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1. Noomium
2. Gopalt
3. Funky Dunky (In Spiral Expression)
4. Teledron
5. Borter (Probb)
6. Tureehy
7. Terromony
8. Sarah Sunrise
[52:38]
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and feel “funky dunky” ..
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This is a concept album about the chain-link fence that was twisted into a double helix shape by the elements, some 50 yards from my apartment, which gleamed brightly green in the distance.
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1. Ritual Rite to Reclaim
2. Consonant Returns
3. Springs Forth (Braindamaged in the Bathtub Mix)
4. Toad Expedition
5. Nymph Trails (Hexanchus Hunting)
6. Gavrinis / The Torches Rhyme
7. The Way the Mind Became
8. The Empty Reaches / Arashi Metro <anvers>
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In my eyes, the name of AUN has become synonymous with the genre of drone, as they are the perfect embodiment of the endlessly fascinating aesthetic - vast, shimmering celestial tapestries resonating in time and in tune with the infinite networks of natural geometry surrounding us all (as reflected in the artwork). The “Utica” 7″ is a nicely digestible chunk of AUN for once, and provides a concentrated dose of the unifying energies this group specializes in.
As with other releases by this group, the sounds found on “Utica” are like ’singing’ metal, metallic tones so perfectly rounded and tempered as to harmonize in perfect consonance with each other, and in the ear drum. The rippled refractions become extrapolated visions in the mind’s eye, a deep trance inducing stillness takes hold as the lapping rhythms of the pulsations speak to the patience of their creators.
A volley of analog pops loops ad infinitum for half of the title track, anchoring the scintillating shimmer in a glitchy pulse that only creates the illusion of regularity through its many repetitions. The piece really opens up and shines after the sudden cut into a cloudier, denser realm of tones and weather-beaten undulations. I would associate the color gold with this music; the ringing resonance pockets in the higher frequency ranges are the sonic signatures of precious metals.
Oddly enough for a drone release, the tracks do not steadily build, but meander through a series of louder and quieter sections which seem to take place in contrasting environments. AUN dwells in each space for a minute or two before blinking (with a surface noise pop) into a new realm.
“Lelehudah” is even more cut up than the first piece, the different movements made up of different iterations of shifting, dim groans and clanks. A noisy dissonance swells in for a moment only to dissipate into nothing as a forlorn machine tone takes the place of all previous sounds. This is less comforting and more alienating than the first piece.
“Utica” is a great little 7″, fresh and experimental and yet totally representative of AUN’s output overall. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in drone.
Tonight’s “Psytrance Meltdown” show on KAOS was great, and perfect practice if I want to start DJing local psytrance parties. We had 3 hours of psychedelic trance, beginning with the classic epiphany-inducing British goa trance from the mid 90’s and working our way up to twisted digital darkpsy.
Other specialty shows you can look forward to in the near future -
- Next week’s HORRIFYIN’ halloween show, where I pull out all the stops and play the most evil, depraved and tortured noise ever recorded!
- I’m gonna take Oscar of Planet Question Mark’s suggestion and do a show of ‘transcendental ambient sound’… Nocturnal Emissions, Coil, z’ev, Organum and the like. I haven’t set a date yet, but it should be sometime in the next month or two.
Check me out next Friday night at 1 AM on KAOS 89.3 FM!
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A monstrous beam of will penetrating through several dimensional boundaries. A stylistic lean towards psychedelic trance and heavier bass. Psychic disruption for revelers young & awake.
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1. iitro
2. Tail Pipe Acid
3. Emily’s Mouths
4. Merile
5. Brieghrnat
6. Sasha Knocks
7. Ionatera
8. Arachnid Mask / Heavy Light
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I’m reviewing this album by Sven Vath, one of the legendary German techno DJs/producers of the last 20 years, from a fairly unique perspective: by all appearances, “Fire”, released in 2002, is a lesser known album by Sven, yet so far it’s my first and only exposure to his music, due to a chance encounter with this disk in a European record store. I originally became interested in Sven through his collaboration with Richie Hawtin, and was happy to find his music as infectiously kinetic as the Plastikman’s, albeit with a more playful and musical aesthetic. He’s produced a diverse selection of tracks for this release, so I’ll discuss them individually.
The extended 9 minute build of “Design Music” opens the album, pushing a thick techno rhythm with an open progressive trance soundspace. The bassline is formed from distorted fuzz, yet EQ’d nicely into smoothness, taking cues from the polished yet aggressive production style of drum & bass. The track layers subtle, percolating percussive riffs and micro-melodies, but never comes to a hook or memorable lead. It’d be easy to say this track is too long, but the production sounds marvellous, and right after I heard the first throbbing, rhythmic filter on the bass (whilst listening in the store), I bought the album.
“Mind Games” introduced me to Sven’s goofy vocals and lyrics, full of sing songy rhymes and cliched vocabulary, and uttered in a pseudo-sultry deadpan speaking voice. After a little while, it’s clear that Vath has no real interest in being taken seriously. His real goal is to heighten the party atmosphere, something these kinky drug mantras accomplish marvellously. “I’m flirting with madness / I’ll make my brain spin”, he intones, and there is masterful processing of his voice. His granulated, pitch shifted muttering is like a horror film serial killer over the phone.
“Shock Ralley” is a let down, 6 minutes of aimless and untuned analog sounds which appear to be operating outside the tempo of the percussion track. Analog synths always sound pleasant, but I fail to see the point of this composition. Its dissonance is empty, as there’s no grimey or dirty vibe to this track, and no discernable emotion, either. The naked, similarly arrhythmic filter sweeps in the latter half of the song do little to help.
“Ghost, Pt. 1″ is a great track with some real swing to its pulse, accomplished through clever delays and stuttering programming. A deep dirty bass enters after a minute or so, and when the kick drops in, I can’t help but move. Sven’s monotone appears again here, in similar rhythm and spirit as in “Mind Games”. “Talk to your ghost / find out who you are”, he commands, as a blaring 9 note lead works its way into your mind, sounding like a Depeche Mode line detuned into hideousness.
“Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus” is a reprieve that splits the album in two, truly sounding like music from an anime children’s program with its candy coated melody. The cheerful and bubbly acid bass is a pleasant sound, and Sven’s vocals are a hilarious attempt at suave romanticism, not to mention melodic singing! It’s a fun song.
Title track “Fire” is somewhat redundant by this point in the record, sporting the least memorable lyrics yet with “Come on take me higher / Set my heart on fire”, and synths that sounds like a cross between “Shock Ralley” and “Design Music”. The beat and bassline are powerful in combination, though monotonously straight and unadventurous. The bizarre filters and delays on Sven’s voice are the best thing about the song. Sven’s production never loses its perfect balance and hallucinatory organization, but this a b-side quality track, for sure, and I’m bored before the end.
Luckily, the final 3 songs are the most abstract, odd and mind expanding on the disk. “Cala Llonga” is a futuristic, mechanized chillout tune, like Monolake but with more ear-catching and upfront timbres. Breathy chords diffuse slowly into the soft distance, and the loping kick pattern carries us gently along. Muted electro bass stabs are replaced with deep, undulating long tones and the track feels like a night time drive on the highway.
“Steel” is actually quite alarming, channeling the brain smashing terror techno of projects like Matthew Dear’s Audion. The music itself seems bent on destroying the listener’s mental coherency. The kick is consistent, but the swirling, tight ostinatos around it follow a contrasting rhythmic logic, and clash with dizzying effect. As a fan of dark psychedelia, I loved this track, and since it’s the only one of its kind on the disk, I think few could argue that it’s tastefully placed.
“Heisse Schiebe”, the epic closer, is a fitting return to chillout territory, beginning as a muffled exercise in sub bass not dissimilar to Plastikman’s “Consuming” record, unsurprising as Sven’s collaboration with Richie emerged only a year after this album’s release. Trebley, crisp snare hits are subject to long, rhythmic delays, and shimmering infinite reverb creeps up from the backdrop, as do subtle wisps of dissonant, alien chords muted into an unintrusive goo. This track is an intense and cerebral experience.
I don’t doubt that Sven’s classic albums will likely surpass this one in my mind once I’ve heard them, as other fans have said, but considered on its own merits “Fire” is a treasure trove of beautiful sounds and diverse, undeniable grooves sourced from a variety of genres and influences. His passion for the musical style and culture is palpable. I’m excited to hear what else this man has done. 4 stars.
For their first new release in over 10 years, Transwave abandon the layered, analog labyrinths of melody that comprised their 90’s material for a fairly anonymous new school full on sound. Though many of the tracks featured here are apparently intended to be digital recreations of classics like “Rezwalker”, “Trashish” and “Cycle of Life”, they share extremely few identifiable elements in common with the originals, even to a longtime listener of the “Helium” and “Phototropic” albums such as myself.
The album is technically quite competent, and as described in the liner notes, actually boasts significant dynamics compared to your average heavily compressed trance album, and thus results in significantly less ear fatigue. “Frontfire” is pleasant on the ears, and would sound both powerful and transparent on a large soundsystem, but it’s also clean to the point of sterility, a problem common in the progressive and full on psy genres.
The intense layering, full spectrum of frequencies and glistening, wet soundspace that made early Transwave a three dimensional, shamanic experience has been replaced with a stripped down, monochromatic style in which the kick drum and repetitive single note bassline are placed at the fore, complimented by little more than a single filtered major key arpeggio, delivered in the sort of thin, unremarkable saw lead preset that has been driven into the ground time and time again in the last 15 years, and chopped up with a by-the-numbers trance gate. These musicians’ masterful skills of subtle resonance manipulation and automation go totally unused in these samey patterns. The almost linguistic, erratic and complex timbres of old school Transwave’s rapidfire lines are nowhere to be found, and though the reverbs are cavernous, they are also predictable and constant throughout the album.
Harmonic material does not build until the final couple of minutes of each track, and even then sticks out as obviously consonant and unadventurous compared to past material, which maintained a druggy air of edgy urgency and darkness. Indeed, bland titles like “Uplifter” unfortunately sum up the new Transwave’s sappy agenda, and for the first time on a Transwave record we hear predictable progressions of familiar major chords.
The best track on here is unsurprisingly the Koxbox remix, where a few more analog synth textures are left intact than on the rest of this compilation, but even this only inspires me to listen to the marvellous original, as the full on elements seem to clash with the original sounds and atmosphere, and the sense of building intensity has been greatly lessened. Adding a chunky, muted industrial rock guitar riff to “Trashish” was also a monumentally bad decision, turning what should have been a deep soundspace into a claustrophobic and heavy-handed affair.
Even “Phototropic”, possibly one of my favorite songs of all time in its original form, is completely lifeless here. The whistling, flute-like whine of that tear inducing, uneven melody, so perfectly describing that bewildered, world weary yearning unique to electronic psychedelia, has been clumsily sampled from the original and then pushed down into near inaudibility. Their attempt to shape a more kinetic track from this downtempo gem simply masks its most distinctive qualities.
Ultimately, “Frontfire” is an album so safe it has more in common with the airy, heavily polished sound of big names like Sasha and Tiesto than it does with the Transwave classics it pays homage to. I can’t recommend it to anyone, really, as there are plenty examples of modern full on with a lot more creativity and memorability than this, made by people to whom this sound came naturally. The best thing I can say about Frontfire is that it’s not annoying, and despite not actively grating on me, I still find it utterly uninspired. 2 stars.
For their first full length, Spanish duo Oikos have created “Ecotono”, an enigmatic guitar texture album of singular voice, compassion and heart. They borrow from the maudlin over-emotionality and distortion worship of shoegaze as well as the filmic vastness and finality of post rock, but their music is somehow wiser, more universal, than your average specimen of either genre. Oikos places a comforting hand on the listener’s shoulder, and presents a soundtrack to fond recollection of days of connection with nature and other human beings.
The soundspace they construct is an open, outdoor vista, and indeed may cause the listener to flashback to experiences of intense natural beauty. The borders of a reverberant canyon are outlined by sound. Like light patterns on the surface of the ocean, the sound is both texturally constant and endlessly shifting. Distortion is ubiquitous, and though it has little sharpness and does not displease the ear, neither is it an indistinct wash of echo. In this mix, there is sound at all levels of closeness and distance. Oikos have proved themselves knowing craftsmen, capable of taming/tempering the violent and treble-heavy heart of the guitar amplifier.
Each of these tracks is a full spectrum swell, with gradual additive layering of volume, feeling, and timbral scope through vast, shimmering delays, echoes and feedback. Oikos have evidently decided that any pause or ebb in sound would be counterproductive. Rich, solidified drone pitch serves as anchor, and each song becomes a towering vertical construction.
Before this rising and thickening of the sound, notes and chords are sometimes left naked, in discernable metric rhythm and strumming motion (”Boreas”). These are rare glimpses of Oikos’ musical logic, largely intuitive or veiled by effects for the greater part of the album. In these moments, it is clear that these scintillating slabs of texture are built upon intelligent, subtle progressions and quasi-song-like forms, and my respect for the group only deepens. Only in the final moments of closer “Jatavena” does the careful web of tonality destabilize into a storm of rough hewn metallic string noise, and even this is no dramatic derailing from the by-now-familiar trajectory, rather an expressive flourish due to intensity overflow.
For later tracks, loop-driven patterns come to the fore, density is lessened and the newfound sonic transparency only accentuates the depth and warmth of the sounds. In the surprisingly minimalist and lo-fi “Red Forest”, mystery looms thick as thieves. A clanking fuzz-textured loop builds a waltz rhythm that soon becomes the perfect frame of reference for the snakey meandering of a vibrant synth string patch. The surreal simplicity of this basic sound is overloaded with embellished distortion harmonics, and the primal, plodding feel of the track is akin to a more melodic TenHornedBeast.
Essentially, “Ecotono” stands head and shoulders above the majority of guitar texture music, completely devoid of pretense, tired musical systems and overblown, wallowing melodrama. A powerfully emotional recording that undoubtedly improves with repeated listenings, this album may even convert those who ordinarily find themselves less than enchanted with walls of distortion through the unusually tonal stylings of its drones. Oikos has made a masterful addition to the already impressive Utech catalogue.
New radio playlist uploaded!
May 24
In an effort to make this more of a functional webpage for my radio show, In Place of Dreary Patterns, which now typically extends until 3 AM every Thursday night on KAOS 89.3 FM [or www.kaosradio.org, for those outside of the Olympia area], I’m going to start uploading each week’s playlist immediately following the show. The first one is available in the scrolldown menu at the top of the page!
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1. Spirit of Nitre
2. Aquatint
3. Makeshift Orifice
4. Dogheart / Fever Dream
Download “Jupiter (and Beyond the Infinite)”
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Griffin Bain’s 1st full length as Reincarnate is a glorious, heavy sheet of delirious mystic dronoise! He says:
“This release reminds me of drifting through the water on your back and looking up at a star-ridden sky. Or what space would be like if you could float around in it without a suit on.
Sometimes you’re listening to some breathing creature, floating around in all that space, and it shrieks and snarls at you. But sometimes it makes beautiful noises.
The whole album really progresses and evolves like a dream does. Like my dreams do, anyway. Hopefully you can listen to it feel like you’re on some otherworldly plane.”
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