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voice of the machine
At what point does sound become music?
Sachiko M's "13072001," generated from a pair of oscillators, would seem to put this question to the test: it seems to be emptied of almost everything which might qualify as "musical" information. What we get instead is the intermittent appearance of short, stark bursts of sound which last for only a second before winking back into silence.
And yet it's not difficult to recognize that there's an aesthetic at work here, whether it be the Western-minimalist tradition of reduction and renunciation, the (much older) Eastern-minimalist tradition of incompleteness and negative space, or even an aesthetic of technological animism, which might suggest that the role of the musician is to permit the machine to speak in its own voice (related: Haco's "Stereo Bugscope" project). Regardless of where you might slot it, once you give yourself over to the piece its boldness and force become strikingly clear: the life-force that flutters here may be flickering or ephemeral but this only serves to make its vitality stand in sharper focus.
Listen: "13072001" by Sachiko M
From Disc Four in the Improvised Music From Japan box set (2001); special thanks to D. Bauler. Labels: music_commentary |
Friday, April 29, 2005
1:59 PM
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sunroof!, ussa
The final track on USSA is entitled "Rainbow Mush," a phrase which may be the perfect encapsulation of the Sunroof! aesthetic: on this release Matthew Bower has once again taken the candy-colored trappings of pop (big chords, bright sounds, peppy beats) and pushed them far beyond their normal structures, breaking them down almost beyond recognition, disintegrating them into sludge, creating a pop music for the time when the universe collapses back into an infinitely dense singularity.
"Warm Panic 1 & 2" perhaps serves as a good example of the Sunroof! interrogation of musical forms: after four or five minutes of whirling sonic turbulence, a pattern begins to emerge, a cyclically recurring whine—a riff. A strange, alien, minimalist riff, but a riff nonetheless. This sound then proceeds to repeat with mantric obsessiveness, pushing the very concept of what a riff does to its logical extreme in a way reminiscent of the Stone Age doggedness of an act like Faust. (Bower may have acknowledged his debt to Krautrock acts with the first Sunroof! release, Delicate Autobahn Under Construction, which uses its title to invoke that specifically German sense of endless smooth propulsion.)
The other influence I hear on this album is Robert Fripp, particularly Fripp's work with Brian Eno. In those collaborations, Eno takes Fripp's guitar and replicates it to the point where it opens up, lotus-like, to reveal a seemingly infinite hall-of-mirrors environment inside: many of the pieces here on USSA, equally dazzling, could function as heir to those experiments. Especially notable in this regard is the twenty-minute "Baltimore Starry Night," which sounds like the work of an acid-damaged Glam child attempting to replicate the entirety of No Pussyfooting in a dank garage.
Although Cloudz may ultimately work as a more polished and complete realization of the Sunroof! "sound", USSA is a disc that no fan of ecstatic guitar will want to miss.
On the always-reliable VHF.
Listen: "Rainbow Mush"
(Note: this is part of an occasional feature where we'll post MP3s of bands we review for as long as the review remains on the front page of the blog. Once the review goes into the archives, the MP3s will be removed. Special thanks to Matthew for his kind permission.)
This review cross-posted to Thaumaturgy |
Thursday, April 28, 2005
12:29 PM
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face to face with the goat god
I posted an MP3 last Friday, and I'll post one today-- maybe we can make this a weekly thing.
Today: the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
Famously described by William S. Burroughs as "a 4,000 year old rock 'n' roll band," the Master Musicians are a Moroccan ensemble located south of Tangier. It's theorized that the primary Jajoukan festival is in fact a reenactment of the Lupercalia, the Roman Rites of Pan, and much of the ecstatic Jajoukan music found on this recording (1992's Apocalypse Across the Sky) can, indeed, be described as panic-inducing: it's some of the most frightening music I've ever heard. The dominant instrument on many of these tracks is the ghaitia, a terrifyingly shrill pipe: when played in mass ensemble, these pipes are pretty ego-annihilating. (Their intricate melodic lines may also have inspired the hallucinatory calligrammatic art of cut-up pioneer Brion Gysin, who for two years ran a Tangier restaurant where the Master Musicians served as the house band.)
The particular piece I'm putting up today doesn't feature the pipes, but rather a drummer and what sounds like two musicians on stringed instruments (to deduce from the liner notes, I'd guess a gimbri and lira). What's special here is the way that even with only these minimal means, the track still has the capability to send the receptive listener directly into a potent trance state. Lights out.
Listen: "The Middle of the Night" by the Master Musicians of Jajouka Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Friday, April 22, 2005
4:49 PM
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zone of nothing
The other new mix I'm offering this week is a mix of psychedelic and electronic music:
ZONE OF NOTHING (57 minutes)
"Ghosts Are Never Forgiven" by Pelt
"After the Locust" by John Cale
"Untitled" by Axolotl
"Tornado Rose Canoe" by Sunroof!
"Kamelin Hikea" by Kemialliset Ystavat
"Always / Never Sleep [Part 1]" by Bird Show
"All Our Base Are Belong To Them" by the Books
"For the Trees" by Matmos
"Appear" by Minamo
The rule, as always, is that I'll swap this mix for a copy of a mix you've made: for my address, e-mail jeremy [at] invisible-city.com. The usual circle of music-swapping villains (you know who you are) can expect a copy of this automagically in the next week or two. |
Thursday, April 21, 2005
1:53 PM
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motherfuckers II
It's been several months since I've made a new mix CD available through the Raccoon Mix Exchange, so this week I plan on offering two.
The first of these was inspired by Angela's improvement of my fuck-themed mix idea from Friday. In Angela's revisioning, she broadens out the theme to include songs with any profanity in the title, not only "fuck" and its variants. This would seem to make it substantially easier, but she also provided a complicating restriction: that the song must also feature profanity prominently in its lyrics or chorus.
A worthy challenge! My results:
SHIT AND FUCK (52 minutes)
"Fuck" by the Kleptones
"Ain't Nothin' Ta Fuck Wit" by Wu-Tang Clan
"Sexy Motherfucker" by Prince
"Shit & Fuck" by Wesley Willis
"Go To Hell" by Nina Simone
"Tiger Bastard" by Mu
"Fuck the Pain Away" by Peaches
"Fuck You Pay Me" by A.R.E. Weapons
"To Hell With Poverty" by Gang of Four
"Enter the Bitch" by Kurtis Rush
"Hey Bastard" by STP
"Full of Shit" by the Electric Eels
"Jim Motherfucker" by Gaunt
"Fuck the President" by Witchy Poo
"Today Has Been A Fucked Up Day" by Beck
Possible bonus tracks could be derived from the Explicit Content Only version of N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton."
As always, I'll swap this mix for a copy of a mix you've made: for my address, e-mail jeremy [at] invisible-city.com. |
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
12:55 PM
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motherfuckers
Learning (via iTunes) that I have twelve songs which include the word "fuck" (or a variant) in their titles suggests a possible theme for a mix.
I can pretty much guarantee you that this theoretical mix will never come to pass, but I will give you an MP3 of one possible track, Gaunt's "Jim Motherfucker," from 1992.
It's a scuzzy little bit of punk rock goodness that tells the familiar cautionary / celebratory tale of drunkenness, poverty, and nihilism. Use it to kick off your weekend.
Listen: "Jim Motherfucker" Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Friday, April 15, 2005
8:09 PM
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alphane moon / our glassie azoth, experimenting with an amen / the magician's heavenly chaos
Students of alchemy, that compelling science-in-ruins, know that "azoth" is one of alchemy's four symbolic substances. The other three, mercury, sulphur, and salt, are all familiar enough— azoth is the one that's truly cryptic, described variously as a mysterious life force, an invisible fire, or a river of living water. It's thought, by some, that azoth is a sort of proto-electricity, or that electricity is azoth itself under a different name—so the name Our Glassie Azoth suggests something cryptic, slippery, and above all, enthralled by the transfiguring fire-water of current.
In this regard, the three Azoth tracks that make up the "Magician's Heavenly Chaos" half of this album don't disappoint: each of them are a long-form experiment in attempting to harness (or to liberate) a wild torrent of primal electrical squall. It's impossible to tell exactly what is generating the sounds captured here: it could be an analogue synth, guitar feedback, an array of test-tone oscillators, a theremin—basically these tracks sound like pure unrefined voltage, given voice. And it turns out voltage has a personality: it chatters, it wails, it thrums menacingly and veers chaotically. It evolves patterns which then disintegrate, other patterns corroding it cancerously from within.
This music is hard to situate precisely—the band's from Wales, but if I were hearing these tracks without that knowledge I'd probably guess Japan (at its noisiest it recalls the terrifying white-hot typhoons of analogue-era Merzbow, and at its most delicate it could be the spastic cousin of sinewave minimalists like Sachiko M or Toshimaru Nakamura). Listen with a slightly different ear, though, and it's suddenly reminiscent of a 1960s American electronic composition—there are moments that could be from a lost Tod Dockstater tape-piece, some occluded moon of Quatermass.
The album's opening half is contribued by sister act Alphane Moon, which, if I understand correctly, is the Our Glassie Azoth folks recording under a different name (or vice versa). I know that, of the band's two faces, Alphane Moon is the one that explicitly invokes the moon, but, frankly, they seem like the solar half of this sacred marriage— "The Magician's Heavenly Chaos" is all about lunatic darkness, whereas "Experimenting With An Amen" seems more willing to cast a few beams of illumination to guide the wary. It's still noisy—the shriek that kicks off the album's first track is as punishing as anything on its flipside—but the noise is consistently tempered with warm, hazy drones. Take the second track, "Opal Fire," for instance: overlook the occasional wraithlike keening, and it could pass for one of the otherworldly bog-spaces on Eno's On Land. There are even a few side-steps into wyrd-folk territory: "Cyngor y Borgen" is a straight-up acoustic ballad, sung in Welsh, which is paired with "Further," which sounds more like Nick Drake than it sounds like anything else on either half of the record.
These are brief digressions, though, and before you know it we're at the final Alphane Moon track. This track, "Usk," is the one which makes an attempt to form a union between the two acts on this disc—it opens with magnificent pulsating sheets of noise which seem like they belong more readily to the Our Glassie Azoth side of things, but then the noise gradually clears, replaced by a palette of calming electronic arpeggiations and what sounds like a distant flute, revealing the gentler hand of Alphane Moon. It's a lovely, hermaphroditic piece, showcasing the best side of each of these intriguing acts.
On Oggum.
Hear: "Usk"
(Note: this is part of an occasional feature where we'll post MP3s of bands we review for as long as the review remains on the front page of the blog. Once the review goes into the archives, the MP3s will be removed. Special thanks to Daffyd for his kind permission.)
This review has been cross-posted to ThaumaturgyLabels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Thursday, April 07, 2005
9:57 AM
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our federal government
Raccoon correspondent K. McLellan writes in:
OK, so I just saw this in the Washington Post:
"Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable.
"In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists.
"'It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people.'"
OK, so first of all, very obviously, this is a totally offensive way to excuse acts of violence against judges.
Secondly, though-- on what PLANET is the role of the judiciary branch of government to be the "enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people"??? For WHAT FUCKING REASON do we have THREE FUCKING BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT except to provide motherfucking CHECKS AND FUCKING BALANCES???
This is a government that bases its arguments on the assumption that the people they are courting don't fucking understand how our fucking government is fucking supposed to fucking work!!! Their power base apparently consists of people who couldn't fucking pass a junior-high-level civics class!!
I am filled with rage.
Love,
K.
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Wednesday, April 06, 2005
7:21 AM
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this disc's ineffable nature
Some of the fake records mixed into the April Fool's Day edition of the Aquarius Records newsletter are pretty funny:
UNKNOWN s/t (???) 2cd 21.00
Finally back in stock. We listed this way back in 1999, and due to this disc's ineffable nature, we were unable to find more. UNTIL NOW!
A monumental extension of John Cage's "4'33" into the realms of marketing. Absolutely inaudible field recording of empty space, walls of noise digitally obliterated into the void of utter silence, and intricate sampling masterfully worked into nothing at all. Austere and basically impossible to see packaging. An audio and visual allegory of pure nothing. Silence made even more silent. Emptiness completely and utterly emptied. Absolutely nothing. No sound. No art. No disc. Recommended!
ZORN, JOHN First Words (Tzadik) cd + Book 45.00
It's hard to believe it's already been half a year since John Zorn's 50th birthday party. People are STILL talking about what a great party it was and what an excellent batch of new Tzadik releases related to his septuagenarian anniversary we've been blessed with. Wow. Wow! I mean WOW! And what more of a suitable way of kicking off the second half of this year's batch than with First Words. Recorded in the early months of 1955 by his doting mother (using a portable Wollensack recorder purchased at Sears) as he lay in his crib in his yellow and gray camouflage pajamas, the first track of First Words is exactly as one would expect: The very first words uttered by John Zorn! These two syllables, spoken in the interval of a major second, have mystified Zorn for most of his life. This kernel of music, this germinal source of inspiration, was it meant to lead into something, or was it a cadence? Frustrated in his attempts to understand the genius of his earlier self, Zorn went so far as to enroll in Columbia University's Ph.D. program in musicology in an attempt to analyze and break the code on the brief musical passage. The fruits of his labors resulted in the completion of his thesis: The Ontological Implications Of My First Utterance, which is included in hardback form in this limited edition first pressing. The remaining 11 tracks on the album are all compositions commissioned by Zorn and performed by the Downtown scene's greatest: Steve Lacy, Wayne Horvitz, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, Dave Douglas, Otomo Yoshihide and more!
SUNN 0))) / BORIS / EARTH Reserve Not Yet Met (Southern Lord / Inoxia / Sub Pop) cd single 99.00
In an attempt to record an album that will induce coronaries in record collectors worldwide, the current monsters of sludge: Sunn 0))), Earth and Japan's mighty Boris, got together and recorded a single track, 11 minutes long, one chord, an E to be exact, with each band handling one of the notes in the chord. Sunn 0))) deftly tackle the G, as if it were a blackened, dying sunn. Earth spews forth the B, with as much vitriol as they can muster. And of course Boris offer up a soul crushing E to complete what is quite possibly the heaviest chord ever recorded. EVER! Unfortunately this is super limited, in fact we didn't get any copies at all. We're currently bidding on the only copy in existence on Ebay right now. The Buy It Now was $25,000, so the fact that the bidding is now at $18,301 and the reserve has still not been met is not very encouraging. But c'mon, three bands, three notes, one chord, eleven minutes, one copy. You just can't put a price on that!
And while we all want to own the first edition of this already out of print triple threat sludge match cd, rumours on several message boards suggest there will be a repress, another single copy, but this will be the timeshare version. For a small fee, you will be able to own, listen to, and gaze adoringly at the cd for a brief period of time each year (determined by the number of buyers, limited to 365, so at the very leat you can own the disc one day a year), before a courier shows up to deliver it to the next owner. We'll of course keep you posted.
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Saturday, April 02, 2005
8:28 AM
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