1. Bvdub - Tribes at the Temple of Silence
2. Jacaszek - Glimmer
3. John Foxx and the Maths - Interplay
4. Nils Frahm - Felt
5. Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - summvs
6. Gus Gus - Arabian Horse
7. A Winged Victory for the Sullen - A Winged Victory for the Sullen
8. Robert Lippok - redsuperstructure
9. Chris Watson - El Tren Fantasma
10. Bvdub - Resistance is Beautiful
AOK! From univrs (Raster-Noton, 2011). Featuring Ann-James Chaton.
“Divided”, the opening track Owl Splinters, sounds immediately familiar, with its scraping cello and haunting atmosphere. It treads perilously close to the sacred ground that Richard Skelton has staked claim to, but with a more ominous dark ambient slant. Inevitably, the track frames your expectations for what is to come and my first thought was that a relentless gloom was sure follow. The kind of one-note hammering that too often characterizes music of this ilk in my opinion. How many times do you really want to listen to 50 minutes of non-stop black and slightly varying shades of gray? But it turns out that there’s more to this album than that. The Norwegian duo of Erik Skodvin (aka Svarte Greiner) and Otto Totland (aka Nest) offer a broader range of colors on Owl Splinters, their second full-length album, following the celebrated Pale Ravine in 2005.
Yes, the mood is generally melancholic. But the dark is interspersed with pure beauty and bursts of light. Sandwiched between “Divided” and the palpable tension of “New Beginning (Tidal Darkness)”, the crystalline piano tones of “Time Spent” stand out in stark relief. Throughout the album, Totland’s refined piano pushes against Skodvin’s rugged and primitive cello drones, waging an interesting tug of war. It gives the album an ebb and flow that is moving and compelling. And the intimacy of the recording adds to the intensity. On “Time Spent”, you can here the piano keys being struck and the pedal being engaged. It’s as if you’re sitting there on the piano stool right next to Totland, watching his fingers glide across the keyboard.
Brock Van Wey's new album lives up to its mystical name. It's an awe inspiring edifice in its own right even though the architecture of this aural citadel is essentially quite simple. The tracks are mostly built around short phrases or patterns that are repeated over and over again for an average of 10 minutes. So this is no prog rock labyrinth. The complexity lies elsewhere, in the building materials themselves - the textures - and how they are layered together to create a sumptuously rich tapestry of sound that seems imbued with a divine spirit.
As far as I can gather, Temple of Silence is a name used for places of meditation. Incredibly apt for what you experience listening to this mesmerizing music. The hypnotic repetition, slow build up and increasingly complex soundscapes draw you into a deep trance if you let them. The opening track, "A Quiet Doorway Awaits", ushers you into this place of power. By the middle of the second track, "The Past Disappears", the present and future have also evaporated and you feel like you've left this mortal coil behind.
I have to admit, the first couple of times I listened to the album I had a hard time staying awake. First of all, because I'm probably not getting enough sleep these days. But also because you can't help but just completely relax and let go listening to this album. It's magical.
One of the sensations of the year, New Yorker Nicholas Jaar is being likened to Aphex Twin when he first emerged on the scene. The kind of singular talent that immediately stands apart. Jaar’s first full-length album, Space is Only Noise, is hard to describe. It sure doesn’t sound the like the work of a 20-year old. It’s so confident in a lazy, burned out, lived in, melancholic kind of way. Recalling hot and sticky summer days in the big city, the music just barely has the energy to get up and go at times. Dashes of jazz piano here, Middle Eastern flavours there... Plus horns, splashing waves and an intriguing cast of voices, all percolating at a slow and sultry simmer. Now and then the flame comes close to being extinguished. But Jaar is one to watch.
1. Jan Bang - ...And Poppies from Kandahar (Samadhisound)
2. Max Richter - Infra (Fat Cat Records)
3. Scott Cortez - Twin Radiant Flux (Line)
4. Ametsub - The Nothings of the North (Mille Plateaux)
5. Ryuichi Sakamoto - Out of Noise (Decca)
6. Johann Johannsson - And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees (Type)
7. Pjusk - Sval (12k)
8. Brian McBride - The Effective Disconnect (Kranky)
9. Inch-Time - The Floating World (Mystery Plays Records)
10. Chris Abrahams - Play Scar (Room40)
And the next ten in alphabetical order:
B.J. Nielsen - The Invisible City (Touch)
Elephant9 - Walk the Nile (Rune Grammofon)
Goldmund - Famous Places (Western Vinyl)
Kangding Ray - Pruitt Igoe (Raster-Noton) [It's an EP but I had to include it.]
Michael Santos - Memory Maker (Home Normal)
Richard Skelton - Landings (Type)
The Sight Below - It All Falls Apart (Ghostly International)
Sylvain Chauveau - Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) (Type)
Taylor Deupree - Shoals (12k)
Yellow Swans - Going Places (Type)
Carbon Based Lifeforms - Interloper (Ultimae)
Hydrophonic Gardens, CBL's 2003 release, was a special album, if for no other reason than the opening track, "Central Plains". So deep and engrossing... and spectacularly produced. It ranks high on my top ten list of tracks of the past decade. Interloper is only the second full length release from the Swedish ambient acid maestros since then (the excellent World of Sleepers from 2007 came in between) so it's safe to say that my expectations were high when it arrived. I hate to say it, but I was a bit disappointed. The opening two tracks - "Interloper" and "Right Where It Ends" - are right up there with the best of CBL. But the rest of the album feels a bit by the numbers. Or at least not very compelling. I don't know whether I'm being unreasonable, but it doesn't feel like there's been much development in seven years. If anything, while the music has become more ambient and less beat driven, it is also more direct and less... mysterious, shall we say. This is not to say that Interloper doesn't have its charms. It retains many of the characteristics that make CBL so good. So I guess I'll probably be waiting just as eagerly next time to hear whether they take that extra step. http://www.carbonbasedlifeforms.net/
Jan Bang - ... And Poppies From Kandahar (Samadhisound)
One of the most memorable concerts I've every been to was a performance by the wonderful Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and his countryman and live sampler, Jan Bang, at the Reykjavik Jazz Festival in 2009. Bang provided the rhythm and sonic bed for Henriksen to stretch out in. And he worked wonders on the sampler and mixing board, grabbing snatches of Henriksen's lines, manipulating them and throwing them back into the mix to fill out the incredibly rich tapestry of sound that the two created. Henriksen was predictably stunning but the innovative Bang's contribution was maybe even more of an eye opener for me. So the appearance of Bang's first solo album, ... And Poppies From Kandahar, a few short month's later was an event not to missed.
An intriguing patchwork of live recordings and studio constructions, ... And Poppies From Kandahar is a subtle and graceful album. Henriksen and other guests, including fellow trumpeters Jon Hassell and Nils Petter Molvaer, appear both as live performers and as source material for samples for Bang to manipulate. It makes for a very interesting credit list. Referred as a descendent of Hassell's "fourth world concept" on the Samadhisaound website, the album has a rich, exotic quality and plenty of mystery and atmosphere to match the suggestive titles concocted by label boss David Sylvian. In short, a memorable release from a unique talent. Another "douze points" for the fertile music scene in Norway. http://www.samadhisound.com/janbang/
Underworld - Barking (Cooking Vinyl)
In 1993, Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman was my introduction proper to the electronic music scene. I've been a devotee ever since. Even if their more recent albums have not matched the supreme excellence of that classic and its follow-up, Second Toughest in the Infants from 1996, they've always been good for at least a couple of cracking tracks per album. (Plus, by the way, a rather wonderful soundtrack to the film Breaking and Entering with Gabriel Yared in 2006). Their last offering, Oblivion with Bells (2007) had the irresistible one-two punch of "Crocodile" and "Beautiful Burnout". And Barking does not let the side down, offering up no less than three infectiously sunny numbers - "Bird 1", "Always Loved a Film" and "Scribble" - that'll stick in your brain and get you moving. Conveniently, they're the opening three tracks on the album so no need to skip around in search of them. The rest is far from essential but well worth a listen. Apparently, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith collaborated with a different producer on each track on the album. Not that it makes much of a difference, really. It all sounds a heck of a lot like Underworld. Which is a good thing. http://www.underworldlive.com/