musings

The last 90 eMusic downloads for 2009:

• Aerial by 2562

• Pop Tatari by Boredoms

• Enjoy the Fall by Edge of Dawn

• Tarot Sport by Fuck Buttons

• 1% of Monster by Mogwai

• Gold and Green by OOIOO

• Welcome to Goodbye by Rotersand

• When Black Beats Blue [Rarities] by Seabound

• Deep Space by Jah Wobble

• Invisible Republic by Young Galaxy

November’s 90:

Time’s been short, so this is just a list of what I’ve grabbed – I haven’t given any of them a proper listen yet.

• Lilies by Arovane

• Tides by Arovane

• The Last Dubber by Ministry

• What We All Come To Need by Pelican

• Geneva by Russian Circles

• Do You Trust Your Friends? by Stars

• Beacons of Ancestorship by Tortoise

• Object 47 by Wire

• Send by Wire

Mostly electronica / EBM this month, with a couple of exceptions.

• Young Fight by Amusement Parks on Fire
  Amusement Parks on Fire’s first album was influenced by the shoegazer sound that I love so well. This album is still shoegazery, but less obviously so. A good listen though – seems like they’re trying to find their own sound.

• Harmonizer by Apoptygma Berzerk
  I don’t know why it took so long for me to grab this. Harmonizer is the last real EBM sounding album from Apoptygma Berzerk – all the subsequent stuff has sounded like electronic emo-pop, which isn’t my thing at all. Even Harmonizer flirts with a warmer sound than the earlier stuff, but it’s the last great Apop album.

• Eulogy For The Sick Child by Imperative Reaction
  I saw Imperative Reaction open for VNV Nation when VNV toured for Matter + Form and was quite impressed, but I’d arrived to the show a bit late and didn’t know who they were. They remind me a lot of mid-period Frontline Assembly, and there’s nothing wrong about that.

• Jagged by Gary Numan
  It’s Gary Numan. I shouldn’t have to say anything more.

• In And Out Of Control by The Raveonettes
  With In And Out Of Control it seems like The Raveonettes have finally found the it in their sound. Previous albums have been teetering on the edge of greatness, but this one jumps in with both feet.

• Smile And The World Smiles With You by Sonna
  Shimmering guitars, jangling melodies, and gentle swells that build to crescendoes. Fans of Mogwai, Low, and Múm will find much to like here.

• Altar by Sunn O))) & Boris
  Masters of drone Sunn O))) collaborate with the ultra-amazing Boris. This isn’t two bands writing half an album each and playing together, nor is it a split single, it’s two very different bands collaborating right from the songwriting, and it’s fascinating to see how the result isn’t much like either bands’ material. This one’s worth owning just for “The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep). The fact that the rest of it is damned good is just icing.

• I Cry by Rotersand

• War On Error by Rotersand
  Germany’s Rotersand is a new discovery for me. They make EBM, but it’s strongly influenced by rock as well as other electronica and techno.

• Of Faith, Power and Glory by VNV Nation
  VNV Nation doesn’t seem to change much from album to album, but this is a case of not messing with a formula that works. One thing that sets VNV apart from so many similar acts that stands out more and more with each album – the idea that we should face each day with hope. That message has never been so strong. Strong beats with pretty melodies and Ronan Harris’ almost-romantic vocals, it’s really good listening.

Some great stuff this month!

• AmericanPornSongs by 16Volt
  I used to hate 16Volt, but somewhere along their career they got good. This album might well be their best yet. Aggressive, danceable industrial is always welcome to these ears.

• A Story in White by Aerogramme
  I noticed Aerogramme because they’d done an “In the Fishtank” collaboration with Isis. Not that they’re anything like Isis, except insofar as they can achieve similar levels of intensity. The album wanders from crushingly heavy to mellow acoustic right down to almost ambient, but it never sounds inconsistent. Definitely worth the download.

• Reading All The Right Signals Wrong by Final
  I don’t even preview anything done by Justin Broadrick any more. Since I discovered Godflesh some 15 years ago I’ve devoured everything he’s done that I could find from the ultra minimal Final albums through slow grinding nightmare Godflesh, through the ambient on one album, screamingly aggressive on the next Techno Animal, and now the beautiful and haunting Jesu. I’ve never been disappointed.

• Flesh is the Law by Genitorturers
  Sleazy, snarly, and unapologetically trashy, the Genitorturers are awesome. Gen kicks ass – she can sound evil and snarly one moment and sexy as hell the next, and she uses that skill to amazing effect. They’re also an amazing live act, which is a good thing as this album is half studio, half live.

• Burner by Jane Jensen
  I downloaded this one on a whim – eMusic recommended it as similar to Genitortures, and AllMusic called it “electric girl-pop grunge with a twist of hip-hop blues” and I couldn’t say no. Regrets? I’ve had a few, but grabbing this album isn’t one of them.

• Aphorisms by Red Sparowes
  Instrumental rock, similar is style to Explosions in the Sky. Amazingly good. I’d have been tempted to download it just on the strength of the song titles – how can you not want to own songs with names like “We Left the Apes to Rot, But Find the Fang Grows Within”, “Error Has Turned Animals Into Men, and to Each the Fold Repeats”, and “The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer”? Non sequiturs for the win! Genius!

• Station by Russian Circles
  Russian Circles were recommended by Twitter friend Nightwyrm for fans of the “darker” stuff from Mogwai. So far so good.

• We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight by Sonna
  Sweet indie rock in the same vein as Múm and Mogwai.

• The Lo Fibre Companion by Various Artists
  This is a compilation of material from Justin Broadrick’s Lo Fibre label, most of which is a Broadrick side project of some sort. Particularly amazing are the tracks by The Sidewinder, a collaboration between Broadrick and Scorn‘s Mick Harris.

EMusic’s download cycle is 30 days long, and that means the renewal date slowly creeps backwards in the month. I’ve been a member long enough now that my renewal date has crept to the beginning of the month – my next download refresh date is the September 9th, and this is a really busy time at work, so rather than lose a set of downloads, I downloaded what I would normally have called September’s downloads in August.

• How He Loved The Moon (Moonsongs for Johnn Balance) by Current 93
  A tribute to Johnn Balance of Coil who died in 2004. This album is tribute to his genius. I really loved Coil, so this album makes me a bit sad. Mostly darkly ambient.

• Hpynagogue / Hypnagogue II by Current 93
  Another darkly ambient bit of mood music.

• All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone – Remixes by Explosions in the Sky
  Explosions in the Sky remixed by the likes of Jesu, Eluvium, and Four Tet? How can you go wrong? Fantastic.

• This Is What You Get by Flunk
  I’ve loved Flunk since I first heard their cover of Blue Monday (on For Sleepyheads Only). Every release has been consistently great, and this one continues the trend. While I don’t think they’ll ever manage to top the genius that is “Play”, it’s unfair to expect them to do so.

• Holy Fuck by Holy Fuck

• LP by Holy Fuck
  Two albums of electronic noise rock by Toronto’s Holy Fuck. The albums sound surprisingly raw – like live recordings. Good fun.

• Gone by Mono

• Hymn to the Immortal Wind by Mono

• Walking Cloud, Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined by Mono
  I can’t get enough of Mono – if you like Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, or Yume Bitsu you’ll love this band.

• Salt Marie Celeste by Nurse With Wound
  This is a very strange album. One track, just over an hour long. If you’re not paying close attention, it sounds like a 2 minute ambient loop repeated 30 times. It’s super minimalist and creepy as Hell. Play it loud on Halloween to scare the bejesus out of the local kids.

• Dream, Tiresias! by Project Pitchfork
  Yet more industrial goodness from Project Pitchfork.

• Love and Distortion by The Stratford 4
  Fuzzy shoegazery stuff. Not exactly original sounding, but that’s not a bad thing. They clearly wear their influences (Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine) on their sleeve.

August’s 90 Tracks:

• Complete Recordings by Black Tambourine
  Black Tambourine remind me of a rawer (is that a word?) less polished Lush. A bit more wall-of-fuzzy noise, but the same almost ethereal vocals.

• Absolutego – Special Low Frequency Version by Boris

• Akuma No Uta by Boris

• Amplifier Worship by Boris

• Smile by Boris
  Boris rocks. Every album amazes with every listen. Get it all, you won’t regret it.

• Farm by Dinosaur Jr.
  Dinosaur Jr. continues to amaze – their second album since their reformation is every bit as fresh and vital as Beyond, if not quite reaching the admittedly high watermark set by You’re Living All Over Me.

• Palmless Prayer: Mass Murder Refrain by Mono & World’s End Girlfriend
  From what I gather, Mono are widely considered Japan’s representative in the so-called “post-rock” scene. Contemporaries with Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, Laura, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and others. Let’s get this out of the way – “post-rock” is as patently stupid a label as I’ve ever heard. EitS hate it – they rightfully claim that what they do is make rock, no “post” about it. That said, humans have this need to label things, classify them, and slot them away and if you really had to do such a thing, there’s be less apt ways of doing it than to seat Mono with EitS. World’s End Girlfriend are similar, but far more experimental – more daring arrangements in less comfortable compositions. Their 2005 album The Lie Lay Land is a mind-boggling tower of unsettling music with titles like “Phatasmagoria Moth Gate” just destined to set your brain on edge. This collaboration is entirely unlike that. A collection of delicate and beautiful and ultimate devastatingly sad acoustic instrumentals.

• SKOLD vs. KMFDM
  KMFDM has spent several albums recycling what they’ve been doing since Tim Skold’s tenure with the band. Given that, I was expecting this album to be yet more of the same, but I was pleasantly surprised. This album shares more with early Front Line Assembly than with recent KMFDM, showing that sometimes you have to mine the past to sound new. I’d say it’s the best thing either Tim Skold or Sasha Konietzko have done since Skold left KMFDM.

• The Eternal by Sonic Youth
  I realized a couple of months ago that I’m the worst Sonic Youth fan ever, because I hadn’t bought a Sonic Youth album since Dirty. A twitter friend advised me that I’d like this one and he was totally right – this is screaming, kicking, rocker of an album. Definitely a return to the form they’d had in the SST days.

• Naked Acid by Valet
  Hypnotic and trippy and all over the musical map. An intriguing and recommended listen.

• Super Ready / Fragmenté by The Young Gods
  More than 25 years since they started, The Young Gods prove that they can still hang with the kids. Though it gets a bit uneven towards the end, it’s their best album since 1995′s Only Heaven.

Former CFNY DJ Martin Streek chose to end his life yesterday. Marty had been a fixture on the radio and the local club scene for the past two decades. I listened to him on the radio, and went to “CFNY Nights” at clubs in the Greater Toronto Area for years and years – all through university and then some. When anyone mentions CFNY, I think of a select few names: Dani Elwell, Alan Cross, Maie Pautts, Brother Bill, and Martin Streek. All of those people had moved on, either through station restructuring or moving onto new opportunities. All of them save for Marty – he’d hung on ’til this past May, when a new restructuring finally showed him the door. He was the last tie I had to CFNY, the last person that kept me even wanting to listen. His death marks the end of an era – maybe just a personal era, but an era nonetheless. His death is a much more personal loss to me than all the “big” celebrity deaths of the last couple of weeks. Though I never knew him personally, I knew his radio persona, and I’ll miss him. Good night and godspeed, Martin – I hope you’ve found the peace you sought.

June’s 90 tracks:

• The Very Best Of … by Blind Mr. Jones
  Pretty proto-shoegaze stuff that sounds a bit like Ride and a bit like Slowdive. The latter is not much of a surprise given that Neil Halstead wrote some of their guitar parts. Really great, it’s too bad they disbanded so early in their career.

• Waves by Ride
  A compilation of Ride’s BBC sessions, it’s almost exactly a career retrospective. Like their career, it starts off soaring and adventuresome, and ends a bit drably, but it’s a nice journey all the same. Their cover of Dead Can Dance’s Severance is amazing – faithful to the original and still infused with everything that is Ride.

• The Third Face by Malory
  The third offering from Germany’s Malory finds them distancing themselves ever further from the Slowdive homage of Not Here, Not Now, getting more comfortable with their own musical identity. The shoegazer influence is still present, just no longer at the forefront. A real gem.

• Pink by Boris
  I first heard of Boris when I found they were opening for Nine Inch Nails on their last tour. The epic adventure of that show – where I wound up missing their performance – was detailed earlier on this blog. I was happy to find that eMusic has their discography available, and retroactively disappointed that I missed seeing them perform. Pink is drone, and noise, and thunder, and all of it is bloody awesome. I’m going to have to download the rest of Boris’ discography.

• Seed to Sun by Boom Bip
  I was introduced to Boom Bip by my friend James a couple of years ago when he advised me to listen to Blue Eyed In The Red Room. That album blew my mind, and I went out and bought Corymb. Seems I’ve been working my way backwards to this one, Boom Bip’s first. It’s every bit as good as the others – an incredible blend of hip hop and beautiful ambience, and compelling vocals. Highly recommended.

• Mahakali by Jarboe
  Haven’t given this one a real listen yet – will fix this once I’ve done so. I’m a huge Jarboe fan, and she’s never let me down, so I’m expecting more great things.

• Peace by Aspera Ad Astra
  Aspera Ad Astra are another of the neo-psychedelia bands like BJM and The Asteroid No. 4. Much like the first BJM album, this one has some pretty strong shoegazer leanings, but unlike the typical Kevin Shields outing, the vocals are in the forefront. Great stuff.

May’s 90 Tracks:

• 
  Hush by Asobi Seksu
  Another fine release from New York’s Asobi Seksu. This one steps back from the shoegazer leanings of the previous releases in favour of sweeter, more pop-oriented songs. I’m sure this one is going to alienate fans who came just for the feedback and swirl of the previous albums, but I rather like it.
• These Flowers of Ours by The Asteroid No. 4
• An Amazing Dream by The Asteroid No. 4
  I first heard The Asteroid No. 4 on the Sounds from Psychedelphia” compilation – the song “Tricks of the Trade” stuck in my head seemingly forever after. Like The Brian Jonestown Massacre, these guys take a great formula and run with it – any fans of 1960s psychedelic rock will find this right up their alley. Recommended.
• Man With The Movie Camera by Biosphere
  Yet more haunting and creepy ambient soundtrack from the masterful Geir Jenssen. It’s hard to say how it’s different from other Biosphere albums – they’re so minimal that casual listeners would probably think it all sounds the same. It’s not the best of Jenssen’s album (that title is held by Microgravity – one of the most haunting and creepy ambient albums I’ve ever heard) but it’s really good.
• Fallout by Front Line Assembly
  A collection of remixes and outtakes from the excellent Artificial Soldier album, along with three new tracks.
• Split by Jesu / Battle of Mice
  Two tracks each by the incomparable Jesu, and Battle Of Mice. I don’t understand the logic of this split single – the two Jesu tracks are slow and introspective, and the two Battle of Mice tracks are screaming aggression. It’s a lot like putting two early Sigur Rós tracks on a single with two early Sonic Youth tracks. It’s all good, but the pairing is incoherent. That said, it’s well worth the download.
• Lost Alone by Mind in a Box
  Introspective synth-pop from video game music composer Stefan Poiss. Not bad, but a bit repetitive.
• Sabresonic II by The Sabres of Paradise
  Is there anything to be said about The Sabres of Paradise other than “They were brilliant?” I don’t think so. Get it. Get everything they did. It’s hard as hell to find on physical media, so EMusic is really the best way to get it now.
• Linienbusse by Studio Pankow
  I downloaded this in the mistaken belief that it was Italian electronic duo Pankow, last heard from in the 1990s. It sounds kind of like acid-jazz done with synthesizers. Not bad at all.

Looking back the past three months, it reads like I’m one of those guys that just likes everything, because I keep giving everything positive reviews. Thing is, between eMusic’s previews, allmusic and the other review sites on the internet, it’s pretty rare that I’m downloading anything that’s unlikely to appeal to me. So I’m not so much reviewing albums as I am attempting to describe why I like them.

Here’s how I spent April’s 90 tracks at eMusic:

• Halou by Halou Beautiful vocals and shimmering melodies, I just can’t get enough of Halou. This latest album features guest appearances from ex-Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie, and cellist extraordinaire Zoe Keating. Amazingly good.
  
• Exile Paradise by In Strict Confidence EBM for those who are sick of the same old EBM. Major keys, pretty female vocals, and good lyrics (!).
  
• Blitz by KMFDM KMFDM never changes – they’ve been recycling the same material since Angst, and I think that’s exactly why I keep getting their stuff. They know what their fans like, and they don’t fix a formula that isn’t broken. If you liked the last 8 or 9 studio albums, you’ll probably like this one too, and if you didn’t, well, this one ain’t gonna change your mind.
  
• Devils In My Details by OhGr The third album from Skinny Puppy frontman Nivek Ogre and producer Mark Walk. None of OhGr’s albums have been “Skinny Puppy light”, but this is perhaps the darkest one yet. It’s different enough from Skinny Puppy that some fans may feel alienated (though that was true of both WELT and SunnyPsyOp too), but it’s an excellent album that shows Ogre isn’t content to rest on his laurels. Dig it.
  
• Kaskade by Project Pitchfork Project Pitchfork has never strayed far from strong beats, cold synth arrangements, and nearly tuneless vocals, and this album doesn’t really change that, but the albums do all sound different – Kaskade is an evolution of that classic Project Pitchfork sound, and draws influences from several genres of music – industrial, prog rock, pop, even baroque. Not my favourite Project Pitchfork album, but it’s a great listen.
  
• Lust for Blood by Velvet Acid Christ Once, a long long time ago, I listened to VAC all day long, and was left feeling totally and utterly paranoid – something about VAC’s compositions is so sinister and creepy that even if you can’t make out the lyrics (and I can’t) the songs have a profound effect. Lust for Blood is just as paranoia-inducing as my favourite VAC album, Church of Acid. Brilliant.
  

And in other news, I picked up both of Zoe Keating‘s One Cello x 16 albums. Zoe Keating uses a single cello and a foot-pedal controlled computer to create huge, lush, layered epic orchestral pieces of music. She’s also worked with some really amazing acts like Rasputina, Halou, and Amanda Palmer. Highly recommended.