Cascading loops with dark soundscapes and Latin-influences and velvety melodies, “Pequenas Canciones de Amor” reminds me of something off of Acuarela Discos out of Spain. Inflected indie rock noodles throughout this stirring experimental album. Exploring a variety of styles, O Paradis deploys a king’s ransom worth of diverse instrumentation. But the one all encompassing common denominator is heady vocals and a knack for crafty a finely tuned song. There’s seventeen tracks here that bridge the gap between Euro-pop, indie-pop, electronica, experimental, and abstract. I love it. Thank you Tourette Records!
Interesting remix of the original tracks from Species of Fishes albums “Songs of a Dumb World” and “Trip Trap” were utilized throughout this rather lengthy 56 minute jaunt into experimental music land. Muslimgauze is known for their Arabic influences and brooding electronica with an interesting mixing technique. They shed some of that here with shimmering electronic stabs and manic looping techniques that have sometimes only percolated in the backdrop of past endeavors. I found this remix album to be fantastic and totally fascinating. Worth a deep dive for the adventuresome music listener for sure.
Two tracks written as a non-song but one long-form poem that is both spoken word and sung lyrics by Chris Connelly and his varied assembly of guests, “How This Ends” is the soundtrack to doom and melancholy. Featuring contributors such as Sugar Bullet’s Izi Coonagh, Tania Bowers of Via Tania fame, Bill Rieflin known for his diverse work with bands such as R.E.M., Ministry, and Swans, and David Levine, “How This Ends” is a stark soundscape devoid of true composition but glowing red with the pulse of improvisation and controlled chaos. There is more than just harsh white noise and penetrating terror; indeed there are sinewy lines of piano, synth pads, and underlying rhythms. But it all centers around the poem, a flowing free-verse of intrigue and a glimpse inside the melting pot of Connelly’s genius and showcases him as a Renaissance Man and artist. Perfect for the left-of-center crowd who strives to find a unique gem out there.
Trangendered artist famous for paintings for Psychic TV album releases and more recently for her self-released lo-fi albums, Val Denham collaborates with Black Sun Productions for this brooding and dank experimental electronic excursion. Beginning the album is a spoken word reading of Charles Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” with a Coil-esque backdrop drone. No surprise on the Coil reference as Massimo and Pierce have their tight ties with Coil in the past. Sexual undertones perverse the soundtrack collapsing words into a separate entity that is both instrument and vision all at once. Industrialized rhythms dominate some of the tracks while the druggy green visions of “Absinthe” portend their influence with cooled keyboards and manipulated loops.
Astonishingly gripping dark ambient and noise that is filtered through brainy nuances of druggy soundscapes, Maurizio Bianchi’s latest on Tourette Records (I’ve never heard of a more fitting moniker for an experimental music record label). There’s a depth here yet an urgent sense of brevity that counterbalances each of the six tracks. Not to say that these are quick ballads of bright white noise; indeed the shortest is just a tad under 8 minutes in length. Instead each tune focuses on a sense of manic solitude wrapped in looping and manipulated electronic pulses and waves. Beautiful, sad, and emotional, “YNOHPMYS” will challenge everything you previously thought about experimental music living up to ‘symphony’ the backwards album title suggests.
Featuring seven remixes of their “Filmezza” adventuresome album, Delicate Noise’s latest remix album casts its net wide across the globe in search of artists to re-rub their music. With young-and-upcoming electronic musical groups reaching far and wide from such places as France, Japan, Iceland, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., “Filmezza Remixes” has repaved the highways that the original concreted. Throughout the album there are elements of bleak and stripped down electro house, minimal soundtrack and psychedelic art, art-noise, atmospherics, and synthetic electro. Eclectic and essential.
Moroccan primitive electronica!?! Okay well the duo isn’t really from the Middle East but they temper the sounds of the Saharan Desert with the ethno-centric music of the Middle East while filtering it all through a mirage of experimental electronica and primitive noise ala Throbbing Gristle. Dangling elements of sonic manipulation while copulating with authentic middle-eastern textures and musical elements, Khamsa Khala (who is really Don Poe and Neville Harson with several guests), conjure a musical extraction that one rarely finds. Also the full-length disc comes packaged with a DVD of several music videos shot in Morocco and Egypt in full HD quality. Another money release from our friends at Lens Records.
Another dark industrial EBM and dance album by one of best up-and-comers this past decade has seen in this genre, Suicide Commando. “Implements of Hell” smashes your skull against hard concrete drum loops, techno acid synths, and distorted vocals that could only be heralded by people who have a sinister desire of the dark gothic underworld. The album populates each banging beat with gyrating club-friendly melodies that while harsh are still undeniably catchy. To date Suicide Commando had yet to release such a compelling stroke of genius that was across the board fantastic but “Implements of Hell” does just that and much more raising the bar for everyone else in a very dominated EBM genre.
Remixes of KMFDM’s latest album released in 2009, “Blitz”; “Krieg” is a body-crushing dance nightmare with some of scene’s bravest and best innovators tapped to revision the music into something distinct and even more intriguing than the original track. The album opens with a bang with Combichrist’s “All 4 One Mix” of “Bait & Switch”, sounding like a rave held at an abandoned east European factory. Then “Strut” is rerubbed by Andy Selway whose “Disco Balls” mix is dirty and reminds one of Lords of Acid. Seismologist offers up a darkened “Potz Blitz!” that bleeds old school industrial dance. Prong grabs their distortion pedals and pounds on your eardrums with their rendition of “Bait & Switch”. Skinny Puppy contributor and engineer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie brokers his take on “Never Say Never” with a mix that’s surprisingly very Yo Gabba Gabba with its sun-soaked synths and pleasant melodies. Other notable contributors are Komor Kommando, Assemblage 23, tweaker, Koichi Fukuda, and Vile Evils (Pop Will Eat Itself).
When people mutter the word “crossover” in regards to music, I find it usually is a reference to two possibilities – one being that it’s a “nu-metal” type band from the ‘90s in the vein of Korn or Deftones or hell even Limp Bizkit, and the second being even worse, an excuse for not being able to write music that’s good, thus using a genre crutch to get by the simple fact that your band can’t write anything cohesive or imaginative. Slow Six has convinced me that there’s a third; a genuine crossover that crosses the genres of classical in the traditional sense with electronic music in the semi-traditional sense – and I’ve found that more and more bands in this hybrid genre are being self-referential when saying the ‘c’ word. Interesting how music and the verbiage to describe it constantly is evolving, huh?
The music of this breed is one that is both a stripped down and raw acoustic-electro experiment that refuses to abandon the structures that classical music has eschewed for a handful of centuries now. “Tomorrow Becomes You” is somewhat prophetic in this sense, offering a new style of minimalism that darts and dashes through high-brow melodies harmonious with slow-building cacophonies of sound that simply overwhelm the senses. Crafting soundscapes this rich and surrounding, almost to the point of sonic suffocation is no doubt a challenge, but one that Slow Six has raised the bar in creating. Even more elating that the timeless pieces of music that the group has composed is the fact that Christopher Tignor, who is both the band’s violinist and resident software engineer, has released his custom written music software to the general public available for free on their website. Stunning people, stunning. This is a must-have for 2010 – they’re touring in support of “Tomorrow Becomes You” and if you are lucky enough to see one of their shows, please leave comments, I’d be fascinated to know what that experience is like.
Listen and watch a live rendition of “Echolalic Transitions” as performed on WFMU:
Slow Six – “The Pulse of This Skyline with Lightning Like Nerves” with video art by Shimpei Takeda:
” smashes your skull against hard concrete drum loops, techno acid synths, and distorted vocals that could only be heralded by people who have a sinister desire of the dark gothic underworld. The album populates each banging beat with gyrating club-friendly melodies that while harsh are still undeniably catchy. To date Suicide Commando had yet to release such a compelling stroke of genius that was across the board fantastic but “Implements of Hell” does just that and much more raising the bar for everyone else in a very dominated EBM genre.
”; “Krieg” is a body-crushing dance nightmare with some of scene’s bravest and best innovators tapped to revision the music into something distinct and even more intriguing than the original track. The album opens with a bang with Combichrist’s “All 4 One Mix” of “Bait & Switch”, sounding like a rave held at an abandoned east European factory. Then “Strut” is rerubbed by Andy Selway whose “Disco Balls” mix is dirty and reminds one of Lords of Acid. Seismologist offers up a darkened “Potz Blitz!” that bleeds old school industrial dance. Prong grabs their distortion pedals and pounds on your eardrums with their rendition of “Bait & Switch”. Skinny Puppy contributor and engineer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie brokers his take on “Never Say Never” with a mix that’s surprisingly very Yo Gabba Gabba with its sun-soaked synths and pleasant melodies. Other notable contributors are Komor Kommando, Assemblage 23, tweaker, Koichi Fukuda, and Vile Evils (Pop Will Eat Itself).
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