musings

• audiomedikation by abs6

• Fluorescence by Asobi Seksu

• Things Come Apart by The Charlottes

• experimental aircraft by Experimental Aircraft

• Hold / Sick by Grouper

• The President of the LSD Golf Club by Hooverphonic

• Web by Bill Laswell and Terre Thaemlitz

• Voyeur by Noise Unit

• Seventh Heaven by Pale Sketcher

• Refuse; Start Fires by Scorn

• Steam Powered Submarine by Squid Lid

In light of all the amazing, mind-blowing, inspiring peoples revolutions in the Middle East, this seemed appropriate – Thievery Corporation’s “Warning Shots”

They try their best just to smash up the resistance,
Warning shots and sirens from a distance,
Riot gear and barricade for an instance,
And the words from mi mouth, mi nuh response.

Hollywood sending signals of destruction,
Stereotype the ghetto youths as the bad man,
Overcome the rough times and we grow strong,
Step up in a life, now them want to shake we hand.

We are eternal, made of the creator,
Won’t fall to the soul-less devastators,
Divide and conquer, and try to separate us,
Up to this day, them still try fi rape us.

• Recollections of Memory by A Shoreline Dream
  I go on and on about shoegazer music on my blog, I know, but Denver, CO’s A Shoreline Dream are a cut above. They fuse psychedelic rock and shoegaze in equal parts to generate something entirely new yet intimately familiar.

• samdhya by diaphane
  One of my favourite podcasts is the Regen Radio podcast hosted by Toronto’s own DJ RaZoRGrrL. She’s continually introducing me to new music by bands I’ve never even heard of. Diaphane is one such band – they make beat-driven but moody and atmospheric electronica that you can totally lose yourself in.

• archive.one by Klangstabil
  Klangstabil is another band I first heard on Regen Radio. Klangstabil does not make music you can lose yourself in. They make music that grabs you by the throat and shakes you ’til your head rings. Pounding beats and droning vocals absolutely command your attention.

• Cold by Lycia
  Many moons ago, when the earth was young and the sun rose twice in a day I went to see one of my favourite bands, a short-lived Toronto goth band called Thrive. They were the first opener, ahead of Trance to the Sun, for Lycia. I’d never heard of either Trance to the Sun nor Lycia, but I loved Thrive well enough that I went to the show, figuring I might discover somebody I’d like. Turns out I loved everyone on the bill that night. Cold is an early Lycia album – cold, haunting, an absolute standard-bearer for what came to known as Darkwave.

• Find Me Before I Die A Lonely Death.com by Minuit
  This is an odd one for me. I heard a track by Minuit whilst flipping channels one night, bored out of my skull. The song was intriguing so I grabbed the old iPhone and fired up Soundhound, and discovered the song was Aotearoa. I downloaded this album on the strength of that song because I’m an obsessive compulsive completist, and can’t bear to have the odd song floating in my library. This album is a mixed bag – it starts off pretty weak, with quirky folky songs, often happy or bouncy but with pleasingly bleak lyrics, but then takes a turn for the dark around the midway point. It slips a bit again, but finishes off with a couple of dark, heavy, brooding gems that pull in breakbeats to stellar effect.

• Profanation: Preparation For A Coming Darkness by Praxis
  I’ve been a Praxis fan forever – Bill Laswell, Buckethead, Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell all in the room is enough to shift the axis of the earth, but having them make music together? It’s plate tectonics in action! Sadly, Profanation doesn’t feature the bass stylings of the Mighty Bootsy, but attempts to make up for it with the craziest gathering of guest vocalists ever – Doctor Israel, Iggy Pop, Serj Tankian, Killah Priest and Mike Patton all take the mike for a song each. The album is, as you might expect from such an eclectic group, totally scattershot. It’s uneven and incoherent and ridiculously awesome.

• Albino Peacock by Stripmall Architecture
  A four-track EP from San Francisco’s greatest export, Stripmall Architecture. There are times on this EP where I swear singer Rebecca Coseboom has been possessed by Siouxsie Sioux. The Cosebooms have never been content to rehash their old material, and that’s certainly true of Albino Peacock. It’s the quirkiest thing the band has done, and I hope it’s a sign of things to come.

• Carte-de-visite by Stars of the Lid
  Stars of the Lid make gorgeous, flowing, drone-based ambient music. Carte-de-Visite is a collection of outtakes spanning 1997-2007, but you’d never guess it. Part of that’s because they’re so minimalist it’s hard to tell songs from one another – they don’t leave a lasting impression. But SotL’s music is like the waves of calm ocean gently lapping at the beach. Barring geologic time, it won’t leave an impression at all, but while you’re there you just enjoy it.

• Red Barked Tree by Wire
  Wire keeps getting better and better. Red Barked Tree is my favourite Wire album since at least The Ideal Copy, maybe even since the seminal Pink Flag. Their press release claims it features songs that “range from the hymnal ‘Adapt’ to the barking sledgehammer art-punk of ‘Two Minutes’” and “encompasses the full palette of style and nuance that has always endeared Wire to pastel-tinged pop afficionados and bleeding-edge avant-rockers alike.” [ last.fm ] Well, press releases can say anything, and are always self-aggrandizing, aren’t they? Except that this is exactly what Red Barked Tree feels like. It’s a fantastic summation of Wire. Brilliant.

Last year I kind of let my eMusic download posts dwindle into simple lists of albums. I’m going to try to be a bit more disciplined about posting descriptions of what I’ve grabbed this year. I’ll still post the lists immediately when I download, but I will make a better effort towards going back and revising the posts after I’ve given the music a real listen.

• Strike a Match by Autodrone
  Imagine Raise-era Swervedriver’s arrangements with Ladytron’s vocals and you have only the barest hint of what Autodrone sounds like. This is an album with serious bite.

• Remain by The Blood of Heroes
  In August of last year I raved about the self-titled album by the Bill Laswell and Justin Broadrick project called The Blood of Heroes. This is the remix album, and it’s every bit as good as the source material. Sometimes remixes bear no resemblance to their source songs, but on this album every single track is recognizable, yet utterly unique from it’s source.

• Jordan by Buckethead
  As far as I know, prior to the release of Guitar Hero II, Jordan was only ever performed live. It’s a pretty cool song, but you don’t really understand the sheer technical prowess of the Bucketed One until you see this video of him playing Jordan, interspersed with (I think) Post Office Buddy:
  
  
  
  
  
  Jordan’s played entirely without strumming – just hammer-ons and a kill-switch. Think about that – it means he’s playing the negative space with his right hand. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.

• Mute by Catchers
  Sweet early 90s indie pop from Ireland. Folk-infused in the way the first Cranberries album was, but, unlike the Cranberries’ debut, with the listener held at arm’s length. There’s a bit of a Lloyd Cole feel in here too.

• In Praise of More by Engineers
  Last month I grabbed the incredible moody and atmospheric Three Fact Fader, by Engineers. (I know, I never posted a review – briefly, it’s a wonderful album that feels as much like a tribute to early Ride as Malory’s Not Here, Not Now feels like a tribute to Slowdive.) This month, I downloaded the follow-up, In Praise of More, which truly sounds like the band is finding their identity. It still bears the hallmarks of shoegaze – gorgeous shimmering walls of guitar and effects with gentle harmonized vocals that are nearly lost in the mix, but the sum of the parts is something gentle and comforting. It’s a musical blanket – it wraps around you and keeps you warm.

• Cover the Windows and the Walls by Grouper
  Grouper is Portland singer-songwriter Liz Harris. I’m getting conflicting information out of Discogs.com and Allmusic.com, so I’m not sure if this is Grouper’s third or fifth album. Regardless, of the three I have, it’s probably my favourite. Beautiful dreamy vocals floating above gentle guitar and keyboards all awash in reverb, it’s sweet, atmospheric, haunting, and, at times, terrifying. I hear something new every time I play it, it’s an incredibly rewarding listen.

• Aquatic by Highspire
  I’m positive that Highspire are deliberately derivative of late 80s / early 90s shoegaze and dream pop, and that’s why I love them. Their first album was a mixed bag – a couple of really excellent songs but mostly forgettable. Seven years later they’re back with Aquatic, a consistently excellent tribute to the music of my youth.

• Chemical Playschool 8 & 9 by The Legendary Pink Dots
  Catch a Match … is one of my favourite LPD songs, and I’d have grabbed that lone track if not for my musical OCD. See, I’m a completist – I can’t stand to have portions of albums. That said, the 18 other tracks on this 2 disc set are wonderful. Trippy, crazy, druggy messes that take you to remote galaxies. It’s a long way, as the Dots say, to Andromeda, and there’s no better music for the trip.

• Clinging to a Scheme by The Radio Dept.
  This was eMusic’s #33 album of 2010, and was described as “Shoe gaze by way of the Pet Shop Boys”, a description too intriguing to resist. The description is a deft way of describing the shift in the band’s sound, but it does little to describe the album, which sounds like synth pop songs arranged in a more traditional rock manner. A most pleasant surprise.

• Lightbringer by Covenant

• Three Fact Fader by Engineers

• Live at the Music Gallery by The Flowers of Hell

• O by The Flowers of Hell

• Absolute Dissent by Killing Joke

• Seconds Late For The Brighton Line by The Legendary Pink Dots

• Bullhead by Melvins

• Surfing on Sine Waves by Polygon Window

• Disconnect from Desire by School of Seven Bells

• dissolver by Voyager One

Peter Christopherson, died peacefully in his sleep on 2010-11-24, aged 55. Affectionately known as “Sleazy”, he was a founding member of industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle, a founding member of Psychic TV and a founding member of one of my favourite bands, Coil. He was also an incredibly inventive graphic artist, responsible for some of the most recognized album covers (like Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here) and some truly amazing music videos. I can’t even begin to describe how influential he was.

Farewell, Peter. You are already sadly missed.

• Chris and Cosey’s Tribute to Peter Christopherson
• …ology.’s Obituary
• Boing Boing’s Obituary
• The Guardian’s Obituary
• Spinner Canada’s Obituary

October’s 90:

• consume adapt create by Architect

• Japanese Heavy Rock Hits V.3 – 16:47:52 by Boris

• Making Monsters by Combichrist
  Typical of Combichrist, this is some hard-hitting eminently danceable industrial music. It’s more consistent than previous albums, though, and seems lyrically less (but not much less) ridiculous. Good fun, the band’s best effort to date.

• Humanoids from the Deep by DJ?Acucrack

• Sunde by Eisbrecher

• Exit Calm by Exit Calm
  I have to thank Alan Cross over at Explore Music for this discovery. Exit Calm sound so much like Storm in Heaven-era Verve it’s uncanny, but they’re so damn good that it’s hard to complain about such obvious homage. This is a terrific album – it’s on my short list for best album of the year.

• Out for Blood by Unit:187
  Hard industrial from Vancouver. It’s been a long time since Unit:187 released an album (their last release was 2003′s Capital Punishment) but this is worth the wait. This album is, with apologies to George Orwell, like a boot stomping your brain forever.

• Moving On by Unter Null
  Excellent EBM! Dark, yet danceable. An excellent cover of Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s The Mercy Seat is just icing on an extremely tasty cake.

The September Haul!

• Japanese Heavy Rock Hits v.1 by Boris

• Japanese Heavy Rock Hits v2 — H.M.A. Heavy Metal Addict by Boris

• Take A Line For A Walk by Chatelaine
  One of my favourite bands ever, the incomparable Curve disbanded in 2005. Since then, singer Toni Halliday has been all but absent from the music scene. To my knowledge, she sang on the 2006 Christmas charity single “A Great Big Sled” by The Killers and that was pretty much it. In early 2008 she announced that she’d started work on a new solo project, Chatelaine. A little over two years later, we finally have that album. Gone are the huge beats and heavy bass lines of Curve – this is a stripped down album, consisting mostly of piano and vocals. As a result it feels very personal. A couple of years ago I described Sol Seppy’s music as sounding like it’s being sung to you. Take A Line For A Walk doesn’t sound as intimate, but it does sound as honest. Twenty years ago this would have done nothing for me, but the older me loves it.

• The Medication Generation by Cyanotic
  Atari Teenage Riot may have created Digital Hardcore, but no band deserves the classification more than Cyanotic. Aggressive as Hell, pounding beats, crunching guitars and death-metal vocals. Play it loud, frighten your neighbours.

• Slumber Party Massacre by Fawn
  Fawn is a shoegazer-inspired side-project from Acumen Nation’s Jason Novak. Their first EP, Frozen, was an altogether too short sampling of shoegazer tinged with Acumen’s particular brand of industrial-metal. I’d been eager for another Fawn release since Frozen came out some five years ago, this came out in 2008 and somehow I’d failed to notice. Full of shimmer and reverb, with just enough teeth to draw a tiny drop of blood, it’s excellent stuff.

• 55:12 by Gregor Samsa

• Drowned In Light by Manual
  Way back in 2002 I heard Manuals Ascend whilst browsing at Penguin Records. Five minutes later I’d bought the album and have been a fan ever since. I’ve said before that the reason I keep buying KMFDM and FLA albums is that they never change – I know what I’m in for and I know what I’m going to get. Manual, of late, has fallen into this pattern too. Every Manual album is a delicate, shimmering butterfly wing held up to the sun. I wouldn’t say it stands out as the best of Manual’s work, but I’m not sure any of them do – they’re consistently excellent albums. Ascend remains my favourite, but I think it’s because it was the first one I’d heard.

• Holy City Zoo by Mob Research
  I bought this almost entirely because it’s the last thing Paul Raven (Killing Joke, Prong) had finished. The fact that Mark Gemini Thwaite (most famously of The Mission U.K.) plays guitar doesn’t hurt it any. Vocals are by one Kory Clarke, who sang for Warrior Soul. (Honestly, I’d never heard of them – 90s metal wasn’t really my thing.) The album’s a scorcher, meant to be played at horrendous volumes. It’s clearly Raven’s baby, as it’s way more industrial-metal than anything either Thwaite or, judging from a few videos gleaned off YouTube, Clarke has done. I wish I’d had a chance to see these guys live, it’d've been a Hell of a show. I’m still sad Raven’s gone, but this was a good final note for him.

• Can I Go Now (Gone Version) by Pale Sketcher
• Jesu: Pale Sketches Demixed by Pale Sketcher
  Jesu has always been Justin Broadrick exploring his softer side, but as Pale Sketcher he takes that exploration one step further. Pale Sketches Demixed is an apt description – Jesu’s Pale Sketches album deconstructed and remixed to almost gossamer delicacy. It’s a marvellous album.

• I Wanna Be Adored by The Raveonettes
  A faithful cover. It’s a great song, and it really suits Sharin Foo’s voice.

• The Human Animal by Android Lust
  My love of Android Lust is already well documented. I’d been eagerly awaiting the release of this album (in fact, this album shoved a planned download of The Melvins off to next month). This new album isn’t quite as experimental as the earlier albums, but that makes it more approachable, and perhaps a better introductory album for those looking to sample Shikhee’s aural excursions.

• Transit Transit by Autolux
  It’s been six long years since Autolux’s stellar debut album but it’s hard to complain about such a long wait when the payoff is so very good. Shoegazery, but with less reliance on distortion and feedback. It’s a more melodic album than Future Perfect, but along with giving up the roar of the debut gives up the hooks, both musical and vocal. No song stands out, no chorus is memorable. At the end of the album you’re just left feeling an impression of the album. This isn’t necessarily bad – I say the same thing about Boards of Canada albums. After an hour you don’t remember what you heard but you’re left feeling like you experienced something profound.

• The Blood of Heroes by The Blood of Heroes
  One of my all time favourite guilty pleasure movies is a low-budget bit of trash SF from 1989, The Blood of Heroes, starring Rutger Hauer, and Joan Chen. It’s a fairly typical bit of post-apocalyptic doom and gloom, but it’s a fun watch. I’m also a ridiculous fan of Justin Broadrick and Bill Laswell, so I was aware that they were collaborating under the name, but I had no idea ’til listening to the album that it was inspired by this forgotten relic. (The shoe dropped when I heard samples of dialogue from the film in the songs.) This album, however, is not just a silly homage to what could only be charitably described as a cult classic. It’s a cross-genre masterpiece. Broadrick brings his trademark Godflesh guitar roar and the gentle shimmer of Jesu to the project, Laswell brings his dub terrorist persona, and together with vocalist Dr. Israel and electronic artists End.user and Submerged they’ve created and album of beats, and grooves that combines dub, industrial, metal, hip-hop and every other “subversive” genre that will keep you guessing and keep you thinking. It’s absolutely my leading candidate for best album of the year.

• My Thoughts Light Fires by Deep Cut
  The Deep Cut is the newest band from ex-Death In Vegas bassist and Revolver founder Mat Flint. A great album of fuzzy, droney, shoegazery guitar rock. Vocalist Emma Bailey is an absolute treasure.

• Delirium Cordia by Fantomas
  Fantomas is one of Mike Patton’s myriad post-Faith No More projects, and it’s on the avant garde end of the scale. Delirium Corda is one 74 minute track, a concept track (so sayeth Wikipedia) about surgery without anaesthesia. I don’t necessarily get that from it, but it’s an electronic ambient piece that’s creepy and haunting, strongly reminiscent of Lustmord. Amazingly good.

• Fractured by Filament 38
  Angry sounding dancey industrial music. It’s pretty good, but I think I’m getting just a wee bit tired of this sound.

• 2012: Zwanzig Zwylf by Hanzel und Gretyl
  I’ve now caught up with all of Hanzel and Gretyl’s back catalogue, at least as far as EMusic’s subset of it goes. Musically this one is the strongest yet, and their tongue in cheek humour hasn’t been diluted a bit. They get bonus points for channeling Snoop by calling a song “Heil Hizzle Mein Nizzle”. I was laughing out loud as I walked to work as I heard that song for the first time.

• Last Of The Great Romantics by Snog
  The last Snog album I bought was 1997′s Buy Me…I’ll Change Your Life, an electronic, industrial rumination on consumer culture. Six albums later, Snog’s change a lot since I last listened to them. The songwriting is as sharp as ever but the arrangements have changed drastically. Last of the Great Romantics is minimalist by comparison to Buy Me – drums, guitar and David Thrussel’s vocals, but it’s no less affecting. My favourite track on the album is “This World (Done Me Wrong)”, the video for which is sharp, cynical, and insightful – proving that though the music has become much gentler, the message is no less incisive.
  
  
  
  

• Tomahawk by Tomahawk
  Another of Mike Patton’s projects, where Mike channels his inner David Yow – Tomahawk is jarring blues-influenced rock that sounds much like The Jesus Lizard or perhaps even Cop Shoot Cop. There’s a strong punk influence in here too – abrupt changes in tempo and time signature, stutters and stops. … oh hey, I just looked Tomahawk up on Wikipedia (yeah, I love the Wikipedia) and guess who’s in Tomahawk and co-wrote the songs? The Jesus Lizard’s Duane Denison. Dig.

A fairly varied set of tracks for the month:

• A Place To Bury Strangers by A Place To Bury Strangers
  This album is a revelation! Seriously, it blew my mind – it’s so many 80s-and-90s-alternative music styles. Some songs are The Jesus and Mary Chain, some songs are The Cure, some are Fields of the Nephilim and Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry goth-flavoured. There’s not a single weak moment on the album. Certainly the best download of the month, maybe the best download so far this year.

• Evolution by Android Lust
  I’ve always loved industrial music, but let’s face it, it’s pretty much music made (mostly) by European white men, and that gives it a kind of sameness. So I was really thrilled when I discovered Android Lust a couple of years ago. Bangladeshi-born, NYC based Shikhee is Android Lust. Women in Industrial are a minority. Asians in Industrial even more so, particularly South Asians. As you might imagine, a South Asian woman in industrial is almost impossibly rare. But I’m not gushing about Android Lust because she’s a South Asian woman – that’s just icing. Android Lust is excellent. This is the remix album of her debut, and it’s just fantastic. In places quietly menacing, in other places super aggressive, but almost always unsettling and creepy (the way early Velvet Acid Christ albums were unsettling and creepy).

• Cantoma by Cantoma
  Really mellow, latin-jazz-influenced down tempo. At times riding the edge of too jazzy for me, but really excellent over all. Perfect “chillout” music, as the raver kids say.

• Way Their Crept by Grouper
  Ambient, creepy, haunting and beautiful. Grouper’s debut is wonderful, but only hints at the magnificence that is yet to come. (Yes, I’m talking about Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill.)

• Scheissmessiah by Hanzel und Gretyl
  Not quite as good as Uber Alles but still tons of ridiculous over-the-top fun. Choice song titles include Kaiser von Shizer, Disko Fire Scheiss Messiah, and Scheissway to Hell.

• At The Soundless Dawn by The Red Sparowes
  Red Sparowes’ debut album. Epic instrumental rock with a metal edge – imagine Mogwai, Isis and Pelican had some kind of mutant gene-spliced child and you get some inkling of Red Sparowes.

• Every Red Heart Shines Towards The Red Sun by The Red Sparowes
• The Fear Is Excruciating But Therein Lies The Answer by The Red Sparowes
  Red Sparowes’ second and third albums respectively, I listened to these two back-to-back so they kind of blur together for me. Somewhere along the ride, that hard Isis-style edge rounded off a bit, much to the music’s benefit. Still heavy, but not quite as bombastic.

• [Everywhere] [And Right Here] by The Six Parts Seven
  Yet another so-called post-rock band (have I mentioned how much I hate the term post-rock?), but different. Where Yume Bitsu did psychedelic, where Mogwai does epic, where Mono does introspective, The Six Parts Seven does pretty. And it really is very pretty music.

• You Never Did Anything Wrong To Me by Team Ghost
  M83 co-founder Nicholas Fromageau left after their second album, Before the Dawn Heals Us, and has stayed under the radar for the past seven-or-so years. Team Ghost is his return to making music, and his M83 roots are clearly apparent. But where M83 progressed, Team Ghost is mostly the same. This EP sounds a lot like it picks up right where Before the Dawn Heals Us left off. Musically the EP is terrific, but the vocals are rather weak. It’s a shame, because they hurt an otherwise enjoyable EP.