Trees- "Sickness In" (2013) [Crucial Blast]

The new Trees album has a goat on the cover, which in my book, is an instant win.  A vibrating goat, to boot.  And I must say, Sickness In is one of those pieces of music that needs to be played at a floor rattling volume to be properly experienced.  No, it doesn't make the music "better," but when the buildup finally breaks it's comparable to the release of a good orgasm.

Trees first hit my radar earlier this year with the discovery of their two previous albums, Light's Bane and Freed of This Flesh.  While their debut brings the heavy doom you crave, Freed of This Flesh showcases the band's development of more eerie buildups and use of textural feedback, which continues onto Sickness In more grandly than before.

Introduced with finger picked guitar and crescendo feedback, Cover Your Mouth doesn't mess around with bringing the drone, but when the intro finally succumbs to the awaited ear splitting madness it's much heavier than anticipated.  This is slower than previous Trees offerings and demands a fitter physique to withstand the continuous aural and filthy feedback.

Perish takes a different tact opens with throat singing, punchy bass, and beloved feedback.  This is one track that will grab your ribcage and pulverize your liver in a total aural domination, and while it is still clearly Trees, the glimpses where their path may be heading.

Sickness In has decimated a lot of the heavier albums released this year, but I almost wish Perish had been first in the track listing.  As it is, this song is an almost-hidden gem in the Manhattan sewer experience Trees create on their latest release.

-A.

Great Attractor - "Black Star" (2013) [Reverb Worship] (FULL ALBUM STREAM)

Canadian multi-instrumentalist Neddal Ayad is his own microcosm. Over the course of his music career, Ayad has gracefully stumbled through the worlds of sleazy blues, discordant noise rock, beautiful psychedelic folk, and deep, thoughtful drone. Having followed his career from his early days on Timothy "timeMOTHeye" Renner's Hand/Eye label, Ayad's creativity has been a consistent source of pleasure and pain (in a good way).

With his new solo effort, Great Attractor, Ayad beautifully melds his psychedelic folk and harsh drone sensibilities into a cohesive whole, Black Star being the project's first full-length effort. Beginning with the dreamy drones of its titular track, "Black Star" slowly morphs into a slow, dreary Americana dirge, no doubt influenced by the great Nick Cave. As Ayad smolders and sizzles through mournful folk progressions and distant synthesizer drones, Lithuanian singer Daina Dieva's smooth, mumbled alto fully realizes this song's sort of "back porch" vibe, like a modern interpretation of a lost Alan Lomax recording.

Track two, "Tropic of Cancer/Tropic of Capricorn" is its own monster. A lengthy exercise in sound maximizing, this massive wall of pulsing drones and feedback loops slowly shifts between scratching noise and skyward guitar. Joined by his The Floating World bandmate Amanda Votta, who contributes flute midst the galactic soundscape, we can still hear Ayad's sort of folk mentality pushing through, but only as a subtext. Don't get me wrong, this is still a full-on bout of droning psychedelia, but it is unmistakable that this came from a folk musician. A beautiful, flowing, LOUD piece of music.



From the label:

"Reverb Worship is delighted to announce the release of Great Attractor. This is a superb solo project from Neddal Ayad who also graced the Floating World album I did a while ago. In fact, all three musicians (Amanda Votta and Grey Malkin from The Hare And The Moon) from that album all appear on this recording too in addition to the voice of lithuanian singer Daina Dieva. What we have here is a album which comes across like some galactic space transmission. It begins with "Black Star" which buzzes, hums and sizzles with distorted effects and feedback which dies down to near silence from which we get a mournful vocal amidst angular strummed guitar and keyboards. The second and final track "Tropic Of Cancer/Tropic Of Capricorn" is one of those pieces of music that seems to evolve and reveal more and more each time you listen to it. It has a strange rythmic breathing pattern (or is it a treated drum loop?) with morphing and skyscraping guitar moves and synth patterns which gradually build and develop into some kind of out there Popul Vuhesque film soundtrack.The album has been mastered beautifully by Amanda Votta. Its cover artwork was done by Prins Preben. Printed on 210 gsm white artcard. This cd is available now in a limited edition of 50 copies." -Roger Linney/Reverb Worship

-Jon

The Inarguable Exclusive: New A Death Cinematic Track "Seek Shelter From The Vile Swarms" Streaming Now

Image courtesy and intellectual property of Simple Box Construction.

A Death Cinematic is a sort of sonic enigma, residing in a unique stasis between beautiful, melodic minimalism and violent, gruesome grit. This multi-disciplinary project, led by an anonymous Michigan resident, lends itself to the new wave of "Americana drone," a style based in Morricone-esque timbre painted in shades of modern Western author Cormac McCarthy, but A Death Cinematic's full DIY aesthetic and unique sound palette sets this project apart from the Earths and Barn Owls we encounter so often. Often accompanied with beautiful, handmade packaging, books of photographs, or even water decals, in the case of the Your Fate Twisting, Epic In Its Crushing Moments EP, A Death Cinematic (and its home label Simple Box Construction) is of a rare breed, encompassing the artistic spectrum in one devastating fell swoop.



From the B-side of soon-to-be-released cassette Corrosions of Traveled Daydreams, "Seek Shelter from the Vile Swarms" shows a new face to A Death Cinematic. While still rooted in the apocalyptic, picturesque sounds of the Rocky Mountains rainshadow, the textures we see here are much more carefully laid out. Whereas previous releases' improvisational character manifested itself in loops which didn't always fully match up, a la Brian Eno's Music for Airports, here we see the many different parts feeding off of each other in a communal mass. Delicate bursts of noise, reminiscent of distant sandstorms and tumbleweed, meld with airy slide guitar, riding ever so slightly on the backs of distant chords. It really is beautiful, probably the best A Death Cinematic material I've heard in the six wonderful years I've spent following this particular project.

The Corrosions of Traveled Daydreams cassette/art box is set for release on New Jersey label Tycho Magnetic Anomalies, who brought us the cassette version of Planning for Burial's Quietly, on Friday, March 15th. The packaging was painstakingly assembled over the past few months by Simple Box Construction, and photos of the packaging's individual components and construction can be viewed at the Simple Box Construction blog.

From the label:

"There is a sense of wonder and despair to the post apocalyptic soundtrack that A Death Cinematic is slowly unleashing on the world, one release at a time, and Corrosions Of Traveled Daydreams just might be the most realized vehicle for that vision (and the album was quite literally born to be on tape). Even without lyrics, Corrosions Of Traveled Daydreams tells multiple stories of peoples and places and things that have left only their ruins behind them. The whole presentation of the album is a work of art that hearkens back to a recently bygone era bringing the tangible aspects of opening and exploring and listening to the record together again." -Tycho Magnetic Anomalies

-Jon

Jon's Favorite Things of 2012

I'm writing this on December 1st, or at least I'm starting to. Wouldn't it be odd if for some strange reason all the morons who believe that the world was supposed to end five days before this is scheduled to post were...right? Silly I know, but this feature is not going to feature very much complaining. Yes, it seems to be that time of year where I gush about my favorite albums of the year past. There certainly have been quite a few quality releases this year, and while some killjoys revel in posing the "Was anything of quality really released this year?" question on their Facebook/Twitter/Blog, I'm here to remind you that they are wrong. At least, they're wrong in my book, anyway. And hell, going back to the silly, impossible conspiracy theory, 2012 wouldn't be a terrible year for music to end.

So here goes with my year end list. I'm starting with #20 and working my way to #1, you know, for the rising suspense. If an artist released two albums of a similar style and gait and I really liked both, I condensed them into one slot.

10. Krallice - "Years Past Matter" [Self-Released/Gilead Media]
Krallice is the ultimate black metal experience for eggheads like myself. While still maintaining a muscular, hyperblack physique, it's what goes on underneath which has made this "supergroup" of sorts one of my absolute favorite US bands. Constantly changing pulses, Hindemith-obsessed tonality, and a great communal ear for powerful arrangements, this transformation of the modern classical style, which is largely unknown and unresearched in black metal, to a familiar texture is really something to behold. They definitely made a gutsy move when Marston, Barr, McMaster, and Weinstein collectively decided to self-release the CD edition, and maybe it's a sign that you don't always need a label, though the excellent 2LP, handled by the ever great Gilead Media, sure helps the other side of that argument

9. Anatomy of Habit - "Anatomy of Habit EP" [Self-Released]
This collective of Chicago misfits has done it once again. The band's second release, this (currently) vinyl-only, self-titled EP offers up two more slabs of Anatomy of Habit's signature heavy, introspective post-punk/superdoom hybrid. I have to admit, I wasn't totally sure about this one at first, seeing as this particular EP utilizes a lot more "studio magic" (read as: overdubbed vocals, extra instruments) than their previous full-length, which sounded much more like their extremely oppressive live shows, but I finally came to my senses. "After the Water" and "The Decade Plan" are definitely live favorites, so it's nice to hear them fleshed out to their full potential. Sadly, various circumstances resulted in the band parting ways with drummer Dylan Posa and Greg Ratajczak, so who knows what the future spells for Anatomy of Habit? I'm definitely interested in hearing how next month's studio session (with session musicians, no less) turns out, and will be picking up the soon-to-be-released CD edition of both the LP and EP.

8. Wreathes - "Wreathes" [Brave Mysteries/Pesanta Urfolk]
An excellent, excellent neofolk album. An offshoot of Kinit Her, musicians Troy Schafer and Nathaniel Ritter formed Wreathes as a sort of "songwriting-based" counterpart to their main project, and this concerted effort towards songwriting resulted in some of the strongest neofolk this side of the Atlantic. Schafer's seemingly infinite layers of guitars, violins, and bass intermingle so perfectly with Ritter's loops, synthesized sounds, and advanced keyboard work. I've recently joined Wreathes as a live member, so I guess there's a sort of "conflict of interests" going on here...but I guess that's a sort of testament to how much I enjoyed the music, right? Right? Exactly. Get this one on CD from Brave Mysteries or gatefold LP from Pesanta Urfolk.

7. Zelienople - "The World Is A House On Fire" [Type Records]
If ghosts played music, it would probably sound like this. Ethereal, almost jazzy "slowcore" (read as: excessively minimal, quiet "rock" music), Zelienople never ceases to amaze with their unique, almost sleep-inducing approach. As unique an experience as it is, The World Is A House On Fire feels as if you've put on your favorite Miles Davis album at half speed and crawled into the speaker with a warm blanket and a good book. If you're into music which moves like a filmreel of an empty, lamplit street in slow motion, you definitely need to experience Zelienople (especially live).

6. Pinkish Black - "Pinkish Black (Everything Went Dark)" [Handmade Birds]
Texas duo Pinkish Black was definitely the "dark horse" for most 2012 lists. Coming out of left field at a million miles a second, Pinkish Black is an expertly crafted "deathrock" album, complete with forays into Om-inspired stoner doom, crazed black metal, and oddball krautrock. Completely foregoing the use of guitars, or any string instruments for that matter, Pinkish Black only uses voice, synthesizer, and heavy-hitting percussion, which is extremely impressive. Though I'm a little sore they signed to Century Media, which I find a little weird, I hope they find the unanimous recognition they deserve with their new home.

5. Hell - "III" [Eternal Warfare/Pesanta Urfolk]
I never really knew what to make of Hell's first two full-lengths. A weird combination of Sabbath-inspired doom, funereal drone, and soaring post-rock, it almost seemed sort of scattered and lacked focus...but the potential was there. With III, the end of the initial Hell trilogy, solo musician M.S.W. found that focus and laid waste to everything in his path. Utterly despondent, romantic, and with a heaviness which goes unmatched, III is Hell's triumph, featuring some of doom metal's most powerful, moving songwriting since Asunder called it quits. This is one of those albums to which you can listen over and over again without it ever getting stale. Brilliantly executed and welcomed with open arms. The tape edition, handled by Eternal Warfare, is sold out through the usual channels, but an LP edition will be made available via Pesanta Urfolk sometime next year. Get into this.

4. Hexvessel - "No Holier Temple" [Svart Records]
Wow. Just wow. Dawnbearer was a solid effort, but this? This is just excellent. No Holier Temple is by far one of the best "psychedelic folk" releases I've heard in a long time, and this Finnish troupe's tribute to the often-attempted-but-never-fully-realized 70s folk scene is as close to perfection as one can get. A brilliant amalgam of proto-doom, gorgeous vocal arrangements, tasteful progressive rock, and, of course, Hexvessel's own "deranged hippie" folk, No Holier Temple is as overwhelmingly catchy as it is deep and brooding. Another mark on singer/songwriter Mat "Kvohst" McNerny's excellent track record, which also includes black metal weirdos and DHG. Proof that great things come from colliding worlds.

3. Vaura - "Selenelion" [Wierd Records]
You know you're in for a treat when cold/synthwave label Wierd Records bites the bullet and signs a metal band. The union of shoegaze's height, post-punks moodiness, progressive rock's braininess, and the scorn of black metal, Vaura's Selenelion opens up a new plane of experimenting for metalheads and goths alike, but what else would you expect from members of Religious to Damn, Dysrhythmia, maudlin of the Well/Kayo Dot, and the Secret Chiefs? Do I need to say more?

2. Horseback - "Half Blood" [Relapse Records]
One of the best feelings in the world is when your most anticipated album of the year just so happens to end up on your year end list. Horseback mastermind Jenks Miller's blend of Morricone-meets-Young (Neil, not La Monte, though if you think about it...) Americana and groovy doom metal is one of those rare successes in the world of "weird" genre fusion, which is usually rife with bands which try way too hard to be unique but end up unlistenable. A continuation of the style he revolutionized with 2009's The Invisible Mountain, Miller's unexpected addition of power electronics and noise to the fold might have come as a shock to many, but those elements were always sort of there, buried in the background. A shining force to be reckoned with.

1. Kinit Her - "Storm Of Radiance" [Brave Mysteries/Pesanta Urfolk]
Well, there you have it. Living up to my "Captain Neofolk" status on Last.fm, my favorite release of 2012 just so happened to be one of the neofolk variety. Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, Nathaniel Ritter and Troy Schafer's Kinit Her is all about boundary breaking. Much like Krallice's fusion of the unfamiliar and the familiar, Kinit Her's Storm of Radiance is a melding of avant-garde abstraction with traditional neofolk leanings, resulting in an inward journey through neomedieval landscapes and modern opera houses. Read my full review, which was featured as part of the Sounds of Autumn review series I ran from August to early November, for both a song premiere and me waxing poetic for a few pages. More than impressive. Can't wait to receive my copy of the special edition double LP, which should arrive at my doorstep soon (hopefully).

Runners Up (a.k.a. things which are also awesome and I needed to make sure I said nice things about them)


11. Wreck & Reference - "No Youth" [Flenser]
One of the few bands who completely eschews the use of direct-recorded guitar for metal. No bass either. The fact that Felix and Ignat were able to craft extraordinarily heavy music utilizing samples, voice, and drums is both amazing and terrifying. Dark, jarring, disturbing, and ethereal, No Youth is a flexing of one gigantic creative muscle. Imagine if they collaborated with Iron Forest?



12. Neurosis - "Honor Found In Decay" [Neurot/Relapse]
Neurosis is back. In most cases, that's all I really have to say, but I feel I'll go a little further. With all the solo work Scott Kelly and Steve von Till have been churning out since Given to the Rising, we really see a melding of the miserable, Townes van Zandt-inspired bummercountry Kelly and von Till emulate and the unique "tribal drone post-hardcore" Neurosis have honed. It's awesome, maybe not their best work, but that still places them much higher than most of the music world. Big, emotional, and beardy.



13. Syven - "Corpus Christi" [Audiokratik]
Syven's sophomore effort was an exercise in simultaneous music modernization and preservation, in this case the music of the Knights Templar. I'd go deeper, but I wrote a huge feature on this and feel I said everything I needed to say here. It is excellent. Listen to it. Love it.



14. Ævangelist - "De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis" [I, Voidhanger/Blood Harvest]
Absolutely putrid, vile death metal. It seems "war metal" is the big thing now, with basement Blasphemy-worship bands releasing demos in droves, and it's almost completely watered down. Ævangelist's full-length debut seems to be making up for lost time, spewing forth some of the most frightening, baffling blackened death metal I've heard in some time. Extra kudos to vocalist Ascaris, who manages to sound even more disgusting than Craig Pillard's early work with Incantation.



15. Jodis - "Black Curtain" [Hydra Head/SIGE]
I wasn't really certain how I felt about Jodis's previous album, Secret House, but the fearless genre fusion found on Black Curtain absolutely blew me away. Aaron Turner's powerful croon dances about over excruciatingly slow dronepop dirges, carefully crafted by doom duo James Plotkin and Tim Wyskida. It's a rare feat to find music which is heavy both aurally and emotionally, and Jodis definitely embodies that rarity.



16. Guzzlemug - "Nervously Counting Rosary Beads" [Self-Released]/"To Leave The Earth" [Speaks Volumes/Bad Human]
I'm not really one for "progressive" music, but, man, Guzzlemug really hits the spot. Recently relocated from Minnesota, this progressive rock/metal act tastefully utilizes elements of free/avant-jazz, 70s psychedelia, modern choral music, and anything else they really feel like using. The expansive and lengthy Nervously Counting Rosary Beads's excellent voice work and massive, through-composed arrangement pairs perfectly with the "shorter," much more succinct tunes found on To Leave The Earth. This is a demonstration of true musicianship without crossing that oft-passed border of "wankiness." Progressive music with passion, which is something I can get behind.



17. GOG - "Ironworks" [Utech Records]
Though I've recently found myself avoiding drone, I couldn't help but check out the newest album from Mike Bjella's GOG. In our Architecture This Resounds, which was released earlier this year on King of the Monsters, showed GOG taking on more musical qualities, which was a welcome change, but I never would have guessed Bjella would have taken the plunge with Ironworks. At times an almost-black metal shadowplay, at others a slow piano dirge with terrifying screeches (a first for GOG), Ironworks is a beautiful eulogy for the American dream.



18. Dreamless - "All This Sorrow, All These Knives" [Handmade Birds]
Pleasant surprises are always welcome here, and Dreamless's magnificently heavy shoegaze was much more than pleasant. Though this was supposedly released excessively late last year, I felt an inclusion in this year's year end list was necessary. Fans of Hum, Justin Broadrick's various projects, and The Angelic Process will be more than happy to experience this one. I actually took a Megabus to Minneapolis to see these guys perform, if that's any indication.



19. Servile Sect - "SVRRENDER" [Handmade Birds/King of the Monsters]
The companion piece to last year's magnificent TRVTH was bound to end up on a few lists. SVRRENDER begins as a demonstration of raw black metal might, but slowly transforms into some of Servile Sect's most intriguing work to date. Krnkr and Clmnt's first time utilizing a full band, this is definitely the ledge off of which one would want to jump if you've been meaning to delve into weird, blackened psychedelia.

20. Circle of Ouroborus - "Abrahadabra" [Kuunpalvelus]/"The Lost Entrance of the Just"[Handmade Birds]

My favorite Finnish weirdos are back, this time with the second and third parts of the what can only be described as legendary session which gave us last year's Eleven Fingers. Similar in scope, we are again presented with two warm and fuzzy slabs of bummed-out, 80s goth-inspired "black metal." I'm not really certain if these albums, or the band, for that matter, can really be ascribed with this describing term, but, nonetheless, there is still definitely something "blackened" lurking around in the muck.


Cool people who deserve infinite thanks but weren't mentioned above: my writing staff, Dave and Liz Brenner/Earsplit PR, Kim Kelly/Catharsis PR, Scott Alisoglu and Ryan Ogle/Clawhammer PR, R. Loren/Handmade Birds, Chris Elmore and Harold Niver/HSS, Josh/That's How Kids Die, Ben/Black Metal and Brews, Ian/Don't Count On It Reviews, Nick and the rest of the Blackened Slugs crew, Keith Utech, Mike Genz/King of the Monsters, Hector/Triangulum Ignis, Garry, Dorian, and Chris/Cara Neir, Jordan, Rae, and the rest of the Last Rites/Metal Review crew, Mike/Fallen Empire, Karl Rogers/Fall of Nature, Alex Poole, Clay Ruby, Joe Beres/Small Doses, Stuart Dahlquist, Adam Wright/Crucial Blast, Timoth "timeMOTHeye" Renner/Stone Breath et. al., The Elitist/YTIMS, my Backlit buddies, all our loyal readers, and anyone else who helped out along the way by being awesome and/or making/releasing cool tunes. See you in 2013!

-Jon

ASVA & Philippe Petit - "Empires Should Burn" (2012) [Small Doses/Basses Frequences]

Music which bills itself as terrifying has really...lost its luster. Yes, there are a select few (Gnaw Their Tongues and other Mories-related projects come to mind) who reek of human filth, hewn in tattered flesh and loathing, but others just seem more like a caricature. Maybe the oodles of horror movies and that weird period in my life when I did way too much research on serial killers altered my recognition of the horrific, but I still feel as if what is known as "scary" has become more obvious than the odd dread of the unknown which pervaded earlier "shocking material." Knowing of ASVA's previous, heady output, I didn't expect to find myself frightened upon listening to Empires Should Burn, Dahlquist's collaborative effort with composer Philippe Petit, and yet I found myself looking over my shoulder once in a while, something I hadn't done since my first experience with occult French weirdo Moëvöt.

Though ASVA and Petit's own discographies are much more progressive and, at times, oddly beautiful, Empires Should Burn is a descent into the madness of the inner psyche. A bubbling mass of deep drones, smoldering in the distance, and the sharp jabs of Petit's homemade hammered dulcimer, the uneasiness found in this album is one which follows you beyond the final turns of one's record player. Subtle melodies whisper their way into the fold now and again, but only after a few listens can one fully grasp their presence in the seemingly endless nightmare landscapes put forth. Utilizing the spoken word talents of Jarboe, Bryan Lewis Saunders, and an especially memorable monologue by Legendary Pink Dots madman Edward Ka-Spel, each track found on Empires Should Burn takes on a different character, each manifesting as a different form of terror. Lengthy opener and title track "And Empires Will Burn" takes up a full side of the LP edition, with Dahlquist and Petit acting as a sort of demon orchestra for Edward Ka-Spel's monotone ramblings of obsession, corruption, greed, and so on. A specific mentioning of the subject's "tiny feet" always gets me. Maybe it's my recent week long runthrough of both seasons of Twin Peaks, but I immediately picture the deranged "Man from Another Place" and am taken to the surreal Black Lodge. It's a weird feeling, but I love it. Saunders and Jarboe's contributions are nothing short of stellar as well, each relying on "against your eardrums" whispers, dictating surrealist nightmares, melting into your mind.

You have to prepare yourself for an album like this. Collaborations like Empires Should Burn don't come around every year, or every few years. It's special, but in that mind-bending, "I need to take a break for a bit" way that the most oppressive music tends to be. To call Empires Should Burn unsettling is an understatement - this album is made from twisted stomachs, standing neck hairs, and eyes gingerly peering over shoulders. Immerse yourself if you dare.

-Jon

A Slow, Beautiful Disintegration: A Portrait of Sujo

It has almost become routine, going to the mailbox once every few months to find a package sent from one RH from Indiana. One wouldn't expect much experimental music to hail from Indiana, and yet artists like Iron Forest and Darkness Enshroud proved that there is always an undercurrent, and, in the case of RH's Sujo, it flows with a vibrant urgency; dangerous, consuming, and unforgiving. Often operating under his own short-run imprint, Inam Records, RH, otherwise known as Ryan Huber, strives to create music which encompasses the challenging and harsh as well as the dreamlike, familiar, and beautiful.

My journey with Sujo began early last year when a copy of the Terran EP appeared at my doorstep. After a quick inspection of the packaging and description, which Huber had so nicely included, I quickly and stupidly dismissed Sujo as one of the many mediocre noise/drone artists who plague my existence thanks to my familiarity and appreciation of the style. There Terran sat on my shelf. As the weeks went by, I thought, "You know, this is limited to 40 copies and the guy was nice enough to send me a copy. I should at least give it a listen so I can confirm my suspicions and be done with it." In classic fashion, I was wrong, and I found myself thrust into a beautiful, ground-glass landscape of buzzing, melodic drone bliss. As grating as the treble-only guitar work was, the depth of harmony and warm, rumbling bass worked together in such a perfect union. I felt as if I was being slowly chipped away by a gust of illuminated pieces of glass. It was incredible. Having not been prepared, I found myself taken aback by the wonder I was processing. I chastised myself and listened further.

A great silence occurred after Xasthur-meets-Tim Hecker doom of Terran, when it's sequel, titled Diaspora, suddenly decided to declare my CD rack its home. With new material comes a new visual direction, completely eschewing the minimal, xeroxed-look of Terran for the intriguing, colorful work of Megan Baijan. Though following a similar, "pretty and harsh" approach, Diaspora shows Huber adding a tasteful amount of clarity - just enough to where the seemingly infinite layers of guitar, bass, synthesizer, noise, and industrial beats become more pronounced and powerful. Though much less "blackened" in melodic approach, Huber still demonstrates his familiarity with the frostbitten path with "Tamil," whose intense and unannounced blast beats are a welcome surprise. Interesting that Huber would choose the word "diaspora," meaning "a scattering of people away from an established or central homeland," to tie this work together, because, while Sujo's sound is based in abstraction, there is nothing scattered about this dense slab of dreamdrone.

Another few months pass until a much larger box from Huber makes its way into my home. Kahane, Sujo's first vinyl release, is one of this project's few non-Inam releases, this time taken care of by the obscure Fedora Corpse Records, who released Black Mayonnaise's Dissipative Structure LP in 2009. Whereas Diaspora seemed to be a clarification of Sujo's sound, Kahane shows Huber tearing down any expectations one might have had. What once was defined by rigid, Parsons-like industrial rhythms suddenly took a detour, taking the route of Pyramids-like abstract drum machine mayhem. Previous efforts might have placed Sujo in the "black drone" or "atmospheric drone/doom" box, but Kahane is a demonstration of versatility, revealing different, albeit related, personalities. Dark ambient, goth industrial, no wave...all styles which could have been attributed to Sujo's previous works are suddenly brought to the forefront as a sort of statement. Sujo isn't always what you think it's going to be. Change is inevitable, and Huber boldly made that point with this excellent effort. Fedora Corpse did an excellent job packaging this album; hand-stamped "tarnished gold" vinyl housed with polaroids in a unique, hand-stamped jacket. Superbly handled, quality material.

Released a mere few weeks after Kahane came Fistula, Sujo's recent collaboration with drone artist Sun Hammer, is arguably Huber's most challenging work to date. Though I've used the word "abstract" to describe Sujo's massive sound palette, nothing in Huber's vast discography compares to the disparate abstraction found in this collaboration. Fistula shows Sujo at its most polar, operating either as a drone or noise entity, and it's nothing short of awesome. Though I was once a drone connoisseur, nowadays I find myself sort of shying away from the quickly staling style, and yet Sujo and Sun Hammer's unique mix of frigid and free sound is an excellent example of formless drone done correctly. Harboring both projects' harshest and most awe-inspiring moments, this is one of the few collaborations in which the final product is an enhancing of both artists' strong points instead of a confused heap of diluted strangeness. Bravo. Fistula is currently available as a digipak CD via Inam, though preorders for a cassette version are currently being held by Music Ruins Lives.

Of course, these four releases are only the tip of the iceberg for Sujo, whose extremely limited releases float around the smallest corners of the internet. And what of Huber himself? He likes to keep quiet, choosing instead to have all Inam releases fully distributed by experimental Mecca Crucial Blast Records and sending out records as he chooses in his usual "unannounced" fashion. Though I've had more than the average person's fill of Sujo this year, I sometimes find myself counting the days until another package from RH meanders over the Illinois/Indiana border.

-Jon

Our Love Will Destroy the World - "Thousands Raised to the Sixth" (2012) [Handmade Birds]

Massive, expansive, enthralling, and utterly exhausting new double album from Campbell Kneale's Our Love Will Destroy the World project, perhaps as close as he's come to a full statement of intent with this moniker than anything previously released.  Certainly longer than any OLWDTW album before it, "Thousands Raised to the Sixth" is a monolithic piece of work, a declaration of comfort and confidence as Kneale furthers the explorations he began on 2010's "I Hate Even Numbers" and refined on this year's "Limbless Soldiers Flight."  Moving away from the sheer and shimmering excess that characterized both his work in Birchville Cat Motel and the earlier releases of OLWDTW, here Kneale delves further into the subliminal co-opting of African forms, much as William Bennett of Whitehouse has done with his new Cut Hands project.  While not as foreboding as Cut Hands, Kneale's compositions here are certainly no less caustic, but they're imbued with a tremendous regard for melody and the power of suggestion, with towering glaciers of songs that feel like they're hiding away as much as they're offering up.  Layering has always been Kneale's greatest strength, and he employs it here shamelessly, stacking sounds and tones on top of each other until he emerges with a goopy mess that somehow moves beyond the sum of its many parts.  Psychedelia is taken out to the great empty plains and forced to call down the rain; think of it as a celestial version of Paul Simon's "Graceland," both naive and welcoming in its reverence for foreign culture and sonics.

Disc One is the more inviting of the pair, with the sounds found therein seeming altogether more joyous and open.  Obviously there's an insane amount of audio going on here, all fighting for space and attention within Kneale's  epic construct; attempting to focus in on any one aspect and understand its correlation to the whole is overwhelming, as well as pointless.  Everything here functions as an apparatus.  As haphazard as all of it sounds, these disparate elements of audio, these found drum patterns, these wheezes of various instrumentation: they all go together in a very sophisticated and instinctual arrangement.  When the massive stuttering percussive patterns of "Early Scrawl Like Fuck Academy" bleed into the heavenly windblown drone melodies halfway through the track, there's a feeling of clouds parting and sunshine beaming down, as though it were the only possible and true way for the piece to move towards.  It's gorgeously uplifting and confusing at once, the shattered beauty of the disenchanted becoming a means of moving towards the light.  Likewise on "Forgotten Stormbringer" and "Zine Boredom"-for all of both tracks' unbridled and severe intensity, there's a loveliness shining through them, beckoning you in further, offering you transformation and rejuvenation if you're willing to go deeper into each.  Kneale understands this sort of transcendent transdimensionality, creating an auditory process of attaining something akin to zen through the supposedly simple act of layering one thing on top of another.  But it goes beyond mere collage: like any truly visionary artist, Kneale sees a whole that might be more ghostly or translucent to everyone else.  In this sense he's more like a seer than a musician, calling things into being from beyond and arranging them just so for maximum (and intended) effect.  The sonic overload OLWDTW revels in is precisely the sort of means necessary for total psychic immersion; the end result for those attuned to the band's unique frequency is a break with consciousness and a transportation to myriad headspaces beyond.

Disc Two finds you in that headspace and attempts to fuck you up royally.  Across five massive tracks, Kneale subverts the joyous cacophony of the previous compositions on their heads and sends your brain on a still-life bummer of a death voyage, an excursion into the forgotten wastes of ambient where repetitious figures of found-sound and whisps of the the future collide in frighteningly oblique towers of menace.  "Icy Reptile Swastikas" lurches you through its stumble drunk dance patterns, wheezing towards an explosive conflagration of distorted melody and frenzied percussion mixed into a giant ball of audio overload.  It's the sheer and foreboding intensity of back to back tracks "Cloud Water Assembly" and "Thousands Raised to the Sixth," though, that most demonstrate Kneale's vision on the album's back end: crumbling and stagnant piano figures ring out almost infinitely as sky-scraping electronics stumblingly vomit themselves over the near entirety of 15 minutes, oozing brutally into the bee-storm shrapnel detritus of the title track's unending assault.  It's close to a half hour of some of the most challenging sound layering you're likely to hear, offering up a gauntlet of both physical and psychological endurance tests.  Inhabiting Kneale's iconoclasm becomes a ritual in the darkness, flashes of light exploding all around you, their origins frustratingly (and terrifyingly) unknown.  Disc closer "Neon Black Sleep Camoflage" offers a little bit of respite in its return to the more inclusive "global" sounds found on disc one, easing you out of the permanent frigidity Kneale has summoned up, but it's ultimately too little, too late.  The damage is done; the psychic scars are carved into the subconscious flesh.  The mournful and destroyed guitar lines that Kneale lets surface towards the end of the track betray the blackness hidden in the core of "Thousands Raised to the Sixth"; whatever joy materializes in life is ultimately drowned by the crushing and immense weight of the struggle that comes to define our personal existences.  The kaleidoscope of life is essentially a teeter-totter: balance is an impossibility, and the immediate and visceral reactions exemplified by the music of OLWDTW beautifully illustrate the ever-changing flux of the world around us. 

Taking this album in is an overwhelming experience.  I've listened to it about a dozen times now and still feel like I've only begun to unlock its secrets.  It's probably one of Kneale's most dense works musically; there's enough material here for 10 albums, let alone the two we've been presented with.  In a sense it almost seems Kneale is letting us off easily, as if daring us to want more (and be sure, there is- a lot).  These are true dreamscapes, technicolor vistas of the imagination sculpted into sound for a peak into an entire series of bizarre, beautiful, and at times dangerous worlds.  We're left to navigate them on our own.  The paintings which adorn the package give some clues but ultimately the journey is ours to take, and the destination will be different for all of us.  For an artist to create works which so consistently allow for individual exploration and reaction, essentially immune to critical interpretation by virtue of their creator's ability to so effortlessly paint his or her life in sound, speaks to a staggering talent.  Campbell Kneale has been doing this sort of shit for decades now, and the output just gets better and better.  "Thousands Raised to the Sixth" is one part of a seemingly lifelong attempt to illustrate the joys and pains of a private existence through the exorcising nature of creation; that the results of that attempt are shared by the artist is a gift any of us remotely interested in musical transcendence can be eternally grateful for.  One of the best of 2012 for me, hands down.  Available via Handmade Birds.  Don't sleep on it-just get it.

-Cory

Sounds Of Autumn III: Circulation of Light and Jodis

Week three of "Sounds of Autumn" explores Kinit Her member Nathaniel Ritter's solo project Circulation of Light and Jodis's Black Curtain, Hydra Head's final full-length album release.

Continue reading for two reviews and two full album streams.

CASSETTE ROUNDUP III: Brave Mysteries CQBL031-036, 038-039

I waited a bit too long to do mass coverage for one of my favorite labels. I skipped CQBL37 for strategic reasons, mostly the fact that I'm half of Eitarnora, but don't let that trick you into thinking I have a conflict of interests or anything of the sort. Here are my thoughts on most of the last two batch additions to the Brave Mysteries "Cassette Qabal."

EIGHT short reviews after the jump.

DOUBLE REVIEW: Kevin Hufnagel

2012 has been a big year for guitarist Kevin Hufnagel. With two critically acclaimed full-lengths already under his belt, namely Dysrhythmia's triumphant return and Vaura's equally as stellar debut, a tour with Gorguts, and an upcoming Dysrhythmia tour, Hufnagel's own solo works seem to lurk in the shadows cast by his more popular projects. Having been familiar with Hufnagel's solo work for the past few years, the wider sound palette used adds another deeper dimension to an already gifted and complex musician.

"Songs for the Disappeared" (2009) [Nightfloat Recordings]

It's odd, I actually found this album on a download blog shortly after it was released some three years ago and never made the connection that the Kevin Hufnagel on this album was the Kevin Hufnagel on my Dysrhythmia and Byla albums until fairly recently. On this album, Hufnagel takes his unique brand of jazz-like modernity and merges it with various aspects of non-Western music through the use of prepared guitar. The art of "prepared guitar" is a modern practice in which the musician places objects, normally paper clips, staples, rubber bands, or, in the popular case of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, drum sticks, onto the strings in order to stretch, mangle, and otherwise distort the guitar's natural sound. With his preparation, Hufnagel is able to produce clustered chords of harmonics which would be impossible to play naturally, Gamelan-like percussive sounds, and other textural sounds. When using the prepared guitar, Hufnagel is able to produce the effect that he's been joined by a group of swift-handed percussionists. Of course, while the prepared guitar is used for most of the album, tracks like "Will They Find Me" take a more ambient route, reminiscent of early "post-rock" but with a much more loop-oriented, swelling sort of nature. Songs for the Departed had been one of my favorite paper-writing albums throughout college, and, now that I'm freed from the grip of undergraduate studies, has become the soundtrack to my own personally-driven studies.

"Transparencies" (2011) [Nightfloat Recordings]

Two years after releasing the acoustic wanderings on Songs for the Departed, Kevin Hufnagel returns to the solo artist world with his second full solo-album, Transparencies. Unlike the more natural, "rooms filled with acoustic guitars" sound found on his previous album, Transparencies takes a much dreamier, droning route. Much like the approach taken by fellow experimental artists Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride of modern classical-based drone group Stars of the Lid, the sounds found on Transparencies are almost orchestral in nature, only instead of the ensemble playing Arvo Part through an army of delay pedals, Hufnagel's guitar takes on the form of the most glorious orchestral tuning session imaginable. I know that sort of comparison sounds awkward, but when you take each instruments' natural distance from "concert C," or the standard tuning of a piano, there is quite a bit if deliberation and thought put into tuning with your peers in an orchestra. Paired with the warm hiss of distortion hidden underneath, the walls of harmonic bliss Hufnagel builds with a guitar is absolutely magnificent.

Choosing the word Transparencies as a title for music like this is interesting, for there is quite a bit of depth in its execution which would make it opaque, or at least translucent, and yet, from a synaesthetic point of view, it makes sense. Transparencies is made of the most delicate, prismatic glass, and only Hufnagel has the finesse to handle it.

-Jon

GOG - "In Our Architecture This Resounds" (2012) [King of the Monsters Records]

The last we heard from GOG, I was having a grand old time drooling all over the masterful Malpais, his collaboration with fellow southwestern experimental musician William Fowler Collins released last year on Utech Records. With my interest piqued in the time after digesting that particular record, as well as seeing both musicians in action at the Utech Records Music Festival last Summer, I found myself digging into AZ native Mike Bjella's back-catalog. I quickly learned that the deep haze found on Malpais was a little out of character for the GOG project, which, in previous releases on Land of Decay, Utech, and Bjella's own label "Sounds of Battle and Souvenir Collecting," opted more for pitch black guitar ooze. A primordial and menacing exercise in "amplifier worship" guitar drone, I had my headphones ready and my ears prepared for a subsonic journey through Hell itself...

...which, oddly enough, I didn't get! Though there is an undeniable darkness about double-LP In Our Architecture This Resounds, released earlier this year on King of the Monsters Records, there is an embracing of magnificent harmonic overtones which, juxtaposed against the thick, trudging drones and textured noise which emanate from Bjella's amplifier, creates a sort of balance which often goes unused, left, and ignored in the drone scene. Where most drone artists concentrate on the separate spheres of "pretty/ethereal/emotional" and "ugly/detached/inhuman," this current incarnation of GOG, a trio of Bjella, Ernst Sonnenbrand, and Gordon Heckaman, embraces both ends of the spectrum, resulting in a near-organic mixture of light and dark. If anything this album is sort of "purgatoric," if that's even a word; you, the listener, are aware of the vast opposites which surround your stasis, and yet, thanks to your current state, you can only accept each as what they are: light and its absence. That isn't to say this album is stagnant like Purgatory's stasis, but merely a middle ground where both exist in the forms of harsh cymbal scrapes, temperamental effects loops, plodding percussion (a first for GOG!) and surprisingly melodic puddles of guitar.

In Our Architecture This Resounds shows a new, unexpected face of GOG. A beautiful and harrowing exit from pure guitar drone into the world of perfectly textured, well-rounded experimental music, I can only excitedly imagine where Bjella will take GOG next. A beautifully packaged white-vinyl 2LP, In Our Architecture This Resounds comes with a magnificent 33"x22" foldout poster, depicting the full artwork by Sandro Setola. Though limited to 220 copies, you can still find some direct from the label here.

-Jon

Myrrh - "Myrrh" (2012) [Soft Abuse]

Vinyl reissue of the long gone debut tape from Minneapolis psych-droners Myrrh, here given a necessary remaster and an improved layout from Minneapolis label Soft Abuse.  This recording showcases the more obscure side of the Twin Cities music scene, and alongside Taiga, Soft Abuse is one of the finer suppliers of outre and brain-melting sounds our musical community offers.  Having recently played a show with Myrrh, I can attest to their incredibly crushing, dense, and narcoleptic soundscaping, and this LP release is a much-needed wider introduction to a band who deserve critical and popular appreciation beyond the sometimes narrow scope of Minneapolis ears.  Harnessing the awesome drone theatrics of Earth and melding them to the lobe-scraping expanse of vintage psychonauts like Trad, Gras, Och Stenar and Amon Duul, Myrrh simply force open the third eye by way of their mesmerizing viola/drum excursions into the great nothingness, creating fire out of sludge and carrying it down the mountain for the good of all.

For a duo, Myrrh froth up an astounding amount of sonic destructionism.  The viola's capabilities as a drone/pyschedelic instrument are on full display throughout, with Jackie Beckey's playing becoming something almost ritualistic across the record's stretch.  Giant bowed lines collapse in on themselves and transform into scathing squalls of screaming feedback, transmissions from an ancient cosmos beamed into the listener's linearity via intense distortions and significant amounts of delays and self-samplings.  Appreciators of Bardo Pond's more modern work will find many similarities to Myrrh's approach as well as much to fall in love with; what the Philadelphia sludge-lords do with five members Myrrh easily achieve with only two.  Having seen both units live, I can honestly say this comparison is without hyperbole (although to be fair, the incarnation of Myrrh that I saw included a third member on lap steel guitar, and the volume was staggering); the focused intensity in Myrrh's approach elevates their compositions to an almost theatrical level of transcendent splendour, a resounding call to break down the walls of reality and throw oneself full into the truly astral.  Like Bardo Pond, Myrrh seem to embrace a level of awakened sense through various organic means; the lazy quality of the music bemoans inner transformation and altered awarenesses.  Free float and abandon consciousness and you shall be rewarded; the tethers connecting one to the corporeal are tenuous and translucent at best, utterly transparent and begging to be forgotten.  Myrrh achieve that spaciness without any sort of pretense: their music simply exists in the moment, void of concern for the physicality around them.

But the physical is not forsaken.  Myrrh occupy an immense amount of sonic ground; all of the feedback and sky-tearing whine is anchored by an obstinate and relentlessly simplistic drum performance by Andie Mazorol (of local psych-agitators Mother Of Fire) that thunders down on the head like a wet mattress dropped from a skyscraper.  There's no flash or showiness present in Mazorol's playing, just a deep understanding of the constant that hearkens back to the glory days of head-nodding, fried out krautrock and wasted psychedelia.  The drums lock in to the "riffs" in the most conjoined way; the two instruments interact and feed off of each other constantly, creating an unshakable aura of unity that opens the door to a parade of flashing lights and towering visuals.  I'm astounded that Myrrh sound as murkily thick as they do; volume like this necessitates a certain drowned out sound, and the deep reverberations are as much of "Earth 2" as they are Neu!.  This is music that will lull you, stoke the simmering inner fires of consciousness and then shoot you into the coldest reaches of outer space.  Endless black and pulsing scathes of brittle stars stratifying themselves, altered states and heightened senses reaching into the great infinity to bring back a relic from outside the known.  Myrrh serve as transport, as a vehicle for moving beyond the known and getting into the oft-indefinable sense of the self.

This is the sort of record that makes me happy to be part of the Twin Cities community.  Too often we're tied to an enormous amount of mediocre bullshit and too often our local rags perpetuate that mediocrity with continued (and seemingly endless) coverage of the same ten or so musicians doing the same three things they've always collectively done (I won't name names, but just take a tour through the cover stories of the City Pages, or even worse, the yearly "Picked to Click" awards, to see the familiar faces I'm referencing), and there's no room or appreciation for innovation and "outside the sphere of commonality" influences.  Groups like Myrrh help dispel the idea of Minneapolis as singer/songwriter territory and make a case for us as a birthplace for some seriously damaged, wasted, hypnotic, and uncompromising slacker-drone squalor.  The LP version of "Myrrh" is available now through Soft Abuse; order a copy and watch reality recede into a hazed out blur of melting brain waves and throbbing bass nodules.  While you're there pick up some of the great shit they've released from the might Steven R. Smith under his "rock" guises, Ulaan Khol and Ulaan Markhor as well as the vaguely ancient and hermetic traditionalisms of his wonderful Hala Strana project.  You'll pretty much wash yourself away in a cloud of dripping psychedelic ethereality.  One of Minneapolis' finest bands, on one of our finest labels.

-Cory

Kevin Drumm - "The House Trilogy" (2012) [Self-Released]

Drone/noise overlord Kevin Drumm has been on a serious tear as of late, self-releasing oodles of new material in small handcrafted editions that highlight his frigid, destructive and intensely minimalist approach to sonic architecture.  Three of Drumm's most recent works comprise a loose trilogy of sorts, in that they were all recorded (ostensibly) in different rooms of his house; the result is an expansive and challenging series of recordings illustrating Drumm's various approaches to immersion, texture, and all-out noise assault.  Few artists working with electronics and tone have such a singular vision: Drumm's work easily echoes old masters like Merzbow and Masonna but maintains something uniquely individual within its incendiary eruption, a wisp of black metal ferocity that betrays its creator's deep interest in northern extremity.  Drumm's noise-sculpting is rooted in organic performance regardless of its instrumental inception, and these three albums all go beyond the simple processes of computer-generated tone abuse and manipulation.  The resultant trilogy is a portrait of one of modern drone's masters at his most restless and agitated, a tour through the hellish anxieties of isolationism and defeat.

I.  THE BACK ROOM

The trilogy opens with this violent exploration of analogue terror and synthesizer holocausting, five tracks of shriek and static crafted into crushing waves of disorienting, severely uncomfortable sine wave abuse.  Recalling and eclipsing the good majority of modern HNW recordings, "The Back Room" sees Drumm working off his own templates to erect a crumbling wall of diseased electronic detritus.  The harshness and unapproachability that defined classic Drumm albums like "Sheer Hellish Miasma" and "Impish Tyrant" returns here in a flurry of knob-twiddling and chaotic cord-patching, all fed through a wealth of delays and quick edits to create something sounding like an electrical storm in Tartarus.  Drumm also throws in some of the frequency difficulties he's been harnessing since his debut album, making "The Back Room" not only harsh in its sound but truly harsh to listen to.  Through a pair of headphones the music becomes intensely oppressive, like a cloudy vice wrapping itself around the outer cartography of your brain and injecting quick shots of hallucinatory venom into its surface.

This is a Drumm record free of any semblance of respite; gone are the lovely and saturated Radigue-like drones of "Imperial Distortion" and "Imperial Horizon," here replaced by a caustic and virtiolic desire to explore the outer regions of free-flowing electricity.  The ghost of Aburptum hangs heavy over "The Back Room," with its listless shifts and seemingly random sojourns into spasms of blackened reverbation and white noise vagrancy, but never once do you fail to hear the actual human hand organizing and building the audio.  Best to simply let the distortion wash over you and eviscerate as it will; these sounds flay the flesh and gouge the frontal lobe in a dizzying manner that leaves little beyond breathless awe in its wake.  This is Drumm in his most purely aggressive mode without the bombastic overloading of "SHM"; the intensity then becomes psychedelic rather than obliterating.  Transformative and evocative, rich in depth and texture, "The Back Room" is the necessary violent opening of the proverbial third eye.

 II.  THE KITCHEN


"The Kitchen" eschews all the hyperviolent absurdity of "The Back Room" and goes in a completely different direction.  Here Drumm employs an accordion run through a Big Muff and processes some of the results, emerging with a gorgeous metallized drone that recalls both the hypnogogic psychedelia of Birchville Cat Motel and Drumm's own 2000 recording "Comedy," a vicious slab of oozing accordion vomit that totally rattles speakers and minds.  "The Kitchen" is appropriately dreamy, drifty, and primal in its minimalism, scarring across the mythic nowhere at its own glacial pace. 

Opening on a rush of lulling haze, Drumm bleeds the accordion into total saturation mode, pushing it to its sonic limits.  The instrument rapidly approaches its meltdown point, fed through an assortment of delays and echoes until it becomes an endlessly recycled loop of melody, each note receding into the next.  The piece becomes magnificent in its elegiac grandeur, sorrow sloughing off its body like so many wasted tears.  Melancholia gives way to triumph which in turn becomes nostalghia, the stain of memory inflicted on patterns of distance and saturation.  Drumm's accordion becomes a vessel of feeling, slowly rolling across mounds of human experience and approximation.  Here the "heaviness" of some of Drumm's other recordings is referenced and his skill as a sculptor of tone becomes apparent: droning note fallout is shaped into massive swooning chords and the bitter sounds of regret, a severe and exhausting tour through the more depressive side of existentialism.  "The Kitchen" gets close to a vintage Mogwai-like aura of defeatism, each bloated note serving to advance a narrow ideology of confusion, dismay, and sadness.  The raw power of Drumm's approach on this album is truly something visionary, as he taps into the wealth of emotion and mood hinted at on "Imperial Distortion" but ultimately hidden by that piece's inherent reluctance; on "The Kitchen" that emotion pours forth like lava down a mountainside, threatening everything in its path with immolation.  There is truly no escape.

This is one of the definitive Kevin Drumm recordings, fusing the grace of his current drone works to the sheer and towering destructive power of his most abrasive noise assaults.  The use of the accordion is an interesting self-reference, but the ultimate power of the piece as a whole isn't diminished by any suggestion of ideas already explored; instead Drumm shapes the accordion's sounds into something beyond mere drone, a mesmerizing envelope of suffocating, claustrophobic sorrow closer in spirit to the gauzy washouts of Tim Hecker than the hypnotizing austerity of Pauline Oliveros.  Drumm has reached a high point with this album, a convergence of all of his ideas and influences into a flattening bed of intensity.  "The Kitchen" is a portrait of isolationism at its most yearning.

III.  THE WHOLE HOUSE


"The Whole House" closes out the trilogy in bizarre form, being both the most processed piece and the most distanced.  Comprised of two tracks, "The Whole House" finds Drumm working in both drone and cut-up/noise terrorist method to markedly polarizing results.  The initial track is the more droning of the pair and ultimately the more successful; here Drumm relies on virtually no editing and instead presents a bizarre batch of recordings that sound like they're coming from a significant distance, which they more than likely are.  The tones have a watery quality to them that makes me wonder if they weren't sourced from a washing machine, with a relentless churning and tumbling that becomes almost percussive in its squall.  As the piece progresses the churning becomes more hypnotic and mesmerizing, gradually approaching a level of saturation and depth akin to early Sunn 0))) recordings before it spasms out into a torrent of noise and jolting free electricity.

The second track jumps on that spasming and rides it into oblivion, showcasing Drumm's penchant for disarming, cacophonous edits and moments of alarming staccato silence.  This is pure noise eruption arranged for maximum disconcertedness, an assumed sputtering out of ideas that manifests itself as mere flirtations with static deviance and tonal impatience.  This section of "The Whole House" caters to earlier manifestations of Drumm's prepared guitar aestheticism despite little to no guitar as source; the jumpy nature of the piece erodes the free-flowing nature of the first section of the composition and gives way to a jittery bit of tension-generating electronics that aren't noise so much as they are itchy grievances.  Drumm is in control throughout, generating a wealth of audio that seeks to alienate and discomfort the listener as much as it can.  The palpable sense of distance realized in the first section comes to fruition here, recalling both the assaulting extremity of "The Back Room" as well as the immersive gravitational texture of "The Kitchen," arriving at a median that combines the two in way not wholly satisfying but notably intellectual.  "The Whole House" isn't an experience so much as it is an exercise in which Drumm makes the listener work for meaning; experimentation in the truest sense, freedom as expulsion and composition as spontaneous evolution.

Read separately, these three pieces represent a myriad approach to "computerized" music that ignores the rather stoic modality of standard ambiance in favor of an approach more brutally hands-on and wicked.  As a triptych they become fairly overwhelming, a testament to Kevin Drumm's inexhaustible skills as a composer and arranger as well as his penchant for audience antagonism.  Drumm is clearly comfortable with the uncomfortable, willing to go further into the unexplored than any of his contemporaries (and really, at this point, who the hell are they?).  The great emptiness becomes audible in his hands, and the sounds existing in the universe's bleak outer vestiges find an outlet in his laptop.  Despite any sort of label support, Kevin Drumm is releasing some of the most interesting and thought-provoking, as well as the loudest and most visceral, "electronic" music currently available.  All of his recordings stand as evidence of a metal ideology infiltrating the more refined methods of structure, and all of his albums reference a distinctly metallized view of the current musical microcosm.  Their considerable depth and weight more than marks them as worthy of exploration, but their irreverent approach to musicality marks them as masterpieces.

-Cory

lovesliescrushing - "Shiny Tiny Stars" (2012) [Handmade Birds Records]

Over the past twenty-one years, Scott Cortez has proven himself to be the Western hemisphere's answer to Kevin Shields and Neil Halstead, crafting at times poppy, but always ethereal guitar constellations with an arsenal of effects pedals and a keen ear for sound sculpture with his projects lovesliescrushing and Astrobrite. With lovesliescrushing, Cortez teams up with vocalist Melissa Arpin-Duimstra and arms himself with chopsticks, violin bows, forks, knives, vibrators (take that, Dave Navarro!), and any other object he deems necessary to create a perfect, astral atmosphere. Though Cortez's approach and shifting sound can be deemed similar to guitarist Kevin Shields's extreme layering with My Bloody Valentine, lovesliescrushing's 1994 debut, bloweyelashwish, showed an abstraction in the then-young genre, foregoing the upbeat pop song for rich ambiance and dreamy textures. With a handful of limited releases and seven full-length albums to their name, Cortez and Arpin-Duimstra "return" with their latest offering, Shiny Tiny Stars.

I put "return" in quotes because, well, this technically isn't a new lovesliescrushing album. Deemed their "lost first album," Shiny Tiny Stars features some of Cortez and Arpin-Duimstra's earliest collaborations, dating all the way back to the band's first year of existence. Why wait so long? Honestly, I'm not sure (I'll be asking Scott about it soon), but this material needed to see the light of day. For diehard fans expecting the grating, distorted euphoria of "babysbreath" and "Glimmer," a surprise is definitely in store. Undoubtedly Cortez's most mellow work, the clean, shimmering sounds of Shiny Tiny Stars sounds more like a sonic predecessor to Liz Harris's Grouper fourteen years before the fact rather than the noisepop syrup they pioneered a mere three years later. In the pre-distortion pedal era, lovesliescrushing was a different kind of calm. Rather than a neon-bright mushrooms and cough syrup daze, Cortez's guitars melded into soft wisps of cloud pillows while Arpin-Duimstra sang the most distant of quaalude lullabies. It's damn near sonic perfection, and, in my current state of sleepiness, it's proving very difficult to write about such a wonderfully relaxing album. I can feel my heartbeat begin to slow as my eyes become heavy with every new, magnificent volume swell and vocal glissando. This is the kind of music which has a legitimate, physical effect on you, and the fact that Cortez and Arpin were able to achieve such sonic beauty at a young age (I believe Cortez was around nineteen at the beginning of the Shiny Tiny Stars sessions) is a commendable feat. Let the sepulchral sounds of lovesliescrushing enfold you.

It is a rare opportunity to catch such an in-depth glimpse at the formative works of such quiet, influential musicians as Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Duimstra. With the lovesliescrushing name already as important as it is in its own circles, the canonical nature of Shiny Tiny Stars makes it one of the most important releases you can own. Though it is quite different from its consequential "successors," the quiet sounds on Shiny Tiny Stars are merely another face of lovesliescrushing, a step on their path to immortality. This is true, sleepy beauty in sound form. Expect more new material from lovesliescrushing later this year. Shiny Tiny Stars will begin shipping within the next few days from Handmade Birds.

-Jon

Duane Pitre - "Feel Free" (2012) [Important Records]

Like a leisurely walk through an empty Zen garden, Duane Pitre's latest effort is an exercise in modal relaxation.  Following up his 2007 effort on Important, the majestic and transcendent drone poem "Organized Pitches Occurring in Time," "Feel Free" finds Pitre reaching for something slightly more aggressive and brittle, emerging out of the considerable din with a piece that is both lulling and thoroughly engaging.  The five sections on this record dress themselves in the guises of modern classical, but they're really explorations of prepared guitar and avant-improv, not dissimilar to Kevin Drumm's earlier guitar-based recordings (though far more compositionally complex.)  Pitre's music is obviously a product of planning and speculation, despite the majority of the performances comprising it being open-ended wandering by the players involved.  The result is a beautifully organic LP that flows and floats, lazy without being complacent. 

"Feel Free" is based around pre-recorded guitar string harmonics in Just Intonation played by a computer in random order around which a performer or various performers can add to improvisationally.  Whether they work with the harmonics or against them is the beauty of the piece; the performers can "feel free" to do as they like, creating either total discordance and cacophany or lullaby soothe.  The players on this particular version of the piece mostly opt for the latter approach, working with Pitre's prepared harmonics in a way that almost defies spontaneous interpretation.  Things are spacious but full of sound, busy but never grating.  Stringed instruments behave in a distinctly percussive way, rebelling against preconception and giving way to unique reimaginings.  The five pieces that make up "Feel Free" have a marked dreaminess, a sort of malleability that washes in and out without ever really letting go.  There is an ebb and tide, a push and pull, a dark and light-but the composition never gives itself fully to any of these moods, instead choosing to reside in a mysterious and lovely middle place betwixt a rainbow of tones.

Lest one accuse Pitre of aimless atonal wandering, his approach has always been one of layering and building.  Taking cues from classic demonstrations of musique concrete, Pitre understands the power of sounds placed together with one another, whether in juxtaposition or cooperation.   There is magic in chaos just as there is harmony in peace; the composer's ultimate job is to place those elements in an order and manner that will evoke a specific intent or emotion.  In light of that, Pitre paces "Feel Free" so that it works as both a provocation and a placation.  The wealth of notes, tones, and sensibilities that define the piece across its first two-thirds represent the vastness of subjectivity, an allowance few modern composers give to their works.  Those that succumb will be rewarded.

Towards the end of the piece, Pitre's ensemble retreats into a massive onslaught of bowing drone and string whine, a gorgeous, thick marriage of melodies and strains that twists in upon itself over and over, creating a swirling roar of buzzing bliss.  It happens so naturally, flowing from the plinks and plucks of the forms before, that you barely notice what's taken place until you're drowning in a sea of uber-layered constants that gets deeper and deeper.  Pitre is in full-on master mode here, transforming the staunch unapproachability of neoclassical posturing into something totally and utterly enveloping, the purity of sound for its own sake, the wonder of simply being, of presence in a particular moment-the sheer joy of the spectacle.  Whether it's the philosophical grandeur of life or the ever-changing nature and idea of music itself, "Feel Free" works with it and comments on it.  This is a piece that is joyously, unabashedly alive.  Listening to it is nothing less than a rejuvenation.  Or perhaps meditation.  The actual decision lies with you.

-Cory

Cassette Roundup II: Land of Decay Records LOD20, 22, 24, and 27

Locrian's "private" label Land of Decay has quietly been churning out tapes and the occasional CDr for the past three years. With twenty-six releases in total, ranging from their own projects to a cassette release of Ash Borer's discography, Land of Decay's eclectic range in music has been home to local friends and bigger artists looking for a quiet release alike. You might remember my coverage of their Servile Sect and Cedars of Lebanon tapes not too long ago (has it really been six months?!), well, now they're back with four new cassettes, as well as a tapebox version of the Bless Them That Curse You collaboration with Mamiffer.

I've seen Scottish experimental duo Wraiths's name floating around the internet in close circles, mostly due to their work with Aurora Borealis, At War With False Noise, and Paradigms Recordings, as well as their upcoming collaboration with R. Loren's Pyramids, yet I hadn't heard any of their material. The abstract sounds on the Edinburgh/Glasgow cassette, Land of Decay's twentieth catalog release, tread the line between noise, ritual ambiance, and Stockhausian electronic music. Though these are live performances, I can't help but associate the sounds with the locations in which they were recorded: gloomy, grey, bleak, rainy, much like any other city on the British isles. Wraiths's slow burning, churning noise is as relaxing and entrancing as it is unsettling and full of malice. An excellent introduction to the project, and a fine precursor to the (what I speculate to be amazing) collaboration with Pyramids due sometime this month.

Chicago duo Number None have been silent for some time now; math says five years. Repeat collaborators with Land of Decay co-proprietor Andre Foisy, Christopher Miller and Jeremy Bushnell would combine both analog and digital source material to create cacophonous, almost euphoric noise and drone, often leaving a metallic taste in the listeners mouth. Strategies Against Agriculture is no different, a grinding, machine-like mass, complete with stuttering gears and a consistent, inhuman hum. Fittingly titled, the stark, industrial atmosphere found on this release sounds like machines plotting to destroy organic plant matter, and it might just be convincing enough.

Now here's something I've been waiting for. After brooklynvegan's premature coverage of New York duo Ithi's wITHIn, I found my patience running thin, and with good reason. Joshua Convey and Luke Kranker's dark, almost gothic take on industrial music, at times treading pop music's waters (don't tell me "Go Forth And Die" isn't infectious) is as enjoyable as it is confusing and exhausting. wITHIn's fifteen minute B-side bruiser "NoWHere" proves to be Ithi's most expansive work, building from harsh alien noise to a melodic, almost doom-like industrial dirge. Wonderfully crafted and a perfect sequel to last year's The Persistence of Meaning, Kranker and Convey's Ithi has vastly increased my appreciation and adoration for industrial music. Also, what's with the deer?

A massive collaboration within itself, it isn't hard to imagine The Fortieth Day (Mark Solotroff and Isidro Reyes from Bloodyminded), Sshe Retina Stimulants, and Terence Hannum (Land of Decay co-proprietor and Locrian analog wizard) meeting up in WLUW 88.7 FM's studio. The product of a group of like minded musicians, the Advent tape is a work based in juxtaposition, suddenly changing from soft, deep drones and quiet drum machine mantras to complete, utter chaos. Synthesizers do relentless battle with atonal guitar work and crumbling laptop noise, sometimes not letting up for extensive periods of time before entirely disappearing without any cue or warning. To be a fly on a wall in that studio, sheesh.

All four of these cassettes (and more great releases) are available at the Land of Decay store, where you can also grab the brand new Eolomea and Kwaidan cassettes.

-Jon