Foot Village - Friendship Nation LP

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7_LGkyFj8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Drew Daniel, John Wiese: Continuous Hole (Gilgongo Records, 2018)

72: Tashi Dorji & John Dieterich // "Midden"

"Midden" Tashi Dorji & John Dieterich 2019, Gilgongo (Bandcamp)

“Midden” is a live (?) recording of the third of three improvised jams between guitarists John Dieterich of Deerhoof and fellow noisenaut Tashi Dorji. Packaged with a copy of the flyer for their 2018 show at The Trunk Space in Phoenix, listening to the alarmingly green LP gives me a real Proustian Mad Libs experience with the dozens of experimental sets like this that I’ve seen in lofts and art spaces over the years. Making harsh noise with an electric guitar is kinetic and imprecise compared with using digital tools, and it can have a quality of being physically worked over by the musician. When I bring people with me who haven’t had the experience before, at the conclusion I often find myself looking dazedly over at them, trying to suss out, “Do they get it?” and also, “Do I get it?”

Sometimes! A friend recently gave me an Orange Micro Dark mini amp-head to tool around with. While I should probably be trying to learn chords or something, most of the time I just sit down at my kitchen table, put my headphones on, crank the gain up, and bop and slap at my guitar’s neck until I’m gloved in reverb. The sound is as wayward and idiosyncratic as untrained dance, and to the extent I could ever “play” like this with someone else it would be down as much to an emotional sympathy with them as it would our skills. With a collaboration like Dorji and Dieterich’s, which relies on no obvious pre-agreed chords or movements, the interest is in listening to how the players figure out a way to converse in real-time.

I realize in trying to find my way to a point about this record I’ve instead provided something like a broad definition of free music in general. Every free performance is an attempt at removing music’s foundations to discover whether something new might be grown from the soil below. Its satisfactions tend to be, like those of physical labour, in seeing what our bodies and our tools can do when tested in unusual ways. On “Midden,” the pair open with some black tar skronk, as if each is sending out a signal the other can use to home in on. In time they spoon into one another a little, their tempos coming to an agreement, one or the other taking a more rhythmic posture. Between the fierce crescendos, when the pair have locked into a shared freak out, there are wandering moments as each fiddles for the next spark, a pattern that repeats until they’ve gone on about as long as two sides of vinyl will hold. It’s to their credit that by the end of “Midden” they sound more inspired than they did at its outset (in particular, some swampy, talk box-sounding croaks that make me bolt up each time). It leaves the listener in a pleasantly nonverbal frame of mind, open to some sensations words typically occlude.

72/365   

Sandy Ewen - You Win

Gilgongo Records

2020

Polar Visions Amplitude reviewing -

John Wiese - Deviate From Balance

Released on 15 June 2015 by Gilgongo Records

Reviewed format: CD album

Connected listening - there are various ways to order a selection of John Wiese’s further discography. The Helicopter mail-order stocks various John Wiese releases as well as Sissy Spacek releases and releases by by John Wiese in collaboration with associates, you can find it here: https://helicopter.storenvy.com/collections/924921-john-wiese

Several solo releases by John Wiese are also available on physical and digital format from his Bandcamp page here: https://johnwiese.bandcamp.com

Many releases on Gilgongo Records are available on physical format through their mail-order store here: https://gilgongorecords.storenvy.com

After looking at one of Sissy Spacek’s recent new albums Featureless Thermal Equilibrium in the previous Polar Visions Amplitude it’s time today for the first of two follow-up reviews in which in this case we’re focussing first on one of John Wiese’s past solo albums, Deviate From Balance. Released back in 2015 on both a 2 LP vinyl package as well as a CD version on James Fella’s label Gilgongo Records our look is on the CD version which features the packed 79 minute album in full and what a collection of pieces it is. While the Sissy Spacek album showcases John Wiese’s talent in mixing Grindcore aggression with monolithic Noise screeches as well as maxing out the energy throughout, Deviate From Balance showcases John’s more restrained side in a collection of 10 tracks encompassing mostly live recorded compositions and improvisations that are leaning more towards intense choppy sound collages and noisy electro-acoustic interplay of acoustic and electric instrumentation with John’s electronics with a more conceptual edge to them. However while some of the titles of the 10 pieces suggest a somewhat philosophical or technical meaning behind these pieces, listening to these reveals a much more playful and raw sense of composition and performances from John and all musicians and artists involved in this album. Whilst John’s sound can be related to Free Improvisation, his rapid-fire editing and manipulation of sonic material on this album is much more complex and dazzling than many other artists and carries John’s signature knack for surprise, high frequency distortion crunches as well as shifting and abusing lo-fi sound recording equipment and electronics in as many ways as possible, almost as if they turn into crumbling fragile rocks. Disintegrating broken sound and dadaist absurdist humour is a recurring theme in John’s sound, making for an album that is much more enjoyable than overly academic contemporary Tape Music can be at times. Besides John’s sonics the involved musicians on this album are definitely an important element that adds many rich colours to the 10 pieces, featuring musicians like guitar virtuoso Oren Ambarchi, violin artist Jon Rose, sampling expert David Shea and drum machine musician Ikue Mori as well as many others. Before we’re diving deep into the 10 tracks on Deviate From Balance, let’s have a look at the packaging design of the CD version. The CD comes in a neat glossy oversized gatefold sleeve showcasing John Wiese’s minimalist design, artwork as well as a very colourful artist photo of John by Martin Escalante on the back. In terms of artwork I do like the photo-collages and art pieces on the inside of the gatefold a bit more than the cover this time as while the cover does highlight the general collaged, choppy nature of the album well in a visual manner, its subdued grayscale grainy images aren’t as striking as John Wiese’s other album covers but still, it’s a decent cover and the typography is quite stylish and repeats on the spine in a similar manner. The aforementioned imagery on the inside of the gatefold showcases both grayscale abstract art in the form of archaeological artefact style fragments on the left panel as well as a film roll like photo collage of a rather disturbed looking lady blowing up a balloon. The abstract images are a bit similar to the album cover though with darker and more distinct contrast but the photo collage also adds another good visual reference to the packaging regarding the tracks themselves in that balloon like squealing and screeching can be heard on some of the pieces and it also seems to refer to the album’s quite off the wall type of abstract humour. The left panel additionally features all album credits neatly laid out so you can find out all about the involved artists and recording locations plus sources. The CD itself comes in a convenient little black envelope with plastic protection and features a more LP like label design featuring simply the artist name, album title and Gilgongo label logo, somewhat similar to a Japanese mini-LP replica package. Now that we’ve looked at the package, let’s pop in the CD and dig in.

Deviate From Balance starts with Wind Changed Direction which is one of the most atmospheric pieces on the album. The piece blends organ like drone, chopped up distorted recordings of what sounds like children’s voices, machinery as well as other Industrial noises together to form a quite surreal mysterious soundscape. Quite like the title suggests the music sounds quite like you’re floating through the clouds right after the wind has changed direction. The drone feels both calming but also a notch ominous whilst the auto-panned chops of sound are both vaguely abstract and at times recognisable with John varying between distorted and resonant shards of crunchy sound and cleaner metallic elements. The voice samples hint somewhat at sonified memories, they sound like fragments from the past, conversations or event you might remember from childhood though the actual words are unrecognizable. This first piece is definitely one of the most straight-forward compositions on here in terms of structure with the drone both introducing and rounding off the piece as in both cases it eventually fades into the background. A quite lush start of the album. Following piece 356 S. Mission Rd continues the soundscape like approach but in a more ominous manner sounding quite like a cross of dark sounding orchestral music samples with strange hollow metallic resonances and washy shifting noises. The metallic resonances bring plenty of subdued Industrial shine to the piece but the aforementioned orchestral samples are what draws me into this piece the most as the screechy dissonant strings combined with ever so slightly differently timed horn crescendo suggest an ever apparent danger which is getting closer but just like in an abstract nightmare is stuck in a loop with the danger never reaching further than a certain indiscernible point. The shifting noise elements add some rawness to the piece which suggests some kind of turntable manipulations going on in the piece, a lovely brooding collage piece this is. Segmenting Process For Language, the next piece, is where things start to get more chaotic and free-wheeling though still very much controlled. The track featuring a live performance recorded at East Brunswick Club in Melbourne, Australia consists of wild and inspired mixtures of saxophone, (junk) objects, percussion, drums, guitar and noise as the musicians move into always differing “segments” made up of shards of sound, wildly swirling melodies, chords and tones. This does make for quite some literal clashes of sound but rather than being one of the more random sounding Free Improv performances the sections of interplay follow a much more recognisable structure in that certain droning tones as well as feedback lays somewhat of a base underneath the bursts of sonic mayhem. Whilst there are a whole lot of things happening in this recording I would like to name a few particularly enjoyable bits. These include the short bursts of squelchy synth swirls, resonant ground vibrating feedback laden noise, the hilarious goofy but still playful wordless vocalisations spat out by the musicians but also the at times disturbing dissonant chords which are formed and culminate in an absurdly, almost 50’s Horror film soundtrack like waves of organ droning at the ending of the piece after which we can hear the only applause that could be fit in on the tightly edited CD. An inventive juxtaposition of out of the blue musical absurdism with the more dadaist lightning strike like approach of collage based Harsh Noise carrying John’s seal of quality. The next track Superstitious does match its title rather well in terms of the sounds within and it’s the most Noise focussed piece on Deviate From Balance though still more along the lines of a layered soundscape. After the instrumental interplay of Segmenting Process For Language we’re back to a more noticeably composed piece which moves through various phases emitting a definite ambience of superstition through somewhat disturbing concrete sounds, noise and tones. Its beginning featuring chopped and quite heavily scrambled recordings of a scared woman wailing as well as various other waves of distorted sound and tone overtime moves to the climax of the piece which is an extended section of the aforementioned noise from by a nicely low end grounded stream of screechy sound featuring especially piercing high frequency sound manipulations quite like some kind of dystopian alien machinery, though your interpretation might definitely be much different. Regardless of how you interpret it, the piercing noise does give off quite an intense feeling of dread and fear and while the sounds used in the piece are sometimes somewhat recognisable, like dirt like crumbling sounds, coffee cups, car related sounds etc., again they’re manipulated and structured in such shifting and distorted manners that they feel like sudden waves of mind imagery than things you can really grab onto. The finale of the piece in which John frequency manipulates a continuous tone is quite gripping too and Superstitious as a whole sounds quite like both a physical and mind gripping piece. Cafe OTO is the track that follows and it’s obviously a live recording that was made at Cafe OTO. Moving back to the more improvisation based style of collaborative group performances that John Wiese has done together with other musicians this piece has a more continuous flow of sonic events and instrumental interplay and a generally might lighter edge to it than some of the other pieces. Especially the percussion blended with effect manipulations and saxophone performances are particularly good on here with percussion clattering, clinking, jumping around the room in quite hilarious surprising manners moving from crystal like tinkling to shells and wooden percussion whilst the saxes wildly swirling melody lines and screeches form sweet tonal abstraction that are wild but not going overboard and staying well in tune with the other elements of the performances. The “spat” out vocalisations are quite matching with the saxophone performance and whilst somewhat more subtle for most of the recording, there’s also some tasty, albeit less abrasive crashes of objects near the end of the recording. Again, John Wiese’s talent in highly abstract but always varied and uncompromising electronics and instrumental performances combined with the excellent inspired energy of all musicians that appears in his group performances shines through with the fun and details in the layers created making this suitable for many repeat listens. The following track Battery Instruments (Stereo) does work quite like an extension of the sounds from the Cafe OTO recording, though in a bit more minimalistic fashion being made up of mostly small, clicky and quite sounds. A collage of instrument, objects, electronics as well as short vocal bursts the piece puts the freely moving aspect of John Wiese’s group pieces into more of microscopic lowercase territory. It’s the shortest piece of the album at 2:12 minutes and works as kind of transition from Cafe OTO to the quite abrasive walkman Noise collage piece Memaloose Walkman, showcasing various crackling, scraping, spiky sonic details, a mysterious subdued drone as well as some quite tasteful bass string scratchings all panned quite widely (as this was originally a multi-channel piece). A sweet short piece this one. The aforementioned piece Memaloose Walkman then follows and it’s quite straight-forward in nature consisting of a mono tape collage of various recordings of gunshots. Besides splices and perhaps a bit of pitch adjustment there’s not much manipulation added to this but as a Noise piece it’s quite effective letting you hear the different swishing phased textures of shots from various guns as well as some bits of talk and music in between with a layer of crunchy saturation on top of everything. Simple but effective. Afterwards Dramatic Accessories continues within the Noise territory as a piece of quite a lot of instrument / object and especially turntable abuse featuring quite a lot of bassy and wild distorted screeches mixed with chopped recordings all presented through some crazy panning. One that will especially please harsh heads, within Dramatic Accessories there are various sections in which John and the other artists involved use all kinds of methods to create a variety of sounds ranging from the shifting kind of turntable warble, clicks, grating washes of distortion, chunks of feedback, amp hiss and metallic ringing. However whilst there are a lot of distorted sonic events happening within this piece, there is some sense of dynamics within however, created by the wild panning as well as shifting the phase and using some of the room acoustics and feedback of equipment to create some loud / softer / loud sections leaving some headroom for the sounds to not fully max out and become a bit overblown. The garbled object and instrument chops are clattering around often but strange distorted disturbing recordings of voices are also thrown in the mix making for an at times frightening but thrilling ride of unpredictable sounds. One element that is recurring throughout the wildly fluttering barrages of different sounds are certain grounded tones that bring forth some kind go base for all sounds to lean on as they continue changing in at times rapid manners. All in all Dramatic Accessories is another enjoyable sonic ride on Deviate From Balance in which rich and uncompromising textures are brought out in memorable ways through some fine inspired performances from all people involved. Solitaire follows, which is one of the two longest and final pieces on Deviate From Balance, at 11:15 minutes. In terms of approach the piece is somewhat similar to Dramatic Accessories but with the difference that rather than using vinyl, tape is being used here as one of the elements that create the various sounds within the piece. Solitaire follows a more continuous structure than other pieces on Deviate From Balance in that it’s mostly based on a set of repeating patterns within it's structure acting a bit like the compositional and performance equivalent of mechanical processes. Whereas Dramatic Accessories featured experiments with both clean and distorted sounds, Solitaire moves more into a quite crunchy rough direction featuring shards of chopped up instrument and music recordings, junk objects, voices as well a various especially percussive and resonant concrete sounds that ever continue to change in form. These repetitive patterns do give some kind of rhythmic drive to the piece but change often enough to not become sampler like and are more akin warbled broken tapes as the recordings are mercilessly abused through speed manipulations and ever increasing distortion. This is combined with a constant shift of stereo phase, through which on headphones you get the idea that the shards of sound are flying over your head and are forming 3D shapes in between your ears. A great listening experience which even works as the distortion gets quite murky and harsh nearing the end of the piece. Whilst the pattern style, on the fly pitch warbles and crunching noises carries on throughout, it’s great how some depth is slowly forming near the end of the piece, in which soft ticking percussive bits are being scattered between out ears and rimshot like ticking sounds are added for nice clean percussive accents. A very fluid piece in terms of progression and sound work which shows that whilst John Wiese’s solo and band works might at times sound very free-flowing and chaotic, he’s always got quite some noticeable control and focus within every piece, inspired and always different. Final piece Segmenting Process (Oregon) is indeed somewhat related to the earlier Segmenting Process For Language although in the case of this recording the segmenting of the several parts of the piece is even more clear. Being the longest piece on Deviate From Balance at 21:45 minutes the piece is also one of the most introspective and “organized” sounding tracks on the album as in here we can find the by now familiar mixture of acoustic, electric instrumentation with both electronic sounds and manipulations but also a more restrained approach to the Noise elements John Wiese has explored in various ways in most tracks before this one. Rather than almost overtaking the non-electronic instrumentation either through loudness or sharp (harsh) frequencies, the Noise is more in tune with the instrumentation as being a part of a blend of various sonic elements. This is also helped by the fact that with the larger group setting featuring brass, percussions, drums and more the piece required a larger venue to be performed which gives the piece some welcome acoustic space, adding some room ambience and keeps the piece nicely dynamic. Sounding most similar in approach to Electroacoustic Improvisation the pieces segments blending vibrant instrumental performances which vary from fluttering percussive tones, noises as well as more drone focussed falling and rising tones with crackling, noisy, humming, distorted, sample based and glitchy electronics sound quite like the piece is based on a mixture of dreams. Like a sonic interpretation of a dream world the piece moves from segment to segment with all of them featuring somewhat recognisable sounds like the instruments themselves or voices mixed with shaped abstract noises but everything carries some kind of mystery within it, which is especially caused by the somewhat unnerving textures created by the brass instruments within the performance. The absurdist humour element is still apparent within the piece however with at times goofy squeaky noises, drum kit hits, tinkling bells and other pointy bits of abstract sound keeping things nicely playful and light but still powerful as always. The flow of the piece also helps to keep things captivating and interesting throughout as its length might take some listeners a bit to get into it but with so many different events happening throughout there’s never any idleness in here. And with this last piece I’m getting into the conclusion of this review of John Wiese’s Deviate From Balance. I award this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 85 dB, recommending you to definitely check out this album. Deviate From Balance showcases both John Wiese’s compositional and performance talents through a varied selection of recordings in which you can hear John’s approach in various settings ranging from surreal sound collages, Noise infused instrumental improvisations to rough tape manipulation and Electroacoustic Improvisation. Never resorting to mere academic musical studies John Wiese’s pieces on Deviate From Balance keep hitting the ears and mind in excellent and inspiring manners and will be a great discovery for fans of free spirited contemporary music, both analog and digital based sound collage works, (Harsh) Noise fans as well as anyone into inspired improvised music and will be a great addition to the collection of fans of John Wiese and Sissy Spacek.

Deviate From Balance is available on CD from Gligongo Records mail-order store here: https://gilgongorecords.storenvy.com/products/20648396-john-wiese-deviate-from-balance-cd-gggr-077

Sissy Spacek “Freaked With Jet” LP (Gilgongo Records)

http://helicopter-la.com

Sissy Spacek “Blear” LP (Gilgongo Records)

Drew Daniel & John Wiese - Abhorred Shears (Continuous Hole, 2018)

Official Video / http://www.john-wiese.com 

http://vague-terrain.com / http://gilgongorecords.com

Monday, November 11th, 2019

NOTS

with Lenguas Largas, and Soft Shoulder.

at Club Congress (more info)

Top Several Hundred Records of 2020

My Top 11: 1. Slum Of Legs - Slum Of Legs (Harbinger Sound / Spurge) 2. Oily Boys - Cro Memory Grin (Cool Death) 3. Model Home - SE (Future Times) 4. Valentina Magaletti & Marlene Ribeiro - due matte (Commando Vanessa / Horn of Plenty <O) 5. Kris & Tavi - Kris & Tavi (Misophonia) 6. Still House Plants - Fast Edit (Bison) 7. None - Khneï Khneï Thnacapata Thnacapata (Unknown Precept) 8. Rychlicki / Kostkiewicz - Zapis (Absolute Fiction / Maternal Voice) 9. Rosso Polare - Lettere Animali (Klammklang) 10. Patois Counselors - The Optimal Seat (ever/never) 11. Impatiens - Scene At The River (Altered States) Favorite 20 That Weren't My Top 11: 12. Irma Vep - Embarrassed Landscape (Gringo) 13. FRKSE - Desecration Anxiety II (Iron Lung) 14. Merula - Sleep (Men Scryfa) 15. Al Karpenter - If We Can't Dream, They Can't Sleep!! (ever/never) 16. BbyMutha - Muthaland (the muthaboard) 17. Pose Dia - Front View (Bureau B) 18. SIR E.U - Midnight Train To Velvet (Self-Released) 19. Nightshift - Nightshift (Cusp) 20. Massicot - Kratt (Harbinger Sound / Spurge / Bongo Joe / Red Wig) 21. Alessandra Novaga - I Should Have Been a Gardener (Die Schachtel) 22. Zeroh - BLQLYTE (Leaving) 23. Swallow - Body Horror (ANA) 24. Pink Siifu & Fly Anakin - FlySiifu's (Lex) 25. Balans - Sam pravm (Kapa) 26. Bruch - The Fool (Trost / Cut Surface) 27. P22 - Human Snake (Post Present Medium) 28. ovrkast. - Try Again (do more.) 29. Chapelier Fou - Méridiens (Ici d'ailleurs) 30. Schisms - Speech Copy Rap Master (Fort Evil Fruit) 31. Új Bála - How the Cookie Crumbles (Czaszka Records)

Mozo Mozo - Mozo Mozo (Epileptic Media) Orion Moustache - EP02 (Noorden) Mentira! - Mentira! (Harbinger Sound) Leyden Jars - Gone (Outer Reaches) Last Call At Nightowls - Ask the Dust (Subsound) Gaffer - Gaffer (Helta Skelta) Inturist (Интурист) - Action! (Incompetence) Директор Всего (The CEO of Everything) - Самый занятой гражданин (Doing Great Music) Christos Chondropoulos - On Nature (12th Isle) Uptown XO - Culture Over Corporate  (1 Force United) Lichen Gumbo - Altered Village (Ikuisuus ‎/ Jumatsuga ‎/ Lal Lal Lal) The Worms - Back To The Bog (Hidden Bay) Kneeling In Piss - Music for Peasants EP (Anyway) Taste - Rope In The Closet ( If Society / Half Bear Half Cat / Roge Records) Flogging A Dead One Horse Town - Old Scum EP (MUZAI) BIG $ILKY (Psalm One & Angel Davanport) - BIG $ILKY Vol. 2 (Self-Released) Dame Area - La Soluzione É Una (Màgia Roja / B.F.E Records) Enir Da - Silence (Too Soon Tapes) Obnox - Savage Raygun (ever/never) Mike Cooper - Playing With Water (Room40) Nape Neck - Nape Neck (Self-Released) S.U.V. - Neoliberal Folk Songs II (Otomatik Muziek) Patrick Shiroishi - Descension (Thin Wrist Recordings) Pink Siifu - NEGRO (Self-Released) En Attendant Ana - Juillet (Trouble In Mind) Sergei Demin - Not Music Of The Day (Klammklang) Brandy - The Gift Of Repetition (Total Punk) Nyx Nótt - Aux Pieds De La Nuit (Melodic) Bearer - Precincts (ANA) Norms - Háború és fű (Mindig Otthon Punk Discs) Vertical Slump - Oubliette (Blank Editions) Lau Nau - Själö (With Sound Environments by Janne Laine) (Fonal) Model Home - One Year (Disciples) WOW - Falene (Maple Death) Santa Sprees - Sum Total of Insolent Blank (Leapantique) Edd Sanders - Sun Bleached & Hollow (Cadmus) Charlemagne Palestine - Ffroggssichorddd (Staalplaat) Loopsel - Loopsel EP (Mammas Mysteriska Julebox) Kuupuu - Plz Tell Me (KRAAK) (I forget whether I put the oriinal version of this on my year-end list last year. Here it is again though) QQ - Vanguard Youth (Skrot Up) DJ Speedsick - (All Releases) Armand Hammer - Shrines (Backwoodz Studioz) Lewsberg - In This House (12XU) Ubiquitous Meh! - Fecund With Love (Buried Treasure / Damnsonic) Schulverweis - Suppe (Neoprimitive) La Chasse - Meretrix ∕ Doloris (Donnez-moi du feu) No - Vol. 1 (Faustian Haus) David Nance - Staunch Honey (Trouble In Mind) Hun Bed - Brood I (Het Generiek) Młody Kotek & Niemy Dotyk - New Age Speedball (Enjoy Life) Aurat - Zeher (Etang Brulant) Addict Ameba - Panamor (Black Sweat) Sunset Flips - Between Two Sheds (Altered States) Small Bills (E L U C I D & The Lasso) - Don't Play It Straight (Mello Music Group) Nail Club - Collected Methods (Hot Releases) Maximum Ernst - Time Delay Safe (ever/never) Tim Hicks X The Dirty Church - Bullets (Humble Monarch) Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon - GOD Body & Soul Side B (Self-Released) Red Bennies - Futurist, Nihilist Post-Rock, Cyberpunk, Anti-Humanist Music (Chthonic) Tsap - Flickering Lyghte In Campsite (Altered States) Latex Cop - Privacy Policy (Cadmus Tape) Ka - Descendants of Cain (Iron Works) Violent Quand On Aime - The Movie Star (Simple Music Experience) Flaner Klespoza - Przygody i tajemnice (Nagrania Somnambuliczne) Budokan Boys - So Broken Up About You Dying (ever/never) Datblygu - Cwm Gwagle (Ankstmusik) Pays P. - Pays P. (Gravity Music) Somaticae - Amesys (In Paradisum) Kipp Stone - Homme (Self-Released) Sada Baby - Bartier Bounty 2 Tribalism3 - April on Mars (Collectif Coax) Men With Secrets - Psycho Romance and Other Spooky Ballads (The Bunker) Brainbeau - Infinite Ways (Good Samaritron) Landowner - Consultant (Born Yesterday) Jay & Yuta - Condemned Compilations (Research) Machine Woman - Dj Dolfin Snare 808 Machine (Take Away Jazz) Slowburn - Folketro (momeatdadrecords) Twinkle³ - Minor Planets (Marionette) Unglee Izi - notice & initiation au monde alterné T.1 (Lost Dogs Entertainment) Sick Urge - Structures of Domination (Puukotus-Levyt) German Army - Pulling at Principles (Flophouse) NAPPYNAPPA - IFEELJUSTLYKTHEIRART (Bad Taste) Social Stomach + Body Shame - Split (Bento) Pacific Yew - Squeeze Demo (Hot Record Societe) Isabella - Magnetica (Ehse) Trrma´ & Charlemagne Palestine - Sssseegmmeentss Frrooom Baaari (Jazz Engine) Astute Palate - Astute Palate (Petty Bunco / Eternal Soundcheck) Axel Larsen - Les Éléments Du Crime (Macadam Mambo) Post Spiderhole Ensemble - False Alarms and Excess Baggage (Kitchen Leg) Cash Kidd - No Socks Senyawa & Stephen O'Malley - Bima Sakti (iDEAL Recordings) Henny L.O. - Sages (Mutant Academy) True Sons Of Thunder - It Was Then That (Total Punk) Tim Gick - Não Há Laranja ∕ Scrying Glass Eye (Working Man Lay Down) Junk Magic - Compass Confusion (Pyroclastic Records) Person of Interest - All Tomorrows Parties (Exotic Dance) Pumice - Table (Soft Abuse) Max Nordile - Building A Better Void (Gilgongo) Mrs. Dink + Magnum Opus - Mrs. Dink / / Magnum Opus  (Soil) Swamp Harbour (Stinkin Slumrok, Bisk, & Sam Zircon) - Swamp Harbour (Blah) Camden Malik - Understand Me (10k) Heckadecimal - Critters (Kajunga) Geld - Beyond The Floor (Iron Lung) Drakeo the Ruler & JoogSzn - Thank You For Using GTL Senketsu No Night Club - 沈丁花 (Signora Ward) Jef Mertens - NO AMP (291) Tomaga ‎– Extended Play 2 (Self-Released) [R.I.P. Tom Relleen] Boldy James & The Alchemist - The Price Of Tea In China Shoreline Mafia - Mafia Bidness pisse - LP (Phantom / Harbinger Sound) Reymour ‎– Sarabande A Deux (CAF?) Goldblum - Goldblum (Het Generiek) Phil Struck - Schleswig-Holstein Aufnahmen (Séance Centre) Maths Balance Volumes - A Year Closer (Penultimate Press) Body Double - Milk Fed (Zum Audio) Low Flung - Oil in the Mangroves (Bedroom Suck) Chris Crack - White People Love Algorithms (New Deal Collectives) Krypton 81 - Tranquility Base EP (Dalmata Daniel) Akai Solo - Ride Alone, Fly Together (Break All Records) Gad Whip - Fanimal Arms (Gad Whip Recordings) Tygapaw - Get Free (NAAFI) Pamela_ and her sons - Pink Room (Self-Released) Etceteral - Ama-Gi (Kapa Records) Ghostie - Self Hate Wraith (Self-Released) Young Nudy - Anyways DrxQuinnx & Chase Baby - God Gooch & Blue Jesus EP (Bit Tape) Museum Of No Art - Museum of No Art (Séance Centre) Terrible Signal - The Window (Heart of the Rat) Bambi OFS - Yakka (B.F.E Records / Subsist) Zarabatana - Cum Raio (tsss tapes) Soberin Exx - Normal Islands (Liquid Library) Sylvain Darrifourcq, Manuel Hermia, Valentin Ceccaldi - Kaiju Eats Cheeseburgers (Full Rhizome / Hector) Günter Schlienz + Jeans Beast - Split (Econore) Hasufel - Lamentations of the Foul High Priest (So Called Hell) Delphine Dora - L’Inattingible (Three:four / Meakusma) Suburban Cracked Collective - Swimming Amongst The Dregs (A Colourful Storm) Military Genius - Deep Web (Unheard Of Hope) Mesa Of The Lost Women - Les Tables Noires (Specific) Ferocious (Bill Direen, Mark Williams, & Johannes Contag) - Ferocious (Rattle) Domestiques - Vol. 1 (Glass Modern) gogoj a.k.a Sheng Jie - oviparity (Maybe Noise / WV Sorcerer Productions) Midnight Mines - Live From The Mystery Plane (Independent Woman) Muro - Pacificar (Beach Impediment) Satan - Toutes Ces Horreurs (Jungle Khôl / Throatruiner) Scarlatine - Mimosa (Le Syndicat Des Scorpions) Vanligt Folk - Allt E'nte (Kess Kill) VOLE - Dej Bůh Pěstí (Stoned To Death) Upsidedown Flames - Creeps At Shows EP (Fuck Yoga) Zurich Cloud Motors - Do More Than Deconstruct​-​o (Zazen Tapes)

Buncha other records

Sweeping Promises record wasn't that good though. But if you guys like it when people take singing seriously, you should check out some of this music called "R&B"

Wobbly Interview: Going for Happy

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Thurston Moore Ensemble/Negativland band member Jon Leidecker has been releasing electronic music under the moniker Wobbly for over two decades now. In Chicago experimental label Hausu Mountain, he seems to have found kindred spirits, matching his far out idiosyncrasies. 2019′s Monitress and its follow-up, Popular Monitress, which came out earlier this month, are albums about and by machines, as Leidecker ran his music into pitch trackers and synth apps on his phones and tablets, embracing the errors and randomness that were produced along the way. While the source material on Monitress was mostly improvised, the songs on Popular Monitress are more structured and composed, resulting in songs like “Authenticated Krell”, which follows a comparatively clean synth arpeggio before being enveloped by texture, or “Lent Foot”, where the various instruments trail each other. It’s remarkable just how familiar certain sounds are even if not traditionally instrumental ones, like the typewriter clacks of “Illiac Ergodos 7!” or the zooming notes of the thumping title track. Blurring the lines between what’s instrument and what’s not, and even further, what’s composed music and what’s not, Popular Monitress is a defining statement for both Leidecker and Hausu.

I was able to ask Leidecker about various songs on the album and their inspirations. Read his answers below!

Since I Left You: You chose to write more structured songs this time around before running them through the pitch tracker. Do those nuggets of recognizable structures make the final product all the more disorienting?

Jon Leidecker: Hopefully! On both albums, the main thing is keeping the focus on just how live those pitch trackers are. It’s Monitress as long as you can hear how they’re listening. For years, it was strictly a piece for live performance--I needed to be improvising myself, and able to respond instantly, to really underline just how spontaneous the machine responses are. So the first record tried to keep more of that sense of flow. Large stretches of it are simply baked down from stereo recordings of concerts & radio performances of it. Overdubbing more layers of trackers seemed legal, as long all the voices were following that one original sound.

Of course, when you play a tune, something composed or even quantized, it definitely becomes easier to hear what they’re doing. The exact same code running on each phone will respond in very different ways to the same source audio, and you get a chorus of individual voices. They play a lot of wrong notes, but oddly, if you feed the trackers lots of consonant, major chords, it stops being dissonance, and you can tell they’re going for happy. You hear these weird things, trying to sing in unison, and..the result is just pure delight. Weirdly emotional! What’s a mistake? What’s music?

SILY: How did you come up with the song titles? For instance, is there anything particularly Appalachian about "Appalachian Gendy"?

JL: They’re mostly mashed up references to landmark works in the field of generative & algorithmic composition, from the 50’s up to the early 90’s. The recent push of stories on AI musical tools seems to be about automation and labor-saving, but the field of how to develop tools for more creative ends goes back all the way to Bebe and Louis Barron going to the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics and designing their first self-oscillating feedback circuit.

So while my tracks aren’t really in the musical style of the works they reference--something like  “Appalachian Gendy”, which sprung up a fantasy Spiegel/Xenakis tribute, got paired to that stompdown track, and once it did, I added a solo on iGendyn.

SILY: To what extent is your music here inspired by the inner workings of the brain?

JL: Once you get a grip on just how simply neurons and synapses interact, how reassuringly physical thinking is, the electronic music I’ve always found most inspiring often involve feedback systems, self-playing devices, generative music, things that learn rather than settle. Music that helps you model thought. The whole East Coast/West Coast 60’s divide in synth design boiled down to Moog reducing your options until you could easily dial in what you already know you want, and Buchla designing uncertainty machines to be networked together until they approach the complexity of an unknown brain.

SILY: "Synaptic Padberg" and "Every Piano" have moments of recognizable instruments as opposed to alien instruments (strings and piano, respectively). Was that just a product of the errors/randomness of the music-making, or purposeful?

JL: It's supposed to sound orchestral, so I hit my Mellotron and Chamberlin apps pretty hard with this piece. Not like anything remains plausibly real once they're getting hammered by the trackers. That is a real grand piano, however: me playing the tune at SnowGhost Music in Montana. Brett Allen deserves an engineering credit, but I also wanted the first listen to make you wonder.

SILY: There's almost a funky rhythm to "Motown Electronium". Do you envision folks dancing to this record?

JL: Would have been plain wrong to put that title on an unworthy beat. What would a room full of people dancing to this even be like? Maybe in Baltimore.

SILY: Do you think "Training Lullaby" is what a computer trying to write a lullaby would sound like?

JL: Not that relaxing, is it? That’s ten seconds pulled from a five minute live improvisation, just a little burst of fury in the middle. Which I’ve heard enough now that I can sing along to it; so now, for me, it is calming.

I finally had to admit to myself that I’m a fan of the OpenAI Jukebox stuff. It’s right at that stage where their results are still primitive enough to remain a little mysterious. All the context and relationships intrinsic to what humans call music is irrelevant to those GANs. They don’t need culture to make music, they just need waveforms. What does it tell us that simple pattern analysis and brute number crunching on a large enough data set can produce those sounds? They’re training us. I have twelve hours of their Soundcloud dump ripped to my phone, and I play it a lot, though I wouldn’t play it for anyone under four. Can definitely sing along to some of the weirder ones by now.

SILY: How did you approach the order of tracks on the record? I'm struck by, for instance, the chaos of "Grossi Polyphony" following the comparative lull of "Every Piano".

JL: Just trying to show the range, and keep the surprises coming. Perpetual variety becomes monotony so quickly, so there is a very careful balancing act to play between shorter and longer tracks. I like a record where on first listen, any new section that begins, you feel like there are no guarantees how long it’ll last, eight seconds or eight minutes. Even things that sound like they should be songs: no guarantees. I still remember the first time I heard The Faust Tapes as a teenager.

SILY: Did you actually use musical dice to write "Wurfelspiel"?

JL: “Wurfelspiel” is just name-dropping Mozart’s generative piece--again, a real piano, but no musical dice involved.

SILY: The beats towards the end of the album--the pseudo hip-hop of "Cope By Design", techno of "Dusthorn Sawpipe", krautrock of "Help Desk"--seem to me to be far more propulsive than anything else here. Do you see a connection between those tracks?

JL: The album hits you with all these miniatures in the middle to keep things moving, and those three are the last little barrage of them before the shift into the final stretch with the longer, more hypnotic pieces. Can be tough to sequence an album when you’ve got so many short tracks, but it’s also total freedom.

SILY: How did you like getting the Hausu Mountain album art treatment?

JL: Totally family. All the Monitress packaging has always been iPhone panorama mode artifacts, visual glitches not entirely unlike what my phone’s trackers do to what they hear. I gave one of those images to [Hausu Mountain co-founder Max Allison] to work with the cover of the first Monitress, and he sent back this image, saying, “Here’s the initial stage: Your photo reduced to color blocks I’ll carefully render out later.” So when the second hyper-detailed one came back in a more proper Hausu style, they already seemed like a sequence, and this second one was already in place, so it all clicked. Any version of Monitress, the music is different, but it’s always the same piece. I’m really happy they asked me for something. [Label co-founder Doug Kaplan] and Max are just coming from the good place.

SILY: Are you doing any live streams or socially distant shows any time soon?

JL: Multi-location live streams are a blast. The time modulation inherent in all streaming is deeply psychedelic. The kind of listening you have to do when you know that the relationship of sounds together in time is different for each musician involved? I’m learning utterly new tricks, and it’s astonishing just how live the result is. I sat in on a live stream with Thurston Moore Group a few months ago, the four of them in London, and me hooked up to an amp not far from where I normally am when I play with them. And everyone agreed: It felt like I was there, right up until the instant I quit the app.

I’ve been pre-recording some home live sets for Hausu, Curious Music and High Zero Foundation. Negativland is putting together an hour long performance with Sue-C for the Ann Arbor Film Festival in late March. I finished an album mostly recorded outdoors with my old friend Cheryl E. Leonard for Gilgongo, and we’re going to try to a few outdoor concerts, too.

SILY: What else are you currently working on/what's next?

JL: The second album with Sagan, with Blevin Blectum & J Lesser, is coming out in late April. That one took 14 years to finish. There’s a trio record with Thomas Dimuzio and Anla Courtis coming out on Oscarson. Doing a revision of the last episode of my podcast on sampling music, Variations, to incorporate that OpenAI music. Some Negativland releases tying together the last two albums. There are about four of five other albums that might be done, though it takes time to be sure.

SILY: Anything you've been listening to, reading, or watching lately?

JL: This month has been Maryanne Amacher’s collected writings, Keeping Together in Time by William H. McNeill, Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, important even with happy ending. Interview with Karl Friston - Of Woodlice And Men.  Listening to a lot of “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Xenakis & Lang Elliott, and last week every Ghédalia Tazartès album in reverse chronological order. I don’t care what anybody says: That guy’s immortal.

SILY: Anything I didn't ask about you want to say?

JL: Thank you for your questions!

Popular Monitress by Wobbly

Dusted Mid-Year Exchange, Part 1: Activity to Jeff Parker

Irreversible Entanglements

Six years ago, newly moved to Tumblr, we looked for a fresh take on the mid-year best-of list idea, partly to be contrary, partly because some of us had no interest in writing about the same records over and over again. After some discussion — well, a lot of discussion — we decided to turn our mid-year feature into a sort of secret Santa exchange. We’d each nominate two records and each review two records, but, here’s the kicker, they wouldn’t be the same records. We’d trade with our fellow writers, and if it meant that we had to listen to music way out of our comfort zone, so be it.

Since then we’ve had smooth exchanges and rough ones – last year’s was especially testy, but what can you do with such an opinionated bunch—but it’s become a favorite annual event. This year was no different, except that no one was truly revolted by their assignments.

Unlike some years, there was no clear dominant pick, though Six Organs, James Elkington, Makaya McCraven/Gil Scott-Heron, Cable Ties and Irreversible Entanglements all got multiple votes.

We’ll split our individual album write-ups into two posts. Today’s covers records by artists from Activity to Jeff Parker. We’ll get to the rest of the alphabet tomorrow. On the third and final day, we’ll post writers’ lists. Participants included Tobias Carroll, Tim Clarke, Justin Cober-Lake, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Arthur Krumins, Patrick Masterson, Ian Mathers, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw and Derek Taylor.

Activity — Unmask Whoever

Who picked it? Tim Clarke

Did we review it? Yes, Tim said, “This music strains at the leash, held tightly in check by the motorik rhythms, while gaseous synths seek to permeate all corners of the soundscape.”

Ray Garraty’s take:

You wouldn’t know that it is a debut album, but then it’s a super band, so that doesn’t count. Vocalist Travis Johnson’s delivery reminds you a symbolist poet reciting some lines from his notebook, neither singing nor reading. Despite referring to violence in song titles and lyrics, this music is as far from violent as it can be. It’s too self-conscious to even carry symbolic violence but when on ‘Earth Angel’ the vocalist with the hook “I wanna fuck around” almost breaks into a scream, it turns into a whisper instead. It’s these small details that unmask the outfit’s postmodern disguise and show that Activity is the real deal, not a half-baked pastiche.

Decoy with Joe McPhee — AC/DC (OtoRoku)

Who picked it? Derek Taylor.

Did we review it? Yes, Derek said, “Decoy is a working group and a heady amalgam that recalls a dream fusion of Atlantis-era Sun Ra, Keith Jarrett’s marathon electric stand with Miles at the Cellar Door, and Larry Young circa his Blue Note moonshot Contrasts, while still relentlessly retaining its own flight plan.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Wow. “A/C” is impressive enough with its wild unfurlings of trumpet and sax, its woozy meditations in bowed and plucked stand-up bass, its incendiary organ bursts, all rooted in jazz, but touching on the hot, experimental outposts of rock and soul and R&B, too. But the second side, “D/C,” is even more exciting, as the tumult of sounds gets more fevered and McPhee breaks out in song. Who can blame him? You want to join in. It’s a mind-bending swirl that boils up and over the edges, heady, excessive and exhilarating. So glad I got to hear this, Derek, and it reinforces the benefits of trading favorites, i.e. finding music that is way out of your normal circuit but, even so, exactly what you need.  

 Sandy Ewen — You Win (Gilgongo)

You Win by Sandy Ewen

Who picked it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No.

Andrew Forell’s take:

Experimental guitarist Sandy Ewen appears as much concerned with space as sound. On You Win, she treats her instrument as pure object to explore the minutiae of its potential. Patterns emerge like communications from distant galaxies or the gradual shift and warp of old buildings. The 5 tracks scrape and rumble as occasionally identifiable guitar sounds — feedback hum, plucked strings — flicker from the mix. Best heard through headphones, You Win demands concentration lest one misses the nuanced denaturing and subversion of Ewen’s work, which is as fascinating as it is challenging.  

Fake Laugh — Dining Alone (State 51 Conspiracy)

Fake Laugh · Ever Imagine

Who picked it? Tim Clarke

Did we review it? Yes Tim said, “These sharp, funny, warm-hearted songs are immediately endearing, yet shot through with bracingly sour ingredients.” 

Andrew Forell’s take:

Dining Alone, Kamran Khan’s latest album as Fake Laugh, is a collection of pastel Day-Glo bedroom pop songs that breeze by leaving barely a hair ruffled in their wake. Khan has an ear for a melody, a wistfully pleasant voice and a talent for arrangement that make this album an enjoyable listen but there is a nagging feeling that he is holding something back. Tracks like the finely wrought “A Memory” and Supertramp update “The Empty Party” stand out but Dining Alone feels like an intermediate step on which Khan tries out ideas and seeks a way forward although there is enough here to be optimistic about what might come next.

 Field Works — Ultrasonic (Temporary Residence)

Ultrasonic by Field Works

Who picked it? Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? Yes, in a May Dust, Tim Clarke wrote that “Stuart Hyatt’s latest compilation in the Field Works series is an absolute beauty — and timely given it’s being released during a pandemic whose origins may be linked to bats.” 

Derek Taylor’s take:

Most of the listening that I do in the service of reviewing music revolves around discerning who’s, what’s and how’s. Those sorts of taxonomic identifications feel superfluous, not to mention futile when navigating the music on Ultrasonic. Sources I mistook as aquatic (“Dusk Tempi,” “Echo Affinity,” “Music for a Room with Vaulted Ceiling,” and “Indiana Blindfold”) are subterranean, specifically the echolocation emissions of bats. Harp and piano sounds dapple “Silver Secrets” and “Sodalis” as instrumental signposts, but they’re outliers in a program that feels largely electronic and beyond the scope of scrupulous inventory.  

The closest, if admittedly antiquated, genre descriptors I have for these ecology-minded creations are ambient and new age. A seraphic, celestial quality suffuses most of them with sweeping washes of tonal color layering over more definable rhythms and progressions. The combination curiously reminds me of a distant temporal relic that served as childhood gateway to this sort of territory, my father’s vinyl edition of Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast. It’s another feeble attempt at a compass point and evidence of how difficult it can be to escape the ingrained habits that influence personal musical consumption.

The Giving Shapes — Earth Leaps Up (Elsewhere)

Who recommended it? Arthur Krumins

Did we review it? Yes. Arthur said, “You feel like you’re being carried into a dream, familiar yet strange.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

There’s just something nice about a record where, a few minutes after putting it on, your partner suddenly remarks “you know, this is very calming”. It’s not that the work of Robyn Jacob (voice, piano) and Elisa Thorn (voice, harp) is soporific or somehow uninvolving, more that there’s a somehow centered kind of deliberateness with which they approach these songs that feels oddly reassuring. The way their voices often echo lines (or slightly altered lines) back at one another can feel vaguely Stereolab-ish, but rather than the coolly pulsing, layered grooves (and transient noise bursts) of that outfit, the simplicity of the arrangements here feels direct and clean and often comforting. But it’s the type of comfort that lets you see the difficulty you’re trying to tackle head-on, not the comfort that swaddles you away from having to deal with the world. It’s more bracing than lulling, in other words, and frequently beautiful at that.

  Irreversible Entanglements — Who Sent You? (Don Giovanni/International Anthem)

Who recommended it? Andrew Forell.

Did we review it? Yes. Andrew Forell wrote, “Who Sent You? is an extraordinary statement lyrically and musically.”

Bill Meyer’s take:

I’m inclined to agree with Andrew Forell. When I first encountered the vocal-focused free jazz of Irreversible Entanglements in 2018, I was more taken by the band’s focused exchanges of energy onstage than I was by their self-titled debut LP as a listening experience. But its successor steps up their already powerful game by easing up just a bit. They’ve let more air and variety into the surging rhythms and interweaving horn lines, opening up space for vocalist Camae Ayewa’s words to land with even more impact and staying power. Ayewa, who also records as Moor Mother, is more of a poetic declaimer than a singer or rapper, and her expressions of cultural memory and existential survival in the face of remorseless racism and economic terrorism boom over the music’s ebb and flow with inspiring authority. While her words are always applicable, this record sounds like it was made to be heard in a time of plague and revolt; when people ask in years to come what record sounds like the middle of 2020 felt, a lot of people will hold up Who Sent You?

  The Jacka — Murder Weapon (The Artist / EMPIRE)

Who recommended it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? Yes. Ray Garraty said, “this album confirms Jacka’s status among the greatest fallen soldiers of hip hop.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Despite being a posthumous release whose title refers to the artist’s tragic death by shooting back in 2015, Murder Weapon by Bay Area rapper The Jacka is a surprisingly cohesive listening experience, largely thanks to the lush palette of old-school samples employed on many of these tracks. From the aching strings on early highlight “Walk Away” via the swinging funk of “Can’t Go Home” to the children’s choir on “We Outside,” there’s a warmth and humanity to this sad story that honors the artist’s memory.

 Ka — Descendants of Cain (Iron Works)

Who picked it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? Yes, Ray said, “Descendants of Cain, Ka’s seventh album combines the epic bleakness of the Old Testament with Brownsville’s hopelessness.”

Tobias Carroll’s take:

Shamefully, this is my first exposure to the music of MC and producer Ka; it’s his sixth album overall, and I’ve got some catching up to do. For an album with a title and cover art that could just as easily fit on a doom metal album, what surprised me was how focused this all was. The album flows beautifully, with music that fits somewhere between sinuous soul and the art-damaged Americana heard on, say, Matmos’s The West — with a handful of cinematic samples topping it off. It’s a perfect match for Ka’s voice, which manages to be textured and beatifically smooth all at once. Some albums paint a picture for the listener; this one is wholly immersive.

Matt LaJoie — Everlasting Spring

Everlasting Spring by Matt LaJoie

Who picked it? Tobias Carroll

Did we review it? No

Ray Garraty’s take:

Matt LaJoie’s technical verbosity is on the spot here, as all the man-made sounds can be mistaken for something Nature produced out of its vast resources. Everlasting Spring is like a small water spring which flows and flows but can’t eventually flow into a river, being forever condemned to be just this spring. Everlasting Spring lasts almost for an hour (if we count a bonus track), and it’s six minutes for every string LaJoie’s guitar has. Not many men can admire nature for that long. The whole album has that New Age-ish feel, when you can start listening to it from any track, and nothing will change in your views on it.

Maybe it does give a good mimesis of what spring sounds like but we still need a change of weather from time to time.

 Mamaleek — Come & See (The Flenser)

Come and See by Mamaleek

Who recommended it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes. Jonathan said, “Their dominant textures are still harsh and confrontational, vocals are still howled and shouted. But there are riffs. There are melodic structures.”

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

As black metal, Mamaleek would hold their own, but there's a persistent work to stretch boundaries here. Come & See keeps a core mix of sludge and anger, but the group's inventiveness keeps the album consistently surprising. The group finds brighter tones than anticipated, even while moving away from metal more toward alt-rock at times, and post-rock at others, and generally finding expressions that require a hyphen. An occasional breakdown touches on jazz or finds its roots in rock 'n' roll. “Cabrini-Green” functions like a suite — track the movements and break the track into its separate pieces — even as it avoids a sort of linear sequence. “Elsewhere” (and, indeed, much of the album) turns out a demented history of hardcore. The record probably won't find much of an audience outside of the metal scene, but listening past the obvious trappings reveals a wealth of influences and a complexity that makes for intriguing listening across genre strictures.

 Jeff Parker — Suite for Max Brown (International Anthem)

Suite for Max Brown by Jeff Parker

Who picked it? Arthur Krumins

Did we review it? Yes. Arthur said, “Following the looped, electronic and eclectic New Breed, Jeff Parker’s latest album expands into an even greater range of off-kilter sonic experiments.”

Tobias Carroll’s take:

Before this year, my knowledge of Jeff Parker’s music came largely from his work with Tortoise. And that’s far from a bad thing; Tortoise is a fine band. But hearing Parker push further into the realm of jazz with Suite for Max Brown is its own form of delight, where precisely-played melodies meet instrumental virtuosity. It’s an eminently listenable album, and one where I’m still noticing new moments of subtle beauty in the mix.

i ordered a james fella record and an olivia neutron john record from gilgongo records and they sent me three extra album download codes, a bunch of stickers, and an extra 7″ called “tiger hatchery”

Sissy Spacek - Prismatic Parameter

Gilgongo Records

2020

Sissy Spacek “Blear” LP (Gilgongo Records)