#Steve Baczkowski

[dustedmagazine]

Brandon Lopez Trio — Matanzas (Relative Pitch)

Matanzas by Brandon Lopez trio

There are musicians who leverage their instrument’s conventional vocabulary to create works of art, and then there’s Brandon Lopez. The NYC-based composer and improvisor has crafted an entirely new language for the double bass. His is a sound rooted in many locations simultaneously, primarily those vast swathes that extend beyond tradition. Deep growls, peals of thunder, shrieking caterwauls, intense thrumming: Lopez coaxes all these resonances from his instrument without the aid of electronics. Yet the relatively young improvisor also knows when to dial back his aggressively idiosyncratic ways, to vibe with his sparring partners on the bandstand and achieve symbiosis. His desire to commiserate is commensurate with his confidence and curiosity.

With his trio, Lopez has found the perfect partners to achieve the divergent modes of fierce experimentalism and collaborative groupthink. Buffalo-based saxophonist Steve Baczkowski stuffs all manner of implements into the bell of his horn to extract divergent timbres from the belly of the beast. Outside of his work with Lopez, he associates with the noiseniks of the American northeast, shredding eardrums alongside outré guitarist Bill Nace and human tornado Chris Corsano. Gerald Cleaver is an elder statesman with a long and impeccable CV, who – no matter how outside he goes – always has at least one of his limbs in some sort of groove. His drumming skills are so in demand that it’s easier to list the performers he hasn’t played with rather than the other way around. Together, these three adept players are like a controlled burn: their flame is bright and hot, but it yields before reducing its surroundings to ash. 

Matanzas translates to “slaughters” or “massacres,” but Lopez and his compatriots are not so bold as to attempt to cause terminal otalgia in their listeners. Their music shatters boundaries, not eardrums; it’s exploratory rather than aggressive. As “Dithyramb, Sodomy, Salt” comes into focus, Baczkowski has stuffed an aluminum can into his horn, so that his contemplative blowing creates serrated edges across which Lopez and Cleaver duck and weave. Soon, the trio ratchet up the energy, Lopez strutting about the fingerboard in a blur while Cleaver transforms into an octopus. Baczkowski’s sheet metal shrieking becomes a snarling glossolalia before eventually subsiding into a mid-register drone in the final few minutes. 

On the much longer “Gomorrah, Philadelphia,” Lopez gets more exploratory with his bass, pulling out some of the more creative tricks from his solo endeavors. The visceral nature of his playing comes into focus as he saws and hammers the strings, and taps his fingers across the wooden body. Baczkowski and Cleaver seem more contemplative on this piece, often falling silent or spilling out tiny fragments of sound. Later, Cleaver leads the other two players toward a clattering, almost funky rhythm and then shoots off into a mutant jazz-rock orbit as the piece concludes. There’s an almost sinister nature to this improvisation; it’s the nightfall to the preceding track’s dawn. This balance between the ecstatic, the malevolent, and the beatific befits the spirit of this trinity of daring musicians. On Matanzas, their many moods are on display, and this can be both dizzying and exhilarating, so buckle in and enjoy the ride.

Bryon Hayes

[silocityreadingseries]

Silo City Reading Series, 2021

[dustedandsocial]

June, previously. The end of the month rundown of what was best in June: but in July. June: July. There’s plenty where June came from. Christ’s Kingdom is eternal. June (July)

Was on vacation at the end of last month and forgot to upload this June rundown. So here it is. I’m better than Pitchfork. I’ll fight everyone at Vice HQ. I unearth more underground music than The Wire and The Quietus combined. I’m the best. Down with all with music mags, sites for profit, music content subsidiaries of Old Spice, Monster Energy Beat Camp etc. Bring info exchange to the fans, build the community, Patreons for our celebrated writers, donations for our artists, down with the for-profit content factory. Long live the independent, community-oriented content factory. I’m #1.

Here, this:

Rock, hard rock, rock music, rock and roll, heavy hard rock

Full-Lengths Acolytes - Rupture LP (Alter) Al Doum & The Faryds - Spirit Rejoin LP (Black Sweat) Alameda 4 - Czarna Woda CD (Instant Classic) Big Blood - Operate Spaceship Earth Properly LP (Feeding Tube) Boyhood - Bad Mantras LP (Shuffling Feet) [nice follow-up to their underappreciated lp from a few years back, although a bit more traditionally pop] Brian Case - Plays Paradise Artificial LP (Hands In The Dark) Chaos Echœs - Mouvement LP (Nuclear War Now!) Danielle Dahl - Loosening Orion's Belt CS (Abstract Tits) Dreebs - Forest of a Crew LP (Ramp Local) The End - Svårmod Och Vemod Är Vardesinnen LP (RareNoise) [complete rager] Eugene Chadbourne, Steve Beresford, Alex Ward - Pleasures Of The Horror LP (Bisou) Flesh Narc - Pillow Talk CD (Heavy Baby) H E X - BLDG CS (Wetwear) Ivan The Tolerable - Le Monde Inversé 10" (Vinyl, Ack! Ack! Ack!) [far removed from prior Ben Wallers homages, Ivan brings something unexpected to every new release] Jukka Nousiainen - Ei enää kylmää eikä pimeää CD (Jukan Musiikki) [the only rock star on earth] Larry Wish & His Guys - The Mouth is the Most Promising CS (Bumpy) Maxine Funke - Home Fi CS (Brierfield Flood Press) [lo-fi folk, every song a winner] Palberta - Roach Going Down LP (Wharf Cat) Patois Counselors - Proper Release LP (Ever Never) Slushy Guts - The Blasted Stump CS (Cusp Recordings) [most underrated band in the UK] Society's Decline - No Angel On The Shoulder Of The World LP (Skrammel / Kibou) [favorite hardcore record in quite some time, pretty straightforward, thuggish. Brainbombs approved] Stefan Christensen - City Code LP (Knotwilg) Überkrøppling - Sådan Ka' Det Gång Gadagång (Mastermind) Uniform & The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing LP (Sacred Bones) VA - Para Cuando En Mi Te Mueras  20 Unearthly Sissy And Sassy Hits CS (Comidillo Tapes) Yunclas - De lingua ad mortem CS (Grabaciones Autobombo)

Singles, EPs, Demos

Alienation - Bitter Reality 7" EP (Warthog Speak) [best hardcore band in north america] Chloe Alison Escott - Hard Femme in Argyle EP (Self-Released) Cremalleras - Mercado Negro 12" (Thrilling Living) Dead C - On The Outbreak Of Civil War 7" (I Dischi Del Barone) Dame Area - Immagina il passato- ricorda il futuro CS (U-Bac) DEAFKIDS - Espiral da Loucura (Self-Released) Full of Hell / Intensive Care - Split 7" EP (Anthems of the Undesirable) HEX [UK]- TOUR DEMO 2018 (Self-Released) Ivan The Tolerable - Ring Around The Country 8" EP (Endless Records) La Misma - Negociac¸o~es De Paz Continuam Como As Fabulas 7" (Toxic State) Lion's Cage - Lion's Cage 7" EP (Heavy Dose) Perverted Ceremony - Perverted Ceremony 12" (Nuclear War Now!) Pig Frenzy - Pig Frenzy CS (Smikkelbaard) Pineapple RnR - Pineapple Rik n Roll 7" EP (Lumpy) Puke Puddle - Detox CS (Epileptic Media) Pumice - Platelets 7" (Soft Abuse) Sect Pig - Crooked Backs CD (Nuclear War Now!) SSRi - SSRi CS (Sexy Romance) Stef Ketteringham - Marcos' Bomber Jacket 8" (Endless) Thackery Earwicket - Lost My Heart In Space CS (Un je-ne-sais-quoi) Urbanoia - Nådeløs Vold 12" (Byllepest Distro) [*Pictured] YOR - YOR THE FUTURE CS (U-Bac)

Experimental, Avant-Garde, who even knows

◉ ╋ ◑ Stefano Pilia & Massimo Pupillo - κένωσις (Kenosis) LP (Soave) Black Crumbs - Black Crumbs CS (Chthonic ) City Dragon - Owl Drugs CS (Andesground Label) Dan Olsson - Relaxing and Stress Relieving Music for Smartphone Users CS (Zeon Light) Embassador Dulgoon - Hydrorion Remnants LP (Nonlocal Research) Gate - Winter Songs LP (8mm) Gonçalo F Cardoso - Impressões De Uma Ilha (Unguja) LP (Edições CN) Helicopter Quartet - Last Death of the Phoenix (Self-Released) i_like_dog_face - Sleepless Illusions LP (Hot Releases) Lärmschutz - Fruits CS (Faux Amis) Laurie & Olly - Ample Profanity LP (Slip) Micromelancolié - Streaming CS (Never Anything) Monopoly Child Star Searchers - Make Mine, Macaw II LP (Discrepant) Noel Meek and Cameron Stallones - ADVENTURES IN OBJECT-HOOD! CS (Ikuisuus) Officina Errante - Recorder! Ricorda CS (Linear Obsessional) Ophüls - The Demons (Sentencia) [*Pictured] Stilluppsteypa - Beach Jolanda LP (Ultra Eczema) Sunk Heaven - Where All Sides Collapse LP (Hot Releases) URBI-FLAT - 8 Petites Pièces De Variété LP (Replica) VA - Studies On Regression Of Organic Substances And Sounds CDr (Sounds Against Humanity) Will Guthrie x TSAATAN - Will Guthrie x TSAATAN (Noise Bombing) Yngel - Indonesia CS (Insula / Abstract Tits)

Free Jazz, Fake Jazz, music with instruments and no vocals, etc

BACZKOWSKI ∕ PADMANABHA - Mastoid Process 7'' (Iron Lung) Charlie Morrow - Toot! Too LP (Recital) Didi Kern & Philipp Quehenberger - LINZ LP (Shameless Rocks) Evan Parker & Eddie Prévost - Tools of Imagination (Fundacja Sluchaj) Flamingo - LOUD CD (Relative Pitch) Grabek - Day One CD (Gusstaff) Konstrukt - Oryantal 12" (Holidays) Les Conférences Bunker - Malédiction / Bénédiction (Self-Released) [*Pictured] Madalyn Merkey - Happy Birthday Julie Moon! (Self-Released) Malaikat dan Zoo - Malaikat dan Zoo (Noise Bombing) Marc Sinan & Oguz Buyukberber - White (ECM) Michel Kristof and Vinnie Paternostro - A Place You Could Not See... (Muteant Sounds) Nathan Corder and Tom Weeks - Anaconda (Noise Pelican) Oiseaux-Tempête - طرب TARAB LP (Sub Rosa) R A I C - Symbiosis- Vol. 1 CS (Lurker Bias) Sam Weinberg, Teté Leguía, Weasel Walter - Weinberg / Leguía / Walter CD (Buh) Toad - Toad LP (La Nòvia) Verneri Pohjola & Mika Kallio - Animal Image LP (Edition Records) WIG - Music For Birds (CRAM)

Reissues, Archival

Agathocles - If This Is Gore, What's Meat Then LP [Rec. 1988-1990] (Nuclear War Now!) Anima - Anima [Orig. 1972] (Pilz) Anima - Der regt mich auf [Orig. 1982] (Ohr) Anima - Stürmischer Himmel [Orig. 1971] (Ohr) Basa Basa - Homowo LP [Orig. 1979] (Vintage Voudou / Bombay Connection) Blurt - Blurt / Singles CS [Rec. 1980-1984] (Post-Materialization Music) Carsickness - 1979-1982 (Get Hip) Crack Cloud - Crack Cloud LP [Rec. 2016-2017] (Meat Machine) Dimitris Kamarotos - Electromagnetic Landscapes (Unreleased Recordings 1983-2016) LP (Intersonik) Dive - Concrete Jungle 2xLP [Orig. 1993] (Mecanica) Frank Hurricane - Holy Archives Vol. 1 LP [Rec. 2010-2012] (No Fidelity Audio) Graham Lambkin - No Better No Worse (Vol 2) [Rec. 2001-2007] (Self-Released) Happy Rhodes - Ectotrophia 2xLP [Rec. 198x] (Numero Group) Heroin in Tahiti - Casilina Tapes 2010-2017 LP (Boring Machines) Jean-Marie MASSOU - La citerne de Coulanges LP [Rec. 1978] (Vert Pituite La belle) John Foxx - Metamatic 3xCD [Orig. 1980, Remastered] (Metamatic) Jonah Dan - Intergalactic Dub Rock LP [Orig. 1995] (Bokeh Versions) Joanne Forman - Cave Vaults of the Moon LP [Rec. 1987] (Séance Centre) Mercy - Mercy LP [Orig. 1984] (Nuclear War Now!) Mercy - Swedish Metal / Session 1981 LP (Nuclear War Now!) Morgen - Morgen LP [Orig. 1969] (Replica) Muziekkamer - II - Popmuziek LP [Orig. 1983] (Contort Youself) Pacewon - The Pacewon Affect [Rec. 1999] (Roc-a-Blok / Ruffhouse / Blingnot) Plastic EP & The Records - Best Of 7" EP [Rec. 1981-1982] (Xerox Music) Plastic EP & The Records - Well You Want To Make A Record 7" EP [Rec. 1981] (Xerox Music) Poulson Studio - Poulson Studio CS [Rec. 200x] (Albert's Basement) Pseudocode - Next One's Called LP [Rec. 1980-1982] (Sub Rosa) Sam McClellan - Music of the Five Elements LP [Orig. 1982] (Séance Centre) Shahara Ja - I'm An Arabian Knight (Egyptian Lover Remixes) (Left Ear) Sprung Aus Den Wolken - The Story of Electricity LP [Orig. 1986] (Vestibular) [*Pictured]   Sprung Aus Den Wolken - Sprung Aus Den Wolken EP [Orig. 1981] (Vestibular) VA - Crumbling Concrete and Rusted Iron? A Soviet Punk Cassette, 1985-1992 CS (No Label) VA - Polish Dark Wave 1982-1989 CS (No Label) VA - Satan In Love - Rare Finnish Synth-Pop & Disco 1979-1992 2xLP (Svart) VA - Studio 12 (Recordings 1980-1984) 5xLP+7" (Blowpipe / Vinyl-On-Demand) UTON - See You On The Other Side [Rec. 2012-2016] (Lactofermented Subconsciousness)

Electronic

Afrodeutsche - Break Before Make CS (Skam) Asger & William Kudahl - Tilnærmelser II 7" (Resonans) Asger Kudahl - Sketches for Revolution LP (Resonans) Bary Center - Betrayal CS (Always Human Tapes) Bead - Deploy Tomorrow's Rations (Self-Released) Belp - Hippopotamus LP (Jahmoni Music) Benedikt Frey - New Now 12" (Live At Robert Johnson) Bill Westerby - KL02 CS (Kavalanic Languages) Boothroyd - Pure Country LP (Fnord Communications) CAPELO - Baby Boom LP (Le Syndicat Des Scorpions) Cosmic Force - Transmitting Illicit Logic 12" (Something Happening, Somewhere) Cleveland - Tusk 12" (ESP Institute) Dravier - Height CS (Jungle Gym) Fluxion - Ripple Effect 2xLP (Vibrant Music) Foodman - Pokopoko CS (Plastic Bags) Graham Dunning - Way Too Much Time 12" (Adaadat) Grøn - Ingen Skår I Frosne Haver CS (Infinite Waves) Haircuts For Men - Possessions LP (Self-Released) HMOT - Inside the Black Box EP (Self-Released) HMOT - Permanent Imbalance 12" (oqko) Jako Maron - The electro Maloya experiments of Jako Maron (Nyege Nyege) Jigga - lillllill LP (Bedouin) Krypton 81 - Concorde (Blind Allies) [*Pictured]   Laksa - Delicates 12" (Ilian Tape) L/F/D/M - X-Enter-O 12" (Midnight Shift) Lee Noble - Q EP (Longform Editions) Lokier - Last One 12" (Squirrels On Film) LQ & Headland - Fat Neck 7" (ZamZam) Magic From Space - Ioeoular CS (Plastic Response) Oscar Mulero - Electric Shades 2xLP (Token) ótimoKaráter - Da Clínica CS (Meia-Vida) Théo Spécial - Ivory 12" (Bordello A Parigi) VA - The Black Wig Throw Off 12" (Contort Yourself) VA - Nein To Five (Nein Records) VA - Patina Echoes 2xLP (Timedance) Violent Quand On Aime - Violent Quand On Aime LP (Knekelhuis) Zuli - Trigger Finger 12" (Haunter)

Hip-Hop Rap

(Liv).e & 10.4 ROG - ​hoopdreams​ EP 03 Greedo - God Level 70th Street Carlos - Loosies (Download C/0) A.G. - The Taste Of AMBrosia ALLBLACK - Outcalls Bandgang Lonnie Bands - Loosies (Download C/0) Bisk - Hardcorepimpfunk Cash Click Boog - Indictment Music Cdot Honcho - Head Honcho EP Chief Keef - Ottopsy EP Chris Crack - Let's Just Be Friends Chris Crack - This Will All Make Sense Later EP Co Cash - Foolhardy DSR Splurge - Hollywood Dopeboy EP  E L U C I D x Haj of Dumhi - No Edge Ups In Uganda Eludem - Films for the Mind IAMSU - 06 Solara Larry June - Sock It to Me, Pt. 2 Lil Blood - Ndugu Lil Yase - Winners Circle MIKE - Renaissance Man Rico Nasty - Nasty Shootergang JoJo - Free Jojo Ski Mask the Slump God - Get Dough Presents EP The Skull Eclipses - The Skull Eclipses Snypa, Rx Peso, Scarfo Da Plug & Drugrixh Hect - Wraith Talk Rx Drug Rixh SOB X RBE & Big Money - Tutuland EP Spitta - Let Me Eat 3 Starlito & MobSquad Nard - Open Cases EP Westside Gunn - Supreme Blientele ZachBlackDiamonds - FreezaMode: All This Ice [Awful-affiliated. Taken down off SNDCLD/BNDCMP, DL HERE] [*Pictured]

(Also made six mixes in June, which cover much of the ground presented in this post: check them out HERE)

[wolviecat]

Advent 3.2.

Summary: Mise se začíná komplikovat - způsobem, který Steve nepředpokládal

“Kam že to vlastně letíme?” zeptal se Bucky, když jim New York zmizel za zády a Steve přepnul Quinjet na autopilota.

Steve mávl rukou a na holografické obrazovce se rozbalila mapa Evropy. Dalším gestem přiblížil kousek někde na východ od Německa. “Do Českosl…” Steve se zarazil v půlce slova. “Do České republiky, a přesněji…” další přiblížení, na blikající bod v severní části státu: “...do Plzně?” Bucky měl pocit, že to jméno zná. Bůh ví proč se mu ale vybavovala jen plechovka s pivem.

Dalších pár minut letěli v tichu. Steve si položil nohy na řídící panel a začetl se do nějakého tlustospisu. Bucky si kontroloval zbraně. Někde vzadu v hlavě ho ale pořád hlodala myšlenka, která mu nechtěla dát pokoj.

“Steve?” zeptal se nakonec: “Jak se tam vlastně domluvíme?”

Steve zvedl oči od knížky a zatvářil se trochu nechápavě: “Jak to myslíš?”

“Jak se domluvíme?” zopakoval Bucky: “Možná budeme muset mluvit s místními, nebo někoho vyslýchat. Jak se chceš domluvit? Umíš vůbec česky?”

Ten nesnesitelný Zdravím-já-jsem-Kapitán-Amerika-a-všechno-bude-OK úsměv byl zpátky. “Pamatuješ si pana Bačkovskiho, co měl ten krám s ovocem na rohu? Myslím, že jsem od něj odposlechl základy.” Než se Bucky zmohl na protest, spustil Steve jakousi tirádu plnou sykavek. Složil hlavu do dlaní. “Hezký, Steve,” řekl, když se konečně dostal ke slovu: “ale má to dvě vady. Za prvé byl pan Baczkowski Polák. A za druhé, jsem si poměrně jistý, že si mi právě vynadal do Irskejch parchantů, kterejm zpřerážíš hnáty, jestli ti ještě někdy přijdou do kšeftu.”

Stevův úsměv poněkud pohasl.

“No,” řekl nakonec: “jsem si jistý, že tam někdo bude umět anglicky.”

“Madam, prosím…”

Kdyby kvůli tomu nepřeletěli půlku světa, ležel by teď Bucky na zemi a prskal smíchy. Stevova “jednoduchá mise, na pár hodin, vážně” se totiž rozhodla zaseknout na tom nejnepravděpodobnějším místě vůbec. Přistání proběhlo bez problémů - Steve vypadal skoro zklamaně, že nemohl zase někam skákat bez padáku - a základnu by snad nenašli rychleji, ani kdyby k ní vedly ukazatele. Při zpětném pohledu je mělo varovat, že měla všeho všudy jen jeden vchod, ale co. Stejně se neplánovaly nijak plížit. Ani nebylo zamčeno. Krátké schodiště je dovedlo do chodby, ozdobené loupající se malbou jednotek HYDRY.

Nikde nikdo. Jen na vzdálenějším konci seděla u malého stolku žena v prošívané bundě a pletla.

Bucky zvedl samopal. V té samé vteřině mu ho Steve málem vyrazil z rukou.

“Zbláznil ses?” zasyčel. “Přece nezastřelíš…” chvíli pátral po vhodném výrazu: “něčí babičku.” Bucky se zamračil. V Red Roomu zažil, jak přesně taková babička sama zlikvidovala  Černou Vdovu a rozbrečela deset dalších. Jenže Steve se zřejmě rozhodl všechno komplikovat.

Bucky ukázal na štít, ale Steve zavrtěl hlavou. “Není ani ozbrojená. Nezkusíme to prostě proběhnout?”

Nebyla to otázka.

Steve byl dobrý stratég, opravdu. Na akcích s Avengers Buckyho nepřestával překvapovat tím, jak daleko dopředu dokázal myslet. Jenže když kolem sebe neměl tým, veškeré uvažování letělo do koše a Steve přecházel na strategii, která mu stačila většinu jeho života. Prostě tam vletíme a uvidí se, co se stane. A Buckymu bohužel nezbývalo než se držet role, kterou v téhle strategii měl. Tu, kde kde utíkal pár metrů za Stevem a doufal, že ho dožene dřív, než se stane něco strašného.

Od doby, kdy už Steve neměl ploché nohy a astma byla tahle role nesrovnatelně těžší.

Ale byla to jen krátká chodba, paní za stolem byla skloněná k pletení a Steve nabral solidní tempo. Budou vevnitř dřív, než stihne zareagovat.

Posledních pár kroků.

Paní zvedla hlavu. Vytřeštila oči. Zaječela.

[gabstractblack]

Nik Francis; percussion, electronics, Forbes Graham; trumpet, laptop computer, Jayve Montgomery; woodwinds, percussion, and electronics, Steve Baczkowski; saxophone, multi-wind instrumentalist, CK Barlow; live sampling, electronics, @highzerofoundation’s 21st festival of Experimental Improvised Music, Saturday September 21, 2019. (at Baltimore Theatre Project) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3ZaQfuhoan/?igshid=lvhjiegjl0ed

[samaralubelski]

Summer 2019

July 8th - Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain - Walter - Brussels, Belgium July 9th - Duo w/Ryan Sawyer - Gent Jazz Festival - Gent, Belgium July 9th - Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain - Gent Jazz Festival - Gent, Belgium

July Duos w/Bill Nace - July 17th - Collision + Mirror Trio - Pittsburgh, PA July 18th - Hanson Records Shop + The Silly Siblings - Oberlin, Ohio July 20th - Strangewaves - Paris, Ontario July 21st - Duende at Silo + Steve Baczkowski Solo - Buffalo, NY

July 28th - Due w/Marcia Bassett + Loren Connors & Susan Langille + Bob Bellerue & guests - First Unitarian Congregational Society - Afternoon Show - Brooklyn, NY

[noloveforned]

wednesday at 5pm is almost here so be sure to tune into nlfn on wlur. last week's show is below if you need a warm up routine!

no love for ned on wlur – february 27th, 2019 from 5-7pm

artist // track // album // label mary lou lord // i figured you out // martian saints! ep // kill rock stars sandy denny and the strawbs // on my way // all our own work // numero group jessica pratt // this time around // quiet signs // city slang * lou barlow // on fire // plays waterfront // spunk sneeze // shaky ground (live) // the four seezons // half a cow shit bitch // blue // what would you rather // (self-released) martin frawley // you want me? // undone at thirty-one // merge * feels // awful need // post earth // wichita * the woolen men // walking out // quick trips 7” ep // loglady gonzo // russian dancer // glitch ep // (self-released) vision 3d // trop tard // vision 3d 7" ep // belly button uralita y los fibroesqueletos // elena // nociones sobre amianto 7” ep // sociedad fonográfica suterránea nov3l // natural // novel ep // flemish eye * duster // four hours // apex, trance-like 7" // smooth lips filthy huns // out of the grave // filthy huns // not not fun sunwatchers // ptah, the el daoud // illegal moves // trouble in mind steve baczkowski, bill nace and chris corsano // mystic beings // mystic beings // open mouth hms // retriever // tetrad cassette // astral spirits the sun ra arkestra // pathways to unknown worlds // pathways to unknown worlds // modern harmonic binker and moses // how land learnt to be still // alive in the east? // gearbox milo // nominy // budding ornithologists are weary of tired analogies // ruby yacht kehlani // love language // while we wait // atlantic benny sings featuring cornelius // my world // city pop // stones throw * donna regina // blitze // transient // karaoke kalk le superhomard // sdvb // meadow lane park // elefant the crystal furs // thinking problem // pseudosweet // koshka beach youth // for us // second // (self-released) no fucks // estrellas // no fucks // discos de kirlian spit // walking slow // death coast paradise // (self-released) anna burch // tea-soaked letter // quit the curse // polyvinyl

* denotes music on wlur’s playlist

[cyanidetooth]

Honor Role! NASA Space Universe! Fitz Of Depression! Epileptix! Hatefuck! Golden! Lives Of The Saints! Die Todliche Doris! Das Synthetische Mischgewebe! Schatten Unter Eis! Pustostany! Scorpion Violente! Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano! Byron & Gerald! Steve Baczkowski, Chris Corsano, Paul Flaherty! Mattin!

[ironlungrecords-blog]

Here are some opportunities to see IRON LUNG live soon. May: Tue 23 Providence RI @ AS220 w/ Wound Man, V-Sect, Hardware. 9pm Wed 24 Boston MA @ Elks Lodge w/ Wound Man, Brother, Longings, Chaos Cross. Thu 25 Brooklyn NY @ St. Vitus w/ Noothgrush, Captain Cleanoff, PLF, Motherbrain. Fri 26 Bethlehem PA @The Ice House w/ Manbeast, Burglary Years. Sat 27 Washington DC @ Slash Run w/ D.O.C., Closet Christ. Sun 28 Baltimore MD @ Soundstage w/ Terrorizer, Genocide Pact, Suppression, PLF, War Master, Die Choking, Junior Bruce, Night Raids, UxDxS. Mon 29 Braddock PA @ Dock 5 w/ Concealed Blade, Peace Talks, The Electric Word Life Band & Choir. Tue 30 Buffalo NY @ Dreamland w/ Steve Baczkowski & Ravi Padmanabhan Duo, Hot Tip, Facility Men. 7pm. Wed 31 Toronto ON @ Coalition w/ Yacøpsae, Black Iron Prison, Beggin’ For Oxys, The Boys. 8pm. June: Thu 1 Sherbrooke QC @ Le Murdoch w/ Ultrarat, Cell, Flying Fortress, Sensory Deprivation. 7:30pm. Fri 2 Montreal QC @ Katacombes w/ many bands, Montreal Earslaughter V.2. Sat 3 Brooklyn NY @ Brooklyn Night Bazaar w/ 9 Shocks Terror, Warthog, SHIT, Wound Man, Brown Sugar, Fuck You Pay Me, Conspiracy, Rashomon. 6pm V/A - Iron Lung Mixtape III and LEBENDEN TOTEN - Static 12" should both be out for this tour. We will have copies with us if that is the case. Stay peeled for more developments. updated 5.1.17

[stormyrecords-blog]

new releases 6-15-17

in on FRIDAY ORPHAN SWORDSLicense To Desire  LP  $22.99Orphan Swords see the reissue of their License To Desire LP, originally released in 2015. The Belgian duo, formed in 2013, bring a heady, fog-shrouded sonic maelstrom to Aurora Borealis, perfect for the post-truth era. What sort of music is this? What genre do you file it under? Hard to say. There's chaos, there's unhallowed chanting, there's some fierce rhythm and there's undeniably some abuse of electronic equipment. It's best to leave the definitions up to the listener, but with titles referencing demons of Goetia and the world's oldest profession, you should let the good times roll. Their music, described as "a brutal hypnosis" by Ransom Note, has been released on Desire Records, Clan Destine and Idiosyncratics. Idiosyncratic is indeed a description that perfectly fits both their releases and live performances. Recently back from the US, they have shared bills with acts as diverse as Oathbreaker, Andy Stott, and Vatican Shadow. Their new collaborative side project Black Swords, with Stuart Argabright of Black Rain, was released on Vienna's Noiztank label (2017). Black/white label; Comes in full color folder sleeve, in heavy PVC outer sleeve; Includes download code; Edition of 200 (hand-numbered). ORPHAN SWORDSLicense To Desire Remixes  LP  $22.99Aurora Borealis unleash Orphan Swords' License To Desire Remixes LP. The sonic tangle and entheogenic orgy of the demonically inspired "Asmoday" and the tranced-out "Hooker", are given workovers by Helm, Icon Template, Black Rain, Prostitutes, and Svengalisghost. This is remix as rite of destruction, the tracks being disfigured rather than beautified for commodification. Awkward, uncomfortable listening rubs shoulders with pounding bass, post-techno hiss squall prevails. And then there's the superbly dirty fever-dream lope of the Black Rain remix. Formed in 2013, Orphan Swords is a Belgian electronic duo. Their music, described as "a brutal hypnosis" by Ransom Note. Their work has been released on Desire Records, Clan Destine, and Idiosyncratics. Idiosyncratic is indeed a description that perfectly fits both their releases and live performances. Artwork by Lara Gasparotto. Black/white label; Comes in full color folder sleeve, in heavy PVC outer sleeve; Includes download code; Edition of 200 (hand-numbered). Borusiad/Sixteen: Promises 12" $24.99"Cititrax is thrilled to present a split EP by two massive talents, Borusiade and The Sixteen Steps. Borusiade, originally from Bucharest, Romania began as a DJ in the early 2000s and then started producing music in 2005. With a background in classical music, she combined her love of raw electronics, obscure themes and melodic lines to create her own signature sound. She has released on the Cómeme label as well as Correspondant. 'Infatuation' and 'Confutation' are dark, moody and intense tracks that catch you upon first listen. The flip side of the Promises And Infatuation EP features The Sixteen Steps, the brainchild of George Lanham who cut his musical teeth DJing and running events in the south of England. We have been listening to many of his tracks endlessly for a while now. They've also been a highlight of Veronica Vasicka's DJ sets as of late. 'Signals From The South' and 'Promises On The Run' are both immaculately produced, hypnotic, dance floor killers. They are sparse ebm meets smoky warehouse techno, and offer a wonderful contrast to Borusiade's layered emotive tracks that reminisce of an East Village club in the 1980s. Themes of infatuation, appearances, and anonymity appear throughout this EP from the music itself right through to the cover art. Limited edition vinyl pressing of 999 copies." Whitehouse: Dedicated To Peter Kurten LP $32.99Green vinyl version. Gloss laminated thick 350 gsm sleeve; Edition of 250. Dirter Promotions present a reissue of Whitehouse's Dedicated To Peter Kurten, Sadist And Mass Slayer, originally released in 1981. Unavailable on vinyl for 36 years, this iconic and ground-breaking masterpiece of electronic and extreme music is finally back. Superbly re-mastered and cut by Noel Summerville. BACZKOWSKI/CHRIS CORSANO/PAUL FLAHERTY, STEVE The Dull Blade $20.99"More than a decade since their first (and last) trio album, Dim Bulb (2005), 'Buffalo Steve,' Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty are back on the attack. The three recorded as part of a larger ensemble on the Open Mouth LP, Wrong Number (2014), but they have a certain way of creating focused trio dynamics that makes babies talk in tongues and old men drool. The line-up is a bit unorthodox -- two saxes (one a goddamn baritone) and drums. You might almost be tempted to call the format European. But it'd be a canard to try and place this album in the Euro free music tradition. I mean, yeah, there is some massive outsider brawling here. Buckets of wind and clumps of tubs 'all double twisted up,' as Fred Blassie used to say. But the fire never refrains from flaming as jazz-qua-jazz, which places it a lot more squarely in the American tradition than actual squares would have you believe. These three are clearly savages, which is a far cry from people impersonating savages, if you catch my drift. Beyond that, there is an ineffably jazzoid heft to the music here. Both Steve and Paul are playing in a distinctly post-Ayler jetstream. The freedom of their runs maintains that strangely (perhaps even imaginary or projective) American connection to bar-walking R&B maniacs -- something that seems to lie at the bottom of our country's hornic subconscious. Which is not to say individual moments on this record couldn't have come from the FMP catalog, but there's a red hot holism here that will brand most asses with the stars & stripes. The Dull Blade has a strange undercurrent of swing here as well. Largely provided by Mr. Corsano's driving full kit approach, the most outward-moving passages (often those involving the inner and outer freak registers of the horns) get corralled back into more clearly terrestrial and genuinely moving. It's a great goddamn record. Once again these guys manage to defy odds and expectations, creating music that is as fully-charged and beautiful as it is warped." --Byron Coley, 2017 Edition of 400. New York Contempory Five : Consequences  LP $29.99Modern Silence present a reissue of The New York Contemporary Five's Consequences, originally released in 1966. The New York Contemporary Five barely lasted a year, all told, but they recorded five albums that shaped the jazz to come. They were a super-group after the fact -- the stellar frontline of Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai all being relative newcomers at the time. Cherry had recently left Ornette Coleman and was only starting to stretch into world music. Shepp was fresh off a stint with Cecil Taylor and had just found his voice as a composer and performer. And Tchicai was virtually unknown. Their scorching music -- aided by the supple and hard-hitting rhythm section of Don Moore and J. C. Moses -- is a thrilling mix of adventurous soloing and post-bop structures, memorable heads and go-for-broke improv. Shepp and Tchicai offered two different ways forward for sax players: Shepp privileged texture, density, and fragmentation -- a pointillist take on Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, perhaps. Tchicai was a master of melodic invention, teasing out hard and bright phrases that seem unpredictably off-kilter. What's still remarkable about these tunes is their sense of internal tension. They're wound tighter than a magnet coil, without sacrificing any spontaneity. There's little that's strictly free about this jazz, but it's full of reckless and unexpected drama all the same. "Consequences" is the record's barnburner, built on fiery performances and climaxing with a Don Cherry solo that sounds like the aural equivalent of a fifty foot skid mark. Their version of Bill Dixon's "Trio" is contemplative by comparison, offering a loping groove, overlapping textures, and a series of wonderfully sustained solos that show off the stylistic strengths of each player. VA: Pop Makossa 2LP $29.99Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve with 20-page booklet; 140 gram vinyl. The Pop Makossa adventure started in 2009, when Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb first travelled to Cameroon to make an initial assessment of the country's musical situation. He returned with enough tracks for an explosive compilation highlighting the period when funk and disco sounds began to infiltrate the makossa style popular throughout Cameroon. From the very beginning, there were several mysteries hanging over Pop Makossa. It was not until DJ and music producer Déni Shain was dispatched to Cameroon to finalize the project, license the songs, scan photographs, and interview the artists that some of the biggest question marks began to disappear. His journey from the port city of Douala to the capital of Yaoundé brought him in contact with the lives and stories of many of the musicians who had shaped the sound of Cameroon's dance music in its most fertile decade. The beat that holds everything together has its origins in the rhythms of the Sawa people: ambassey, bolobo, assiko and essewé, a traditional funeral dance. But it wasn't until these rhythms arrived in the cities of Cameroon and collided with merengue, high-life, Congolese rumba, and, later, funk and disco, that modern makossa was born. Makossa managed to unify the whole of Cameroon, and it was successful in part because it was so adaptable. Some of the greatest makossa hits incorporated the electrifying guitars and tight grooves of funk, while others were laced with cosmic flourishes made possible by the advent of the synthesizer. However much came down to the bass; and from the rubbery hustle underpinning Mystic Djim's "Yaoundé Girls" to the luminous liquid disco lines which propel Pasteur Lappé's "Sekele Movement", Pop Makossa demonstrates why Cameroonian bass players are some of the most revered in the world. "Pop Makossa Invasion", an obscure tune recorded for Radio Buea makes its debut here and joins the pantheon of extraordinary songs that plugged Cameroon's makossa style into the modern world. Also features: Dream Stars, Mystic Djim & The Spirits, Bill Loko, Eko, Olinga Gaston, Emmanuel Kahe et Jeanette Kemogne, Nkodo Si-Tony, Bernard Ntone, Pat' Ndoye, and Clément Djimogne. Haino, Keiji: Watashi Dake LP $32.99Black Editions present the first vinyl reissue of Keiji Haino's stunning debut album Watashi Dake?, originally released in 1981. This first ever edition released outside of Japan features the artist's originally intended metallic gold and silver jacket artwork. Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances, Haino has staked out a ground all his own, creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. For all this, his 1981 debut album Watashi Dake? has remained enigmatic. Originally released in a small edition by the legendary Pinakotheca label, the album was heard by only a select few in Japan and far fewer overseas. Original vinyl copies became impossibly rare and highly sought after the world over. Watashi Dake? presents a haunting vision -- stark vocals, whispered and screamed, punctuate dark silences. Intricate and sharp guitar figures interweave, repeat, and stretch, trance-like, emerging from dark recesses. Written and composed on the spot -- Haino's vision is one of deep spiritual depths that distantly evokes 1920s blues and medieval music -- yet is unlike anything ever committed to record before or since. Produced in close cooperation with Keiji Haino and legendary photographer Gin Satoh. Coupled with starkly minimal packaging, featuring the now iconic cover photographs by Gin Satoh, the album is a startling and fully realized artistic statement. Housed in custom printed deluxe Stoughton tip-on jackets, including black on black inserts, extras, and hand-colored finishes; Remastered by Elysian Masters and cut by Bernie Grundman Mastering; Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI; Includes download code. Faust: Od Serca Do Duszy 2LP $33.99Od Serca Do Duszy originally appeared as a double CD set, joint-released by Lumberton Trading Company and AudioTONG in 2007 (LUMB 008CD). Long out of print, this album documents a professionally recorded live show at Krakow's Loch Ness Club. As anybody who has seen Faust live, in their countless different yet always wonderful forms, can testify, they are such a musical high, all other stimulants aren't necessary. This remastered reissue once again illuminates the residual experience of a Faust concert in all its expectation-scrunching glory. Comprising the thirteen songs that constituted the original show, this set was produced by founders Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier, plus Amaury Cambuzat. Together they dovetail perfectly with one of Peron's mantras during the occasion, "Od Serca Do Duszy". This translates from Polish to, "From heart to soul", which just about covers one of the many facets to Faust's incredible music. Leyland James Kirby, : When We Parted I Wanted To Die  2LP $29.992017 repress. Originally released in 2009. It's a prescient hauntological elegy somewhere between Vangelis' Bladerunner OST (1982), Lynch and Badalamenti's Twin Peaks score, Erik Satie's solo Piano works, William Basinski's gradual tape decompositions, and James Ferraro's washed out visions. Back in 2009, James Leyland Kirby explained: "Here we stand, twenty years on from the first CD, and our optimism has been gradually eroded away collectively. 'Tomorrows World' never came. We are lost and isolated, many of us living our lives through social networks as we try to make sense of it all, becoming voyeurs not active participants. Documenting everything. No Mystery. Everything laid bare for all to see." A decade later, it could hardly have been more prescient. It's with this pessimistic sense of being that Kirby constructed these incredible pieces, creating a sequence of music designed to overwhelm and absorb, affecting our sense of time and place by tracing and retracing musical steps into a blur, re-using the same motifs with incremental differences, trapped in our own feedback loops of lost emotion. On this long double album, James Leyland Kirby once again acts as a spiritual bridge, holding fast against the perceived current of time and culture in order to afford a slow, lingering gaze on its ambiguous, ever-shifting ripples and eddies. Like staring at a body of gently moving water, the effect is strangely soothing and meditative, encouraging immersed reflection and dilated focus... Leyland James Kirby: Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was  double lp  $29.99 2017 repress; Originally released in 2009. The second part of Leyland Kirby's uniquely prescient dark ambient masterstroke, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was (2009) finds the listener returning to Kirby's draughty corridors of processed 78s and midnight keyboard meditations is a sublime, haunting experience like no other. The listener can read his melancholic diagnosis of capitalist malaise, deferred futurism and thwarted social utopianism as a genuinely uncanny foresight of what has played out in contemporary society, in an age when Facebook and Twitter have become an all-encompassing filter for daily life and effectively assuaged the rich analog ambiguity of collectivism in favor of cold, hard, binary politics and reflexive, unthinking emotional responses. Especially in the wake of Mark Fisher's tragic passing earlier in 2017, Kirby's hauntological sentiments, embedded quite literally in titles such as "When Did Our Dreams And Futures Drift So Far Apart", and figuratively perfused through its stark negative space, now feel to resonate stronger than ever; using shared echoes of the hive mind such as classic film scores from Vangelis and Lynch/Badalmenti -- both quite literally omnipresent in imminent sequels right now -- as cues for sorrowful elegies and meditations which aesthetically resonate as much with Deathprod's liminal scapes, as a sort of mildewed modern classical flocking to Satie's tasteful ambient wallpaper. Yet it's not all doom and gloom. There's a sense of underlying sense of resilience, of resistance to Kirby's hushed, ribboning expressions which flows with a considerate pathos and open-ended emotional curiosity which belies the narcissistic reaffirmations of social media's echo chambers and dialectic cul-de-sacs, quietly striving to wrench something beautiful and affective from the clutches of a manipulative mainstream. VA: Monika Werkstatt 2LP $26.99restocked!!"... Gudrun Gut has a proven track record of successfully connecting with like-minded artists on unusual paths of creativity. She's an outstanding example of someone who refuses to compromise their artistic vision. And now she is ready to present one of her most ambitious projects ever: Monika Werkstatt -- a loose collective of female artists set up to enable each of them to achieve new goals through collaboration. Monika Werkstatt will ensure that their artistic output gains visibility in an art context still too dominated by men. Monika Werkstatt has its origins in collective workshops and in shared interactions. By sharing their own challenges and achievements later on with an audience, this opened a gateway to a further feedback and creative dialogue. . . . History has a weakness for coincidences, and the release of Monika Werkstatt happily falls on the 20th anniversary of Monika Enterprises. A fantastic landmark and a means of celebrating such a tremendously talented collective that Gudrun Gut has orchestrated. So what is this release really about? Gudrun's fellow Monika members -- AGF, Beate Bartel, Lucrecia Dalt, Danielle De Picciotto, Islaja, Barbara Morgenstern, Sonae, Pilocka Krach, Natalie Beridze -- travelled from Berlin and assembled in the creative oasis of Uckermark. The goal was to create and record without any of the usual pressures and distractions that you'd anticipate in a group context. To keep the focus, Mo Loscheider cooked, Manon Pepita assisted with the day-to-day and Lupe was filming. . . . Between recording and jamming, their days were filled with music, eating, short walks in the fields and forests resounding with inspiring talks and discussions. Without any restraint or rules, they opened up new forms of interaction and creative dialogue which found themselves falling into a process without any clear beginnings or ends. . . . Once the recordings were completed, representatives of the group were delegated roles for a finished production -- some sequenced and mixed the recordings into their own tracks, while others built their own from the material recorded. The results succeed in showcasing the community as a group, as well as portraying singular pieces of art derived from a collective process." these chris watson cds are being reissued - please let us know if you'd like a copy - they are scheduled for july release datesWatson, Chris: El Tren Fantasma CD $15.99Watson, Chris: Weather $15.99

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 1

Phicus

Another year, another volume of Dust, which means we’ve been collecting these brief, pithy reviews for seven years now.  This time around, we sample the usual cornucopia of genres, from ambient death metal to Iranian punk to noisy skree to shoegaze-y lookalikes to polyglot global dj grooves, with the usual stops in free jazz and improvisatory environments. Contributors include Jonathan Shaw, Bill Meyer, Ian Mathers, Jennifer Kelly, Bryon Hayes and Andrew Forell.  

Aberration — S/T (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Aberration by Aberration

Not sure what “ambient dark death metal” is, but recently formed band Aberration claims to play it. The “ambient” bit may be a nod to the drone that sometimes resonates deep in the mix of the three songs on this 10” EP. Other than that, Aberration’s music sounds pretty typical of the death metal created by bands on the primitive, murky end of the genre’s sonic continuum. Some of the musicians are in other, more established projects: John Hancock plays guitar and provides vocals in the widely admired death doom outfit Void Rot, Dylan Haseltine plays bass and sings for the blackened death metal (mostly black metal, it seems to me) band the Suffering Hour. Those bands have much more specific musical identities, and their intense records express the players’ clarity of vision. Perhaps Aberration wants to live up to its name, presenting something unprecedented, an unpleasant mutation — and hence, perhaps, the decision to release the vinyl version of the EP on an unusual format. That’s sort of fun. The music is not. But that’s nothing new in death metal, and to be honest, these songs don’t warrant the announcement of a new sub-subgenre. They are just fine, if you like your death metal atavistic, cavernous and claustrophobic. But an aberration? Nope. Maybe a weeping pustule. In death metal, isn’t that enough?

Jonathan Shaw

 Steve Baczkowski / Bill Nace — Success (Notice)

Success by Steve Baczkowski/Bill Nace

Dallas is synonymous with a sort of excess that begs to be perceived as success. Old TV shows, memories of oil, nation-splitting politics, you name it; it’s bigger, badder and gaudier in Dallas. A tape of a free improv show that was recorded at a Dallas bookstore might not fit your preconceptions of longhorn accomplishment, but go ahead and tell that to Steve Baczkowski and Bill Nace. If they answer at all, they might let you gently know that it’s your problem, and then pop in the tape. This 42-minute-long recording will hook you by the belt, take off into the stratosphere, drag you through an asteroid belt, and deposit your cindered remains by the bar (yes, The Wild Detectives serves liquor as well as literature) before the tape reverses. That still leaves plenty of time savor the duo’s mastery of transition, from stout-sounded duel to fading filigree framing the sounds of the cash register opening and closing. Yeah, that’s the sound of Success.

Bill Meyer

 Aidan Baker — There/Not There (Consouling Sounds)

There / Not There by Aidan Baker

Unsurprisingly, 2020 doesn’t seem to have slowed Aidan Baker (Nadja, WERL, Caudal, Hypnodrone Ensemble, and many more) much at all. Of the many records released under his own name, the recent There/Not There stands out for being a surprisingly accessible entry to his personal metal/drone/ambient/shoegaze melting pot, even given the opening 20-minute title track. “There/Not There” marries some whispery shoegaze songwriting with a beautifully monomaniacal repeating drone. Over the course of the track, it does slowly transition until we get to a crescendo as intense as any Baker’s done, but even more so than normal the unwary might get lured in by the low key, blissful opening and the frog-boiling slowness with which the tension is ratcheted up. One of the other two tracks is really just a way to section off the real noise-squall coda of “There/Not There” but then “Paris (Lost)” offers a more concise, quieter storm version of the same framework. Like a lot of Baker’s work, it sneaks up on you, but when it hits it hits hard. 

Ian Mathers

Ballrogg — Rolling Ball (Clean Feed)

Rolling Ball by Ballrogg

The Scandinavian combo Ballrogg changes direction once again on Rolling Ball. Founders Klaus Ellerhusen Holm (clarinets) and Roger Arntzen (bass), who are both Norwegian, started out reinvestigating the folksy jazz vibe of Jimmy Giuffre, then sought out a new home on the range by adding slide guitarist Ivar Grydeland. Now, incoming Swedish guitarist David Stackenäs and his rack of pedals have redirected the trio into a technology-enhanced future. Not the sci-fi imaginings of Sun Ra, but a future more like 2019 might look if you stepped straight into it from 1959; in some ways quite familiar, but in others, different enough to be disorienting. The Giuffre-esque and country elements are still there, but when punctuated by minimalist-influenced compositional flourishes and illuminated by the diffuse, digital flicker of Stackenäs’ effects, it suddenly becomes clear that those Viking cowboys didn’t put a key in the ignition before they drove out towards the horizon.

Bill Meyer

 Bipolar — S-T (Slovenly)

BIPOLAR "Bipolar" EP by Bipolar

For a band named Bipolar, with a single called “Depression,” this EP sure is a lot of fun. Two of the band’s mainstays are apparently Iranian emigres, now seeking the more permissive environs of Brooklyn. (The only hint of that exotic origin is in “Sad Clown,” where there might be an imam exhorting the faithful, but who knows? I don’t speak Farsi.) One of them sometimes plays keyboard with the Spits, and in fact, the Spits are a pretty good reference point for these hard, fast, bratty songs. “Virus” pummels a relentless pogo beat, the one-two of the drums rocketing ever faster, the shouted all-hands chorus in tumbling sync. “Fist Fight” is even more exhilarating, with its blaring, roiling guitar blast and adrenaline-raising refrain, “It’s a fist fight. It’s a fist fight.” There’s nothing profound here, but it’s a good time.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Bosq — Y Su Descarga Internacional (Bacalao)

Y Su Descarga Internacional by bosq

Bosq, a globally omnivorous DJ formerly based in Boston (real name Benjamin Woods), recently moved to Colombia, perhaps to get closer to his source material. The Colombian influence is certainly strong on Y Su Descarga Internacional, which opens with a scorching “Rumbero,” featuring the Afro-Colombian star Nidia Góngora. Dorkas, another singer from Colombia, follows immediately with “Mi Arizal,” an intricately textured dance track which erupts with fiery bursts of Latin brass. Justo Valdez, whose Son Palenque did much to define the Cartagena sound in the 1960s and 1970s, drops by for two of the album’s best tracks: a rollicking “Mambue” and the hand-drummed, bass-thumping hand-clapping “Onombitamba.” And yet the album doesn’t just document the singers and artists of Bosq’s new home. Kaleta, a Benin-based Afro-beat artist who has worked with Fela Kuti and Eqypt 80, takes the lead on funk psych “Omo Iya” and the stirring, horn squalling “Wake Up.” Bosq knows how to pick collaborators, and there’s not a dud track on the disc, but wouldn’t almost anyone sound like a genius in company like this?

Jennifer Kelly

Deuce Avenue — Death of Natural Light (Crash Symbols)

Death of Natural Light by Deuce Avenue

If you are a lurker of the cassette underground, you may remember a West Virginian outfit called Social Junk appearing in the mid-aughts. This duo offered up crackling melodic scree, blown out murky fuzz and semi-coherent mouth sounds like an industrialized version of The Dead C or a new wave outfit newly recovered post-coma. Noah Anthony, the male half of Social Junk, has since moved on to releasing solo material under both the Profligate and Deuce Avenue monikers. The latter is the more recent project and is quite minimal compared to his other work. With Death of Natural Light, there are no cold wave rhythms and vocals à la Profligate. What’s left is a dank, steamy vapor. Contrails of filter-swept hiss slowly develop into a more enigmatic and darkened tonal palette. The ominousness continues to thread its way into the second half of the cassette, fittingly entitled “Blood Turns Black”. Loops of nocturnal jump scare fodder coalesce into rhythms that provide skeletal forms to foil the menace of the more oblique textures. Those who enjoy their horror in slow motion will latch onto these sounds like a facehugger to… …well, a person’s face.  

Bryon Hayes   

 Fleeting Joys — Despondent Transponder (Only Forever)

Despondent Transponder by Fleeting Joys

Let’s start with the obvious. Despondent Transponder sounds a lot like MBV’s Loveless, with wild sirening guitar tones, waves of noise-y feedback, thunderous drumming and sweet, fragile lyrics engulfed in the swirl. “Go and Come Back” has the same fluttering guitar melody as the great “To Here Knows When,” while “Satellite” blusters with the dopplering, dissonance-addled grandeur as “I Only Said.” Fleeting Joys — that was Rorika Loring singing and playing bass and John Loring on guitar and vox — never made any secret of their love of MBV. Despondent Transponder was an homage right from the start. The album was the debut for this Sacramento-based twosome, released originally in 2006, then as now on Loring’s own Only Forever label. And yet, while no one will ever top Loveless, from an ear-bleeding psych-noise daydream perspective, this one has its own particular beauties. “Magnificent Oblivion” surrounds a lullaby-pure melody with a reeling, caterwauling mesh of inchoate sound; guitar notes stream off in bending contrails as Rorika murmurs sweetly into the mic. “Patron Saint” lurches to motion on a Frankenstein bass riff, but softens the brutality with calming washes of vocal hypnotism. It’s all super beautiful and, anyway, even after the reunion, there aren’t nearly enough MBV albums. Plenty of room for a band that sounds so similar.

Jennifer Kelly

 Get Smart! — Oh Yeah No (Capitol Punishment)

Push play: driving staccato guitars, rubbery bass lines, lockstep drums, declamatory vocals and it’s the mid-1980s all over again. Lawrence, Kansas trio Get Smart! — Marcus Koch (guitar, vocals) Lisa Wertman Crowe (bass, vocals) and Frank Loose (drums, vocals) — have that timeless mixture of English post-punk and American indie down. Then see that 33 years after it was recorded Oh Yeah No finally sees the light of day on the back of the band’s reformation. Time and the cycle of musical fashions are fickle beasts and in this case the wheels turn in Get Smart!’s favor. They sound both of their time and thoroughly in tune with the steady flow of recent guitar bands mining this lode of choppy, melodic indie. The Embarrassment, Big Dipper, Pylon and other regional heroes are being rediscovered and reassessed and, here’s the thing, Get Smart! are really good at what they do and this six-track EP is both a testament and, hopefully, a taste of what the future may hold.  

Andrew Forell  

 Rich Halley / Matthew Shipp / Michael Bisio / Newman Taylor Baker — The Shape Of Things (Pine Eagle Records)

The Shape of Things by Rich Halley

If the bolt strikes twice, it’s probably not lightning. The Shape Of Things is the second successful meeting between Rich Halley, a tenor saxophonist based in the Pacific Northwest, and the current members of the Matthew Shipp Trio. The album is, like its predecessor Terra Incognita, a congress of strengths. Shipp’s trio follows the pianist easily into one of his classic roles, that of supplying sonic foundation and harmonic framing for an extroverted saxophonist. Halley fights right into the spaces that they create, rippling easily over the trio’s turbulent surfaces. He works within the broader jazz tradition, sounding equally at home patiently sketching a lyrical line and blowing raw, acidic cries. This ensemble plays achieves a state of centered abandon which feels wilder than Halley’s recordings with West Coast musicians, but fits right into the spectrum that contains Shipp’s work with the David S. Ware Quartet and Ivo Perelman.

Bill Meyer

 A Hutchie — Potion Shop (Cosmic Resonance)

Potion Shop by A Hutchie

Hamilton, Ontario-based producer Aaron Hutchinson has his fingers in many pies. He nimbly dispenses free jazz, hip hop, outré pop and even more enigmatic forms of song. Potion Shop is his debut LP, although he is a long-time fixture in the Steeltown music scene. This immersion in a small, tight-knit domain has led to many fruitful collaborations. Hutchinson features many of his compatriots in these recordings, in which his music snakes alongside their vocal stylings. Mutant 21st century soul singlehandedly played by Hutchinson is a foil for the slam poetry of Benita Whyte and Ian Keteku, the latter of which the producer warps with a vocoder. Sarah Good’s vocals morph into those of a ghostly chanteuse among smeared strings, while the soulful Blankie swims beneath narcotic R&B beats. When imbibing these intoxicating concoctions, you will be immersed in a warmth of familiarity tempered with the unsettling yet exciting sense of the uncanny. Like absinthe, the disquiet is illusory while the intimacy is authentic.

Bryon Hayes  

 Imha Tarikat — Sternenberster (Prophecy Productions)

STERNENBERSTER by IMHA TARIKAT

Imha Tarikat’s principal member Ruhsuz Cellât (stage name of Kerem Yilmaz) breaks with black metal orthodoxy by musically engaging his family’s Muslim heritage. That’s a provocative move in an artform dominated by glib nihilism, rampant anti-religious sentiment and (somehow sometimes all at the same time) ardent claims of Satanist faith. And that distinction at the symbolic level likely doesn’t come near the intensities of being of Turkish descent, living and recording in Germany, in a scene that flirts (and at its extreme margins actively identifies) with fascism. Beyond those ideological and social dimensions is the music. Imha Tarikat demonstrates facility with tremolo riffs and song forms that twist and snake even as they hammer and pummel. But Cellât’s unusual vocal style cuts against convention’s grain, and it’s immediately apparent as album opener “Ekstase ohne Ende” commences. There’s a lot of grunting and hollering, but rather than contorting his voice, shrieking and croaking in mode of most black metal vocalists, Cellât goes for more straightforward intensity. He often shouts, and the lyrics frequently come in bunches, explosive and punctuated bursts of verbiage, but he makes no attempt to distort the lyrics or his voice. I wish my grasp of German were even halfway close to fluent, in order to report on the lyrics’ thematic content with some coherence — because Cellât clearly wants the words to be heard.

Jonathan Shaw

Jon Irabagon / Mike Pride / Mick Barr / Ava Mendoza — Don’t Hear Nothin’ But The Blues Vol 3 Anatomical Snuffbox (Irrabagast Records)

I Don't Hear Nothin' but the Blues Volume 3: Anatomical Snuffbox by Jon Irabagon

Never mind the blues; if you don’t exercise caution, when you’re done playing this loud-at-any-volume recording, you won’t hear nothin’. The latest installment in tenor saxophonist John Irabagon’s series of one-track, meta-blues recordings starts out with a spray of sound as bracing as Saharan sandstorm, but quickly solidifies into a veritable wall of sound. At the outset, Irabagon and drummer Mike Pride engage in a high-speed dance of charge and countercharge which, if heard without accompaniment, would sit comfortably on the same shelf as your Mars Williams and Mats Gustafsson records. But when you put guitarists Mick Barr and Ava Mendoza on the same stage and tell them both to start shredding, the effect is somewhat akin to putting the pyrotechnic specialists in charge of the circus. Subtlety, dynamics and even the oxygen you breath all disappear as everything catches fire. If any of the participants here have effectively bent your ear, you ought to listen all the way through once. By the time it’s done, you’ll know in your heart whether you ever need to hear it again.

Bill Meyer    

 John Kolodij — First Fire / At Dawn (Astral Editions)

First Fire • At Dawn by John Kolodij

Where there’s fire, there’s often smoke, and while this tape claims alignment with Hephaestus’ element, it’s more likely to evoke thick clouds. As the capstans turn, the murk of “At Fire” accumulates gradually, filling the room with an increasingly dense atmosphere. By the time you notice flashes of flame, it’s too late. “At Dawn” brings to mind a lesser conflagration — maybe the embers of the previous night’s campfire. John Kolodij (who has, until recently, recorded mainly under the name High Aura’d) pushes his heavily processed guitar sound into the background, where it lurks with a bit of birdsong, and leads with an unamplified banjo and acoustic guitar. Fiddler Anna RG (of Anna & Elizabeth) further bolsters the melody while some sparse percussion played by Sarah Hennies heightens the sense of moment. Once more, a mass of disembodied sound rises up as the piece progresses, but this time the effect is the opposite; instead of getting lost in sound, the listener finds a moment of peace and light.

Bill Meyer

 Lytton / Nies / Scott / Wissel — Do They Do Those In Red? (Sound Anatomy)

Do they do those in Red? by Paul Lytton, Joker Nies, Richard Scott, Georg Wissel

“Do they do those in red?” The title may speak to the particular peculiarities of this combo, which is formed from several pre-existing duos, Joker Nies is credited with “electrosapiens,” which seem to be self-constructed electronic instruments, and George Wissel applies various items to his saxophone to modify its sound. Georg Wissel’s synthesizers come with some assembly required, and it would appear that Paul Lytton, best known for playing drum kits and massive percussion assemblages, confines himself in this setting to the stuff he can fit on a tabletop. What, you think your saxophone is prettier because it doesn’t have anything red jammed into a valve?  

Moving on to the music, while the sound sources are heavily electronic, the interactive style is rooted in good old-fashioned free improvisation. Lytton’s barrage sounds remarkably similar to what he achieves playing with a full drum kit, and Wissel’s lines may be more fractured, but his alto sound has some of the tonal heft and agility that John Butcher exercises on the tenor. The electronicians’ bristling activity brings to mind a debate between opposite sides of the electrical components aisle at the hardware store, but it’s a lucid one, thoughtfully expressed on both sides.

Bill Meyer  

Ikue Mori Satoko Fujii + Natsuki Tamura — Prickly Pear Cactus (Libra)

Prickly Pear Cactus by Ikue Mori, Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura

Pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura spent February 2020 touring Europe with their combo Kaze, which they’d augmented with the electronic musician, Ikue Mori. As lockdown wore on, they kept the connection going via Zoom chats between their abodes in Kobe and New York. After Fujii shared her experiences of trying to mic and stream her piano online, Mori suggested that she send some recordings. Mori edited what showed up and added her sounds; Tamura contributed additional elements to nearly half the tracks. Some of them are balanced to sound like live recordings, with Mori’s neon squelches and high-res, bell-like tones gathering and dispelling like real-time reactions. Others feel more overtly constructed, with the piano situated within a maelstrom of sounds like a view of a TV set turned on in a room with a party going on.  

Bill Meyer

 Phicus — Solid (Astral Spirits)

Solid by Phicus

Phicus is the Barcelona-based assemblage of Ferran Fages (electric guitar), Àlex Reviriego (double bass) and Vasco Trilla (drums). The line-up looks like a power trio, and if you heard them two seconds at a time, you might think that they were. Reviriego and Trilla each play in ways that convey a sense of motion, and Fages’ bent notes and serrated harmonics are just the sort of sounds to cap off a display of guitar heroics. But if you note that each track is named for an element or chemical compound, and that the album is called Solid, you might get a clearer idea of their concerns. This music is all about essential relationships, and its makers are more interested in making things coexist in productive ways than they are in re-enacting rituals borrowed from jazz, fusion or free improvisation. That means that even the sharpest sounds don’t hook you, nor do the fleetest charges carry you away. Phicus isn’t interested in settling for the familiar. But if you’re ready to observe that thing that looks like a duck making sounds that ducks never make, you’ll find plenty to ponder on Solid.

Bill Meyer

 Quietus — Volume Five (Ever/Never)

Volume Five by Quietus

Quietus songs unfurl like cream in coffee, spiraling curlicues of light into dark liquid drones amid clanking blocks of percussion. The songs expand in organic ways, picking up purpose in the steady pound of rhythm, strutting even, in a loose-limbed rock-soul-psych way you might recognize from Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “Anemone” or Grinderman’s “I Don’t Need You to Set Me Free,” but quieter, much quieter, and seething with submerged ideas. The words are mumbled, croaked, submerged in surface hum, but when pushed up towards the surface, arresting. “This life can be sunlit hills turned all to their angry sides,” murmurs Quietus proprietor Geoffrey Bankowski in the relatively concise “Reflex of Purpose,” which sprawls anyway, notwithstanding its 2:36 minute duration. The music’s better, though, when it’s allowed to find its slow way forward, unconforming to any pre-existing ideas of how long a pop song should be. I like the closer “Posthemmorrhagic,” the best, as guitars both tortured and prayerful intertwine, and Bankowski breathes slow, moaning poetry into a close mic, and the song revolves in three-time like the last dancer on the floor, not just tonight but forever.

Jennifer Kelly

Ritual Extra — In Luthero (Dinzu Artefacts)

In Luthero by Ritual Extra

In Luthero was performed inside an empty water cistern, and the ensuing reverberations act as microscopic versions of the grander ebb and flow within which French-Finnish trio Ritual Extra operate.  Percussionist Julien Chamla’s cymbal scrapes and tom hits form a backdrop of bomb blasts and shrieking, missives from some war-torn locale long since vacated by the populace.  Steel structures seem to groan and collapse as they are rattled by percussive ordnance. This bleak setting is given a sense of color by Lauri Hyvärinen’s acoustic guitar.  A stew of string scrapes diverges into discrete plucks, which morph into strums.  The metronomic chords are enriched as they bounce around the walls of the cistern, folding in on themselves through echo, becoming a mechanical mantra.  Tuukka Haapakorpi’s voice rises from the ashes, soaring polysyllabically yet wordlessly.  As In Luthero begins to take shape, these vocalizations are almost inhuman: whispers and gurgles that come on in waves.  Later, more anthropoid utterances take shape, yet fall just shy of coalescing into a discernable language.  Across 24 minutes, Ritual Extra musically narrate the pre-history of humankind, the primordial essence from which everything good — and bad — about us originated. 

Bryon Hayes  

 Subjective Pitch Matching Band — Twenty-One Subjectivities in Six Parts (Remote Works)  

Twenty-One Subjectivities in Six Parts by Subjective Pitch Matching Band

Chris Brian Taylor has trod a serpentine path on the journey that culminated in the creation of his first large ensemble electroacoustic composition. His roots are in punk and rave — he still DJs house and techno — but he recently shifted his gaze toward improvised electronics. Rather than stifling his ambition, COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown encouraged him to think big: he would cast a wide net and compose a piece of music for as many people as he could get to participate. He reached out to friends, relatives, and internet acquaintances to assemble his orchestra, and borrowed the melody and chords from Pet Shop Boys’ “Being Boring” to act as the foundation of the work. Twenty people responded from a variety of musical disciplines, and all agreed to participate remotely. The composer gave each player audio cues to work with and encouraged the performers to respond subjectively. They could either stay true to the pitches provided, harmonize against them, or play ornamentally. Taylor collected the resulting tracks and structured the resulting thirty-minute piece of music based on what the respondents provided. Dense yet graceful, the composition unfolds like a slow-motion blaze. Flames of sonority form a sinuous body from which sparks of discrete sound leap heavenward. There is nary a moment of silence, as Taylor weaves a plethora of long tones together to form an undulating core over which stabs of piano, guitar and percussion materialize momentarily. Naivete didn’t keep Chris Brian Taylor from aiming as high as he could with this piece, and we are the benefactors of this ambition, rewarded with a rich and complex sonic brew to enjoy.

Bryon Hayes  

 TV Priest — Uppers (Sub Pop)

Uppers by TV Priest

TV Priest works the same corrosive, hyper-verbal furrow as Idles or, in a looser sense, the Sleaford Mods, spatter chanting harsh, literate strings of gutter poetry over a clanking post-punk cadence. The vocalist Charlie Drinkwater snarls and sputters charismatically over the clatter, a brutalist commentator on life and pop culture. The band is sharp and minimalist, drums (Ed Kelland) to the front, guitar (Alex Sprogis) stabbing hard at stripped raw riffs , bass (Nic Bueth) rumbling like mute rage in the back of the bar. And yet, though anger is a primary flavor, these songs surge with triumph as in the wall-shaking cadences of “Press Gang,” the blistering sarcasm of “The Big Curve.” This is a relatively new band, their first and only tour cut short at one gig by the lockdown, but the songs are tight as hell on record and likely to pin you to the back wall live. “Bad news, like buses, comes in twos,” intones Drinkwater on theclearly autobiographical “Journal of a Plague Year” against an irregular post-everything clangor, loose and disdainful and hardly arsed to entertain us; it’s as fitting an anthem as any for our lost 2020. But when band gets moving, as on the chugging, corroscating “Decoration,” it’s unstoppable, a monstrous thing bursting “through to the next round.” Sure, I’ll have another.

Jennifer Kelly

Voice Imitator — Plaza (12XU)

Plaza by Voice Imitator

Voice Imitator, from Melbourne, Australia, rips a hard punk vortex through its songs, ratcheting up the drums to battering ram violence, blistering the guitar sound and scrawling wild metallic vocals over it all, with nods to noisy post-hardcore bands like the Jesus Lizard and McClusky. “A Small Cauliflower” takes things down to a seething, menacing whisper, Mark Groves, the singer, presiding over an uneasy mesh of tamped down dissonance and hustle. “Adult Performer” is faster and more limber, all clicking urgency and sudden bursts of detuned, surging squall. All four members—that’s Per Bystrom, Justin Fuller, Groves and Leon O’Regan—have been in a ton of other bands, and the sounds they make here have the rupturing precision of well-honed violence. If you like Protomartyr but wish it was lots louder and more corrosive, here you go.

Jennifer Kelly

 Sam Weinberg / Henry Fraser / Weasel Walter — Grist (Ugexplode)

Grist by Sam Weinberg / Henry Fraser / Weasel Walter

Ornette Coleman once called a record In All Languages; these guys ought call one Any And All Possibilities. Saxophonist Sam Weinberg, bassist Henry Fraser and drummer (this time, anyway) Weasel Walter are scrupulous student of improvisation in all its guises, and they’re ready and able to use what they know. You could call it free jazz, for they certainly know how that stuff works, but they’re under no obligation to swing; that’d be a limit, you see. This music bursts, darts, expands and contracts in a sequence of second by second negotiations of shape and velocity.

Bill Meyer  

 Chris Weisman — Closer Tuning (Self-Released)

Closer Tuning by Chris Weisman

Chris Weisman is a Brattleboro, VT songwriter, in the general orbit (not a member but seems to know a bunch of them) of the late, great Feathers and one-time member of Kyle Thomas’ other outfit, the fuzz pop band Happy Birthday. A shunner of all sorts of limelight, he is nonetheless very productive. Closer Tuning is one of five albums he home recorded and released in 2020. You might expect a certain lo-fi folksiness and there is, indeed, a dream-y, soft focus rusticity to the tangled acoustic guitar jangle, the blunt down home-i-ness lyrics. And yet, there’s a good deal more than that in Closer Tuning. The chords progress softly, gently but in unexpected ways, a reminder of Weisman’s jazz guitar training, and the sound is warm and enveloping and every so slightly off-kilter, as if filtered through someone else’s memory. Cuts like “Petit Revolution,” with its close shroud of harmonies, its eerie, antic guitar cadence, feel like Beach Boys psychedelia left out in the garden to sprout, or more to the point, like Wendy Eisenberg’s brainy, left-of-center pop puzzles. “My Talent” is hedged in with blooming bent notes and scrambling string scratches, but its center is radiant, weird, astral folk along the lines of Alexander Tucker. “Hey,” says Weisman, in its slow dreaming chorus, “I gave my talent away.” Lucky us.

 A.A. Williams — Forever Blue (Bella Union)

There’s a dim and shadowy corner where heavy music, orchestral music and post-rock all meet, and A.A. Williams’ music resides there as naturally as anyone else’s. That’s what you might expect when you get a professional cellist who fell hard for metal as a teenager and then started writing songs after finding a guitar on the street. After an EP her first LP is the kind of assured, consistently strong debut that balances calmly measured beauty with the kind of crushing peaks that give that sometimes hoary quiet/loud dynamic a good name. At its best, like the opening “All I Asked For (Was to End it All)” and “Dirt” (featuring vocals from Wild Beasts’ Tom Fleming), Forever Blue is as gothically ravishing as you could hope for, and by the time it ends with spectral lament “I’m Fine” it might tempt even those not traditionally inclined that way to don the ceremonial black eyeliner.  

Ian Mathers

[musicmakesyousmart]

Steve Baczkowski / Bill Nace - Success

Notice

2020

[merzbow-derek]

POST-SCRIPTUM 39

À PROPOS DE NATURES ÉRUPTIVES

Il s’agit là d’une série de huit lathe-cuts flexis monofaces tirés à huit exemplaires chacun et numérotés, exclusivement dédiée aux saxophonistes s’exprimant en solo, et apparemment mise sur pied par David Vanzan du Jooklo Duo. Les six premiers me sont passés par les mains, via David Vanzan justement, au cours du premier concert du Jooklo Duo au DOJO à Nice (il y en eut un second et même un troisième, impromptu, en quintette avec France). Une série collector consacrée à Virgina Genta, Johns Lunds, Steve Baczkowski, Arthur Doyle, Marko Karlovcec, Don Dietrich, Dror Feiler et Tamio Shiraishi. Épuisé à la source (va sans dire).

[augrisliclandestin]

I Can Repay You