Tuesday, June 03, 2008
va - pendu sound
getting rid of the glue 12"
[2006, pendu sound]
the title of this compilation was lifted from a quote by henry cowell, right before introducing the music of john cage, morton feldman, christian wolff and earl brown; it referred to how these composers were eschewing traditional structure for looser experimentation. this brooklyn-centric 12" adheres to this, uh, unadhesiveness, and offers up ten artists and groups' musical perspectives on the matter.
dirty churches' eat birth is the most strikingly different track from the rest of the compilation as it's pretty rocking. they establish a great drum rhythm with slow, steadily driving guitar. doesn't sound much like free-improv, but listening to it, there's not much "traditional" about it. formless female vocals at first, but even when stephonik briefly starts singing, it won't sound all that normal. since there's no chorus and hardly even a verse, i began to understand its inclusion. diggin' that track. not sure if this band is still active, but two of the members' (jesse gelaznik and alex beard) current exploits are being carried out in hula.
fin fang foom (fun fact: also the name of a math rock band... and an alliteration) by duo spin-17 is more like what i was expecting; multi-layered female vocals by motoko shimizu aided by light drum, wooden and metallic percussion. shimizu's mostly in maja ratkje mode, but with a healthy pinch of maggie nicols thrown in for good measure. the multi-tracking was nice, but the best part is ed chang's unexpected blast of noise and feedback that closes out the last fifty seconds. ed's pretty active in the avant-garde community and collaborates with doug theriault as dual and ed howard in agents at midnight. there's a collaborative effort between both members of spin-17 and adam kriney (beets (with dirty churches' john dalessi), the colour sounds label, owl xounds, la otracina, blizzards, castanets) called lust ionics, as well. then there's also rust ionics, which is ed chang, kriney and theriault.
k.p.'s birds fucking outside my window is a glorious orgy of electronic chaos and noisy electronic drone with organic percussive undertones. i really enjoy the random sounds of the muffled hand drumming buried underneath the obtrusive squeals and scuffed up noise. k.p. consisted of tyler orr, matt folden (hatefuck) and max gudmunson. both matt and max are in abuse report with pendu's proprietor todd brooks, and max also gets his write on with cassette gods and the demon academy blog. it seems like k.p. is just matt and max now, not sure if orr was on this track or not.
percussion and electronics meet again on fessenden's pt. iii/ii. the results are a lot calmer though. the drumming sounds like disconnected explosions off in the horizon, while drones softly undulate. there's a wind-up sounding click that's rather hypnotic, especially with the waviness of the metallic ambiance. the sporadic and spastic percussion is a unique companion for the overall lull of pt. iii/ii, but, to my delight, it doesn't detract from the trance-like feel, and i actually found that it provided a fantastic compliment to it.
eager meek (andré joel paul, also of this sheep those sheep and you aren't my mother) begins to accidental crashes and long naps with twenty seconds or so of sparse guitar before a brief passage of loud, hollow noise leads to a bleak, but still captivating rolling drone which will repeat for most of crashes' duration. there's also some random rhythmic clicking noises, which only stick around in the first half, but the center of this track's universe is clearly the wintry drones. with a foundation as good as this is, the main concern should be not adding too much to it, and paul succeeds there, with a nice bit of restraint on his part.
hemorrhage, by mialessot, daniel carter and old ghost, who are now known as ghost moth, features waves of distorted noise and squaller. that noise is far more of a presence than i heard on their split cassette with fossils, and i'm liking it a whole lot. carter's saxophone cries are no competition to the strength of todd and robbie's tumult and are relegated to back seat status. not that that's a bad thing, it's nice to hear his frantic blurts and prolonged whines lurking just below the surface, puncturing the thick noise at the opportune times. awesome.
experimental turntablist (ex-texan and fashionista!) maria chavez hadn't been on my radar, for some inexplicable reason, but her untitled piece from an april 2006 performance at spoken word has captured my attention. expertly used audio excerpts, crackling vinyl, needle skips, squeals and minimal noise is making me very happy. what's weird is that i've heard of everyone she's collaborated with or gets mentioned with, but not her. okay, considering that this was the last thing of hers that's shown up on a tangible audio recording, it's not so weird. maria's no longer putting out releases, although she is still performing (in the nyc area). rather than record music, she's decided to just videotape the performances and then have them freely streaming on her blog... but it seems like youtube has more videos of her than the blog.
talibam's talibam eat a sound soup does a whole lot of wandering. i'm mainly drawn to kevin shea's impressive rolling polyarrhythmic drumming. the pitch-shifting organ synth sounds good, as does the brief bit of saxophone towards the end, but that's about it. there's a fifteen second period where synth and drums have a connection, and that was promising, but the bottom falls out too quickly. it's alright, just not as memorable as other tracks on getting rid of the glue, despite the fact that it does one of the better jobs here of actually getting rid of the glue.
excepter will overcompensate for talibam!'s noodling with an upbeat, whimsical and repetitious synth foundation on sonja. then, to balance out all of the structure, they'll flesh it out with reverberated, almost shoegazey cooing that drifts about more as an atmospheric addition than a focal point, there's also improvisational synthesizer playing on top of the main loop. whether intentional or not, i like how the album was bookended by the two tracks that were kinda-sorta improvisational, but i just like themes, doesn't matter if they're imagined or not.
the record's final two tracks didn't move me so much, but the rest of comp was great. i dug the broad range of sounds and styles and it was interesting to hear the different ways that everyone chose to sidestep tradition. some made wide fucking detours, others merely tip-toed around it, but, overall, it made for a rad album.
K.P. - Birds Fucking Outside My Window
Maria Chavez in Houston
Ghost Moth @ Monkeytown (Pt. 1); Brooklyn, NY 7/18/07
Talibam! in Bordeaux, France 10/21/06
Dirty Churches @ Pianos; Manhattan, NY
(may induce seizures)
Excepter @ Rocky's; Brooklyn, NY 8/18/07
K.P. @ Death By Audio Space; Brooklyn, NY 3/14/08
Spin-17 @ Goodbye Blue Monday; Brooklyn, NY 2/8/07
[2006, pendu sound]
the title of this compilation was lifted from a quote by henry cowell, right before introducing the music of john cage, morton feldman, christian wolff and earl brown; it referred to how these composers were eschewing traditional structure for looser experimentation. this brooklyn-centric 12" adheres to this, uh, unadhesiveness, and offers up ten artists and groups' musical perspectives on the matter.
dirty churches' eat birth is the most strikingly different track from the rest of the compilation as it's pretty rocking. they establish a great drum rhythm with slow, steadily driving guitar. doesn't sound much like free-improv, but listening to it, there's not much "traditional" about it. formless female vocals at first, but even when stephonik briefly starts singing, it won't sound all that normal. since there's no chorus and hardly even a verse, i began to understand its inclusion. diggin' that track. not sure if this band is still active, but two of the members' (jesse gelaznik and alex beard) current exploits are being carried out in hula.
fin fang foom (fun fact: also the name of a math rock band... and an alliteration) by duo spin-17 is more like what i was expecting; multi-layered female vocals by motoko shimizu aided by light drum, wooden and metallic percussion. shimizu's mostly in maja ratkje mode, but with a healthy pinch of maggie nicols thrown in for good measure. the multi-tracking was nice, but the best part is ed chang's unexpected blast of noise and feedback that closes out the last fifty seconds. ed's pretty active in the avant-garde community and collaborates with doug theriault as dual and ed howard in agents at midnight. there's a collaborative effort between both members of spin-17 and adam kriney (beets (with dirty churches' john dalessi), the colour sounds label, owl xounds, la otracina, blizzards, castanets) called lust ionics, as well. then there's also rust ionics, which is ed chang, kriney and theriault.
k.p.'s birds fucking outside my window is a glorious orgy of electronic chaos and noisy electronic drone with organic percussive undertones. i really enjoy the random sounds of the muffled hand drumming buried underneath the obtrusive squeals and scuffed up noise. k.p. consisted of tyler orr, matt folden (hatefuck) and max gudmunson. both matt and max are in abuse report with pendu's proprietor todd brooks, and max also gets his write on with cassette gods and the demon academy blog. it seems like k.p. is just matt and max now, not sure if orr was on this track or not.
percussion and electronics meet again on fessenden's pt. iii/ii. the results are a lot calmer though. the drumming sounds like disconnected explosions off in the horizon, while drones softly undulate. there's a wind-up sounding click that's rather hypnotic, especially with the waviness of the metallic ambiance. the sporadic and spastic percussion is a unique companion for the overall lull of pt. iii/ii, but, to my delight, it doesn't detract from the trance-like feel, and i actually found that it provided a fantastic compliment to it.
eager meek (andré joel paul, also of this sheep those sheep and you aren't my mother) begins to accidental crashes and long naps with twenty seconds or so of sparse guitar before a brief passage of loud, hollow noise leads to a bleak, but still captivating rolling drone which will repeat for most of crashes' duration. there's also some random rhythmic clicking noises, which only stick around in the first half, but the center of this track's universe is clearly the wintry drones. with a foundation as good as this is, the main concern should be not adding too much to it, and paul succeeds there, with a nice bit of restraint on his part.hemorrhage, by mialessot, daniel carter and old ghost, who are now known as ghost moth, features waves of distorted noise and squaller. that noise is far more of a presence than i heard on their split cassette with fossils, and i'm liking it a whole lot. carter's saxophone cries are no competition to the strength of todd and robbie's tumult and are relegated to back seat status. not that that's a bad thing, it's nice to hear his frantic blurts and prolonged whines lurking just below the surface, puncturing the thick noise at the opportune times. awesome.
experimental turntablist (ex-texan and fashionista!) maria chavez hadn't been on my radar, for some inexplicable reason, but her untitled piece from an april 2006 performance at spoken word has captured my attention. expertly used audio excerpts, crackling vinyl, needle skips, squeals and minimal noise is making me very happy. what's weird is that i've heard of everyone she's collaborated with or gets mentioned with, but not her. okay, considering that this was the last thing of hers that's shown up on a tangible audio recording, it's not so weird. maria's no longer putting out releases, although she is still performing (in the nyc area). rather than record music, she's decided to just videotape the performances and then have them freely streaming on her blog... but it seems like youtube has more videos of her than the blog.
talibam's talibam eat a sound soup does a whole lot of wandering. i'm mainly drawn to kevin shea's impressive rolling polyarrhythmic drumming. the pitch-shifting organ synth sounds good, as does the brief bit of saxophone towards the end, but that's about it. there's a fifteen second period where synth and drums have a connection, and that was promising, but the bottom falls out too quickly. it's alright, just not as memorable as other tracks on getting rid of the glue, despite the fact that it does one of the better jobs here of actually getting rid of the glue.
excepter will overcompensate for talibam!'s noodling with an upbeat, whimsical and repetitious synth foundation on sonja. then, to balance out all of the structure, they'll flesh it out with reverberated, almost shoegazey cooing that drifts about more as an atmospheric addition than a focal point, there's also improvisational synthesizer playing on top of the main loop. whether intentional or not, i like how the album was bookended by the two tracks that were kinda-sorta improvisational, but i just like themes, doesn't matter if they're imagined or not.
the record's final two tracks didn't move me so much, but the rest of comp was great. i dug the broad range of sounds and styles and it was interesting to hear the different ways that everyone chose to sidestep tradition. some made wide fucking detours, others merely tip-toed around it, but, overall, it made for a rad album.
K.P. - Birds Fucking Outside My Window
Ghost Moth @ Monkeytown (Pt. 1); Brooklyn, NY 7/18/07
Talibam! in Bordeaux, France 10/21/06
Dirty Churches @ Pianos; Manhattan, NY
(may induce seizures)
Excepter @ Rocky's; Brooklyn, NY 8/18/07
K.P. @ Death By Audio Space; Brooklyn, NY 3/14/08
Spin-17 @ Goodbye Blue Monday; Brooklyn, NY 2/8/07
:: posted by avant gardening, 1:12 PM