Piano Interrupted
Two by Four
Denovali
A reissue conjoined with live tracks is a tricky situations as many avant-leaning acts view records and concerts as different and distinct entities. ”Two by Four” by Piano Interrupted falls into this category with its three live tracks not only doubling the personnel from a duo to quartet, but also adding vocals and newly imagined structures all together. Live experimentation is undoubtedly high on the priority list for Piano Interrupted as it makes you view the studio tracks differently: they are not necessarily definitive versions, but a single permutation taken from an infinite amount of possibilities. In many ways, “Two by Four” is the sound of Denovali captured into one concise album: classical instrumentation, vague jazz directions, and liberal use of 21st century electronics to skewer and prod the proceedings. And we are all the better for it. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
Robedoor
Primal Sphere
Hands in the Dark
“Primal Sphere” is huge in a prehistoric sense and it seems to lumber over charred landscapes and unrecognizable ruins like some leviathan from the past. The Los Angeles-based duo assemble likeness to some rather big names in the noise milieu from the past decade – Yellow Swans, Wolf Eyes, Black Dice, etc – on their latest offering, but in doing so remain original and refreshing amid referential approaches. Robedoor are at their best when they go loud, particularly on “Flannel Shroud” that blares noise-riddled guitar melodies over thumping rhythms and synth scree to an awe-inspiring effect. Three of the four “Primal Sphere” tracks hover near the ten minute mark, establishing time as an important factor in their psychedelic excursions and, indeed, the album becomes more powerful and resonant as time stretches on and you lose its markers entirely. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
Plkzfx
Plkzistentializm
Further
I can find zero information on who Plkzfx might be, but I can tell you that his/her new cassette on Further Records is positively a mind bender, with enough movement and schizophrenic energy to satisfy a ten year old’s birthday party. In fact, at a high volume “Plkzistentializm” makes you question your sanity, skewing reality towards a bright, hyper-colored video game. Plkzfx uses that medium as a starting point, particularly on the first track that squeezes stuttering pulses and spinning tendrils of sound from familiar eight bit tones. Naturally “Plkzistentializm” doesn’t stay in one place long as it manages to also pillage sound effects records and kids toys in order to appropriate them into a psychedelic muddle of sound. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
Lubomyr Melnyk
Corollaries
Erased Tapes
Despite the advances in technology and equipment, one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring sounds is still a few suppressed keys on an unadorned acoustic piano. It’s an idea that Lubomyr Melnyk seems to hold in high regard, though he plays many, many more notes than a few on “Corollaries,” his first album for Erased Tapes.
Over the last 35 years he has pioneered a style of piano playing called “continuous music,” which includes sustaining rapidly played notes to form a bed of constantly shifting and pulsing piano textures. It’s a kindred spirit to Charlemagne Palestine’s “Strumming Music,” but Melnyk veers a bit closer to a regulated rhythm and gliding, evolving melodies that seem to push forward as much as cycle through repetitions. The tone is set perfectly with “Pockets of Light, a 19 minute epic that sounds like it has three different sets of hands contributing to its mesmerizing piano layers and delicate harmonies. Yet, when Melnyk’s vocals appear seven minutes into the piece, it somehow feels perfectly natural. The flow isn’t broken, but instead augmented in a way that couldn’t have been anticipated and feels exactly right.
In fact, an underpinning of other instruments happens frequently on “Corollaries,” but usually they are left to set a moody backdrop or provide a rich harmony to the proceedings. It’s not until the closing two tracks that they really come to the fore. An e-bowed guitar slides alongside the piano on “Nightrail From the Sun” and, most notably, Peter Broderick’s violin provides a duet on the stunning closer “Le Miroir D’Amour.” Still, Melnyk’s exquisite piano tapestries are the clear and unbridled highlight to the album, which just happens to be one of 2013’s best. - Ryan Potts, Experimedia
DIRTY BEACHES// “CASINO LISBOA” (ZOO MUSIC)
A raw, distorted, drone-imbued take on pop music. From the album “Drifters / Love Is The Devil.” Available now.
Standish/Carlyon
Deleted Scenes
Felte
Conrad Standish and Tom Carlyon cut their teeth in Devastations, an Australian-based rock act that that was steeped in the menacing dispositions of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Outwardly they have changed considerably on “Deleted Scenes,” their first album as a duo, but their mellow, noir-inflected pop music still retains a dark, ominous tone that is very much linked to their previous incarnation. Instrumentation is sleek and fully driven by electronics and tempos are usually slow, but within this template Standish/Carlyon are able to convey a lot of different musical ideas, some pop-minded, others moody and atmospheric. The closing track “2 5 11” dips deepest into the latter with Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power providing a brooding pulse that consistently piles synth noise and whirring melodies on top. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
“Abandon,” the new full-length album by Margaret Chardiet’s Pharmakon project, couldn’t open more aptly – a processed scream of anguish is held and allowed to develop, imbued with horror film synth, spoken vocals, and crashing, panning electronic hisses and pops. It’s not until three minutes into the track that the listener is given some space, as a lurching bass tone begins to subtend sequenced oscillations, creating a rhythmic bed for Chardiet’s truly tortured vocals. While the second piece follows a similar trajectory, all swarming masses of synth skree, stalking rhythms, and menacing vocals, the album’s third track, “Pitted,” yields something new (and more arresting), possessing a dirge-like component that recalls Zola Jesus at her most primitive. There’s a raw physicality to the track that serves as the perfect lead-in to the album’s final movement, “Crawling on Bruised Knees,” a hypnotizing, largely instrumental work that constitutes a savvy denouement to the proceedings. A harrowing album of stark and brutalized songs, Pharmakon’s “Abandon” will likely appeal to fans of Wolf Eyes, Black Dice and, beyond that, industrial music in general. – Alex Cobb, Experimedia
New arrivals in the shop this week.
Co La
Moody Coup
Software
Moving his sample-based house music from NNA Tapes and into the bigger studios and larger budgets of Software Recordings, Matt Papich’s Co La project gets amplified and appropriately emboldened. ”Moody Coup” is littered with audio allusions and obscure samples, but most of the album’s 38 minutes is still cut out and fully abstracted from its sonic origins. However, one of the album’s most arresting moments comes when Co La retains his source material entirely. On “Deaf Christian” he keeps the doo-wop grooves of Neil Sedaka and embeds them in synth squiggles and dance beats while former Dirty Projector Angel Deradoorian coos and chants a rhythmic backbone. Overall “Moody Coup” is addictive and lucid in ways deep house rarely is. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
Adult.
The Way Things Fall
Ghostly
Some try to fight against any blatant artistic trajectory, but it’s refreshing when artists admit what any fan can obviously hear. That’s the case when Adam Lee Miller calls the new Adult. LP “the closest we have to come to writing traditional ‘pop’ songs,” but the odd thing is it doesn’t diminish their impact or sense of eerie detachment in the slightest. True, some of the steely distortions have been removed, but many other hallmarks of their electro sound still remain: vacuum-sealed drum machine beats, vocalist Nicola Kuperus’ lyrics of lost love, and big, pervasive synth sounds. Naturally, “The Way Things Fall” also leads to the duo’s biggest melodic payoffs, particularly on “Tonight, We Fall” that feels like a song Gary Numan may have written in his prime. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
NEWS// As expansive and detailed as ever, experimental music label and magazine Futuresequence has unleashed their sixth installment in the Sequence series. The compilation collects names found on the label itself (Radere, Ed Hamilton), some other recognizable monikers in the drone community (Hakobune, Simon Scott), and a bevy of new and unfamiliar names to form a massive 40 track work. Even better, the entirety of Sequence6 is available as a free download, encouraging listeners old and new to become immersed in underground experimentation and a new wave of laptop music.
MIX// It’s Just Music Baby - May 9, 2013 Mix
This week’s mix is from Richard Cunliffe who runs a monthly radio programme on Sound Art Radio called It’s Just Music Baby and features sounds from the Cotton Goods and Moteer labels.
“This month’s show features some two unreleased songs from Andrew Johnson (one half of The Remote Viewer) - the final track of the show ‘great palaces’ is exceptional. The programme begins with a lovely piece from Isnaj Dui. I actually began with ‘just as the circle did’ from her album ‘patterns in rocks’, but there was a glitch on the cd, so I started the show again, and played ‘nirily’ instead. Isnaj Dui was one of the artists that played at Off Key Sessions concert in Bristol on 13 April, and it is a pleasure to also play some of the other artists that performed on that wonderful evening (big thanks to Dan Crossley), including Orla Wren, Cello & Laptop, and The Boats, who presented their new industrial beats side. Those boys know how to hit things!”
01. Isnaj Dui – nirily (patterns in rocks – cdr);
02. sonnamble – aphelion II (blindlight - forwind);
03. david newlyn – interlude 3 (random pieces – cathedral transmissions);
04. days before us – in deine firn gegenwult (autumnal wandering- cathedral transmissions);
05. 6&8 – exercises in beauty step7 (exercises in beauty – bandcamp);
06. off the sky - ifward (the lowern decay ep- wistrec);
07. orla wren – five acre ladder (off key sessions – cdr);
08. cello & laptop – we were turning up… (vle 1.0 – cdr);
09. william ryan fritch – the waiting room (the waiting room ost – lost tribe sound);
10. bill seaman – well (unreleased loop –ijmb);
11. 6&8 – bus stop (unreleased – bandcamp);
12. night shift – orthodox transmitter(trespassers guide to nowhere - time released sound);
13. miles - irreligious (faint hearted - modern love);
14. the boats – track 5 (unreleased);
15. the mistys – stalking (7” single - other ideas);
16. skeamo – lights talker (unreleased);
17. a new line (Andrew Johnson) – European medium (soundcloud);
18. dentistry – part I (VARDØGR – forwind);
19. sub loam - ruderal memory excerpt (ruderal memory - dissolving records;
20. the green kingdom – the blue heron - excerpt(birds of a feather – flaming pines;
21. a new line (Andrew Johnson) – great palaces
To submit a mix, visit this page.
No longer standing behind a pseudonym, Geir Jenssen, better known as Biosphere, also does away with much of the electronic treatments and digital manipulations that have made him a standout artist on Touch Music. The album’s title, “Stromboli,” is taken from the name of a volcano off the north coast of Sicily and Jenssen documents its simmering movements and random outbursts of activity for the duration of the record. The rustling organic textures could easily be lapping waves or swirling leaves, but the threat of sticking a microphone into a still active volcano does add a certain sense of danger to the proceedings as well as a thick layer of intrigue to the listening experience. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
Eluvium
Nightmare Ending
Temporary Residence
If 2007’s “Copia” was an overture, then Matthew Cooper’s new album as Eluvium is a full-fledged opus with sweeping orchestral flourishes and lulling atmospherics. Yet that description could have been applied to nearly any LP he has put out in the past ten years. What makes “Nightmare Ending” different isn’t just the sheer volume of material (a double album clocking in at nearly an hour and a half), but also the breadth of sounds and styles it covers as Cooper ably flows distorted abrasions into quiet lullabies. In many ways “Nightmare Ending” is an effort to consolidate all the various permutations Eluvium has shown over the past decade, from static-ridden vignettes (“By The Rails”) to stately strings (“Don’t Get Any Closer”) and vocal-led minimalism (“Happiness”). That he does it so seamlessly is a testament to Cooper’s structural and tonal talents. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
The duo of Messages may be based in New York, but “Mirages” has a decidedly different regional point of view as the four tracks frequently delve into European electro-acoustic practices and the scales and timbres of Eastern music. Though they permeate the record, every piece begins with a tremoloed frequency that drones and soothes in all the right ways before being topped with handheld percussion, cascading guitar melodies, and sizzling electronic manipulation. It’s a formula that may get old if Messages weren’t so vivacious in their approach, allowing the album to revel in warm and lively intonations. The album closes with the side-long “Magaraga,” a decidedly darker take on what came before it, but linked in its ritualistic and worldly approach to drone. – Ryan Potts, Experimedia
