Honorable Mentions ::

The fourteen piece Transatlantic Art Ensemble, led by Roscoe Mitchell
on soprano sax make some fine noise. The highly lauded Mitchell is one
of the world’s foremost abstract jazz composers, and this selection of
nine interwoven works, recorded in 2004, tell his history. It tumbles,
rumbles and whispers, it wails and bellows. Composition/Improvisation
Nos. 1, 2 & 3 paints a wild, yet saavy picture of our striated sense
of universal change. The melodious notes he plays speak from worn lips
telling bittersweet stories, in fact, there’s a passionate melancholy
bolstered by a backing ensemble nimbly gyrate through Mitchell’s
shattered, scattered blowing, around wiggly projections and roads less
travelled. It’s something of a collected circus chaos that bleeds
delicately into a faded watercolor of the buried sea. [Purchase]

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Portugese guitarist and electronic composer Rafael Toral delivers a
stuntifying new release based in space. To accomplish this he’s
employed filters, empty circuits and feedback, sparsely construed to
make for a minimalist collage that pops, hides away and squeaks as if
repelling a wooden floor in rubber soles. Toral is equipped with a
board full of effects that he then fashions like a clown twisting
balloons into poodles, though the result is far more contagious.
There’s something as sinister, but not as, er, clownish to these
bloated antics. By manipulating various gassy overtures, sliding and
stretching them into new sound shapes it becomes aural cinema. The
faster he works the more removed and expressionist the sounds of
‘Space Solo 1′ become. And yes he leaves room for open air white noise
that’s pretty hush. But not too much, as there’s a sense of antsy,
frictitious disorder at play. “Echo Feed” plays into the whole notion
that life may exist outside our perception with its nod to 50′s
b-movie elongated bleeps and warm vortex exterior, built for two. [Purchase]

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Low are back. Drums and Guns has got the raw spirit one might expect
during wartime. While so many “Pretty People” are out there jazzingly
distracting us with their never-ending booty call stage antics this is
an uncertain quirky alarm call to arms. To hear something like this
from a longstanding threesome who actually have built a home in the
realm of the avant garde is uneasy these days. Mind you, this is
probably their most accessible record to date, and they sound great
here, and focus more on crafting songs with strings alongside
electronics. The bass is self-evident. “Breaker” recalls the rootsy
ramble in some early, less righteous, pre-MTV Peter Gabriel. They seem
straight-forward, caressing the wounded in acoustic caress, by
dispelling their personal maybes in a distillation of truths.
Harkening to the stance of a myriad of legendary drum and bugle corps,
they cleverly admit beats as well as smart lyricism. The band seems
poised to fall between the intersection driving forces like Bjork and
Spiritualized, without bells and buzz. The record is pretty stark and
elemental until track six of thirteen where “Always Fade” adds some
warm percussion and broken electronica which swirls around the vocals
of two singers. This makes for something a bit distinctive, and less
of another homage to age old Dylan-like anthemic stylings. The record
plays like a poker faced reality rich in the same tonal qualities once
heard from the 4AD label. Phrasing like “Always a whisper, worthless
and tender. Breaking my arm that won’t heal” prove their may still be
poetry in the arena of independent music. The disc comes housed with a
colorful picture book that illustrates the mood by Jimi Sides. [Purchase]

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Nijmegen’s duo Beequeen (Frans de Waard and Freek Kinkelar) release a
compilation of 23 various works recorded since 1989. Certainly one of
the more notable experimental outfits of the last two decades, this
collection numbingly sets a certain tone (or atones) both to the past
and future. There’s a delicate balance of low chords breaking into
dark ambient space (“Does He Do As If He Is”) from their 1994
recording ‘Split’. You’re in the dark, someone is casting a vague echo
while slowly bowing a cello, you see a faint light. There is this
sense of passing figures, black on black shadowy movements hinted at
in your peripheral view. At points queasy, others like your spinning
in a Spanish villa for just a dazzling moment (“Fond II”). They firmly
use the guise of industrialisms to build the droning layers of works
like “Land Above Us” which has both a sense of open continuum and
repeat cycle that can, for many, become unnerving. Though, they do so
with a certain grace that kind of rounds the corners of chaos. The
final stage of production, so to speak. And the point is clear, these
two men have built a passionate body of work that is at once striking
for its qualities emulating the codec of film, secondly they have used
that motif to concoct music which is out of the personal body, told
from the vantage point of the other. And third, it takes you some
place you may have not dared, distinctively told with a fusion of
pace, timing, fore/background. Then there are these themes of
meditation, observation, then realization. When you sample tracks like
“Brasillian Fond” (1989), you are just barely eavesdropping by way of
the slight incorporated field recordings. Part mysterious travelogue,
part staging for how you might compose music to send to navigate the
hole in the ozone and then into the deep universe to cultivate answers
to its questions. The work of Beequeen simply trips the mind.

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Karl Hyde and Rick Smith are back after several years where they
toured and parted with their former label, V2. Here the duo continues
their fully produced wide-open dancefloor wash of warm rhythms and
beats galore. The lead in cut, “Crocodile” sounds like an immediate
hit, though with a few grungier and vocal dynamics in today’s mix how
will these gents compete? First, they have a world class sensibility
of what people are physically move to. They’ve proven themselves live
over and again, and this collection of bright tracks really captures
the spirit of how arms and hair and torsos dart between the sweat of
light and the darker chords of chillout. This is plain on “Good
Morning Cockerel” where the sweet tinkling piano plays to Hyde’s
unplugged, no-nonsense vocal. Back in June Smith was injured by
baseball bat wielding hoodlums during a concert at the Ejekt Festival
in Athens, though it sounds like these gents have made it back firmly
to their feet. A lot of what appears here is balanced by the
construction of song structures as opposed to the pure dance work of
some of their former work. This harkens to similar strategies made by
other electronic colleagues like Moby, Chemical Brothers and others in
the recent past. “Boy, Boy, Boy” sounds more like what you may hear in
a White Stripes pop song as opposed to late night in Ibiza. And then
there’s “Ring Road” which features the beloved Brit-rap they came to
fame on the wave of. It’s dressed down, almost spoken. Add some
skeletal percussion and the beat is basic, bridged by a beautifully
slightly vocoded chorus. It’s thick and in the trends set by
themselves, De La Soul, Soul Coughing and a handful of others
lip-serving the masses at one moment or another. The nice surprise
here is ‘Faxed Invitation’ built on the mechanical mutations of an old
machine that transmits messages. Their message is all kept on the warm
down-low. The funky dance hooks are in “Holding the Moth” though
they’ve hurdled some of their catchiest phrases for a larger focus on
the vocal throughout. For that look to “Beautiful Burnout.” The title
says it all in that which amply re-uses some of their classic flow,
and will surely be the dance single for what it’s worth, which is more
than two bits (or is that bytes)? [Purchase]

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Developed from a series of live shows over two years, Guillaume Graux
sorts out seven tracks that source the sounds from his laptop with
mastering by Yves De Mey. The result is dense, cryptic and punctuated
with clicks and pops encrusted with electronic noise and space as
heard on the rambunctious “Insomnia.” Elsewhere on Shallow Water
Blackout (a loss of consciousness caused by the lapse of breath)
there is hazy dulling set of harmonies, pale as a blue sky at high
noon, effectively in mid November when the chill has just set in full
on. The mix of assorted tones are intertwined on “Lady Jane.” Fingers
to strings like spider to web, a nervousness arises and dissipates,
leaving a warm stretched passage that meanders in speed and density.
Yet there’s still room for the branding of chunky noise on “Stillnox
Parties” which sounds like a factory in full production as interpreted
through teletype. Like a haphazard collision between Merzbow and Kim
Cascone, this recording jumps around a rock and a hard place. Solid in
fearless tracks like “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” which cranks
out a gyrating percussive beat that rolls and rocks, through colliding
distortion and a raspy undertone. Hard in its edgeless
experimentation. This is an impressive second full length challenge of
any basic formula.

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Well oiled, to a patina perhaps unlike any other avant band ever out
of Germany, Einstürzende Neubauten decided to release this latest
ten-track collection on their own accord. With lyrics by resident
spoken croonster Blixa Bargeld, the band offers a heavy piano on
opener “Die Wellen.” Building and building with their signature
percussion, things slowly come to a crescendo and close abruptly. It’s
dramatic, alive. The record continues with the clip-clop of “Nagorny
Karabach” which sounds like an intimate, dusty travelogue. Since the
early 80′s this quartet have offered a wide angled discography with
fiery experimentation that never seems to cut itself short from
beating its own drum(s). That outcome has provided amazing work like
the powerful tin beats as heard on “Weil Weil Weil” alongside a
spirited vocal by Bargeld and other electronics and a barrage of amped
samples. It’s probably the best “song” for them in years. It’s got a
contained structure. All sung in German, their sound, gutteral,
poker-faced and at times poking fun at itself, becomes another
instrument telling a story for any ears, bilingual or not. Elsewhere
on Alles Wieder Offen you’ll find field recordings mixed down as on
“Von Wegen” which is a cross between an acoustic folk rock number with
the vestiges of a operatic prelude. But when the percussive beat
blends in things become more uncalculated. And this is what these
gents are known for. Taking it way out. The title track starts like
something from 80s new wave, with a noir Nick Cave-like vocal. Rhyme
may have a reason. Most lovely here I must point out “Susej” which
something of an industrial love song. Posing in a bit of a whisper
over the clink of a repetitive beat that comes and goes with dramatic
flair. [Purchase]

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This is an explosive barrage of droning guitars and percussion. It
cranks and careens and crashes and burns. There is a broad peripheral
soundscape here, something drown in amplification and its absorption
of everything in its path. Not loud for the sake of it either, there’s
more of a twisted containment of an abundance of noise junk, being
controlled and manipulated with a keen construction. The flailing
metallic jamboree of brass and small explosions breathe from inner
earth. This hour is split in near even quadrants, so it’s as if you
are listening to an aural play in part. The volume shifts, but there
is a beating that is constant, blurry at points then open and raw in
others. By part three they are in a quieter space, wider, more about
harmonies in the atmospheric strings, and the chamber music crated by
the din of the background. A pale sense of sadness in the air rides
towards the final track when things become nearer and clearer.
Actually, this is done with a stretched drone that is as balancing as
it is menacing. The long washes of guitar are mixed and filtered like
light fading into a distant valley. But that is edged out by the
clamor of heavy bass and distortion at midpoint which continues its
path until the very last minute where things settle with the sense of
a angered, mysterious cliffhanger. [Purchase]

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Here’s a debut from an Icelandic producer who has worked with Bjork,
Sigur Rós, Coco Rosie, among others. The sounds are wafting delicacies
with strings and breezy buzz, music boxes all intertwined with guest
vocals and other sensitive arrangements. Symphonic strings with
breaks, recalling the soundtrack for Dancer in the Dark which he
worked on with Bjork are evident on the sauntering stop/start of
“Focal Point.” The harmonies are bright and flickery. “Baby Architect”
with J. Walker has a rambling, cut-up feel to it, like they are
humming along inside a machine that is slicing tiny portions and
feeding it back. There’s a warmth throughout the entire record that
spills softly. At times this sounds like a lost record from the 70′s
hidden rock opera vault as peaked at in tracks like “Winter Sleep”
with its Craig Armstrong-like overtures and ambient texturing. Dawn
McCarthy’s voice is a lovely addition that makes for something
brightly birdlike. As I listen the sounds fade away, on the
romanticized “Equilibrium is Restored.” It’s a passage to a small
gazebo in a forest, among nature, a recital with passing minstrels,
and light faire. Ekvílibríum is a floating and dreamy record that
suggests taking a much needed, contemplative pause from our
advertising saturated, overproduced daily speed culture. Charming. [Purchase]

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This tight threesome of tracks collects a piece each recorded in 2003,
04 and recently in 07 – each with the concept of sounds that are
cylindrical, emulating music boxes, player pianos or other motorized
sound machines. Ethan Rose has been busy at work recording film
soundtrack work with Gus Van Sant in between touring with his band
Small Sails, and when he has the wherewithall even creates sound-based
art installations. Here are some of the sounds that have not quite
fallen between the cracks. Starting with the tinkling ringing metallic
harmonics of “Singing Tower” which was recorded at Stanford University
and manipulated from an automated carillon. Rose is fascinated by the
potential of re-using these archaic instruments of yesteryear that
didn’t need a human to play them. He shows his penchant by taking
their sources throughout this recording and filtering, modifying and
otherwise completely reinventing their wheels. The results are powdery
washes of ambient drones, undulating rhythms that bend above and
around the listener. It’s quite mesmerizing and centering. On “…the
dot and the line…” he’s used a series of player pianos and subteley
coarse sound effects that carress the edges of the surface. The piano
is distant as though a lone player is practicing in the dulling divide
of another room. The earliest work here, “Miniature & Sea” sources
optical film readers as well as small music boxes to obtain a
figure-in-the-attic ghostly effect. There is a certain hollow that air
whistles through steadily like a police siren a few blocks away, or
the faded screech of roman candles in July. The pulse breaks the
cyclical frame of the piece nicely, and shifts to a meandering sound
haiku of sorts. The piece eventually roars like a passing train at a
nosehair away until things slowly degenerate into a clump of
austerity. [Purchase]

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Kick it Genesis (and crew)! From the climbing opening righteous
rocker “Higher and Higher” to the wee notes of “Milk Baba” this really
explodes all over the place. A bit with the vengeance of 80′s bands
like Love & Rockets, Icicle Works and others who focused more on the
guitar than on the synthesizer. Jammed in here through smart samples
and sound effects are some real pop rock gems, without the trite
structure of bridge, chorus et al. For example, “In Thee Body” starts
like some industrial dirge that spins into a jamming guitar with a
spoken word vocal questioning the reality of the self in the body. It
meanders just long enough to bring about a streaming of consciousness
of the listener, then brings you back. It darkly rambles about, partly
unrecognizable lyrics, chantlike to a degree. A rock anthem or sacred
code? On “Maximum Swing” the bold tribal percussion is blurs the
buried, gutteral Tom Waits-style vocal which spouts “She could take
the poison from a bee sting…She can pull the feathers off a black
angel wing”. It’s high tone attitude, aha. “New York Story” is their
out loud, hazy-dazy nod to Velvet Underground, tamborine and all.
Serrated strings and shoegazer crooning mixes rightly with the
saltiness of it all in a similar style heard primarily from bands like
Spiritualized. And then there’s the near trance-like “Hooka Chalice”
which transgresses the whole variance of PTV stylings, from noir
visualizations to chamber music until it blows the roof off the mother
about a minute and a half in. Wow. Unexpected grinder totally nailed.
A riot in all senses of the word. [Purchase]

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Sawako has been making soft, atmospheric works for the last few years
and this is of the same ilk. Where things seem to grow is in the
overall sense of composition. The sounds are less ‘tiny’ sounding, and
roll around in space more fluidly. She’s managed to tour and play
live, and the spatial plane here has been effected by a growth in a
greater sense of spatial sound management. The whispers on “August
Neige” sound channeled like apparitions rather than a collaged
patchwork of added sounds in the mix, there is an overall sense of
fusion in the way she is now layering and laying it all down. The
ambience is perfectly mood setting, then building. There’s this sense
of an endless lagoon of sensuous, cool water rippling, a fine mist on
a hot day, and this sated feeling to the tips of your being. “Appled
Soapbox” is a warped piece with an indistinguishable voice sample that
repeats in and outside itself. Throughout Sawako hints generously at
the landscape of her native Japanese roots with themes of quietude and
balance.

El Camino Real is William Basinki’s rebirth of ambient cool. Keeping
true to his growing discography of sensitively deconstructed sound
work, this was recorded from his signature tape loops in 2006. It’s as
if I were sitting upon the tarmac at LAX at dawn, watching the 747s
take flight, one by one, in slow motion. The hazy thick drone is
delivered en masse filling the ground with passing clouds of dusty
distortion, rolling as if you could almost touch its edges. The single
50-minute track rumbles in the eye of this low-fi sound storm, never
losing the bounty of its curvy, harmonious structure. In its
insistent, repetitive continuance Basinski retrofits the listener at
dawn, within a certain silence where few have survived the fallout of
an imaginary apocalypse. It’s fiery, yet desolate.

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The new disc by Novi_sad (Thanasis Kaproulias) on Greek label Tilt
Recordings is a categorically astonishing debut. From the start, this
nearly hour-long triptych of pieces is a multi-layered, expertly
edited collage of dramatic fluid and crunchy textures. In this light,
becoming a transcendent departure from your sense of space.
“Everything Looks Better Beside Water,” indeed. And if you simply
close your eyes while playing this you may envision haunting streams
of consciousness on the edge of clinical abduction. At times the low
end delivers indelible hypnotic vibrations, searing metallics and a
steady sense of the percussion of presence in the distance. The almost
inaudible high pitched sine waves of “O you sweet and spontaneous
Earth. You answered them only with spring” shift the velocity some.
That is until about four minutes in when a siege of encrusted razor
tones builds to a drone that obliterates most anything in its path.
It’s noisy, yet resilient, and Kaproulias smartly knows when enough is
enough, and as such mediates his own table of elements.

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This is the first full-length by the Montreal duo Minibloc (Nicolas
Dion and Anne-Francoise Jacques). It runs the gamut from risky rough
micro-noise on “Examen: Monsieur Déboule L’escalier Jaune Longtemps”
to the shyly sparse feedback and roll-back-the-tape play of “Bingo
Crounch.” One thing’s for sure, these two are nothing if not
completely adventurously inventive. They sound as if they are on the
underside of their instruments on the quirky THX 1138 inspired
“Bourgeois Poison Ivy.” Very physical and raw, without any real
melody, Minibloc has concocted what sounds at times grating like an
overly anxious dog pawing at an open mic. When I saw them play live at
the Mutek Festival in ’05 I actually called them “cute” and this makes
me want to eat those words. Sure their name is Minibloc and the
players are each under 5’8″ – but the whole book/cover conundrum plays
hardball right back at you here. Sawing wood, jangling keys, twisting
and tightening gadgets – their playful experimentation continues
throughout. This is not at all music that you can dance to, more like
the sounds of a fix-it chop shop do-it-all repair center – especially
as heard on the muscularly breathing “Pink Duvet.” There’s ample
amplitude, and a sudden, almost naïvely curious sensibility.

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These thirty-one imaginary soundtracks combined in a deluxe two-pack
are based on the films of Yasujiro Ozu. A very diverse international
compilation that includes work by John Hudak, Roel Meelkop,
Steinbruchel, Steve Roden, Taku Sugimoto, Marc Behrens and many
others. They’ve each created their own visual/visceral sound
experience for the listener to explore with conceptually dramatic
sequencing throughout. In a combination of field recordings, samples
and electronic experimentation, most of what is contained herein is a
wash of drone and ambience – especially noted in the beautiful
three-minute piece “Ukigusa” by Alejandra & Aeron.

Doors creak in
syncopation, a stream flows quick and softly, with a light roar from
the mysterious outdoors. On Behrens’ “Samma No Aji” there’s a dramatic
shift between understanding the listening experience as sine waves or
the nature of crickets. The tone is sharp and postured like stalking
prey, while incidental chirping distracts the potential of the
situation. The work is dramatically dense and ordered, and not
necessarily through common sense, but the shared experience, the
happenstance of aural cinema perhaps. As you listen, read deeply into
the well-written liner notes from Masters of Cinema’s Doug Cummings,
who truly gives a quick, yet rounded historical interpretation of
Ozu’s film work and how it can possibly endure through recordings such
as this. The shaking feedback in Asuna’s short “From Scene 99 To The
End – Kohayagawa-Ke No Aki” alludes to the never-ending buzz of the
fixed machine age. It changes the continuum of energy here, but is
much needed grounding.

Kiyoshi Mizutani presents two pieces titled two
tables (1 and 2) where field recordings of domestic scene, watching
television in the kitchen are layered with exotic birds and the hiss
of a light rain. Part 1 sounds like the bass roar of a waterfall
combined with the delicate gathering of well water, or bathing. There
are voices and knocking (industrial or ‘peckers?). Rustling through
woods can be heard over a fine din of more rapturous rain, along with
vehicles whizzing by and a few cawing birds. It’s all quite noir,
really. “Tooi Soba” is Sawako’s unusual free-form ambient noise
contribution. Sauntering in slippers, perhaps prepping breakfast with
the clink of teacups, it’s definitely morning. There’s a frustrated
bit of pacing, and a few sparse words as familiar birds call. This is
the morning after (what though)? Dale Lloyd contributes one of the
few truly melodic pieces here called “Return To Me Who Sleeps” which
closes the set. Strumming on strings, with the echo of a gong-like
instrument, there’s a distinctly Japanese quality to the timing of his
playing as it fades softly.

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The Tokyo duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno has released a record of range
from the delicate harmonies of the jazzy shoegazer “Cacoy” that turns
discordant towards the very end to the mysterious crooner “Rasen”
which plays on Bjork’s lonesome sweetness amidst the vibration of
organ drone. Totemo Aimasho makes several attempts to toy at
something pop, but never really goes there intentionally. The weary
“Jitsurei” is a good example of a languid soundtrack at half-speed. Of
the dozen tracks on the disc, three are under one minute, including
the would-be just-revving anthem “Midori,” the 44-second piano recital
opener “Hakka” and the micro-hiss and textural elements of “Broome”
that are more like a throat singing version of a chugging freight
train passing through. These are situational pauses, like haikus, that
balance the drama of the other stories like “Donna Donna” (sung like a
Japanese oompa loompa ditty, with a hint of Nick Cave). Though phrased
in quite a contemporary manner, parts here sound like one of those
lost folk records that slipped between the cracks decades ago, atop a
cracked rhythm box, both bright and mellow.

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Phases of open wired strings, like feedback caressing, then sending
distress signals, this live duo is immediately bold and distracting.
Fullman has developed her own long string instrument, percussionist
Sean Meehan helps fill out the sound with the brushed sizzle of his
cymbals. In the constant barrage of wavy vibrations grows a fuzzy glow
that fills the entire aural capacity of the room, or your head
(through earphones). It’s a pervasive, building dissonance cyclically
regenerating itself like sunflowers in August. And that’s just track
one of three. The break in the set is dramatic, necessary, before
diving back into the elongated pitch and echo created from these
untitled pieces. The screech in part two is a bit cumbersome and
grating, disconcerting and run-on. But things change some in the final
leg of this torso where the high-pitch is traded in for a mutable
drone approximating a dead old-fashioned analogue telephone line or
the low-hum whir of some assorted motor. At closure, the numbing
layers are like a flatline current, slowly softening into air.

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Soundmatters is a compilation of five works by Jean-Francois Laporte
that spans 1997-2005. The flap-like snore of “Plénitude du vide”
(2005) has a metallic edge that rumbles about with a to and fro
motion. The restless purr is a curious warning. In the distance a
hybrid air raid siren slowly moves to midground. The discordance is a
disturbing reminder of our times. The near 1/2 hour long “Mantra” (1997)
treats industrial field recordings like collage, ahhh, the familiar
pitch of generators spinning endlessly. Laporte has found a way to
harmonize the shape of the sound with his own layer of drone reverb,
which ominously cascades in and out. Incorporating PVC tubes to mute
some of the frequency, there’s a directional sense to the sound in a
sculptural sense. The track sandwiches gut-massaging lows that offset
the crisp high spatters. It’s funny how compositions that use the
manmade production machine can become somewhat meditative the more you
listen. The initial influx of noise is a bit dense and brusque, but in
no time, if you close your eyes you may see stars. “Boule qui
roule…” (1997), by comparison, is a bit of a test. It’s posture
seems to be much more micro intimate, with sine wave-like pitches that
are scratchy and neon bright. The work plays on sounds that remind us
of cartoon space gravities, lunar expeditions and hover craft. I’m
most certainly not in Kansas anymore.

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In a whirring, crunchy buzz-fest filled with discordant rhythm this
Madrid-based duo has been developing industrial sounds for nearly
three decades. This time out they’ve sent a lethal charge through a
wood chipper, well not really, but the music is muscular and suited
for well worn ears. The insistent shock waves made by “Raskin
Maquinista” are insistent and unforgiving, but again, they know how to
make noise experiential, and not just from the point of pain and
endurance. It’s a factory-like mechanized mix of full-bodied gyrating
repetition. “Control Dos” is the last cut on this four track long
player, an overtly physical recording, texturally grating, an
impractical, unnerving listen. It’s punctuated by pointillism and
brashly brazen. These two have virtually stumbled outside the
sensibility of building any semblance of traditional composition into
their own hands and pulled it inside-out.

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Jeremy Jacobs is JPLS and this new disc is filled with refreshing
free-float, and syncopated dance tracks. His hooks are jangly and
elongated, tinny and spaced. But all the while he keeps you waiting
before adding a layer, a twist or break. It’s the tease of recycled,
regenerated loops. Happy loops nonetheless. And this is chill out
slow shimmy stuff, not the run out on to the dancefloor to shake and
romp variety. It’s a calculated affair, hence its title. But making
such clap-trap fodder you must circumvent the simplicity of the beats
with an undulating harmony, which is here and there on Twilite
though a bit too spare, except for on the very catchy “green 01
(skoozbot’s twilite remix).” It doesn’t save this recording from being
a bit dry and programmed sounding. From track to track there is just
too much that sounds similar, which overall makes for a bland batch.
Though I bet this stuff relaxes the masses into the wee hours, it
comes up short here. [Purchase]

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If you could imagine flying high, into hyper space you could fashion
this trip in your mind. Seattle’s Matt Shoemaker has drawn from the
wide open space of fantasy science fiction. He has, as well, depicted
the intimacy of the hands touch of immediate objects dramatically
playing on the dichotomy of aural depth of field. With an intense
sense of pacing, and the breath between instrumentation Shoemaker has
generated something a bit akin to the lingering noir of the classic
soundtrack for Kubric’s 2001. It’s gassy drone, and moving airways,
the low-fi roar of something faintly mechanical, yet restrained, to
build up a mysterious set of passages that are inhabited by beings and
distant weather systems. Field recordings are folded into the
background delivering a sense of the remote. You get the feeling that
perhaps something much larger than you lurks out there, somewhere. It
harkens a sense of third person, of surveillance. And without any
specific action, the ambience of Spots in the Sun projects that a
lurking and suspenseful sense of the sinister is at large, and
elusive.

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Opening in a gorgeously processed title track filled with wavering,
glowing tones and sparkly crackle Sheffield’s Jodi Cave makes a
stunning debut. Equal parts Kim Cascone and Nobukazu Takemura, the
blend is something freshly toothy to the touch, and bits of a lullaby.
Incorporating samples and field recordings she uses music boxes and
the meandering of a toothbrush(?) on “Rara.C” which sounds dreamy and
exploratory. There’s a train whizzing by atop a twinkling flash of
tiny clicks and a daydream harmony that is residual from “For Myria
(Two)” which is a sleepy piece that sounds a whole lot like labelmate
Skoltz_Kolgen. The “Unititled” tracks seems oddly different from the
rest here. Contemplative, drawn, paced like a gauzy funeral dirge.
Throughout Cave conducts a whole ritual of moving physical objects
about with the additions of peculiar birds, breath and other vestiges
emanating sound in her surroundings. For Myria is so full of
emotive, tones in a multitude of strange hues, dark and light, and
everyday.

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This collection of compilation tracks, remixes and other short
oddities spans 1999-2006 and is a welcome relief to many who have
watched this man’s elusive career and random output. For he
uninitiated Felix Kubin is this slamdunk cross between the
ping-ca-chong tonalities found in Kraftwerk, the wry humor and pacing
of They Might Be Giants and his own poker-faced delivery. And here
tracks like “Ich Traeume Nur In Super-8″ fit the niche to a t. It’s a
rat-a-tat-tat throw-back to the gay old era of Liberace and Lawrence
Welk. On “Marche Telepathique” add the playful themes of Danny Elfman,
mix it all up by fellow frolicking sound boxers like People Like Us or
Analogue alchemist Asmus Tietchens – and voila – instant harmonious
pandemonium. This record brings together a whole slew of fun music,
handclaps, twang guitar, reverb and all into one place. ‘Axolotl
Lullabies’ is collected chaos at its best. There are moments when
things get a bit more off and dense as on the short “Rudi Gullit’s
Head” which harkens to some of Richard D. James “Come to Daddy” days,
which sequences into “Let’s Rock, Baby” perfectly. The cadence here is
amply messed around with, blending lunge and Wurlitzer like a set of
twins forced to wear their Garamimals (r). “Trauergonelparadies” is a
whole other world where Kubin collaborates with Tietchens. What
emerges is something of a grey area blending each of their sounds. If
you might imagine “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” but just a whole
lot more darkly psychedelic, with characters caught in the eye of the
storm, falling endlessly to their untimely death, you may see what I
see. And just when you thought it was safe to continue playing “Slides
From Yesterday” from the One Bomb Fits all compilation throws Grace
Jones, ESG and Slayer into the Blendit for fun. Its melancholy chords
vs. gravely rock stance is a frolicking match of pompous wit and pert
punctuated attitude. You have to sit this one out because they saved
the best for last, the anthemic “Russian Robot in N.Y… It’s his own
lushly noir-filled march of the robots combining the precision of the
stealthy futurism of Metropolis opposing the little people of
Munchkinlan. A complete romp!

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It caresses the mind and careens forward, this Beautiful Schizophonic
(Jorge Mantas). Musicamorosa is a selection of passages, deep and
full-bodied in passionate drone. Music for the awakening of the soul,
no doubt. Much of this was influenced by the romantic sense of time,
and losing it, in the literary work of the great Proust (Valentin
Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust). The disc is most cavernous at
times (“Du Fond Du Sommeil Elle Remontait Les Derniers Degrés De
L’escalier Des Songes”), taking a surging river ride at others (“Les
Oiseaux Qui Dorment En L’air”). On “La Lectrice” (The Reader) he
employs multi-instrumentalist and composer Colleen (Cécile Schott)
reading without accompaniment from Proust while in Paris. It causes
for a linguistic pause before once again floating amid the luminous
“L’amour, C’est L’espace Et Le Temps Rendus Sensibles Au Coeur.” Chambers of translucent whispers and the elongated echo of whistling
carry the sense purported on “L’éternel Matin”. What Mantas, who
fancies himself a sound designer rather than a composer, ends up
harvesting here is randomly conceptual as a long player. It works in
sections, but perhaps it may be best left alone, to simply bathe into
the entirety of its length. And in conclusion, it does with the
thirteen minute gem “Soixante-Quatre (@C Pour T.B.S.)” which combines
all that is grande about electronica today, a glint of minimalism and
the subliminal power of the soundtrack. And while pre-empted by
hushed, fidgety goings-on the end straddles those moments in-between,
that time actually forgot. Which is to say the subtleties of
Musicamorosa will carry its secrets into the air like a swarm of
bees, vying on extinction, on a particularly humid day.