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dustedmagazine · 2 years

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Dust, Volume 8, Number 5

Circuit Des Yeux

Sanskit-versed death metal and minimalist saxophone reveries, beefy, muscular alt.Americana and African electro disco — we run the gamut in this late spring edition of Dust. Contributors this time around include Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Cober-Lake, Bryon Hayes and Tim Clarke.

Aparthiva Raktadhara—Adyapeeth Maranasamhita (Iron Bonehead)

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It’s hard not to love a record that includes songs titled “Obsidian Noose of Naag-Paash: Ominous Ophidian” and “Nada of Creation Collapses onto Primal Bindu.” But Aparthiva Raktadhara come by death metal’s earnest (if sometimes also goofy) romance with obscure, multisyllabic locutions pretty honestly. The band comes from Kolkata, which they prefer to call Kalikshetra, the city’s much older Sanskrit name. That may be a nationalist gesture, or one inspired by more cultic intent. For certain, the death metal band is invested enough in the Hindu concepts at stake in Adyapeeth Maranasamhita to include a glossary of terms among the record’s promotional materials. The music? It’s dissonant and dizzying, highly technical death metal that knots and gnarls with vertiginous violence. The attendant complexity seems to complement the arcane weave and multivalent religious energies of Hindu myth. How that works in relation to the current, sustained wave of sectarian, political violence in India is likely an even more tangled, thorny issue. Simple stuff, this ain’t.

Jonathan Shaw

Andrew Bernstein — a presentation (Hausu Mountain)

a presentation by Andrew Bernstein

Taking inspiration from minimalist composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley, composer/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bernstein produces three highly technical yet compelling drone pieces on his latest album a presentation. Using circular breathing, electronics and unconventional intervals to explore the limits of his alto saxophone, Bernstein conjures clusters of notes that interact and mutate like the aural equivalent of wax in a lava lamp. They pursue an internal logic in which shapes shift in surprising, sometimes disquieting ways. Bernstein focuses on microtones and overtones, concentrating on the physicality and interaction of notes in time and space. Deliberate, almost glacial, in pace, his notes hang and sustain, with miniscule changes in tone to form tectonic sheets of sound that the warp saxophone’s dynamics. His ability to imbue emotional depth into these pieces makes a presentation a fascinating exploration of sound and a riveting musical experience.

Andrew Forell

The Builders and the Butchers—Hell and High Water (Badman)

Hell & High Water by The Builders and the Butchers

The Builders and Butchers, as you might expect from their name, make rough working man’s country rock, full of muscle and sinew. Their seventh full-length wreathes simple melodies in epic accoutrements, the songs rising in mutinous triumph about halfway through, kicking away the jangle and murmur for full-throated, power-chorded expressions of rage and hurt and sorrow. Ryan Sollee, who sings and plays guitar, sings with a grand busted tremolo, hoarse with sincerity (and also with volume), but though he often starts a song by himself, he is always joined by a brotherhood of hard strummers and bangers—Willy Kunkly on bass and guitar, Harvey Tumbleson on mandolin, banjo and guitar) and Justin Baier on drums. They’re especially good singing morosely beautiful campfire chants—like Will Oldham, they see a darkness—and desperate, rampaging road songs. “West Virginia” is maybe the best of these, a song that hurtles through the middle distance, banjo twanging, kick drum thumping in the most desolate sort of barn dance. (The band recorded Hell and High Water on a houseboat, and you can watch them lay down “West Virginia” there in this video.) Other states fly by in a blur, a melancholy, prayerful “Nebraska,” an amp-frying, frenzied “Montana,” and the sound is thick and visceral, full of drama, but grounded in the real.

Jennifer Kelly

Circuit Des Yeux — Live from Chicago (Matador)

Live from Chicago by Circuit des Yeux

Haley Fohr of Circuit Des Yeux is by no means alone in the experience of getting sick on tour. But you can’t just cough through the bus rides when you catch COVID-19; CDY had to cancel the middle half of a European tour, which stacked financial disaster on top of physical distress. Low-overhead releases like Live from Chicago, a digital-only EP that was originally tracked for the podcast, Music Is Everything!, are a chance to make back a little bit of that lost change. It is a live studio performance of four songs from last year’s album, —io. These performances confirm that their grandeur isn’t dependent upon the LP’s orchestral arrangements. The tunes translate rather handily to a four-piece rock band, probably because everyone in said band can double on strings and each other’s instruments, which balance complementarily with the wide-screen sweep of Fohr’s vocal delivery.

Bill Meyer

Thomas Dollbaum — Wellswood (Big Legal Mess)

Wellswood by Thomas Dollbaum

Tampa-born, New Orleans-based artist Thomas Dollbaum has just released his debut record, Wellswood. Most of the eight songs come under the banner of unapologetically ragged country-rock, such as the defiant, clanging jangle of “Gold Teeth,” or the tumbleweed roil of single “God’s Country.” Dollbaum deploys well-worn chord progressions, digging into the performances so familiar changes are invested with fresh new life. The songs are populated by hookers and motels, whisky and cigarettes, signifiers of escapism that have proven to be sprung traps, Dollbaum singing with a forlorn twang that’s reminiscent of Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock on the morning after a bender. Though he often sounds as though he’s on the verge of giving up, there’s enough grit here to suggest drawing on precious reserves of hope. This is especially apparent on “All is Well,” which rides electric piano with a soulful slink, Dollbaum’s voice elegantly gliding up into an unexpected, elegant falsetto. At the end of closing song “Break Your Bones,” we overhear him ask co-producer and engineer Matt Seferian, “What did you think of that take?” Pretty good, Thomas; pretty good.

Tim Clarke

Haunter — Disincarnate Ails (Profound Lore)

Discarnate Ails by HAUNTER

Haunter’s third LP Disincarnate Ails pushes the band’s black/death sound toward the blackened end of the subgenre’s sonic continuum, to some good effect. They have ditched the whacky wordplay of Sacramental Death Qualia (“Spoils Vultured upon Sole Deletion” is one of this reviewer’s favorite song titles, ever) and some of that previous record’s more pronouncedly death-driven aural qualities. Many of the guitar noises made by Enrique Bonilla and Bradley Tiffin on Disincarnate Ails may remind you of Hasjarl’s playing, c. Paracletus (without the national socialist baggage, thanks very much). The sounds are cold and spiky; the opening minutes of “Spiritual Illness” fairly bristle with it. Striking a different tone, “Chained at the Helm of Eschaton” suggests some serious time logged listening to Josh Raiken’s recent stuff with Suffering Hour, but Haunter doesn’t have that other band’s uncanny sense of tunefulness. That bites back a bit: two of the songs on Disincarnate Ails cross the ten-minute mark, and the band sometimes seems to be stitching ideas together, rather than following a trajectory through a sequence of necessary forms. But taken independently, they’re good ideas. The second half of “Chained at the Helm of Eschaton” is particularly hair-raising, passionate and intricate in nearly equal measure. When the band locates that combination of elements, the music is compelling.

Jonathan Shaw

Ibibio Sound Machine — Electricity (Merge)

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Ibibio Sound Machine has always integrated African pop funk influences with electro, finding a very particular sound in melding various traditions. For Electricity, the group brought in Hot Chip for production work. The partnership works wonderfully. Ibibio Sound Machine brings the electronic sounds to the front, but always in service of a song's given energy. Whether leaning toward Afrobeat or disco or (more typically) both, the group performs with drive. Frontwoman Eno Williams moves between English and Ibibio in her lyrics, often so quickly as to be disorienting. That approach keeps the dizzying dance drive central, ideas floating in and out of focus even if steadily expressed in tone. “All That You Want” expressed connection as much in its horns and synths as in its verbal denotation. The group derives its power from maintaining a conversation between England and Nigeria, and it shares that power as a transnational dance party. The sound might feel a little updated on this one, but the central approach remains strong.

Justin Cober-Lake

Catalina Matorral — Catalina Matorral (Via Parigi)

Catalina Matorral by Catalina Matorral

A woman’s voice, filtered by a vocoder, rhythmically intones deadpan cadences in French over a keyboard bass. A few string instruments occupy space in an otherwise empty mix. If X=X, Catalina Matorral=the francophone Laurie Anderson.

At least, that’s true of a few songs. Elsewhere, Catalina Matorral, whose name refers to a male-female duo rather than a person, dips into overt chanson, with the guy’s voice showing up on occasion, and the keyboard behavior eases into the 21st century. If you aren’t skilled in the language at hand, or just engage at a surface level governed by records that have been cool to American record collectors, the LP begins to sound like a Laurie Anderson/Brigitte Fontaine & Areski mash-up. And you can justifiably call this writer a shallow sort for staying at that level, but hey, it’s not a bad place to spend 32 minutes.

Bill Meyer

McPhee Marker — DNA Parliament (Corbett Vs. Dempsey)

The folks at Corbett Vs. Dempsey remember when things were right, so, vinyl production realities be damned, they’ve gone ahead and made a 12”, 45 rpm single. In 2022, that’s either an act of madness or love, and this record’s touched by a little of both. The core partnership here, between saxophonists Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee, is a mutual appreciation society that’s been nurtured by a quarter century of periodic collaboration, and both songs covered here are by performers that the former musician clearly loves. Vandermark’s most recent band, Marker, is a drums-keyboards-two guitars combo whose potential for clatter nicely matches the inherent staccato brittleness of DNA’s “Egomaniac’s Kiss.” However, it’s McPhee’s gleeful overblowing that loosens the hinges. It’s a nervy endeavor to perform Parliament’s “Night of the Thumpasaurus Peoples” without a proper bass, but Macie Stewart’s neon-accordion synth voices and Phil Sudderberg’s juggler-like aplomb do the groove credit.

Bill Meyer

The Mutual Torture — Don’t (Non Standard Productions)

Don't - NSP 19 by The Mutual Torture

Veteran Berlin producer Tobias Freund taps bassist André Schöne and Chilean singer Javiera González to explore his interest in early electronic post punk on The Mutual Torture’s debut Don’t. Across 12 tracks of racketing drum machines, thrumming bass and declamatory lyrics, the trio channel the alienated paranoia of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the performative excess of some of the Wax Trax! roster. Don’t benefits from the temper of times, unfortunately as riven as that of early 1980s, and the presence of González whose vocals lend a credible edge to Freund’s songs about gender roles and nationalist violence. The Mutual Torture hit all the right notes but there is a gnawing sense that their seriousness is undercut by excessive respect for their musical forebears.

Andrew Forell

Bill Nace / Paul Flaherty — Touchless (Open Mouth)

Touchless by Paul Flaherty/Bill Nace

Title be damned, there can be no doubt that things were roughly touched in the making of this record. Bill Nace could not have obtained the peels of feedback that rip through the massive “Based On Letters Written To Their Children” without some hefting and shifting of his electric guitar. And Paul Flaherty could not have summoned the extinction event-level grief that he expels from his alto saxophone on the sparser “End Or No End” without pressing some keys. But what’s truly touching is the concentration of texture-sourced emotion on these two tracks. The seven-inch format forces you to get to the point, and Flaherty and Nace waste not a second of anyone’s time.

Bill Meyer

Tim Olive / Matt Atkins — Dissipatio (Steep Gloss)

Dissipatio by Tim Olive & Matt Atkins

Tim Olive, Canada’s master of the magnetic pickup, has broadened his palette. On this collaborative release with the London-based Matt Atkins, he wields shortwave radio, electronics, and tuning forks. Atkins deploys percussive implements and electronics. Since Olive calls Japan home, the pair likely interacted through telecommunications. Given the intricate nature of these soundscapes, you’d be forgiven if you believed that Olive and Atkins created their music in close proximity. Atkins’ clamor melts nicely into the prickly textures that Olive weaves, the percussive and electronic sonorities conjoining into a single uncanny entity. At times, one catches a whiff of Eli Keszler’s Catching Net, and at others it sounds like the pair are disassembling a radio with fireworks. Throughout, there’s a frenetic energy that never dissipates. Considering both artists tend to favor reductionism, Dissipatio surprises by brimming with sonic detail.

Bryon Hayes

Seedsmen to the World—S-T (Blue Arrow)

Seedsmen to the World · Seedsmen to the World

Seedsmen to the World aren’t in any hurry. This four-cut EP bends long, vibrating tones into shimmering edifices, letting the harmonium throb on, measure to measure, while guitar notes zoom in and out of focus. All five players are vets and, maybe, this has played into their willingness to let things play out on their own terms. Specifically, his Name Is Alive’s Warren Defever plays harmonium and tanpura. out-folk billionaire Ethan Daniel Davidson sings and plays cello while his wife Gretchen Gonzales Davidson (once of Slumber Party) plays guitar. Sponge founder Joey Mazzola plays another guitar, and Steve Nistor, who has worked with almost everyone, plays drums.

The first track, “Blood,” trudges on for nearly 13 minutes, a hazy chant about birth and death and suffering marking time as the instrumental bits shift in tectonic ways—that is to say, barely moving but massive. The second side, too, starts in an extended manner, with “Brown” surging lysergically, out of lingering guitar bends and elongated patterns of banjo. There’s a cosmos in it, wide-frame and ever expanding, but essentially unknowable. In between, some shorter cuts intervene, a raga-shot campfire song called “Home” and a droning cover of Creedence’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” Everything glimmers through a cough-syrupy haze, but there’s a kind of beauty in the indefinite hum.

Jennifer Kelly

Sister Ray — Communion (Royal Mountain)

Communion by Sister Ray

The Velvet Underground song may be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Sister Ray, but this is far from noise-rock. Yes, there are guitars, plus drums and bass, but they’re deployed in the service of slow-burn rather than all-out assault. The artist behind Sister Ray, Ella Coyes, takes a sober approach, crafting slow, serious songs that explore the nuances of interpersonal dynamics. Coyes is a skilled lyricist and vocalist, akin to Sharon Van Etten or Adrianne Lenker, unflinchingly poking around in the most sensitive areas of the human experience. On album highlight “Visions,” the circling chord progression at the song’s climax is a real kick in the guts, more than matching the intensity of the words. Elsewhere there’s a definite sense of withholding, as if waiting for a pay-off that never comes, only serving to up the dramatic tension. In this regard, Communion is definitely a grower; at first it appears monochrome, but each listen reveals subtle gradations in color and unexpected depths.

Tim Clarke

Ches Smith — Interpret It Well (Pyroclastic)

Interpret It Well by Ches Smith

When Ches Smith, Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri recorded The Bell for ECM, the label’s typically reverberant production played up the potential cloudiness of their interactions. For Interpret It Well, the trio added guitarist Bill Frisell, a man who is acquainted with the ways of ECM in particular, and diffusion more generally. But the resulting music is more sharply focused, perhaps because their new label seems to have less of a brand consciousness when it comes to matters of sound, but also because the combo had plenty of time to rehearse, since COVID had taken everyone off the road. Even so, Smith’s compositions seem to be in the process of becoming as they are played. No one player overwhelms the others, and they know how to pull back and let a paradoxical moment of big delicacy materialize.

Bill Meyer

Veneno — Camino des Espinas (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Camino de Espinas by Veneno

Everything old is new again. Cold War-style thermonuclear-apocalyptic anxieties? Check. McCarthyite Red Scare bullying of academics? Check. Satanic Panic narratives of rampant ritual child sexual abuse? You bet — that’s essentially an American political party now. Hard to know exactly what the guys in Veneno are hollering about in “Pánico Satánico” without a lyric sheet, but the song’s basic tonality may have you flashing on CoC’s Eye for an Eye and those halcyon days of 1984. The QAnon folks and their political-managerial partners in DC and rightwing media are a lot less subtle than their 1980s counterparts, who claimed professional training in stuff like psychotherapy and religious studies. Likewise, Buenos Aires-based Veneno makes hardcore that’s more bludgeoning, ugly and rancorous than just about anything pressed to vinyl in the 1980s (Stickmen with Rayguns got kind of close…). The weirdos at Sentient Ruin Laboratories have rereleased Veneno’s demo tape, so now we can groove with (or more likely: roll around in the broken glass and scummy ditch water with) this initial release from the Argentine band. It’s pretty good.

Jonathan Shaw

XV—Basement Tapes (Self-Released)

Basement Tapes by XV

The rawest sort of home-made punk comes direct from someone’s basement in Michigan at the height of the pandemic. Consider, “Light in the Woods,” where a dank, echoing bass line saws forward, as someone drums scattershot in the background. A young woman, well away from the mic, is shouting about something being purple, in perky way. Song is so loose that it feels like it’s falling apart in your ear, but also slyly, addictively hooky. It speeds up towards the end like a skittle in its final desperate whorls, spinning faster and faster until it crashes in a heap. From there, you can hear the soft, untutored sound of women singing a few lines from Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” It couldn’t be sillier, or more enjoyable. All three artists involved are loosely associated with Fred Thomas, the godfather of Michigan independent rock and the man behind Saturday Looks Good to Me and Tyvek. Claire Cirocco and Emily Roll also play in Cultural Fog, while Shelley Salant has recorded with Saturday Looks Good to Me. “I Used to Have a Perfect Mouth,” wanders tipsily, low-end crunch of bass flaring and fading, as cymbals clash and the singer muses, on beauty and falseness (“I used to have a perfect mouth…until I lied.” Fourteen tracks, most under two minutes, not a second of self-doubt in the lot.

Jennifer Kelly

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