Three From Rune Grammofon I’ve long been aware of the rich musical tradition of Norway. As a guitarist at the end of the 20th Century, I found it hard to ignore the force of Norwegian black metal artists, many of whom evolved in fascinating ways over just a few albums to incorporate many styles into their music: Ulver, Dodheimsgard, Peccatum, and many more. When I was in music school, a native Norwegian trumpet player exposed me to the music of Farmers Market, and as a big fan of the montage approaches of early 90s Zorn and Bungle, I was very impressed. When I dug further into experimental jazz, Norwegians were there, too, showcased over the decades by ECM records, and further highlighted today by labels like Rune Grammofon.While a lot of the artists showcased on Rune Grammofon have roots in jazz and classical traditions, the label focuses on a broader spectrum of creative music from Norway, including artists whose work falls closer to pop and rock. I recently profiled two of their artists, Scorch Trio and Hedvig Mollestad Trio, in my power trio album review, but there are many more exciting albums and artists to explore from this label. Here are three more of their submissions that make an impressive case for Norway as a diverse cultural destination.Elephant9 - Walk the NileElephant9 could easily have been included in my power trio review if I had expanded the definition of “power trio” to substitute Hammond organ for guitar. This is a highly energetic trio working in gaps between rock and jazz fusion that recall the best of Miles electric period, Herbie Hancock’s more aggressive 70s work, and Mahavishnu Orchestra. The rock part of the approach is that most of these jams emanate from riff-based guitar and bass work, and the frequent and liberal use of overdrives/distortions on keys (and again an occasional ring modulator effect—dust off your EH Frequency Analyzers, folks). The jazz influences become apparent in the creative unfolding of melodies and solos over the riffs and the sophisticated rhythmic interplay within the group.The basic framework for each of these songs is clearly composed, but rather than taking turns playing extended solos, the group listens carefully to where the music wants to go, and they seem to collectively improvise the pieces into satisfying variations. Singable, memorable melodies far outnumber moments of dense soloing. And though each track builds to a thick jazz-psych jam eventually, there are many introspective moments throughout the record, too, my favorite being the gentle first few minutes of “Habanera Rocket” that eventually coalesce into a softly-played riff from which vast armies of funk are sent into battle.This trio is itself a kind of supergroup of Norwegian musicians: Stale Storlokken, man of many keys in groups like Supersilent and Humcrush, leads the band, accompanied by basist Haengsle Eilertsen on bass and drummer Torstein Lofthus, who also drums for a favorite Rune Grammofon artist of mine, Shining. The focus of Elephant9 is relatively narrow compared to the wide range of skills these musicians bring to the band, but they clearly care about this style and they dig deep. I was especially impressed with the way Storlokken often makes the group sound like a quartet, keeping sustained organ passages rolling with his left hand while adding Fender Rhodes melodies with his right. The whole record sounds like a lost artifact from the early 70s: the writing is there, the playing is there, and the recording itself is a warm, huge, and slightly toasty analog affair. If you’re a huge fan of rocking, raw fusion combos of yore but you’ve mostly exhausted your search through old crates, this album will be a treasure.Stian Westerhus - Pitch Black Star SpangledI’m always interested in solo guitar albums, and this is a really good one. Westerhus also plays in Monolithic, Rune Grammofon trio Puma, and has been featured in a wide range of other collaborations. On Pitch Black Star Spangled, he pulls out very close to all of the “guitar tricks” I can think of, both in terms of extended technique and in the use of effects. These soundscapes plunge into moments of harsh textures, but I was also impressed at how much melody is included in the proceedings: most records like this sent my way tend to stay focused on either melodic considerations or textural/sound exploration, but this one integrates both impulses very well.I don’t get the impression that most of this music is improvised. The melodic ideas seem carefully considered, and many of the effects are used in ways that require at least some premeditation to get the layers of sound to flow into one another so organically. Improv probably plays a role in guiding the duration of some sections, but there is a very “personal” feel to the pieces, like sounds and approaches discovered in experimentation getting taken out of a practice room mindset into further compositional refinement.Placed in the center of the album’s track sequence, the title track is an especially potent piece, and the longest track at almost 12 minutes. It starts very gently, with just occasional sounds of static set into a looping pedal, and gradually builds up through effected swells, feedback, and simply smacking the open strings. It beautifully contrasts short, percussive attacks, sometimes manipulated with quick delays, atop long swells of feedback. Further contrasts between heavy reverb and very dry ambient spaces also create sonically interesting spaces. The last half of the piece includes some very loud-sounding melodic playing, shifting between minor key and half-whole scales, eventually landing on somewhat meditative iterations of manipulated feedback presented at a softer volume which carry directly into the following track, “Trailer Trash Ballad.”Manipulated feedback, captured and pitch-bent, modified in volume, harmonized, filter modulated, and presented in a variety of perceived spaces through changes in proportions of reverb and delay, is a connective tissue throughout the album, creating pads and melodic fragments over which more sharply-articulated sounds can have various conversations. Westerhus is obviously a skilled “traditional” guitar player, but it’s his deeply considered deployment of effects that make this album so interesting. Highly reccomended for fans of experimental electric guitar music.Ultralyd - InertiadromeMy favorite of these Rune Grammofon releases comes from Ultralyd, a band I hadn’t heard of before, though they’ve been releasing records for almost 10 years. “Inertiadrome” looks to be their sixth full-length, having also released a split with Noxagt and a self-released 12” single the same year as “Inertiadrome” (which contains a track of the same name). These are punishing bass and drum-driven jams that frequently ride a groove for their duration while guitar and sax textures make glorious noises above it all. There is an early industrial vibe to most of the riffs, and I’m especially reminded of Kevin Martin’s “God” project that released a couple of excellent jazz-industrial albums in the 90s. I’ve often wished that band would have produced even more records, and I’m delighted to find another ensemble working in that mysterious chasm between industrial, jazz, and goth concepts. Ultralyd manages to sound almost as dense and heavy as God, an impressive feat for a 4-piece! The drum work focuses on industrial and tribal grooves, at times pushing into the busy, driving approach used on early 70s fusion albums, but the dark, relentless bass riffs and distorted, distant-sounding guitar and sax textures sustain a much more gloomy atmosphere than one would ever expect on an Eddie Henderson record. The guitar and sax approaches on this album are really unique: at times, Anders Hana will take up a two or four note repeating figure high on the neck of his guitar, or saxophonist Kjetil Moster will use a delay pedal to build up a harsh rhythmic counterriff, but over much of the album the two of them push one another into progressively cascading waves of aggressive sound, the timbres of their instruments bleeding into one another and becoming a singular force. They’re united by playing lots of long, sustained figures (no solos here), and through heroic doses of distortion and reverb. It can be a harsh-sounding record with so much distortion blending the higher-pitched parts into ugly masses of dissonance and feedback, but this kind of production quality adds a lot to the cold, despondent feel of the jams.My favorite riff on the album makes long appearances in two tracks, forming the backbone of the first track, “Lahutma,” as well as forming a contrast against a repeated three-note sax riff in the penultimate track “Geodesic Portico.” Amazing, heavy stuff. Playing in Ultralyd must be a real workout for Kjetil Brandsdal and Morten Olsen, sustaining brutal bass/drum riffage for 40 minutes at a time with very few moments of rest. The repetitive, groove oriented nature of this music, as well as its boundless supply of energy, give it a curious relationship with club music: Kevin Martin largely moved onto more “traditional” sounds and textures in his later dancehall and dubstep related projects, but in my mind there is an alternate universe where Bauhaus and Love and Rockets evolved into aggressive club music, keeping the guitars and basses and real drums and ignoring drum machines and sequencers and synths. There are stages instead of DJ booths at the clubs in this alternate reality, and Ultralyd belongs on those stages, headlining every night.—Scott Scholz

Three From Rune Grammofon

I’ve long been aware of the rich musical tradition of Norway. As a guitarist at the end of the 20th Century, I found it hard to ignore the force of Norwegian black metal artists, many of whom evolved in fascinating ways over just a few albums to incorporate many styles into their music: Ulver, Dodheimsgard, Peccatum, and many more. When I was in music school, a native Norwegian trumpet player exposed me to the music of Farmers Market, and as a big fan of the montage approaches of early 90s Zorn and Bungle, I was very impressed. When I dug further into experimental jazz, Norwegians were there, too, showcased over the decades by ECM records, and further highlighted today by labels like Rune Grammofon.

While a lot of the artists showcased on Rune Grammofon have roots in jazz and classical traditions, the label focuses on a broader spectrum of creative music from Norway, including artists whose work falls closer to pop and rock. I recently profiled two of their artists, Scorch Trio and Hedvig Mollestad Trio, in my power trio album review, but there are many more exciting albums and artists to explore from this label. Here are three more of their submissions that make an impressive case for Norway as a diverse cultural destination.

Elephant9 - Walk the Nile

Elephant9 could easily have been included in my power trio review if I had expanded the definition of “power trio” to substitute Hammond organ for guitar. This is a highly energetic trio working in gaps between rock and jazz fusion that recall the best of Miles electric period, Herbie Hancock’s more aggressive 70s work, and Mahavishnu Orchestra. The rock part of the approach is that most of these jams emanate from riff-based guitar and bass work, and the frequent and liberal use of overdrives/distortions on keys (and again an occasional ring modulator effect—dust off your EH Frequency Analyzers, folks). The jazz influences become apparent in the creative unfolding of melodies and solos over the riffs and the sophisticated rhythmic interplay within the group.

The basic framework for each of these songs is clearly composed, but rather than taking turns playing extended solos, the group listens carefully to where the music wants to go, and they seem to collectively improvise the pieces into satisfying variations. Singable, memorable melodies far outnumber moments of dense soloing. And though each track builds to a thick jazz-psych jam eventually, there are many introspective moments throughout the record, too, my favorite being the gentle first few minutes of “Habanera Rocket” that eventually coalesce into a softly-played riff from which vast armies of funk are sent into battle.

This trio is itself a kind of supergroup of Norwegian musicians: Stale Storlokken, man of many keys in groups like Supersilent and Humcrush, leads the band, accompanied by basist Haengsle Eilertsen on bass and drummer Torstein Lofthus, who also drums for a favorite Rune Grammofon artist of mine, Shining. The focus of Elephant9 is relatively narrow compared to the wide range of skills these musicians bring to the band, but they clearly care about this style and they dig deep. I was especially impressed with the way Storlokken often makes the group sound like a quartet, keeping sustained organ passages rolling with his left hand while adding Fender Rhodes melodies with his right. The whole record sounds like a lost artifact from the early 70s: the writing is there, the playing is there, and the recording itself is a warm, huge, and slightly toasty analog affair. If you’re a huge fan of rocking, raw fusion combos of yore but you’ve mostly exhausted your search through old crates, this album will be a treasure.

Stian Westerhus - Pitch Black Star Spangled

I’m always interested in solo guitar albums, and this is a really good one. Westerhus also plays in Monolithic, Rune Grammofon trio Puma, and has been featured in a wide range of other collaborations. On Pitch Black Star Spangled, he pulls out very close to all of the “guitar tricks” I can think of, both in terms of extended technique and in the use of effects. These soundscapes plunge into moments of harsh textures, but I was also impressed at how much melody is included in the proceedings: most records like this sent my way tend to stay focused on either melodic considerations or textural/sound exploration, but this one integrates both impulses very well.

I don’t get the impression that most of this music is improvised. The melodic ideas seem carefully considered, and many of the effects are used in ways that require at least some premeditation to get the layers of sound to flow into one another so organically. Improv probably plays a role in guiding the duration of some sections, but there is a very “personal” feel to the pieces, like sounds and approaches discovered in experimentation getting taken out of a practice room mindset into further compositional refinement.

Placed in the center of the album’s track sequence, the title track is an especially potent piece, and the longest track at almost 12 minutes. It starts very gently, with just occasional sounds of static set into a looping pedal, and gradually builds up through effected swells, feedback, and simply smacking the open strings. It beautifully contrasts short, percussive attacks, sometimes manipulated with quick delays, atop long swells of feedback. Further contrasts between heavy reverb and very dry ambient spaces also create sonically interesting spaces. The last half of the piece includes some very loud-sounding melodic playing, shifting between minor key and half-whole scales, eventually landing on somewhat meditative iterations of manipulated feedback presented at a softer volume which carry directly into the following track, “Trailer Trash Ballad.”

Manipulated feedback, captured and pitch-bent, modified in volume, harmonized, filter modulated, and presented in a variety of perceived spaces through changes in proportions of reverb and delay, is a connective tissue throughout the album, creating pads and melodic fragments over which more sharply-articulated sounds can have various conversations. Westerhus is obviously a skilled “traditional” guitar player, but it’s his deeply considered deployment of effects that make this album so interesting. Highly reccomended for fans of experimental electric guitar music.

Ultralyd - Inertiadrome

My favorite of these Rune Grammofon releases comes from Ultralyd, a band I hadn’t heard of before, though they’ve been releasing records for almost 10 years. “Inertiadrome” looks to be their sixth full-length, having also released a split with Noxagt and a self-released 12” single the same year as “Inertiadrome” (which contains a track of the same name). These are punishing bass and drum-driven jams that frequently ride a groove for their duration while guitar and sax textures make glorious noises above it all. There is an early industrial vibe to most of the riffs, and I’m especially reminded of Kevin Martin’s “God” project that released a couple of excellent jazz-industrial albums in the 90s. I’ve often wished that band would have produced even more records, and I’m delighted to find another ensemble working in that mysterious chasm between industrial, jazz, and goth concepts. 

Ultralyd manages to sound almost as dense and heavy as God, an impressive feat for a 4-piece! The drum work focuses on industrial and tribal grooves, at times pushing into the busy, driving approach used on early 70s fusion albums, but the dark, relentless bass riffs and distorted, distant-sounding guitar and sax textures sustain a much more gloomy atmosphere than one would ever expect on an Eddie Henderson record. The guitar and sax approaches on this album are really unique: at times, Anders Hana will take up a two or four note repeating figure high on the neck of his guitar, or saxophonist Kjetil Moster will use a delay pedal to build up a harsh rhythmic counterriff, but over much of the album the two of them push one another into progressively cascading waves of aggressive sound, the timbres of their instruments bleeding into one another and becoming a singular force. They’re united by playing lots of long, sustained figures (no solos here), and through heroic doses of distortion and reverb. It can be a harsh-sounding record with so much distortion blending the higher-pitched parts into ugly masses of dissonance and feedback, but this kind of production quality adds a lot to the cold, despondent feel of the jams.

My favorite riff on the album makes long appearances in two tracks, forming the backbone of the first track, “Lahutma,” as well as forming a contrast against a repeated three-note sax riff in the penultimate track “Geodesic Portico.” Amazing, heavy stuff. Playing in Ultralyd must be a real workout for Kjetil Brandsdal and Morten Olsen, sustaining brutal bass/drum riffage for 40 minutes at a time with very few moments of rest. The repetitive, groove oriented nature of this music, as well as its boundless supply of energy, give it a curious relationship with club music: Kevin Martin largely moved onto more “traditional” sounds and textures in his later dancehall and dubstep related projects, but in my mind there is an alternate universe where Bauhaus and Love and Rockets evolved into aggressive club music, keeping the guitars and basses and real drums and ignoring drum machines and sequencers and synths. There are stages instead of DJ booths at the clubs in this alternate reality, and Ultralyd belongs on those stages, headlining every night.

—Scott Scholz

Extra Life - Dream Seeds Lately I’ve been really impressed with young Brooklyn label Northern Spy’s releases. Home to Neptune, whose newest album I recently reviewed here, they first came to my attention for their involvement with the recent Zs album “33,” and they’re starting to release a number of “Zs family” projects such as last fall’s Hubble Drums and an upcoming full-length from Diamond Terrifier. So I was pleased to see them handling “Dream Seeds,” the latest LP from Extra Life, currently a main project of Zs co-founder Charlie Looker.It’s my hope that some of these longish reviews can transcend the smarmier consumer-culture exigencies of “record reviews,” and I suspect the subject matter involved here raises those odds. You see, I find it difficult to think of Extra Life as a “band.” I find myself drawn to describing their music in sacerdotal, rather than musical, terms. There are extraordinary riches to explore in this music from intellectual and aesthetic perspectives, but at its best moments, the music consumes you from within, transcending language: a powerful experience, but a perplexing state from which to write a review!Before we explore Dream Seeds, I want to draw your attention to two earlier Charlie Looker compositions that have been paradigm-shifting for me. The first is “Nobody Wants to Be Had,” from the 2007 Zs release, “Arms,” and the second is “I Don’t See It That Way” from the debut Extra Life full-length, “Secular Works.” In hindsight, I hear “Nobody Wants” as the conceptual beginning of Extra Life, and “I Don’t” seems to be its companion. At first, they seem to be musical antipodes: “Nobody Wants” is sharp and pointillistic, expanding on the idea of recitativo secco, while “I Don’t” is rich with melismatic passages and the lyricism of early music. But as they both rail against the conditions of modern life in their lyrics (conspicuous consumption, homogenized culture, shallow relationships and the like), they perfectly avoid the obvious cliches of turning into abrasive metal screaming sessions, leaving much more unique—and powerful—impressions instead. I still find it difficult to articulate my feelings and thoughts about this music, but as luck would have it, I think Looker did a good job describing the breadth and depth of his own work in a review he wrote of Little Women:“Like all of the music which I find profoundly revealing, the music of Little Women embraces and consolidates vibes which are normally considered in opposition. The band renders these vibes non-dual, non-opposing, returning to the original place where they are one to begin with. This is the basis of magick in both the East and West, from the Tao to the Hermetic and alchemical traditions.”So it is with Extra Life as well. This music has plenty of value in terms of entertainment and aesthetics, but for me it especially shines as a catalyst for heavy contemplation, a series of musical sigils that open difficult doors and embody their hidden contents.Onto Dream Seeds proper. The third full-length effort from Extra Life, Dream Seeds finds the band working in a trio configuration continued from last year’s Ripped Heart EP: Tony Gedrich (bass) and Travis Laplante (synth, sax) are gone, Caley Monahon-Ward has moved over to guitar from violin, and Charlie Looker is playing synth instead of guitar, with a focus on covering bass duties. The other major difference is the compositional approach, which is collaborative this time instead of Looker writing everything. The singular Extra Life sound remains—I think that spinning a minute of any of these songs would be enough to know what band you’re hearing—but the project continues to be refined toward generally more traditional song forms.I must admit that I miss Looker’s baritone guitar playing. His angular, tense riffage on earlier Extra Life records, blended with delicate arpeggios, was totally unique. But his left hand covers similar riffs on Dream Seeds with a frequently metallic-tinged bass sound. Guitar parts have generally taken a more supportive role, with Monahon-Ward filling in spaces with chord work and Lynchian atmospheric flourishes, though there are times when the synth and guitar parts interact rhythmically to create riffs, such as the verse playing on “First Song.”There is some truly beautiful songwriting on display in Dream Seeds. No stranger to evocative melodies on previous albums with songs like “I’ll Burn” and “Black Hoodie,” “First Song” is the newest gorgeous and mostly gentle offering, and the violin/piano arrangements in the last half of “Little One” are breathtaking. But my favorite moments continue to include a lot of muscular, more rhythmically active writing: “Discipline for Edwin” repeatedly builds to an explosive chorus, “Righteous Seed” is a propulsive, high energy workout, and there are some crazy, disturbing moments in the center of the album closer, “Ten Year Teardrop,” which build to almost impossibly beautiful melodic passages at the record’s end.The last two tracks are exceptions to the move toward pop songforms—and maybe “exception” isn’t the best word, since they occupy half of the album’s playing time. “Blinded Beast” is a plodding dirge that builds slowly, eventually adding some very interesting countermelodies and twisting riffs, like a kind of avant-prog Swans. It would be a great album closer by itself, but “Ten Year Teardrop” takes the band into an even more expansive drama. Like the Beast, the first half of the piece is a slow dirge, but without percussion. The center of the piece is a nightmarish collage of reversed sounds, metallic textures and dissonant synth tones, gated reverbs, and intense singing, followed by a brief spoken soliloquy. Once the drums enter the piece, it rises to a wonderful, redemptive end as mentioned above.Nick Podgurski’s drum work with Extra Life deserves a special mention. It’s difficult to stand out in a band with a songwriter/leader so distinct as Charlie Looker, but Podgurski’s creative approach to drums is a major component of the unique sound of Extra Life. He rarely plays anything approaching a generic pop or rock drum beat, and he lays out a lot of time. But his parts are critical to building tension in all of the right moments in this music, and when he settles into part playing, he emphasizes all of the interesting interactions between melodic and harmonic parts instead of pushing a particular beat. We’re supposed to be big boys and girls—we can find the “one” all by ourselves.In addition to guitar and other instrumental duties, Monahon-Ward did an exquisite job recording Dream Seeds. This music covers such a vast range of feels, from intimate to anthemic, that it can be difficult to capture on record, but everything is very clear. In particular, the vocals seem to be mixed a little higher and recorded with a little more detail than previous Extra Life albums to my ears, and it’s a lot easier to make out the lyrics.Speaking of lyrics, I don’t want to attempt a full exposition of the lyrical concepts behind this album, but there is more of an album-length concept behind these songs than previous Extra Life LPs. There are moments of black humor and sometimes quite disturbing imagery, this time focused largely on issues of childhood and dreams. Mostly presented from the perspective of adulthood, simultaneously coveting and fearing the innocence and depth of emotional experience possible in the young (before social conditioning dulls our senses), we re-experience these acute highs and lows as they’re born and buried in our dreams. This doesn’t form a linear narrative, as it flows through the wild terrain of dream logic, but I get vibes of various confrontations with the Jungian “shadow,” terrifying as they occur but offering the potential of powerful transcendence. Many choose to ignore or retreat from stuff this heavy, but Looker doesn’t back down. He’s already done so much of the Work for us that you can simply buy the album and watch the battle from a safe distance. Or you can consider these lyrics and this music to be a fragment of the map into your own unexplored territory—what will you find if you go further into yourself? More light, more darkness, more light.—Scott Scholz

Extra Life - Dream Seeds

Lately I’ve been really impressed with young Brooklyn label Northern Spy’s releases. Home to Neptune, whose newest album I recently reviewed here, they first came to my attention for their involvement with the recent Zs album “33,” and they’re starting to release a number of “Zs family” projects such as last fall’s Hubble Drums and an upcoming full-length from Diamond Terrifier. So I was pleased to see them handling “Dream Seeds,” the latest LP from Extra Life, currently a main project of Zs co-founder Charlie Looker.

It’s my hope that some of these longish reviews can transcend the smarmier consumer-culture exigencies of “record reviews,” and I suspect the subject matter involved here raises those odds. You see, I find it difficult to think of Extra Life as a “band.” I find myself drawn to describing their music in sacerdotal, rather than musical, terms. There are extraordinary riches to explore in this music from intellectual and aesthetic perspectives, but at its best moments, the music consumes you from within, transcending language: a powerful experience, but a perplexing state from which to write a review!

Before we explore Dream Seeds, I want to draw your attention to two earlier Charlie Looker compositions that have been paradigm-shifting for me. The first is “Nobody Wants to Be Had,” from the 2007 Zs release, “Arms,” and the second is “I Don’t See It That Way” from the debut Extra Life full-length, “Secular Works.” In hindsight, I hear “Nobody Wants” as the conceptual beginning of Extra Life, and “I Don’t” seems to be its companion. At first, they seem to be musical antipodes: “Nobody Wants” is sharp and pointillistic, expanding on the idea of recitativo secco, while “I Don’t” is rich with melismatic passages and the lyricism of early music. But as they both rail against the conditions of modern life in their lyrics (conspicuous consumption, homogenized culture, shallow relationships and the like), they perfectly avoid the obvious cliches of turning into abrasive metal screaming sessions, leaving much more unique—and powerful—impressions instead. I still find it difficult to articulate my feelings and thoughts about this music, but as luck would have it, I think Looker did a good job describing the breadth and depth of his own work in a review he wrote of Little Women:

“Like all of the music which I find profoundly revealing, the music of Little Women embraces and consolidates vibes which are normally considered in opposition. The band renders these vibes non-dual, non-opposing, returning to the original place where they are one to begin with. This is the basis of magick in both the East and West, from the Tao to the Hermetic and alchemical traditions.”

So it is with Extra Life as well. This music has plenty of value in terms of entertainment and aesthetics, but for me it especially shines as a catalyst for heavy contemplation, a series of musical sigils that open difficult doors and embody their hidden contents.

Onto Dream Seeds proper. The third full-length effort from Extra Life, Dream Seeds finds the band working in a trio configuration continued from last year’s Ripped Heart EP: Tony Gedrich (bass) and Travis Laplante (synth, sax) are gone, Caley Monahon-Ward has moved over to guitar from violin, and Charlie Looker is playing synth instead of guitar, with a focus on covering bass duties. The other major difference is the compositional approach, which is collaborative this time instead of Looker writing everything. The singular Extra Life sound remains—I think that spinning a minute of any of these songs would be enough to know what band you’re hearing—but the project continues to be refined toward generally more traditional song forms.

I must admit that I miss Looker’s baritone guitar playing. His angular, tense riffage on earlier Extra Life records, blended with delicate arpeggios, was totally unique. But his left hand covers similar riffs on Dream Seeds with a frequently metallic-tinged bass sound. Guitar parts have generally taken a more supportive role, with Monahon-Ward filling in spaces with chord work and Lynchian atmospheric flourishes, though there are times when the synth and guitar parts interact rhythmically to create riffs, such as the verse playing on “First Song.”

There is some truly beautiful songwriting on display in Dream Seeds. No stranger to evocative melodies on previous albums with songs like “I’ll Burn” and “Black Hoodie,” “First Song” is the newest gorgeous and mostly gentle offering, and the violin/piano arrangements in the last half of “Little One” are breathtaking. But my favorite moments continue to include a lot of muscular, more rhythmically active writing: “Discipline for Edwin” repeatedly builds to an explosive chorus, “Righteous Seed” is a propulsive, high energy workout, and there are some crazy, disturbing moments in the center of the album closer, “Ten Year Teardrop,” which build to almost impossibly beautiful melodic passages at the record’s end.

The last two tracks are exceptions to the move toward pop songforms—and maybe “exception” isn’t the best word, since they occupy half of the album’s playing time. “Blinded Beast” is a plodding dirge that builds slowly, eventually adding some very interesting countermelodies and twisting riffs, like a kind of avant-prog Swans. It would be a great album closer by itself, but “Ten Year Teardrop” takes the band into an even more expansive drama. Like the Beast, the first half of the piece is a slow dirge, but without percussion. The center of the piece is a nightmarish collage of reversed sounds, metallic textures and dissonant synth tones, gated reverbs, and intense singing, followed by a brief spoken soliloquy. Once the drums enter the piece, it rises to a wonderful, redemptive end as mentioned above.

Nick Podgurski’s drum work with Extra Life deserves a special mention. It’s difficult to stand out in a band with a songwriter/leader so distinct as Charlie Looker, but Podgurski’s creative approach to drums is a major component of the unique sound of Extra Life. He rarely plays anything approaching a generic pop or rock drum beat, and he lays out a lot of time. But his parts are critical to building tension in all of the right moments in this music, and when he settles into part playing, he emphasizes all of the interesting interactions between melodic and harmonic parts instead of pushing a particular beat. We’re supposed to be big boys and girls—we can find the “one” all by ourselves.

In addition to guitar and other instrumental duties, Monahon-Ward did an exquisite job recording Dream Seeds. This music covers such a vast range of feels, from intimate to anthemic, that it can be difficult to capture on record, but everything is very clear. In particular, the vocals seem to be mixed a little higher and recorded with a little more detail than previous Extra Life albums to my ears, and it’s a lot easier to make out the lyrics.

Speaking of lyrics, I don’t want to attempt a full exposition of the lyrical concepts behind this album, but there is more of an album-length concept behind these songs than previous Extra Life LPs. There are moments of black humor and sometimes quite disturbing imagery, this time focused largely on issues of childhood and dreams. Mostly presented from the perspective of adulthood, simultaneously coveting and fearing the innocence and depth of emotional experience possible in the young (before social conditioning dulls our senses), we re-experience these acute highs and lows as they’re born and buried in our dreams. This doesn’t form a linear narrative, as it flows through the wild terrain of dream logic, but I get vibes of various confrontations with the Jungian “shadow,” terrifying as they occur but offering the potential of powerful transcendence. Many choose to ignore or retreat from stuff this heavy, but Looker doesn’t back down. He’s already done so much of the Work for us that you can simply buy the album and watch the battle from a safe distance. Or you can consider these lyrics and this music to be a fragment of the map into your own unexplored territory—what will you find if you go further into yourself? More light, more darkness, more light.

—Scott Scholz

Pig Soul - Chorume Da Alma One of my favorite musical traditions is the Rock In Opposition (RIO) movement, now in its fourth decade of gifting the world with music that artfully integrates multiple musical traditions with an awareness of the complex social fabric of our increasingly interconnected world. While the first wave of RIO bands is sometimes considered the only wave of “true cvlt RIO,” having explicitly signed onto collective tenants of virtuosity in composition and performance integrated with extramusical activities and “a social commitment to Rock,” many bands have continued to embrace the approach into contemporary music and times. Among the newest and most exciting of these is Brazil’s Pig Soul, whose first album, “Chorume Da Alma,” recently arrived at my doorstep. Pig Soul is a 4-piece instrumental combo whose members are all music grads of Brazil’s UNICAMP. They’re all fantastic technicians on their respective rock instruments (guitar, bass, drums, keys), and they’re apparently collaborating compositionally, as songwriting credits are shared among the whole band on their debut disc. Guitarist Brita also contributes a few well-placed passages on trombone. While it’s clear that these guys can really play, the emphasis here is truly on composition. This project could turn into a mindless shredfest in lesser hands, but Pig Soul keep their focus on creative writing and energetic ensemble-based performance. There are virtuosic “take a solo” moments on occasion, but they only happen when the music demands them, and even then they incorporate frequent compositional turns that draw listeners’ attention to whole-ensemble interplay. Like many bands that take an RIO-influenced approach, it’s difficult to describe this music in genre-specific terms, because it incorporates many styles and approaches in fluid, constantly evolving ways. I probably listen to RIO-influenced music more than any other style, yet succinct characterizations of records like this remain elusive. In the case of Pig Soul, one can point to a few compositional tendencies that characterize their approach: playful, shifting rhythms, blends of 70s jazz/rock fusion, melodic jazz, and Meshuggah-like metal chugging, and frequent juxtapositions of repeated ostinato figures, which often get recontextualized in a number of rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral settings, teased into musical corners and re-released as unison figures into the whole ensemble. While that still doesn’t capture their essence, I think it’s fair to say that if you like some of the harder-hitting Cuneiform bands like Doctor Nerve or Cheer-Accident, you will be delighted with Pig Soul. “Chorume Da Alma” is broken into 10 tracks, but it’s really a 33 minute through-composed suite with track breaks for the sake of convenience. The album begins with an aptly-titled “Intro (11)6142212X,” in which sounds slowly drift within earshot, starting with bass rumbles covered in gentle delays. Piano and percussion add pointillistic flourishes and cymbal scrapes to the atmosphere. When guitar enters the mix, the band builds to a huge crescendo that shifts from a noisy mass toward a tonal center. Then we get some unison stop-time chugging, followed by another crescendo and more stop-time. But this stop-time section is a melodic and rhythmic exploration: the band plays with segments of a motif which becomes the main melody for the title track. At the other end of the album, the closing track, “Taking Waves,” is a long repeated loop, edited just a comma out of common time, that repeats a little ii-V turnaround on a gentle jazz/bossa texture. It goes on for about five minutes looping the same couple of seconds, like a locked groove in a record.  Between the bookends formed by this intro and outro, there is relatively more stylistic consistency in the middle sections of the album formed by the constant presence of structured percussion. Drummer Gigante makes many stylistic leaps and shifts throughout the record, but his playing also serves as an anchor, making sure that these occasionally wild forms always have a clear rhythmic delineation. Even when he gets playful, sometimes moving the beat around while others play a repeating figure, he does so after firmly establishing where the beat is “supposed” to be. Like the rest of the music, his parts sound mostly composed, though played with plenty of style and vigor. And I don’t mean to imply that he’s playing non-stop riffs through most of the music—Pig Soul is a band that uses a wide dynamic range, and he’s also good at finding the perfect cymbals to tease through the frequent soft passages that punctuate this music. The bass and keyboard work of Boni and Chicao, respectively, are in many ways the most flexible parts of the Pig Soul sound. Both players have complex roles in these compositions that can take them from ambiance/pad duties, to complex rhythmic stabs, to more traditional rhythmic/harmonic parts, to lead melodic roles, very quickly. I’m especially impressed by how much of a role the bass gets in the more ambient, sound-sculpture sections, which are dominated by guitars in many bands. When unison parts are tossed around the band, it’s nice to hear how the bass and piano work together, too: in “Wa A Api Vini,” for example, a melodic sequence is dissected in various ways by the band, but it’s introduced with prominent bass and rhodes piano sounds before the guitars and higher piano octaves are introduced. A guitar player myself, I’m especially impressed with the guitar work of Brita. He’s a very tasteful player when the music requires it, and plays creative parts with great precision and sound choices, but he has a secret weapon I wish more guitar players would consider when it’s time to get crazy: a whammy pedal! Rather than an occasional effect to yank random notes up and down, Brita uses his primarily as an octave displacement device for whole passages, to put melodic ideas into a distorted, abrasive stratospherically high range. I love it, maybe partially because I use a similar sound approach, and I wish more people did. But it sounds great, bringing a whole new contemporary vibe to the solo at the end of the Mahavishnu and Os Mutantes-influenced psych-fusion of the title track. I suspect I can even identify the digital effects Brita uses, hearing some other multi-effected sounds toward the end of “Romanza,” or the long, bouncing delays in the melody of “L’Amour:” is it a Digitech RP series, maybe an RP10 or RP12? I’ve spent many hours tweaking similar sounds in one of those boxes. Anyway, Brita is a great player with an ear for good sounds, from clean to crunch. In all, this is a great debut, and I’m excited for what comes next. As far as embracing social aspects of the RIO movement, the distribution of this recording on CD uses a proprietary Brazilian technology called Semi Metallic Disc (SMD), which is intended both to lower duplication costs for bands as well as lower sale prices of music to fans. This disc, for example, lists for R$5,00, which is around $2.75 USD. They look cool, too, with a clear plastic edge around the disc, housed in a kind of paper box I’ve never seen before. The idea of SMD discs has some positive implications for bands trying to control some distribution and promotion of their own music—shlepping mp3s around is fine, but a disc like this provides opportunity for including some visual design and art elements, as well as more information in liner notes than one can really put into mp3 metadata. And the recording can circulate as a normal CD with full audio fidelity. For an album so detailed and complex as this, being able to hear the full-fi mix brings out every beautiful nuance in the music. But if you’re prohibitively far away and you want to track down a copy of this album, you can contact the band for information on ordering at their Facebook page, see some videos of them on their YouTube channel, or hear the music at their soundcloud page. —Scott Scholz

Pig Soul - Chorume Da Alma

One of my favorite musical traditions is the Rock In Opposition (RIO) movement, now in its fourth decade of gifting the world with music that artfully integrates multiple musical traditions with an awareness of the complex social fabric of our increasingly interconnected world. While the first wave of RIO bands is sometimes considered the only wave of “true cvlt RIO,” having explicitly signed onto collective tenants of virtuosity in composition and performance integrated with extramusical activities and “a social commitment to Rock,” many bands have continued to embrace the approach into contemporary music and times. Among the newest and most exciting of these is Brazil’s Pig Soul, whose first album, “Chorume Da Alma,” recently arrived at my doorstep.

Pig Soul is a 4-piece instrumental combo whose members are all music grads of Brazil’s UNICAMP. They’re all fantastic technicians on their respective rock instruments (guitar, bass, drums, keys), and they’re apparently collaborating compositionally, as songwriting credits are shared among the whole band on their debut disc. Guitarist Brita also contributes a few well-placed passages on trombone.

While it’s clear that these guys can really play, the emphasis here is truly on composition. This project could turn into a mindless shredfest in lesser hands, but Pig Soul keep their focus on creative writing and energetic ensemble-based performance. There are virtuosic “take a solo” moments on occasion, but they only happen when the music demands them, and even then they incorporate frequent compositional turns that draw listeners’ attention to whole-ensemble interplay.

Like many bands that take an RIO-influenced approach, it’s difficult to describe this music in genre-specific terms, because it incorporates many styles and approaches in fluid, constantly evolving ways. I probably listen to RIO-influenced music more than any other style, yet succinct characterizations of records like this remain elusive. In the case of Pig Soul, one can point to a few compositional tendencies that characterize their approach: playful, shifting rhythms, blends of 70s jazz/rock fusion, melodic jazz, and Meshuggah-like metal chugging, and frequent juxtapositions of repeated ostinato figures, which often get recontextualized in a number of rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral settings, teased into musical corners and re-released as unison figures into the whole ensemble. While that still doesn’t capture their essence, I think it’s fair to say that if you like some of the harder-hitting Cuneiform bands like Doctor Nerve or Cheer-Accident, you will be delighted with Pig Soul.

“Chorume Da Alma” is broken into 10 tracks, but it’s really a 33 minute through-composed suite with track breaks for the sake of convenience. The album begins with an aptly-titled “Intro (11)6142212X,” in which sounds slowly drift within earshot, starting with bass rumbles covered in gentle delays. Piano and percussion add pointillistic flourishes and cymbal scrapes to the atmosphere. When guitar enters the mix, the band builds to a huge crescendo that shifts from a noisy mass toward a tonal center. Then we get some unison stop-time chugging, followed by another crescendo and more stop-time. But this stop-time section is a melodic and rhythmic exploration: the band plays with segments of a motif which becomes the main melody for the title track. At the other end of the album, the closing track, “Taking Waves,” is a long repeated loop, edited just a comma out of common time, that repeats a little ii-V turnaround on a gentle jazz/bossa texture. It goes on for about five minutes looping the same couple of seconds, like a locked groove in a record. 

Between the bookends formed by this intro and outro, there is relatively more stylistic consistency in the middle sections of the album formed by the constant presence of structured percussion. Drummer Gigante makes many stylistic leaps and shifts throughout the record, but his playing also serves as an anchor, making sure that these occasionally wild forms always have a clear rhythmic delineation. Even when he gets playful, sometimes moving the beat around while others play a repeating figure, he does so after firmly establishing where the beat is “supposed” to be. Like the rest of the music, his parts sound mostly composed, though played with plenty of style and vigor. And I don’t mean to imply that he’s playing non-stop riffs through most of the music—Pig Soul is a band that uses a wide dynamic range, and he’s also good at finding the perfect cymbals to tease through the frequent soft passages that punctuate this music.

The bass and keyboard work of Boni and Chicao, respectively, are in many ways the most flexible parts of the Pig Soul sound. Both players have complex roles in these compositions that can take them from ambiance/pad duties, to complex rhythmic stabs, to more traditional rhythmic/harmonic parts, to lead melodic roles, very quickly. I’m especially impressed by how much of a role the bass gets in the more ambient, sound-sculpture sections, which are dominated by guitars in many bands. When unison parts are tossed around the band, it’s nice to hear how the bass and piano work together, too: in “Wa A Api Vini,” for example, a melodic sequence is dissected in various ways by the band, but it’s introduced with prominent bass and rhodes piano sounds before the guitars and higher piano octaves are introduced.

A guitar player myself, I’m especially impressed with the guitar work of Brita. He’s a very tasteful player when the music requires it, and plays creative parts with great precision and sound choices, but he has a secret weapon I wish more guitar players would consider when it’s time to get crazy: a whammy pedal! Rather than an occasional effect to yank random notes up and down, Brita uses his primarily as an octave displacement device for whole passages, to put melodic ideas into a distorted, abrasive stratospherically high range. I love it, maybe partially because I use a similar sound approach, and I wish more people did. But it sounds great, bringing a whole new contemporary vibe to the solo at the end of the Mahavishnu and Os Mutantes-influenced psych-fusion of the title track. I suspect I can even identify the digital effects Brita uses, hearing some other multi-effected sounds toward the end of “Romanza,” or the long, bouncing delays in the melody of “L’Amour:” is it a Digitech RP series, maybe an RP10 or RP12? I’ve spent many hours tweaking similar sounds in one of those boxes. Anyway, Brita is a great player with an ear for good sounds, from clean to crunch.

In all, this is a great debut, and I’m excited for what comes next. As far as embracing social aspects of the RIO movement, the distribution of this recording on CD uses a proprietary Brazilian technology called Semi Metallic Disc (SMD), which is intended both to lower duplication costs for bands as well as lower sale prices of music to fans. This disc, for example, lists for R$5,00, which is around $2.75 USD. They look cool, too, with a clear plastic edge around the disc, housed in a kind of paper box I’ve never seen before. The idea of SMD discs has some positive implications for bands trying to control some distribution and promotion of their own music—shlepping mp3s around is fine, but a disc like this provides opportunity for including some visual design and art elements, as well as more information in liner notes than one can really put into mp3 metadata. And the recording can circulate as a normal CD with full audio fidelity. For an album so detailed and complex as this, being able to hear the full-fi mix brings out every beautiful nuance in the music. But if you’re prohibitively far away and you want to track down a copy of this album, you can contact the band for information on ordering at their Facebook page, see some videos of them on their YouTube channel, or hear the music at their soundcloud page.

—Scott Scholz

Neptune - msg rcvd My first spin through “msg rcvd” filled me with regret and dread—regret that I missed out on hearing this band’s work over the last 15 years, and dread at how much money I’m likely to spend tracking down Neptune’s voluminous back catalog. I don’t know how I’ve been out of the loop on this amazing band, but enjoying revelatory moments like my first time listening to this album are precisely why I’ve gotten into the “record review game.” For those of you arriving to the work of Neptune as late as me, a touch of background: this band started around 1994 as an outgrowth of a sculpture project by bandleader Jason Sanford. Discogs.com indicates at least seven folks have contributed their efforts to the band over the course of 16 releases. As one might expect, the discography on the Neptune website is more comprehensive, listing 23 previous releases (not including either of their most recent efforts for Northern Spy). Their website also includes a “listen” button I’d recommend checking out, which will launch a player featuring tracks from older releases (check out “Thorns” and “Paris Green”). I’m digging the tracks on “msg rcvd” even more than the music in this sampler, but there are a lot of compositional/orchestrational similarities that will get you into the proper state of mind to rcv yr msg. The most unique aspect of Neptune is surely its sculptural pedigree: the band continues to design and construct their own instruments. Their guitar designs are visually striking, with wide rectangular or square metal bodies and skeletal metal-frame necks with just enough structure to support fretwork. They’re a fascinating contrast of positive and negative space, or something like Ghost of Future Bo Diddley guitars, if you’re feeling more whimsical. There are homemade electric kalimbas with guitar pickups mounted on their wood block bases. Drum hardware is made to fit around discarded trash bins. And they use many other mysterious homemade metal boxes with various knobs, switches, switches, meters, and jacks—perhaps a few of these are the “new ‘feedback-organ’ machines” mentioned in the album’s promo literature. But don’t equate Neptune’s devotion to instrument design with novelty. Ordinarily, I might wonder if compositional focus would be compromised with so much thought invested in the instruments themselves, but this music is created with a similarly sculptural—or ritualistic—attention to detail. In fact, “msg rcvd” exudes a unique kind of compositional integrity that is probably only possible when the musicians’ hands are creating both their medium and their message as an integrated whole. I am reminded of the “Crafting A Drum” section toward the end of Rhythmajik, in which Z’EV describes several methods by which a person can consecrate an instrument during its construction: everything from personal sigils, symbols, prayers, songs, and bodily fluids can be focused together at the “birth” of a new instrument. Such instruments easily become extensions of their owner/creators. In the case of Neptune, whose music and lyrics explore connections between cultural disguises and cultural detritus, there is an impressive amount of emotional power in giving voice to “junk.” Musically, I think anyone who is into the early 80s confluence of industrial/pop/goth music (think early Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, PTV) will fall in love with “msg rcvd.” Another obvious influence is Einsturzende Neubauten, for some musical connections as well as instrument design/modification, but Neptune has a distinct voice all its own. Compositionally, this is mostly minimalist work—Neptune has the ability to make a LOT of sound, but they’re masters of patience. Tension builds very gradually, even gently, and usually works itself out through repetition of musical sections with variations in orchestration or rhythm. And I really like the vocals, which are mostly spoken and occasionally sung—but there is no screaming. There are moments where screamed/yelled vocals might have been the obvious choice for many bands, but singer/guitarist/etc Mark Pearson’s vocal restraint really pays off, in my opinion, creating even more tension by not falling into aggro vocal cliches. I really love the blend of sounds: “natural” instruments of plucked strings, plucked metal tines, drums, etc, are electrified and amplified to great effect among other kinds of oscillating ephemera. I’m not sure what a “feedback organ” or an “oscillator organ” would be, structurally, but I do hear controlled feedback or self-oscillation sounds being used frequently. It’s all very structured—this is by no means a “noise” album, nor do I get the impression that improvisation plays a significant role. Sounds one might associate with “noise” are used, but they’re deployed for very specific textural or rhythmic effects. Again, that sense of thoughtful patience permeates the work at every level: instrument design, sound design, compositional permutation, vocal approach, lyrical/thematic motifs. The result, at least for me, is a well-defined and very addictive record. —Scott Scholz

Neptune - msg rcvd

My first spin through “msg rcvd” filled me with regret and dread—regret that I missed out on hearing this band’s work over the last 15 years, and dread at how much money I’m likely to spend tracking down Neptune’s voluminous back catalog. I don’t know how I’ve been out of the loop on this amazing band, but enjoying revelatory moments like my first time listening to this album are precisely why I’ve gotten into the “record review game.”

For those of you arriving to the work of Neptune as late as me, a touch of background: this band started around 1994 as an outgrowth of a sculpture project by bandleader Jason Sanford. Discogs.com indicates at least seven folks have contributed their efforts to the band over the course of 16 releases. As one might expect, the discography on the Neptune website is more comprehensive, listing 23 previous releases (not including either of their most recent efforts for Northern Spy). Their website also includes a “listen” button I’d recommend checking out, which will launch a player featuring tracks from older releases (check out “Thorns” and “Paris Green”). I’m digging the tracks on “msg rcvd” even more than the music in this sampler, but there are a lot of compositional/orchestrational similarities that will get you into the proper state of mind to rcv yr msg.

The most unique aspect of Neptune is surely its sculptural pedigree: the band continues to design and construct their own instruments. Their guitar designs are visually striking, with wide rectangular or square metal bodies and skeletal metal-frame necks with just enough structure to support fretwork. They’re a fascinating contrast of positive and negative space, or something like Ghost of Future Bo Diddley guitars, if you’re feeling more whimsical. There are homemade electric kalimbas with guitar pickups mounted on their wood block bases. Drum hardware is made to fit around discarded trash bins. And they use many other mysterious homemade metal boxes with various knobs, switches, switches, meters, and jacks—perhaps a few of these are the “new ‘feedback-organ’ machines” mentioned in the album’s promo literature.

But don’t equate Neptune’s devotion to instrument design with novelty. Ordinarily, I might wonder if compositional focus would be compromised with so much thought invested in the instruments themselves, but this music is created with a similarly sculptural—or ritualistic—attention to detail. In fact, “msg rcvd” exudes a unique kind of compositional integrity that is probably only possible when the musicians’ hands are creating both their medium and their message as an integrated whole. I am reminded of the “Crafting A Drum” section toward the end of Rhythmajik, in which Z’EV describes several methods by which a person can consecrate an instrument during its construction: everything from personal sigils, symbols, prayers, songs, and bodily fluids can be focused together at the “birth” of a new instrument. Such instruments easily become extensions of their owner/creators. In the case of Neptune, whose music and lyrics explore connections between cultural disguises and cultural detritus, there is an impressive amount of emotional power in giving voice to “junk.”

Musically, I think anyone who is into the early 80s confluence of industrial/pop/goth music (think early Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, PTV) will fall in love with “msg rcvd.” Another obvious influence is Einsturzende Neubauten, for some musical connections as well as instrument design/modification, but Neptune has a distinct voice all its own. Compositionally, this is mostly minimalist work—Neptune has the ability to make a LOT of sound, but they’re masters of patience. Tension builds very gradually, even gently, and usually works itself out through repetition of musical sections with variations in orchestration or rhythm. And I really like the vocals, which are mostly spoken and occasionally sung—but there is no screaming. There are moments where screamed/yelled vocals might have been the obvious choice for many bands, but singer/guitarist/etc Mark Pearson’s vocal restraint really pays off, in my opinion, creating even more tension by not falling into aggro vocal cliches.

I really love the blend of sounds: “natural” instruments of plucked strings, plucked metal tines, drums, etc, are electrified and amplified to great effect among other kinds of oscillating ephemera. I’m not sure what a “feedback organ” or an “oscillator organ” would be, structurally, but I do hear controlled feedback or self-oscillation sounds being used frequently. It’s all very structured—this is by no means a “noise” album, nor do I get the impression that improvisation plays a significant role. Sounds one might associate with “noise” are used, but they’re deployed for very specific textural or rhythmic effects. Again, that sense of thoughtful patience permeates the work at every level: instrument design, sound design, compositional permutation, vocal approach, lyrical/thematic motifs. The result, at least for me, is a well-defined and very addictive record.

—Scott Scholz

I’ve long thought of string quartets as an excellent form to showcase compositional approaches. They’re small but incredibly flexible ensembles that can take nearly limitless musical journeys in a capable composer’s hands. While making satisfying music unto themselves, listeners can often find all of the major elements of a composer’s style presented in relatively unobstructed view within quartet writing: dynamics, use of space, articulation, polyphony, etc. Recently I have received a number of power trio recordings—I’ll use the “classic” definition of a power trio consisting of guitar, bass, and drumkit. As I dug into this music, I realized that I’ve loved dozens of power trios over time, and that the power trio format provides a similarly reliable platform for the presentation of compositional ideas through rock instrumentation. Frequent servings of improvisation are one place where the analogy falls short, as most string quartet music is fully composed. While some power trios focus on composed music, most incorporate improvisation, together or in solos. But the clarity of approach is consistent: think of the power trio efforts of folks like Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, or Vernon Reid, and how their power trio-based projects inform the compositional and improvisational strategies they bring to work in various larger ensembles. After several weeks of power trio immersion therapy, here are four of my recent favorites: Hyrrokkin - Astrionics For having recorded the music for this cassette EP less than three months after forming, Hyrrokkin sounds like they’ve been playing together for years. And for being only an EP, this music has a long reach. Hyrrokkin leans heavily on intricate composition—other than short intervals within occasional rhythmic/textural cells (most notably in “Sephfus”), I don’t hear much improvisation on this album. That puts them in a small class of power trio comp maniacs like the “Void” era configuration of the Flying Luttenbachers, or Colin Marston-related units like Behold the Arctopus or Dysrhythmia. Hyrrokkin bring the same amount of energy to their music as those bands, but they gravitate toward relatively cleaner sounds, and they’re not afraid of melody. Timbrally, the guitar sounds remind me of my favorite early post-hardcore sounds, or even earlier crunchy goodness like “Hard Attack” era MX-80. Edward Ricart and Paul Larkowski alternate guitar and bass duties on different songs, and they have remarkably complimentary sounds on either instrument. Both lay down hypnotic and propulsive bass riffs (Paul on “Super Agoinst” and Ed on “HAARP,” for example), and both take their turns at guitar fearlessly, alternating between long-tone melodies, inventive diad-based harmonic/rhythmic ideas, and occasional outbursts of atonal/chromatic speedpicking. Drummer Brett Nagafuchi’s approach unites jazz and math-rock ideas brilliantly, sometimes taking a stop-time approach on thorny, unison riff sections, alternating with a jazz approach to teasing cymbals through longer grooves. In between those percussive extremes, there are a lot of busy ideas happening in the guitar and bass parts throughout the record which the drum work sensitively delineates into palatable sections while keeping the energy level very high. A masterful debut, and I’m psyched for more. Fortunately, Hyrrokkin are planning to record a full-length soon and tour throughout 2012. Much love to label New Atlantis for bringing this group to light. This one is a cassette/CDr release, already in a second printing since September, and you can find New Atlantis releases online at http://sundmagi.com. Scorch Trio - Melaza Scorch Trio is almost the opposite of Hyrrokkin in approach: they too create a forceful sound with the energy of rock, but their collective vocabulary outlines roots mostly in jazz and improvised musical systems. There are occasional repeated figures that serve as collection points along these wild rides, but these songs are very free, with emphasis on texture, soundscape, and in-the-moment conversation between the musicians. Raoul Bjorkhenheim gets brutal with his guitar, pulling many unexpected sounds from his strings, bending, tapping, sliding, and finally firing through a ring modulator in the last few minutes of the album. Ingebrigt Haker Flaten digs into his bass just as fiercely at times, loudly and percussively tremolo picking into a frenzy. That’s not to say this is a noise album. While this seems mostly improvised, the trio carefully incorporates contrast into the music. Tracks like “Raitru” are delicate and quiet, and others like the title track are high energy but with a more melodic sensibility—at times the guitar tones almost drift into Bill Frisell territory on that one. This is the fourth Scorch Trio record, and the first to feature Chicagoan Frank Rosaly on drums. Rosaly keeps the drum approach here eerily similar to that of his predecessor, Paal Nilssen-Love. In comparing this record to “Brolt!” immediately before, the only substantial difference in drum textures that I detect is that Nilssen-Love spends a lot more time with his snare in passages that Rosaly more often fills with tom work. This is a solid and exciting record, but I must admit that I hear a degree of hesitation at the extreme noise pole of their concept. In comparison to Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple, for example, Scorch Trio heads bravely into sheets of pure sound, but they arrive with trained musical sensibilities that seem to include an attendant sense of reservation which peeks through in moments of potential psychedelic reckless abandon. But maybe I’m being unfair to compare the playing of Bjorkenheim to Kawabata, a man whom I once saw play guitar with his ass. Ahem. CD and LP available from Rune Grammofon. Many Arms - Missing Time I wasn’t familiar with Many Arms until I picked up their 1st self-released disc “Palabras Malas” at the merch table of a Zevious show (bassist John DeBlase capably serves in both bands). Zevious, by the way, is another excellent power trio with two good albums and a truly great live show. But I think I like Many Arms even more: for me, this band reaches to the top tier of thoughtful and visceral power trio music, and deserves to be celebrated with classic trios like Blind Idiot God and Massacre. Many Arms splits the difference between Hyrrokkin and Scorch Trio on the composition-to-improvisation continuum. Songs are mostly composed, but many feature intensely high energy solos. And they really excel at both. Compositionally, this music nods to math, prog, drone, psych, jazz, thrash, and more contemporary NYC scenes without bursting at its seams. In terms of playing and soloing quality, the whole band can exhibit an almost punishing display of technique, but they pull it off without turning into “shred” music. Nick Millevoi’s guitar playing in particular floors me. He can spin endless jazz lines or angular stabs of sound with a particularly assertive picking technique. He’s not much of a legato player, but I’ve never heard picking articulation that so effectively demands attention. This is a guitarist to watch carefully. He also recently released a powerful 12-string electric solo record on New Atlantis that I’ll be covering in the near future. Though John DeBlase is the least flashy performer in Many Arms, maintaining structure when the guitars and drums go wild, he writes a lot of the band’s music, and he gets an especially satisfying fuzz bass workout on the epic “Enfolded Within a Great Flow.” And drummer Ricardo Lagomasino sounds comfortable in every stylistic context he tries, from jazz to blast beats. He’s especially inventive when shifting accents and densities over ostinato bass figures, a technique that makes “Extraction” rock both weirdly and hard. That approach is also responsible for my favorite section on their “Palabras Malas” album, the outro of “The Year 500 Billion.” “Missing Time” is available from Engine Studios, but also be sure to check the Many Arms BandCamp page, where you can find all of their music. And stay tuned in March—Tzadik Records is set to release the third Many Arms full-length, followed by some April tour dates with Hyrrokkin. Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Shoot! Another recent power trio offering from Rune Grammofon, the Hedvig Mollestad Trio debuts with a good, though uneven, record. It’s a refreshing blend of jazz and rock influences, including some Touch & Go vibes and even sludge/doom/drone riffs in songs like “For the Air” that would be at home on a Melvins or Earth record if one added a little more distortion. In fact, they even cover the Melvins’ “Blood Witch,” which features the only vocals on the album, yelled/sung by the band in the background and seemingly picked up by room mics. But that’s a weakness of the album: there is a lot of space in the music where vocals could comfortably sit. Maybe too much room. Answering the “how to fill space” question is surely one of the most difficult aspects of playing in a power trio configuration: you can fall into a trap where everything sounds too similar timbrally, but it’s also easy to go too far in the opposite direction and sound gimmicky. And each instrument is so critical to the sound—there is no place to hide. If both melodic/harmonic instruments are locked into playing riffs together for minutes at a time, even transitioning between verse and chorus forms, I start to crave melodies above the riffs. Sometimes guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen takes some thoughtful and interesting solos while the bassist Ellen Brekken holds down the riffs alone, but I wish there were more of those moments, and more interlocking riffs/countermelodies in the compositions, like one finds in “No Encore,” or the bass melodies in “Doom’s Lair” while the guitar maintains the song structure chordally. That said, everyone plays beautifully, it’s beautifully recorded, and I suspect that the Hedvig Mollestad Trio will evolve into an even more exciting group with time. And the gentle closing song, “The Valley,” is a nice wind-down after several weeks of listening to many, many power trios. —Scott Scholz

I’ve long thought of string quartets as an excellent form to showcase compositional approaches. They’re small but incredibly flexible ensembles that can take nearly limitless musical journeys in a capable composer’s hands. While making satisfying music unto themselves, listeners can often find all of the major elements of a composer’s style presented in relatively unobstructed view within quartet writing: dynamics, use of space, articulation, polyphony, etc.

Recently I have received a number of power trio recordings—I’ll use the “classic” definition of a power trio consisting of guitar, bass, and drumkit. As I dug into this music, I realized that I’ve loved dozens of power trios over time, and that the power trio format provides a similarly reliable platform for the presentation of compositional ideas through rock instrumentation. Frequent servings of improvisation are one place where the analogy falls short, as most string quartet music is fully composed. While some power trios focus on composed music, most incorporate improvisation, together or in solos. But the clarity of approach is consistent: think of the power trio efforts of folks like Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, or Vernon Reid, and how their power trio-based projects inform the compositional and improvisational strategies they bring to work in various larger ensembles.

After several weeks of power trio immersion therapy, here are four of my recent favorites:

Hyrrokkin - Astrionics

For having recorded the music for this cassette EP less than three months after forming, Hyrrokkin sounds like they’ve been playing together for years. And for being only an EP, this music has a long reach. Hyrrokkin leans heavily on intricate composition—other than short intervals within occasional rhythmic/textural cells (most notably in “Sephfus”), I don’t hear much improvisation on this album. That puts them in a small class of power trio comp maniacs like the “Void” era configuration of the Flying Luttenbachers, or Colin Marston-related units like Behold the Arctopus or Dysrhythmia. Hyrrokkin bring the same amount of energy to their music as those bands, but they gravitate toward relatively cleaner sounds, and they’re not afraid of melody. Timbrally, the guitar sounds remind me of my favorite early post-hardcore sounds, or even earlier crunchy goodness like “Hard Attack” era MX-80.

Edward Ricart and Paul Larkowski alternate guitar and bass duties on different songs, and they have remarkably complimentary sounds on either instrument. Both lay down hypnotic and propulsive bass riffs (Paul on “Super Agoinst” and Ed on “HAARP,” for example), and both take their turns at guitar fearlessly, alternating between long-tone melodies, inventive diad-based harmonic/rhythmic ideas, and occasional outbursts of atonal/chromatic speedpicking. Drummer Brett Nagafuchi’s approach unites jazz and math-rock ideas brilliantly, sometimes taking a stop-time approach on thorny, unison riff sections, alternating with a jazz approach to teasing cymbals through longer grooves. In between those percussive extremes, there are a lot of busy ideas happening in the guitar and bass parts throughout the record which the drum work sensitively delineates into palatable sections while keeping the energy level very high.

A masterful debut, and I’m psyched for more. Fortunately, Hyrrokkin are planning to record a full-length soon and tour throughout 2012. Much love to label New Atlantis for bringing this group to light. This one is a cassette/CDr release, already in a second printing since September, and you can find New Atlantis releases online at http://sundmagi.com.

Scorch Trio - Melaza

Scorch Trio is almost the opposite of Hyrrokkin in approach: they too create a forceful sound with the energy of rock, but their collective vocabulary outlines roots mostly in jazz and improvised musical systems. There are occasional repeated figures that serve as collection points along these wild rides, but these songs are very free, with emphasis on texture, soundscape, and in-the-moment conversation between the musicians. Raoul Bjorkhenheim gets brutal with his guitar, pulling many unexpected sounds from his strings, bending, tapping, sliding, and finally firing through a ring modulator in the last few minutes of the album. Ingebrigt Haker Flaten digs into his bass just as fiercely at times, loudly and percussively tremolo picking into a frenzy.

That’s not to say this is a noise album. While this seems mostly improvised, the trio carefully incorporates contrast into the music. Tracks like “Raitru” are delicate and quiet, and others like the title track are high energy but with a more melodic sensibility—at times the guitar tones almost drift into Bill Frisell territory on that one.

This is the fourth Scorch Trio record, and the first to feature Chicagoan Frank Rosaly on drums. Rosaly keeps the drum approach here eerily similar to that of his predecessor, Paal Nilssen-Love. In comparing this record to “Brolt!” immediately before, the only substantial difference in drum textures that I detect is that Nilssen-Love spends a lot more time with his snare in passages that Rosaly more often fills with tom work.

This is a solid and exciting record, but I must admit that I hear a degree of hesitation at the extreme noise pole of their concept. In comparison to Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple, for example, Scorch Trio heads bravely into sheets of pure sound, but they arrive with trained musical sensibilities that seem to include an attendant sense of reservation which peeks through in moments of potential psychedelic reckless abandon. But maybe I’m being unfair to compare the playing of Bjorkenheim to Kawabata, a man whom I once saw play guitar with his ass. Ahem. CD and LP available from Rune Grammofon.

Many Arms - Missing Time

I wasn’t familiar with Many Arms until I picked up their 1st self-released disc “Palabras Malas” at the merch table of a Zevious show (bassist John DeBlase capably serves in both bands). Zevious, by the way, is another excellent power trio with two good albums and a truly great live show. But I think I like Many Arms even more: for me, this band reaches to the top tier of thoughtful and visceral power trio music, and deserves to be celebrated with classic trios like Blind Idiot God and Massacre.

Many Arms splits the difference between Hyrrokkin and Scorch Trio on the composition-to-improvisation continuum. Songs are mostly composed, but many feature intensely high energy solos. And they really excel at both. Compositionally, this music nods to math, prog, drone, psych, jazz, thrash, and more contemporary NYC scenes without bursting at its seams. In terms of playing and soloing quality, the whole band can exhibit an almost punishing display of technique, but they pull it off without turning into “shred” music. Nick Millevoi’s guitar playing in particular floors me. He can spin endless jazz lines or angular stabs of sound with a particularly assertive picking technique. He’s not much of a legato player, but I’ve never heard picking articulation that so effectively demands attention. This is a guitarist to watch carefully. He also recently released a powerful 12-string electric solo record on New Atlantis that I’ll be covering in the near future.

Though John DeBlase is the least flashy performer in Many Arms, maintaining structure when the guitars and drums go wild, he writes a lot of the band’s music, and he gets an especially satisfying fuzz bass workout on the epic “Enfolded Within a Great Flow.” And drummer Ricardo Lagomasino sounds comfortable in every stylistic context he tries, from jazz to blast beats. He’s especially inventive when shifting accents and densities over ostinato bass figures, a technique that makes “Extraction” rock both weirdly and hard. That approach is also responsible for my favorite section on their “Palabras Malas” album, the outro of “The Year 500 Billion.”

“Missing Time” is available from Engine Studios, but also be sure to check the Many Arms BandCamp page, where you can find all of their music. And stay tuned in March—Tzadik Records is set to release the third Many Arms full-length, followed by some April tour dates with Hyrrokkin.

Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Shoot!

Another recent power trio offering from Rune Grammofon, the Hedvig Mollestad Trio debuts with a good, though uneven, record. It’s a refreshing blend of jazz and rock influences, including some Touch & Go vibes and even sludge/doom/drone riffs in songs like “For the Air” that would be at home on a Melvins or Earth record if one added a little more distortion. In fact, they even cover the Melvins’ “Blood Witch,” which features the only vocals on the album, yelled/sung by the band in the background and seemingly picked up by room mics.

But that’s a weakness of the album: there is a lot of space in the music where vocals could comfortably sit. Maybe too much room. Answering the “how to fill space” question is surely one of the most difficult aspects of playing in a power trio configuration: you can fall into a trap where everything sounds too similar timbrally, but it’s also easy to go too far in the opposite direction and sound gimmicky. And each instrument is so critical to the sound—there is no place to hide. If both melodic/harmonic instruments are locked into playing riffs together for minutes at a time, even transitioning between verse and chorus forms, I start to crave melodies above the riffs. Sometimes guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen takes some thoughtful and interesting solos while the bassist Ellen Brekken holds down the riffs alone, but I wish there were more of those moments, and more interlocking riffs/countermelodies in the compositions, like one finds in “No Encore,” or the bass melodies in “Doom’s Lair” while the guitar maintains the song structure chordally.

That said, everyone plays beautifully, it’s beautifully recorded, and I suspect that the Hedvig Mollestad Trio will evolve into an even more exciting group with time. And the gentle closing song, “The Valley,” is a nice wind-down after several weeks of listening to many, many power trios.

—Scott Scholz

Perhaps the Ergo Phizmiz phenomenon is better known in England/Europe, but I hadn’t heard of him until a promo copy of “Things To Do and Make” landed at KiC headquarters. A quick online search reveals the rich career of Mr. Phizmiz over the last decade, who looks to be a well-admired fellow working as a multimedia composer, artist, and sound art archivist. If you’re interested in exploring his work, he releases a substantial portion of his output directly to Archive.org and Free Music Archive, where just a few clicks will yield many hours of Phizmizian glory. While most of his previous work focuses on plunderphonics, collage, and bizarre cover arrangements, “Things To Do and Make” is what he considers his first recorded foray into pop music. It’s an incredibly catchy album that I’ve found myself playing many times over. In its way, though, its brand of “pop” belongs to your eccentric great uncle. Ergo’s “pop” manifests through deep influences from vaudeville music and late-era Tin Pan Alley arrangements, while his lyrics and even his accent deliver the project with a whimsical attitude redolent of the Canterbury scene of the late 60s. Phizmiz also reveals himself to be a capable multi-instrumentalist, using a wide range of acoustic instruments with confidence (and occasional electronic supplementation from drum machines/synths/samplers). Many string and keyboard instruments are featured, and I also hear a lot of wind instruments, from clarinets to low brass to tinwhistles and slide whistles. While a lot of songs are very short—half of the album’s tracks are around 3 minutes or less—many of the longer compositions feature well-played instrumental passages. Ergo is a great vocalist, too, and he’s filled many of these arrangements with layers of satisfying overdubbed vocals. Vocal melodies generally move quickly, creating rich layers of bizarre vaudevillian rhymes. The straight mid to uptempo rhythms found through most of the album sustain the carnival atmosphere, but harmonically, Phizmiz stretches out with experimentation closer to the Canterbury vibe: half step motion like that of the verse endings in “Busby Berkley,” or the meandering faux-Baroque falsetto lines of “The Dapper Transvestite,” wouldn’t have been common in the early 20th C. pop this music expands upon. Some songs seem to come from more of a 50s or 60s rock & roll approach, like “Dirty Shower Honk Stomp” and “Late,” but my favorites point toward older influences. Homemade instruments and junk percussion frequently appear, punctuating a lot of arrangements with toy squeaks, jaw harps, and slippery low-tuned plucked strings.  One doesn’t hear many people this far North of Syd Barrett continuing to expand on the potential of vaudeville songwriting, but Phizmiz has proved to me with this record that there indeed remain “things to do and make.” And I’d highly suggest exploring Phizmiz’s many online recordings, as they’re clever and beautifully conceived on their own, while also contributing to a rich overarching career quest toward music that can be both touching and fun. Related to his pop music efforts, one can find similarly chimerical instrumentals in excerpts from his music for operas and plays, and amusing “utility music” applications of his pop music made to solve problems like repairing or comforting household appliances, or musically addressing irritating neighbors. The next Phizmiz pop release looks to be titled “Look, Do and Listen,” which seems to have been released last year. I don’t see any ordering information for it online, but if anyone knows of a way to locate this record, feel free to mention it in the comments—I’d love to give it a workout on my turntable. —Scott Scholz

Perhaps the Ergo Phizmiz phenomenon is better known in England/Europe, but I hadn’t heard of him until a promo copy of “Things To Do and Make” landed at KiC headquarters. A quick online search reveals the rich career of Mr. Phizmiz over the last decade, who looks to be a well-admired fellow working as a multimedia composer, artist, and sound art archivist. If you’re interested in exploring his work, he releases a substantial portion of his output directly to Archive.org and Free Music Archive, where just a few clicks will yield many hours of Phizmizian glory.

While most of his previous work focuses on plunderphonics, collage, and bizarre cover arrangements, “Things To Do and Make” is what he considers his first recorded foray into pop music. It’s an incredibly catchy album that I’ve found myself playing many times over. In its way, though, its brand of “pop” belongs to your eccentric great uncle. Ergo’s “pop” manifests through deep influences from vaudeville music and late-era Tin Pan Alley arrangements, while his lyrics and even his accent deliver the project with a whimsical attitude redolent of the Canterbury scene of the late 60s. Phizmiz also reveals himself to be a capable multi-instrumentalist, using a wide range of acoustic instruments with confidence (and occasional electronic supplementation from drum machines/synths/samplers). Many string and keyboard instruments are featured, and I also hear a lot of wind instruments, from clarinets to low brass to tinwhistles and slide whistles. While a lot of songs are very short—half of the album’s tracks are around 3 minutes or less—many of the longer compositions feature well-played instrumental passages.

Ergo is a great vocalist, too, and he’s filled many of these arrangements with layers of satisfying overdubbed vocals. Vocal melodies generally move quickly, creating rich layers of bizarre vaudevillian rhymes. The straight mid to uptempo rhythms found through most of the album sustain the carnival atmosphere, but harmonically, Phizmiz stretches out with experimentation closer to the Canterbury vibe: half step motion like that of the verse endings in “Busby Berkley,” or the meandering faux-Baroque falsetto lines of “The Dapper Transvestite,” wouldn’t have been common in the early 20th C. pop this music expands upon. Some songs seem to come from more of a 50s or 60s rock & roll approach, like “Dirty Shower Honk Stomp” and “Late,” but my favorites point toward older influences. Homemade instruments and junk percussion frequently appear, punctuating a lot of arrangements with toy squeaks, jaw harps, and slippery low-tuned plucked strings. 

One doesn’t hear many people this far North of Syd Barrett continuing to expand on the potential of vaudeville songwriting, but Phizmiz has proved to me with this record that there indeed remain “things to do and make.” And I’d highly suggest exploring Phizmiz’s many online recordings, as they’re clever and beautifully conceived on their own, while also contributing to a rich overarching career quest toward music that can be both touching and fun. Related to his pop music efforts, one can find similarly chimerical instrumentals in excerpts from his music for operas and plays, and amusing “utility music” applications of his pop music made to solve problems like repairing or comforting household appliances, or musically addressing irritating neighbors. The next Phizmiz pop release looks to be titled “Look, Do and Listen,” which seems to have been released last year. I don’t see any ordering information for it online, but if anyone knows of a way to locate this record, feel free to mention it in the comments—I’d love to give it a workout on my turntable.

—Scott Scholz

Sometimes I really miss the glory days of the Kansai scene in the 90s, especially the early to midperiod Boredoms records that had a great “Sesame Street on PCP” vibe that sat perfectly with my youthful need for music that could simultaneously amuse and terrorize. Those days are mostly gone, with cut & paste montage/collage approaches abandoned in favor of psych/tribal long-form work. The newer stuff is enjoyable in different ways, but I still crave the less-controlled energy release potential in the short disjointed freakouts on albums like Pop Tatari or the Ruins/Omoide Hatoba collab album from ‘94. Enter Ydestroyde, whose work has been floating around Japan for the last decade but rarely heard in the US. With the release of Synzosizer on Public Eyesore, we now have a stateside taste of this fascinating stylistic bridge between the scattered/deconstructive japanoise approch of yore and newer slow-build psychedelic impulses. This iteration of Ydestroyde is mostly a solo effort by founding member Synzou, who sings and programs, though most tracks also feature guitar contributions from Shintaro Kinoshita. The music isn’t as cut-up as some of the earlier Osaka noiserock referenced above, but the vocals often take me back to that vibe with screams perfectly placed in rhythmically exciting moments on tracks like “Hissatsu,” or the simple repetitions of words or short phrases found throughout the record. Musically there is a punk influence, and the riffs are allowed to extend over full compositions, creating grooves rather than obliterating them. I hear a Misfits vibe at times, or something along the lines of the best riffage on old Mad Capsule Markets albums. And the drum programming and synth sounds frequently point to breakcore influences. But ultimately I hear this as a sort of amped up electropsychedelic release, though it attains this atmosphere without resorting to the standard psych tropes of reverbs and delays. When Killed in Cars head honcho Paul was guesting on the Other Music program a couple of months ago, we talked about the nature of contemporary psych bands, and he pointed out how a generous application of reverb can have a transformative effect on a typical blues riff, practically transubtantiating a blues/rock track into an outer space psych experience. Generally I agree—there are lots of bands creating an “outer space” vibe that way.  Ydestroyde is different. This music makes it to orbit with relatively dry ambient spaces. But we start our journey in space, asserting “THIS IS SPACE” repeatedly in the first few minutes, and Ydestroyde sustains the excitement of a rocket ride throughout the album. The exquisite programming, sample editing, and synth playing create a compelling, expansive atmosphere, leaving room for guitar riffs to lumber across alien landscapes while the dry, spoken/yelled vocals hit listeners head-on. Interestingly, the first s/t Ydestroyde effort did rely partly on a reverb + lo-fi production to drive its point home, and I don’t care for it nearly as much. The general musical approach here is similar, but it sounds like this album was produced with a lot more studio time and clearer goals.  It succeeds. The riffs are relentless, the percussion alternates between energetic drive and jarring interruption in all of the perfect places, and the vocals take me back to my first memories of hearing Japanese rock approaches in the early 90s, the beginning of a long strange love affair with music that can follow its muse on its own terms. THIS IS SPACE!

Sometimes I really miss the glory days of the Kansai scene in the 90s, especially the early to midperiod Boredoms records that had a great “Sesame Street on PCP” vibe that sat perfectly with my youthful need for music that could simultaneously amuse and terrorize. Those days are mostly gone, with cut & paste montage/collage approaches abandoned in favor of psych/tribal long-form work. The newer stuff is enjoyable in different ways, but I still crave the less-controlled energy release potential in the short disjointed freakouts on albums like Pop Tatari or the Ruins/Omoide Hatoba collab album from ‘94.

Enter Ydestroyde, whose work has been floating around Japan for the last decade but rarely heard in the US. With the release of Synzosizer on Public Eyesore, we now have a stateside taste of this fascinating stylistic bridge between the scattered/deconstructive japanoise approch of yore and newer slow-build psychedelic impulses.

This iteration of Ydestroyde is mostly a solo effort by founding member Synzou, who sings and programs, though most tracks also feature guitar contributions from Shintaro Kinoshita. The music isn’t as cut-up as some of the earlier Osaka noiserock referenced above, but the vocals often take me back to that vibe with screams perfectly placed in rhythmically exciting moments on tracks like “Hissatsu,” or the simple repetitions of words or short phrases found throughout the record. Musically there is a punk influence, and the riffs are allowed to extend over full compositions, creating grooves rather than obliterating them. I hear a Misfits vibe at times, or something along the lines of the best riffage on old Mad Capsule Markets albums. And the drum programming and synth sounds frequently point to breakcore influences.

But ultimately I hear this as a sort of amped up electropsychedelic release, though it attains this atmosphere without resorting to the standard psych tropes of reverbs and delays. When Killed in Cars head honcho Paul was guesting on the Other Music program a couple of months ago, we talked about the nature of contemporary psych bands, and he pointed out how a generous application of reverb can have a transformative effect on a typical blues riff, practically transubtantiating a blues/rock track into an outer space psych experience. Generally I agree—there are lots of bands creating an “outer space” vibe that way. 

Ydestroyde is different. This music makes it to orbit with relatively dry ambient spaces. But we start our journey in space, asserting “THIS IS SPACE” repeatedly in the first few minutes, and Ydestroyde sustains the excitement of a rocket ride throughout the album. The exquisite programming, sample editing, and synth playing create a compelling, expansive atmosphere, leaving room for guitar riffs to lumber across alien landscapes while the dry, spoken/yelled vocals hit listeners head-on. Interestingly, the first s/t Ydestroyde effort did rely partly on a reverb + lo-fi production to drive its point home, and I don’t care for it nearly as much. The general musical approach here is similar, but it sounds like this album was produced with a lot more studio time and clearer goals. 

It succeeds. The riffs are relentless, the percussion alternates between energetic drive and jarring interruption in all of the perfect places, and the vocals take me back to my first memories of hearing Japanese rock approaches in the early 90s, the beginning of a long strange love affair with music that can follow its muse on its own terms. THIS IS SPACE!