Music Reviews: Year Archives
2006 Releases
Marching Thru The Wilderness
by State Bird
This year’s Cornerstone Festival was the first one I had attended in five years, and as such, there were some notable differences between my experience this year and my experiences from years past. Perhaps the biggest difference was that my primary focus this year was not on the music side of the festival, but rather the film side. As such, the number of concerts that I attended can be counted on two hands—a mere fraction of the concerts that I’ve seen in the past.
Even so, as I made way through that paltry number of shows, there were still things that I was hoping for. Namely, a band that would come completely out of the leftfield, that would leave concertgoers picking their jaws up off the muddy ground—or at least scratching their heads full of rarely washed, nappy, campsite hair.
In years past, that bill was filled by such acts as S.S. Bountyhunter, Danielson, Fine China, Soul-Junk, and Psalters. For Cornerstone 2007, it was State Bird. And for a while, during their late night show full of insanity—Native American stylings, conga line—it was like those five years had never occurred. I was back in those Cornerstones of yore, and I couldn’t wait to run back to my campsite and grab all of my friends to herd them back to the Encore Stage.
Altered Realities
by Erdem Helvacıoğlu
According to my MP3 player, Altered Realities—the latest from Turkish guitarist Erdem Helvacıoğlu—ought to be filed under “Jazz”. Which might throw some folks for a loop, since there’s nary a trumpet or sax to be found in the album’s seven tracks and fifty-three minutes. However, the disc does have a highly improvised nature to it, based entirely around the live electronic manipulation of Helvacıoğlu’s acoustic guitar.
The result is a shimmering, hazy collection of songs not unlike something one might find in the discographies of Christian Fennesz and Off The Sky‘s Jason Corder (with maybe some hints of Tujiko Noriko‘s electronic collages thrown in for good measure). There are moments where the manipulation renders the music into incredibly abstract forms, the tones from Helvacıoğlu’s Ovation getting split and shattered like light through a kaleidoscope.
The resulting sounds are less guitar-like than you might imagine, instead resembling the random radio noise you might pick up on your AM radio around four in the morning. This is highly effective on the darker, more foreboding tracks, like “Dreaming On A Blind Saddle”, where the constantly shifting guitar atmospherics conjure up strange, alien vistas and remote sights.
Holding On - Letting Go
by Peter James
I sometimes find myself wondering, if only halfheartedly, how much longer it’ll be before I stop buying CDs altogether. And the reason is that there is simply an abundance of great music being released, for free, by such netlabels as Thinner/Autoplate, Subsource, Lost Children, and Archaic Horizon. (Okay, so not entirely free, since someone still has to pay for the internet connection and bandwidth used, but you know what I mean.)
Take, for instance, the first release on Archaic Horizon: Peter James’ Holding On - Letting Go. Featuring a handful of tracks picked from James’ full-length record as well as a bonus track, Holding On - Letting Go is an exceptionally crafted piece of melancholic dark ambience that is as good as anything I’ve purchased from the likes of Projekt, Cold Meat Industries, Manifold, Soleilmoon, etc.
La Stanza Di Swedenborg
by Vanessa Van Basten
Vanessa Van Basten hail from Genoa, Italy and are bizarrely named after the wife of Dutch footballer Marco Van Basten. This duo operate somewhere between the heavy post-rock world and the experimental metal tendencies of Neurosis. La Stanza Di Swedenborg is a beguiling mix that is augmented by God Machine-style distortion and occasional Mike Patton-esque vocals.
Using a glut of electronic, distorted and acoustic instrumentation, it all starts with the impressive title track. A tense 3-minute build-up of Italian spoken word and apocalyptic synths soon explodes with some tremendous, melancholic guitar work and industrial-sized drums.
City Island
by The Artificial Sea
It seems like a lot of electronica-laced pop acts out there focus on making music that is all pretty and floaty, blending wispy (often female) vocals with gurgling, glitchy electronics and ethereal, ringing guitars. Some groups under this umbrella that immediately leap to mind include Park Avenue Music, Lullatone, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and Piana.
However, I have difficulty lumping The Artificial Sea (MySpace) in with the aforementioned artists. While the music of Brooklyn-based duo Kevin C. Smith and Alina Simone contains many of the same elements, there’s nothing all that cutesy or floaty about their music.
Rather, there’s a tension and anxiety lurking in the shadows of City Island that seems at odds with what most folks might be expecting from an electronic pop act. At odds, and yet also quite beguiling.
Shades Of A Vast Moment
by Void's Anatomy
The music on Void’s Anatomy’s debut album, Shades Of A Vast Moment, often reminds me of a darker, more dolorous version of Amy Annelle’s fractured folk-pop. Like Annelle, singer/songwriter Marie Jorge has a voice that is surprisingly strong for all of its breathiness, and it has a unique way of wrapping its tendrils about the fragments of your subsconsious, regardless of whether she sings in French and English.
But whereas Annelle’s songs ramble, tramp-like, through broken, faded snapshots of Americana, Jorge’s songs pirouette on the edge of an abyss, her delicate voice seemingly quite outmatched by the long, dark night of the soul that she faces.
Jorge sings “Words we speak are empty/No light, no solace to share… Up to now, there is nothing left/Outside the wind is killing what’s left” on the opening track, setting the somber tone that permeates much of the album. A light piano melody dances its way through the song, but its lightness seems almost morbid and even mocking when compared to the song’s mournful cello and synth strings.
The lethargic guitars, languid keys, and conversational snippets that make up the musical backdrop of “Life Sleeps” is quite appropriate for Jorge’s tale of spiritual unrest and exhaustion. The song captures tiny details—a pile of unmade clothes on the bed, for instance—but the ennui dispels any notions that the song is purely observational.
“Consuming ads makes me want to throw up/And I’m tired to see within or without/Between flashes of your face”, “Blaming others is an easy way out/I’m tired to drink words that bypass the heart/Fading essense outrunned by doubt”—the ennui in Jorge’s song is almost palpable, with a faint echo of heartache about it all.
Romance Of Young Tigers
by Romance Of Young Tigers
I made a brief post on Dayton, Ohio trio Romance Of Young Tigers about a month ago. Back then I said this young band (two guitarists and a bassist) made music the equivalent of “Mono merging their dynamic sound with the attention to detail aspects of Labradford”.
With their debut self-released EP, the Young Tigers not only match the promise of that statement, they blow it out of the water! For a band with literally no percussive elements, their sound of massive distorted soundscapes is, nothing short of, absolutely monumental.
(Before talking about the music, the packaging is something to marvel at too. It’s handmade, hand-drawn and highly inventive. It makes this EP worth buying, before even listening to the music.)
Opening proceedings with the incredible, and aptly titled, “Long Withdrawing Roar”, this fledgling band combine lulling drones that slowly unravel into a real cacophony of psychedelic sound. As this track progresses, the discordant sounds become drenched in reverb, while a glorious melody starts to emerge, before subsiding into a mass of distorted ambience. For a band’s first foray into recorded territory, it is astounding stuff.
Aerial Days
by Songs Of Green Pheasant
Those expecting Aerial Days to be a proper follow-up to Songs Of Green Pheasant’s self-titled 2005 debut might be somewhat disappointed. This EP is essentially a sort of clearinghouse for Duncan Sumpner (who records under the Songs… moniker with various collaborators), representing material that was recorded at various times between 2002 and 2005. It’s difficult to tell, exactly, which tracks were recorded when, or which tracks represent a more nascent version of Songs Of Green Pheasant, as all of the songs are wreathed in a lo-fi haze that purports naivete and rawness. Which, of course, is all part of the charm.
But there are certainly moments of unevenness throughout the EP, which does reveal that Sumpner was still figuring things out while recording these tracks. For example, the broken, distorted guitar that lurches forth in the final moments of “Remembering And Forgetting”, the extra-long denouement of “Stars Form Birds” (which sounds lovely in its own right but seems a bit awkward simply tacked onto the end of another track), or the meandering midsection of “Wintered”, which gets lost amidst whirling whistles and synths.
All that being said, however, Aerial Days is still full of tiny shimmering moments of beauty.
So This Is Goodbye
by Junior Boys
Although I enjoyed Junior Boys’ previous album, 2004’s Last Exit, I didn’t crush on it as much as some folks I know. However, So This Is Goodbye has been in a near-constant rotation ever since I picked it up back in September. The departure of founding member Johnny Dark might have something to do with this, the result being a much more graceful and flowing sound that moves even deeper into a form of electronic pop that sounds both shamelessly retro and breathlessly futuristic.
However crisp and infectious the beats and rhythms might be, however smooth and graceful the synth melodies might move, it is ultimately Jeremy Greenspan’s voice that proves to be Junior Boys’ chief saving grace. His sighing croon (or is it crooning sigh?) of a voice is dashing, seductive, nostalgic, regretful, and wounded—and often all at once—as if he’s resigned himself to the fact that he’ll always be in alone in the morning, even after the most torrid of club trysts.
And The Glass Handed Kites
by Mew
The three fellows in the Danish indie-rock band Mew have described their music as “pretentious art rock” or “the world’s only indie stadium band”. Thank goodness such descriptions are rather tongue-in-cheek, because folks might get the wrong idea. “Pretentious art rock” might cause one to think that Mew’s music is rather exclusionist and elitist, when nothing could be further from the truth.
There are some elements to Mew’s sound that could turn off potential listeners, such as singer/guitarist Jonas Bjerre’s high-pitched vocals, the band’s lyrics, which are often full of myth-like fairy tale imagery, or the sometimes bombastic arrangements that often verge on—gasp!—epic prog-metal. But if folks these days are prepared to greet another similarly falsetto-led band that utilizes their own imaginary language as something akin to the Second Coming, than I think it’s perfectly reasonable to cut Bjerre and his mates a little slack.
And The Glass Handed Kites may verge into stadium band territory from time to time, thanks to the band’s love of massive, explosive riffs and thrashing rhythms. But by and large, the album is a solid mixture of hard and soft, quiet and loud; there’s a little something in here for everyone. “Circuitry Of The Wolf” may kick off the album with crunchy guitar wolfs and choral voices, but stately piano melodies also shine out amidst all of the distortion, lending a refined, even stately air to the song.
Much of the focus on the album will probably be placed on its mid-section, primarily the triptych of “Apocalypso”, “Special”, and “The Zookeeper’s Boy”, and for good reason. These three songs—all of them singles—find the band diving headlong into the more extreme, heavier aspects of their sound.