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The "wink wink" Thread 2010: This Time It's Personal
KaosPilot:
Marnie Stern - In Advance of the Broken Arm
--- Quote ---Somebody hold me steady, this record has me in convulsions! Not in a bad way either, Marnie Stern has done something with this, her debut album, that makes me rabid with childlike glee... she has combined two of my guiltiest pleasures - math rock and riot grrl. Okay I know I might not be selling it here but this works; apparently (or so her press release says) she only started listening to 'good' music at 23 years of age, when she chanced upon Sleater Kinney, picking up her guitar playing technique after seeing a video of Don Caballero... and that's exactly what 'In Advance of the Broken Arm' sounds like. Firstly, her guitar playing is simply incredible; apparently playing for at least three hours a day, she has perfected her technique into pure art in the same way Chris Corsano has perfected drumming. The fun doesn't stop here though, she is joined by none other than math rock prankster Zach Hill (of Hella) who lays down frenetic percussion to accompany Marnie's vocals and fretwork and then lends his hand to the production too. Phew, well I'm exhausted, even writing about this record is tiring, so imagine listening to it - from the minute it starts your senses are assaulted by Marnies' gorgeous (but lovingly abrasive) vocals, her abstract sense of songwriting and Hill's incredible barrage of drums. Maybe this is the first singer-songwriter math-rock album, it certainly sounds like nothing I've ever heard before and what's more, every second works perfectly. With the attitude of Sleater Kinney and the technique of Don Caballero she does something that many have tried and few have mastered - writes songs that are equally as listenable as they are technical, and somehow it still retains a punk spirit? I recently waxed lyrical about Hella's latest project which takes their sounds into bigger, brasher more poppy places, but where Hella shoot for late 70s prog rock, Marnie Stern manages something which sounds a lot more contemporary and a lot less comical. This is music with conviction, with honesty and with pure unadulterated character, and Kill Rock Stars have yet again struck a seam of gold. I am going to be spinning this record for a long time to come, and I highly recommend it to anyone with a penchant for the more unpredictable side of life. Blistering!
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Rather...longsish review from Boomkat.com
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Zingoleb:
--- Quote from: Jeans on 12 Jan 2010, 12:54 ---what irony is that?
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A lot of people don't view wikipedia as a reliable source. I do, for what it's worth.
Scarychips:
Okay, so we are actually starting a new thread.
Oh and thanks for the Shearwater. Really cool of you.
KvP:
Nils Frahm - The Bells
--- Quote from: Strangeglue ---This record became a part of Kning Disk’s solo piano series at the behest of Peter Broderick, who first heard Frahm’s exceptionally lucid and beautiful piano improvisations in much the same way I did; lying down and looking up. I thank him for having done so, Nils Frahm is a welcome addition to my life, reminding me of the first meeting I had with Gonzales’ phenomenal record Solo Piano.
Those who don’t find Broderick’s music annoying after the first listen (unlike myself) might well find themselves sharing the slither of the venn diagram where the two meet. Coincidentally Broderick was present at the recording of the album, which must have been a real treat. In his own words they “hired a beautiful old church in the heart of Berlin for two nights, with a wonderful old grand piano and the most amazing natural reverb I've ever heard.” Lucky for some eh?
Though fans of iconic improvising pianists like Keith Jarrett might enjoy The Bells, it should be noted that Frahm is devoted to the same kind of prettiness that drives contemporary classical/indie/folk crossover players like James Blackshaw, fans of whom should apply (and it even outswirls that good lads latest piano forays… review here). In other words: There’s no jazzmatazz. But don’t dismiss it just yet jazzficionados! Because Frahm is capable of playing with an immense, guttural power and when he does alight on the prettiest lillies he does so softly and moves on before sinking them with overemphasis and heavy handed repetition; the twee technique which has become the norm in much of that very indie/folk/classical genre that Broderick is perhaps an unwitting figurehead for.
When I began this review I had no idea that I would have so many cross-references to play with. Dude clearly digs Satie, but who doesn’t? It’s not ECM material (a Very Influential Label), but is that just marketing/who your mates are? In the record shop where I work this would end up in the indie/folk bed with quack piano doctor Hauschka (don’t get me wrong, he’s good too!) and the ever wonderful William Basinski (reviewed here), separated from the Chick Corea’s and the Gary Burtons (who you can have a little taste of here and here) by all manner of soul, gospel and electronica.
And this divide makes some sense, because they are growing from very different earth and being picked up by younger antennae (plural of antennae? Not so easy is it!). The improvisatory technique was wrenched from the hands of the jazzers and the Steve Reichers, or at least duplicated/borrowed/stolen, a long time ago. So fans of the what’s-gonna-happen-next chemistry can go looking all over the genre spectrum and find good results, be it Pocahaunted, Chris Corsano & Paul Flaherty or some punk band you’ve never heard of making up their songs on the spot. This has been going on a long time too. So a pianist like Frahm is not only absorbing all manner of non-improvised ear candy, he’s hearing the technique pioneered by his instruments forebears echoing out through the Devil’s music, and Buddha’s too.
But that’s getting a little too far out, and as soon as I let one of The Bells’ longer tracks loose again, in this case the melancholic ‘It was really, really grey’, my senses and my emotions are re-engaged, and the ideas of “why” fall by the wayside. The piano is not a dying instrument, but there is something of antiquity about it. It is an immensely articulate conjurer of images, but that goes for nearly all music, except for pale abominations like Mr Scruff.
So instead of using all manner of untranslatable images to explain my deep and sentimental interaction with this music I’m inclined to call the grand piano a unique kind of lens; it delivers the images with it’s own character, rather than devising them. The basic parameters of its sound can be replicated, but its inimitable soul is embedded in all those ever changing hammers and strings. Nils Frahm can speak to that soul, and The Bells is a beautifully captured conversation between two friends. Pieces like the truly striking ‘Said and Done’ embody something in music that can’t be achieved on other instruments, it is enlivening and uplifting. ‘Down down’ explores deep resonance and attracts a magnificent force without sounding like an “experiment”, ‘Over there it’s raining’ and ‘Somewhere nearby’ are both full of light, lyrical and at times painfully wistful.
The Bells achieves a depth by its contrast of fragility and strength, applied to welcome emotions as well as those of a more challenging nature. The record’s explorative nature flows well, these forty minutes were culled from five and a half hours of recordings. I’m intending to seek out more records by Mr Frahm.
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Floating Points - Vacuum EP
--- Quote from: Resident Advisor (4.5/5) ---Floating Points' Vacuum EP sounds a bit like Motor City Drum Ensemble if Danilo Plessow, like, knew how to orchestrate a full band and stuff. Sam Shepherd, the man behind the project, likes the same sort of dusty soulful house sound as MCDE does on his Raw Cuts series, but it's smoother, less overtly loop-driven. The tracks on Vacuum flow, maaaan.
"Vacuum Boogie," as the title suggests flows upwards, straight into air. The melodies reach, reach, reach until you're nearly ready to dive into the track yourself and push them where they so obviously want to go. This sort of unresolved tension is where Points, AKA Sam Shepherd, excels. You're either hanging on to the edge of your seat or hanging on to your dancing partner waiting for the hit. The same goes for "Truly" and "Argonaute II," on a more muted scale. The groove is paramount, the instruments locked into a Bolero build that only rarely gets extinguished, only to be built up again. Like Plessow, Shepherd's talent on this particular EP is in creating glowing bits of soul and then simply letting them run their course. Both producers often create more challenging work elsewhere, but Raw Cuts and Vacuum Boogie are a classicist's dream.
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King Midas Sound - Waiting For You...
--- Quote from: Pitchfork (7.6) ---The Bug's London Zoo aged well over the past year: It still stands as one of the more exciting albums of 2008, a roots-heavy dubstep/dancehall crossover with rib-cracking rhythms and an amazing guest roster of singers and toasters that stands as a remarkably distinctive collection of voices. But there was a surprise harbinger in that album, a song that my original review actually completely overlooked due to-- or maybe despite-- a stripped-down, ambient eeriness that offset the rest of the album's aggro-beat feel. That song was "You & Me", a strikingly delicate yet powerful collaboration with the soft-voiced singer/poet Roger Robinson. And about three months after London Zoo dropped, the creative partnership of Robinson and producer Kevin Martin brought forth a deservedly lauded single under the name King Midas Sound: the ghostly "Cool Out", which rivaled the best of Burial when it came to the more desolate corners of dubstep.
One year later, "Cool Out" has reemerged as the lead track off the first King Midas Sound full-length, and it's retained its impact-- assuming you can refer to the feeling of becoming slowly enveloped in abandoned-high-rise ambiance and serenaded by quivering, sweetly voiced murmurs as an impact. It also stands as one of the highlights of Waiting for You, or at least one of the most chilling moments; the fact that this album can conflate the two is a sure sign of where it's coming from. Every strength this record holds draws off the symbiotic relationship between Martin's beats and Robinson's voice, which adapt to each other in a way that the last two people in a barren environment might. This is dub production rendered as the final reverberations of a deserted cityscape, infused with a crumbling low-end that does for bass what a single fluorescent tube in an underground concrete tunnel does for light. And the voice decorates it like a spiderweb-- fragile in appearance, but structurally resilient enough to hold strong against the rhythm.
Robinson's singing sells his idea of zero-gravity lovers' rock like a champ, filling in the evocative cracks that his mostly straightforward lyrics don't do much to cover. The title track's lovesick sentiments are familiar, but there's this pang to his voice-- a bit disbelieving, bitter, hopeful and agonized all at once-- that holds the deeper meaning. And he's just as powerful on the other songs where he's called upon to invoke that lonely brooding atmosphere-- "One Ting" (sonically bleaker than the nano-orchestral lavishness of Dabrye's remix from the "Cool Out" 12"); the misty-eyed take-me-back begging of "Darlin'"; "Meltdown" and its heavy-sighing pleads for intimacy. Robinson does have an intriguing vocal counterpart on a few tracks in the person of Dokkeki Q member Kiki Hitomi, at her ethereally malicious best on "Goodbye Girl" delivering spiteful reprimands and Elvis Costello quotes with a scalpel's agility ("I wish you pain 'til you can't ever feel joy/ I wish you luck with a capital F, boy"). But the more remote and abandoned Robinson's aching voice sounds, the heavier it hits.
Not all of Waiting for You has that same ambiance, though it rarely rises above the level of a soft rumble. Martin's production forgoes the stereotypical dubstep war of bassbin attrition to let the beats glow instead of flash, and even when it approaches an actual heavy knock-- like the underwater dancehall bump of "Outta Space" or the smothered Mantronix boom-clap of "I Man"-- it still resembles the starker moments of Mezzanine-era Massive Attack more than it does something along the lines of Bug tracks like "Skeng" or "Warning". Still, a little something is lost when things digress from the cutting isolation that made "Cool Out" work, especially when Robinson breaks from his singing to issue scoffing spoken-word holistic reprimands on "Earth a Kill Ya"-- a decent bit of preaching with a heavy scowl of a beat beneath, but oddly harsh and self-assured on a record that thrives on sounding vulnerable.
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Oneohtrix Point Never - Rifts
--- Quote from: Tinymixtapes (4.5/5) ---What does it mean to be a DIY artist in 2009? For one thing, it means you probably aren’t making a living off of music. One might think that Oneohtrix Point Never and other like-minded acts carry an anti-commercial agenda, content to release homespun music to only the most eager fans, happy to send a "fuck you" to the gloss of top 40 and a celebrity-obsessed culture. But surprise, surprise: unlike the oftentimes nebulous, nihilistic noise scene that dominated the DIY landscape early in this decade, the new underground is engaging every area of our culture, high and low — from the Billboard charts to your garage — with fascinating results. Almost anything can be appropriated under the "experimental" banner these days; just take the simple pop bands dripping in distortion or the multitude of nu-age acts releasing short-run cassettes while simultaneously getting name-dropped on Pitchfork. Yet one unifying factor among DIY sub-genres is a distance from monetary concerns, which should strike fear into the hearts of the Big Four CEOs: yes, music will survive one way or another, even if the industry is hemorrhaging money.
Daniel Lopatin, a.k.a Oneohtrix Point Never, is equipped with a pragmatic view of music’s call-and-response with the broader culture. Of our capitalist bubble, he says: "None of us are totally culture-free, and all of us, on some level, have been sentenced with having to relate to the ‘popular’ whether we side with it or not." Which seems more appropriate and less reactionary than several of America’s famous counter-culture head-spaces. And while it’s easy to view Lopatin’s attitudes through the prism of DIY culture in general, his music has many entry points. Listening to Rifts — a compilation of the albums Betrayed in the Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind — some will hear 80s soundtrack music, cosmic ambiance, or minimalist repetition, while others might pick up on the mishmash of noise and plastic, mystical new age music.
Indeed, as fellow TMTer Jon Lorenz pointed out, the sounds on Rifts look to past versions of unrealized futures for inspiration. Hearing the record in one sitting is like being in two times and places at once, like watching someone from another decade daydreaming. There is a calm certainty at the heart of these recordings that allows each track to paint a vivid and believable fantasy world through sound. Lopatin is also clearly aware of his music’s dialogue with the culture it sprang from. "I’m a sponge," he says. "I love culture and the process of soaking it in is just as rewarding as working from the inside-out and making my own ‘unique’ work — really I don’t see those processes as separate."
Perhaps most musically striking about Rifts is its pervading bareness, an aspect that, on the surface, disengages it from the pop canon. Oftentimes a song will appear shimmering and expansive, only to be revealed upon closer inspection as a single spare synth line arpeggiating to infinity. Other moments are filled with pure ambient texture, lending a variety somewhat rare amongst such peers as Caboladies and Emeralds. As well as providing entry points for a variety of listeners, the versatility and mobility of ONP’s sound also gives Lopatin an exit strategy if he needs it. That is, through the application of a synthesizer, almost any sound-world in recent memory can be conjured in facsimile. "I wanted to make an album that flowed seamlessly through this unspoken history of musics," Lopatin reiterates, "with the synthesizer as the primary engine for the discovery and marriage of disparate musics, which to me, feel like they really belong together."
And that’s really the beauty of Rifts and the movement of albums and artists it loosely represents. It’s as if the overt hybridization of 21st-century music has finally produced a strange, new singular vision, with various facets being illuminated by every new CD-R and handmade tape release. Rifts’ sleek digipack casing is perhaps both an unintentional laying down of the gauntlet and a nod backwards. Or maybe it’s just easier to ascribe an epic narrative to an equally epic slab of music.
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gospel:
Magnetic Fields - Realism
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--- Quote from: nonesuch ---The Magnetic Fields’ new album, “Realism,” will be released on Nonesuch Records on January 26, 2010. Swerving from the unrelenting feedback pop of “Distortion,” this record explores the various genres under the umbrella of folk. Stephin says, “I thought of the two records as a pair, and I initially wanted them to be called ‘True’ and ‘False.’ But I couldn’t decide which I wanted to be called ‘True’ and which I wanted to be called ‘False.’”
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VA - Portland Stories: A Collection of Nine Songs Produced and Compiled By Heather Woods Broderick
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--- Quote ---Portland Stories is an effort made by Heather Woods Broderick (who is a member of the Efterklang live band and recently released her debut solo album on the Preservation label) to capture the simple beauty of some lovely musicians in her hometown of Portland, Oregon.
Portland is blooming with music. Music on the streets, on front porches, in venues around the city, in basements, coffee shops, record stores, etc. It's a city that is truly embracing music. And for this compilation Heather sought out to document a small, quiet corner of that music world in a very simple way. She road her bike to the homes of eight different people with a simple 4 track recorder and pressed record, whether in be on the front porch or in the living room.
The result is a strikingly beautiful set of nine songs (including one by Heather herself). Sparse, warm, touching, honest music. Songs that make a nod to the old world of simple folk music but stay true to the time we're living in now. (Peter Broderick)
Artist Info: (in order of appearance)
1. Kele Goodwin - Kite Strings
'Kite Strings' was written after a failed attempt to fly a pterodactyl shaped kite on windy spring evening in the middle of a busy street. The kite never did fly and now resides in the basement resting on top of Laurel's 4-track tape recorder.
myspace.com/kelegoodwin
2. Sarah Winchester - Northeast Kingdom
Sarah Winchester grew up in Vermont singing folk songs and church music with her family. Later, she would perform in various choirs and begin writing songs. She received her B.F.A. in Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art, where she studied sound recording and performance, printmaking, painting, and writing. In addition to her solo work, Sarah plays drums and sings with Portland, Oregon band A Weather.
myspace.com/sarahwinchestermusic
aweathermusic.com
3. Michael Elias - Halfway There
Michael Elias wrote 'Halfway There' when his wife and son were away for a few weeks. He got to missing them, and this is what came out.
myspace.com/splitrailfence
4. Nicholas Archibald Marshall - Into the Night
Nicholas Archibald Marshall, originally from Northern England, now lives in Southeast Portland. He has an old brown dog, and went gray before his time.
arenarockrecordingco.com/bands/sabertooth
5. MayMay - The Fall
Laurel Simmons is the songwriter behind maymay. The project began as an ode to friends and family back home in Flagstaff, Arizona. Over time it has evolved to become a project played, at various times, with several fellow musicians. Among those included are Heather Woods Broderick, Raúl Pastor Medall, and Nicholas Archibald Marshall, all dear friendships found in a new place.
myspace.com/barbarramaymay
6. Rauelsson - Liebre
Rauelsson is the moniker for Raúl Pastor Medall's musical projects. Born in Spain, but self-considered adopted Oregonian, Raúl has spent the last years of his life living in between Portland, OR, where he resides currently, and his European motherland. He released a double ep on HUSH Records in 2008 and has two new albums to be out in 2010 on the same label.
myspace.com/rauelsson
7. Town Rill - My Park Bench
Town Rill is the musical pen name of a fella named Birger Olsen. He writes modern blues and secular spirituals with hope of soothing his soul and perhaps a few others along the way. He's currently at work on a new album of New Orleans blues and country folk.
townrill.com
8. Galveston - Never Ask Why
Galveston is the musical alias of Chris Ashby. The music is influenced by, and occasionally performed with, other musicians.
myspace.com/galvestoregon
9. Heather Woods Broderick - Behind Doors
Heather wrote and recorded 'Behind Doors' in her vacant bedroom in Portland, Oregon, shortly before moving. To her, the song marks the realization of changing times and the closing of an era. Heather's debut solo album, 'From the Ground', was released in 2009 on the Australia based Preservation label.
myspace.com/woodsmusical
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