On_14 - “ Green EP ” (ON-LI)
the latest release at japan-based ON-LI comes from a guy that calls himself on_14. there are nearly no informations dropped on the website beside the link to on_14's older release photon. we get to know that he is working with processed guitar-sounds and field-recordings. sounds interesting, but what does his record sound like? good!
usually, i choose netaudio-music because of the artwork, the description (if there is one…) or because i like the label. i put it on my walkman and listen to it on my one hour-way to university. it's dark and rainy these days, and when you're half-asleep riding the tube, the on_14-sound is the music of choice. i wasn't sure to review it the whole week through because my walkman's batteries were low and i couldn't manage to record. his tracks didn't work at home, maybe i was expecting something different. oh, conceited journalist! when i finally took them for a walk, everything made sense.
the green EP consists of two long tracks called green and lavender. the first one starts with slightly processed field-recordings that soon get swapped with a gush of riff-less distorted guitar-noise. maybe noise ain't the right word, don't get me wrong. on_14's play is somehow static and ambient, subtle and strange harmonies form from this amalgam of electric stream of consciousness. *hendrix* revisited! the electric guitar finally succeeds in stripping of all rockisms one might still connect with. mogwai sound like bon jovi next to this, please excuse the comparison.
lavender works pretty similar. both tracks could last for hours but are cut after a while, i wish on_14 could have spend some more time on at least a smoother fading... my old minimal-music LPs are cut like this when the needle runs out. still it's a good thing he lets his music time to bore into the listener's head. i feel a bit ashamed about the fact i like the green EP that much, it's so fucking simple! after all, this is also sort of a praise.
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Andrey Kiritchenko - “ True Dilusion ” (Nexsound)
among the few people acting as the web's opinion-leaders, section netaudio and future sound of music, andrey kiritchenko represents the east wind of experimental electronic and electro-acoustic. his label nexsound from kiev, ukraine, unites many promising artists (you should know at least kotra, zavoloka, the moglass and gultskra artikler) and reveals uncut diamonds from the lands of the former sowjet union one after the other. the collaboration from nexsound and legendary avantgarde label laton from austria (at zavoloka's latest CD plavyna) is the consistent step forward. andrey himself released dozens of records, both on- and offline, ranging from noise, electronica-improvisations to more structured, acoustic experiments, e.g. with the moglass. there are MP3-EPs at zeromoon, autoplate and -N. this guy knows what it's like.
kiritchenko divided the LP into two parts, the first dominated by his environmental guitar-play, the second based on very direct piano dubs. field-recordings have always been a part of his oeuvre and so are here. sounds of every day's life, chatting kids, specific reverb-flags- the surrounding is always part of the composition and important to review the music, both aetheticly and political (check the liner notes for the rural psychogeography-sampler). the minimal accords and clusters of his acoustic guitar and piano fit into this like their made for it. some strangely filtered synth-sounds whirl in the back, but the mentioned elements make up the tracks.
true delusions still confuses me. in the first half, andrey arranges small melodies, harmonic overtones and processed, spacious motives to achieve an atmosphere of self-contained meditation, slight repetition and concentration. illusion of safety is close to be called (thinking man's) pop, tracks seven and eight tend to become more ambient. i like the record a lot, still i think there could be at least a few moments that get you by the neck, reminding you who's record you're listening to... bet andrey is over this. what will his next releases be like?
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Bazaar - “ Pacha's Ale EP ” (Experimedia)
fred debief seems to be a busy man. he's releasing music as ascalaphe (hardware) and bazaar (online), was working with judith juillerat for her last album on berlin-based shitkatapult-label and still has the time to tell me about. thanks!
the pacha's ale-EP is released by the welcome hands of experimedia and free for download. the music fred releases under this alias has a certain strength: it combines some nostalgic idm-sounds with analogue instruments (although i'm not sure about if fred played them on his own), strange samples and dense, noisy fill-ins.
especially the synthesizers caught my attention. his programmings sound more like, let's say, *tangerine dream* than the contemporary electronic music everybody uses to produce. don't get me wrong- bazaar ain't electric hippie-music your parents would listen to (or at least don't beg you to turn off). laika used (and use) sounds like these, and also the squarepusher got into warm twitters at his compositions less drilling.
a thing that makes it kinda hard for me to get this review on point is the fact fred crams his tracks with so many elements. all these samples bring their own history, and most of the time it works out due to fred's compositional skills. but here and there it might get a bit too much... one herb less for the hotpot.
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Liger - “ The Infra-ordinary ” (Beat is Murder)
ever heard of ligers? a liger is in the family of the felidae what's the mule for the cloven hoofed animals- a sterile hybrid between the species, fanciless named after its parents: a lion (dad) and a tiger (mum). let me see... mules are strong, persistent and good looking. what are the characteristics that argue for the liger? cuteness? thoroughgoingness?
dino spilutini releases his experimental lo-fi pop under the alias liger doesn't seem to care about marketability. field-recordings pervade his songs like fumes of dirt, melodies appear, stay for a few moments and are gone before you can sing along, hum along. glitchy beats take on a relaxed groove or appear without any rhythmical sense.
the songs are mainly based on some basic guitar-patterns and the liger's singing. but he doesn't sound like his loud-voiced parents! the liger whispers, lilts in falsetto or processes and doubles his voice. he's not a great singer, but his ideas are legion. sometimes, moments of pure beauty get douched to the shore (not in my place, work in/out), the other time strangeness takes over (a man asleep).
guess the liger likes the current pop-releases at american hip hop-label anticon. there's a similar amount of weirdness, the will to write seriously beautiful songs on the one hand and the necessity to hide them under a pile of grubby sounds on the other. go dig 'em out!
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V.A. - “ eDogm V.A. 1 & 2 ” ( edogm )
johann bourquenez' netlabel eDogm offers some cool records with influences from noise- and experimental music, but first of all jazz has to be mentioned. johann has a broad understanding of 'jazz' and if you want to get a hint what his vision of contemporary (french) free jazz and avant-garde music sounds like, check the eDogm -compilations 1 & 2!
volume one starts with a ten minutes-track by alex piques. he's using samples of spoken word and very minimal and stoic rhythm-patterns. more minimal music than minimal techno, you'll get into it if you don't wait anything to happen. chamber music with contrabande is next. nice acoustic track between improvisation and composition, jazzy harmonies and uncommon melodic scales. song number four come from youngsters no flute and features energetic drums and bass-play over a simple synth-loop. did shock me somehow as i heard the (white) rap come in!
fasten boalbus afterwards stresses with its nightmarish funfair sounds, but the following track is my favourite: cannibales & vahinés play some powerful free jazz over hectic drums and massive bass-plucking. gives you the impression everything may end the next moment, but the tenor saxophone holds it all together. after a sudden ambient breakdown, the song shifts to some slight guitar-play and takes up speed over another four minutes until the sax comes in again. great! the last three tracks focus on some more 'illbient' vibes and didn't hit me that hard.
and here's volume two. ferdinand doumerc opens with a live improvisation on baritone sax. powerful and lyrical both way, cool you get hear the surrounding (people, wind, breathing). vincent ferrand at the next song drops melancholic piano-chords over some clumsy hip hop-beats. the song gets interesting as different layers of clarinet comes screwing in. fantastic combination of indietronica and something more classical. a lot like the tied & tickled trio.
funny wending at track number four (sylvain darrifourcq quartet): after a decent introduction at viola and trumpet (?), heavy guitars take over and jazz rock-motives emerge. the song defibrates in collective improvisation, ambient sine waves and introspective guitar picking. strange one, bit too academic.
well-known french producer d'incise takes part with a track of his cold sound of processed fragments of jazz music. once again, he's up with his buddies cyril bondi and gael riondel of diatribes. julien taillefer presents the compilation's final track. for 'string minimum', he processed many acoustic sounds and forced them back together. the outcome's a lovely cut-up bastard between experimental electronica, chamber- and minimal music. leaves me stunning.
so many styles, so many great and novel music. still bourquenez manages to compile the different tracks like a coherent album. can't count one bad track. thanks a lot man!
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Ibakusha - “ Novctzember ” (Zymogen)
italy-based netlabel zymogen got a new record out! it's their fourth release, and it looks like these guys are willing to make you remember the name. after the stunning diatribes-record last year, it's ibakusha from switzerland with his novctzember EP the label serves for you.
electronic music, once again. but don't stop reading! manuel has some great ideas to make his music more interesting than most of the other releases i've heared. at asperitè, the first song, he expands some nice textures of dirty synths and adds a click here, adds a cut there. along with a distorted, melodic glockenspiel-pattern, trashing breakbeats explode in your headphones. cool, surprising and referential. astonishment nr. 2: fripèes features a heavy cello-line. hunting track with delayed piano and a lot of background-sound whirling somewhere below your attention. at track four (taxifolia), beats become a bit more concrete. ibakusha drops a processed motive of electric guitar over his production that makes you think of 80s indie-pop like and also the trees and similar. strange thing how all these 'real' instrument fit into the electric environment like it's nothing special.
last song to mention: chlorophylle rouge. ibakusha combines his romantic piano-play with smooth breakbeats, let's say tom jenkinson 1998, and a lot of low key noise. great composition, dense atmosphere, the perfect last song. very well done, manuel!
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MonoCulture - “ Animal Economy ” ( Urban Sprawl Records )
at the distinct border between IDM, cut-up groove and hip hop-music, urban sprawl-cofounder nick eymann releases a new album under his alias monoculture on his own label. there has been a more ambient vibe in his former releases (e.g. at acrylic, kikapu, hippocamp), but now nick decided to get into beats.
his arrangements are closer to the boards of canada than dj shadow- monoculture approaches hip hop coming from electronic music, not the different way 'round. there is no place for real raps in his music, just vocal-samples my be heard (the new rasputin), but nick is able to create a good groove out of it so you won't miss the mc. his beats are pretty rough, something i like pretty much because the smooth soundscapes and melodies fellow monoculture expands don't sound like easy-listening this way. for example my cancer for a kingdom (great title!): maybe a bit too much stage-piano if the beats hasn't been mixed that aggressively upfront. cause and consequence is the most traditional track- reminds me a lot of the french style of hip hop mc saar was successful with in the late nineties. hypnotically.
the first five songs seem to be the EPs core-compositions. winterstrand and teague cullen spend two solid remixes that fit the monoculture- style and add some pop-appeal. the records closes with an ambient piece of asian religious music (haragei) and a final track i don't understand... nevertheless, go get this delightful album of electronic hip hop-music.
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The Depreciation Guild - “ Nautilus ” (8bit-Peoples)
the 8bit-peoples from NYC tend to release 3-4 EPs at one hit. that makes it kinda hard for me to keep their output in mind, and sometimes i download stuff just to forget it on my portable harddisc immediately. thank heavens i listened to the depreciation guild-record before storing it outside the laptop!
chip-music is funny music. not the haha-way, but it always makes me silently smile to hear these nice little melodies coming out of the grey machines we all spend our time with. maybe it's the contrast between the certain bitter-sweet melancholy (many 8bit-artist come up with) and the typical chip-sound that makes this sort of music so charming.
unless many other chip-artists, kurt feldman and akira hashizume a.k.a. the depreciation guild are a band. their genre is 90s indie- and collegerock, and instead of keyboards, they're using the mighty nintendo entertainment system (NES) for rocking your children's room. the opener stuck pig e.g. takes you back in time (13 years, maybe): uptempo drumming, guitars that sound like recorded from the room next door and a singer who likes the tips of his shoes better than the girls in the first row. imagine yo la tengo in a good mood (or weezer in a bad one) hooking on a 8bit console. by sundown, the second song, is an instrumental with a great and cheesy 8bit-melody above metal-like distorted guitars and synth-drums. ratatat of brooklyn is my comparison.
the EP closes far too early with a heavy shoegazer-ballad. nautilus is the title-track and takes you deep under the sea. great! if you liked lush better than my bloody valentine, this song will be yours. i'm waiting for your LP, promised.
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The Joe-K Plan - “ Demo ” (Trastienda)
being familiar with a lot of styles of music, i find it remarkable how strong the walls of genres still stand. imagine a band that has got everything: good melodies, sturm & drang, distortion, groove and rhythm. there might even be refrains (or something similar, at least), still this band'll probably be called post-whatever and judged for arty. funny thing.
i'm talking about the joe-k plan from madrid, spain. two guys (mario at guitar and cesar behind the battery) that recorded a pretty good LP for the trastienda netlabel. their vision of contemporary instrumental rock mixes the different sources this genre is fed from. antishock 3M opens the LP with some good indierock. slintistic! song number two and five, electric blue, english red and protzoo derive its complex and repetetiv harmonic motives from chicago adult pop, triskaidekafobia (the pathological fear of the number 13) at three comes up with some less tastily but more exiciting and weird guitar-riffs that made me think of the late dismemberment plan.
all songs are played with verve and precise power, only the open distortion brings forth a certain feel of metal, and maybe that's just a less important detail; everything else is like it should be- not everyone can build his own amplifiers, if you know what i mean… don't miss the joe-k plan if they're coming for ya town!
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Bruce Russel & Sakada - “ Casa Precario ” (Con-v)
con-v is a very very serious label. they're releasing music at the crossroads of sound-design, ambient textures and field recordings, strictly limiting themselves to an unique approach to music. it takes some experience in the wide field of experimental music to judge the quality of their releases, and might be i'm not the right one to do so. still this 20 minutes live performance caught my attention.
eddie prevost of british avant-garde pioneers AMM and mattin form the sakada -trio (usually in concert with rosy parlane of thela who's missing here). drummer prevost is important for the avant-garde, free jazz and improv-scene since the late sixties and runs the matchless records -label. mattin (spain) is the one between prevost and russell, their “cutting, bowing, scraping” is converted though his computer and fed back to the mix. this anti-copyright agitator runs the labels w.m.o. and desetexa and is sort of the digital face of this cooperation. he is working with computer feedback and self-written algorithms to alter the sound being produced on stage, a highly intuitive and spontaneous process. usually, the third man in row bruce russell is featured as a freeform guitarist, i'm not sure what he's doing here… but i think it ain't important what he's actually playing, the outcome as an integration of all contributing components (or musicians) is the benchmark.
so, what do we get to hear? first of all, feedback and high frequent sine waves. found-sounds. fragments of percussion. you even might recognize the sound of the room and the attendant crowd. this is pretty rough music, indeed. but these guys are always smart enough to catch your attention with some small tones you can't guess where they come from, might be just the squeaking sound of a chair, might be the laptop, might be whatever. this concept of recording ALL sounds available makes the recording special and noteworthy.
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Alexandr Vatagin - “ Valeot ” (Mirakelmusik)
alexandr uses to pluck the bass-guitar for austrias' finest avant-folk band tupolev, who released their debut EP at 12rec. if you're familiar with this one, you'll recognize certain elements alex constructs his solo-album from: the dusty piano at active/passive, peter holys' boyish singing (valeot) or these remarkably harsh-but-beautiful melodies over delayed 40bpm-rhythms here and there. still vatagin is much more into abstract ambient, drone and musique concrete.
the simple tones he plays on his bass have a lot of room to disappear in. feedback comes up from time to time, field recordings and found-sounds back up his compositions. the first four tracks remain relatively calm and without huge dramatic efforts, but song number five, inconnu, features david schweighart at the battery for the first time. vatagins experiments in sound turn to be songs, suddenly, accidentally. lay your head where your heart used to be afterwards marks the albums acme with accentuated drumming and a touching stagepiano-melody.
rats and mistakes at position seven sounds different from all the other songs. alex creates a droning synth-soundscape and adds samples and some dark jazz-like organ upon it. maybe a better track without the programmed beats... the album fades with a six-minutes composition of crackling found-sounds and high frequent overtones.
far the best release at mirakelmusik, i think. alexandr vatagin combines the analog warmth of his guitar with a the idea of tonal ambient music. the appearance of drums, piano and even some vocals make valeot outstanding within the big pile of ambient music the netaudio-scene spits out day by day.
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PCF Moya - “ Untitled/ God Slot EP ” (Merzbau)
frango, the portuguese improv-band rui damaso is part of, released a record of beautifully rough avant-rock at test tube back in the spring of 2005 (check sitting san ). now he's back solo under the alias of PCF moya , whatever this might mean. what has changed? no drums in here, rui keeps it calm.
solitary man explores the depth of his guitar-play. on his EP for the small merzbau -label, rui combines a very minimal, untitled live-performance (tracks 1-3) with two song recorded at home. the main elements in his music are small improvised guitar-motives over dense loops of guitar, synth or other instruments, both digital or analog. guitar-ambient with a decent pulse of layered drones, as the 15-minutes track god slot (for mother) displays perfectly. the first three songs just draw the path for this fantastic, enigmatic piece of music.
where there is missing some kind of final harmonic deepness and dramaturgic finesse in his live-recordings, god slot (for mother) evolves from pure ambient to a continuously permutating organism of sound. it's alive! carefully, rui adds layer by layer, drives up the delay, uses the effect-tools like solitary instruments. at this point, the greatest effort is drawn from the drones that can be heard in between the sounds- a stunning effect both classical minimal music and drony ambient share. hypnotically, relaxing, beautiful. reminds me a lot of the moglass, an ukrainian band which released a stunning co-op CD at nexsound (snake tongued, swallow tailed, highly recommended!). another comparison might be the second marsen jules-album at autoplate, yara. all these artist share the ‘analog' approach to ambient music, combined with a strong sense of not loosing the tension. the good stuff's right here!
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Zavoloka & AGF - “ Nature Never Produces the Same Beat Twice ” (Nexsound)
what makes me think of rough 90's eastcoast-hip hop when listening to the zavoloka+AGF -record i just received? i don't think that rap-music is a great influence for the artists at this album, and strictly focusing on the music there are no hidden links between, let's say, the wu-tang clan, and this female super-group of electronica. you know what? i think it's the uncompromising way, antye and katia mix up their harsh sound, this snoting out the beats, the concept of jamming to a steady pulse of various bpm and recoding what happens.
don't get me wrong- there's a huge difference between the RZA's peaking finger-snaps and those rumbling beats you can hear on nature never produces the same beat twice . antye is into (more or less) electronic music since the early nineties and katia also released enough tracks to know about 'good production'. it's a strict decision to let the tracks appear like they came to be, like carefully cultivating the weed on yr frontdoor pavement instead of cloning a rose, if you want to stick to the biological concept of the album. their tracks grow like grass, trees, like magic peas to heaven, from kiew to berlin and vice versa .
i admit: you have to listen with some good will to cover the specific beauty of this record. but there are so many things happening in the 50 one-minutes songs! if you're familiar with the solo-works of AGF and zavoloka , you will recognize many of katias semi-tonal synth-sounds, the flute-samples, her harsh singing. antyes voice is also present in the mix, altered with some effects. still the use of human voices gives some hold in the storm of musical particles the listener gots to put in order. due to that, the sparingly use of harmonies emphasizes the melodies if there are some.
nature never produces the same beat twice is a quite rhythmical album, but the subtle harmonic surplus makes it outstanding and special. far too fragmentary to be called the future sound of electronica , but one of the most exiting records of abstract electronic music i was allowed to listen to for the last few months. 8€ worth spending!
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1.000 Hours of Staring - “ Co-operative Thread ” (Serein)
in the beginning there was organ. a monumental instrument! mike ramsey aka 1.000 hours of staring (google *tom friedman* for reference) opens his EP on UK netlabel serein with a track that limits itself to some simple, drony organ-chords and a delayed guitar. the keyboard sounds very analog and noisy, so i think it ain't a plug-in. nice one. although i'm listening to a huge amount of netaudio-stuff, the idea that someone sits in his bedroom, recording an old organ with a microphone instead of using the simple crack of a B3 to send it to the world still impresses me.
song number two shows up with scraping and grating found sounds. rewind-guitars can be heard, decent synth and organ-tones in the back, unrecognizable samples pitch high and low. born in a swallow is more experimental than enamel (the first song), and equals the weight of a feather. both tracks got a strong *four tet*/ *fridge*-feel without just copying. concerning the atmosphere, *opiate* might also be a good comparison.
with i am philips head , mike introduces some great string-arrangements and a 'real' guitar- and piano-melody. heart-rending, boy! my pistil your pedal at position number five got a strange sound. far in the back there maybe three or four layers of looped guitars, played in different velocities… or something else. a improvising solo-guitar is introduced, permutating a simple motive until the noises from the back take over. cymbal-sound? field-recodings? dunno, you can't grab it.
essen , finally, is a striking prove for the songwriting-qualities of 1.000 hours of staring . once again, ramsey piles up different layers of picked guitar. they seem to disappear in reverb and feedback at first, but come back in a beautiful swarm of single chords at minute 2:30. like rain pounding against your windows. slowly the main motive emerges from the different layers until a simple bass-guitar gives hold to the indefinable melody. fantastic! the song upraises in volume and distortion before this beautiful and strange EP comes to an abrupt ending.
note: make sure take a closer look at the artwork- both artists (mike himself and alanna gladstone for the frontcover) crafted a colorful visualization of the sound the art corresponds to. disturbing, somehow. like to see the real paintings..
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This is a rough collection of older reviews I wrote in 2006.
Please visit www.RUBored.org for news on recent Netaudio-releases.
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