Album Review: Leni Stern - Dance

Dance is Leni Stern's coming out party. After being penned up and cooped up due to COVID for a year and a half, the guitarist and singer is ready to stretch her legs (and her fingers!) and take up her ax again for a new album- this time matching wits and chops with keyboardist Leo Genovese, skin man Eladje Alioune Faye, and the magnificently dry bass-styles of Mamadou Ba. 

Since giving herself over to the muse of performance and composition in 1983, she has released an album every two years on average, meaning that Dance (2021) (the follow-up to 2020's 4) is arriving a little ahead of schedule*- lockdowns and other consequences of a global health emergency notwithstanding. 

Thematically, Dance is an optimistic album in a manner that is joyous in its rebellion against the current swell of chaos that the post-pandemic world has been birthed into. On the track " Kono - Bird," Leni sings in her peculiar, supple, and flexible demeanor, unleashing a fanciable dream of freedom, and imagining herself as a bird playfully swooping past the sill of a window with nary a care in the world. 

In granting this power to herself, she further imagines being able to reach those she loves half a world away in an instant- a gratifying wish that I remember well from 2020, when taking the chance to visit friends and family seemed like a reckless undertaking- a series of decisions and anxious calculations that I would have given just about anything to lift the weight and the fear off of. 

Throughout Dance, Leni allows her vocal training in India to imbue her singing with a weaving, concerted caprice, matching the evocative character of the absolutely stunning grooves conjured by her backing band, and her own guitar playing, in a consonant and ephemeral butterfly stitching of feeling and form. Here and there you even have the chance to witness Leni harmonizing vocally with her own guitar melodies in a manner that reifies the lyrical and narrative nature of her unique relationship with that instrument. Speaking of her playing, it is top-notch on Dance, combining South and West African rhythms with an electric blues style that sounds right out of the cold, windy streets of Chicago. 

In fact, the entire album works to collapse distinctions and borders, leading one to wonder where the percussive flutter of a Thelonious Monk-styled piano jam and incoming waves of Central American funk begin, and where the unifying pulse of a marshal drum and the hypnotic pattern of a kindred nomadic rhythm ends. It's all the product of a single world, after all, united by the universal language of sound and the effervescent development of the creative spirit. Dance won't just move your feet- but your heart as well. 

*Can't blame a girl for getting stir crazy, can we? 

Album Review: Warren Franklin - Second April

Okay so I'm kind of beat but I want to take a minute to shout out this record that I've been listening to you cuz I think it's really stellar. It's a newish record out on Count Your Lucky Stars, a short EP from acoustic orator and performer Warren Franklin, this time with a full band that includes Brandon Lutmer and Stewart Oakes- both of whom really help Warren to fill out the potential of his style. Second April, as the EP is called, sees Warren endeavoring in a poppier orientation that really suits him. Now when an artist who started out as a solo acoustic act takes on a full band, the tendency is for them to go in a harder, more electric direction with their sound, but this is not the case for Second April. On this record, Warren does manage to expand his sound impressively, all the while making it sweeter and more layered. He does this while not losing the heart-on-his-sleeve acoustic emo aesthetic that made so many of his past efforts endearing- retaining the warmth of his earlier releases while deepening and widening his sound. While I could still imagine hearing these songs in a garage or a suburban basement, there is now a transportive aspect to his music that is easy to get swept up in. It feels like he is lifting me and everyone else who hears his music up into the funnel of a glittering sandstorm and depositing us into a freshly swept and waxed ballroom, a setting where we can be just as captured by his performance, and just as entranced by a connection with his passion, but where the venue is large enough to contain the aspirations of his sound. Despite the fact that this record feels like a complete and entirely original statement in its own right, Second April does give me the impression that Warren is working towards something else- something even bigger. For confirmation of this fact, I not only have to look to the gleaming production and the increased confidence that he displays in his performances, but also the new friends he's made, specifically his collaboration with Say Anything's Max Bemis on the lovely opening track "January." Second April is a great listen, from front to back, and I sincerely hope you check it out. But before I leave you, I need to mention how much I appreciate the tranquility of the cover art. Particularly its thriving indoor garden. A picture like this is something that I aspire to every time I bring home a new plant. Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb so I am not quite at the level of horticulture displayed in this image just yet. Although, I plan to put this album cover on a vision board and hope that it helps. Send me green vibes if you got 'em folks! 

Count Your Lucky Stars has it. 

Album Review: Mister Goblin - Bunny

Mister Goblin's third LP may be named for a soft little lettuce chewer, but that doesn't mean it lacks bite. Actually, Bunny is the fiercest addition to his catalog yet. Mister Goblin began as the singular, imaginative offspring of Baltimore boy Sam Goblin. As a solo project, he discovered a remarkable sweet spot between pop-punky folk and late '90s, post-grunge feedback- a hybrid that might not have had any life in this world, or any other, before he brought it into existence. After briefly dipping his ladle in the Iron & Wine end of the indie pool on his 2021 album Four People in an Elevator and One of Them is the Devil, he's back to his old ways on Bunny- sans the folk but flush with a serious cindery burn a la parasol pyros Failure. Bunny doesn't totally replace the band's former mix of sounds, but rather enhances them. The residue of cooked-down, pop-punk sugar is hinted at in the caramelized outline of hooks on tracks like "Good Son/Bad Seed," but with a new crunchy hard-coating of guitar noise around them which gives each a crackling, tooth-chipping spike, similar in flavor and palate to the contemporary hardcore/shoegaze crossover of Dazy. You don't have to search long for the evidence of his change in direction either. The heart of Bunny's burning cry is heralded from the first fiery notes of the opening track "Military Discount," a blistering and dramatic push and pull that recalls the gripping post-hardcore angst of early Single Mothers in equilibrium with the slacker ethos of Toadies or Silverchair. Bunny has its tamped-down moments for sure, but for the most part Sam sounds electric, like Chris Stutter of Meat Wave backed by 3/4s of the original Everclear lineup, all doing their best to convince you that you're listening to unreleased Jawbox tracks circa My Scrapbook Of Fatal Accidents- angular guitars allying between the clipped spaces of trimming downstrokes, submerged within leagues of watery feedback, and pressing into urgent, snarling pop melodies that will sock the air out of you like a knee in the gut at a Vision of Disorder show. Most of the lyrics are absurdist in the sense that they seem to be about ordinary things, tinted by a melancholily that intimates the profound, but which is obscured by sadness and the cloud of the mundane. Bunny is a significant escalation of the established Mister Goblin sound and general concept, giving it both a determined sense of forcefulness as well as more resilient roots. I'm really glad Sam found this one in him. 

It's out on Exploding in Sound Records.

Album Review: Alister Fawnwoda, Suzanne Ciani, Greg Leisz - Milan

It's a peaceful night. A thunderstorm passed about an hour ago and the streets are quiet and unburdened by traffic. A cat wanders out and on to the corner of an intersection by me, visible under the glow of a street lamp. She seems unhurried and calm. I can see her from my window and think of my own cats, snug and asleep on the couch cushions next to me. I've just sat down with a book so that I can unwind after a busy weekend. It's the perfect time to put on Milan, a collaboration between synthesizer pioneer Suzanne Ciani, pedal steel sage Greg Leisz and Detroit-based producer Alister Fawnwoda. Milan is highly engaging in its selection of sounds- simple and visual, organic and composed- it produces with its hyperreal whimsy a cascade of shifting, palpable forms within the mind's eye. The combination of airy, drifting vocal sighs, gripping basks of shimming, golden-hued synths, and the wistful, bending sway of the pedals arch are all intertwined in a way that you feel like you could thread your figures through, tie around your forearms, and let lift you into the air like a hot air balloon. Milan transporting and real, sensuously platonic, with dirt in its soles from many miles of uncontained wanderlust. It's the sound of a softer side to the world. A more forgiving America. One that feels foreign to us today but which we can come to know by believing it is the future we deserve and making room for harmony to saturate the fabric of our beings, like freshly fallen rainwater seeping into the soil. 

AKP Recordings has it

Album Review: Computer Love - Forever

Computer Love is a project from Baltimore producer Finn Martel. He uses his incredible skill, sense of timing and ability to sort overlapping grooves to examine the concept of eternity on his debut EP Forever. An investigation he successfully mounts with the aid contemporary digital pop's era defying melange of aesthetics, aka hyperpop. 

Eternity is a concept that hyperpop is well suited to address as the genre represents a kind of musical form from nowhere, one that draws from the entirety of late 20th-century pop history with equal flare and enthusiasm, turning the past into a rotating, flat spiral of endless groove that powers the present.

Now it is fairly cliche to observe that one's creations, specifically their art, are an attempt to transcend death and somehow achieve immortality. For this reason, when an "artist" holds up the denial of death as the theme of their work, you can usually disregard it entirely and save yourself an encounter with an egregious stunt of insufferable narcissism.* 

Forever is the exception to this rule. It takes for granted that most human activities, whether the observations and rituals of religion, the inquiries and intellectual rigor of philosophy, the tenderness and conscious care demonstrated between lovers, and even the conversations that happen within a well-maintained friendship, are all, to some degree, an affirmation of life, and by implication, demonstrate a hope (however faint) that the life which our thoughts and actions acknowledge and perpetuate will extend forever.

Like the diversity of human activities, the recognition of life, and its indeterminate length, is addressed in different ways throughout Forever. Such as through the slinky and hazy interchange that forms the central pillar of the wet and mellow "The Weather," where the convention of a phone call between Finn and Chicago local Ondine is used to examine the dimensions of an endless epoch as captured by an informal conversation about clouds and rain and casual plans- the momentary threaded like beads along the chain of the infinite. 

The next track, "Clio," is less subtle in its examination of the impermanence of forms and consequence of change, parsing out the causes and fallout of a relationship that has dissolved due to a failure of expectations rounded out by an accompaniment of heavenly synths and an awesomely physical swath and set of '80s toms. 

Later, the track "Eternity" exhibits a dark percolating contour, one which it borrows from gothic, post-industrial dance music and '10s R'nB a la the Weeknd, a combination of characteristics that illuminates the trap of chasing the abstract in exclusion of the real, a pursuit which strains one's connection to humanity, demonstrated in the song by a single repeating declaration, heralding like a scream from a dissociative nightmare, "It don't mean a thing!," emerging in the form of an acid-fried house interlude, where words become chopped and mangled as if they had been slide through a digital abattoir. 

The following track, "Berlin," in contrast, feels like a parting of the clouds, the slicing of a cataract, and a piercing of the delusion and myopia that had previously held you, a personified grasping of the tender palm of a friend, the aid you need to lift yourself out of the hallow well of egotism and self-conceit that had previously held you. It represents the type of clarity that sometimes hits you early in the morning when you are in a different and unfamiliar place, a rapid onset of clarity through which you can discern, what is, and should be, your true path. 

Forever has a lot to say about eternity, but its real wisdom lies in what it offers as perspective on the here and now. Life has its terminus. You will eventually reach an off-ramp. What matters about life is not how long it lasts but what all the small things that happen and are done to affirm its importance. As implied by the whistful ruminations and grateful tone of the song "Learning to Walk," the point of learning to stride is not so that you can walk forever, but rather to understand the significance of taking each step forward, and the necessity to offer others the chance to do the same.

*Do not spend your time validating other's neuroses. 

Album Review: Vinyl Williams - Cosmopolis

Vinyl Williams has come a long way since his 2012 debut Lemniscate. Initially pegged with the somewhat dismissive tag "chillwave," Vinyl "Lionel" Williams has continued to be guided by a more attentive muse than most and now exemplifies a near-perfect chakra alignment and psychedelic harmony on his sixth LP, Cosmopolis. Representing a psychological tributary and cosmic extension bridge between the fertile crescents of the nervous, vibrational stir of pre-post rock Seefeel, the extended wavy welcome and transformative ritualism of the 5th Dimension, and the relaxed effortless charm of a talk-therapy heeled Anton Newcombe, his music finds no limits to its ascension- extending into the sky like a cloud-piercing beacon of evanescence and integral knowing. Cosmopolis benefits from its various, diverse, and manifold sonic facets and relies on the strength of its integrated threads to manifest over more acreage than would seem possible. Despite Lionel's commitment to analog and retrotastic, hand-selected polyphony, his sound always feels like it is growing and gaining strength through its proliferation and progressing towards a definite, brighter future. His sound leaps from the luminous and tangy "Beaming," to the crystalline cleanse and visionary reflection chamber of "Paracosm," to the energized heterostatic exchange of "Telaculum," and finally to the smokey psych-soul resurgence of "Dream House" like a radiant empyrean dolphin bounding between the outwardly curling waves of an expanding nebula. Cosmopolis is warm and oaky, cozy and inviting, while preserving a sense of adventure that consistently finds new venues of exploration within the kaleidoscopic dimensional folds of its starlighted, multiform, ecstasy staind, internally generated glow.  

Find it on Requiem Pour Un Twister.

Album Review: Jack Luminous - Crawling Out Of The Darkness

Crawling Out Of The Darkness is the debut LP from Boston local and globetrotter Daniel Szetela, recording under the name Jack Luminous (which has to be a Voivod reference- tell me if I'm wrong!). You can break this album into three essential elements; guitar, rhythm and Daniel's poetry. There is not that much more to it, and that's fine. Sometimes being extra is just being extra, and can really interfere with the artist's attempt to get their message across. This is thankfully not the case with Crawling Out Of The Darkness and you can pretty much pick up its vibe right away- no crystal ball required. 

As the name implies, the album profiles Daniels' cautious but optimistic advance into the world in search of love and connection. In truth, I didn't need to tell even that much. You could have probably picked up on what these songs are about from the extent to which the guitar work borrows from Johnny Marr. Nothing says forlorn and looking to heal one's heartache like choppy waves of reed-thin and quivering guitar chords that sound like they've leaked through a temporal tear in '80s Manchester. 

The next element is the rhythm, which is very complimentary to the guitars in that it feels highly attentive to its surroundings and even stilted at times. It almost feels like the drummer is afraid to move without the cover of amplifier feedback obscuring their motions and guarding each purposeful strike at their instrument. As much as the beat might try to hide, I still noticed it, and how it impacts the cadence of the music in a meaningful and thematic way- so it's going to get a shout from me! 

Then there is Daniel's poetry, which he speak-sings in a kind of wayward leaning sigh, that has a very K Records kind of sensibility to it. There is a hesitation to his singing and a naivete that helps to barter the value of the nervous joy that impacts his words. Words that any Smiths fan will recognize as very proto-emo in their content and reflections, and the way in which they speak to everyone's life in a strangely personal but still anonimizing manner. 

Something else that is worth noting about how the songs on Crawling Out Of The Darkness are put together is the gap between Daniel's singing and the rest of the instrumentation- a gap that is wide enough to comfortably get your whole hand through if you needed to. Far from being distracting, this distance works for the overall construction of the album, as it puts some physical distance between Daniel as the narrator and the world he is inhabiting to reinforce the reticence expressed by the lyrics while helping the listener to empathize with the singer's situation- a necessary hurdle to clear if someone is going to find the singer worthy of their love and affection. 

Getting over the initial hurdle of a sheepish "Hello" can sometimes be the hardest part of a conversation. But once that greeting is out there, things have a habit of taking their own course and winding in directions you might not have predicted. That's what I like most about Crawling Out Of The Darkness; it's charting its own course and making space for itself where it needs to. There is nothing much more you can do than admire its careful stride and conscious progression.

Album Review: Turbo World - My Challenger

Americans love a good crime story. From Scorsese flicks, to Scarface remakes, to AMC originals about men who ominously claim to be "the one who knocks," to those true crime podcasts your aunt fearlessly binges; Americans are obsessed with the underbelly of our society as a source of entertainment. I can't say for certain why, but if I had to guess (and I will) it's probably because the underworld operates on such a different set of rules than those that govern the lives of the average American. Yet the stories of graft and murder that come out of this other world still occur in the same cities and spaces where law-bidding folks lead their own boring, mundane existences. The environments are familiar, but the situations are foreign enough that they might as well be happening in another country- or another dimension, for that matter. 

It's strangely exciting to think that there is always the possibility of something transpiring in plain sight, but just outside of your awareness and field of view. It is the adrenaline rush brought on by this intrigue that keeps people coming back to these stories for a mostly harmless thrill. Even when based on true events, these stories will always remain somewhat alien for most, and good works of crime fiction (or true crime) are good at making the most of their audience's distance from the events they describe- bringing them close enough to feel threatened, but not to the point where they are in any real danger. 

But what if you were to take that final step? What if you could get as close to a criminal as possible? I am talking about literally sitting inside their head and seeing through their eyes. Would their actions become any more intelligible? Rational? Sympathetic? New York's Turbo World have a lot to say on this topic, although their conclusions are far more bizarre and banal than I think even the most jaded crime aficionado is prepared to reckon with. Their debut My Challenger is less The Godfather and more of a particularly bleak episode of The Sopranos... if it were directed by the members of Styx. Did I mention that it is a progressive rock album? Well, there is your segue. 

Conceived as a concept album in collaboration between Stephen Cooper of Clouds Become Your Hands and Caroline Bennett of Stice, My Challenger loosely recounts the confessions of an infamous mob killer named Max Kurschner (better known by his nom de plumb, Joey the Hitman) gleaned from a filmed 1973 interview with talk show host David Susskind. The lyrics of the album are inspired by unimpeachable crime anecdotes set to stripped-down, funky, even tropical synth patterns and progy motifs that illustrate how the essential absurdity of life drips through and saturates even the most depraved and secretive lamina of the world. 

It's very fitting that many of the synth interludes (especially on tracks like "Greek Vase") feel like transition pieces for commercial or industrial instructional videos from the '70s, as the business-like manner in which the subject matter of drug dealing and murder is presented feels noticeably desaturated and lacking in moral content. The only thing grisly about these tales are their disassociative dedication to a twisted sense of proceduralism and professionalism. 

Through this juxtaposition of methodical polish and appalling accounts of commonplace villainy, you arrive at the sense that the unforgivable crimes being depicted are just the mundane minutia and bare facts of a man's livelihood, and the placid and studied smoothness of the performances only make the incredible preposterous of this person's reality all the more apparent. Thankfully the vacillations in tones, textures, and pitch do, in fact, make for a pleasant gloss when applied, lending the project a critical veneer of levity- something that it desperately needs, or else the mere fact of listening to the details of the price negotiation phase of a contract-killing would be both too tedious and horrifying to bare. 

Truthfully and thankfully, my anxiety is eased with shocked amusement at key inflection points throughout the album due to the band's subtle, dry sense of timing and warped wit. Like on the title track, where Caroline orates in a heavenly tone, "I don't think it's wrong to smuggle cheap dope" while unspoiling a yarn about running drugs and bribing cops. Similarly amusing is the experience of waltzing through the regal melodies that twirl through and enliven "Neck's Friend," while soaking in the song's lyrics, all of which depict the longitude and latitude of a firm moral crossroads from which the narrator departs on a long and unapologetically dark path. 

Of what Turbo World has laid out for us here, there are many familiar and engaging points of reference, like the opener "20k," which sounds the most like Caroline's other band Stice, while "Cards" could pass for a Cloud Becomes Your Hand take on a Richard Harris penned musing, and "Mambo 62" which resembles one of those near parodic homages to '60s feel-good standards that the Residents used to churn out during the '80s (with a breezy ocean-side vibe no less!). The charm of these compositions could almost make you forget that these songs are primarily about the quiet, living barbarity that teems in a parrel strata to your own lived experience, but which makes up the quotidian particulars of how others earn their bread. Trust me, you will be grooving too much to dwell on the implications (hopefully).

I'm of the opinion that My Challenger is easy to appreciate for its skill and deft handling of subject and sound form. I'm also entirely certain that it is a completely insane piece of art- a fact that does not in any way diminish its unique vision-  deranged as it might be. Truly, it's the unhinged aspects that make me appreciate it even more. 

Find this and other favorites from Ramp Local. 

Metal Monday: Tzompantli, Dungeon Serpent, Fading Trail, and Brain Tentacles

Wrote a quick and dirty list of some metal I've been enjoying lately. Some new, some old. All brutal and badass in their own right. I know I say this every time, but I'm going to try and do these more often (but I mean it this time!). I have a couple hundred metal releases that I've been meaning to get and I do enjoy making these lists- it's just a matter of finding the time to do them. I'm committed, though. Watch out!  In the meantime, check out what I've got for you below and get ready to roundhouse the hell out of the Monday blues (and the rest of your week!). 

Tzompantli - Tlazcaltiliztli (20 Buck Spin)

I'm starting things off here at a good mid-paced chug by introducing you to Tzompantli's debut LP Tlazcaltiliztli. The band is one of many death metal side projects from Brian "Bigg o)))" Ortiz, who is one of the malevolent forces behind the hardcore band Xibalba. Here he teams up with bassist G-Bone and drummer Erol Ulug to construct a gruesome, towering tribute to Aztec and Mesoamerican cultures. The name of the album, Tlazcaltiliztli, is the Nahuatl word for "nourishing the sun with blood"- I bet you can't guess how that might work.  A fitting title for an album of this style and intensity. Tlazcaltiliztli consists of generally severe and brooding death metal, played as if the Paradice Lost were keeping time, with overt nods to the band's tribal and folkier affiliations, used to illuminate themes and break up the brutality on tracks like "Eltequi" and opener "Yaohuehuetl." It's a very kick-ass way to start things off here tonight and will hopefully teach you a bit about the pre-colonial history of the Americas that they might have glossed over in school. 

Dungeon Serpent - World of Sorrows (Nameless Grave Records)

Leaving the ancient Americas, we now forge ahead to the frigid north of British Columbia, where we will encounter a different but recognizable very menace. Dungeon Serpent owes its origins to one man, Arawn, a guy who pretty much does everything himself, except play live (he has friends to help him with that). Dungeon Serpent released their debut LP World of Sorrows last year with a singular goal- cut against the grain of metal trends. It's a self-consciously traditional, melodic death metal album in the vein of classic Rotting Christ and early Kataklysm, where the incendiary drum patterns scold and pock-mark the skin, low-terrifying-vocals conjure an aura of madness and menace, and the guitars do most of the talking- and they have nary a nice thing to say to the likes of a brigand such as you. World of Sorrows is a stone-cold slay fest that takes zero prisoners. Most surprisingly, it feels more innovative than stuff from other death metal bands who proclaim themselves to be "breakers of the mold," which is nothing if not an endorsement of the passion and anger Arawn brings to the project.

Fading Trail - Count The Days (Every Day Hate)

Alright, now we're really picking up the pace. Fading Trail is a grindcore band, who, in grindcore fashion, starts their debut album, Count The Days, with an irreverent audio clip. This selected slice of inanity appears to be from a psychological examination of Jeffery Dahmer, where a doctor is repeating what his patient has just told him: "You're patient, with a good ear, who tries to help people...," to which a man's voice replies, "Yes," promoting the doctor to retort with exacerbation, "... when you're not trying to murder them," followed by the same man's voice replying again, "Yes." A quote like that is like a good couple of pumps of the primer bulb lending extra gusto to the opening riff which takes off like it had started up off the first tug on its pull cord. Fading Trail is a well-oiled death-grinding machine and Count The Days is a beautifully deranged album- a dirty, senseless, bloody chaos without rhyme or reason other than to personify a torrential, surging essence of disorder. Grinding, galloping grooves and toothy vocal performances in line with present-day Napalm Death and Nasum, minus the electronic interference. Count The Days is short, savage and clinically unhinged- it might be over before you can say "25 to life," but the scars it will leave on your psyche will last a lifetime. 

Brain Tentacles - Brain Tentacles (Relapse)

Alright, time to get weird with it as we bring it back home. Brain Tentacles are a three-man crew out of Chicago featuring vocalist Bruce Lamont of Yakuza on saxophone and synths, Dave Witte of Municipal Waste on drums, and Aaron Dillson of Keelhaul on bass and synth (also). Together they perform a warped and often humorous hybrid of death metal, sludge metal, and improvisational jazz. There are no electric guitars on this album- which is an experiment in its own right- but when you layer in those wild synths and sax textures, it's like you're coasting into another reality entirely. The jittering, eastern-influenced sax melodies of "Fruitcake" dance atop deep, tarry bass riffs trying to keep their heads above a black, boiling demise, next, the saxy, death-sludge lurch and discordant hammering of "Cosmic Warriors Girth Curse" ushers forth giggling tides of dissonant, fathomless incongruousness. "The Spoiler" sounds like you're trying to escape from a doomed ship that is halfway down the gullet of a giant wail while you're being prematurely eulogized by some mocking combination of Jesus Lizard and Primus. And, lastly, the smoky, pensive and turbulent, bass-anchored neo-noir soundscape of "Fata Morgana" will leave you feeling forlorn and homesick in a city whose name your forgot after nearly drowning yourself in a river of whisky and regret. Their self-titled squirmed its way out and onto the scene back in 2016 and it still got a grip on me like it was one of the Kraken's own mighty, sucking appendages. This beast has staying power! 

 

Album Review: Tengger - Electric Earth Creation

I can't even pretend not to be excited about this EP. Electric Earth Creation is the 2013 album from Seoul-based, husband and wife, electronic duo Tengger. They're best known for new age-inspired and deeply spiritual varieties of resonating ambient, but they didn't start out that way. They were a hard techno outfit once upon a time and Electric Earth Creation is the time capsule of their origin. The parts you may recognize from their previous works consist of breathy sighing vocal performances- highly reminiscent of Japanese shoegaze and vertical selections of Boris's Attention Please- that leap magnificently through the openings presented to them by an ethereal turbine of crescent synth loops. The clearest difference between Electric Earth Creation and their later work though is the pace- this is a fairly fast record. But speed is not the point. It has a tempo, and that tempo is persistent and undeterred, but its aim is not to wear you down or drain you. Instead, it will restore you so that you can rise to meet a new day. The beats and bassline flow like the rush of water through a canal, with each percussive pattern impacting the area around you like rapids banking against boulders in their path or fish creating a counter-current as they splash and spawn up river - your body is constantly receiving the ripple of the vibration and it feels compelled to move in response to the insistence of these rhythmic inflections, almost like they are releasing an electicity into the atmosphere and it is recharging some internal battery within your core. The most exciting aspect of these mixes is how refreshing they feel- the rush of sound is like stepping into a waterfall and letting it wash and rinse you thoroughly- every second you move to its rhythm is like a replenishing sip of cold crisp spring water. Most dance music is defined by how much it can make you perspire, Electric Earth Creation seems more interested in replacing what others take out of you.

Available through Extra Noir. 

Album Review: Rosie Alena - Pixelated Images

Pixelated Images is the debut EP from London-based singer/songwriter Rosie Alena. It makes for a strong first impression with impeccable production that compliments Rosie's confident, evocative and eternal singing style. She cites influences like Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos, and it's not a stretch to hear these inspirations in her performance. The prickly and groovy "The Light" has a kind of freshly-faced, rutty-ragamuffin vibe as if it had been blessed with a kiss from Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, while "God's Garden" has a dusty kind of sarcasm to its clattering gallop that is theatrical and timeless, as well as drenched in a perspiration of passion like the nervous speed up outpour of a "Cornflake Girl." The melodies have a folksy, homespun quality to them with parallels to the candid enunciations of artists like Big Theif and Lucy Dacus, but with more of a bold emphasis on harmony than the former, and a penchant for subtly that skirts around the scornful rock'n rumble of the latter. Songs like "Dream Song" have all the color and temperate contemplation of a fall stroll through a park trail piled high with the discarded leaves of surrounding trees, with a head swimming full of anticipation for the Holidays and the promises of the coming year, while "Who Do I Call" returns to the well with a poetic, harp accompanied turn that recalls Mitchell at her most transcendental. Pixelated Images is comprised of many tiny pieces, but together they form a miraculous picture of an incredibly talented, emerging artist.  

It's poppin' off over at untitled (recs).

Album Review: Fetter - Gush, Psychosomatic

Gush, Psychosomatic dropped this year from Fetter, the musical project of new media artist and performer Jessica Tucker. While it is a deeply conceptual album that appears to have a great deal to say about the impermanence and contingent nature of identity, it is also entirely possible to enjoy the album for its pure aestheticism. The tones are well balanced, the sequencing is simultaneously solid and indeterminate, the beat selection is both classic and very much of the moment, and Jessica's voice ushers forth through the collisions of her creation as both a whisper and a shout. All told, the fabric of her songs is like a net of conductive varicolored and iridescent fibers through which the pleasure principles of the Eurythmics are drawn out and bound up with the forceful restraint of Imogen Heap, only to be subdued and then reinvigored by the spooky, distant action of something like an Eva Geist arrangement. Gush, Psychosomatic feels like something that would be playing the lounge of a gothic dance club, hastily constructed in a half-collapsed lighthouse with a still functioning beacon, whose every illuminating rotation reveals to you spectral doppelgangers, mingling and dancing through the crowd in a cosmic replay of past frivolities and parallel courses of action that have cross-streams and overlayed with our reality. It is both an apparition of discarnate vibrations and a perfectly suitable dance record. Strange enough to get your attention, eerie enough to get your heart-racing, and reassuring enough to persuade you to move your body in all the ways it deeply wishes to be moved.  

Album Review: Shane Parish - Liverpool

Here is a unique find. Something I've never heard done before. It is the latest work from progressive guitarist Shane Parish, whose solo exercises tend toward dedicated interpretations of various folk traditions. With his latest album Liverpool, he has seen fit to drop anchor into the deep loch of traditional sea shanties. The songs he has reeled in for this album were all originally meant to be sung, but Shane has cannily imitated them on guitar. Even more inspiring, he has elected to interpret these songs via electric guitar, lending back to each a certain resonance that would have otherwise been lost in translation. Shane has put to practice through Liverpool his theory that the enduring character of shanties is in part due to the way that they literally fill the body of the singer and listener in turn, tussling muscle and nerve fiber as they quiver and excitedly tremble with the resonance of the human voice. The appeal of these songs is therefore as physiological as they are aesthetic and cultural- faithfully connecting the singer with their audience in a manner of twin tuning forks picking up on each other's vibrations- only in a very literal sense. As for Shane's renditions, it is the clapping waves of feedback issued by his amplifiers that do the lifting that would otherwise be the burden and the joy of the human voice. Oddly enough, the thing that Shane's compositions remind me of the most is not open water, but open deserts. I have to attribute this to my American attachment to wide-open, and relatively barren places, as the resonance of his playing invokes in me images of expansive seas of sand under an overbearing sun, populated by low-lying shrubs, rows of desiccated telephone poles, barbed wire fences, and not much else. It's fitting that many of the real places that inspire the visions of parched patches of soil that sprawl endlessly in my mind were once engulfed by an inland sea- an enormous body of water that consumed much of North America in prehistory. There is nothing left of it now but bones and a sandy belly, transformed, like all things, great and small, by the eroding waves of time. Shane's guitar playing connected us to men, when men depended upon the sea, and allows us to see forward in time as well, to when the sea may no longer be there to succor the human race. I expected the songs on Liverpool to represent a profound sense of memory- I didn't expect how deeply they would penetrate into the cenote of geological time- a vector of millions of years, hastening simultaneously into an unknowable past and unfathomable future. 

It's shipping out thanks to Dear Life Records. 

Album Review: Tropa Macaca - Colónia / Vai e vem

Here we have a delightful little artifact that I am pleased to share. It's a piece from the Lisbon-based sound artists André Abel and Joana da Conceição who have collected two recordings of their environmental exhibitions on a single cassette. The works, Colónia / Vai e vem, correspond with physical interventions into the terrain of the island of São Miguel (The Green Island) as part of the Azores Arts Festival organized by the residency program Walk&Talk and were commissioned to encourage thoughtfulness around topics of migration and community investment. "Vai e vem" emerged as part of a renovated skate park, covered in fictitious images, shadows of sprouting plants, graffiti, and various signs that it had been roughly, but lovely, used in order to invoke a sense of connection with the transient in acknowledgment of the overlapping nature of experience; bringing to the fore the intersection of our reality with that of those who we may never meet, interact with or even acknowledge in the stream of our own narrow lives. It is a dense spacial concept and metaphor embedded in a flat segment of a volcanic landslide, complimented by the scratch and scrape of cat-clawed guitar chords and breaches of windy electronics that interrupt an imposed solitude like the scrapings of phantoms, or transdimensional beings, etching the names of their hopes and passions into the surfaces that surround the listener. "Colónia," in contrast, is comprised of more defined and definite shapes with bold outlines that nonetheless find themselves intercepted and in inseparable dialog with larger bodies as a means of examining the ontological veins that connect concepts and people to greater truths and communities, acting on the hypothesis that all concepts and matter in existence necessarily constitute a unified and cosmological whole. Close your eyes and let your consciousness flow in and out of these compositions like water through the pores of a sponge. 

There are still teal tapes of this little marvel available through the project's Bandcamp if that is your thing. 

Interview: Mike Reed

Spoke with jazz drummer Mike Reed for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series this week. It was a great pleasure being able to talk with him about his work for Pitchfork Fest and Chicago Jazz Fest as well as what he has coming up next for his solo projects. You can check out the conversation here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Mike Reed Interviews

As a fun bit of trivia, I'm often confused for Mike at shows around Chicago (we have similar names) and have had to turn down many guest list opportunities knowing that the front door person has made a mistake. There isn't any other reason for mentioning this other than to point out that it personally amuses me when it happens.

Album Review: The Keplerians - Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth is a fantastic little Euro-dance record that I have been vibing on all weekend. It's infectiously positive and motivating with bright, almost blinding, effects swiveling around a central core of pure grooves. It's from a group called The Keplerians, they are, as the name implies, Keplerians from the planet Kepler-452b, and on their way back to their home planet they took a wrong turn and ended up on Earth. Luckily for us, they come in peace, with a message that transcends the petty quarrels of this wet, blue marble we find ourselves inhabiting- "Love your planet because it is your home." The sentiment forms the basis for the final track, "The Place We Call Home," a heart-pumping, triumphant and romantic ode that sounds like it is either endeavoring to shake all the snow off a mountain top with the power song, or win next year's Eurovision via sheer force of will. The rest of the album has more of a French house flair- serving up a tantalizing array of beats and treats on the Bangalter-esque "Final Frontier," and then reminding us of our responsibility to each other (and the planet) on the spectacular, future-funk opener "Spaceship Earth." There is no way the Earth can stand still as long as Spaceship Earth is spinning, as everyone will be moving like they're in one cross-continental disco- the way it ought to be.  

Get it from Blim Records. 

Album Review: Fantasma do Cerrado - Mapeamento de Terras a Noroeste de São Paulo de Piratininga

Fantasma do Cerrado's Mapeamento de Terras a Noroeste de São Paulo de Piratininga is a sound experiment and album that explores many of the inhabited, but largly forgotten spaces of São Paulo. It is solitary but not hermetical. Cool but not without warmth. Comprised of wandering solo piano and guitar performances in concert with field recordings and cycling feedback loops, it exists in a state of detached contemplation that is purposefully removed but not alienated. 

The guitar work on "Estrada de Elisiário (dia)" has a frevo flare to its twists and doding bends, wrapping it in a particularly inquisitive refinement that enhances the ariel component of its sound as it swoops around rumbling distortion and the bones of piano chords, as if it were a songbird flitting between bits of crumbling brick and exposed rebar spurs in search of a place to nest for the night. The essence of these dichotomies is further broken down on "Visita Guiada à Coleção Paleontológica Instalada no Bar e Celeiro do China" which prizes and probes the interplay between cooling synthesizers smelts and near tribal industrial percussion before dissolving into a smoldering psychedelic guitar trip worthy of The Brian Jonestown Massacre as their most lucid and limber. 

The softly purling ripple of the guitars and distant echo of the reminiscing vocal performances of "Magrelo Taquara (do Sindicato em Ariranha)" unfolds and then recedes like a dream quickly slipping from your comprehension moments after you've roused from a foggy sojourn within you subconscious, and "Estrada de Vila Ventura (noite)" will make feel like you're an honored guest at, and witness to, a kosmische invocation of the ghost of Iron Butterfly in the hollow belly of a decommissioned iron forge. 

This might all sound mystical and esoteric, but it's important to recall that Fantasma do Cerrado is writing and performing this music about real places and the thoughts and feelings that they inspire. Many of which you can see here. These songs are a way of stepping back and appreciating the life that clings to seemingly abandoned places. Places experiencing the reclamation by nature of their manufactured environments, a reclamation that coincides with the civilization that these artifices still serve. These places comprise the landscape of many cities with industrial pasts, with parallels all over the world. Yet, they retain a spark of life and a glow of community, one that is nutured and kept in good health by the people who inhabit them and continue to call them home. 

It is out on Municipal K7.

Interview: Temple of Void

Got to catch up with Mike Erdody of Detriot death-doom monster Temple of Void for the THAS Podcast this week. We mostly talked about his latest record Summoning the Slayer out now on Relapse. It's an awesome record that is doing some different stuff in the realm of death metal and I'm really thankful to Mike for taking the time to unpack it with me. Check out the interview below: 

Check out Summoning the Slayer here: 

The Simps - Siblings

The Simps are LA duo zzzahara and Eyedress. Now you might be thinking, "Hold up, isn't zzzahara the live guitarist for Eyedress's band?" Yes, they are. But they're also in another band with Eyedress, it's called The Simps. People can have more than one band together. The next thought you're almost definitely having is, "What's up with that name?" Well, they're named for the fact that they play "simp" music, ie Joy Division, Culture Club, Johnny Marr, Mazzy Star, kind of stuff. At least that's the joke. They have at least one LP out, called Siblings, and despite the name, it's genuinely not gimmicky at all. They might seem like they're playing to anglophones who unironically use the word "senpai" to refer to people they have crushes on, but that's really just the bait. The hook is that they've got some decent chemistry going on and it's helped them cook up some really fun songs. Yup, fun. I'm calling Siblings a fun record, despite the dreary tones of many of the synths they employ on it. You really don't get to the dreamier tracks until close to the end of the album, but it's all pretty relaxing and inviting stuff from start to finish. Some of the tracks are love songs, and that's ok. But most of the content seems to just be about zzzahara and Eyedress's lives- living (or at least trying to survive) in the big city and the weird relationships and moods they find themselves drifting in and out of. The production is also very wet sounding, which given the location of the city where the songs are set in, is an inspired touch. Los Angeles isn't known for its proximity to water, so having a full record recorded there that sounds like it's bathed in the ambient humidity of a summer rain storm is extremely satisfying. Imo the most based tracks off Siblings are the ghostly glow of "Green Eyed Girl," the dry, strummy heart-throb of "Heavy," the jittery jangle and scramble of "666," and the satin-coated kiss in the dark "Guardian Angel." What else can I say? If I liked this album any more, I'd be twins. 

It's out on Lex Records.

Album Review: Hellrazor - Heaven's Gate

There are a lot of things that I like about New Haven trio Hellrazor and their second LP, Heaven's Gate. As a '90s guy, one of the easiest to talk about is their affinity for the alternative rock of that era. It's hard to listen to Hellrazor and not think of the stuff that Sub Pop was putting out during that period, given their ability to combine aggressive guitar playing and walls of sound with an unconstrained and unhurried pop finesse. 

The flexing and contorted hooks and spinny, jumpy grooves of "Jello Stars," a rather awesome single off of Heaven's Gate, feel like they were inspired by the decoded DNA sequence of an angstier teenage version of myself, biological signatures translated into musical notation for the band's later interpretation. This is to say, that many of the songs off of Hellrazor's latest album feel like they have been with me for a lot longer than seems possible. It's an odd sensation, but not one that I don't welcome. 

Heaven's Gate, and the alternative rock that generally emerged at the dawn of the '90s, are both the kind of art that are promptly identifiable- they are like looking into your own reflection in terms of quality and character. Back in the day, it was this accessible angst that caused a number of albums of the era to be labeled "instant classics" because of how well they settled into the prevailing mood of the moment (whether anyone was likely to remember a particular band or their release the following year or not was another matter altogether). Now Heaven's Gate has that same kind of feel, but I'm not going to curse Hellrazor with any such critical kiss of death. I will, however, point out that their music does "click" in a way that few bands since that moment in the late 20th century have. Hellrazor's sound has the kind of immediate, accessible character that connects to people's emotions and need for an adrenaline spike in their lives. Hellrazor taps into a stratum of rock music where chords aren't afraid to be big as hell and boss the listener around a bit, but don't sacrifice charisma or skill in their emphasis on impact. The grunge of groups like Nirvana and Soundgarden gave people who weren't ready to risk life and limb in the pit at hardcore punk shows the opportunity to identify with music that accurately personified the mood and state of distress that settled in at the advent of the "End of History." Thirty years later, we're still waiting for history to kickstart again, and the monumental ennui of these acts, as reflected through Hellrazor's music, is as pressing and urgent feeling as ever. 

"Big Buzz" has a whiplash charm to its elastic power-pop fray that sounds like the Posies riding the high of an intravenous drip of Rob Dickinson's spinal fluid. "Phantasm" is another glorious grunge-gilded number, that is slower in tempo, but with just as much muscle and hot-blooded warmth below the cool detachment of its exterior. And as a treat for all you shoegazers in the crowd, Hellrazor has pruned and nurtured "Landscaper," a distortion submerged, teargas-treated freakout which sounds like it is pitting the Melvins against Alison's Halo in a burning punk house, as they claw and scramble up a flight of cellar stairs to the safety of the chilly night air above. 

Then there are the songs that I wouldn't only expect a band with big-label money to be able to pull off. Songs like the backwater, Primus funk flattering hootenanny and fever dream "Demon Hellride," a wild detour that sounds like it is being sung by Black Francis after chasing a fistful of quaaludes and LSD tabs with a Corpse Reviver cocktail. And then there is the final track, "All the Candy in the World," which is similarly outrageous as "Demon Hellride," but of a completely different character; sounding like a remixed Lush b-side contrived by Aphex Twin and commissioned to suss out the nagging similarities between Miki Berenyi's and Webby from Duck Tale's speech patterns. 

In case you thought a record as elaborate and smartly crafted as Heaven's Gate is entirely a fluke, it's worth noting that Hellrazor has been gestating in the mind of singer/guitarist Michael Falcone's (most notably of Speedy Ortiz and Ovlov) since at least 2006, and that he's joined in the project by Kate Meizner of Jobber and Michael Henss of Heele. Also, as mentioned above, this is their second album- they've rode this bull before. It would also be easy to tag the project as simply the culmination of everything they couldn't make fly with their other bands, but that's not the way Heaven's Gate feels while you're in it at all. It's a fully calibrated and tautly constructed rollercoaster, one that ebbs in and out of the annals of rock history, absorbing everything that it touches and leaving a constellation of shining gold tethers in its deliberate, exploratory drift. A dispatch from a world where punk never broke, but where the damn feels like it could burst at any minute.