Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit - Secret Rhythms 2

Second installment in an ongoing (and hopefully endless) series of collaborations between sound designer/genius Burnt Friedman and Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Although this would probably be classified as electronica, there are other musicians on this disc - notably reed player Hayden Chisholm, who I recognise from a number of other Friedman records - and the sound is definitely one of a band, although it's very hard to categorise the exact sound. It's a mellow and spacy blend of electronica, jazz and post rock. The instrumentalists provide backing, and, presumably, sound sources for Friedman to manipulate - there is always a shimmering haze of morphing and drifting ambience behind the picked acoustic guitar, reeds, vibes, and Jaki Liebezeit's springy drums. The temptation is always to describe this awesome drummer as metronomic, as he so often was in Can, but many of the tracks on this disc are in strange time signatures, and he plays around the beat, often adding an accent on unexpected drum hits.
David Sylvian sings on 'The Librarian' (also on the Nine Horses album), and this is probably the most traditional track - a sung song. The following track 'Mikrokasper' shows the other end of the spectrum - very electronic, delicate and beautiful, it sounds like it was created almost entirely in post production from samples. The next track, 'Niedrige Decken', perfectly sums up the rest of the album. Pattering along in 9/8 time, after an introduction by sombre and elegant clarinet, which continues throughout; melodica, and a mesh of intricate samples and picked guitar harmonics. For me these tracks conjure up images of sun-blasted landscapes, with an unreal blue sky, and powerful heat haze distorting the edges of visible reality. Strangely laid back and intense at the same time.
Volume 1 is also great, volume 3 is amazing, and volume 4 is due out this year. Also highly recommended is any release by Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players, and 'First Night Forever', just by Burnt Friedman. This last one features a selection of excellent vocals, creating a weird kind of acid fried electronic soul. Check out all these releases at Nonplace.de, and support the artist!

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Circle - Katapult

Terrific 2007 album by the prolific and inspired Finnish lunatics. Circle have probably put out more excellent music in the last decade than any other band. Their forte is riff-heavy cosmic jamming, often in brain twisting time signatures: the album Prospekt is a good example of this, and I would have uploaded that one if I'd realised that it's currently unavailable. Also, they do space epics (Arkades)...basically, it's hard to go wrong with a Circle album. What I like about this one is that it has a great deal of vocals on it. Vocalist and band mainstay Jussi Lehtisalo has a kind of deranged, sometimes operatic, growling, dramatic delivery, that is at once awesome and hilarious. On this album it is generally smothered in reverb. Opener 'Saturnus Reality' gives a good idea of what is to come as it goes straight for the jugular, but 'Understanding New Age' has some amazing delivery (possibly not all by Jussi Lehtisalo , it's hard to tell). The music is hard to describe, veering from buzzing thrashing walls of guitars (I'm sure I read that this album was their homage to black metal influences). Often the guitars are chugging - the band refer to themselves as NWOFHM - New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal, but everything is always refracted through a hazy fog, and there are certainly no harsh edges anywhere. Instrumental 'Tree On The Higher Mountain' evokes a pastoral folky fug, and 'Four Points Of The Compass' is driven along with Kraut type synths. 'Fish Reflection' follows with what could almost be a Saxon riff, undermined by some abstract gentle guitar plucking, and some of the craziest vocals you could wish to hear, and is a work of inspired genius.
Underneath all the derangement, though, there is a lot of beautiful music, which is probably what makes this such a hugely enjoyable and inspiring listen.

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El-P - Fantastic Damage

This is one of my all time favourite albums. It's about as heavy and psychedelic as hip hop can get without imploding, and is definitely not one for hip-hop conservatives, seeing as very little of the instrumentation is made from soul/funk samples, but instead is created by El-p with synths, samples and drum machines. It's the arrangements and mix that make this so excellent, and such a head trip. The opening line sets the scene: a distorted synth, with a slightly chipmunked voice reciting some cheesy but somehow ominous lines of poetry. The remainder of this track is pretty sparse, martial distorted beats and scratches allow the lyrical manifesto to be promulgated with little audio interference, and it's only as it fades into 'Squeegee Man Shooting' that the musical blueprint for the rest of the album is revealed - a tapestry of wah-scratching that peaks almost into a 303 line halfway through; piano arpeggios; driving bass; searing phased synth drones - all backing a relentless stream of vocal which is often cut up, overlaid and delayed. It's definitely a heady and intense mix, one that doesn't let up. The listeners brain is equally divided between the rapping and the music, and the weird pitched-down vocal echoes that weave around the mix fall halfway between the two, making fora disorientating but hugely satisfying listen. This is taken to extremes on what is probably my favourite track, the very weird and fabulous 'Dead Disnee', which is a real brain odyssey. The density of this music means these tracks still blow me away many many listens down the line; the apocalyptic, claustrophobic vibe, and exhilarating swarms of noise and clusters of words that drift in and out of my conscious hearing...makes my sentence construction deteriorate.

An awesome album.

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Populous - Quipo

This is one of my favourite electronica albums of the last decade. Released on Morr Music in 2002, and produced by Italian Andrea Mangia, this shows all the hallmarks of a debut album - it is rich with melodic ideas and expression, and no amount of attention to detail is spared. In fact, luscious opener 'Bottom 01' is cut off in its prime at two and a half minutes, when such a gorgeous conflation of melodic bass, sweeping synths, glitchy mesh and morphing arpeggios should ideally play out for about 6 minutes, and probably would on a 3rd or 4th album, when the life's-worth of musical ideas have been used up. I would recommend this to fans of Boards Of Canada, as it obviously inhabits the same sphere - the pace is hip-hop, and it is heavy on the melodic synths. The beats here are somewhat lighter, and skip along more. There is more dynamics created by fading the volume up and down and panning; and there is a more delicate filigree of scrunches and glitches that help move the phrases along. I would say that the best of this album matches the best of BOC: the melodies are often exquisitely turned, and the whole sound is so perfectly at one, it glows with the obviously huge amount of love and effort that went into producing it. Summed up perfectly on the awesome 3rd track 'Flu', which is truly glorious. I actually bought this on cd as well as vinyl, to protect my LP from wear and tear.

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Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - The Days Of Mars

Another one of my favourite albums of the decade, and another blissful blast of analogue synthery. Released in 2005 on DFA, there is nothing punky or funky about this disc. It clearly harks back to the 70s peak of soaring, pulsing and oscillating synths, and contains 4 long tracks, all over 11 minutes. There is also a definite 80s feel to this music - not in the crappy synth pop sense, but in the excellent-John-Carpenter-soundtrack sense: the arrangements are a bit more spare; the sounds are slightly less cosmic (only slightly!), slightly harder, and there is a faint sense of menace, of imminent technological danger. There is also none of the stratospheric guitar work from the 70s - it's all synth, and there is also the same authentic sense of techno-about-to-happen: especially in the pumping bass arpeggios of 'Relevee'. You can bet that if this was out in 1981, the Electrifying Mojo would have been playing it on his radio show. The rather lovely cover knowingly represents this wilful embrace of the past, with (presumably?) Delia and Gavin in period dress, juxtaposed with the somewhat sci-fi title.
All this is secondary, though, to the glowing beauty of these four tracks.

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Black Heart Procession - 3

Released in 2000, I consider this to be The Black Heart Procession's masterpiece. I suppose this would have fallen under the alt. country banner at the time, but there is something majestic and timeless about this album, and it has probably shed that label in the intervening years. This is a collection of spare, stark and very beautiful songs, with a consistent unity of character. 'Doom Country' I think I have referred to this as, although there is something uplifting in these baleful, resonant songs. All delivered in a downbeat, plaintive voice; and backed by a glorious palette of acoustic instruments, organ, piano, trumpet - all slowly stomping to the funeral march pace.
There are no highlights, because the whole album is brilliant and mesmerising from start to finish, and I'm not going to write any more about it.

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The For Carnation - The For Carnation

This amazing album came out in 2000, thus qualifies for my best of the decade run down. I still listen to this and enjoy it as much as I ever did, 9 years down the line.
The For Carnation were a post-Slint band, and have featured various Chicago musicians at various times, although the only two major players on this album are Brian McMahon, and John McEntire who contributes some extra instrumentation and who engineered the album (remarkably well). There are many of the hallmarks of post-rock on this album: the predominance of bass and drums; the ease and assurance with which slow pacing is used; mastery of texture. There are far more vocals on this than your average post rock outing, and this probably adds to the lasting appeal. McMahon's vocals are close-mic'ed, and border on spoken/whispered, helping to build a very intimate mood. As I said, this is beautifully recorded, and the slowly rocking rhythms are tight, and almost tense. There is often an ominous throbbing ambience, and delicate touches of spacy synths - heard to great effect on 'A Tribute To'. The sense of melody is gorgeous, yet restrained - the carefully picked out guitar line on opener 'Emp. Man's Blues' is backed by gradually swelling strings to a blissful plateau. After this these two tracks, a sense of foreboding and tension is developed with the very moody post rock of 'Being Held', before another slow and majestic gem in 'Snoother', which sounds somewhat like Tortoise vs Bill Callahan. 'Tales (Live From The Crypt)' is a wonderful spaced out groover; very similar to Do Make Say Think's debut: it's almost a prog-out compared to the rest of the album. Layers of spacey keys, shimmering guitar, and even a Goblin-esque synth line embellish this fantastic track. The last track 'Moonbeams' is probably the most beautiful. A distillation of what has gone before, and a coda, or resolution, too - a release of the slow-burning mood built up through the preceding tracks. A very slow track, laid on a bed of spacious synths drones, punctuated by a lyrical guitar, some throbbing analogue sythns, and seen out with a swell of strings.
I've namechecked a lot of bands describing this, but I think it is pretty unique, and a masterpiece that is amazingly undervalued. They are playing at the forthcoming 10 years of All Tomorrow's Parties festival - I hope this leads to a resurgence of interest and some further recordings.

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Rhythm & Sound - The Versions

2003 compilation of tracks previously released on vinyl. R&S are the dub incarnation of Basic Channel - Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, and have released a succession of spellbinding dub discs since 1996; they have been one of the most consistent acts of the decade, and this is one of my favourite albums of teh last 100 years. There is a sister album to this - "With The Artists", which has the full vocal versions, and is brilliant. This album, though, is utterly sublime. Adorned with only minor snippets - the perfect amount - of the original vocals, the rock solid rhythms, subtle tunes, and brilliant textures are allowed to gently work themselves into your consciousness. Most tracks are fairly skeletal, usually only have two chords, and very minimal bass lines; but they all totally rock. The use of reverb and delay is masterful; the hi-hat sounds are perfection and the grooves are unstoppable. Despite being largely electronic creations, an organic warmth permeates this wonderful album.
All their output that I've heard is worth checking out, including the albums 'Rhythm & Sound', and 'Showcase' with Tikiman.

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Shora - Malval

Another of my favourite albums from the 2000s, this is quite an exceptional blend of prog, metal and post rock: nothing else comes close to its laser-like focus, or naturally brilliant and comfortable blend of styles: even though it feels like one individual and coherent style.
At just over 33 minutes, and four tracks, it hovers between an EP and LP, but could quite easily have been the kind of musical suite that often comprised side one of an album in the early/mid 70s, such is the overall coherence and power. The sound palette is not too dissimilar, either: the standard rock band accompanied by odd touches of keyboard. There is no aimless meandering here, though, and no vague hippy sentiment: everything is tight, controlled and purposeful. Not a second is wasted. At times resembling a metal band interpreting the soundtracks of Goblin or John Carpenter - with martial drums and disciplined tightness displaying their proggy qualities, there are many moments of beauty. Despite being mostly instrumental, vocals are introduced in the final track to quite devastating and gorgeous effect, showing that a band with obvious mastery of heavy dynamics can indulge their lyrical side too, after a hazy drone-like intro, and heavy syncopated sequence.
Magnificent, and very highly recommended - if you like post rock you have to check this out, and this should be listened to as one piece, with full attention. Thanks to Ryan for giving me the promo of this way back when.

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Biosphere - Shenzhou

I'm going to post some of my favourite albums of the decade in the coming months. I've already posted some: Sinoia Caves & Kopernik, for example.
This 2002 album by celebrated ambient artist Geir Jenssen is a thing of beauty. Constructed primarily from loops of music by Debussy, many sampled from vinyl, this has a real otherworldly feel. The organic woodwind and orchestral parts repeat away, seemingly trapped in some kind of time capsule, competing against the gentle synth backings and cavernous bass rumblings.
Some of these loops were recorded from vinyl, and this only adds to the curious co-mingling of eras - heard to great effect on 'Ancient Campfires'.
This album serves many of the commonly accepted uses for ambient - going to sleep to, putting on in the background etc, as it is soothing and beautiful. But it is just as captivating as any prog album with a million notes. Well, maybe you have to like repetition and minimalism for that to be true, but this album will still serve you as a gorgeous backdrop.

nb. I should have added that Geir Jenssen has recorded quite a few excellent albums as Biosphere, well worth buying: I especially recommend Dropsonde and Patashnik. Not only that, but he has climbed Himalayan peak Cho Oyu without bottled oxygen, which is pretty cool.

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Sinoia Caves - The Enchanter Persuaded

Blissful, beautiful and deeply spaced album by Jeremy Schmidt, keyboardist for the excellent psych/70s/space/prog-rock-influenced Black Mountain. Mr Schmidt has some wicked keyboards, and uses them brilliantly. 35 minutes of this album are taken up by two epic tracks, which are influenced equally by the current drone/space rock scene; and 70s synth masters like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. There are definitely similarities to the opening on Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, which is of course a good thing. In between are a small collection of gorgeous ghostly songs, with touches of vocoder, and shimmering hammond, sounding not too dissimilar to Air, but with more emphasis on the psychedelic elements.
One of my favourite albums of recent years; thanks to Sam for introducing me to this.

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Kopernik - Kopernik

Released on Eastern Developments in 2003, this really should have been one of the first posts on this blog. I love this album, and it is a unique and totally under-appreciated gem. A duo, Kopernik (follow this link for better words than mine) have released nothing since, which is a terrible shame.
This falls somewhere between soundtrack, post rock, ambient and modern classical. Dominated by sonourously bowed bass and shimmering string arrangements, it's a brilliantly recorded and engineered album. Wisps of backwards samples, carefully used vocal snippets of voice and choir and assorted acoustic instruments are all used to perfectly augment the themes. The opener 'Ondoyant Et Divers' encapsulates the sound - a simple and beautiful plucked bass line over some backwards pulsing, then what sounds like a woodwind ensemble swells as the bass switches to bowed, and the piece gradually drifts into a glorious peace. The style is gloriously simple, although 'Man, Myth and Magic' begins with oriental flourishes, what sounds like a dulcimer, and the kind of proggy bass work heard on Eno's mid 70s rock albums, although this gives way to a wonder-filled string arrangement. There are light Eastern influences throughout, melodically; but like the electronic sound manipulation, they are always understated.
I don't really know what these chaps have been up to in the interim - I just look out for a new Kopernik album. Hopefully they are getting tons of soundtrack, or at least engineering/production work that they clearly have the talent for. I actually bought this on cd as well as LP, because I wanted to preserve my LP. It's a magnificent album.

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