Reviews
December 15, 2015
EM Records, 10.17.2015
Haku is reportedly the alias of Frank Tavares, an obscure Hawaiian experimental composer who — in addition to any other accomplishments — produced at least one slipstream synth album of truly weird and spectacular proportions. Ne Mele A Ka Haku (Music of Haku) began…
December 10, 2015
Students of Decay, 11.20.2015
It’s been three years since Already Gone, the second full-length from En, the Bay Area-duo featuring perennial astral travelers Maxwell August Croy (member of Portraits and co-head of Root Strata, with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma) and James Devane. But while the pair may…
November 16, 2015
Kranky, 9.25.2015
A bit of orientation: referencing a tradition in electronic music with an intense cult following, Kranky calls Where All Is Fled “a modern kosmiche milepost.” Hauschildt’s former group, Emeralds, has its own deeply devoted fanbase and its own complex universe of musical influences….
November 11, 2015
6.21.2015, Inner Islands
“Chillwave is the iPhone 4 of music genres,” quoth my drunk and cynical friend, “hinging on its own planned obsolescence. It’s the soundtrack to Windows Vista and beta-testing apps.” We were stumbling across Brooklyn’s Williamsburg wasteland, away from the warehouses…
October 16, 2015
Captcha Records, 8.24.2015
Chicago’s Ben Baker Billington is the workingman’s drummer, one of the everyday fixtures on the experimental/outsider circuit to lend his hand to everything from psychedelic grooves to freeform-ad hoc jazz/noise collaborations. While I was previously familiar with…
October 14, 2015
Self-Released, 5.15.2015
Many Arms continue their series of collaborative LPs, shifting from freer-jazz pastures to pure noise indulgences on their latest album with Toshimaru Nakamura (Public Eyesore). Nakamura is an accomplished Japanese no-input mixer and experimental guitarist, and he opens…
September 16, 2015
Ecstatic, 9.4.2015
Despite spending most of his life in the steel industry, experimental organist Abul Mogard seems to have been born to master ambient music. “Despite” is somewhat misleading, since it’s largely the lulling, repetitive sound environment of Serbian steel mills that inspired Mogard…
September 7, 2015
Woodsist, 9.4.2015
The Woolen Men are a band out of time. Based in the Portland, Oregon of Fred Armisen rather than that of Greg Sage, the band is soaked in the same weird waters that dripped from Dead Moon, the Wipers, and Poison Idea. The band has often felt overlooked despite an excellent 2012 debut…
September 2, 2015
Touch, 3.30.2015
Stator finds Biosphere and Deathprod, two of Norways’ most elusive and cherished ambient producers teaming up for a second round of brooding transcendence and refined, tonal dismay. Having last teamed up in 1998 for a split of sorts reimagining and retooling works by fellow Norwegian…
August 27, 2015
Thrill Jockey Records, 7.24.2015
Lost Time is the latest LP from Greg Fox and Kid Millions, or the Fox Millions Duo, out via an increasingly apocalyptic Thrill Jockey, leading me down some roads of hyperbole and jazz-dissing, as well as disrupting my kid’s nap with all that confounded loud drum…
August 19, 2015
Full Spectrum, 6.1.15
“Please dont mistake the humor in the album title for irony I am absolutely sincere I dont have enough time on earth for irony” -@andrewweathers, May 12
Yes, it reads beautifully as a title, but what does an album called Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything sound like? I had…
August 6, 2015
12XU, 4.28.2015
I first heard Shawn David McMillen on the third volume of Tompkins Square’s excellent Imaginational Anthem series, a group of compilations that pair “American Primitive” guitar architects of the ‘60s and ‘70s (John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull) with current progenitors….
July 30, 2015
Metaphysical Circuits, 6.12.2015
Earlier this spring, Copenhagen-based Metaphysical Circuits crowdfunded a massive label compilation, 400/100, so named to mark the 400th release that proprietor Christian Kann has worked on, and the 100th on tape. Though Kann had written on the label’s website…
July 7, 2015
La Station Radar, 12.8.2014
Stephen Molyneux’s The Shape of Clouds to Come is a record for the small hours, gently rushing past your ears with its delicate touch. Released on La Station Radar, this EP is very different from my previous listen to Molyneux’s work — a nifty tape on No Kings from…
June 16, 2015
1080p, 6.2.2015
The blurb that comes with 1080p’s latest release is as ambiguous as it is accurate: “The tape is a cartridge: by inserting it in your machine, you unlock the SETH exotic realm; flaming away into ashy night. Poing, volatile, poing.”
All you can know about SETH before…
June 5, 2015
Students of Decay, 5.12.2015
It’s been nearly a decade since I was first introduced to Alex Cobb’s music via the Snowfallout CD-R that Brad Rose released on his Foxglove micro-label. At the time, Cobb was going by the moniker Taiga Remains and producing chord organ and melodica canopies…
June 4, 2015
Self-Released, 3.9.2015
I just finished the first round of volunteer medical studies on this new product Musical Youth. Wanted to let everyone know here on this forum who’s struggled with the same issues over the years — it stopped my brain shivers! I’ve been spinning strong and looking for…
June 3, 2015
Drag City, 5.19.2015
Simple Songs is the first Jim O’Rourke solo record with a title that doesn’t reference a film by Nicholas Roeg. It seems something of a private chuckle for O’Rourke to name the most conventional releases in his catalogue after some of the director’s boldest deconstructions…
May 29, 2015
Umor Rex, 5.8.2015
Since launching in 2006, Umor Rex has, for the most part, led a noble campaign for finding exploratory experimental, synthetic music with actual heart. While the Mexico City-based imprint has flirted with its love for wispy folk and electronic music of all shapes and sizes, Umor Rex’s…
May 26, 2015
Hausu Mountain, 5.26.2015
All The Way, the new album from Goodwill Smith member TALsounds (aka Natalie Chami) is by turns hypnotic and gripping, with swaths of gorgeous texture that metamorphose into songs and back again before your ears. Listening to the album is kind of like taking a late-night walk…
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