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dustedmagazine · 2 months ago

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Dust, Volume 10, Number 12

Olivia Tremor Control

Another year of Dust goes into the books with this final edition. We’ve relished the chance to work in short form, covering small label releases and chart-toppers, new music and worthy reissues, across a lot of genres but leaning heavily on jazz, folk, punk and experimental music. We hope you’ve enjoyed it, too, Here’s to continuing that, at least, in 2025.

This month’s contributors include: Bill Meyer, Patrick Masterson, Tim Clarke, Ian Mathers, Alex Johnson, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Christian Carey and Bryon Hayes.

Abdou / Gouband / Warelis — Hammer, Roll and Leaf (Relative Pitch)

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When applied to improvising musicians, residency usually refers to a sequence of gigs at the same club. This session, a first-time encounter for the trio but not for its component parts, takes another tack. The hour of music on Hammer, Roll and Leaf was tracked in alto and tenor saxophonist Sakina Abdou’s home over the course of four days, two of which were taken up with gigs elsewhere. So, we should we call it a residential residency? At any rate, one supposes that the shared time in close quarters contributed to the music’s charge. It has a feeling of excitement in becoming. They’re not just improvising; they’re figuring out who they are as a trio. Each musician brings both flexibility and a strong individual presence. Martha Warelis is as comfortable inside the piano as she is at the keys, and she uses that combination of hardware rumble and high-wire line-tracing to give the music shape, motion and space. Toma Gouband’s penchant for playing with stones and branches filters the conventional spectrum-filling function of his drum kit, and his astute placement of small sounds invites one to listen for the details. Abdou thrives in their company, find a complementary stance for whatever her fellows throw at her. Great stuff.

Bill Meyer

Barker / Parker / Irabagon — Bakunawa (Out of Our Heads)

Andrew Barker is a drummer, improviser and composer based in New York whose cv includes Gold Sparkle Band, Acid Birds and a host of endeavors that blur the line between solo and collaborative. Take this one, for example. Barker put the date together, but when you call on William Parker (heard here on bass, B flat pocket tuba, and a Catalan double reed instrument called a gralla) and Jon Irabagon (tenor and sopranino saxophone), you don’t do so in order to shove music stands under their noses. Each musician adds such personality and imagination to their parts that the shared compositional credits make perfect sense. Each of the LP’s four (five on the download) tracks explores a different tributary off the free jazz stream, pushing back the mapped zone of exploration just a bit.“Fly Anew,” for example, swings with burly muscularity, while “Morgan Avenue Second Line” fractures and scrambles said line into an expression of confrontationally dancing sound, like martial arts sparring match between three choreographers.

Bill Meyer

Batu & Nick León — Yiu EP (A Long Strange Dream)

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Bristol’s Batu and Miami’s Nick León are both club vets at this point — the former via numerous late UK bass singles and ownership of both the Timedance and A Long Strange Dream imprints, the latter an adventurous remix workhorse whose 2024 highlight ended up being an Erika de Casier collaboration. Closing out the year with their first EP together, Yiu thrives on the tension between Bristolian bass weight and the lighter, faster beats of Miami’s Latin scene. The eponymous track, originally heard in León’s Dekmantel mix, is the highlight, snagging a reggaeton rhythm and marrying it to swirling, dissonant (but not unpleasant) synths. Don’t miss the bubbly “Tuvan” (yes, there is throat singing incorporated) or the dashing “Palo,” either, though. For just four tracks, a great deal of ground is covered; let’s hope this just scratches the surface of their potential together.

Patrick Masterson

“Deadly” Headley Bennett—35 Years from Alpha (On-U Sound)

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If you listen to Studio One reggae, you know Headley Bennett’s playing, even if you don’t know that you know. As part of the core session crew, his spreadably rich alto saxophone is all over the label’s discography, but as a consummate sideman he managed to make it to the age of 50 without making a solo record. When he stuck around London after a tour with Prince Far I, Adrian Sherwood recognized an opportunity to right a cosmic wrong and put him in the studio with drummer Style Scott, singer Bim Sherman and a posse of creatively named On-U Sound regulars. The combination of Bennett’s fluid melodies and Sherwood’s muscularly dubby, percussion-forward production is inspired. Every boingy syndrum, ardently crooned lyric and echoing beat has a reflective surface that points attention to the saxophonist.

Bill Meyer

Blawan — BouQ EP (Temesc)

The longer South Yorkshire producer Jamie Roberts is left to his own devices, the weirder his songs get. Using his literal voice more than ever and letting in a lot more light than his typically aggro, industrial-leaning productions account for, BouQ covers considerable post-dubstep ground for him on the big room highlight “Fires” alone. Lest it be misunderstood, Blawan isn’t going James Blake singer-songwriter mode or getting confessional instead of confrontational, but the more discernibly human touches and melodies of this four-tracker are a distinctive step to the left. It suits him; more than another Persher album or even an extended hardware-only Karenn set, BouQ is the sound of an opportunity, of fresh potential from a guy who’s lived through club trends of the last decade and a half and still has something left to give.

Patrick Masterson

Bursting — Bursting EP (No Sabes)

Bursting cites Jawbox, No Knife, Drive like Jehu and Shiner as musical reference points for its debut six-song EP, but even with that and pedigrees of bands including Coliseum, Stress Positions and Thou, the thing “Trade in Time” reminded me of most immediately was early Foo Fighters. There’s a subtle multitracked quality to Kortland Chase’s higher register that recalls Dave Grohl in his first years after Nirvana and the music never feels too heavy — but far from a negative thing, this just paints Bursting as distinct from its creators’ biggest projects. There’s no question you can hear Jehu’s most driving Yank crimes on “Play It Nice,” but taken as a whole, this is a solid slab of 1990s-indebted indie-rock skirting the perimeter of knotty post-hardcore as it was then delivered. Put another way: It’s easy to imagine a 1995 where “Dark Phase Manager” is an alt-rock radio staple (complementary).

Patrick Masterson

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ — Sorcery (Spells on the Telly)

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It’s unnerving how prolific DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ is. The still-anonymous London producer properly broke through with the three-hour odyssey Destiny, a mind-bending 41-track melange of sunny, psychedelic, sample-heavy house the likes of which most people hadn’t heard since the Avalanches’ Since I Left You heyday. That was August 2023. Normally, you’d take a moment after that to make a victory lap, catch your breath and see where you’re at artistically, assess what you want to do next. But that’s you, a mortal; what Sabrina did instead was release two singles and three albums, one of which (Hex) has two companion albums unto itself. The latest (though only a fool would bet on it being the last) 2024 release is the 14-track Sorcery from early December, which fails to dip in the quality we’ve come to expect. Despite oft-straightforward 4/4 rhythms, the sheer density of these productions — which have to look like a nightmare in ProTools, incidentally — boggles the mind. What does her process look like? When does she sleep? How the fuck is this possible? The answer has to be right there in the title; nothing else seems plausible.

Patrick Masterson

The Green Child — Look Familiar (Hobbies Galore / Upset the Rhythm)

The self-titled 2018 debut by the duo of Mikey Young (Eddie Current Suppression Ring, Total Control) and Raven Mahon (Grass Widow) was an uncanny gem. Its deadpan space-pop felt like the soundtrack to an odd, dated nature documentary. On album three, Look Familiar, the duo are joined by Alex Macfarlane (The Stevens, Twerps) on guitars and synths, and Shaun Gionis (Boomgates) on drums. The resulting sound is much fuller and more propulsive, with a motorik bent and a twist of glam swagger. The title feels like a nod to the fact that several of the songs have elements that are reminders of a diverse range of other songs, such as Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” (“Easy Window”), Boards of Canada’s “A Beautiful Place Out In the Country” (“A Long Beautiful Flowing Cape”), and even Wang Chung’s “Dance Hall Days” (opener “Wow Factor”). The eclecticism in these reference points is a good indicator of this album’s tunefulness and likeability.

Tim Clarke

Haptic — Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (Line)

One could accurately characterize the entire timeline of the Chicago-identified trio Haptic as a shift between the poles of outreach and interiority. Originally formed expressly to perform live, with guests, extended episodes of geographic separation brought out their latent tendencies towards audience-free interaction. The title tips the hand of this recording, which can be considered an experiential confrontation with destiny. For while the musicians added to, subtracted from, processed and otherwise manipulated sourced from a one-day session at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, they kept coming back to the original sounds. Which is not to say that it sounds like what they played; rather, what you hear was fileted from the original sound capture, dredged through field recordings and room sounds, and then shaken until only a light dusting of influence remained. There are long stretches where it sounds like a rank of long electronic tones tucked behind a cloud bank of room sound, and this immateriality makes the choice to release it only as a digital download feel like an artistic choice to make format congruent with content.

Bill Meyer

Hirsch Swell Clouse Parker — Out on a Limb (Soul City Sounds)

To spell it out, that’s Steve Hirsch on drums, Steve Swell on trombone, William Parker on bass and Jim Clouse on soprano and tenor saxophones. All of them save Minneapolitan Hirsch are New Yorkers who spend a lot of time in Clouse’s Park West Studio, and there’s a rapport between them that contributes to this music’s apparent effortlessness. The horns glide and tangle, then stop and smear textures as one; the bass and drums have a leap-frogging dynamic that keeps the music moving even when one of them temporarily plunges into space and then pops back up, gleefully gravity-defiant. Soulful and free-flying, his is free jazz that inhabits the moment and makes you want to live in it too.

Bill Meyer

Hypnodrone Ensemble — The Problem Is in the Sender—Do Not Tamper With the Receiver (WV Sorcerer Productions)

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About all you can count on with a release from this group led by Aidan Baker (Nadja) and Eric Quach (thisquietarmy) is that those two will play guitar, there will be at least three drummers (here Fiona McKenzie, Angela Martinez Muñoz, and Sara Neidorf), and that things are indeed going to drone hypnotically. On this outing, in addition to past contributor Gareth Sweeney returning on bass, there’s a first: vocals, by Lane Shi Otayonii (Dent, Elizabeth Colour Wheel). Otayonii’s wailing vocals are equally entranced and entrancing and fit surprisingly well with the roiling boil the rest of the Ensemble can whip up seemingly on command. The result is just as easy to get lost in as their other LPs, but in a whole new head spinning way.

Ian Mathers

Licklash — Big Smile (Roolette)

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Here’s hoping you have at least 12 minutes for punk rock today. Listen just one time through Big Smile, the debut EP from Melbourne duo Licklash, and you’ll have gotten a satisfying pummel from these four furious, bouncy polemics. The pleasures of the blurted but flowing last verse of “Party Line” or the pounding, angular rhythm guitar on “Battleship,” for example, are immediate. But leave Big Smile on for another round and you’ll find a carefully constructed, complex record that, despite its four-year formation, never sounds over-thought or precious.

Big Smile was entirely and admirably produced by the band — guitarist and vocalist Kahlia Parker and bassist Carsten Bruhn. The mix is clean and balanced and spotlights the subtleties: the crinkled buzz of Parker’s lead riff on “Battleship” or the high, bent notes that orchestrate the music into intervals of calm, of form meeting content, however briefly, on “Control.” Achievements in production noted and appreciated, you’ll keep coming back to Big Smile for the polemics and the pummeling; for Parker’s sharp, indignant delivery of the group’s frantic, funny-until-dead-serious lyrics and headlong, hard struck instrumentation that manages both hardcore intensity and a bumping groove.

Alex Johnson

Low Animal — Bedlam Hiss EP (Decapitator)

I’m not saying it’s Low Animal’s fault my tinnitus is beyond repair — you’re talking to a guy who saw My Bloody Valentine without earplugs in his younger, dumber years — but I’m also not saying they helped at a recent gig in support of Flint grunge staples Greet Death. The flamboyant Chicago quintet knows where their bread is buttered, and on recent three-tracker Bedlam Hiss, they put that noise-rock know-how to tape with a screeching, smashing, soaringly irrepressible pummel. There are a not-unnoticeable number of bands, led by Chat Pile, currently out there demonstrating what they’ve learned from The Jesus Lizard … but I can assure you that few of them match the sonic intensity of Low Animal. The EP doesn’t quite do the live experience justice, so take it from one who learned that too late: Do not leave those earplugs at home.

Patrick Masterson

Lunar Noon — A Circle’s Round (self-released)

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Michelle Zheng was reading works by the Vietnamese Buddhist and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh when she started composing A Circle’s Round, and his thinkings on action, inter-being and connection to all living things permeates the expansive contours of this art-song cycle. The sounds of nature weave through sophisticated, large ensemble arrangements. Indeed, the very first sound you hear is running water. Yet this is no meditation-inducing drone. Zheng constructs shimmering, multi-layered compositions out of choral vocals, strings, piano and other instruments, and enlivens them with constant interlocking motion. Her core band includes half a chamber quartet in violinist Brian Lach and Christopher Healy, plus drummer Théo Auclair, and she herself sings and plays piano and synths. Some cuts like “Forgettable Consequences” swagger with jazzy urbanity. Others, such as the closer, “The Other Shore,” billow with lively voices at play. “A Circle’s Round” percolates and shivers, approaching Jon Hopkins electronic ambiences. Lovely and complicated.

Jennifer Kelly

Mahall / Stoffner / Griener — Die Exorzistin (Wide Ear)

Give this record’s sleeve a good look. The artists have gone to the trouble of packaging the CD in a 7” single sleeve, thereby guaranteeing two things; it won’t get lost in the same stack as the other slimline CD sleeves, and fading jazz-head eyesight stands a better chance of registering the details of the dense, irreverent collage on its sleeve. Neither the image nor the music it encases seeks to provide comfort. Drummer Michael Griener and clarinetist Rudi Mahall have a partnership that has endured since they were both teens, and they are as jointly fluent in mid-20th century swing as they are in elbows-out free improvisation. They zero in on the latter end of the spectrum through this album’s 17 spiky and generally pithy tracks. Mercurial and agile, they make music like a pair of swordsmen who are just itching for a chance to evade the rules and poke holes in each other’s favorite smoking jackets. Electric guitarist Florian Stoffner is equally nimble, but he brings a clanking sonic ballast to the proceedings.

Bill Meyer

Anne Malin — Strange Power! (Dear Life)

North Carolina poet and songwriter Anne Malin brings an extended ensemble to her fifth full-length, moving away from the ghostly tremors of 2020’s Waiting Song (“These songs have a fey, otherworldly quality,” said Dusted.) towards a surer, more communal sound. There’s nothing spectral about “North Carolina,” for instance. The tune pays tribute to the white sand beaches of Malin’s home state, trace-like percussion, pedal steel and piano flourishing around her warm, twining melodies, while “River” undulates with the warmth of Lily Honigberg’s violin. Still, “Lilac Bloom” is as delicate as the blossoms it celebrates, and wavery washes of surf guitar arise around its slow lament. And edging back into goth, “The Visionary” quotes a poem by Emily Brontë, Malin’s voice echoing the novelist’s 19th century, death-haunted romanticism. Strange Power! builds a narrow bridge between this world and the next.

Jennifer Kelly

Nate Mercereau — Sundays (How So)

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Nate Mercereau is a guitarist, sampler and composer who has worked with a long list of high profile musicians, from pop icons like Lizzo, Shawn Mendez and Andre3000, to jazz innovators like Idris Ackamoore and Kamasi Washington. For Sundays, Mercereau pairs with avant percussionist/synthesizer whiz Carlos Niño for a set of radiant, synth-heavy dreamscapes that however somewhere between prog and fusion jazz. Mercereau infuses his music with light and air and nature. When birds twitter in the interstices of “Every Moment Is the First and Last,” and you can almost feel the sunshine pouring in. “Absolute Sensitivity” sits cross-legged in a meditation garden, letting the long tones vibrate, mutate and fade without forcing them into melody. On the downside, these cuts can feel disembodied and imaginary, an unreal landscape too pretty to buy into. However, bits of organic music—alto flights from saxophonist Josh Johnson, kit drums from Jamire Williams—provide some grounding.

Jennifer Kelly

Non Bruises — II (Just Because)

Ohioan Mike Uva returns to his electrified Non Bruises project for a second round, cutting back on the lyrics-focused song structure and zooming in on guitar tone. Thus, “Silent Partner” cuts back to the words to a recorded (and uncredited) inspirational speech, building a slow bloom of post-rock guitar and drums around it. “Moto Rick” is a sharper vamp, all driving guitar/bass/drums for a long time before picking up some thready vocals. Standout “Evelyn Martin,” credited to guitarist Andy Stibora, has a bit more of the first record’s lo-fi GBV-into-Pavement grace, but most of these cuts groove rather than hook. “Taster,” a Grandaddy cover near the end, looms and hazes and resolves, a reminder that the fuzz has to have a center somewhere. We liked the first Non Bruises a lot here at Dusted (“an album that could take its place in your small rack of favorites”) and this one a bit less.

Jennifer Kelly

The Olivia Tremor Control — “Garden of Light” / “The Same Place” (Elephant 6 Recording Co.)

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Two new songs by legendary psych-pop band The Olivia Tremor Control were recently released as part of the soundtrack to the Elephant 6 Recording Co. documentary. Then, a matter of hours later, news circulated that Will Cullen Hart had died of a heart attack following a decades-long struggle with multiple sclerosis. The experience of listening to these two songs is not only colored by the news of Hart’s passing, and that of Bill Doss before him, but also the sinking realization that the long-gestating third OTC LP may never see the light of day without Hart or Doss at the helm. Having said that, the strength of the E6 musical community, so beautifully depicted in the documentary, may work miracles once the sting of Hart’s passing has begun to fade. For now, these two songs are premium, essential OTC. “Garden of Light” is classic Doss, full of bright, major-key jangle, harmonized vocals, and Beatles-esque guitar breaks, while Hart’s “The Same Place” could have come straight off the first Circulatory System LP with its mournful cellos and dreamy sway.

Tim Clarke

Ploughshare — Second Wound (I, Voidhanger)

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Angular and dissonant, Canberra-based black metal band Ploughshare makes music that seems like it would be more at home in Norway or Northern France. But black metal is global, and always has been; the Scandi bands get the most buzz for breaking the form open, but Brazil and England were likely more important sites of early articulations of the genre’s visual style and unslakable need for infernal speed. Ploughshare plays a much headier, avant-garde rendition of black metal (as the band’s current label suggests), and it’s demanding stuff. This reviewer really digs “Thorns Pressed into His Head,” which achieves a propulsion that is both dementedly downhill in its abandon and deeply dizzying; there’s a churn in your gut if you really dig in and engage. On some of the longer compositions, the desire for atmospherics and rhythmic complexity can drain the music of some of its bloody-minded heat; see “The Mockery of the Demons.” Wish this talented band would devote a little more of their intensity to keeping the music grounded, where its capacity to gouge and pummel has maximum material force. But Second Wound is a mostly satisfying record. If it cuts into you once, you’ll go back.

Jonathan Shaw

Primitive Art Group — 1981-1986 (Amish)

1981-1986 by Primitive Art Group

These New Zealand improvisers used jazz instruments in their work, with some unorthodox inclusions like bass banjo, bass drum, and guitar preparations. Their two albums are collected here. Multiple reeds in tandem create howling dissonance on “Swingin’ in the Rain.” On the live track “Cecil Likes to Dance,” the group channels raucous free jazz from the United States circa 1970, with a central section that thins out to harmonics, drum rolls, and altissimo call and response, and a return to the opening demeanor. “Lannie’s Revenge” has more organized horn charts that are periodically interrupted by spacy organ and angular drumming. Solos from saxophone and organ provide an Arkestra ambience. “Macho Groove” is rife with syncopation and juxtaposes multiple saxophones playing sustained lines and emphatic short motives. 1981-1986 is an eclectic pastiche of free play that embodies the energy of New Zealand’s fertile creative music scene in the 1980s.

Christian Carey

Maeve Schallert — The Etching (cow: music/Astral Spirits)

The Etching by Maeve Schallert

Scratched into a solid but capable of suggesting all manner of active perceptions, etchings have a lot in common with LPs. The Etching may be cut into plastic (or, if you fail to find one of its 100-small micro-pressing, coded into your favorite file format), but it certainly evokes movement. It is performed by Maeve Schallert, a violinist based in Kingston NY who is too young to have known a world without delays and canny enough to spin elusive gold from the collision of architecturally and electronically generated echoes. They created each of the album’s two pieces by feeding phrases into a ten-second delay MaxMSP whilst playing in a stairwell, which generates the impression of violin strokes circling the space like a vortex of bats, then flying up and out towards every possible horizon.

Bill Meyer

Pat Thomas / Dominic Lash /Tony Orell — Bleyschool: Where? (577 Records)

BleySchool: Where by Pat Thomas and Bleyschool

Bleyschool is another in Pat Thomas’ bulging bag of musical tricks. Like Ahmed, which had a banner year in 2024, it deals with history on the English keyboardist’s terms. Accompanied by bassist Dominic Lash and drummer Tony Orell, Thomas sticks to piano and deals mainly with material associated with (but not written by) Paul Bley. The centerpiece is a 16:40 version of Carla Bley’s “Ida Lupino” that melts the original’s melody into a churning textural mass, and then slowly reassembles it. On another Carla Bley composition, “King Korn,” an iridescent bowed bass clears space for a Thomas’ leaping clusters, and “Monk’s Mood” magnifies the tune’s chasmic gaps and springy, wandering rhythms. Mid-20th century jazz often got compared to Cubism; the way that Bleyschool magnifies and distorts their material’s angles and shapes feels very true to that model without sounding like it’s of that time.

Bill Meyer

Vernal Scuzz — Vernal Scuzz (Sweet Wreath)

Vernal Scuzz by Vernal Scuzz

Jasper Lee birthed Vernal Scuzz after Silica Gel dissolved, and this new group’s debut shows off a darker and murkier side of the Sweet Wreath ecosystem. They’re collecting mutant spores from the sooty catacombs of 1980s Manchester rather than grass clippings from medieval pastures. Tight, punchy post-punk rhythms bathe in a fizzy stew of broken circuitry and rangy structures that the band intersperse with arcane rites and translucent melodies. Album opener “La Durée” fools us into thinking we’re in for turn of the millennium post-punk revivalism, but the rest of the songs are steeped in a simmering chaos akin to Liars’ They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. The odd swatch of spoken word finds Lee looking back at the folky leanings of his previous outfit, but Vernal Scuzz would rather rock out than revisit the songs of our ancestors. Their dank, punky energy certainly tingles the eardrums.

Bryon Hayes

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dustedmagazine · 8 months ago

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Dust Volume 10, Number 6, Part I

Infinite River

We’re halfway through the year and swamped with mid-year activities (look for our round-up next week), but the records continue to pile-up and we continue to make time for as many as possible. This month, the slush pile yielded a wide range of music, from Burkina-Faso-ian griot to microtonal composition to snarling black metal to improvisation and jazz.

Our reviews are split in two parts because of Tumblr's arbitrary limits on sound samples. See Part II here. Contributions included Jennifer Kelly, Bryon Hayes, Andrew Forell, Christian Carey, Jonathan Shaw, Bill Meyer, Jim Marks, Justin Cober-Lake and Alex Johnson. Happy summer!

Avalanche Kaito — Talitakum (Glitterbeat)

Another of those cross-cultural, Afro-European collaborations that are so often great—see recent works by Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers, Ndox Electrique and Group Doueh/Cheveux—Avalanche Kaito sets Burkina Faso griot to a rattling, pummeling noise punk beat. I like “Lago” best, where a clatter of mixed percussion and serrated, distortion crusted guitar dart in and around a keening call and response. Near the end of a recent long-distance drive, I listened to it 14 times in a row without wearing it out. Still the title track is fantastic as well, its guitars stabbing in like Fugazi, its drums boxy and agitated, its spatter-painted words dicing the beat into eighths and sixteenths. The “Kaito” in the band name comes from grioteer Kaito Winse. The Avalanche comes from the falling-down-the-stairs-but-still-on-beat mix of strident punk and West African syncopation.

Jennifer Kelly

Ayal Senior — Ora (Medusa Editions)

Toronto’s 12-string warrior Ayal Senior workshopped the songs that became Ora at a monthly residency he has at the Tranzac Club, a haven for the city’s most adventurous musical minds. His comrades Kurt Newman (pedal steel, electric guitar) and Andrew Furlong (bass) joined him on the journey, and together they slowly worked the sonic skeletons into fleshy bodies of song. The trio brought scene veterans Blake Howard and Jay Anderson on board to add drums and percussion when they laid the sounds to tape. Their flourishing rhythms complete the image: five beams of light passing through the prism of Senior’s celestial vision. The guitarist bills Ora as the spiritual successor to 2022’s Az Yashir, yet while that record embraced a post-COVID sea change, Ora is bathed in the light of tranquility. Senior’s folk devotionals draw warmth from the presence of his pals, taking on raga and kosmische adornments as they languidly unfurl. These hymns are beauty incarnate, guitar-centric mantras in service of the cosmic mystery that surrounds us all.

Bryon Hayes

Beams — Requiem for a Planet (Be My Sibling)

Beams is an alt.country ensemble, playing rock and folk instruments in delicate, otherworldly ways. The voices especially — Anna Mērnieks-Duffield primarily but fleshed out in harmonies by Heather Mazhar and Keith Hamilton—float in translucent layers, mixing eerily with the meat-and-potatoes sonics of guitar, bass and drums. As the title suggests, Beams main subject is the earth itself, its fragility, its rising temperature, its trajectory towards unlivability. Yet though there are lessons here, in songs like “Heat Potential,” Beams steers clear of polemics. “It’s All Around You,” especially envelopes and enfolds. Its string-swooping, gorgeously harmonized arrangements lift you up and out of the mess we’re in. “Childlike Empress” with its well-spaced blots of keyboard sound, its ghostly, tremulous singing, is an eerie elegy for the world’s natural beauty. The album is its own thing, but it might remind you of certain twang-adjacent Feelies side projects, Speed the Plough and Wild Carnation especially.

Jennifer Kelly

DELTAphase — Synced (Falling Elevators)

Process. DELTAphase founder Wilhelm Stegmeier contacts a disparate group of musicians and provides them with a key, beat, tempo for seven pieces of music and allows them complete stylistic and compositional freedom. Each of 10 musicians contributed to one or more of the seven pieces, without knowing who else was involved. Stegmeier, seeking synchronicities and serendipity, collates and adds to the contributions and collages them within the given parameters. Result. The musicians, Merran Laginestra, Beate Bartel, Thomas Wydler, Brendan Dougherty, Lucia Martinez, Antonio Bravo, Andreas Voss, Eleni Ampelakiotou, Dominik Avenwedde, Kilian Feinäugle and Stegmeier come from classical, jazz, electronic and post rock backgrounds, and the music occupies liminal interstices between and across genres. There’s lots of layered percussion, electronic backgrounds and guitar interplay from the squalling electric duel on “Phase Lock” to Bravo’s jazzy riffing on “One by One” which also features Laginestra’s impressionistic piano. That combination is a standout on an album that can occasionally meander into cul-de-sacs. Remote collaboration has become a commonplace since the pandemic but the caliber of the musicians here and Stegmeier’s skill in pulling their contributions together make Synced a fascinating exploration of compositional process.

Andrew Forell

Taylor Deupree — Sti.ll (Greyfade)

A recent microtrend involves making acoustic realizations of electronic compositions, the latest being a new version of Taylor Deupree’s lauded 2002 electroacoustic recording Stil. Sti.ll follows suit, with a reworking for acoustic instruments by Deupree and Joseph Branciforte. The bespoke Greyfade book that accompanies Sti.ll is handsome and contains a QR code to download the digital recording. The acoustic versions can sometimes fool you into thinking that you are listening to the original synth sounds, which is part of the game. “Stil.” is nearly twenty-minutes long, for vibraphone and bass drum. The vibes play both textural passages and, simultaneously, repeating dyadic melodies. The bass drum errs on the side of gentle effects rather than thwacking. Another standout track is “Temper,” for multiple clarinets and a shaker. The composition moves through a series of repeated intervals, descending fourth, ascending minor third, et cetera, with harmonic underpinning from the other clarinets and constant pulsation contributed by the shakers. Hard for clubbing, but these pieces would work quite well in a concert.

Christian Carey

Emma dj — Lay2g (Danse Noire)

Paris based Finnish producer Emma dj has the tendency to get distracted by novelty which interrupts the flow of this set and disrupts individual tracks often enough to leave the listener frustrated. If that’s the point, all well and good, but I suspect it’s not, which makes you wonder if this is all in service of the producer rather than the audience. That’s fine if there’s challenge in the music, which here, there is not. He collides bits and pieces of dance punk, chiptunes, video game soundtrack and the detritus of underground sub-sub genres into a messy mélange — a potluck casserole thrown together for a class reunion no one’s attending. It’s particularly annoying for the moments when, by design or serendipity, Emma produces a dish worth eating like “RR.dnk” for instance that sprays warped synth stabs against cowbell hi-hat, thumping kick drum and a stumbling bass line without succumbing to the over seasoning of vocal samples, jokey blips and burps or overwrought exhortations to dance. With a little more focus and balance, he may well produce something pretty good but this is only halfway there.

Andrew Forell

Incipient Chaos — S/T (I, Voidhanger)

There are times when some listeners just want a record of snarling, muscular black metal — thematics and scannable cultural politics be damned. If that sounds good to you, this new self-titled LP from French band Incipient Chaos rages and rips with all the right sorts of aggressivity. It seems that one takes chances with one’s ethics (if not one’s immortal soul) doing this sort of impulse listening in black metal: Is this NSBM? Does anyone have the skinny on that? Do we need to dig into the various “Is this band sketch” subreddits and descend into that 9th Circle of gossip-mongering and reaction? Lucifer smiles; so does Advance Publications. Is that a distinction without a difference? Meanwhile, we can note that Incipient Chaos has released this record on a politically reliable label, and while it’s unusual not to get a lyric sheet from I, Voidhanger (uh oh…), that may just be typical black metal shtick: the words are obscured because they are sooooo evil. Whatevs. The riffs are strong, if not world-changing, and the compositions have drama, if not overwhelming tragedy. Check out the guitar-centric middle portion of “Ominous Acid,” which is hugely satisfying. The down-tempo opening minutes of “Dragged Back from the Abyss” will remind you of the best of Aosoth. It’s all a lot of…fun?

Jonathan Shaw

Infinite River — Tabula Rasa (Birdman)

First came the space, now comes the rock. Infinite River’s first couple recordings had a definite COVID-era vibe to them. The Detroit-based ensemble started out as a trio, with Joey Mazzola and Gretchen Gonzales playing guitars and Warren Defever contributing tambura and a place to record. But a bliss-oriented drone might make less sense in a time when you can get out and play shows than it did when clubs were shut down and people didn’t want to go out than it does when stages are available and Steve Nistor, who drums for Sparks, is available to join in. Last year, Bryon Hayes invoked Windy & Carl and Mountains when describing Infinite Rivers’ Prequel; “Sky Diamon Raga,” the track that kicks off Infinite River, is more like an arena rock dream of Chris Forsyth’s “The Paranoid Cat.” Much of the time this record feels rather like the Raybeats negotiating production ideas of the 1990s and 2010s, which means that the guitar tones will have you scratching your head to remember what’s being reference and how it’s been changed, but that the snare drum takes up entirely too much sonic real estate. Tellingly, the best moments come when the production is dialed back and the melodies take over, as on a Ventures-does-Coltrane interpretation of “My Favorite Things.”

Bill Meyer

Will Laut — Will Laut (Wavetrap)

Producer Ivan Pavlov AKA COH has collaborated with John Balance and Cosey Fanni Tutti, and the sounds of Coil and Throbbing Gristle are clear influences on his new EP with singer William Laut. Shot through with the feeling of dancing towards doomsday, Laut’s haunted murmur wavers just on the right side of cynicism and sleaze as he sings of living through hate, looking for the redemption of love or at least an opportunity to forget even for a few moments. COH lays down a minimalist carpet of synths and drum machines that use TG’s “United” and Daniel Miller’s “Warm Leatherette” as templates. Most effective are the slow burn sarcasm of “Cryptoman” and the weary tango of “Wine of Love.” These are songs Brecht and Weill might have written if they had access to cheap keyboards and a primitive drum machine. Noirish, knowing and smart, the four songs on Will Laut are a speakeasy floorshow for the modern world. Highly recommended and hoping to hear more from this duo.

Andrew Forell

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini — Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important)

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like bubbles colliding in space and, concurrently, the often tense unpredictability of the human experience, makes these choices instead seem organic and well-considered. As the piece unfolds, the register of the pitch material makes a slow decline from the stratosphere to the ground floor with a simultaneous long decrescendo. The quartet are masterful musicians, unfazed by the challenge of playing long bowings and long-breathed harmonica chords simultaneously. The resulting sound world is shimmering, liquescent, and, surprising in its occasional metaphoric bubbles popping.

Christian Carey

#dusted magazine #dust #avalanche kaito #jennifer kelly #ayal senior #bryon hayes #beams #deltaphase #andrew forell #Taylor Deupree #christian carey #emma dj #incipient chaos #jonathan shaw #infinite river #bill meyer #will laut #Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard

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