Archive for June, 2010

Coil - (2004) ANS (*)

Jun 19

Posted by Mr. Landry in 1 star, Ambient, Avant Garde, Electronic Music, Reviews, Tribal / Ritual Ambient | No Comments

coil-ans

Regardless of the spiritual meanings behind what the group was attempting to accomplish here, this 3 disk set is ultimately, as the title of my review indicates, completely unlistenable. The sounds here do not sound composed; if they evoke anything, it is only an anomaly, an accident- I do not believe one can simply translate an image into sound and still find the SOUL of that image, that thing that made it interesting/worth looking at/spiritually significant, remotely intact.

The ANS is evidently capable of creating some ghostly, strange sounds worthy of inclusion on a Coil album, but the virtually unchanging drone of the ANS is all that is found on the album, and even it is not structured in any way. There is no attempt at track ordering. There is no humanity. This is the closest to mechanical randomness in music one can find.

Perhaps if the rest of Coil’s truly beautiful, transcendental discography did not exist, “ANS” would hold SOME value, but as it stands, even if you evaluate “ANS” as something to use an ambient backdrop for other activities, many other Coil albums are far, far beyond it (”Time Machines”, “Queens of the Circulating Library”).

I’ve heard every piece on this set at least once by now, but I basically had to force myself to listen to it. I can enjoy maybe 2/3 of one track of this at a time from a purely textural standpoint, but it is completely empty sound. I doubt that I would even pay normal CD price for this (I downloaded it), so the fact that they charge more than $100 for it leaves me with no other choice but to give it the lowest rating possible.

In conclusion, I find it admirable that these adventurous musicians would try to work with such a machine. However, I have no idea why they released this. If you haven’t heard Coil, get the “Musick to the Play in the Dark” series. If you’re already a fan, get every other release first, and there are a LOT.

Originally published on Amazon.com on July 27th, 2008.

Xanopticon - (2003) Liminal Space (*****)

Jun 19

Posted by Mr. Landry in 5 stars, Electronic Music, IDM / Glitch, Reviews | No Comments

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Someone had to take amelodic, claustrophobic, oddly timed, electronic insanity as far as it would go. This album spits in the face of anyone who has called an album by Richard Devine or Autechre a soulless technical exercise rather than legitimate composition, making no attempt to provide melodies or thematic elements that could make the music accessible and instead taking the style to uncharted heights of alienating incoherency and disorienting chaos. It would be wrong to dismissively classify such left field music as IDM, though this music surely originates from the Warp records school of thought. “Hard IDM” would make a more fitting term, maybe. Xanopticon’s “Liminal Space” is an experience so overwhelming one might easily need a break part way through. This music moves at about 1.5x the speed of even the fastest death metal or grind music, and there are no repetitive rhythms to ground you.

“Liminal Space” is the sound of stress, of thinking too much, too quickly. The music makes no attempt to breathe, or even to let the beauty of its own individual elements shine. There are layers and layers of ambient sound in these tracks that are almost completely buried into inaudibility by distorted, forceful, frantic percussion - break beats and danceable grooves granulized into pulp and pointilistically shoved down the listener’s throat in an impossible rapid barrage bent on completely overloading listeners’ minds. These desperate beats scream in your ear for the entirety of this record, but it feels a lot less like a aggressive display of force than an intense expression of panicked confusion, unlike the work of (fellow?) breakcore producer Venetian Snares, who is in my opinion the closest reference point for this kind of rhythmic ridiculousness. In order to actually hear the subdued elements hidden beneath, one would have to play the music at a volume at which the beats would be unbearably loud. Ironically for an album with the word “space” in the title, Friedrich seems afraid to let any emptiness or space into his music. There are few dynamics; this music is consistently at full tilt and full volume.

Repeated listenings allowed me to more adequately keep pace with these busy rhythms, though every song has so many parts that it would be impossible to memorize or truly absorb them. At best, this music falls into a bizarre, completely undanceable eight legged groove. The mind can move to it, even when the body cannot. The beats are very human despite their absurd complexity… It is clear that the endless variations were sequenced rather than mathematically generated, and that the endlessly morphing beat is the aspect of his music Ryan Friedrich pays the most attention to. The detailed nuances of the composition and production of the rhythm are truly his voice, the elements he uses to describe images and concepts inexpessible in ordinary language… And through this cataclysmic blizzard of sound, one can glimpse a hallucinatory universe created by the vast networks of sonic layers that is absolutely one of a kind.

This music is perhaps best experienced one song at a time. When evaluated alone, almost any of Friedrich’s tracks seems fresh, original and rich with ideas. There are no weak tracks on “Liminal Space”, but it does appear that Friedrich has a formula. Some tracks begin quiet and ambient, but in the end all are overtaken by heavy percussion by the 45 second mark. The songs vary stylistically only in that some are even more dense and claustrophic than others. In the less busy tracks, such as “Indec” or “Symphwrak”, some mournful, wintery synth chords and melodies can be clearly heard, showing traces of a less deranged side to Xanopticon’s musical intellect. These melancholic tonal elements don’t add much actual warmth to the music, but at least they are expressions of easily understood emotions. It’s not enough make me feel like any real respite has been provided, and the album is very exhausting to listen to as a whole.

Yes, I could easily justify giving this album a 4 star rating, docking it 1 for being too hard to listen to, or being too repetitive within its own bizarre idiom, but I must admit - I continue to be fascinated by this enigma of an album, and as it would seem “Liminal Space” is destined to be the sole full length of this unique and irreplacable musician, I feel compelled to give this unforgettable album 5 stars.

Z’EV - (2009) Sum Things (***)

Jun 17

Posted by Mr. Landry in 3 stars, Ambient, Avant Garde, Dark Ambient, Electronic Music, Noise, Reviews | No Comments

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Z’EV has always been a musician who has had my respect (he is completely uncompromising), but whose music I could not truly enjoy. His earlier percussive works, such as “Heads & Tales”, which often contained vocal samples, are more enjoyable with their concise compositions, discernable direction and polyrhythmic energy, but for the most part, his albums are such austere, unfeeling exercises; perhaps he is focused more on the process by which his works are created than the resulting sound, as are many other avant garde artists whose work sounds similarly lacking in human warmth or logic patterns, such as Ryoji Ikeda or Richard Chartier… or perhaps with his works he intends to take us on a journey to a mental space so distant that most get inevitably lost along the way, unable to emotionally relate or comprehend where the ‘trip’ was supposed to lead.

“Sum Things”, six tracks of ringing, beatless sound (described on the spine as “a possible form for cold dark matter”) is no different, showcasing many of the aspects which make him unlistenable. As often with Z’EV, every track seems to be a separate product of the same experimental method, making for an extremely consistent sound throughout the record. In this case, the primary and only sound on the album is a grainy, harsh metallic resonance, which rather than being ambient and pure is mulched up with unpleasant artifacts caused by performing excessive time stretching and compression on a sample. Only rarely does it approach something I would call ‘textural beauty’, something I’ve found in even the most unapproachable avant garde quite often. Mostly it rings obnoxiously in a muddy morass of high frequencies.

Though the music ends up sounding similar to ambient music in some ways, and does drone on, I have not been able to interpret the sound as representing a space, something ambient music generally does. There is only the haziest ‘landscape’ hidden in the sound here. It does not ‘reverberate’ as ambient music should… reverberation being the way the human ear determines the size and shape of the space in which sound occurs. The dull cacophony of this album seems random at first, and repeated listenings do nothing to make any kind of organization apparent. There are louder and softer sections. The last track is almost on the level of noise. But it seems to mean little.

Dark ambient, despite its name, is not always a masochistic genre of music to partake in. Many artists known for their fear inducing music are, for the initiated, pleasant to listen to in many ways. Lustmord’s music has a sense of hugeness and cosmic unity about it, whereas Lull specializes in a sort of cathartic, escapist hypnotism and sonic impressionism. Many an artist’s work could be called ‘badass’, and is thus enjoyable as subtle, slightly campy apocalyptic daydreaming rather than coming across as actually disturbing. All seem driven by a human sense of aesthetics. Even Aube’s work, nearly comparable to Z’EV’s in inaccessibility, has a certain spatial order and rhythm.

The universe of “Sum Things”, on the other hand seemed to be governed by a being with no soul, no desire. It is abrasive without ever really being loud, breaking inhibitions or exposing a shred of aggression. Nor does it express the simplicity and clarity of any kind of zen or meditation state. The only keys we get into the bizarre world of “Sum Things” are the photos contained in the album packaging. Eroded, precarious natural pillars of rock of a grey color the album does seem to reflect. Even Steven Stapleton’s “Thunder Perfect Mind”, which came across as completely unsympathetic towards human life, was understandable in its sheer hostility. As far as I can tell,there is no force of will present in this music. The structures of the pieces would lead me to believe that they were caused by glitches or pure mathematics (just look at the track titles), and not a thoughtful process of composition.

So, after giving Z’EV another try I must concede he remains sonically interesting to me, but completely unlistenable. Perhaps if he chose the best of six tracks here and including it on an album with other, completely different experiments, it would be possible for me to listen to all the way through in one sitting. I give “Sum Things” it 3 stars on the basis of feeling like there is still something I’m not getting here. Perhaps this is generous, but I admire those who are unafraid to really push the boundaries. This is only for the most adventurous, and even they may be disappointed.

Scorn - (1997) Logghi Barogghi (****)

Jun 15

Posted by Mr. Landry in 4 stars, Ambient, Dark Ambient, Dub / Chillout, Electronic Music, Reviews, Sampling / Instrumental Hip Hop | No Comments

scorn-logghi-barogghi

Regardless of what I say about it now, Scorn’s 5th album “Logghi Barroghi” is destined to be dismissed as just another in a long string of minimalist dark ambient beats. In my opinion, it does distinguish itself from the others - it is one of the most unfriendly, minimal and alienating albums I know, and certainly the most ‘out there’ Scorn release to date. Though it is hard to enjoy, it has the rare distinction of being a musical enigma.

Even by the standards of the always dismal Mick Harris, “Logghi Barogghi” represents a particularly deep and bizarrely unfamiliar circle of hell. Its tone is one of nameless fear and confusion. The messy, hallucinogenic red blur on the cover, like the vision of a individual massivelty inebriated at the point of despair and black out, staggering down a threatening and alien city street in the night, proves the perfect image for the drugged disoriented terror that is this album. In a way it is more unsettling than his spacier ambient works as Lull because it brings the darkness back into the context of our urban everyday world with the organic sounds of the drums and bass. These familiar timbres keep the listener grounded, prevent this album from providing the psychedelic escape into peaceful abstraction of space ambient. Instead, it comes across as very dystopian.

These rough break beats fall into what at first seem to be sluggish hip hop grooves but soon morph into shambling mantras as layers and layers of rhythmic electronic ambience are quietly and systematically added. The impatient listen will start to wonder around the 3 minute mark when the main hook / theme of the track will be introduced, only to be disappointed when the song ends 3 minutes later without ever resorting to anything of the kind. Listeners able to immerse themselves in the subtle polyrhythms of these carefully constructed loops will find themselves drooling. For those with time, this is a sublimely rhythmic experience. Nobody can make a loop feel ’spiral shaped’ quite like Mick Harris.

Apparently, vocal samples cannot reach this abyssal plane without becoming stretched and mutilated into garbled nonsense. Indeed, no words can really describe the emotion on this disk and would thus only cheapen it. The sound palette here is incredibly stark; nearly every sound is muffled, chopped up, distorted and then muffled again, sometimes in very arbitrary and chaotic (yet emotional ways), resulting in a very gritty sounding production. No sound can hold together for long. The bass lines commonly utilize ungodly low frequencies, and may not even be audible on some lower budget systems.

“Spongie”, which is dominated by the sound of a whining mosquito turned drone, stands out as especially bizarre. “Out Of” gets points for containing the closest thing on the album to a nice cleansing spliced break beat solo ala Aphex Twin or Venetian Snares. “Black Box II” is refreshing with its sparkling high frequencies. Mostly, though, as with every Scorn album since it became a solo project with 1995’s “Gyral”, the tracks, while all good, keep a very consistent sound throughout the album. After you’ve heard a few songs, the rest of the album won’t surprise you.

All in all, a solid and unique Scorn album. It is definitely possible to listen to “Logghi Barogghi”, though I feel that to really allow yourself to be absorbed into it is to willingly descend into some sort of psychological dead end. Listen at your own risk. 4 stars.

The Angels of Light - (1999) New Mother (*****)

Jun 14

Posted by Mr. Landry in 5 stars, Folk, Neofolk, Reviews | No Comments

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Michael Gira’s Angels of Light project, no longer exactly ‘new’, at first continued on with the hypnotic, dreary and almost infinitely pessimistic sounds of his solo album “Drainland” while borrowing all the folkiest bits from the Swans’ 1989 folk experiment “The Burning World”. This time around, he puts his whole heart into it, and gets a diverse, sprawling 17 track epic. This is easily some of Gira’s best music ever, dispelling any worries caused by the breakup of Swans.

On “New Mother”, Gira’s compositions, most easily classifiable as folk songs, are more complex and also oddly more conventional than ever before, often containing verse and chorus sections, though sometimes in unexpected alternations. Swans tracks often featured the same layered texture for the entirety of the song. This album shows that Gira has become ever more conscious of time, condensing the incredible power of the “Soundtracks for the Blind” album and its 12 minute build ups into shorter, 4 to 6 minute songs with many distinct parts. These songs still remain ’soundworlds’ in the Swans sense, although interestingly enough they are primarily acoustic, or recognizable instruments. The listener is typically bombarded by 10+ layers at once. Guitars and multitracked vocals dominate, backed up by vibraphone (as per “Soundtracks”), organ and a particularly good sounding melodica. In many cases it sounds like Gira recorded the song first with just guitar and voice, and then layered other tracks over the top. The result is that it is simultaneously intimate and very produced and polished, perfect for this style of music.

As often with Gira, the lyrics end up being a focus. This album is a bit more playful, knowing, self aware… but for the most part it is filled with Gira’s age old despair, all the more bitter, stagnant and desperate after all these years. His surrealist vocabularity is powerfully put to use. The album is filled with evocative metaphors describing alcoholism, destructive relationships, domestic violence and lack of faith in one’s own good nature, to name only the most decipherable subjects. There’s an odd sense, despite the sadness, that Gira is more comfortable in his own skin as a performer, more used to being perceived the way he has been in the past. It seems he feels more natural in his latest role as a folk singer than he ever did as a no wave extremist, although it took about 10 years of music along these lines to get to this point.

His singing here is surprisingly expressive and full, his vocal range larger than ever, though still limited. The best way to describe the change is that he’s become extroverted and also sensitive, and no longer feels the need to hide his emotions behind displays of anger and force. His tone changes drastically depending on the song, almost as if he plays a different ‘character’ with each new set of lyrics. As a result his lyrics ring with more power and sincerity than ever. His singing on albums like “White Light from the Mouth of Infinity” was sometimes so unchanging and monotone as to be comical.

“Praise Your Name”, a tribute to all the battered spouses of the world, is one hell of an opener, and just a very moving song. The rest of the first half of the album sounds similar - gentle, beautiful, orchestrated, melancholy, not so dark as to be actually unpleasant. The lush, mostly instrumental “Angels of Light” is like a river glistening in the sun. “The Garden Hides the Jewel” is a sublime ambient electronic experiment that brings back the transcendent beauty of the later Swans material, one of the lightest moments on the album. After the 8th track “Intermission”, it’s like night has fallen. Gira begins to lose his composure and visciously rasp, almost as if in physical pain. “Not Alone” is the sort of the song that could make a person fear for their safety in an intimate performance setting… It recalls a person who, in the course of their rant, lashes out at the confidant who has offered to help. These violent songs were obviously recorded in a state of mental breakdown. The climax “The Fear of Death” says more in its naked 3 minutes of desperation than dozens of albums of wordiness and inhibition. It’s uncomfortably raw music, and therefore an always needed breath of fresh air. It’s also one of the darkest albums I have ever heard.

5 stars.

In Place of Dreary Patterns

exploringthecavernousbeyond - a blog for colder, stranger, more inexplicable musical trinkets