KILLED in CARS

Three from Eh?

I’m especially excited to showcase some records from this awesome label with long-standing Midwest connections. Public Eyesore, founded by creative improviser and instrument designer Bryan Day, will turn 15 later this year! Public Eyesore has been a home for a wide variety of recordings, “progressive and regressive,” from artists all over the world, and they added a second line of CDR-based releases around four years ago under the Eh? imprint. In my opinion, they’re a particularly important label to follow if you’re interested in free improv and EAI music, but they also release music from a wide range of other disciplines, giving voice to the feral edges of pop, rock, jazz, and classical musics.

Full disclosure: PE released an album of mine back in 2006. But I had already been a long-time fan of the label, having released some of my favorite records from artists like Blue Collar (Nate Wooley/Steve Swell/Tatsuya Nakatani), Jesse Krakow, Mike Pride, Amy Denio, and many more. PE is a label that will consistently surprise you—one never knows what kind of auditory surprises might be awaiting you when you put on a random release of theirs. Recently I’ve covered a couple of their new albums from Philip Gayle and Ydestroyde, and here’s another batch of compelling recent releases. All three of these are officially under the “Eh?” imprint, shipped as CDRs in paper sleeves with poly jackets—not the most fancy packaging, but it gets this music into the world, which is the most important thing. There were similarly spartan releases earlier in the “proper” PE catalog, but nowadays those have gotten fancy packaging—I’ll be covering a couple of those releases in the near future as well (awesome job on the Anderson/Pepper/Tamura/Petit release!). I’m especially excited about the upcoming Normal Love full-length being co-released by Weasel Walter’s ugEXPLODE, and the Cactus Truck album sounds promising, too…

KBD(uo) - Any Port in a Storm

This release features the “principal agents” behind the KBD Sonic Cooperative, with Michael Kimaid on percussion and electronics, and Gabe Beam on guitar and electronics. This is the second Eh? release from these folks, minus Ryan Dohm who also appeared on the earlier “Four Plus One” album. This time around, we get six more untitled tracks of EAI, very cleanly recorded in a very “controlled” sounding, intimate room. The music is produced with percussion (including a lot of bowed cymbals/gongs), guitar (which mostly sounds like “tabletop guitar” with effects), and an arsenal of electronics.

The music evolves slowly in these pieces, usually letting ideas overlap one another for a long time. The first two tracks focus on long tones and sustained atmospheres, and the third piece starts to introduce contrasting ideas, made mostly of short, pointillistic bursts. Polyrhythms of sorts are featured in the fourth piece, with oscillations against softly-repeated drums that come and go amidst subtle guitar manipulations. Like their previous release, the final track is a live performance around 25 minutes in length: while the album mostly works with gentle, carefully unfolding textures, things can get much louder and more intense in live performance, briefly building up to a wall of sound around the six minute mark. But that’s an exception, and most of the live set stays well below fortissimo as well, thoughtfully blending a variety of axillary percussion tools, cymbals, gongs, and occasional undercurrents of sizzling electronic drones.

Hag - Moist Areas

Like KBD, Hag’s name comes from the last names of the musicians involved: in this case, Brad Henkel on trumpet, Sean Ali on bass, and David Grollman on snare drum. This Brooklyn trio plays a fine brand of meditative free improv, working with layers of texture rather than any kind of trad jazz vocabulary. Henkel’s trumpet work sometimes reminds me of Nate Wooley’s catalog of otherworldly sounds, and David Grollman’s snare drum work similarly deconstructs his instrument of choice—I don’t think there’s a moment on the album where I would’ve pinpointed what I’m hearing as coming from a snare. Instead he works with scraping, rubbing, and (I’m pretty sure) blowing directly on the drum head, as there are moments where it sounds like there are two horns playing. Sean Ali’s bass playing is the closest to convention on the album, with occasional cascades of chromatically ascending or descending lines and even brief passages of bowed work, but he too works to draw extended sounds from his bass.

My favorite track is also the longest, “Moist Again,” placed in the center of the album. It shows off how well the group listens to one another, each member getting moments where they lead the ensemble, coming to the front of the mix and moving the group into new variations in texture. It also features an especially wide dynamic range, contrasting not just loud and quiet sections in terms of volume but also with variations in density at both ends of the volume spectrum. The title track, which closes the album, also features some of the louder passages on the record, as well as some trumpet lines played with considerable crunch in the instrument’s lower range, sounding surprisingly like a woodwind instrument instead of brass. 

Psychotic Quartet - Spherelon

My favorite of this batch of Eh? releases, Psychotic Quartet is a Philly-based group that brings together a number of really exciting musicians from one of my favorite music scenes in a free improvisation context. Trombonist Dan Blacksberg also plays in Archer Spade with guitarist Nick Milleovi (whose own recent contribution to an Eh? release will be covered soon), bassist Evan Lipson plays in one of my favorite bands, Normal Love (and was probably the only person who could successfully follow Jesse Krakow in Dynamite Club), and violinist Kat Hernandez (who recently relocated to Sweden) specializes in microtonal and alternate tuning systems, a recent obsession of mine. They’re joined by NYC drummer Michael Evans for five rounds of complex improvisation referencing a wide range of musical traditions.

Microtonal doesn’t necessarily equate with “out of tune,” of course. While it can mean touching quarter tones or making waves of weird noise, it also points to playing music that can be even more “in tune” than is possible within equal temperament. I was excited to note that all three melodic instruments working on this album have the potential to play outside of the constraints of ET with little effort, and I found myself re-listening to this album many times with my attention directed at subtle adjustments in pitch happening organically as a simple side effect of listening carefully to one another. And the group keeps things interesting with moments of duo and trio playing, too. The music breathes with the kind of control many groups can only get through composition, but this is what you can achieve when you put four virtuosos who all have their own compositional chops together: cooperation truly equals instant composition.

This is much more note-oriented than the other two releases covered here, which more closely follows my own musical obsessions. Though it is a very “free” affair, there are allusions to various musical genres, especially jazz and even bits of swing violin, that can give listeners moments of stylistic context which slide around in interesting ways that frequently reminded me of very early Anthony Braxton ensemble playing. And that’s a high compliment—parts of this sound like a kind of extension of Braxton’s BYG Actual 6 album from ‘69, one of my favorite records, and that’s a style that just didn’t get enough love for my ears. While sections of this music can be very “serious,” there is also a great sense of humor, humility, and fun running throughout the record. You can tell the musicians are having a great time playing together, and they’ve been kind enough to invite us to listen in. I’m looking forward to the next invitation.

—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

Three from lo bit landscapes

I’m going through a bunch of submissions to KiC and planning to showcase a series of releases organized by label. Let’s start with a trio of albums from Brooklyn’s lo bit landscapes: 2 from Nihiti, and one from Viktor Timofeev.

Nihiti - Other People’s Memories

The oldest of these records, Other People’s Memories dropped in late 2010 (10/10/10, to be exact). There are a pair of slightly different 1-sheets included in this package, one of which indicates that “not much is known about the actual members of Nihiti.” The same generally holds true for the label, whose website isn’t exactly information-packed. A bit of the “Theory of Obscurity,” ala the Cryptic Corporation, perhaps? At least one person involved in the proceedings seems to be Viktor Timofeev, whose solo release on the label we’ll be exploring shortly. Outside of these recordings, Timofeev is best known for his work as a visual artist, and both the album cover for Other People’s Memories and an included foldout poster feature a rather arresting multipanel work of his entitled “Red/Black: The Cyclical Nature of the Practice of Architecture.”

Nihiti takes a wide stylistic path on Other People’s Memories. There are elements of experimental music, ambient, industrial and pop, played on acoustic instruments, rock instruments, and synths/samplers/drum machines/computers. While that might sound like it has the potential to be very unfocused, it is a very cohesive album: Nihiti mostly employs their ample resources toward creating very dark atmospheres. But I think what makes this album so interesting is how those vibes are sustained through so many stylistic variations: the first few tracks had me thinking the band was on a Godspeed/krautrock/electronic bent, but the third track introduces some 8th note-based piano chord stabs so popular in 60s pop songs, ultimately serving as the introduction to an actual pop song in the fourth track, “the ringing in (the sun is rung).” But it’s still a very weird form of pop, repeatedly overwhelming itself by bringing different instruments out of proportion in the mix. And the ride continues, through passages blending melancholy cello lines with piano and sine waves, more pop songforms, and ultimately an impressive blend of postrock and krautrock textures with early industrial-sounding beats.

This record is largely instrumental, but occasional vocal passages are weaved beautifully into the variety of textures. I found it difficult to make out lyrics, as they’re generally mixed relatively low, treated as another instrumental voice. But the few sections I could make out clearly, like the spoken moments in the center of “the return of kind ropes (laku noc, dusan k), seemed fairly bleak and melancholy, a fitting supplement to the music. This is the kind of music that you have to live with for a while and let it take effect, but it will definitely find itself on return trips to my turntable.

Nihiti’s Faced With Splendor 12” EP shows a very different side of the band. Songs, instead of atmospheres, dominate this music, and the orchestration is mostly acoustic, compared to the heavy electronic leanings of “Other People’s Memories.” This is a melancholy pop effort with folk leanings—not usually my favorite kind of music, but it’s very well performed and recorded, and the arrangements are very thoughtful. Generally it’s very sparse compared to the previous album, but with great harmonies and instrumental countermelodies in perfect places to bring out the best in the songs. The simple precision behind these songs makes me think that this record is a totally different aspect of Nihiti’s stylistic range, rather than suggesting that their previous work was a case of psyche/kraut/electronic deconstruction techniques applied to more basic pop songs. In other words, tossing some noisemaking devices at these songs won’t make them into electronic-style Nihiti—they stand in their own unique way. But fans of the approach on the first full-length will be excited to know that the upcoming Nihiti release, “For Ostland,” promises a return to the more expansive attack of “Other People’s Memories.”

The biggest surprise for me in this lo bit landscapes package was Viktor Timofeev’s release, GIVE HEALTH999. Nihiti gravitates toward melancholy and surreal landscapes, but most of their music still functions in relatively conventional tonality, gravitating toward minor keys with dissonant and textural passages. In contrast, Timofeev mostly transcends the major/minor duality and dives into bleak, yet very addictive walls of sound.

Like Nihiti, Timofeev uses a wide range of instruments toward the production of rich atmosopheres, though all varieties of beat-oriented percussion are absent. The emphasis here is on the building of layers that don’t use much percussive delineation—postrock sounds serve as a brief jumping-off point, but most of the album trends closer to drone music, alternating focal points between distorted guitars, voices, synths, and found sound/field recordings/samples. The opening and closing tracks are heaviest with guitars, accompanied by some distant piano stabs in the opening “December 22nd,” and blended more evenly with oscillating frequencies in the closing “July 28th.”

In between, my favorite two tracks are the longest: both of them build slowly to nightmarish, oppressive walls of sound and slowly thin out again. There are some legitimate, though still very dark, melodies played on clarinets in the 14-minute “Flying Zonogons,” which are gradually stacked upon themselves through overdubs and heavy reverb. Voices are used over sounds of moving water in a similar overdubbed, reverbed, and delayed fashion to create the center portion of “WorldWideWaterWorld,” eventually adding a ring modulator or similar filter that obliterates pitch into metallic densities that rise and fall with the pauses in the vocal overdubs. I really enjoyed the less-effected vocal buildups comprising “1.1.1.1.,” too, which evoke some of the best moments in modern choral writing like that of Gorecki or the micropolyphony of Ligeti. It’s this blend of modern classical, drone, and guitar noise approaches that impresses me more with each listen. I’m captivated by it now, and I suspect this music will continue to reveal more of itself with time.

—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

The power of Blunoise!

Nicoffeine - Lighthealer Stalking Flashplayer

Jealousy Mountain Duo - No. _01

A pair of recent submissions from Germany proved to be a nice surprise. These projects are very different from one another, but both groups share drummer and producer Jörg Schneider, who tracked both albums at the Loundry Room in Hückelhoven. And both are released by Blunoise Records, a label founded by Nicoffeine bassist Guido Lucas in the 90s to document the experimental rock scene in Germany. Lucas also handled mastering duties for these releases.

Let’s explore Nicoffeine first, a band that produces a tremendous amount of sound for a power trio. The stark black & white album art had me guessing that this was going to be some flavor of a metal album, and the first minute of the lead track, “Holy Hell of a Himmel,” has a Goslings-meets-Load Records noiserock vibe that seemed to confirm that suspicion. There’s even a touch of black metal in the first vocal passages, accompanying primal stop-starts that remind me of that brief moment where jazz-infused industrial bands like God were still making records. But the last minute of the track points in a different direction: the vocals are gone, and the guitar parts are flirting with playing a melody…

Fans of a wide range of music, including math-rock, noise rock, postrock, and even modern iterations of psych/noise ala Acid Mothers Temple, should give Nicoffeine a try. It’s a very heavy record, but there are unexpectedly subtle transitions that take it between noise/textural and melodic camps in ways I’ve not heard before. The intensity level of these pieces tends to stay high, with riffs written in a clever, organic way that allows stylistic shifts to sneak up on you, wave after wave. I would find myself really liking some noisy, feedback-drenched sections, for example, and slowly realize that Soheyl Nassary’s guitar had drifted toward tremolo picked textures, then to long melodies, then joined the bass and drums in more technical unison riffing. Nicoffiene sounds like what I expect that Explosions in the Sky would sound like if they actually exploded in the sky.

Except to add emphasis to those most intense tech-riffs, the guitar parts are written in a very exploratory and independent fashion. Many riffs are held down by Guido on bass alone, while guitars alternately slash and soothe on their own. Effects also play a substantial role in delineating the different roles assumed with the guitar: the more technical and noise sections are usually dry, while melodic and psych-solo passages generally include reverbs, delays, and occasionally other treats for punctuation. This independent guitar approach is the key to getting a power trio like this to sound so huge, and these parts are well written to lead the music through interesting stylistic combinations.

Schneider’s drumming adds a lot to this music, too. In support of riffs, he alternates between tribal-sounding patterns and some parts that remind me a lot of early industrial beats. In the more free sections, he proves to be comfortable in open territory as well, playing busy fills that add momentum to passages that sometimes head into doom/drone territory. He’s a hard hitter, but he also sounds like he’s really enjoying himself. He and Lucas sound like they’ve played together for a long time, too, as their transitions in and out of technically structured parts sound effortless and natural.

There are vocals on a few of the shorter songs, which tend to stay closer to conventional forms, but most of the record is instrumental. Three long compositions form the heart of the record, and their epic wanderings include my favorite moments on the record. My favorite piece is the final track, “I Always Shine When You Say Nein,” which adds a few new elements to their sound toward the album’s close. We take laps through noise, math, psych, and postrock, and back to some noise, but at the halfway mark, synthesized sounds step into the mix at a moment of relative calm. As the texture thickens again, it includes some sitar-ish sounds and heartbeats via thumping bass strings, as well as melodic vocals that peek in and out of the mix.

Jealousy Mountain Duo’s debut LP shows a totally different side of Schneider’s drum work. This album has moments of intensity, but it’s a very intimate album. Relative to Nicoffeine, it’s practically pastoral, which is even reflected in the soft, hazy agricultural scene on its cover (which also reminds me how similar pastureland in Germany and Nebraska appear—no wonder so many Germans settled here!). Guitarist Berger (no first name given) plays with mostly clean tones, and these songs are built around his employment of a looping pedal, over which the duo builds slowly evolving compositions.

Using a looping pedal introduces a bit of a formula into most of these songs: typically a “bass part” or relatively simple riff is looped, and more complex parts are added over the top. But Berger mixes up his approach, sometimes looping higher parts first and performing lower riffs “underneath,” sometimes looping rhythmically busy passages and playing long tones over them, and he continues to feed different parts into loops as the music evolves, sometimes recording extra parts toward the beginning on songs that don’t get introduced into the songs again until much later, like the moments of intentionally microtonal guitar used in “Sidewalk Soul.” Loops are sometimes used in reverse, too, adding a nice contrast in articulation.

Schneider’s approach is on the busy side of the drumming spectrum for this project, though he’s playing very gently compared to Nicoffeine. Jazz influences seep into this record’s drum work, sounding like a blend of Zach Hill and a Buddy Rich solo at the most hyper moments. Like his efforts on the Nicoffeine record, there is a certain intangible sense of playfulness that comes through—his enjoyment of the moment while playing for these recordings keeps them fresh and invigorating. 

Schneider must be applauded for the quality of this recording, too, which is a sensitively captured live-to-1” tape affair. The drums are rich and warm, and the complex overtones of Berger’s amp going into a touch of overdrive when it’s overwhelmed with multiple loops is faithfully reproduced. This is one of those rare records that I’m guessing represents the sound of this band almost exactly as they are live.

Speaking of which, I was very bummed to realize that Jealousy Mountain Duo toured the US last fall—just missed ‘em by a few months! Fortunately, they’re planning another fall tour of the US for this year, and also hoping to make another record. If you’re in the US, keep an eye out for Jealousy Mountain Duo dates around October. And if you want to investigate either of these albums in more detail, you can go to the Blunoise Records website, or you can find Jealousy Mountain Duo on Bandcamp.

—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

Kyle Landstra - Look Inward (Diatom Bath, 2012)

A brief scroll through Kyle Landstra’s discography (Look Inward, Mass Solitude, Thought Conjurer, Contemplation Through Meditation…), and it’s easy to see a theme emerging.  Where many musicians utilize the drone to induce a feeling of foreboding or menace, Landstra employs it as a synthesized “om.” Look Inward is an expedition into his consciousness; one that he himself took during the recording of the work. The pieces on Look Inward were recorded during the late summer of last year on Landstra’s Roland Juno-106. The resulting vibes are very warm, due not only to the period during which they were recorded, but also to the rich analogue sound of his synthesizer.

Just prior to creating Look Inward, Landstra had exiled himself on the west coast of Michigan in the Nordhouse Dune wildlife area. It was a period of healing and self-contemplation after a series of recent personal struggles. Upon returning to his home in Kalamazoo, he entered into the hermitage during which Look Inward was recorded. The music reflects his solitude.

None of the pieces get too active or overly dense. Instead, Landstra allows the drones to stretch out and patiently modulate. His works progress, but they don’t appeal to any sense of self-aggrandizement through cheaply executed climaxes. To do so would be against the nature of self-contemplation. As listeners we are given a finger pointing in the direction of enlightenment, rather than a beaten path through emotions already well-traveled. We are encouraged to look inward ourselves.


Kyle Landstra - Ode to Hermitage from Ryan on Vimeo