Jason Lescalleet's Due Process - 'Combines XIX, XX' (We Break More)

It appears that Due Process was previously a trio or quartet featuring not just Mr. Lescalleet but also Ron Lessard of RRR/Emil Beaulieu fame and some other collaborators. This is billed as being led by Lescalleet so I've always filed it under L next to his others. But while the first moments of 'Combine XIX' suggest the ringing, haunting resonance of Electronic Music is going to be the vibe here, it quickly combusts into a grab bag of layers and intentionally conflicting ideas, containing some vocalisations even which give it a nice throwback 80s industrial feel. The name of this group draws attention to their working and editing methodology, though I guess almost all music is just 'processing' now, and maybe it always was. The middle drops back to breathe, and it really does, gaining some wind through a chilling, distant echo that started to bring in ringing ghost echoes. It's not a long side, and the short runtime is probably partially responsible for it sounding so good - this is experimental electronic music (you can call it 'noise' even, if you insist) that really has a great mastering job. 'Combine XX' opens the B-side with a wavering, uncentered continuation of the previous side's feel. I'm not sure what the material comes from –– if the processing in question sticks to strict source material, or if it's incorporating the work of other artists, or if it lacks the formally defined rules. But the palette is stark, carefully chosen, for this is the deep listening part of the record. Static is there as on Electronic Music, not so much a foreground element here as a mood, a colouring. About halfway through it fades into a more demonic movement, with an Ash Ra ambience, a pulse that slowly becomes relentless, and disembodied, unarticulated voices that combine with mysterious higher frequencies to resemble a malfunctioning shortwave radio. This is night music, all the way, and the explosive bursts, French accents, and squealing pitches recall the greatest mysteries of the evening sky, transcribed into sound and funnelled through a vision of these Northeastern guys. I tend to overlook this record as it's filed between two bigger 'statements' by Lescalleet, but it's a pretty well-structured and complete work of its own that was really nice to revisit here. 

Erkki Kurenniemi ‎- 'Rules' (Full Contact)

I'm going to use this record as an excuse to rant about a topic that is probably not even relevant anymore, but I connect it to Rules specifically. I'm pretty sure this is the only LP in the accumulation that was purchased at an art biennial, though being that it was Documenta 2012, I suppose I should refer to it as a quintennial (or whatever it's technically classified as). Documenta 2012 had a lovely and large retrospective on Kurenniemi's instruments there, as well as numerous other sound art works on exhibition, most by the big names of the time - Janet Cardiff, Susan Philipsz, etc.  It was all part of a clearly deliberate attempt to recognise 'sound art' as being very much of the 'now', of the contemporary, at least as it looked in 2012. I don't remember much now about these sound works, but felt at the time – even before arriving – that the selection of sound artists was pretty obvious, like a curator who wasn't super familiar with sound art just looked up the top names from Wikipedia and invited them. That's probably closer to the truth than anyone would admit, and echoes the experiences I've had in the art world, where I frequently wonder why visual art people are unwilling extend their interest in avant-garde aesthetics to the world of music. Actually, I no longer wonder about this much, because I don't care much about the narrow tastes of visual art people anymore, and also because the answers are rather obvious (the financial/educational system wrapped around visual art provides a historical and academic context, while music is still generally a populist, market-driven sector, blah blah blah) and people have even written books about it (Fear of Music by David Stubbs is a quick, OK read that mostly emphasises these same points). Anyway, I don't mean this as a dig against the curator since she otherwise did a brilliant job, with the visual art at least. Documenta 2012 was probably the pinnacle of contemporary art as I've seen it – in many ways the 'last' step for me, since I have struggled to find much of interest in the vacuous, decaying carcass of that cultural sphere – despite the mostly forgettable stock list of sound art superstars dotting the periphery of Kassel. Anyway (and, I'm sorry, we're only about halfway through the rant, let alone actually talking about Rules), there was a small concert of several contemporary Finnish musicians performing on Kurenniemi's instruments that were in the exhibition, as they were still functional.  A friend of mine was playing, so I went and tried my best to enjoy it. The press descended on this like vultures, though to be fair it was the official 'press' preview of the whole exhibition so they were supposed to swarm like that. It was actually hard to hear the sounds over the constant digital camera clicks and flashes, and I realised halfway through that not only was nobody listening, but nobody there knew how to listen. Kurenniemi's embrace by the contemporary art mafia was due largely to the strong visual appeal of his creations, as well as the general sense of nostalgia, hauntology, etc that was attractive at the time. Essentially, they looked cool with all of their lights and knobs, fitting a general analogue fetishism which has persisted throughout my entire adult life, and that's all that mattered. The music, the sounds: absolutely secondary. And you know what? This really annoyed me, because up to that point I had always identified myself as coming from a music-world network background that thrived precisely because it was unconnected to commercial or critical recognition in the fine art world. I was working (and still occasionally work) in and around a less explicitly musical art context and I initially found a lot of liberation in this opening up of parameters, as starting to bring strange sounds into an art context could bring in larger audiences and potential career growth. But something happened to me at Documenta in that precise moment, which is that I realised how the wonderful thing about music is that it always has and always will have total freaks and weirdos making noises in their basement, and these freaks and weirdos have built over time and necessity a truly vast, amorphous and undefinable network that is united through passion, enthusiasm, and truth. Some of these freaks may get their moment in the sun of recognition in a larger art context, though only probably if they fit into the social narrative of whatever current is hot in art. I'm channeling Carducci here and I don't want to start sounding anti-diversity or even close, but I'll get back to my main point - let's go back to the basement, or stay there to begin with. The art world can fuck off; if you want to love and celebrate music, then love it and celebrate it for the correct reasons, because you actually love it. There's no one telling you that you can or cannot dub your own cassette in an edition of 10 with whatever fucked up and strange sounds you want there to be; everyone is genuinely permitted to participate in music, and you don't need any validation from an academy, curator or gallerist to be part of it. (Yes I know there are music academies but that's not what I'm talking about). Nor am I talking about Kurenniemi himself - he worked in a university context, and the brilliance and singularity of his music deserves to be heard, and I'm sure whatever late-life financial benefits he's received from interest in his work has been beneficial and appreciated. But the presentation of it to a cabal of the contemporary art media is really what pushed me over the edge, and I've never been quite the same. Oh, and what about Rules itself? It's great, mastered well (I remember my friend proclaiming that the remastering of 'OnOff' here brought out qualities he had never heard before, to the point where it sounded like a different piece entirely), and you should have it. 

Kommissar Hjuler / Mama Baer - 'Amerikanische Poesie Und Alkoholismus' (Feeding Tube)

I'm not sure what this became a roadblock to the project because while it's certainly a slab of extremely dissonant art-brut Fluxus madness, it's not the most difficult thing to write about. The truth is, I found myself listening to side A, by the Kommissar and Frau ('Once Again Concrete Poetry') repeatedly, injecting a musical reading onto something that probably was not intended to be seen that way. But this side-long live performance, a mixture of American poetry records, static hiss, and shouted readings through a low-quality amplifier, somehow succeeds in attaining some sort of mantra-like resonance. Hjuler's voice often resembles a comedic parody of a James Bond villain (like something out of Austin Powers) and it's lurching into 'ONCE AGAIN! CONCRETE POETRY' approximately eight million times starts to take on a visual element. By the end I feel like I'm there, imagining this surely big, sweaty and hairy German bounding across the stage behaving badly in the tradition of all central European performance art. And then on the flip is his partner, Mama Baer, though this is properly a split LP and not a collaboration. 'Alcoholisme - brut' parts 1 and 2 are somewhat more obtuse. It's collaged from tape material, in the greatest of pause-button edit styles, with splices and other distortions providing the rhythmic muscle like a Tall Dwarfs song on downers. Over this are various found materials, high pitched howls and whistles, and likely the wooden recorder on the cover. Baer sings in places, in English, and it's ragged and haunting, with words that comes surprisingly fast and deny any attempt to find narrative. A good use of the stereo field too; the little bursts and buzzes of static dance back and forth across the field and the tape-manipulated squealing making a lovely counterpoint. The second part builds in intensity, with Baer's chant of 'anymore, anymore, anymore' (I think) becoming hypnotic, and the recorder getting as aggressive as you've ever heard such an instruments. Through it all lies a good deal of space, however, and both sides of this record are remarkable in how they maintain a sense of control, never piling things on even when the aesthetic often drives towards it. I give the nod to the Mama Baer side here, as it seems to offer the most encouragement for repeated listens, even though I gave Kommissar & Frau more time myself.

Kodama - 'Turning Leaf Migrations' (Olde English Spelling Bee)

For some reason the title of this, Kodama's only LP, sticks in my head much more than the music does. Although I always think of it as 'tuning leaf' instead of turning, a sentiment I really like. A duo of American-in-Europe Michael Northam + Japanese-in-Switzerland Hitoshi Kojo, Kodama turn the dial slightly past halfway between field recordings and electro-acoustic composition. The musique concrete elements are more than just salad dressing; they're a fundament around which the instrumental interplay congeals, and it's not virtuoso riffing but a careful colouring based around mood and timbre. There's a thick, dense atmosphere that goes throughout almost the whole LP, either the result of buzzing midrange electronics, or acoustic sounds processed into something more - it's hard to say. The numerous tracks, all with great artsy names that are much easier to cut 'n paste from discogs than to re-type ('Backing Up Into A Cultural Ditch We Slobbered Through The Din Of The Alcoholics' Babble' is my fave), blend into one big suite. At their most spacious ('Uprooting Mycelium In The Night Forest Of "Grmade" We Spoke With The Bubilant Sage' being an excellent example), Northam & Kojo bring in just enough improvised instrumentation to genuinely integrate with the field recordings; the silence slowly gets taken over but first after a variety of flutes, small percussive sounds, bells, and other objects are brought in. There's no clear divide between human/machine here; the purity of performance maybe gets lost in service to the cohesive whole, but that's OK. It's a very busy record, and given the naturalistic, pastoral elements (not just the source material but the titles and artwork as well) it's a little bit overwhelming, not a meditative field recording platter at all. That's not to say one can't lose oneself in Kodama's music; it's the very definition of psychedelic, and uncompromising in its vision as it layers up the details. The opening of the first side actually hurts my head a bit, if I have it placed right between the speakers (which is, of course, the best way to listen to music); the opening of side two is made to sound like there's some huge gob of debris being dragged across by my stylus, but it's just a trompe l'oreille. Turning Leaf Migrations is definitely a playful record, not necessarily ha-ha funny or subterfuge-driven but awash in the potentiality of bringing sounds together. For something so carefully put together it manages to feel loose, and even the denser ringing parts feel like sketches, or at least that they feel like they have the intent of a sketch, because they move on quickly. Because the tracks all flow into two side-long pieces, it's arguable that Turning Leaf Migrations is really just one big composition, but there's something a bit scatterbrained about it all. Towards the middle of the second side the sound shifts into a more creeping, underwater/sci-fi feel, like an outtake from a Chrome session only with all of the benefits (and great stereo processing) that the technology of the time (the mid-00s) provide. This shift in tonality either adds complexity to the overall picture or maybe it distracts from it and sounds too generic; I can't really decide. By the end though, I'm glad to have revisited this, as it moves to a hypnotic, meditative drone ('Where Even Once We Slept By The Arctic Ocean When Cloud Drops Bounced On Our Strings') that is stunningly beautiful yet still has the presence of quiet rustling and other bits and bobs, quilted together perfectly. It could close on that but instead takes another tactic entirely, a closing track which is the album's longest and brings in pulsing, yet soft electronics, more ringing and buzzing, and some discordant voices. There's nary a trace of distortion across the whole album, except for maybe the aforementioned needle fakeout on side 2; it's a clean mix that gets thick when it needs to, but doesn't go for the thunder. By the end, I'm actually tired from such active listening.

Heldon - 'IV' (Aural Explorer)

Apparently this isn't a proper release of the fourth Heldon album, but some sort of compilation, containing most of the fourth album but some other stuff. I've never noticed before since it's the only Heldon record I've ever listened to -- but why is that? This stuff is great, I want more! 'Chief Electronic Wizard' Richard Pinhas established a style of minimal electronic music that has been unbelievably influential, though quite singular for its time, so it sounds like a lot of things from recent years, except it birthed a lot of it. This slowly builds up a suite of songs called 'Perspective', with a weird interlude at the end of side 1 (which sounds like guitar-based post-rock twenty years early) that Pinhas neither wrote nor played on. But it's his band - the looming face photographed on the back cover is his, as if there was any doubt whose band this is. He's credited with electronics and guitar, though the guitar isn't that recognisable until the third track ('Perspective III'), where it roars and threatens to keep rupturing the vinyl, despite being pretty buried by the pulsing synth rhythm. In other places, things are more placid; 'Perspective I' could be something released on Kranky in the late 90s by a band like Tomorrowland or Labradford, and the synths are where it gets really crazy. 'Perspective IV' is the most wild, a precursor to all the 'ecstatic drone' stuff that came out of places like Leeds in the late 90s/early 00s. And what does this record make me feel like? Like bits of my brain are burning, and there's a wonder about my place in this world, suggesting that natural, pastoral beauty can find a new life through technology. The cover art is pretty fucking scary, like something you might see on a Voivod album cover, and directly inject this into the "science fiction" realm (as well as reish label Aural Explorer's typeface, which is so retro-cool it feels like it came out of modern day Portland). But I don't want to dwell on this easy sci-fi vibe - it's important to take music like this and make it your own, freeing oneself from the easy tendencies to associate it with soundtracks and other cultural offerings. Pinhas was a pioneering figure and never succumbed to easy New Age sounds or dance beats; this is electroacoustic music, truly, though it doesn't sound anything like AMM, or Cluster, or even other French weirdness like Mahogany Brain or Red Noise. I don't pay much attention to contemporary followers of the Heldon sound, but maybe I should; there's a whole soundworld that I must admit I am undeveloped in, as a listener.

Hat Melter - 'Unknown Album' (Crouton)

Two cellos, two percussionists and a lot of editing = a big electroacoustic tapestry, woven together with some mouse clicks and pressed onto 220gram vinyl. Hat Melted is a big, thick slab o' wax and since I really, really like cellos, I keep gripping my armrests hoping for some nice DDA-sounding deep 'llo. But it rarely comes, or when it does, it's blended with the percussion, the whole AMM-style of laminal sound or whatever they call it. Sometimes one cellos saws around in the background while another dances furtively around the higher register. Sometimes they just leave some space, though the processing here, while not super overboard, gives away that the room ain't necessarily real. The four musicans are pretty evenly balanced, or rather I should say the cellos and percussion are evenly balanced, since I'm not sure who's doing what. This Crouton label is (was?) run by Jon Mueller and focuses on his projects primarily - he's one of the percussionists here and probably also the svengali doing the editing. I suppose this breathes some life into improvisation, though the electronic effects aren't always in service of an overall aesthetic, and some of the more 'improv' parts go on too long. The first side is energetic and has big swells and deep resonating tones followed by their sudden absence; some circa-2003 computer work makes me think this was just coming from the wrong place to really gain some traction. A few years later I was in the UK surrounded by a whole scene that looked to these types of collaborations, but Milkwaukee just before noise broke was probably a somewhat isolated world. Hat Melter never made another recorded peep - I suspect this was a one-off studio-only collaboration, and while it has some intense peaks of enjoyable sound, it strikes me more as a curiosity now than anything. 

Godspeed You Black Emperor! ‎– 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven' (Constellation)

I love the unofficial abbreviation "Yr." for 'your" - thank Sonic Youth for that one - but according to the often-fallible discogs, the vinyl release of this spells out the word "Your" while the various CD issues use the "Yr.". The gatefold sleeve breaks down the movements of each side-long piece, in a very loose graphical score, so you can view this as a 19 track album if you want. I like the side-long approach; I personally think of my own records (the few that I have made) in those terms, one side at a time, as standalone pieces. 'Storm' is the first of the four; it begins with a 'classic' GYBE! sound, with a militaristic drumbeat behind a ringing mishmash of harmonies, like if Vibracathedral Orchestra met Bedhead or something. When cranked up loud (and my neighbours must really be enjoying the GYBE! phase of my record accumulation) you can hear all of the violins pushing against each other in the upper mids, making this feel like the sound of internal combustion. The overall 'Storm', being another twenty minutes of music in four parts, really feels like it ends after it's second movement, 'Gathering Storm'; then we get some field recordings of airport announcements and the lush 'Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way' which takes out the side with deep, ringing low piano chords, practically Well-Tuned in how they create spacious toneclouds. 'Static' is the name of side two and it opens with rotating electro-acoustic drones, before some neo-romantic violin takes over ('Atomic Clock') and here's an evangelical preacher overdubbed, in what's becoming a bit of a Godspeed You Black Emperor! cliché by this point. And you know the rest - guitars slowly noodle into place, the strings grow out of the ambience and take on a life of their own until the motion has gradually become more steady, until it's oceanic. But this doesn't crash into a epic riff-jam - instead 'World Police and Friendly Fire' takes centre stage, where plucked cello notes build a tense momentum. It's a good segue and throughout the rest of the side, this develops around that theme, with instruments coming and going, dense drones behind the melody, teasing us that it's not going to turn into a confident rock jam. But it does - and it's somewhat diminishing, a bunch of musicians playing in a groove, though more composed than a jam. A few of them are keeping a steady crashing drone going, some are focusing on the melodic riff, and the bass/drums hold things tight; it's post-Slint, post-rock as we called it back then, and it's only the buildup and release, buildup and release that keep it from becoming boring (even though we know where it's going all along). But it's not the end - there's an outro, a thick ambient drone that could be smack off the first Labradford album, with the title 'The Buildings They Are Sleeping Now'. And however you may feel about their ascendant indie rock parts, these electroacoustic bits take familiar sonography (bowed cymbals, oscillating drone strings, endlessly echoing roomspace) and somehow create something unique. At this halfway point I'll try to articulate my feelings about GYBE! circa the release of this record, because they seemed unstoppable, yet somehow sort of turned into furniture. All my college buddies were in awe of what they were doing, partially because it has all the art gestures (scrawled song titles, cryptic language, and the good sense to sit back and let the music tell the story) and partially because it's always impressive where this many people get together to make music without some major financial backing behind them. But I was starting to get a bit tired of it; for as enjoyable as this double LP is to listen to now, fifteen and one-half years later, I remember feeling rather disappointed by it all. Apart from the fourth side, it all felt repetitive. So I gave up on this band - I didn't listen to their followup, and when I heard they re-formed (or at least put out their first record in ten years) awhile back I wasn't really interested. I'm a fickle beast, or I was at age 20, but I did see them one last time, at a University-funded concert that worked for a band with mid-sized popularity: pretty good sound, films, and all were on display. They played the hits from Slow Riot  and I think some stuff from this album and probably a whole lot of improvisation - to be honest, the Morricone parts all sound pretty much the same after awhile so I don't really remember. But at some moment it really hit me - maybe when they played 'Moya' or maybe they even played the immortal 'BBF3' live - my memory is really hazy -- and I suddenly realised how fucking amazing and great this band really was. I mean, I was already a fan, a rabid one at first, then a subdued one (no doubt due to them no longer being my 'secret' and their rise in popularity, cause that's the 19 year old mentality), but I left that concert with a deep, deep appreciation. It was an appreciation that wasn't so much about their music, but one that extended someone to an overall idea of ideology. Because I realised, during this horrible time where George W. Bush had just stolen an election and global capitalism was running rampant (and this was pre-9/11 of course) that what Godspeed You Black Emperor! were doing was PUNK ROCK - though of course it didn't sound like the Germs or Crass or Naked Raygun even but rather it was a truly progressive idea of what 'punk' could be; what it could mean, if you want to care about such stupid ideologies. And I did, at least then, and was constantly looking for a way to reconcile that concept with something more progressive. So yeah, if I wanna dismiss them I'll just say they're soundtrack music but the truth is, these Nucks seemed committed to a vision, and I don't know anything about them (they stay pretty anonymous at least across these records) but at that moment, watching these ravaged grainy films that were so bleak and hopeless and full of rage and beauty at the same time - it all clicked with me. So yeah, back to the record - side three is called 'Sleep' and it starts off, well, sleepy (despite more spoken overlays). But the middle segment, 'Monheim', is more of the same yet somehow brighter - the drumming takes on a frantic, almost jazzy cadence, and a drone of higher pitch eventually takes over, the rest of the band fades out, and it turns into this repetitive texture with subtle xylophone tinkles before coming into another rock bit - the 'bringing it all back home' feel, not in the Dylan sense, but more like some kinda of journey. And then: the fourth side, one in which I remember a friend, one of the same friend with whom I drove two hours one night to see them on the Slow Riot tour, referred to as "just a bunch of noise" -- but this quarter of the record, the semi-titular 'Antennas to Heaven', is definitely a departure. It opens with some singing and strumming, and then moves through seven different segments that are far more textural and less concerned with making cohesive melodic riffs than anything to-date. There is an explosive, rocking musical passage in the middle with a bunch of slide guitar and a Hawaiian feel, but it's actually overshadowed by how the rest of the piece is some more loose and episodic than anything they've done before. I know I ranted and raved in the last post about how 'BBF3' is their masterpiece, and it really is, but this is probably my second favourite side of theirs. The Slow Riot EP really stands out against these other two records because those two compositions are tight, and this and the first album are collages formed into side-long compositions, for the most part. And it's a lot of music - listening to Lift Your Skinny Fists knocks out most of an evening, or at least it feels that way. So I'm content having stopped here; I'm left with three records that still feel special to me, even if I used up their inspiration-charges a long time ago. It might even be a nostalgia trip now, for the most part, but it's a sufficiently  soundtracked trip indeed.

Gastr Del Sol ‎- 'Crookt, Crackt, Or Fly' (Drag City)

'In the museum / they set up the drums all wrong / reversed hi-hat and snare' is a lyric that, when you read it here, doesn't sound so odd. But once David Grubbs delivers it with his famous diction, and perhaps in the context of the overall song ('Parenthetically', which is clearly a hissy, caught-on-dictaphone improvisation) and the overall album (the sublime, strange and still singular Crookt, Crackt or Fly), it feels fucking alien. There's a forgotten generation of people like me, mostly male I'm guessing, and white, and quite a few who wear spectacles, who felt the power of the guitar but didn't want to sound like Yngvie or Satriani in our teenage aspirations. Gastr del Sol, and in particular this LP, was like manna from heaven. I never really listened to the first Gastr album, because it didn't have Jim O'Rourke on it. But here on the sophomore record, the two are equals, dazzling in their guitar interplay but not afraid of incorporating some piano or electronics when necessary. The thirteen minutes of 'Work from Smoke' make up the Gastr piece de resistance, the masterpiece that takes you through everything they do in a short period of time: Grubbs's idiot-savant lyrics, edgy acoustic guitar slashes, and a new dawn of droning electronics that sounds like George Crumb having a go at remixing the Spirit of Eden master tapes after drinking a few sixpacks of malt liquor. If this was the only track they ever cut they'd still live in eternal greatness for me, but there's actually the rest of the album to enjoy (and a few other records, too).  Side two's monster is 'The Wrong Soundings', a combination of processed ambient/field recordings (sounding mostly like somebody fucking around in a cave or other resonant space) with some circular insanity-guitar; the first half doesn't grab you by the throat and throttle like the best parts of 'Work from Smoke' or 'Every Five Miles', but it's a key transition to Upgrade & Afterlife's more O'Rourke-dominanted moments - and then the RAWK comes crashing in, and we remember the roots of this band (or at least 2/3 of them). It's not the most cohesive track, feeling a bit like a collage of several different parts, but the sum isn't shabby. I think part of the reason this record feels so perfect is that is sticks to a fairly limited palette, being mostly acoustic, though John McEntire shows up to rock out on side 2 for a bit. Crookt, Crackt or Fly breathes a heavy gust of the avant-garde into an indie rock carcass (remember, Grubbs was the dude from Bastro!) and if there needs to be a photograph of something in the dictionary entry for 'post-rock', this is a pretty strong candidate. You can laugh at Grubbs's vocal delivery (and I often do - it's great to open your junk mail and sing it in his style), and maybe the strangeness feels affected to some, but I'm never one to mock ambition and this is bathed in it, and I think confidently achieves its goals. Maybe it's mostly forgotten by now, but the legions of crookt crackt guitar players in contemporary bands (Dirty Projectors come to mind) surely owe some debt to this. It's absolutely wonderful, and despite the very distinct tone here, I'm almost always in the mood for it.

Double Leopards - 'A Pebble in Thousands of Unmapped Revolutions' (Eclipse)

When I ordered this I only knew that it was a new band from a former member of Un, a semi-forgotten Siltbreeze band from the 90s built around chaos and beauty dissolving into each other. Double Leopards of course became one of the flagship artists of the 2000s, and this, their second album, was a major starting point for what unfolded. With drones built from vocals and other unidentified sources, Double Leopards are masterful in generating long, horizontal soundscapes. The first side is made up of delicate rumblings, deep echoing drones, and smaller detailed accents. The source material is undeniably organic, and it's bathed in a warm bliss. It moves quickly despite being so minimal, and this makes side two's opener, 'Garments In The Midst Of My Vestures', almost jarring. This track is heavily effected with phasers, flangers, and/or ring modulation, and the overt space-case approach puts this into a more complex acoustic realm. It stays within a strict dynamic range though - a product of the home recording, I'd guess - and while it likes to roar, it never violates its boundaries. The final cut returns to the organic warmth of the first side but from a much more yearning, crying voice. And while human voices are probably a major part of the source material, it sounds magically human yet inhuman yet probably human, a double inversion for these double leopards.

Tod Dockstader - 'Quatermass' (Owl)

Here's a classic of musique concrete where it's wonderful to have the original LP - not just for it's aesthetic value as B&W creepy otherworldly sound artefact, but for the liner notes. Sure, you can probably find them online, but it's wonderful to read them while hearing the nearly 50 year old drones and tones float off the surface of the platter. This is one to listen to with turntable dustcover UP! Quatermass sounds a lot like the other pieces of its time - the San Francisco tape music experiments of Ramon Sender, Pauline Oliveros, etc; the 50s work of Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luenig; and all the other stuff compiled on that Ohm box set from awhile back. It sounds a lot like them in that it's recorded to showcase the new possibilities of oscillators, close-mic'ing everyday objects (Tod says in the liner notes that some of the sounds are just balloons and adhesive tape!) and tape loops. But every one of these artists has their own distinct personality, which is why this is music and not just a technical experiment. Quatermass is a 5-part movement and it begins and ends with 'songs', the term used fairly loosely though there is a harmonic and melodic structure evident. Warbles, wiggles and burps underlie the soaring high-pitched assonance, and it establishes a mood, wrought with drama and lurching. Sometimes it sounds like a gong or some other acoustic percussion is used, often to quickly change the feel of a sequence - there's silence and then space, and the reverberation can take its course before the next sound comes in. When it gets thick, it's never too much - the dense slabs of sound have their place and the more active busy parts all have such clear purpose that it's not a noisy freakout. I love the motion here, particularly in 'Tango', when there's a dizzying array of back and forth. This is a stereo LP, recorded in 1966 though the original tapes were from '64, and I wonder how much variation we get. 'Parade' closes out side 1 with some of the harshest bits, a true cataclysm of darkness, though Dockstader's sci-fi tendencies are quite enjoyable, never as apocalyptic as they could be.

Michel Dintrich / Philippe Drogoz ‎– 'La Guitare Au-Delà...' (Classic)

The acoustic guitar is hereby reinvented; played in totality, an osteopathic approach to a sound instrument. Side A finds Dintrich tapping, wobbling, and breathing through his guitar. The strings are an essential component of a guitar, sure, but here they are not the only one. I'm reminded of Tetuzi Akiyama, who shares a similar sparse, minimal approach, but Dintrich is more woody, earthy; with deep reverb and bending harmonics, he stakes out a language of his own. On the flip is a collaboration, I think - it appears to be Dintrich on a 10-string guitar, performing a composition by Philippe Drogoz, though Drogoz is not credited on the front of the record and the whole thing confuses me. Here is some true dark yoga; Drogoz's tape work is sometimes screeching, sometimes plotting, and always a thick counter to Dintrich. In the middle of it all, things decelerate to nothing and then slowly build up again, based around an ever-so-creeping Drogoz drone. Dintrich here is going mad - thrusting backhands against the stringboard, scraping, bending, plucking errant notes out of the air and then receding back to nothing. It's a duo interplay unlike any other, a battle royale, but Drogoz's whirring wins out. Or does it? This was recorded in 1970 which is freaking amazing to think about, as it's so contemporary (or maybe contemporary is just so retro). An eBay search turns up some other work that seems to be straight classical guitar pieces, which I'd love to hear after this gem.

Burning Star Core - 'Challenger' (Plastic)

Another Burning Star Core LP, another label, another sound. This is one that is so incredibly precise in its vision that many consider Challenger to be the pick of the BxC litter. Certainly from a sound-quality point of view, this is the ultimate of intimate outer-awesomeness, permanently perched just over your shoulder when listening on headphones and fantastically in opposition with the rest of the world when heard on speakers. In my case there's a chainsaw audible outside my window which is just amazingly in-sync with Trevor Tremaine's guitar solo on 'Mezzo Forte'. Internally (meaning, inside the sleeve) we get some flatlined graphical scores, perhaps rough approximations of the soundforms on these eight tracks. And that's a fun thing to map out - the firecracker/percussion sounds on 'No Memories, No Plans' are certainly there, though it's the screaming voices in the background that make this track so compelling. This feels like a "fun" album, a party record, though the recordings are often somber -- reverb chambers and slowly rising and falling synthesizer/electronics parts make this anything but danceable, yet the consistency and track lengths solidify the proceedings. It's anything but filler here. There are moments of ur-drone concentration like ('Hopelessly Devoted') but they're sequenced just right, so when the drone breaks and 'Mysteries of the Organ' begins with it's melting, wispy organ pumping, it's a magically awesome trip. And 'Un Couer en Hiver' maximises the range of vinyl - processed industrial sounds of trebly, echoing field recordings - cut in and out around the windy, feather-like core. When they cut out it's practically shocking - a testament to the mastering and pressing process. And when they come back in, it's a giant boost, and a brilliant ending track. Great closers are ones that let the brakes off a little, but suggest/imply more than they show. 'Un Couer' is a gesture, beckoning towards possible worlds, perhaps a sonic transformation of the beautiful cover artwork. It's these tracks that cement the 'classic' status of albums -- for some reason what jumps to mind is 'Soon' by My Bloody Valentine, which the more I think of it, is not that far-off a comparison.

Burning Star Core - 'Everyday World of Bodies' (Ultra Eczema)

Who would have thought that Burning Star Core would release a record layered with references to 1994's post-hardcore/indie classic Rusty, by Rodan, a band that came from just down the river from Spencer Yeh's own Cincinnati? And you can hear the same hard/soft balance, between agressive and elegiac, even if on the surface, his Everyday World of Bodies is a world away from their chugga-chugga guitar anthems. But what do we, the listeners, get? Well, 'Shoot Me Out the Sky' begins the record with hiss, eerie voices, and unraveling tape noise. It's dense, but the clouds slowly overlap and let light through at just the right places. As the side goes along we never quite leave that fluttering insectoid feel, though there's more traditional singing than we've heard from Yeh to-date, and various layered unindentifiable field recordings. This might be the 'eclectic' BxC album, which shows his Nurse with Wound influence. This feels like a series of interrelated plateaus, a patchwork that overall blends into something cohesive. 'This Moon Will Be Your Grave' incorporates a very horizontal (yet wavering) electronic tone throughout itself and eventually blends into a glissando of crackling melodies. We get tortured, dying underwater vocals beneath what sounds like cymbals or maybe heavy machinery, and a whole lot of grabbing. But then suddenly we get a strangely rigid electric piano instrumental, by far the most clean, straight-ahead musical sketch I've ever heard from Yeh. Stuck right in the middle of this album, it feels like a bizarre interlude and gives the album a cinematic vibe. And of course the second it ends, we get violin scraping and noodling. Everyday World of Bodies ranges from lo-fi to the carefully recorded constructions Yeh is capable of -- and this mixed bag somehow works because of the way it's all blended together into a suite of six pieces. The man put out a lot of CD-R and cassette releases before the vinyl onslaught and this feels a bit like a throwback to those days (probably because of the mixed fidelity), but with the confidence and schizophrenia (not mutually exclusive terms, you know) that can only develop with time and discipline. Dennis Tyfus' usual intense artwork is here a giant fold-out two-sided moire-trance poster.