#heard the line is a sample from Sonic CD

[mr-minkles]

Been listening to this beat on loop now 🔥

Inspired by 'Move it, boy', the unused character select music. Sad its unused, (along with many others) it goes so hard

Also ignore how ridiculously tall I made the noise

[taww]

Review: Furutech DSS-4.1 Speaker Cable & DPS-4.1 Power Cord

Furutech DSS-4.1 Speaker Cable & DPS-4.1 Power Cord

The Audiophile Weekend Warrior (TAWW)

TAWW Rating: 5 / 5

Attainable ultra-high-end performance.

PROS: Incredibly quiet, transparent and open-sounding; powerful and resolving frequency extremes; pure and organic midrange; fast and unfettered dynamics; remarkable sense of space.

CONS: Only sold in parts form, so you'll need to figure out termination; power cord can put some strain on jacks.

My first couple decades as an audiophile were relatively frugal. I bought a pair of used Merlin TSM speakers out of college that I used for 16 years. I rolled my own DIY speaker wire and bought $400 Sony and Onkyo CD players that I modified. My amplifier was a defective review sample that I repaired and got for pennies on the dollar. But after years of self-restraint, I started to slide down the slippery slopes of system upgrades. It started innocently enough with some used pieces... an Ayre integrated here, a Cambridge Audio streamer there... then came DAC upgrades, followed by nicer amplifiers, which naturally necessitated a better preamp. But things really took a turn for the crazy last year (I blame pandemic cabin fever) when speakers were upgraded to Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté, which then led to the Gryphon Essence preamp and amp. Along the way I picked up the excellent Audience Au24 SX cables which, combined with Audience powerChord SEi's and a hodgepodge of other wire from Cardas, DH Labs and Mogami, have held me over. But with the system now scaling new heights of resolution and realism, the cable upgrade itch needed scratching... which leads us to the Furutech DSS-4.1 speaker cables ($395/m bulk; $3,138 as tested) and DPS-4.1 power cord ($480/m bulk; $1,458 as tested). While that might seem pricey for wire, they’re positioned to deliver the kind of ultra high-end performance associated with far more extravagant products. Could they deliver on that promise in the new TAWW reference rig?

DIY Ultra High-end??

Furutech is a Japanese cable and accessory manufacturer known for their fanatical attention to material and construction quality. Their AC power components are particularly acclaimed, and the distinctive NCF-series AC plugs and outlets can be found on the finished products of many other high-end marques. Similar to how manufacturers like Dynaudio used to sell raw drivers to other manufacturers while also building complete loudspeakers, Furutech seems perfectly content with anyone in the industry using their parts while they also sell finished products. The enterprising audiophile looking to construct or upgrade their own gear can find Furutech components readily available for purchase, though be warned - there are apparently a large number of knock-offs being peddled as genuine Furutech on eBay and other online marketplaces, so you'll want to stick to an authorized distributor. Fortunately for us in the States, we can turn to reputable online stores such as Music Direct, The Cable Company, Douglas Connection or any number of authorized dealers. The very friendly Scot Markwell of Elite A/V Distribution, Furutech's US distributor, provided the units under review here.

The DSS-4.1 speaker and DPS-4.1 and power cable represent the very highest-end Furutech wire you can buy in bulk - anything fancier requires factory termination. The two are effectively the same cable design, with the DPS version adding the requisite third conductor for grounding. I got a heads up to the remarkable properties of the power cord from my late friend Marty DeWulf a couple years back. Marty had been quietly consulting with an electrical engineer specializing in high-voltage power line transmission to construct his own power cords from scratch, and had reached a point where he felt his DIY concoctions outperformed the dozens of pricey high-end cords he had tried over the years. Marty sent me a number of development prototypes and I can attest that the cord was indeed superb and elevated the performance of most every amp I had at my disposal. Marty was feeling pretty happy with his effort until Scot @ Elite AV sent him some Furutech samples to try out, including the DPS-4.1. Sure enough, the DPS-4.1 performed at a different level from anything else Marty had tried before, including his own creations, and recalibrated his expectations for power cords - it was that good.

I later picked up the DPS-4.1 cable myself, along with the Furutech e-TP80 power distributor he praised, and confirmed their high level of performance. My appetite was whetted and I got in touch with Scot about kitting out the new reference rig with Furutech speaker and power wire throughout. This includes DPS-4.1 power cords on everything save the DAC, a GTO-D2R power distributor (review forthcoming) and DSS-4.1 speaker cables. All my samples were terminated with Furutech’s top-shelf rhodium-plated connectors - NCF plugs on the power cords, locking bananas and spades on the speaker cable. For the Gryphon Essence power amp, I had a 1.5m DPS-4.1 power cable made with 20A connectors. Since the Audiovector SR 6 speakers have tri-wire terminals, Scot also provided bare-wire jumpers made from the same PCOCC copper employed in the finished cables.

Using Furutech's PCOCC wire as tri-wire jumpers

Buying the Furutech parts and assembling the cables oneself can yield a considerable savings vs. finished cables, and most enterprising DIY'ers should be able to manage the job. However proper termination is critical to performance and safety, especially for the power cord, so if you're in any doubt, ask a dealer such as Douglas Connection to terminate them for you. Excluding any such labor, the retail cost of my 2.5m set of DSS-4.1 speaker cables with CF-202 bananas and FP-201 spades is $3,138. The 1.5m DPS-4.1 power cable with the FI-50/50M NCF plugs runs $1,458. High-end prices to be sure, but as you'll see below, I'd have no hesitation using these in systems that many would kit with far more costly wire.

The massive IEC connector is gorgeous and fits surely, but will put some stress on your jacks

Handling-wise, I'd call both on the lighter end of "garden hose," neither supple nor particularly stiff. At 19mm (0.75") thick for the speaker cable and 17mm (0.67") for the power cord, they're substantial but manageable. They'll bend easily enough into gentle curves, but the power cord will put strain on the chunky plugs if not given a good amount of clearance so don't expect to cram it into tight spaces. The speaker cable comes with an attractive woven sheath; the power cord has a purple PVC jacket, but my cables were clad in a silver Techflex sleeve for a more finished look. Both have 11AWG conductors which should allow for plenty of current flow in a typical run, and the speaker cable's capacitance is rated at 51.7pF/m (15.6pF/ft) @ 1kHz. This is an exceptionally low figure - for comparison, Kimber Kable 8TC is rated at 346pF/m, while Cardas Clear is a whopping 912pF/m - nearly 18x the Furutech! The tradeoff is a higher inductance of 0.7µH/m, but at typical lengths the effect of this should be benign.

Furutech DSS-4.1 Speaker Cable

Before we begin: since it’s impossible to say what any one component sounds like in isolation, I made most of my comparisons of the Furutech DSS-4.1 to my current reference cable, the excellent Audience Au24 SX ($3,300/2m pair). I also had Cardas Clear Light, DH Labs Q-10 Signature and a few other things on hand, but given that the Audience is the best of what I had available and is closest in price to the Furutech, most of my comments are relative to the Audience.

The best way I can describe the sound of the Furutech cable is "wide open." Compared to other cables I've had at my disposal, swapping in the Furutech sounds equivalent to the visual effect of renovating your living room from normal-sized windows to floor-to-ceiling glass. Suddenly everything feels more open, airy and illuminated. Notice that I didn't say "brighter - there’s a difference. The Furutech allows more sonic light to pass into your listening room, so when the music is brilliant and luminous, your room is suitably illuminated. But once the sun sets, that wall of glass becomes as pitch black as the night sky - and so the Furutech can be quiet and dark when called for.

In less fanciful terms, the Furutech gives the feeling of extremely wide bandwidth with no attenuation of energy or dynamics across the frequency spectrum, particularly at the extreme highs and lows. This helps it unlock more of the capability of my recent system upgrades - the top-to-bottom dynamics of the Audiovector speakers and ultra-wide-bandwidth of the Gryphon separates. In the lower frequencies the Furutech is a big step up in bass energy and resolution, transmitting more of a recording's energy and tone in the bottom three octaves. Note that this is different from having “big” or “warm” bass - similar to my illumination vs. brightness comment above, those denote colorations that constantly tilt the perceived spectral balance in a certain direction. There is no lower frequency hump or resonance here that could sound favorable on first listen but get a little monotonous in the long run. The Furutech simply allows what’s present in the signal to be transmitted more unimpeded than I have heard before in my system. This gives music tremendous “surprise” factor - it can go from ethereal to thunderous in a heartbeat. And this applies not just when used on the big Audiovectors; it's also a quality I heard on a scaled-back system with the Silverline SR17 Supreme 2-way monitors.

The top end has a similar level of transparency and dynamism, revealing all sorts of harmonics and textures as well as the air and ambience of the venue with striking transparency. Triangle, cymbals, trumpet, violin, and harpsichord are a few examples of instruments with complex high-frequency structure that sound exceptionally realistic via the DSS-4.1. At first, I felt the treble of the Furutech was a bit coarser vs. the Audience, which I have always found to be notably smooth and natural. I initially ascribed this to break-in, and gave the wire a couple hundred hours with a 4 ohm dummy load to try to burn it off. It improved, but it still had a bit of lingering grain. With time, two things became apparent: this cable takes a REALLY long time to break in - things kept getting smoother and smoother over the next couple hundred hours - and the Furutech simply refuses to cover anything up. Once I made the substantial upgrade to the Gryphon Essence combo I realized that grain was mostly endemic to my previous components, which were no slouches themselves - we’re talking all Class A discrete electronics from Pass Labs and Valvet. That just shows you the level of resolution the Furutech brings into play.

Once integrated into a system of even higher caliber, the Furutech sounded close to invisible, with great openness, clarity and detail from top to bottom and little discernible artifact. That said, at some points I did adjust the top end a bit by moving the Furutech's connection to the Audiovector speakers from the tweeter terminal to the midrange terminal. When connected to the tweeter terminal as per Audiovector recommendation (and my standard practice with other cables), things could get a hair bright, and some of the aforementioned coarseness would pop up now and again. Again, the Furutech was just telling it like it was, because later after further improvements to the system (a dedicated 20A power line, IsoAcoustics Gaia feet, breaking in the latest firmware on the PS Audio DAC), the top end sweetened and I was able to return the cables to the tweeter terminal for best transparency. In my system's current state, the Furutech brings out a top end that's wonderfully sweet, extended and natural.

A few other standout aspects bear mentioning. One is the sheer size of the soundstage, both in width and depth. I'm not sure exactly how components that have no effect on actual channel separation can affect the perceived width of the stage so much. Maybe it's a phase thing, maybe it's low level resolution that helps with ambient retrieval, maybe it's dynamic capability to bring out instruments that tend to be at the edges of the stage... whatever it is, the Furutech is able to convey a stage of substantial depth, width and dynamism. Another standout is the Furutech’s ability to convey dynamic contrasts. This is a quiet and fast cable that responds adroitly to the most minute changes in dynamic character, conveying both the undulations of a quiet melody and the surge of an orchestral climax with great color and intensity. Finally, the midrange is wonderfully dense, pure and harmonically complete, with great solidity in the lower range. Unlike many audiophile cables that provide lots of detail and speed at the expense of fullness or balance, the Furutech can better most comers in the "hifi" aspects while bringing out all the natural warmth of a great acoustic recording. Baritones, grand pianos, french horns and celli have never sounded better.

By comparison, the Audience Au24 SX is still a wonderful if more midrange-centric cable. Its slightly laid-back perspective and silkier treble are appealing for a variety of systems, particularly those on the forward side of neutral. There's a roundness and sweetness to the midrange, but at the expense of sounding a hair more congealed, bunching instruments together on a narrower stage. It also isn’t quite as responsive to quick and subtle dynamic contrasts, and the top end isn't as realistic and extended. Prior to hearing the Furutech the Audience was actually one of the best cables I had heard in many of these regards, so we're already talking about a very high level of performance here. And compared to something like the Cardas Clear Light, the Furutech was far more resolving while having a warmer, purer midrange and a sweeter treble.

The DSS-4.1 is an exceptionally transparent, balanced and complete speaker cable that can bring greater levels of realism and naturalness to a commensurate system. It delivers the type of detail and energy one would expect from an ultra high-end wire, but in an honest and unforced manner that draws one to the qualities of the source material and music without distraction. The net musical result is music has wider variation in color, texture, nuance and ultimately emotional impact - or as another reviewer put it, "expressiveness is their strong point."

Furutech DPS-4.1 Power Cord

Remarkably (or perhaps not?), virtually all the qualities that the DSS-4.1 exhibits as a speaker cable also shine through with the DPS-4.1 as a power cord. My longstanding reference is also an Audience cable - the moderately priced powerChord SE-i ($930/6 ft). It’s an incredibly consistent performer that imparts greater body, dynamics and life to most any component vs. a stock cord, not to mention a good number of aftermarket ones.

Compared to the Audience powerChord, again, the Furutech felt wide-open, more transparent and better balanced. The powerChord was a bit meatier in the mid bass and slightly sweeter on the top end - certainly more forgiving, but a little filtered compared to the Furutech. The Furutech also had a much wider and better-spaced soundstage; I won't say "twice as wide and 3x as deep" or anything with such false precision, but it certainly felt significantly bigger, with a lot more air between instruments and a stage that consistently spread beyond the width of the speakers. On pop mixes, this exhibited as stereo reverb and hard-panned effects that popped much more distinctly. Compared to the Audience and anything else I had on hand, the Furutech allowed whatever was plugged into it to transmit more recorded nuance with a sense of effortless transparency, particularly at the frequency extremes.

But like any cable regardless of quality, the Furutech wasn't the best match for everything I had on hand. I found the Audience cable more competitive with the PS Audio DAC; the Valvet A4 Mk.II monoblocks have a bit of upper midrange shine that was slightly prominent with the Furutech; and with the Class D Legacy i·v2 amplifier it was actually the very affordable Audience Forte that clicked better than the rest. But otherwise, the Furutech really shone with the majority of preamps and amps I tried, especially anything Pass Labs.

With the Gryphon Essence preamp, switching from the Furutech back to the Audience wasn’t a huge let-down by any means. And at first blush, the Audience sounded a bit more dense and focused than the Furutech, particularly in the lower midrange. But a few notes into Billie Eilish's "iomilo" [Qobuz] I realized what I was hearing as density was actually a bit of congestion, and the soundstage was quite a bit narrower than with the Furutech... everything sounded a bit more congealed around the center image of Eilish's voice. With the Furutech, the Gryphon preamp was able to eerily float effects around the entire space of the front of my living room, with percussion flourishes sprinkled throughout the track twinkling in ethereal fashion. With the Audience, everything lost some luster and became more confined between the speakers, and the frequency extremes lost some speed and impact. The DPS-4.1 cable really unleashed the wide-bandwidth capabilities of my system, maximizing both the epic bass depth, power and control of the Gryphon electronics as well as the purity and extension of the Audiovector's AMT tweeters. None of this is meant to beat up on the Audience, which costs about half as much as the Furutech and remains one of my favorite cords, but rather to elucidate how a cord like the Furutech can further elevate the performance of a system. At some point, I'll have to get around to trying Audience's latest models, such as the Studio ONE powerChord (closer in price) or the FrontRow (though that one costs 3x as much as the Furutech).

Testing the DPS-4.1 with the Gryphon Essence stereo amplifier was a bit trickier due to the need for a 20 amp IEC connector, so I special-ordered one for this purpose. Once set up, the Furutech rewarded me with incredible detail, an ultra-wide and deep soundstage that extended far beyond my walls, deep and impactful bass response and a heightened sense of purity - the "blackness" between the notes. Transients were immaculate, with perfectly clean attacks and decays - not excessively sharp, not softened, but just natural and energetic. This helped create the sense of greater macro and micro dynamic range; lots of subtle shadings and nuances in the music became clearer, while sudden transients were more explosive. There was a greater sense of both calm and energy with everything, where quiet moments felt finer and more delicate, while pops of energy in the performance burst forward with an effortless impact more akin to the live event. Separation, pitch, and articulation of bass notes were made more exceptional as well. It brought out the more rarefied capabilities of ultra high-end gear like the Gryphon - that ability to hear every element of a performance distinctively, yet perfectly integrated into the overall fabric of the music. All these qualities came to the fore listening to complex, dynamic material such as Strauss Don Juan [Qobuz]. I was struck by just how much clearer a window the Furutech gave into the dense, at times cacophonous orchestration, while making tranquil moments such as the idyllic oboe solo even more delicate and nuanced. The overall performance of the Gryphon + Furutech pairing was exceptional.

One combo where the Furutech power cord worked even better than the speaker cable was with the Pass Labs XA30.5 amplifier. With the DSS-4.1 speaker cable, there was a bit of a tradeoff where the enhanced resolution revealed some of the shortcomings of the amp vs. the more refined (and expensive) Gryphon Essence. However the DPS-4.1 power cord was dynamite with the Pass, helping maximize its dynamics and balance out its midrange warmth with bottom-end impact and top-end extension. The Pass Labs XP10 line stage also never sounded better than with the Furutech cord, with improved dynamics, soundstaging and clarity. The lack of noise and grain further strengthened the quietness, purity and sweetness that many find so endearing of Class A gear. The outstanding synergy with the Pass Labs components makes the Furutech DPS-4.1 cord about as no-brainer a recommendation as I can make for any Pass owner.

Conclusion

The Furutechs were remarkably consistent in their sonic impact. Both the speaker and power cables impart a wide-open feeling, with striking resolution at the frequency extremes, powerful low-end response, highly agile dynamics, super low noise floor and no readily-discernible coloration. They are extremely fast and clean without curtailing any sweetness or richness intrinsic to the music. Both cables are a tad more forward than my Audience reference wire, the Au24 SX speaker cable and powerChord SE-i power cord. There’s a hair more upper midrange energy and treble resolution that will require care with some systems, though it’s less prominent than, say, something with silver or silver-plated conductors such as DH Labs Q-10 or Nordost Valhalla. And the power cord in particular took the extension and resolving power of my system to a different level. They both strike me as reference-caliber cables, exacting enough to round out a tweaked-out $100k system, yet balanced enough to elevate something more modest, with plenty of headroom to grow into more ambitious gear. In particular, if you have a system with significant extension at the frequency extremes, they’ll help extract the most out of those capabilities. And as well as they work with my reference Gryphon separates, I absolutely love how they elevate Pass Labs gear, enhancing their intrinsic warmth and musicality with greater clarity, dynamics and precision. They'll be staying in the system for the long haul as a TAWW reference cable. Very highly recommended!

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude reviewing -

John Wiese - Deviate From Balance

Released on 15 June 2015 by Gilgongo Records

Reviewed format: CD album

Connected listening - there are various ways to order a selection of John Wiese’s further discography. The Helicopter mail-order stocks various John Wiese releases as well as Sissy Spacek releases and releases by by John Wiese in collaboration with associates, you can find it here: https://helicopter.storenvy.com/collections/924921-john-wiese

Several solo releases by John Wiese are also available on physical and digital format from his Bandcamp page here: https://johnwiese.bandcamp.com

Many releases on Gilgongo Records are available on physical format through their mail-order store here: https://gilgongorecords.storenvy.com

After looking at one of Sissy Spacek’s recent new albums Featureless Thermal Equilibrium in the previous Polar Visions Amplitude it’s time today for the first of two follow-up reviews in which in this case we’re focussing first on one of John Wiese’s past solo albums, Deviate From Balance. Released back in 2015 on both a 2 LP vinyl package as well as a CD version on James Fella’s label Gilgongo Records our look is on the CD version which features the packed 79 minute album in full and what a collection of pieces it is. While the Sissy Spacek album showcases John Wiese’s talent in mixing Grindcore aggression with monolithic Noise screeches as well as maxing out the energy throughout, Deviate From Balance showcases John’s more restrained side in a collection of 10 tracks encompassing mostly live recorded compositions and improvisations that are leaning more towards intense choppy sound collages and noisy electro-acoustic interplay of acoustic and electric instrumentation with John’s electronics with a more conceptual edge to them. However while some of the titles of the 10 pieces suggest a somewhat philosophical or technical meaning behind these pieces, listening to these reveals a much more playful and raw sense of composition and performances from John and all musicians and artists involved in this album. Whilst John’s sound can be related to Free Improvisation, his rapid-fire editing and manipulation of sonic material on this album is much more complex and dazzling than many other artists and carries John’s signature knack for surprise, high frequency distortion crunches as well as shifting and abusing lo-fi sound recording equipment and electronics in as many ways as possible, almost as if they turn into crumbling fragile rocks. Disintegrating broken sound and dadaist absurdist humour is a recurring theme in John’s sound, making for an album that is much more enjoyable than overly academic contemporary Tape Music can be at times. Besides John’s sonics the involved musicians on this album are definitely an important element that adds many rich colours to the 10 pieces, featuring musicians like guitar virtuoso Oren Ambarchi, violin artist Jon Rose, sampling expert David Shea and drum machine musician Ikue Mori as well as many others. Before we’re diving deep into the 10 tracks on Deviate From Balance, let’s have a look at the packaging design of the CD version. The CD comes in a neat glossy oversized gatefold sleeve showcasing John Wiese’s minimalist design, artwork as well as a very colourful artist photo of John by Martin Escalante on the back. In terms of artwork I do like the photo-collages and art pieces on the inside of the gatefold a bit more than the cover this time as while the cover does highlight the general collaged, choppy nature of the album well in a visual manner, its subdued grayscale grainy images aren’t as striking as John Wiese’s other album covers but still, it’s a decent cover and the typography is quite stylish and repeats on the spine in a similar manner. The aforementioned imagery on the inside of the gatefold showcases both grayscale abstract art in the form of archaeological artefact style fragments on the left panel as well as a film roll like photo collage of a rather disturbed looking lady blowing up a balloon. The abstract images are a bit similar to the album cover though with darker and more distinct contrast but the photo collage also adds another good visual reference to the packaging regarding the tracks themselves in that balloon like squealing and screeching can be heard on some of the pieces and it also seems to refer to the album’s quite off the wall type of abstract humour. The left panel additionally features all album credits neatly laid out so you can find out all about the involved artists and recording locations plus sources. The CD itself comes in a convenient little black envelope with plastic protection and features a more LP like label design featuring simply the artist name, album title and Gilgongo label logo, somewhat similar to a Japanese mini-LP replica package. Now that we’ve looked at the package, let’s pop in the CD and dig in.

Deviate From Balance starts with Wind Changed Direction which is one of the most atmospheric pieces on the album. The piece blends organ like drone, chopped up distorted recordings of what sounds like children’s voices, machinery as well as other Industrial noises together to form a quite surreal mysterious soundscape. Quite like the title suggests the music sounds quite like you’re floating through the clouds right after the wind has changed direction. The drone feels both calming but also a notch ominous whilst the auto-panned chops of sound are both vaguely abstract and at times recognisable with John varying between distorted and resonant shards of crunchy sound and cleaner metallic elements. The voice samples hint somewhat at sonified memories, they sound like fragments from the past, conversations or event you might remember from childhood though the actual words are unrecognizable. This first piece is definitely one of the most straight-forward compositions on here in terms of structure with the drone both introducing and rounding off the piece as in both cases it eventually fades into the background. A quite lush start of the album. Following piece 356 S. Mission Rd continues the soundscape like approach but in a more ominous manner sounding quite like a cross of dark sounding orchestral music samples with strange hollow metallic resonances and washy shifting noises. The metallic resonances bring plenty of subdued Industrial shine to the piece but the aforementioned orchestral samples are what draws me into this piece the most as the screechy dissonant strings combined with ever so slightly differently timed horn crescendo suggest an ever apparent danger which is getting closer but just like in an abstract nightmare is stuck in a loop with the danger never reaching further than a certain indiscernible point. The shifting noise elements add some rawness to the piece which suggests some kind of turntable manipulations going on in the piece, a lovely brooding collage piece this is. Segmenting Process For Language, the next piece, is where things start to get more chaotic and free-wheeling though still very much controlled. The track featuring a live performance recorded at East Brunswick Club in Melbourne, Australia consists of wild and inspired mixtures of saxophone, (junk) objects, percussion, drums, guitar and noise as the musicians move into always differing “segments” made up of shards of sound, wildly swirling melodies, chords and tones. This does make for quite some literal clashes of sound but rather than being one of the more random sounding Free Improv performances the sections of interplay follow a much more recognisable structure in that certain droning tones as well as feedback lays somewhat of a base underneath the bursts of sonic mayhem. Whilst there are a whole lot of things happening in this recording I would like to name a few particularly enjoyable bits. These include the short bursts of squelchy synth swirls, resonant ground vibrating feedback laden noise, the hilarious goofy but still playful wordless vocalisations spat out by the musicians but also the at times disturbing dissonant chords which are formed and culminate in an absurdly, almost 50’s Horror film soundtrack like waves of organ droning at the ending of the piece after which we can hear the only applause that could be fit in on the tightly edited CD. An inventive juxtaposition of out of the blue musical absurdism with the more dadaist lightning strike like approach of collage based Harsh Noise carrying John’s seal of quality. The next track Superstitious does match its title rather well in terms of the sounds within and it’s the most Noise focussed piece on Deviate From Balance though still more along the lines of a layered soundscape. After the instrumental interplay of Segmenting Process For Language we’re back to a more noticeably composed piece which moves through various phases emitting a definite ambience of superstition through somewhat disturbing concrete sounds, noise and tones. Its beginning featuring chopped and quite heavily scrambled recordings of a scared woman wailing as well as various other waves of distorted sound and tone overtime moves to the climax of the piece which is an extended section of the aforementioned noise from by a nicely low end grounded stream of screechy sound featuring especially piercing high frequency sound manipulations quite like some kind of dystopian alien machinery, though your interpretation might definitely be much different. Regardless of how you interpret it, the piercing noise does give off quite an intense feeling of dread and fear and while the sounds used in the piece are sometimes somewhat recognisable, like dirt like crumbling sounds, coffee cups, car related sounds etc., again they’re manipulated and structured in such shifting and distorted manners that they feel like sudden waves of mind imagery than things you can really grab onto. The finale of the piece in which John frequency manipulates a continuous tone is quite gripping too and Superstitious as a whole sounds quite like both a physical and mind gripping piece. Cafe OTO is the track that follows and it’s obviously a live recording that was made at Cafe OTO. Moving back to the more improvisation based style of collaborative group performances that John Wiese has done together with other musicians this piece has a more continuous flow of sonic events and instrumental interplay and a generally might lighter edge to it than some of the other pieces. Especially the percussion blended with effect manipulations and saxophone performances are particularly good on here with percussion clattering, clinking, jumping around the room in quite hilarious surprising manners moving from crystal like tinkling to shells and wooden percussion whilst the saxes wildly swirling melody lines and screeches form sweet tonal abstraction that are wild but not going overboard and staying well in tune with the other elements of the performances. The “spat” out vocalisations are quite matching with the saxophone performance and whilst somewhat more subtle for most of the recording, there’s also some tasty, albeit less abrasive crashes of objects near the end of the recording. Again, John Wiese’s talent in highly abstract but always varied and uncompromising electronics and instrumental performances combined with the excellent inspired energy of all musicians that appears in his group performances shines through with the fun and details in the layers created making this suitable for many repeat listens. The following track Battery Instruments (Stereo) does work quite like an extension of the sounds from the Cafe OTO recording, though in a bit more minimalistic fashion being made up of mostly small, clicky and quite sounds. A collage of instrument, objects, electronics as well as short vocal bursts the piece puts the freely moving aspect of John Wiese’s group pieces into more of microscopic lowercase territory. It’s the shortest piece of the album at 2:12 minutes and works as kind of transition from Cafe OTO to the quite abrasive walkman Noise collage piece Memaloose Walkman, showcasing various crackling, scraping, spiky sonic details, a mysterious subdued drone as well as some quite tasteful bass string scratchings all panned quite widely (as this was originally a multi-channel piece). A sweet short piece this one. The aforementioned piece Memaloose Walkman then follows and it’s quite straight-forward in nature consisting of a mono tape collage of various recordings of gunshots. Besides splices and perhaps a bit of pitch adjustment there’s not much manipulation added to this but as a Noise piece it’s quite effective letting you hear the different swishing phased textures of shots from various guns as well as some bits of talk and music in between with a layer of crunchy saturation on top of everything. Simple but effective. Afterwards Dramatic Accessories continues within the Noise territory as a piece of quite a lot of instrument / object and especially turntable abuse featuring quite a lot of bassy and wild distorted screeches mixed with chopped recordings all presented through some crazy panning. One that will especially please harsh heads, within Dramatic Accessories there are various sections in which John and the other artists involved use all kinds of methods to create a variety of sounds ranging from the shifting kind of turntable warble, clicks, grating washes of distortion, chunks of feedback, amp hiss and metallic ringing. However whilst there are a lot of distorted sonic events happening within this piece, there is some sense of dynamics within however, created by the wild panning as well as shifting the phase and using some of the room acoustics and feedback of equipment to create some loud / softer / loud sections leaving some headroom for the sounds to not fully max out and become a bit overblown. The garbled object and instrument chops are clattering around often but strange distorted disturbing recordings of voices are also thrown in the mix making for an at times frightening but thrilling ride of unpredictable sounds. One element that is recurring throughout the wildly fluttering barrages of different sounds are certain grounded tones that bring forth some kind go base for all sounds to lean on as they continue changing in at times rapid manners. All in all Dramatic Accessories is another enjoyable sonic ride on Deviate From Balance in which rich and uncompromising textures are brought out in memorable ways through some fine inspired performances from all people involved. Solitaire follows, which is one of the two longest and final pieces on Deviate From Balance, at 11:15 minutes. In terms of approach the piece is somewhat similar to Dramatic Accessories but with the difference that rather than using vinyl, tape is being used here as one of the elements that create the various sounds within the piece. Solitaire follows a more continuous structure than other pieces on Deviate From Balance in that it’s mostly based on a set of repeating patterns within it's structure acting a bit like the compositional and performance equivalent of mechanical processes. Whereas Dramatic Accessories featured experiments with both clean and distorted sounds, Solitaire moves more into a quite crunchy rough direction featuring shards of chopped up instrument and music recordings, junk objects, voices as well a various especially percussive and resonant concrete sounds that ever continue to change in form. These repetitive patterns do give some kind of rhythmic drive to the piece but change often enough to not become sampler like and are more akin warbled broken tapes as the recordings are mercilessly abused through speed manipulations and ever increasing distortion. This is combined with a constant shift of stereo phase, through which on headphones you get the idea that the shards of sound are flying over your head and are forming 3D shapes in between your ears. A great listening experience which even works as the distortion gets quite murky and harsh nearing the end of the piece. Whilst the pattern style, on the fly pitch warbles and crunching noises carries on throughout, it’s great how some depth is slowly forming near the end of the piece, in which soft ticking percussive bits are being scattered between out ears and rimshot like ticking sounds are added for nice clean percussive accents. A very fluid piece in terms of progression and sound work which shows that whilst John Wiese’s solo and band works might at times sound very free-flowing and chaotic, he’s always got quite some noticeable control and focus within every piece, inspired and always different. Final piece Segmenting Process (Oregon) is indeed somewhat related to the earlier Segmenting Process For Language although in the case of this recording the segmenting of the several parts of the piece is even more clear. Being the longest piece on Deviate From Balance at 21:45 minutes the piece is also one of the most introspective and “organized” sounding tracks on the album as in here we can find the by now familiar mixture of acoustic, electric instrumentation with both electronic sounds and manipulations but also a more restrained approach to the Noise elements John Wiese has explored in various ways in most tracks before this one. Rather than almost overtaking the non-electronic instrumentation either through loudness or sharp (harsh) frequencies, the Noise is more in tune with the instrumentation as being a part of a blend of various sonic elements. This is also helped by the fact that with the larger group setting featuring brass, percussions, drums and more the piece required a larger venue to be performed which gives the piece some welcome acoustic space, adding some room ambience and keeps the piece nicely dynamic. Sounding most similar in approach to Electroacoustic Improvisation the pieces segments blending vibrant instrumental performances which vary from fluttering percussive tones, noises as well as more drone focussed falling and rising tones with crackling, noisy, humming, distorted, sample based and glitchy electronics sound quite like the piece is based on a mixture of dreams. Like a sonic interpretation of a dream world the piece moves from segment to segment with all of them featuring somewhat recognisable sounds like the instruments themselves or voices mixed with shaped abstract noises but everything carries some kind of mystery within it, which is especially caused by the somewhat unnerving textures created by the brass instruments within the performance. The absurdist humour element is still apparent within the piece however with at times goofy squeaky noises, drum kit hits, tinkling bells and other pointy bits of abstract sound keeping things nicely playful and light but still powerful as always. The flow of the piece also helps to keep things captivating and interesting throughout as its length might take some listeners a bit to get into it but with so many different events happening throughout there’s never any idleness in here. And with this last piece I’m getting into the conclusion of this review of John Wiese’s Deviate From Balance. I award this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 85 dB, recommending you to definitely check out this album. Deviate From Balance showcases both John Wiese’s compositional and performance talents through a varied selection of recordings in which you can hear John’s approach in various settings ranging from surreal sound collages, Noise infused instrumental improvisations to rough tape manipulation and Electroacoustic Improvisation. Never resorting to mere academic musical studies John Wiese’s pieces on Deviate From Balance keep hitting the ears and mind in excellent and inspiring manners and will be a great discovery for fans of free spirited contemporary music, both analog and digital based sound collage works, (Harsh) Noise fans as well as anyone into inspired improvised music and will be a great addition to the collection of fans of John Wiese and Sissy Spacek.

Deviate From Balance is available on CD from Gligongo Records mail-order store here: https://gilgongorecords.storenvy.com/products/20648396-john-wiese-deviate-from-balance-cd-gggr-077

[alchemisland]

Mike’s list of Irish punk bangers

Recently I’ve been attempting to recall the results of a certain patch-decked census, namely the list of one-off punk bands I’ve seen over the years. Next came another, more troubling thought: if tomorrow morning a hemorrhage turned my wits to water, who would wrest this mantle and detail those defunct Irish punk and metal bands who split without leaving behind a recording? If not I, then who?

Rather than spouting a list of band names so unheard as to seem almost religiously profane when uttered aloud, I recall only the time when conjuring a selection suchlike was easy and did not require considerable aforethought, which counts as work and is thus un-punk. 

Perhaps it’s misremembrance which worries most. 

Striving to immortalize these rarities which, like rare nightbugs, enter one’s ear and soon thereafter die, I will compile these annals myself. I’ve opted for a regular selection of arbitrary Irish underground and alternate tunes. Mostly punk and extreme metal, although there’s post-punk, bassy weirdness, drone, rock&roll and hip hop throughout.

I haven’t yet considered breakdown metrics. By subgenre or county of origin perhaps, but that’s for a future iteration to say. Just count your good sense badges and be glad I didn’t use the originally planned ‘Pale Shadows’ and ‘From the Bog’ headings for Dublin and rest-of-country songs respectively.

From the forge of Hephaestus to your plateless breast, three of my favourite underground Irish songs:

Violins is Not the Answer - Sick

Unless someone’s asking what luthiers make, Violins is Not the Answer. However, Violins were someone’s answer when they tore the tucked shirt off Galway punkdom with their raucous 2011 debut Green Diesel and Poitin. It’s a time-tested sob story of Irish scene cohesion that lets so fresh a band go unnoticed, unhailed and handsomely unkempt outside their home county; it’s this exact myopia, although antipode, which confined Lovecraft in Rhode Island and left Howard’s hypothalamus on the dash under a Cross Plains sun. 

Aside from the band themselves, I doubt there’s another  person alive who has heard this album more than I. I’ve proudly flown that battered, cider-stained flag throughout a local and global invasion until Violins, not 42, became the answer, at least for me.

Has it really been that long? Eight years on it still excites much as the first time. Its engine-revving opening track conjures images of sputtering roadsters chewing the starting line of a Mad Max outback race, while the final upstroked riddums of its GBH-esque closer Sick promises the tinny best of Shitty Limits alongside the sombre heights of FNM’s Midlife Crisis.

Guitars that sound like they’re being played with chainmail’d fingers, vorpal bass tapping, ska pick it ups to HxC stick it ups (middle fingers in this instance), Green Diesel crams a maelstrom of alt genres into a curt 26-ish minute runtime. Ben’s phlegm-tinged vocals lead the sonic vanguard, bolstered and occasionally shelved in favour of fireman-cum-drummer Donal’s softer warble on cryptid welfare anthem Vampire on the Dole.

Sick is my favourite tune. The song, the album’s only track exceeding a three minute runtime, combines everything that makes Violins worth ear-time in the epoch of overchoice. Although Class Ayes and Dickheads Picnic deliver the nutkicks exactly how frontman Ben, of Psychopigs, Hardcore Priests and Doppelskangerz fame, wants them delivered, Sick offers a sample book of greatness to come across two recorded albums. Containing an otolaryngologist-approved mix of harsh shouting and actual singing, Ben’s disarming foghorn timbre sweeps us slowly toward the finish after a suppressing fire of growled insistence, “You ain’t never gonna come//between me and my bottle.”

Fans of short time good time are well served with riffy tunes in the vein of punchier Propagandhi songs, albeit playfully apolitical. Littered with in-jokes and avowedly pro substance, these tracks stink of fun in the studio, a subterranean lodge affectionately christened the Fritzl Bunker. Even angry songs fizz with youthful energy. It makes me want to drink malibu from a shoe in GG Allin’s house. It rouses me to a bubbling zenith of bacchic hedonism which Andrew W.K. can’t hold a candle to. 

There’s much here not found elsewhere; adjoining on Keytar Mr Jimmy Penguin of Skratch Games fame, his genius confined only by the breadth of his current interest; also the album’s producer. You can tell Jimmy put work on this record. Every groove is warm and tipped to perfect balance with just the right amount of hiss; right in the sense that it’s sometimes wrong. 

Since disbanded, there’s two albums worth of raw riffage to enjoy. From Refused rip-offs and Exploited shouts-outs to Elvis Costello tracks played backwards, find this album, buy a CD and tell your Granny this picnic is for dickheads.

I’m rambling. Violins is not the Answer. For my money, the best punk band in Ireland post 2010.

https://violinsisnottheanswer.bandcamp.com/track/sick

Divisions Ruin - Srebrenica/Merely Existing

I won’t lie. Much like a former athlete whose varsity gout impeded athletic excellence, I’ve had to settle here. I wanted the track Srebrenica from Division Ruin’s side of the Easpa Measa split - another band we’ll encounter later, or if not here than absolutely in future installments, should they ere be writ. 

I have the vinyl. Whenever I want to sonically experience withstanding a carpet bombing, I stick the needle down, turn the table over, sit in the lotus position and wait for oblivion. This track absolutely slays. The opening riff, an atomic discharge of heavy bass, distorted guitar and technical drumming from the scene stalwart and filler-player-extraordinaire John K, sears the ears, and one might be forgiven for touching that dial. Then the vocals come. Impassioned howls from the furious maw of Cirarot, which sound almost prehistoric in their primal ferocity. With my eyes closed, I feel the cymbal crashes like great waves and imagine people of the dawn age battling terrible beasties, although I’m not sure if she’s the lizard or its prospective prey. 

Although all their recorded tracks offer something for filth-seekers, I struggled to find another which accurately conveyed with sufficient brutality the blunt force flavour Srebrenica proffers. However you locate this song, ensure you’ve your iodine pills to hand; shit is about to get nuclear. In lieu of an active link, here’s another hefty slab from the same split.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARGqt0r_cVg

Easpa Measa- Vargold

B-side of the Divisions Ruin split, Easpa Measa deliver a cleaner, dare I say, more mature crust experience. Less raw but equal in ferocity, Easpa Measa’s Eric’s howls are twisted as the metal he contorts for his angry punky art, conjuring images of Ireland with reintroduced wolves.

We picture them on the plain, endemic of wider wildness among the populace. However you fall on the lupine legacy of Eireann’s isle, Easpa Measa deliver perfect high kicks on every tier. Riffs, loud bass and amazing drumming from Ken Sweeney, another scene stalwart also of Harvester fame, while Clodagh’s vocals, whose shrieking ire can only be matched by the shipwrecking songs of the sirens themselves, compliment Eric’s baleful howls.

Bring back the wolf indeed. Although so many years since its release the band have disbanded with ne’er a wolf attendant at a single show, this song’s singular ferocity more than accounts for any deficit of wolfnishness on the island. Don’t miss this amazing video from their final show, alongside the Freebooters at the Boh’s club in Dublin, with bonus front row Mike Dempsey (that’s me!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wIQC6wk7sY

If you like this list or the tunes therein, let me know your thoughts and why they activated your nodding lever. 

If other bands are close to your heart but far from the zeitgeist, comment or PM with appropriate links and I’d be glad to include your suggestion.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this short post. I’ll have interesting content by the fishgut bucketload in 2020, but should/hope to have one more live before yuletide at least. 

Please drop a like and share this post with your favourite PUNX. Give them the gift of Violins this Christmate. An early stocking filler to ensure the loyalty of nephews and nieces come the post-yule divorce news, here’s an.. Important music video I made for their track Dickheads Picnic.

[liugeaux]

Linkin Park - Albums Ranked

I’ve written about Linkin Park before. It was following the death of Chester Bennington and mostly covered my mixed emotions about death. I’ve never really talked about how much I truly love the band’s work. Its been over 2 years since Chester passed and I think I‘m finally ready to dive back into the LP catalog whole-hog. As a young 17-year-old when Hybrid Theory came out  I was the right age to fall in love with everything LP was doing. Their first two albums, the unreleased debut EP and the remix collection Reanimated were permanent fixtures in my CD case. It was a time of angry white guy music and LP were literally the best at the craft.  

I’ve followed them VERY closely ever since and have always had strong opinions about each one of their albums. It's finally time to sit down, seriously critique each one and give my definitive ranking of LP’s LPs. For this list, we won’t include the aforementioned EP or any remix albums or live releases. I also won’t be including any of the many LP Underground CDs. As fun as those releases are, there are only 7 albums that actually matter. Here they are ranked from 7 to 1.    

#7 - The Hunting Party

After a couple of experimental albums, 2014′s The Hunting Party was seen as Linkin Park’s conscious effort to make a heavier, more metal record. While technically they succeeded, the results were mixed at best. Much of the metal feels forced and sometimes awkward. The lead single “Guilty All the Same” stands alone as the worst lead single in the band’s catalog. Not to say its all bad, “All For Nothing” is a legit classic and an example of LP’s strength as a “metal” act. Ultimately, It’s a gutsy album that falls flat more often than not.  

#6 - Living Things

Back when Living Things was released I wanted to like it so badly. The lead single “Burn It Down” was reminiscent of the LP sound of earlier albums and “Lost in the Echo” really resonated with me. However, they had not shed the more experimental ideas adopted on their previous album. The result was a half-hearted experiment that couldn’t seem to commit to a direction. If you were to tell me Living Things is a collection of trashed B-sides from the previous 2 albums, I would completely believe you. Even when I revisit the album I’m left with a feeling of disappointment because it could have been so good.  

#5 - One More Light

One More Light gets a bad wrap. Is it a pop album? Yes. Does that bother me? No! Should it bother you? Absolutely not! After The Hunting Party, this is exactly the album Linkin Park needed. It’s their most emotional work since Minutes to Midnight and track to track the album is immensely therapeutic. Despite most of the lyrics being your typical sad LP affair, there’s an underlying joy to the whole project. Like the band finally felt unburdened by their reputation and was making the music they wanted to make. "Sorry For Now” even sees Shinoda and Bennington pseudo swapping the rapper/singer roles. It’s really the first album where Shinoda’s singing feels natural. I’m not saying I wanted to see a new career direction, with LP making pop albums for a decade, but for that moment in time and taking into consideration the devastating events following its release, One More Light might be the perfect album.  

#4 - A Thousand Suns

A Thousand Suns was LP’s first big shake-up of the established formula. The standard Rap/Rock ingredients are technically there, but it’s wrapped in a sonic chaos of future-like abience and anchored by samples from speeches by notable historical figures like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a concept album that aggressively strays from anything you’ve ever heard before. To this day I’ve never heard a band steal the style and sound of A Thousand Suns, and while the rest of the LP library can be reductively placed in a “tracks that sound like the 00′s” box, A Thousand Suns stands as evidence that the band is more talented and interesting than you think. This is LP’s Ziggy Stardust, 2112, or American Idiot. It may not be their best album, but it’s absolutely their coolest. Oh, and “Waiting for the End” slaps harder than any other song in their catalog.

#3 - Meteora

Meteora had the difficult task of following up one of the most successful and influential rock albums of the new century and for the most part, it did a wonderful job of maintaining the established sound of Hybrid Theory while stretching its legs in relatively predictable directions. “Faint”, “Lying From You”, “Figure 9″ and “Numb” remain some of my favorite LP tracks. Meteora is the best representation of who LP was at the height of their reign. The sound is unmistakable and the songs are iconic. Any band would love to have an album as good as Meteora, and LP has at least 3 of them. If Hybrid Theory is the equivalent to the first time you’d ever eaten street tacos, Meteora is an entire buffet of Mexican cuisine. 

#2 - Hybrid Theory

I put more time into ranking numbers 2 and 3 than I’m willing to admit. Both of them completely took over my CD player when released and both had a large hand in shaping a portion of my emotional growth. Hybrid Theory was edgy, it was cool, it was smarter than its contemporaries and with its laser-sharp production, it commanded respect. Sure, was it angry white-dude music? Yes, but the anger and aggression came from points of weakness and believable vulnerability. I connected with Hybrid Theory so much, that 20 years later I find it hard to even speak critically of it. Its flaws are features, its signs of age help ground my own personal growth. Speaking on a personal level, Hybrid Theory MIGHT be my album of the decade. So to try and place it into the context of a ranked list is nearly impossible. Un-luckily Chester Bennington’s death helped lock in the top three of this list in ways I would have never predicted.  

#1 - Minutes to Midnight

By 2007 I was all-in, LP was MY band. When Minutes to Midnight was released I was first-in-line buying the ultra-special edition. Unfortunately at the time I just didn’t get. Like, I owned it, I just didn’t GET IT. Musically it was the next logical step in the evolution of the band and Rick Ross’ looser somewhat dirty production was a welcomed departure from the more polished Don Gilmore albums. However, for the first 10 years after its release, I thought of Minutes to Midnight as a bit of a disappointment. It’s probably 2 tracks too long, Shinoda’s singing was a bit off-putting and unlike its predecessors, it didn’t feel cohesive. Sure “What I’ve Done”, “Given Up” and “No More Sorrow” were and are some of the biggest and best anthems the band has ever recorded, Outside of that the album just felt hollow. 

In 2017 Chester Bennington ended his own life. At that point, my love for Linkin Park was still alive, but my interest in them had waned a bit. Chester’s death sent me into a music-hole like I had never experienced before. For weeks all I listened to was LP’s albums back to back. Chester’s words meant more than ever and out of that deep dive came an appreciation for Minute to Midnight I could never see coming. Songs like “Leave Out All the Rest”, “Shadow of the Day”, “Bleed it Out” and “The Little Things Give You Away” came to life with an emotional vibrancy I had never seen before. LP is at their best when they are swinging for the fences and Minutes to Midnight is them hitting grand slam after grand slam, with a few strikeouts sprinkled in. It’s flawed and beautiful, and that’s kinda the point. It’s LP’s most personal and human album, and that’s why it's at the top of this list. Prior to my 2017 revelation, it might have hovered somewhere between #’s 2 and 4, but in 2020 Minutes to Midnight is #1 with a bullet. 

[happymetalgirl]

Tool - Fear Inoculum

I didn’t actually intend to review the long-awaited fifth Tool album so long after its release, time and life got in the way of things, but I’m kind of glad in a way that I’m talking about it now after all the inevitable and ridiculous hysteria surrounding it has mellowed out, which is (spoiler) kind of a sign of the album’s relative quality next to the band’s other four records in and of itself. And, while now I get to talk about it without the confounding noise of the loud clamoring on about it, I don’t really think my words would have really been too different a month and a half ago than they are now.

Tool are a band, of course, who need no introduction; their cerebral brand of progressive alternative metal has become signature and iconic, and their four albums from 1993 to 2006 that preceded this one have served as an influence, if not a lofty aspiration, for thousands of artists since then. Like any self-respecting Tool fan, I consider Lateralus and Ænima to be roughly neck and neck at the top for my favorite spot in the band’s discography (the joint “Parabol” and “Parabola” together being my personal favorite Tool song). Those two albums show the quick crystallization of the band’s progressive metal psychedelia from their rougher, grungier beginnings earlier in the 1990′s. Though I do hold a lot of respect for how accomplished of a debut statement Undertow was, and how much ground it laid for the two albums to come. And even Opiate served as a strong prequel EP to that album. The band’s fourth album, 10,000 Days, however, took a perplexing turn from the heady, yet still metallic prog hallucinations the band had worked up to, and into more drawn-out, spacey experimentation, which I’d say haven’t really aged into anything and sound about as unnecessarily dilute and jam-band-ish as the day the album released in 2006. The album had its high points like the thundering bass of “Vicarious” and “Jambi” and the alternative metal oddity of “The Pot”, but it’s a largely tiresome and less rewarding listen than its predecessors. And that was the last we heard of Tool for thirteen years.

The tremendous wait for the album of course drummed up a lot of speculation of what it would sound like in relation to their previous works. Would it be a return to the beloved progressive metal of  Ænima and Lateralus? Would it be a culmination of all their sounds in retrospect into one gargantuan crowd-pleaser? Or would it be something totally new for the band. Not to toot my own horn, (and not like I can prove this anyway), but I had this hunch that this album would probably be just a delayed continuation of what the band were doing on 10,000 Days, and, while there is the occasional reinvigoration of their sound with some stylistic callbacks to their middle two records prior, lo and behold, as much as I wish I didn’t, for the most part I guessed right.

Coinciding with the band’s acceptance of the times and the advent of streaming with their release of their catalog onto digital platforms, Fear Inoculum was released as a single-disc CD and as a longer, digital version, with three extra instrumental interludes sprinkled throughout the track listing stretching it past the limits of the CD format to nearly eighty-seven minutes, and it sure feels like the hour-and-a-half-long listen that it is, and not in a flattering way. Like I said, the album is largely a continuation of the atmosphere-focused prog of 10,000 Days, which is only somewhat updated from the band’s 2006 effort. The main songs are all over ten minutes long, and the similarly low energy across the marathon track list doesn’t really make a great case for this direction in contrast to what the band have shown themselves to be great at, namely vibrant, untethered prog adventurousness.

The opening title track layers together plenty of diverse tom percussion and the band’s recognizable guitar reverb into a slowly growing and whirlpool (kind of like the album cover) of Tool’s 10,000 Days sonic pallet that gradually cascades into a thicker, distortion-fuzz-driven finish. The abstract, cryptic lyricism about shedding the influence of manipulative fear mongering is more cryptic than poetic, but I can see the vagueness of the subject being a good way to make it widely and appropriately applicable in its commentary and play into the paranoia of refusing to acknowledge exactly what this deceiver is. As a tension-builder, it’s a great way to start the album off, but it doesn’t really seal the pay-off as the heavy bass line tries to usher in a climax while the other instrumentalists mostly just coast on forward to the end of the song like a tired distance runner giving a bit of a burst to finish the last stretch. And that’s one of the shorter tracks, with over an hour left to go.

The second song, “Pneuma”, is structurally not too dissimilar, with a synthy bridge this time connecting the meditative tom-drum/reverb-guitar build-up to a relatively hum-drum metallic non-finale. It really only marginally feels like it’s that kind of progressively building song, clearly being more focused on its meditative ambiance than its intentional trajectory. In which case, I would have honestly probably preferred the band taking that approach more holistically, rather than trying to fit it into a prog metal formula. Lyrically, the song centers around a lot of transcendentalism that Tool have written about before, not really adding much new beyond perhaps a slightly different angle to meditate on it from. The song is followed by the first of the instrumental interlude tracks, “Litanie contre la peur”, which plays around with a melodically manipulated vocal inflection over some humming ambiance for about two minutes.

The third big piece on the album, “Invincible”, which finally plays a little more to the band’s progressive strengths. The guitar groove is actually allowed to drive the song and shine in a more energetic manner as Danny Carey gets to get a lot more bombastic behind the kit, as do the rest of the band during the instrumental sections throughout the song. It’s not only a more metallically groove-driven song whose heavier elements are actually used to cultivate a sense of meditation from a much more signature angle, but also a more interestingly progressive song that does more than just slowly swell up to a mild crescendo for ten minutes. The worries of the song’s warrior speaker are pretty transparently transposeable to the worry and struggles any aging artist (especially a long-absent artist like... Tool, maybe) to maintain their importance and the meaningfulness of their work.

The ominous bass hum of the second interlude track, “Legion Inoculant”, leads into the fourth of the album’s main epic songs, which keep getting longer and longer with the thirteen-and-a-half-minute environmental apocalypse warning “Descending”, which pleas for an end to the apathy that exacerbates the compounding climate crisis. Musically, the song plays into the somber melancholy of the lyrics, while taking a more balanced approach between the spaciness of the band’s last album and the heavier elements of Ænima in particular, perhaps intended given the similarity of that album’s title track’s subject matter. While some of the later sections feel a bit over-indulgent, this song deserves its length as it cascades through emotive defeatism via progressive metal ebbs and flows into this impending metallic crescendo that actually fits nicely with the melancholic rock build-up and the lyrical implications; it sounds like its tracking the collapse of , much like the title track of Ænima., starting and finishing with the sound of waves upon the shore that will continue to crash, just as they did before our takeover of the land, after our demise.

While the lyrical concept revolving around self-doubt and  of “Culling Voices”, is fascinating and all too tangible, the music falls more on the mild side again, with the band’s softer, more meditative atmosphere crashing just twice into explosive, but unimpressive climaxes of muscular, but not too creative, guitar riffing. The longest of the interludes, the wind-chime-laden and effects-doused electronic pulsing of “Chocolate Chip Trip”, features a tasty little drum solo to kind of make up for the lack of spotlight Carey gets on this album as he does so much of the rhythmic legwork, which I certainly appeciate and welcome.

The closing epic, “7empest” was the song fans were fawning over the most as a monstrous riff-fest after the album was finally released, and the riffing across the song’s almost sixteen minutes, as well as the repeating of the lyrical mantra, do capture some Ænima vibes, which makes sense knowing it was pieced together with motifs written during that era. The song’s lyrics once again call back to that breakthrough album with the repetition of the mantra “A tempest must be just that” in reference to the convenient muddying of the waters of responsibility for disasters caused by said chaos once it arises. It’s a song about those in power managing to use the chaos they create through their mismanagement to hide their guilt and just divert the blame on the chaos itself. The song is proggy in Tool fans’ favorite way and indeed dense with churning effects-laden riffage and a faster, much more aggressive vocal performance from Maynard James Keenan. While it is the longest, heaviest, and most vintage-Tool of the tracks here, I’d say it only stands a bit above the rest of the track list, and honestly maybe not surpassing the magnificent “Descending”.

The digital version wraps up with the odd, but disposable coda of the two-minute chirping sample manipulation of “Mockingbeat”, a strange note to end this version of the album on, but ultimately nothing destructive.

I had talked about Rammstein’s self-titled album and Slipknot’s We Are Not Your Kind as being among the year’s biggest of the biggest metal releases, but the long-awaited arrival of Fear Inoculum tops them both. Yet for all the drama building up around this album, all the hype that was inevitably going to hoist hopes and expectations to astronomical and similarly inevitably unrealistic levels, Fear Inoculum sits average at best, if not rather low in the band’s small catalog, and the rather quick hushing of this hype from fans and the metal sphere in general shows that I’m not alone in my relative underwhelmedness after the thirteen-year wait. While that sounds harsh, it is just because this album had such incredibly high expectations to live up to that it was most likely never going to meet. Fear Inoculum isn’t a terrible album by any means, but it does suffer from being drawn out the most by its weakest elements, its least creative ideas stretching it out in hopes of finding purpose for doing so, but coming back empty-handed. A little while after the album came out, Maynard made some kind of comment about this album being great eight years ago, which suggested that it had been in the works for a long time but perhaps held up by frivolous reasons, but also that it was composed largely near the time of 10,000 Days, as I thought it might have been, and it just kind of bugged me that this album probably didn’t need to be the huge prodigal event it was, maybe just an acceptable transitional moment for Tool to figure out what they wanted to do with their expanding sound arsenal. Instead we got arrested development dressed up as a comeback at a time when we might otherwise have one or two more albums from this band (by their releasing pace), possibly more accomplished. I had mentioned in my review of Opeth’s newest album that they deserved the patience with their prog rock transition, and that album showed it. It took four albums to get a record that could stand tall alongside their progressive death metal classics, but it came, and the journey did come with some good highlights along the way too. The journey to this album was a test of patience with clumsy publicity for several years more than anything else, not quite as rewarding, no music to offer along the way (aside from side projects), and still a sense of a band just picking up where they left off years ago without really assessing their direction. I’m glad Fear Inoculum is finally here, but I think others will share this sentiment with me even if they haven’t said it to themselves out loud. Yes, we got a few strong highlights out of this record, but I’m more relieved that the fiasco surrounding the wait is over than I am excited to have this batch of new songs (the latter of which I wish outweighed the former).

6/10

[blazehedgehog]

The weirdest thing about the Micheal Jackson issue with Sonic 3's music is that Sonic & Knuckles already replaced some of the tunes, namely the mini-boss and Knuckles with something else, and the S&K mini-boss can even be heard in S3 via bug. Was it that the scandal happened right in the thick of development and they had to scramble new tunes in?

Over the last, say, five years, a few major revelations have come to light, and people sometimes treat them in opposition to each other, but I think they all fit together:

Michael Jackson loved Sega. He was personally involved in the development of the Moonwalker game, he partnered with Sega for some Japanese arcade games, so Sega got him on board doing music for Sonic 3.

According to Brad Buxer, Michael was not entirely happy with the sound output of the Sega Genesis. Some have said this is the reason he left the project, but I think it’s more of a general frustration and he would have continued his work as best he could, should he have remained on the project.

I think this may have been in relation to Naoto Ohshima’s claim that Sega is in possession of a cassette containing clips of Michael beat boxing (his “Michaelisms” as some call them). These are probably the basis for the voice clips still contained in Sonic 3, and they are very low quality. Maybe he thought he would actually be able to sing? (Maybe even thought it would be a Sega CD game?)

According to Splash Wave, during the process of producing music for Sonic 3, Michael reused music he had created for Sonic to make Stranger in Moscow. That similarity has been known for a while, but it sounds like the Sonic 3 riff actually came first and then got repurposed for “official” Michael Jackson music later. (This is probably surprising only to me, who doesn’t keep up with pop music.)

When the child molestation controversy hit (August 1993), I think both sides simply agreed to back away from the partnership. Michael wasn’t happy with the way things were turning out and saw it as an easy way to bail, and Sega didn’t want to be cozy with Michael at that particular point in time (though they obviously collaborated again, later).

Whatever music Michael and his team had completed for Sonic 3 simply stayed in. They were apparently supposed to replace the songs, but obviously did not, if we still have pieces of Stranger in Moscow and Brad Buxer’s Hard Times remaining in Sonic 3. The obvious conclusion has always been that there were seven or eight total songs Michael had in some form of completion: Carnival Night Zone, IceCap Zone, Launch Base Zone, Knuckles’ theme, the Miniboss theme, the Competition menu and the Credits music. These songs were replaced in Sonic & Knuckles Collection on PC with new compositions. We already know two of those songs (Credits and IceCap) were definitely related to Michael Jackson and his sound team, and three others (Launch Base, Knuckles’ theme, and the Miniboss theme) contain voice samples probably from Michael himself. Carnival Night also contains heavy sample work in line with the other Michael-related tracks.

The rest of the blanks after Michael’s departure were filled in by Sega’s sound team. (Sachio Ogawa, Tatsuyuki Maeda, Jun Senoue, and Howard Drossin). Sega had nearly six months to rebound from the loss of Michael Jackson (August 1993 to February 1994), which was probably fine, I’d assume, though my knowledge of that process is limited.

[allieprovost834-blog]

Greatest WAV TO MP3 Converter BEGINNER’S TUTORIAL

Easy methods to convert ALAC to WAV on-line with ALAC to WAV Converter? There's nonetheless some room for alac to wav converter experimentation … so do a little testing if you happen to still aren't sure. You can use iTunes or another audio conversion instrument to convert CD tracks into numerous codecs and bitrates. Should you're utilizing iTunes, open the Preferences and choose the Import Settings" on the Basic tab. Convert the identical monitor several times utilizing completely different codecs and quality settings, then listen to them in a quiet room and see in the event you can tell the difference. Most individuals can't discern between MP3 information imported at 192 kbps versus 256 kbps, but a careful listener can simply hear the difference in quality between 192 and 128 kbps. In itunes set Apple Lossless as the desire. Spotlight selected tracks then proper click and choose to convert to apple lossless. changing an M4A file into an Mp3 doesn't enhance the file quality. It should nonetheless sound like an M4a file. You're only increasing the file size, which is pointless. 6. If you wish to enjoy AIFF recordsdata in your smartphone, the audio converter might preset numerous parameters robotically after arrange the goal device. Neil Young's Pono hi-res music challenge has turn out to be synonymous with HRA since it was first mooted over three years ago. Fairly how it will pan out remains to be seen (or somewhat heard), but at the very least the musician has turn out to be a extremely creditable poster boy for 24-bit audio. Major label help is said to be coming from Warner, Sony and Common. Releases can be in FLAC format.

hmm im sampling sometims from FLAC tracks kickdrum or whatever - however i wouldnt save anything in FLAC - because MP3 for soundcloud is nice sufficient. To take heed to your tracks all it is advisable do is open the app and the recordsdata can be there. In this record of greatest music apps for Android, Poweramp is the #1 paid music player present on Play Store. Ruling the store for nearly six years, it's the most powerful music participant because of large options. The elegant design of the app completely adapts with the quilt of the album. ^ Google Play Music transcoding of FLAC to MP3 solely supported with 16 and 24-bit stereo or mono FLAC. From all of the comments here, I am positively not converting the files. retaining as is, then installing quicktime. I just haven't had the time to do it simply yet. Also, since all the compression is lossless, you'll be just positive to convert the Apple Lossless information to WAV, and convert those to FLAC, without fidelity loss. is an online conversion device, so there's completely no software program to put in. This means your laptop will not be cluttered by unwanted software. There is additionally no signal-up process, we wanted to keep the conversion process very simple with none undesirable steps. Simply drag and drop your information and see them routinely convert to ALAC format. Plus it is absolutely free to transform FLAC to ALAC audio format.

I agree along with your sentiments even though I'm a Flac person. I exploit JR Media Heart and I don't assume I am missing something. The deal killer for me with Wav files isn't sonic however file management. The lack to retain meta information makes it inconceivable to prepare a big library. Because of this, if I had been going to go uncompressed, I'd use an AIFF file format. APE - APE is a really extremely compressed lossless file, that means you may get probably the most space financial savings. Its audio quality is identical as FLAC, ALAC, and different lossless files, however it isn't suitable with practically as many gamers. Additionally they work your processor harder to decode, since they're so highly compressed. Typically, I would not advocate utilizing this unless you are very starved for space and have a player that supports it. I use a software program referred to as iDealshare VideoGo for Mac to convert FLAC to AIFF, Apple Lossless , WAV, MP3, AAC on Mac. Finally, click on on the Convert" button and set off the AIFF to WAV converting process. You can set the motion after the process is completed, akin to open output folder. When prompted accomplished, you possibly can take heed to your music at anytime and alac To wav Converter anywhere. AAC - Superior Audio Coding, often known as AAC, is similar to MP3, though it's kind of extra environment friendly. Which means that you would be able to have files that take up much less house, however with the same sound quality as MP3. And, www.audio-transcoder.com with Apple's iTunes making AAC so widespread, it's virtually as widely suitable with MP3. I've only ever had one gadget that couldn't play AACs properly, and that was a couple of years in the past, so it is fairly arduous to go improper with AAC both.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Julia Kent Interview: Moving Through Time

BY JORDAN MAINZER

You wouldn’t know it from listening to it, but cellist Julia Kent’s latest album Temporal was originally written for a dance and theater production that never came to pass. “Their concept was a little it like life moving through time,” Kent told me over the phone earlier this month. Perhaps the concept was so broad that the production would have been too abstract, but it was a benefit for Kent, as she was able to make the music fully her own. Adding in sampled and processed-to-hell vocals from a different theater performance as further texture allowed Kent to create something unique within her discography. “I never have voice in my music, and it’s such a thing that people relate to,” she said. “I thought it would be an interesting way of incorporating voice into music that’s instrumental.”

The multi-talented Kent makes music for a variety of mediums: film (both documentary and feature), dance, and theater. But it’s the core of her work that makes her albums so good: cello and software. Using Pro Tools to record and Ableton Live for live looping, Kent is able to conjure textural and subsequent emotional depth. Temporal is her best work yet, and she’ll be playing some tracks from it as part of a record release show next Thursday, March 7th, at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. (Violinist Christopher Tignor opens; Kent is playing in France a couple days before, Hudson, NY the following day, and Prague next month.) Read our interview, edited for length and clarity, below.

Since I Left You: How was Temporal recorded? Was it your usual recording process?

Julia Kent: It wasn’t, because a lot of these pieces I did write to accompany dance and theater. Not all of them, but certainly the majority of the record. I made them with that in mind and with those concepts in mind. So I had them pretty much written, and I went through the recording process to turn them into a record.

SILY: To what extent did the songs change over time?

JK: They changed a lot. Live, I do live looping. I don’t love how that sounds when it’s recorded, so I record everything into Pro Tools and try to replicate the process of looping. Inevitably, things change a lot in the process of recording.

SILY: Is there a prevailing mood of Temporal?

JK: I think not. I always feel like I’m a little bit sad--as one is. But I feel like it was a little more abstract and a little less personal than my previous records because the genesis was this external thing.

SILY: I love “Imbalance” and the extent to which it’s almost like a dance track. Is that what you were going for with that? Is it the most propulsive music you’ve ever made?

JK: I think it pretty much is in terms of the rhythm of it. Obviously, I never go too far in terms of the beats and stuff. I use it again as a texture. But yeah, for sure, that one feels like it’s most propulsive and...what’s another adjective for it? I can’t think of anything.

SILY: That’s my job.

JK: Ok! Excellent! Thank you.

SILY: You open the record with “Last Hour Story”, a 12-minute track that goes in a lot of different directions. Was there a desire to lay out your sonic palate for the rest of the record with that first song?

JK: That piece does go in a lot of different directions. I think of it as a tripartite piece. It’s three separate sections all of which are anchored by this metronome that goes all the way through but varies. I was interested in seeing how much variation I could create while still having this unchanging thing underneath.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the album title?

JK: It’s because of the concept of time. I was thinking about a bunch of different titles, and nothing else worked. I think the simplicity of this works.

SILY: It carries a couple different meanings. There’s the time one, but also the concrete, almost non-spiritual aspect of the word.

JK: For sure. That definitely inflects the concept of it.

SILY: What about the album art?

JK: I really had this idea that I wanted artwork that conveyed the energy of dance in a really abstract way. I wanted to go through photos of dancers. I went on an internet search for those. I found [Tan Ngiap] Heng’s work, which is so beautiful. We were really lucky he was happy for us to use his photo.

SILY: Are you playing all of the album live?

JK: Not all of it. The first track is really long. I played it live about a year ago, and to be honest, I’m kind of moving on into new directions. Live, I do a mixture of pieces of this record, the penultimate one, and maybe even some newer things. I feel like a 12-minute track is a lot to ask people to sit through.

SILY: It depends. Maybe if they’re expecting a track-by-track performance, but people will sit through continuous hour-long pieces.

JK: That’s true. The work I’m doing now, I’m definitely diving into something much longer and more unbroken. I’m still kind of figuring it out.

SILY: Have you been writing a lot of new material?

JK: Writing, not so much. I’ve been playing a lot with textures and different kinds of sounds. Just trying to figure out a sound world.

SILY: Are you doing any more film scoring?

JK: I am! I’m actually working on a film right as we speak, which is a really beautiful Swedish documentary. I’ve been doing a lot of little bits and pieces in that realm.

SILY: What are some similarities and differences in your approach when it comes to scoring films, writing for theater, and making music on your own?

JK: In the case of film, you’re writing to music to accompany an image or the emotional world of the film. It’s a totally different thing than making my own music. That being said, a lot of the time when people come to me for film music they come to me because they’ve heard the music that I do and they want something along those lines. Also, making music for a documentary is really different than making music for a feature. It doesn’t serve a different purpose, but music for a feature is so intertwined with whatever’s happening emotionally on screen.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, reading, or watching lately that’s caught your attention?

JK: You know, I have not been listening to a ton of music recently. I did just listen to my friend Barbara Morgenstern’s new record, which is gorgeous. I listen to a lot of music, but not a lot of it stays with me. Everything’s so friction-less now with streaming. I don’t want to get into that whole thing--that’s pretty much how I listen to music now--but it’s a different way of listening. It just all streams by you. Like a river.

SILY: I’m not a huge streamer. I prefer some sort of ownership, even if it’s just MP3′s.

JK: Thank God people still own music. Without that, I don’t know what would happen. For me, it’s more like because I travel so much, I just feel like I have so many physical objects, I’m trying to eliminate that a little bit from my life, and that’s an easy way to do it. But I super miss owning the physical object that is a CD, or vinyl, or cassette.

Live dates:

Mar 05 Les Bains Douches Montbeliard, France

Mar 07 National Sawdust Brooklyn, NY

Mar 08 Hudson Hall Hudson, NY

Apr 11 Palac Akropolis Prague, Czech Republic

[gebbzsteelo]

Slow Hand Motëm - Islandoughkee (Full Album) (2004)

The first ever Slow Hand Motëm (now known as Motëm) album .  Unearthed from the Gebbz Steelo Archeological Archives, and now properly documented.  Recorded in 2002-2004 in Lennoxville, Quebec, Ancaster, Ontario and Etobicoke, Ontario all in Canada, this serves as the culmination of motëm's musical efforts up until this point.  All instruments were played by motëm and all songs where written and recorded by motëm as well on a PC built for him by his friend Paul Mihai and recorded using a cracked version of Sonic Foundry Acid Pro 4.0 and a Tascam Fourtrack recorder as a preamp and some times just recorded directly to tape and then transferred to the computer, using mainly live instruments played live as motëm did not really know about sampling and looping at this point in time.  The was the first official Motëm project but not the first release on Gebbz Steelo, that honour goes to a rapper by the name of Z3 whose album has unfortunately been lost and will not see the light of day.  There are two guest features on this album that are listed on the original cover art that is included in the picture above.  Each case for the CD-R that this album was distributed on was hand made by motëm with a felt lining so that the CDs would not be scratched and hand written all the track listenings and artwork done by hand as well.  Original run was a limited edition of 5 copies which motëm was very scared to hand out to family and friends because prior to this release no one had heard him do vocals publicly before.

[rockrevoltmagazine]

MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT Announce Upcoming, New Compilation Album, 'SLEAZY ACTION'!

On 02/22/21, Gothic-Disco legends MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT will release Sleazy Action a compilation of 12 previously unreleased remixes by TKK’s BUZZ McCOY, highlighting the group’s past 12 years on SleazeBox Records. The album also includes tracks from related side-project BOMB GANG GIRLZ and new songs by BUZZ McCOY and GROOVIE MANN’s DARLING KANDIE.

SLEAZY ACTION Track List: 1. “Bella Piranha (Hot Shot Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult 2. “Studio 21 (Titan Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult 3. “Hell Kat Klub (Klit Klub Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult 4. “Want (Cockadoodledoo Mix)” – Bomb Gang Girlz 5. “Royal Skull (Karmakazi Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult 6. “My Wicked Ways (Babylonia Mix)” – Darling Kandie 7. “Witchpunkrockstar (Heavy Mental Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult 8. “Monti Karlo (Kasino Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult 9. “Prism (Mata Hari Mix)” – Buzz McCoy 10. “All The Way (S.T.R.U.T. Mix)” – Bomb Gang Girlz 11. “Suite 16 (Love To Love Mix)” – Buzz McCoy 12. “Lone Road (Dead End Mix)” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

Click HERE for Merchandise and Physical CD Copy!

Hailing from Chicago’s renowned Wax Trax! Records stable of recording artists, MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT have been conjuring up sonic tales of sex, blasphemy and kitschy horror since 1987. Along with label mates such as Front 242, KMFDM and Ministry, TKK (as often abbreviated), helped develop the industrial music genre, but they themselves continued to evolve, creating one of the most diverse repertoires in modern day music. Their sound can be described as electronic rock, heavily influenced by both disco and funk. One of their most distinctive characteristics is the use of spoken-word samples lifted from B-movies laced throughout their songs. Since debuting, they have released 13 studio albums, and their music has been featured in a variety of films, television/cable shows and soundtracks, all the while making a reputation for themselves as one of the most notorious and controversial cult bands of their generation.

Artist Franke Nardiello and musician Marston Daley, two Chicago neighbors who enjoyed late night burritos while watching foreign horror movies on VHS rented from the corner store, began conspiring to make a trashy B movie (in the style of Russ Meyer and John Waters) to be called “My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult”. While the film itself never came to fruition, they also wrote some music to be the accompanying soundtrack. Both worked at Wax Trax! Records in Chicago, and when the label heard the tracks, they were intrigued and eager to release it.

The duo took the title of the film as the name for their band, and decided to focus on the musical group full time. Taking the stage names Groovie Mann (Nardiello) and Buzz McCoy (Daley), they worked on creating an occult-biker meets disco-rock influence look for the project, which included a bevy of voluptuous back-up singers and dancers known as the BOMB GANG GIRLZ. The New York Times wrote, “Sex, blasphemy, big beats and go-go dancing; they’re all in a day’s work for My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult ”. This attracted the attention of indie fans and the ire of religious groups in practically equal measure. They released their first album I See Good Spirits And I See Bad Spirits in 1988 followed up by the hard-hitting dance floor classics “Kooler Than Jesus” and “A Girl Doesn’t Get Killed By A Make-Believe Lover Cuz It’s Hot,” which featured no-wave chanteuse Lydia Lunch on vocals. By the time they released their second album, Confessions Of A Knife (1990), they were far and away one of the biggest selling acts on the label.

In 1991, the band embarked on the decadent “Sexplosion! Tour”, titled after their third album. Alternative Press reviewed the show as “Sin-sational!”. The tour was a success and the record sold so well that they signed a deal with Interscope Records shortly afterwards, and the single “Sex On Wheelz” became a sizeable radio hit.

Hollywood also embraced the group, recognizing the unique cinematic aspect of their sound. The band’s music has appeared in a slew of films and tv/cable shows including, director Ralph Bakshi’s “Cool World”, Paul Verhoven’s saucy “Showgirls”, MTV’s “Beavis And Butthead“, and the cult film classic “The Crow”, in which the ensemble make a cameo appearance performing their song “After The Flesh”. More recently the KULT was written into the story line of the 2014 film “Sexy Evil Genius” starring Seth Green.

THRILL KILL KULT continue to release new material via their own SleazeBox Records label (sleazebox.com) and tour extensively with a rotating cast of musicians and dubious characters, however the core of the project has always been Nardiello and Daley, both on record and in the live act. Their performances sizzle with sleaze and infectious grooves, as Melody Maker once described, “A red hot cabaret from Hell”.

They begin their 4th decade this year with the release of a new album, In The House Of Strange Affairs on February 14th, and a North American tour commencing May 5th in Las Vegas. The current line-up is Groovie Mann (vocals), Buzz McCoy (keys), Mimi Star (bass), Justin Thyme (drums), Arena Rock (Bomb Gang Girl).

Connect with MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT: Official Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT Announce Upcoming, New Compilation Album, ‘SLEAZY ACTION’! was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

[airadam]

Episode 137 : Goodbye Summer

"I'm like when we turn the clocks back in October..."

- Sha

The autumn is here, but given that we're still mostly shut up in the house, it's a pretty academic point. Still, it means that musically we start looking in the hoodies and Timbs direction, and some of that cold weather flavour makes its way into this month's selection...

Twitter : @airadam13

Twitch : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Curren$y & Harry Fraud : 1 Luv (Roll The Credits)

Curren$y is so prolific, it feels like every time I log onto Spotify he's got something new out. This is the outro for the 2020 "The Director's Cut" mixtape, but works just as well as a low-key intro. I'd definitely recommend giving the whole release a spin.

Bagnon Titi : Love And Time

We've been to the "Smooth Grooves Beat Tape" a few times, but inexplicably not for this track until now! I personally might have preferred the mix/EQ to be a bit different on this one (more prominence to the bassline maybe), but the flipping of this well-known sample is excellent.

Nas : N.Y. State Of Mind Pt. II

"Mama should have cuffed me to the radiator" is one of the starkest, rawest lines ever, and the sad story of nine friends reduced to three is told with more efficiency than you could imagine possible. Sequels often disappoint compared to the originals, but this is a worthy successor to the first "NY State Of Mind", with Nas and DJ Premier coming back together on "I Am..." for an underrated classic.

Shyne : More Or Less

Shyne was well into his prison term for the 1999 Club New York shooting incident when "Godfather Buried Alive", his second album, was released in 2004 - understandably not on Bad Boy, but by Def Jam. The vocals were mostly pre-prison recordings with a few things recorded over the phone, and as such, it's not as coherent as you might like - but this was a great cut. A quality bit of sampling from the early days of Kanye West drives this one along, and Shyne comes with the rawness on the mic. "Hip-Hop's not responsible for violence in America / America's responsible for violence in America"? Can't argue with that.

Chemical Brothers ft. Beth Orton : Alive Alone

I remember playing this one in the headphones on many a dark, rainy night after "Exit Planet Dust" was released, so I thought it'd be a good one to include this month. Dark, slow, moody, with Beth Orton's gentle vocals over the  top - perfection.

Mayhem Lauren : Peace Dad

Back over to Queens for some flavour (pun partially intended) from one of the biggest culinary fans in the Hip-Hop game. A short and sweet two verses over Tommy Mas production from the "Respect The Fly Shit" mixtape.

[Pete Rock] Edo G : Just Call My Name (Instrumental)

It was great that the most recent release of the "My Own Worst Enemy" LP by Edo G and Pete Rock contained instrumentals of all the tracks - really makes it an essential purchase for fans of these two legendary veterans. I don't know if the bass and horn samples come from the same place, but the interplay is expertly done!

Nas, Remy Ma, Ghostface Killah, Dave East, Styles P, RadhaMUS Prime : The Mecca

Brand new heat! From the soundtrack to the new film "The 40-Year-Old Version" comes a wicked NYC collaboration that features contributions from all the five boroughs (with Brooklyn represented by Da Beatminerz on production). This one should earn a few rewinds, as all the veterans get busy.

Shabaam Sahdeeq : Pendilum

We take it back to the heyday of the underground 12s for this A3-side - it may not be an example of Chuck's Law (the main track is a killer), but it's still quality. Shabaam is all Brooklyn lyricism on the mic and Dr.Sato (on what looks to be his only production credit) uses what sounds like a sitar sample as the centre of the beat.

LMNO & Kev Brown : Who's That?

LMNO is one of the least subtle MCs I can think of, but he does his job well enough here alongside the bassline king Kev Brown on the "Selective Hearing" LP. That said, the bass is pretty sparse outside of the hook and leaves plenty of space for LMNO to take centre stage.

Torae ft. Sha Stimuli and Kel Spencer : Save The Day

I've been waiting to play this song specifically in October just for the line that I used for this month's epigram :) Khrysis is on the boards with the heat, and the trio of MCs coming with the goods on this cut from the 2008 "Daily Conversation" LP. If you haven't heard it, it's a solid release, definitely worth checking out. 

Da Beatminerz : Take That (Instrumental)

This beat may be almost 20 years old (originally from 2001's "Brace 4 Impak"), but it smacks strongly even today - a testament to the quality of the production and the engineering.

Oh No ft. Buckshot : Gets Mine

"Exodus Into Unheard Rhythms" is one of the first LPs I can think of that was based around samples from one artist only - in this case, the late multi-talented composer Galt McDermot. This track has a cross between that midnight creep sound and some majestic piano business, and while Oh No has a quality verse, bringing in Buckshot as the feature was inspired - perfect choice.

Timeless Truth : What A Life

Straight no chaser from the 2013 debut by TT, "Rock-It Science" (great title). R.Thentic chops the pianos in a serious fashion over a boom-bap beat, and despite this being on a group LP, Solace goes solo end-to-end on the mic.

Rapsody ft. King Mez and Laws : Top Five

I can't quite believe that "Thank H.E.R. Now" is almost ten years old already, but it's an entry in Rapsody's catalogue that is definitely worth going back to explore if you missed it the first time round. "Top Five" is a nice all-southern mic workout with Rapsody and Mez repping North Carolina, and Laws coming out of Florida. Production comes from Amp of The Soul Council, and if I dare say it, sounds reminiscent of mid-2000s Preemo style.

Redman ft. E3 : Ride

This track is the month's rediscovery thanks to my vinyl digitisation project - I hadn't dug it out for years!  It's drawn from the soundtrack of a 2003 film called "Biker Boyz" which, from the critical reception, I probably won't ever get around to watching, but I got this on a promo 12". Production and vocal duties are both shared between Redman and E3, and it's really well-executed within the style frame it inhabits - polished, nicely engineered, but with the funk on the low end.

Ilajide : Number One

To my ears, this man is lining himself up as ones of the kings of the bassline - not when it comes to complexity, but just the sheer sonic impact. This instrumental from "3" bangs along with a low end that will give any system a workout.

Boot Camp Clik : And So

When it comes to hoodie and boot weather, you have to include the Boot Camp Clik in any musical discussion. You'd also usually be talking about Da Beatminerz in the same breath, but this cut from 2002's "The Chosen Few" was produced by Curt Cazal, best known for his work as part of JVC Force. On the mic, the late Sean Price, Tek and Steele, Top Dog, and Buckshot of Black Moon kick it straight Brooklyn style, and it sounds very much like they may have had an issue with a certain mixtape DJ...

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

[righteoustuff]

A Brief History of Japanese Chillout & Downtempo

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                It’s no secret that Japan has produced some of the finest meditative sounds. From the environmental music of Hiroshi Yoshimura to the warm synths of Haruomi Hosono, blissed-out electronics have been surfacing since the 1980s and have continued to evolve through to the present day.

Ken Hidaka, Max Essa and Dr. Rob are three friends and deep digging collectors who’ve been immersed in these sounds for years, be that through writing, DJing or throwing their long-running monthly listening party at Bar Bonobo in Harajuku.

In 2017, whilst in Copenhagen on tour with Midori Takada, Ken visited the home of Kenneth Bagger – the boss behind Copenhagen-based imprint Music For Dreams – who asked him if he’d lead the charge for an instalment of their Collectors Series. Enlisting the help of Max and Dr. Rob, the trio spent the next three years charting the history of Japanese chillout and downtempo music from the 80s through to 2018. Titled Oto No Wa: Selected Sounds of Japan 1988 – 2018, each track is the result of friendships and physical connections, mapping out the development of chilled sounds, from ambient to electro-acoustics, post-house and balearic.

Alongside a mix of Japanese chillout and downtempo from Dr.Rob, we asked him, Ken and Max to discuss some of their personal favourites.

Oto No Wa is out now on Music For Dreams.

Where does your love for Japanese Chillout stem from?

Ken Hidaka: For me, it was when I heard the Silent Poets: Moment Scale (Dubmaster X Remix), the first track on Jose Padilla compiled Cafe Del Mar- Volumen Dos. Not sure where I bought this compilation as I was in between living in London and in Tokyo around the time of when this compilation was released in 1995. At the time, to be honest with you, I was way more into western club music and really not much into Japanese music at all so this Silent Poets’ track in this compilation surprised me a lot!

Although my tastes for music were still leaned towards mostly western club music, after coming back to Japan, I slowly started to discover a few Japanese music that caught my interest. Artists that released music out of Bellissima Records at the time such as Nobukazu Takemura’s Child’s View, Reflection out of Lollop (their debut album, The Errornormous World was also released out of Clear in the UK), Major Force crew, etc. You could say that my roots for Japanese down tempo/ chill-out music stem from Jose Padilla and his Balearic aesthetics, Club Jazz sounds and electronic music that was emerging from Japan.

What Japanese Chillout record has left the biggest impression on you as a DJ, and why?

Rob Harris: As a DJ, I don’t know, but as someone passionate about recorded music, a student of sound, I can give you two Japanese, downtempo / chill out records that made a big impression on me.

The first is Haruomi Hosono’s Paraiso. When I lived in Tokyo, which is about ten years ago now, I spent a lot of time digging for vinyl. Using the second-hand stores as an excuse to get to know the city, and searching for stuff, both for my own collection and to sell. Paraiso was one of the things on my “wants list”. It was on there because Jose Padilla, the former DJ at Ibiza’s Cafe Del Mar, had mentioned it in a radio interview. Even back then this album wasn’t so easy to find. It wasn’t expensive because the boom in Japanese music was still off on the horizon but there didn’t seem to be that many copies around. Produced in 1978, maybe it hadn’t been issued on CD, and those folks with were hanging onto their copies.

Anyhow when I did find one I didn’t know what to make of it – why was it in Jose’s favourites? I’d already hoover-ed up most of the Yellow Magic Orchestras output – the band Hosono founded with Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto – for its chugging electronic afro / cosmic crossovers, but this was acoustic guitar-driven, softly strummed singer-songwriter stuff. But then bumping the needle, scanning from track to track, I hit the title number and understood – as Hosono-san used studio effects to deconstruct the song – send it into the stratosphere. Mid-way through it just dissolved into sonic shimmer, like a passing comet’s tail. Creating an extra-terrestrial exotica – an easy-listening muzak with its sights set not on Hawaii but the stars.

The second record is Sth. Notional’s ‘Yawn Yawn Yawn’. For me this is a defining Japanese downtempo / chill out release. Again it was a favourite of Jose’s – but I only learned that in hindsight. It was Mancunian balearic guru, Richard “Moonboots” Bithell who tasked me with finding a copy. His London-based counterpart, Phil Mison, had one and he didn’t. This record was and still is super rare, since it was made in the early-90s, and kinda opposite to Paraiso, was far more abundant on CD. But then the CD didn’t have all the mixes. Jose and Phil had both championed the break-driven G-Tar Canyon Mix at the Cafe Del Mar, but it was Moonboots who picked up on the Dream… Another Reality version – which is an eight and a half minute meditation of sampled shore-line, piano and poetry. A hippie ode to Mother Nature – which to the West might sound cheesy – but captures a spirituality that exists in everyday Japan – something you only really appreciate, learn to respect, and hopefully come to understand, by living here. These are largely islands of gentle souls.

Moonboots later put this mix on his Originals compilation – co-selected with “Balearic” Mike Smith – for Claremont 56. I can’t tell you how ecstatic I was when I came across the record’s sea-blue sleeve in a rack labelled “Major Force & Friends” in Shibuya`s Recofan. I was seriously in double-take shock. To date I’ve only ever found three copies of the OG. Yawn Yawn Yawn was however reissued by Italy’s Archeo Recordings in 2018. The package expanded by a host of new remixes, and spread across six sides of vinyl. Reworks by Max Essa, Chee Shimizu, and Kuniyuki Takahashi. The update by Tadashi Yabe – ex of Untied Future Organization – is truly amazing. It’ll catch you off-guard. A fucked-up funky, psychedelic collage that – I’ll stick my neck out here – is the best Japanese “balearic” track of modern times. In my opinion if you only own one Japanese downtempo / chill out record then this Archeo reissue of Sth. National’s Yawn Yawn Yawn should be it.

What Japanese Chillout record has made the biggest impact on your sound as a producer, and why?

Max Essa: It’s difficult to single out one particular record, but I’m going to go with ‘Julia’ by Seigen Ono from the Comme Des Garçons Volume Two LP (1989). I got my first break making records in the early 90s through house music. Dance music genres/sub-genres are very rigid stylistically. When one is making those kind of records you can’t just make something that exists purely because it’s a beautiful, emotive, powerful piece of music, it ‘has to be’ a certain tempo, it has to have a 4/4 kick drum etc etc. This is the way I ended up thinking when I approached making music and I thought like that for many years!

I remember hearing ‘Julia’ for the first and being utterly charmed by it. It’s a very elegant piece that combines a calming tranquility with an ever so slightly mysterious, emotional undertow. The effect it had on my own approach to making music was to make me place far more value on the music for it’s own sake. I wanted to start creating music, moments, combinations of sounds that appealed beyond dance floors, DJs, beat-mixing.

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 113

Síria: Boa-Língua

as kindly provided to me as a review copy by Crónica

released March 17, 2020

Catalogue number: 155

Welcome to review number 113 on Fluid Sonic Fluctuations in which today I’m featuring the fairly recently released album by Síria titled Boa-Língua. I received this album as a review copy linking to a Bandcamp download code from the Crónica label. Crónica is the label which actually inspired me to start this blog and over the last two years I’ve often featured and reviewed various Crónica releases both new and old on this blog. Just like I did with Quantum Natives I’ll give a bit of a description of Crónica both for people who haven’t checked out the previous reviews as well as keeping in line with my now even more expanded review style. Crónica is a Portuguese mixed media label founded by a group of sound artists, experimental musicians and audiovisual artists that include Miguel Carvalhais (who’s most in charge of the label nowadays and has mastered and designed many of its releases), Pedro Tudela, who both form the duo @c, an immersive sound art and abstract experimental music project that often utilises field recordings and collaged abstract musical and non-musical sounds to create immersive cinematic experiences based on a philosophical attitude to sound as well as deep listening into various sonic environments. I’ve reviewed various @c works on this blog before. Other founding members of Crónica include experimental musician Pedro Almeida (Pal) and visual artist Lia who uses custom programming to create her moving and captured abstract visuals. Quite matching in spirit to @c’s sound works Crónica’s releases form an ever-continuing chronology of sound, music and noise on various formats including cassette tape, free download, CD and limited edition vinyl releases. Crónica’s discography is a mixture of Sound Art pieces, often conceptual and free-spirited experimental music and Electro-Acoustic Improvisation as well as inventive and often enjoyable forays into composed field recordings and the more arty side of Noise. Now let’s have a look at the contents of the review copy of Boa-Língua by Síria that I received. The download I received includes the album cover artwork in good resolution, the 9 album tracks in 24-bit/44.1kHz high resolution audio as well as a PDF file that contains the album’s tracklist, credits, release description and liner notes. The liner notes by Síria herself give a good impression of the concept and sonic approach Síria used when she recorded the 9 pieces that feature on the album with improvisation that goes beyond simply performing and an element of deep introspection being key elements to this album’s development. A nice short text that you can read alongside checking out the music. What is of interest for now is the background of Síria and the other artists who contributed to the music or whose music Síria sampled / manipulated to create her music. First of all, Síria herself, is a solo project by Portuguese sound artist and experimental musician Diana Combo. As also introduced by the PDF files, Síria is an extension of Diana’s other music project EOSIN, a project that mixes Turntable Music style experimentation, field recordings and other sound sources to create at times eerie and mysterious abstract sonic images, Síria mixes this approach with Diana’s vocals which in the case of Boa-Língua she doesn’t manipulate that much but mostly works as a main thread carrying the pieces of music, often using (traditional) Folk songs or as in some pieces on this album rather expressive (wordless) vocals sometimes using an invented language. Under the name Síria Diana has released two albums on Crónica, has appeared on compilations on Tropical Twista Records and Discrepant and has created a remix for Sontag Shogun released on Youngbloods. Tiago Martins has done “post-production” of the album at his own Fisgastudio, which as I could hear it on the album consists of the connecting the songs together as well as nicely balancing out Síria’s vocals with the instrumentation of her pieces. Miguel Carvalhais did the mastering for this album, which like other masters he did for releases I previously reviewed is rather crisp and clear sounding, a notch compressed in this case perhaps though, but it does keep the vocals quite on the foreground and it’s not reducing the balance of the instrumentation of the music too much and indeed Miguel also created the artwork for this release which features photos by Síria herself of this subtly painted statue of a nude woman which is not quite matching my own interpretation of the music as you will soon notice but does form nice striking imagery that does encompass the general surreal ambience of the album quite well. Amongst the sources of songwriting, samples and recordings Síria used in her pieces we find that first song Canção do Gato is a version of a song that Tiago Pereira recorded for his continuing project A Música Portuguesa a Gostar Dela Própria which documents Portuguese folk songs as sung by local citizens through his audio and video recordings. Nos Montes was remixed by @c who have released albums on labels like Variz, Crónica, Fuga Discos and Grain Of Sound, have been featured on albums and compilation released by labels like Loop, AntmanuvMicro and Variz and are also credited on releases on Dead Motion Records, Ilse and a free Edition Der Standard release. Senhora dos Remédios is a version of a song sang by Portuguese singer Catarina Chitas and features a sample from Portuguese mixed media artist Maile Colbert. Belgian Shepherd is a remix of a track of the same title by Portuguese experimental music artist Rui P. Andrade of his 2017 album All Lovers Go To Heaven, originally released on ACR. Rui has released albums using his own name on labels such as BRØQN, Etched Traumas, Haze and Colectivo Casa Amarela, has appeared on releases on Darker Days Ahead, a compilation by Indie Rock Mag, a split EP on Enough Records. Rui’s credits includes musical work on releases on Zigur Artists, Pale Blue and Warm Winters Ltd. Rui nowadays makes music under his alias Canadian Rifles which he mostly releases on his own Eastern Nurseries tape label. Through Síria’s remix (originally released on the Island Fever compilation by Portuguese experimental music label Colectivo Casa Amarela) I’ve already caught some glimpses of Rui’s sound work and based on the strong bassy resonant noisy drone elements I heard I can tell his solo works and label output will definitely be worth checking out too. Ay Işığında is a version of a song as originally sung by Azerbaijani singer Nərminə Məmmədova. Finally, For Ghédalia and Boa-Lingua feature recordings made by Los Niños Muertos which is a duo made up of Portuguese electric guitar improviser and experimentalist André Tasso (who's also part of the big Ensemble MIA, an international collective of experimental musicians and improvisers who participated in the Encontro de Música Improvisada de Atouguia da Baleia organised in May 2016) and Bruno Humberto (a conceptual artist in a wide array of fields in contemporary arts whose works often use the location of the installation or performance as part of the artwork and who also utilised absurdism in interesting manners as part of the Gazpacho Unlimited theatre group). Now let’s dive into Boa-Língua’s music and sonic imagery.

Boa-Língua starts with the piece Canção do Gato which quite perfectly introduces the sonic imagery that this album conjured up in my mind which is that of a wandering soul on a mysterious journey who encounters all kinds of strange rituals and at times dystopian Industrial environments. The piece feels like we’re inside a circle watching an eerie entrancing ritual happen, with Síria’s vocals working as if they’re the chant forming the ritual itself, combined with the gong like percussion which emits a bassy and resonant but also quite wavy continuous droning and helps to create that nocturnal mysterious atmosphere. The song itself sounds more uplifting than the eerie gong drones suggests which makes for a great intriguing juxtaposition of musical elements and the filtered walkie-talkie noise like rhythm in the first half of the piece adds a bit of surrealism to the piece as it feels quite like a small undefined cloud drifting by, momentarily obscuring the ritual. Síria’s vocal performance itself also got some great details in it too, as she holds the notes of each repeated melodic phrase as if they’re looped and also giving the song a bit of sharp resonant edge, very nice to hear. Afterwards we travel into darker, more dystopian territory with Nos Montes which features Síria’s wordless vocals and various layers of (field recording) manipulations, loose percussion, warbled pitch adjusted vinyl records as well as eerie glassy crystallised textured and choppy fluttering bits of Noise swirling around in the centre of the stereo image as well as as between the left and right channels in a subtle manner. Our aforementioned wandering soul has now arrived in an Industrial landscape in which alien machinery seems to be ever whirring, squeaking and clicking, with the workers in this factory or perhaps even simply a workshop appear to be processing glimmering minerals which radiate vivid blue-tinted rainbows. Warbled voices and strangely dropping tones feel like the wandering soul is slowly getting both frightened and confused by her surroundings, her wordless singing feeling like a soft lullaby like song she sings to comfort herself. Her voice distorts and repeats as the environment changes and while the music follows more of a slow evolution of texture rather than reaching a real climax, the various details and new sounds fading in through the layers of Industrial sound make the immersive sonic experiments that much richer. Like many of the pieces on this album, Nos Montes is connected quite directly to its following piece with the jester like tambourine pattern at the end smoothly moving into the beginning of the following track Senhora dos Remédios. @c’s (remix) contribution to Nos Montes sounds a bit more metallic than I heard before from the Portuguese duo and is a bit more subtle in this case with many of the sonic layers sounding like directly from Síria herself. The depth, panning and immersive acoustic effects definitely make me think of @c’s work in a more direct manner, but I can say that this mixture of contributions to one piece of music definitely works quite seamless instead of being a piece where you can clearly hear “another artist joined as a collaborator” so excellent work in here indeed. Following track Senhora dos Remédios uses a sample by Maile Colbert (possibly a field recording) sounding like hissy wind and we can hear the return of the gong percussion from Canção do Gato at the start of the piece, blending with jester tambourine rhythm. This piece feels quite like our wandering soul has reached a more quiet part of the factory / workshop where we can only hear the hiss of pipes leading to the machinery in the main hall. Síria’s way of singing the song makes it sound quite ghostly and a bit like a lament, the stereo panned delay effect also adds this feeling of being inside the mind of the wandering soul. The second voice in the song feels like the wandering soul is imagining this second voice as a memory from a time long ago. A sweet introspective piece of music which does retain that nice Industrial edge the album has in a great manner. Belgian Shepherd then follows, a quite minimalist piece in which Síria’s vocals feature in a more subtle manner than other the other tracks on Boa-Língua. Now it feels like the wandering soul has moved to another spot in the factory, one in which distant sounds of machinery can be heard. Featuring distorted rhythmic glitch bass, a scraping mechanical resonant metallic drone, as well as burst of dust-laden steam and distant clanging metal poles and racks the Industrial landscape where our wandering soul finds herself has become a bit less archaic and morphed into a more efficient, cold and high-tech sci fi type of gears. Additional excellent details to the piece are the entrance in which high pitched glitched tones as well as a metallic violin like glassy screeches seem to introduce the wandering soul’s desperation as she’s trying to find a way out of this dark landscape, her warm wordless vocals being both cries for help and again a means to try to calm herself down and focus. A great mixture of contemporary minimalist Glitch elements and classic Industrial textures from what I can hear in the piece, Rui P. Andrade’s original version of this piece of which we’re now hearing Síria’s remix must be a fine entrancing piece of Drone / Noise work as all the textures as well as rich manipulations of the elements suggest the source material (which Síria also added on in this remix, which should be noted) definitely has some great creativity and an inspired personal touch to it too. Great work. Afterwards in Yarın the wandering soul has finally got out of the factory and returned to the mysterious ritual we saw before which has now progressed. Featuring long long resonating and decaying cymbal droning which is rich in many eerie and filtered sounding overtones as well as an additional layer of low (synth) frequencies which create a brooding rumbling foundation of the piece the ritual like nature of this piece is much darker. Yet Síria’s vocals are quite uplifting and positive sounding, with her voice overtaking the darkness more in this case than becoming encompassed within it. The double tracking of her vocals does create these curious sonic phenomena however, like her voice detaches itself from her as a separate second “out of body” entity and swirls around within the diffuse flowing liquid tonal mass of the ritual music. A few rays of sunlight are shining through the clouds of the morning to come for the wandering soul but the water drops at the end of the piece predict that the ominous events she encounters aren’t over yet, with the room acoustic of the field recording suggesting a narrow hollow space she soon finds herself in, perhaps a dungeon. Danse Macabre, the piece that follows is quite self-explanatory based on the titled. Indeed the piece feels quite like the sonic depiction of ghosts dancing around in a circle in the dark night. In this case however, it’s obviously the wandering soul who’s growing more and more confused and frightened by feelings that she can’t escape this strange world of mysterious ancient rituals and dystopian cold Industry all that easily. The piece feels quite “classic” in that it has a mostly pure Ritual Ambient sound with a lot of eerie resonant slow percussion rhythms, droning vocals and strange mouth sounds with which she creates strange laughing and screeching noises and spooky wails. However there are also little bits of crackling Noise hidden in the background as well with which Síria does underline her signature sound in this piece, they’re equally eerie in that they’re so “light” in the sonic imagery that you might even mistake them for rustling leaves or tree branches outside your house (this is especially the case on headphones). Further details that are particularly great about this piece are the highly resonant droning overtones mixed with the hollow water drops in the beginning of the piece creating some extra eerie gloom as well as the way Síria’s vocals form their own texture and intensely droning tone at the end of the piece, a very immersive listening experience once again. Ay Işığında follows with a similar kind of Ritual Ambient kind of ambience fading through the water drop sounds into nicely rising and falling waves of gong resonances backed by tinkling cymbals. Our wandering soul appears to have escaped her gloom and is now walking towards a beach with the aforementioned gong resonances feeling like the eerie gloom still surrounding her until the point that some lovely hollow, wooden like turntable needle and mechanism manipulations enter sounding a bit like rowing pans for that nice notch of surrealism in the mix. Síria performs the song Ay Işığında (as originally sung by Nərminə Məmmədova) with much positive emotion and there’s some lovely spacey delay effect on her vocals again but what I like even more about this piece is the way the piece’s subtly moving drone moves into sonic imagery involving soft “caressing” vinyl crackles and the sound of the sea, the swirling waves of water carrying our wandering soul to what appears to be an exit of the fever dream like landscapes she find herself in. The vinyl crackles also appear to hint at the subconscious meaning of “this is all just memories, you’re not actually experiencing this in real life”. Very intriguing. For Ghédalia then is a piece which is a bit more abrasive for its first half featuring screechy high pitched feedback tones but does flow into a more subtle kind of ambience afterwards. Dedicated to the cult Avant-Garde Folk experimentalist Ghédalia Tazartes the piece does indeed recall the curious kind of mixture of Noise, Folk and Tribal like elements I remember from listening to one of his albums a long time ago. This is also a piece which does move a bit out of the flow of the pieces that came before it as it features some more abstract experimentation within it. Síria is performing ornamental wordless vocals in this piece mixed with additional filtered vocal drones making for curious swirling drone around her. She also creates clicky bass drum like percussion using her mouth (though this seems to be more like a layering of two elements in fact). Curious are also the organ like tones in the first half of the piece. Whilst moving into a different kind of textural style, I can still apply my imagined imagery of the wandering soul to this piece as being a ritual she created and is performing on her own. This piece uses recordings by André Tasso and Bruno Humberto and I can definitely say that based on what I found about André, the guitar Noise elements are created by him and add some great rawness in terms of texture to the piece, very nice. Final piece Boa-Língua puts more focus on the recordings of guitar feedback manipulation as well as some sweet woodblock / stick percussion courtesy of André Tasso and Bruno Humberto in terms of instrumentation with Síria’s vocals being more like chanted mantras. The instrumental backing has a great physical touch to it in terms of texture, with the guitar also sounding a bit like an alarm; Síria’s calm vocals give the impression of our wandering soul slowly waking up in her bed in the morning with her thoughts still going through a bit of a confusing haze (the feedback instrumentation) and her wake up alarm having an oddly harsh sound to her ears. Still, she’s safe and sound and thereby we also come to our listening journey of Síria’s excellent Boa-Língua. I awards Boa-Língua a Polar Vision at the frequency of a wandering soul travelling through possibly imagined landscapes full of mysterious rituals, dystopian Industrial landscapes and a surreal experience of past memories. The album’s consistent flow of often vocal lead pieces of rich experimental music make for a great listening experience in Síria’s personal, inspired sonic world that blends “physical” Noise experimentation, Ritual Ambient influences, an inventive approach to using her voice in her music and a great feel for the cinematic side of Sound Art and texture based ambiences. This is a great recommended listen for fans of the more musical side of Sound Art, experimental approaches to Ritual Ambient, Turntable Music as well as a more varied approach to using Noise and Free Improvisation in more subtle manners. Síria’s song based approach also makes the music more accessible for listeners who aren’t very familiar with experimental music in general. Definitely get this album.

You can order Boa-Língua by Síria as a limited edition cassette tape and download from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/boa-l-ngua

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Mike Cooper

Creatively and geographically, Mike Cooper has been on the move since the middle of the 20th century, and he’s still rolling. Born in 1942 in Reading England, he moved to Australia and back again as a child. In the 1960s he joined the legion of blues-loving young men who played in British folk clubs. Playing the blues lead to him back to the roots of the lap steel guitar style, which in turn led him to Hawaiian music. A chance encounter with the music of Peter Brötzmann at a music festival ignited a passion for free jazz, whose impact can be heard upon a trio of early 1970s records reissued in 2014 by Paradise of Bachelors. Cooper’s played with English and Lebanese free improvisers, accompanied films, cut a record with Steve Gunn, and made a series of albums that simultaneously embrace, critique, and subvert the aesthetics of exotica. Now based in Rome, Cooper has released three albums in 2017. Blue Guitar (Idea) and Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer (Discrepant) are vinyl reissues of session originally released on Cooper’s Hipshot CD-R label. On the former, Cooper turns Thomas Pynchon texts into Dali-melted blues, while the latter is a live set that captures his fluid transitions between direct song craft and vertiginous sonic exploration.  Raft is a new instrumental set that meditates upon long distance sea travel.

A Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble 

This book inspired my Kiribati ambient record. Grimble was posted to the Island Nation of Kiribati after joining the Civil Service at age 18 in 1914 where he became a cadet administrative officer. He became resident commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony (Kiribati) in 1926. He remained there until 1933. His book A Pattern of Islands was published in 1952 and is a record of his time in the islands and his experience of living with its people (who he loved) and learning their language, myths and oral traditions. One of the first books I bought, which dealt with Pacific culture and inspired a whole collection which we now have. Whenever I see copies of this book I buy them and give them to friends.

Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Time, Cultures and Self by Greg Dening 

Greg Dening (1931-13th march 2008) was an Australian historian who explored a fascination with Oceania and the encounters between indigenous peoples of the islands and outsiders who visited or lived on the in-between space of ' the beach' -- which became a metaphor which he pursued and developed. The book Beach Crossings is an essay on 'first encounters' between local and strangers coming together. It is an imaginative exploration of the symbolic strip between low and high tide where the ocean meets the land on the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific and its bloody and tragic history of those who lived and some of those who left. Greg wrote, "I cannot cope with an anthropology of natives and a history of strangers. I have ambitions to do an anthrohistory of them both." I wrote a radio play inspired by this and other books by Greg Dening.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

I am not much of a fiction reader, but there are some exceptions, and Ondaatje is one of them, and I have read everything I have been able to find. This book appealed to me in particular because at the same age (11 years old) we both made the same voyage but in reverse, him from Sri Lanka (it was still called Ceylon then) to London and me from London to Australia (via Sri Lanka) at almost the same time. I was being taken with my parents as an emigrant to Australia. Ondaatje's (fictionalized) account of his trip as an unaccompanied young boy on that trip resonated with my own experiences. For both of us it became a floating island where I could disappear from my parents’ sight, probably for the first time really, for days on end without them worrying where I was — apart from falling overboard, there was not much could happen to me. This only occurred in between bouts of sustained seasickness by the way, something that became so acute that I was nearly put ashore at one point. Apart from that it was an exotic experience that marked me for life, travelling for eight weeks half way around the world on a ship that stopped at some very interesting places that I have never forgotten and have even revisited since. 

Sound And Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression by Steve Feld 

I was playing on a jazz festival in Canada with The Recedents who were myself, Lol Coxhill on saxophone and vocals and Roger Turner on drums in the mid 1990s. Back at our hotel, I got into the lift followed by at the time a person at the time unknown to me. As the lift stopped at his floor he turned to me and dropping a cassette tape into my shirt pocket as he left he said "I think you might like this" and the doors shut and the lift continued to my floor. The tape was Voices of the Rainforest, a soundscape of 24 hours in a Papuan rainforest. I remembered that during our Recedents performance I had used some field recordings of birds made during a recent trip to Australia, which was probably why Steve Feld gave me that cassette. We became long distance friends and I began to seek out other of his works, mostly written, as an anthropologist and musicologist. They included Music Grooves (co-written with Charles Keil) and the title mentioned here. Difficult and complicated to explain here but it led to me continuing to make and use field recordings in my live performance and to me pursuing music which is made up of out of sync loops of live sampling of my own playing across which I sing. 

Hud - starring Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal and Brandon deWilde - 1963 Black and White

I grew into an appreciation of cinema in my early life through the late 1950s and early 1960s, and recently I began to re-visit some of the films that I remember from that period. It was the transition time for American films with people like Newman and Marlon Brando taking the screen and also women like Patricia Neal re-defining the female role in these “masculine” films. Hud is not really a western as such but is one of a line of anti-westerns that I like. McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Hired Hand and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada could equally have occupied my choice of western film as well. Hud resonated with me because of my own family relationships at that time and the character that Newman played who: 

"as a character of his time (he) embodied a new ethos (right or wrong) longing to break free from old norms and seeking acceptance. As a film, it marked the entry of a new type of Western, one that was more intimate, more cynical, and more authentic than those before it." (Michael Mirasol) 

Tabu - FW Murnau - 1931 Black and White - Silent

Part of my performing life is making live musical scores to silent films and Tabu was the first one that I ever did, and still do, since the early 1990s. This was Murnau's last film and one he never got to see as he died in a car crash before the premier. Filmed in Bora Bora, it is an anti-colonial 'exotica' film. I first saw it and recorded it, on VHS tape, from Italian television and thought that it was the perfect vehicle for some live Hawaiian lap steel playing. The version I saw and recorded was an inferior copy, which was not only transmitted in the wrong format but had been seriously edited. As time went by I found other and better copies culminating in the most recent beautiful DVD/ Blue-ray available which was taken from an original nitrate print which I believe was found in Floyd Crosby's archive, the cinematographer on the original shoot in 1931, for which he won an academy award. He was David Crosby's father by the way. 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Apichatpong Weerasethakul - 2010 Thailand 

I make short films and video myself and Apichatpong is one of my filmmaker heroes. I love the way he will make short films on his telephone and Super 8 as well as large (?) budget films and installations. I have and do visit South East Asia a lot and I have many friends there. I am constantly fascinated by the plurality of languages, beliefs, thought patterns and the place that mythology and 'magical thinking' play in everyday life. As well as having a very particular way of presenting sound in his films — often sound from a completely different time and place — the film is also shot in a variety of cinematic styles, something that has influenced my own film and video.  

Sun Ra and the Omniverse Jet Arkestra — The Complete Detroit Jazz Center Residency  

Sun Ra is one of my musical heroes, and we play his music a lot in the house here. I have seen him live three times, twice in London and the first time ever in a very small jazz club here in Rome not long after I arrived here in the late 1980s. I also very recently discovered a live recording of him in a duo that was recorded here in Rome in 1977. This Detroit box set is 28 CDs recorded live over a week from Christmas to New Year. I found this box set, remarkably, in a small record shop that usually sells classical music near to the RAI Italian radio studios. I paid a ridiculous 70 Euro for it, and I have recently noticed it goes from around 200 to 600 Euro — so a great find all round. Space is the place. 

Henry Kaiser — Garden Of Memory Live Recordings

Henry sent me this box set as a gift (thank you Henry), and it has accompanied me on many long haul (and short haul) flights. It is Henry playing live solo guitar at the Garden Of Memory Summer Solstice concerts over four or five days in 2014 in Oakland, California. Long form, very slow, ambient, solo electric guitar, very beautiful and in no particular genre really. The perfect place to listen to each of these hour long plus CDs is on an airplane or lying on the beach.  

Gabby Pahinui Band with Ry Cooder — Volumes 1 and 2 

These are two separate records, but I always think of them as one as they were both recorded in the same session in the same place. If you want to know what Hawaiian Slack Key guitar is all about this is where to go. This is the cream of the crop all in one band on one session. Gabby was the instigator of the so-called renaissance of slack key, not that it ever went away of course, it’s just that he took it somewhere else. Ry Cooder organized a mobile recording unit and took it to Kona on the Big Island and then organized the Pahinui family to move in, stay in and record these legendary sessions, adding his own mandoline, tiple and some guitar to the proceedings. An all-star Hawaiian cast: Gabby on 12-string guitar, lap steel, bass guitar, 8-string ukulele and vocals; Cyril Pahinui, guitar, bass and banjo; Bla Pahinui, guitar and vocals; Leland “Atta” Isaacs, guitar; Randy Lorenzo, guitar bass and vocals; Sonny Chillingworth, guitar and vocals; Ry Cooder, guitar, tiple and mandoline. While listening go read Kika Kila, the history of Hawaiian Steel Guitar as an aperitivo.  

[jakewright]

Top 10

As a recent member of 'Club 30', I thought I would reflect on the past 25 years of listening to music and select my 'Top 10'  favourite songs of all time. I plan to revisit this when I'm 60 and see whether my taste has changed. 

A special mention must go to The Beatles, Gerry Rafferty, The Verve and Dekker, Desmond & The Aces, who didn’t make the cut, but who I owe for influencing and shaping my early sojourn into the world of music.

First clause: It's a top 12.

Second clause: There's no particular order.

1.     AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long

I became a hard rock addict when I first heard the strutting two-barrel guitar riffs of AC/DC's T.N.T on Tony Hawks Pro-Skater 4. As a mid-teens teenager with a new electric guitar, I was obsessed with learning licks and riffs in my room and AC/DC provided me with the right rhythm and blues to get me rocking-out in front of the mirror. Obviously, Back in Black was the go-to album with more than enough guitar licks to master, but it was You Shook Me All Night Long that struck deepest, with its jangly intro; no fucks given power chords verse, and bluesy guitar solo that had me hook, line and sinker. I will never ever tire of hearing it and I will never tire of 'Acca Dacca'.

2.     The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary

Another song that was introduced to me by a video game. If I remember correctly, The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary was on the playlist of in-game radio station V-Rock on Grand Theft Auto Vice City. It grabbed me instantly with its pulsating rhythm, catchy lyrics and psychedelic lead riff. The song's energy is addictive and always has me coming back for more.

3.     Arctic Monkeys – A Certain Romance

The most important band to have ever graced my late adolescence. Through Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, Turner and Co. produced a soundtrack to our lives at the time, telling the familiar stories of drinking, fighting, clubbing, trying to chat up girls and having a tight group of friends – more like brothers – to experience it all with. A Certain Romance is by far my favourite song on the album. Its honesty, sincerity and poignancy reminds me of the best and worst parts of growing up. There's a lyric in the song that goes, Well over there, there's friends of mine / What can I say? I've known 'em for a long long time / And yeah they might overstep the line / But I just cannot get angry in the same way. Every time I hear it, I think of the friends of my youth and realise that without them I wouldn't be the man I am today.

4.     De La Soul – Eye Know

A song to fall in love to. Lyrics, samples and production - closest thing to hip-hop perfection.  

5.     Pharoahe Monch – Push (Feat. Showtime, Mela Machinko & Tower Power)

I bought Pharoahe Monch's album Desire back in 2007 on a whim. The album is truly great, but Push captured me wholeheartedly. The all-consuming bass line and flourish of trumpets truly shocks the soul into life like a round of CPR. The song itself is about keeping ones resolve and never giving up no matter how tough things get. Advice we can all heed.

I live my life one day at a time / Hold my head, so I don't lose my mind / Sometimes you might fall down / But you get back up, get on your journey / Yeah, keep on pushin'

6.     Bob Marley & The Wailers – Three Little Birds

Where to start. I was given Legend by Bob Marley & The Wailers when I was about 10 years-old as a birthday/Christmas present. It's was a great introduction to reggae and the songs of Bob, Tosh and Bunny. When I heard the simple but beautiful Three Little Birds I instantly knew it would be a favourite of mine. The reassuring refrain of Don't worry about a thing / 'Cause every little thing gonna be all right genuinely warms my heart. Couple this with the fact that it's one of my beloved Cardiff City's walkout songs, and that Ninian Park (Cardiff's old football ground) once hosted the great man himself makes the connection all the deeper.  

7.     The Pogues – Misty Morning Albert Bridge

Not a song, but pure poetry. A poem about dreams, love and the passage of time. Its references to London's Albert Bridge and Celtic melodies remind me of my Northern Irish grandparents, who met in London in the 1940s and would have undoubtedly passed by the bridge during their courtship and early married life. Sadly, neither of them are with us any more but when I hear this song I like to think of them both, meeting for the first time and falling in love (possibly by the Albert Bridge). Jem Finer's lyrics in the final verse make me deeply believe that one day I will see them both again. Goosebumps.

Count the days / Slowly passing by / Step on a plane/ And fly away / I'll see you then / As the dawn birds sing / On a cold and misty morning / By the Albert Bridge

8.     Jurassic 5 – Concrete Schoolyard

There’s enough groove on this record to quench my thirst for old-school, boom-bap hip-hop forever. Match that with the beautifully interwoven wordplay by rappers Chali 2na, Akil, Zaakir, and Marc 7 and it's no surprise that Concrete Schoolyard made my top 12. Add into the mix a trip down memory lane of summer hoops with some of my best pals when I was a teenager and it's the perfect fix.

9.     The Impressions – People Get Ready

I remember watching a great programme on the BBC called Soul Deep when I was about 13. The series told the story of how soul music was forged from r 'n' b and gospel to become the most successful music in the world. Safe to say I bought the compilation CD that accompanied the series and People Get Ready by The Impressions captured me in a way I still can't really describe. Curtis Mayfield really captured the spirit of community, struggle and racial harmony at a time when African-Americans fought brutal oppression as they marched for their civil rights. And this message was not lost on a middle-class white boy from Wales. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it because it makes me believe that whatever the struggle is it's something worth fighting for. Something bigger and better always lies on the other side.

People get ready / For the train to Jordan / Picking up passengers / From coast to coast

Faith is the key / Open the doors and board them / There's room for all / Amongst the loved the most

10.  Joan Armatrading – Love and Affection (Remix)

A lyrically rich song, with great harmonies and instrumentation. A worthy listen when you're ready to fall in love or when you’ve already fallen in its wake. Recently, I was listening to actor Clarke Peters (most famous for playing Lester Freamon in The Wire) being interviewed by Michael Berkley on his Private Passions show on BBC Radio 3 and discovered he is the man behind the deep backing vocals on the track. Seriously cool.

11.  MJ Cole – Sincere

I love UK Garage (UKG) and this is quite possibly the best UKG track ever made. MJ Cole's first album, also called Sincere, earned him two top 15 singles on the UK Singles Chart; a prestigious Mercury Music Prize nomination; Brit Award nomination, and beat Dr. Dre to win a MOBO Best Producer award in 2001. But more importantly, the album became one of the soundtracks to inner-city life in the early noughties – at a time when I was a teenager and looking for an identity and music scene to belong to. Cole once said, “London is a multicultural city… it’s like a melting pot of young people, and that’s reflected in the music of UK Garage.” But UKG not only influenced young Londoners, it influenced young people from inner-cities and suburbs all over the UK. The fact that his music replicated the pirate radio experience (key to UKG’s existence), and was dark, 'urban' and edgy was all part of the appeal. Even now I can listen to Sincere (the song) and imagine I'm at an underground UKG rave in Elephant and Castle with cheap prosecco in hand, two-stepping away.

12.  Vaughan Williams – A Lark Ascending

And finally. I remember being a young lad, perhaps 11 or 12 and I was alone in the house. It was a Sunday morning and the summer sun was belting through the dining room, making everything shimmer with a golden glow. I decided to put dad's stereo on and set the dial for BBC Radio 3 (my old man was fond of putting classical music on a Sunday and I thought I would do the same). Then bam, I was hit with this weightless, airy violin that sonically sent me to the heavens, speaking to me on an ethereal plane. It was of course, Vaughan Williams's A Lark Ascending. Every time I hear this composition, I transcend reality and imagine myself to be as light and free as a lark, feeling the cold air about me as I rise and fall, flying across a vast endless landscape. There is a glory in listening to something so beautiful, however, there is also poignancy in the music one must be prepared for - to me, it invokes the idea that one day one's voyage will come to an end. The magnitude of the escapism means that by the end of the 15-minute opus you feel quite perturbed when you are set back down to reality. Still, worth it all the same.