This year moved along like diarrhea with a massive flow of thick, gushy gold in the beginning and a few spurts near the end. Nothing People and Sic Alps revamped rock and Car Commercials and the Hospitals reinvented it. Idea Fire Company and Graham Lambkin/Jason Lescalleet delved into new forms of sonic expression, each taking the piss out of the younger generation of space cowboys.
As much as I enjoyed listening to the vast amount of wonderful records that came out of the woodwork this year, I find myself running out of ways to describe sound. Sure, the music I review tends to contain brave new sonic templates that leave the music wide open for original interpretations. But I find myself working in circles, using the same tired metaphors and descriptions. While writer’s block does not exist, periods of bad ideas and limited lexicon command bog down productivity.
I often ignore the shape of sound. Whereas genre bounds music into a narrow corridor and leaves the interpretation up to the reader’s stereotypes, shape and color appeal to senses other than the auditory and may, in fact, mark a more accurate method of criticism. For instance, one could say Black Monk’s “Flowstone” exhibits a very circular rhythm then apply some sort of Hindenberg reference to color in the blank imagery space.
But shapes are kind of boring. There’s a finite number of geometric shapes and many of them fail to describe anything whatsoever. If one describes the motion of music with a spiel that resembles a Windows Media Player trippy vortex, the word virus spewed onto the page will recycle words and images over and over again, emulating its source material.
The problem lies in the fact that much of this music originates from a cut and dry base. Even some of the extended broheim jams from the likes of Sunburned or one of those Finnish psych collectives achieve essentially a variation of the same thing with some moaning here and some clanging there and the sudden emergence of a riff. It becomes difficult to conjure the shape of a tune with a repetitive rhythm or a disjointed tribal feeling.
On top of all that, I really disdain trying to express the philosophy behind most compositions. I find most philosophical interpretations of music boring and far fetched. People want to know what something sounds like. They don’t want to read your dissertation.
So, yeah, I have to find new ways to describe music in order to continue this blog and maintain a level of quality.
…but for now, here’s some tired-ass reviews:
Circuit Des Yeux “Symphone” LP (De Stijl; 2008): Here’s a weird one, even by my standards. The music centers around Haley Fohr, a one-woman-band, as she paints tone poems a la Inca Ore. With an apparent unwillingness to stay within a particular genre, Fohr examines a variety of musical motifs, stomping each apart and toying with the broken parts. Guitars, piano, organ and assorted sound effects build an eerie dungeon of lo-fi sound for Fohr to practice her witchcraft. The maestro sometimes yelps apart from the music surrounding her and the poor fidelity of the tape crinkles under the weight of her banshee accentuations. Other times she resorts to pixie jive, melding her mysterious voice with airy instrumentals. On “Folk,” the chameleon fiddles with a backdrop of urgent, gunslinger acoustic guitar and some distant mantra recitations pushed into the corner. Some critics compared her guitar playing to that of Jandek but Fohr posses the ability to strum disjointed loner skronk while remaining in a melodic realm a la early Shadow Ring. “Happy,” the album’s strongest track, shines with a laser slide guitar attack and an elastic vocal performance, both of which entangle and create a ball of sharp teeth and hair. With Symphone, Fohr constructs a wonderful addition to the duo of vocal-centered, femme sound fuckery, alongside US Girls’ Introducing… and Inca Ore’s Birthday of Bless You.
Social Junk “Concussion Summer” LP (Not Not Fun, 2008): Here’s an album I’d abstain from purchasing if left to my own devices. One of the guys from Hair Police produced it and a guy from Yellow Swans mastered it. Not that either band deserves scorn but I really want to stray from them. I thought the record would contain some bland electronics tweaking and a lot of moaning. Well, it contains a fair amount of moaning but the odd hums add to the spooky, fractured atmosphere. Social Junk transcends its peers by delving into a wholly different musical language. They share none of the electronic freak outs, zoned drones or bile with the Yellow Swans and Hair Police. The band crafts riffs from percussion and uses fragments of sound to solidify their frightening atmospherics. Each tune splinters into snippets of electronics, choppy vocals and cymbal smacks. These monsters exhibit the disjointed, robotic nihilism of early industrial with the impreciseness of no wave. To balance out the album, a few chill-out tunes drift through the vinyl like benzo dream. “House Fire (He’s Still Dead)” takes two layers of narcotic female vocals and surrounds them with sparse guitar, building to a blistering scream of an electronic buzz. A fascinating guitar riff appears within the laid-back “Depleted,” possibly the most Yellow Swans-esque tune on the album. The riff—a few bubbling finger taps and dragged-out tones—sounds almost Satanic in its threatening nature, with an added dose of futurism to balance out the hellfire. Can’t judge an album by its back cover, I guess.
Black Monk “Flowstone” 12" (Arbor, 2008): Originally two releases (one on Buried Valley, one on Maim & Disfigure), this 12” collects three volcanic guitar orgasms. “Murmur” moans and howls like a beast emerginig from the netherworld, as skittering percussion and what sounds like compressed drone moan snippets encase the axe growls. The spaceship hovers on “Untitled,” levitating the spirit with its vacuous whirl and creeping throughout the body with spiraling orbs of robo-whistles. “Flowstone” engulfs Side B with a thick, evil air and some George Hurley drum soloing. After a few minutes, the tune spirals into a sort of Satanic rites festival, as the guitar swarms around the dangerous drum circle. In all, a great title rescued from the junk heap of obscurity. Here’s an idea: All the people who bitch about Zac Davis allegedly ripping them off should be like Mr. Treetops and reissue out-of-print Maim and Disfigure shit like the Negative World cassette and the various classic releases by sub-swamp acts he culled from flop houses across the United States. Also, keep the profit. And spread the love (and the disease).
German “Bunker” CD (Killertree, 2008): Close your eyes. Wait, open them and keep reading this blog. Just imagine a Killertree Records release in your mind. What appears? Guitars, right? Grimy, fuzz drenched psych guitars? Maybe some understated vocals? Bongos? Certainly not jittering industrial percussion that sounds like an extension of the breakdown part on Pink Floyd’s “Bike.” Mystical twisting clicks and sparkling chimes infuse to birth some sort of African extraterrestrial tribal ceremony on the album opener “Damiscus.” To follow up the glitter, the shadowy musicians spread out ten minutes of gloom. “Road to Knowhere” pushes a dingy, whispering melodic hint into a darkened tunnel and light-but-thunderous percussion stomps around overhead, menacingly, until a few drawn-out strings moan. The brief, 17-minute disc ends symmetrically with a whirlwind of zoned keyboard and tapped percussion. The lumberjack at Killer Tree continues to pull deep roots from the underworld.
Rad XX Committee reissue, PussyGutt, Burnt Hills, Henry Kuntz and Tyr/d compilations reviews coming soon.
Check this out. Also buy the postcards Scott Foust just made. They have this cool "Smoking is Green" essay I was trying to find for this post.
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