27 December 2007
"On the cover: Celebration. Features: It's Coming Down Baby!: Erik Davis catches up with Sir Richard Bishop -- gypsy picatrix, ex-Sun City Girl and guitarist extraordinaire; The Way of the Riff: Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny and Om's Al Cisneros manifest music, vibration and camaraderie. Ben can truly call him Al.; Not All Humans Are Bad: I.F. 'Ian' Svenonius files a field report on Baltimore psychedelic soul rock n' roll band Celebration; The Sodfather: Daniel Chamberlain talks s…
26 September 2007
Arthur is back! "On the cover: Born Again! A talk with Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond. Features: One Man, Goofing Off: Journalist Joel Rose visits 80-year-old Zen humorist/media innovator Henry Jacobs. Plus, an appreciation of Jacobs' radio and TV work by filmmaker Mike Mills; Scream At The Sky: 'Bull Tongue' columnists Thurston Moore & Byron Coley have an audience with Yoko Ono. Discussed: The Peace industry, Fluxus, Sarah Lawrence and her life/art before Lennon. Plus: 'Yoko Tanka,' a r…
Zone Sensible 2 - Dundee 2
For the best part of a decade, Éric La Casa's attention to sonic phenomena has resulted in some of the finest contemporary Musique Concréte to come out of France. A listener of the highest order, La Casa's methodology for sound recording allows for a versatile examination of both urban and natural environments and it is these interests which are captured on this new edition for Room40. With an ability to find unique perspectives on his sound subjects La Casa's site specific works 'Zone Sensible'…
W2 (1998-2008)
"We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it's the journey that makes – and unmakes - us." (Nicolas Bouvier, "l'usage du monde"). When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.My relation to the sites wasn't based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps…
Alpha Z Centauris
'I started recording sounds when I was 17 years old, in 1984 when by chance someone gave me a K7 tape recorder with 2 diverse speeds... I discovered recording sounds was already a full and poetic act which was able to be used for the experimental music which i was dreaming of. In 1987, after one month of hard work in a summer camp restaurant I bought a 4-track stereo tape recorder and I started a lot of experiments in my little flat in Lyon (France) : via an old Radiola radio from the 50's, my h…
Cross-Pollination
Plenty of praise has been lavished on veteran musician, field recording expert and BBC sound recordist Chris Watson, and it would be hard to disagree with any of it. 'Cross Pollination' is his latest full-length, again for the Touch label that has been his home for many years, and sees him teaming up with Marcus Davidson for a surprising collaborative piece. Using Watson's recordings of bees in an English country garden as the backbone of the composition, Marcus Davidson had a choir re-interpret…
The Shivering Man
The Shivering Man, originally released in 1986 on Mute, was Bruce Gilbert's second solo album. Following on from his 1984 masterpiece This Way (EMEGO 102CD), it further explores Gilbert's investigations into the grey border where abstract noise and rhythm co-exist with obscure melodies and song structures. The sound is further expanded with guest vocal appearances by Angela Conway and fellow Wire traveller Graham Lewis. This is also the first time the complete album is available domestically on …
Harmony Series 11-16
In the 'Harmony Series 11-16', very small events are happening in every nook and cranny of the music, and these subtle changes give magical effects to the music. This is in fact not magic at all - all the events are due to the theoretical structure of the music, but the way Pisaro incorporates them into his compositions is so subtle and natural, that the whole impression on his music becomes poetic. When I listen to each piece while carefully paying attention to the details, I feel that the nuan…
Not Available
CD EDITION: While there are a million stories about The Residents, one of the more intriguing concerns the recording of their second LP, Not Available. Early in the career of the band, the "theory of obscurity" was introduced to them by the German avant-guardist, N. Senada. The plan called for the creation of complete projects that were literally not intended to be heard by anyone other than its creators. The Residents realized the truth in this ideal: that music really was difficult to record w…
Warrior Creed
Joy of Life/Apoptose - Warrior Creed, LP release date: December It was in 1988 when the British post punk group Joy of Life released their song »Warrior Creed«. Apoptose would never forget this track: the impressive vocals, the stoic drums, the minimalistic keyboards. 20 years later »Warrior Creed« is back – seen though Apoptose’s eyes. The voice of Joy of Life leadsinger Gary Carey has matured and the rhythm section is reinforced by an entire band of drummers, the Fanfarenzug Leipzig. Now the m…
Walden Pond's Monk
The first ‘proper’ widely-available album from Portugese composer and pianist Tiago Sousa, ‘Walden Pond’s Monk’ balances itself on the idealism and revolutionary spirit of Henry David Thoreau. While this might be initially hard to hear in an album of mostly solo piano, as the songs seep into the soul it becomes easier and easier to decode Sousa’s messages. There is a mourning, but hopefulness to these compositions, and in contrast to solo piano records from Gonzales or Goldmund it feels like an …
Undercurrent
California Gothic set to the tidal rhythms of the Pacific and tuned into the metabolic pathways of the northwest coast. Porras (Barn Owl) has scripted a love poem to the mist, a prayer cast in ghostly reflected guitar and deep pools of distortion. The ominous opening of 'Gray Dunes' is a dense and impenetrable murk, a fear that eventually succumbs to distortion but then gives way to a endless open space of delay in its second half. Its trajectory is symbolic of the record as a whole, with many o…
Song Islands Vol. 2
Song Islands Vol. 2, released under the Mount Eerie moniker as opposed to Microphones like the original Song Islands compilation, is a sizable compendium of songs covering from the 2002 release of Song Islands to the present day. Coming in at a total of 31 tracks, Song Islands Vol. 2 continues Phil Elverum’s powerful and decidedly exploratory musical style. The compilation maintains an incredible sense of intimacy, even when the vocals get choral, which is on the precipice of being the rule as o…
Suara Naga
Arrington de Dionyso's newest album Suara Naga is a pleasant balm for any creative spirit. By 'pleasant', I mean incendiary. By 'balm', I mean Cro-Magnon regressive. By 'any', I mean freaks only. By 'creative', I mean dangerous. And by 'spirit' I mean the flames of Hell and the flowers of Eden entwined upon the nuptial sofas of pleasure. By 'spirit', I mean wearing grooves in the floor boards of your dirty mind. By 'spirit', I mean that part of you that either heeds the call or gets destroyed. B…
Dreamweapon III
Limited 2nd pressing. "A second LP of previously unheard recordings of Angus MacLise and Tony Conrad from the MacLise tape archives. Remastered from the original tapes.
Totem 3
Not to be confused with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, MMOB are mischievous ethnographic music fakes from Seattle whose name actually derives from a Japanese pornographic pursuit. Stick with them, though, because against the odds, these miscreants' trilogy‑ending album is a seriously heady decoction of eastern mysticism hitched up to heavy droning jams. Despite the band's forbidding air, tracks such as "In the Twilight of Kali Yuga" reverberate with good cheer and "6000 Years of Darkne…
Broken Bones
This latest in the Latitudes series of limited LPs comes from American noise-pop band Gowns, whose Red State album you may recall as being one of 2007's more unclassifiable recordings. A folkish spectre hangs over these pieces, particularly when it comes to the wiry, haunting violin sequences strewn liberally across the session - they bring to life the sinister spoken word of 'Dog', crowning a soundscape that's always on the precipice of turning nasty. Much of Gowns' music tends towards uncertai…
Paranoid Cat
Paranoid Cat is Philadelphia guitarist Chris Forsyth's third solo album and first for Family Vineyard -- a sprawling, harmonically-charged side-long suite backed by a clutch of compositions merging raw and delicate American roots traditions. After more than a decade trotting the globe and recording with a mess of today's avant garde greats, plus co-leading the brazenly absurd Peeesseye, Forsyth has arranged a full-band to accompany his electric six-string vision of interlocking arpeggios and max…
Nova\'Billy
"I want to be a rocker. everybody else has walked away from rock. I wantto walk towards it." - Henry Flynt Taste the magic! Nova’Billy is another edible audible from Henry Flynt's dusty lower Manhattan bunker and it stands as one of the fullest, most beauteous document of Flynt's tenure with a full working rock band to date. For less than one calendar year between 1974 and 1975, Henry Flynt's hard driving, heavy jamming agit country rock band, Nova'Billy embraced bareknuckled deep fried groove a…
Badlands
If you think something’s wrong with your speakers, you are mistaken. No, you can’t turn up the bass. You’re just listening to the raw, stripped down wail of Alex Zhang Hungtai, better known as Dirty Beaches. His MySpace describes the music as “minimalist rockabilly,” and those are probably the two best words I could think of to describe his newest LP, Badlands.At times, Hungtai’s vocals sound quite Elvis-esque; at other times, you can barely make out the mumbling echoes over the subdued drum bea…