Cyclic Defrost

Injured Ninja – Superluminessence (Heartless Robot)

2012-02-10T13:23:44Z

Perth-based experimental noise-rock four-piece Injured Ninja are certainly a prolific bunch; this latest four track 12” EP ‘Superluminessence’ arrives only a few months on the heels of their preceding ‘Redeemer / Skylazer Remixed’ collection. In many senses what’s most apparent here is the increased confidence and muscularity of Injured Ninja’s overall sound; something that’s no doubt due in part to support slots for the likes of Health, Gang Of Four and My Disco. The opening title track sees them still likely to provoke some comparisons to The Mars Volta, as a precise surging rhythm section locks into place beneath soaring vocals and jagged, atonal bursts of overdriven guitar fretwork and vaguely latin-tinged melodic arrangements, while ‘Aztec Immunisation’ sees them venturing further out into noise territory as Steven Hughes’ reverb-heavy vocals traverse a furious backdrop of undulating live bass and tribal drums, vast walls of overdriven guitar distortion suddenly cutting in and out before drifting out into brooding ambient territory that sees snakelike guitar bends racing around the edges of the stereo field. In many senses though it’s ‘Galaxial Mind Puzzle’ that represents the real centrepiece here, taking things off on a mesmerising 15 minute long collaboration with Japanese vocalist Yuki all recorded in a single take, that effortlessly shifts from eerie cinematic guitar atmospheres and ghostly vocal harmonies into a surging wall of tidal noise jam over its sprawling length. An impressive EP from a band continuing to hone their powers.

Chris Downton

Injured Ninja – Superluminessence (Heartless Robot) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Telafonica – Sleeping With The Fishermen (4-4-2 Music)

2012-02-08T12:52:32Z

The album, as a musical form, was born out of commercial necessity and technological limitation. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s record companies needed a way to shift a number of songs in a single package. Vinyl disks allowed the storage of 50 or so minutes (about 10-12 tracks) making the vinyl long-player an ideal mode of packaging music to the consumer. Later, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s the album began to take on artistic relevance as a form in its own right. Rather than simply a collection of songs, bands began to view the album as a unified whole with a coherent character and narrative through-line.

Some 50 years later, the album is a more complicated concept in contemporary music. There is no longer the same technological limitation. The internet allows any amount of music to be uploaded and distributed immediately. Sites like iTunes allow consumers to remove a track from its context within an album, to treat each song as an end unto itself rather than as a component of a whole. Realistically, this is how the majority of people have always listened to music – the difference is in how it is packaged.

This itself presents new artistic possibilities in terms of musical form. Sleeping With the Fishermen, by Sydney collective Telafonica, is both the name of an ambitious meta-project and the album which forms its gravitational centre. The project includes (in addition to the seven tracks of the main album) seven remix EPs (each focussing on one of the tracks), a music video for each track and a Bandcamp album of fan remixes. There are post-modern, and even cubist, overtones in the way the album is broken up into its component parts and re-examined from multiple angles. Each remix and video offers a new perspective on the songs and after listening to them the original album takes new shape as well.

Even the original Telafonica tunes are awash with differing perspectives. The band is made up from members of a number of Sydney-underground musical and artistic projects (Lessons in Time, Karoshi, Boom Blip Blip) and these contrasting musical views make for an album which pushes and pulls itself into strange and unexpected places. The opening track, ‘Viceroy’, unfurls from an errant sine wave into a looped groove reminiscent of This Mortal Coil before jumping violently into the Sleigh Bells-esque noise-pop of ‘The Unravelling Man’. The album does have a few weak points, but its erratic shifts in style and pace are arresting.

In Sleeping With the Fishermen, Telefonica have delivered a traditional album, bracketed off from its context within the broader project by its two bookending tracks. Taken alone, the album is interesting but its meta-connections with the broader project are what make it noteworthy. For the consumer, there is a choice in how far one wants to delve into the project; to view the entire web of interlocking music, to hear the album as a standalone experience or to simply pick out single tracks as they see fit.

Henry Andersen

Telafonica – Sleeping With The Fishermen (4-4-2 Music) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Valance Drakes – Sky Open To Those Who Have Wings (Bedroom Research)

2012-02-07T17:50:25Z

UK-based electronic producer Valance Drakes first surfaced last year with his debut ‘Alienetic’ release on Community Skratch Music, and a few months on this latest download-only EP on Bedroom Research ‘Sky Open To Those Who Have Wings’ sees him offering up nine new tracks that continue to haunt the middle ground between contorted IDM and glitch-hop. While there’s a strong emphasis on trailing, blissful synths and brightly coloured atmospheres, it’s tempered with a headsnapping, rapid-fire approach to editing and DSP manipulated, resulting in a harsh, jarring edge being present amongst several of the tracks here.

While the opening title track sees rich layers of gleaming ambient synth pads counterbalancing some of the most tortorously contorted and timestretched hiphop beats you’re likely to hear for a while, ‘Life Is Short, Art Is Longer’ sees warped female rnb vocal samples getting bent into all sorts of shapes against buzzing gamecore bass synths and dewy soul pads, in what’s easily the most swaggering track on offer here. ‘One Winged Angel’ meanwhile sees chattering, cut-up vocal samples forming a constant bed of texture around clattering boom-bap rhythms, the entire track suddenly disappearing down a funnel of complex ‘Windowlicker-esque’ micro-edits before emerging back out the other side slightly miss-shapen, before ‘Sky’s The Limit’ lays on the brooding atmospheres as harsh, snapping beats wander against flurries of junglist breakdowns, DSP error tones and eerie background drones. In this case the occasional harsh jarring edge simply adds to the intrigue factor here, with a close local comparison being the likes of Electric Sea Spider.

Chris Downton

Valance Drakes – Sky Open To Those Who Have Wings (Bedroom Research) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Pollen Trio – Roll Slow (Hellosquare Recordings)

2012-02-07T17:47:23Z

I recently watched Ken Burns’ documentary series, Jazz. While wonderful in its historical depth, ultimately it left a sour aftertaste. The first 40 years of the music’s history was covered in episodes 1 to 9. The second 40 years, finishing in 2000, the year of the documentary’s production, was covered in episode 10, the final episode. And it basically framed the entire series as an apologetic for Wynton Marsalis’ particular brand of bland jazz retroism. It gave free jazz a place in the canon (just) but wrote off fusion, the last forward-looking style covered in the series at all, as having lost the plot.

Which brings us, in a roundabout kind of way, to Pollen Trio. The juxtaposition of Roll Slow against Jazz in my own experience was particularly revealing. In my head, at least, Roll Slow just about functions as the lost history that Ken Burns overlooked. It starts out with ‘Tilt’ which, while certainly far less dense than Ornette Coleman, is strongly rooted in the traditions of free jazz. It’s a beautiful piece which utilises acoustic drums, piano and trumpet in a way that none of the 60s jazz heavyweights would find unfamiliar, apart maybe from some moments of extended technique on the trumpet. But, like any jazz work, this is just the head, the starting point. What then takes place across the album is a gradual, subtle disintegration and deconstruction of the traditional form, heading towards electro-acoustic improv, digital processing improv, through to noise and drone, then back out again. All the exciting developments that the old school jazz purists would prefer not be even considered part of the same universe but which, over the last 40 odd years, have continued to keep the music vital and progressive.

The album’s centrepiece is, undoubtedly, ‘Redshift’, a dark and brooding monster that doesn’t ever really explode into anger, but you can hear the menace lurking. Austin Buckett creates the low end drone with the roiling bass notes on his piano, contrasting these with needle stabs on the extreme high end of the same instrument. Two minutes in and the piano and Evan Dorrian’s drums roll in unison swells while Miroslav Bukovsky’s trumpet duets with with processed loops of itself. It’s really only timbre and tone, the acoustic instruments, Bukovsky’s mellow Miles Davis blurts, which tie it in any way to jazz, showing just how far the form can be stretched without snapping.

From there, the final four tracks have the same laid back tone as a late night lounge trio. But the form is far more abstract. This contrast between expectation and the actual sound presented keep the tension up and hold attention. ‘Procession’ finds a loop that sounds like it was played on plastic recorder fly around the stereo field while, again, the percussion instruments boil away underneath. And ‘Erupt_OFF’ brings the album full circle, finishing off with straight ahead timbres being skittled through processing in a muted free jazz universe.

Roll Slow is a beautiful album. It relishes in its technical accomplishment and exploratory inventiveness in a way the DIY underground could only dream of, yet retains the raw power of Noise and improv. It’s greatest accomplishment is to balance these disparate elements into a whole that acts like a great album should, taking you on a journey across its course and keeping you glued to hear what the next step might be.

Adrian Elmer

Pollen Trio – Roll Slow (Hellosquare Recordings) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Undecisive God – RPMs 3-4 (Shame File Music)

2012-02-07T00:05:53Z

Undecisive God is the recently retired recording moniker of Shame File Records impresario Clinton Green. For many years, the guitar was the mainstay of releases from Undecisive God, as Clinton beguiled and tortured six strings into a complex array of noises, some soothing, some unsettling. Since 2007, prepared turntables have slowly replaced the guitar as the predominant tool by which Clinton has explored his sonic territory. Logically continuing the process started on Duos for Guitar and Broken Records, RPMs 3-4 is the third Undecisive God release to work exclusively with cracked shards of vinyl, nails utilised in place of stylus and an irreverent experimental ethos that links into the rest of Green’s work and that of his Shame File label.

‘Rpms 3 x 3’ kicks off proceedings with an astute grasp of the dynamics of the turntable medium; harsh, grating and repetitive, it’s like being locked in an eternal battle between splinters of your grandmother’s music collection versus the misanthropic agenda of earlier Undecisive God, Kevin Drumm or Otomo Yoshihide’s turntable work. ‘Turntables are Wrong’ outlines just that; an overdriven mass of spluttering vinyl summons forth a dark pulsating heaviness that power electronics or noise practitioners would be envious of. The only non-turntable piece on RPMs 3-4, ‘Summer holiday 2010-11′ soothes the ears with the thundering peel of the Australian coast, before ‘RPMs 4’ takes the listener on an epic journey. It’s like being stuck on a clattering underground train with competing vocal companions, as trotting percussive rumbles and Warner Brothers-esque sound bites fight and repulse. Towards the conclusion of the piece, a subtle, almost ambient, passage soothes the frayed nerves, like a less opaque and histrionic antipodean take on Phillip Jeck, just with shards of vinyl rather than manufactured nostalgia from an array of dusty Dansette record players.

As a nation, Australia has a profound and diverse array of labels, individuals and networks of experimentally minded artists working on the peripheries of contemporary music. Shame File was the label behind the two remarkable volumes in the Artefacts of Australian Experimental Music series, plus the digital reissuing of the NMA Tapes, the Ernie Althoff Tape Archive and the formative sound experiments of Jack Ellitt, Arthur Cantrill, and a broad selection of artists active over the past decade. Whilst I have an intellectual appreciation of the processes at work behind the sounds contained on RPMs 3-4, after prolonged audio exposure at home, a headache and an ontological crisis of being emerged for me from this latest iteration of Undecisve God.

I recently interviewed Clinton Green on Community Radio station RTR, when he was visiting Perth during a week of 38 to 42 degree days. You can restream that conversation here.

Oliver Laing

Undecisive God – RPMs 3-4 (Shame File Music) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Polar Chalors – A Day (Nature Bliss)

2012-02-07T00:04:27Z

Despite the credibility afforded by recent hipster forays into wispy synth doodles, new age music remains a problematic area to explore. For all the Emeralds and Ducktails there are George Winstons and Deep Forests, who shift countless more units. Few young turks are brave enough to dive headlong into new age’s ethereal waters, wussing out and muddying up their experiments with low-fi recording strategies, spooky field recordings and releasing on cassette. Tokyo duo Polar Chalors keep an equal distance through different means, their woozy pieces crisply recorded on hi-fi CD, in thrall to a confused vision of Eno’s Fourth World ethno-fusion.

On opener ‘Polar Chalors’ we get child-like twinkling and a boomy choir preset all straight from the can while David Sandborn soundalike Sinsuke Fujieda draws sax lines alongside marimba plonks. Various gear shifts recall a lite kind of fusion, incorporating kooky Moog solos, bent notes and bongos, like a jazzed out James Ferraro. Elsewhere ‘2’ introduces Balearic acid rhythms caked in synthesised bong smoke, ‘3’ a kind of tinned throat singing and ‘4’ a pitched-up didgeridoo, so most world styles a covered, but the whole retains a diluted and washed out taste, like a mall food court, with little sense of individuality or purpose remaining.

Joshua Meggitt

Polar Chalors – A Day (Nature Bliss) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Ourobonic Plague – Post Human Possibilities (Twiceremoved Records)

2012-02-07T00:01:26Z

Fittingly, given the vaguely sci-fi setting of the title, Post Human Possibilities feels like something of a hybrid album. On the one side there are the dark synth textures that Ourobonic Plague are known for and which were explored in detail on their three releases last year. On the other side is a new-found tension brought about through more active rhythmic motifs that pulse and grind, generating a sense of edginess that is quite new to Ourobonic Plagues ouvre. Ultimately this sense of old and new comes together to give a glimpse of something new in Ourobonic Plague unique realisation of dark ambient beats.

Post Human Possibilities gets off to a strong start. ‘Her Reptile Dysfuncton’ blends warped vocal samples with tense, repetitive beats, creating an almost Trent Reznor-ish sound world. This is followed by ‘Lake Slasher’ and here there is some hint as to the influence of the Perth hip-hop collective The Community, to which Ourobonic Plague is a member of. With its cosmic synth stabs and gradually evolving beats this is the closest thing to hip-hop that Ourobonic Plague has conceived of yet. Of course it’s not hip-hop, it just has surface elements resembling hip-hop. It is Ourobonic Plague’s ability to manipulate the characteristics of this genre, that in their original setting are so comforting, into a unique musical language that makes it a downright creepy listen. These two tracks are some of the best music Ourobonic Plague has released so far.

‘Leaving Earth’ marks a turn towards a more static portion of the album, consisting of a dark, doom-laden beat over a soft trance pad. Again Ourobonic Plague’s gently evolving synths work nicely but with the track only lasting three and a half minutes, the piece feels a little short to do the ideas justice. Similarly, ‘Return To The Lake’ uses a wandering synth lead over some underlying atmospheric sounds which, while pleasant, doesn’t really seem to go anywhere either. Ourobonic Plague have never been afraid of creating extended tracks, and so it seems strange that two tracks with interesting musical ideas aren’t further developed.

‘Connection Failed’ is grounded in the sort of musical approach Ourobonic Plague have explored previously on the 2011 LP Moon Worship, namely the reliance of an interplay between skittering surface textures and repetitive beats. Once again the influence of The Community can be sensed as Ourobonic Plague work familiarly rigid beats into a ominously mechanical framework. However, it is the 16-minute closer ‘Washed Up On The Shore’ that really stands out. When finally given the space they need, the familiar synth textures are fashioned into a track that is more powerful and foreboding than anything else on the album. The rigidity of the rest of the album is lost here, as slow changes gradually sculpt a sound-scape that ends the listening experience in an appropriately epic fashion.

Ultimately Post Human Possibilities is an album of dark ambient, beat-based music filtered through a mask of paranoia, that rises above the sludge and drone of Ourobonic Plagues previous works, creating dark ambient pieces that have a unique sense of tension throughout. It is a recording that builds on the sound world that Ourobonic Plague inhabits, while hinting at a sound world that may soon be realised.

Sam Gillies

Ourobonic Plague – Post Human Possibilities (Twiceremoved Records) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

edPorth – Key Black (51Beats)

2012-02-04T17:53:52Z

Italian electronic producer Patrizio Piastra first emerged under his edPorth alias back in early 2010 with his debut album ‘Saying Vamos And Thinking Let’s Go’ on the Inglorius Ocean netlabel, and two years on this download-only follow-up ‘Key Black’ on 51Beats sees him continuing to craft dreamlike, wistful IDM-centred soundscapes that expertly blend more jarring glitchy textures with a sense of sweeping melody that’s anchored by Piastra’s own melancholic vocals at points. In a similar sense to the likes of Active Child, it’s precisely this collision of gentle and more brittle sonic elements that really succeeds in bringing out the sense of ‘humanity’ in the eleven tracks collected here. Opening track ‘Four Eight’ calls to mind associations with the N5MD label’s similarly gentle and crystalline aesthetic, sending brittle glitchy crackles and a rattling, muffled rhythmic pulse rolling against a hypnotic backdrop of muted ambient pads and swelling, emotionally loaded synths that swirl like mist, while ‘Migraine’ sees Piastra’s own dubbed out vocal intonations navigating a darkly cinematic backdrop of moody synths and rattling, percussive rhythmic textures that sits far closer to one of Thom Yorke post-IDM wanders, albeit given a considerably more noir-ish push.

Elsewhere, ‘Like A Frozen Flower’ sees Piastra treating his vocals as the centrepiece of the track rather than simply another textural element, his rich, almost New Romantic-tinged croon suggesting later period Depeche Mode as crackling glitches and buzzes slowly rise into sharp focus amidst gauzy layers of shimmering synth ambience and pulsing bass tones, before ‘Flap Clock’ sees his looped vocal elements tracing a lazily circular motion against woody broken rhythms that suggest midtempo garage, while noodling analogue synth tones and staccato, rattling rhythms cling tightly to elegant-sounding piano keys, the entire track moving with a beautifully controlled sense of grace. You can download ‘Key Black’ for free from the Label.

Chris Downton

edPorth – Key Black (51Beats) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Jannick Schou – Against a Backdrop of Blue Hills, They Were as Beautiful as a Lullaby (Dead Pilot Records)

2012-02-04T22:52:30Z

Even though it is a benevolent, life-giving giant, the sun eventually bleaches everything that passes under it. In this series of vignettes, Jannick Schou´s drones are bathed in light but faded, a little grainy and overexposed, with those Kodak colours that only existed on film in the sixties, never in nature. Form follows function – they were made out of another medium subject to wear and tear, magnetic audio tape.

The drone is commonly associated with the dark and low-down, but it doesn´t have to be that way. With a title borrowed from Milan Kundera´s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Schou does an impressive job portraying the puff of smoke we are inside our mortal skins. The recurring tweet-tweet of a small bird on ´Departure´ sounds like imprisonment; no matter how beautiful she sings, that bird sounds caught and I don´t think she´s ever going to get loose. But rather than dwell on the inevitable end, Schou´s album, tremulous and emotional as it may be, is ultimately optimistic and uplifting.

Although his recording career only stretches back a few years in time, Schou has already established himself – partly under the monicker of ”Cylon” – as a mature artist worth watching for. Self-released in Denmark the year before, the discriminating, dark ambient label Dead Pilot Records in the UK insisted quite justifiably on the necessity of a re-release.

Stephen Fruitman

Jannick Schou – Against a Backdrop of Blue Hills, They Were as Beautiful as a Lullaby (Dead Pilot Records) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Windy and Carl – We Will Always Be (Kranky)

2012-02-04T01:28:45Z

Michigan based husband and wife duo Windy and Carl’s twelfth album ‘ We will always be’ and fourth on the Kranky imprint is a fairly quiet affair that begins with a folkish introduction song and continues into darkening drone. They have been described as space rock, or even compared to 4AD style ethereal pop which gives you a vague inkling of stylistic descriptions of their sound but more readily considered through their core instruments, guitarist Carl Hultgren and bassist/singer Windy Weber create minimal abstract atmospheres with the help of ebow and effects. ‘For Rosa’ opens the piece with quiet patina of fuzz overlaid by simple chord based acoustic guitar with Windy intoning a love dedication track. Then it is straight into bright drones and vocal choral effect additions, ponderous bass doing less than a stroll through the guitar shimmer haze of ‘Remember‘. ‘Spires’ is a more august piece, less flourish on the guitar and drones spun out in gleams against shifting spatial tones. ‘We will always be’ has a classic minimal structure concentrating on a repeating theme with variations and moving the effects from this base, it is high and bright ringing tones with a bass hum underlying it. ‘Looking Glass’ has more of the darkened gleam of it’s title, an introspection of psychedelic tones, slightly jagged guitar notes under a thick constant drone with a few moments of distinct melodic development mostly clouded. ‘The nature of Memory’ is more forgiving to the sense with a lighter drone and the return of the slow bass with slightly more variation and Hultgren’s guitar goes on a noise scape for a while, vocals are low in the mix in a conversational mode. ‘The smell of old books’ brings back the hum versus melodic shimmering guitar that moves from the sharp distinction into a wider atmosphere. ‘Fainting in the presence of the lord’ for all it’s dramatic title is a restrained homily of the ambient mode that constructs a wide sonic palette for it’s atmospheric and drones that lend towards descriptions as hymn albeit with the odd bit of noise.

Innerversitysound

Windy and Carl – We Will Always Be (Kranky) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Bee Mask – Elegy for Beach Friday (Spectrum Spools)

2012-02-03T03:22:45Z

OK, so I’m a bit late to this particular party, and I really wanted to come along earlier, but for one reason or another it just didn’t happen. Now I’m chilling on the beach, with an elegy to those lost Friday afternoons of my youth soothing my jarred synapses after the week from hell. The sun is slowly setting beneath the island just off the coast and the last rays of that fading orb are highlighting the lighthouse. It’s already blinking steadily, warning mariners of the treacherous reefs and barely submerged shoals that have claimed a long procession of seafarers since the Dutch first washed up on this western shore for want of an accurate method by which to calculate longitude.

Bee Mask, the creative nom de plume by which Chris Madak soothes and unsettles my weary workaday worries, returns to the Spectrum Spools label for a retrospective gaze over his recording career thus far. Over two platters of vinyl, the log book of Bee Mask is set out in the hope that enervated minds can garner some respite. There’s over a dozen Bee Mask releases from which to choose for this compilation, on labels such as Action Claw, Deception Island and Chondritic Sound. Spanning from 2003 to 2010, it’s apparent how coherent the Bee Mask sound has been through a slew of limited C14 cassettes and hand-decorated CDRs. In fact, that coherency leads to my only minor gripe with this set, which has been handpicked by Madak himself for Elegy for Beach Friday; the riddle-like and chimeric listening experience of Canzoni dal Laboratorio del Silenzio Cosmico has had the sharper edges abraded off through the relentless action of the near shore drift, or something like that …

I’ve gotta pay the intellect behind the naming of many of these pieces, starting with ‘Deducted from Your Share in Paradise’, which reminds me of a spacious, sunny gap between the clouds, somewhere between the Sky label, Tim Hecker and Klaus Schulze. The remainder of the A-Side is comprised of ambient vignettes both sullen and light-hearted. ‘Askion Kataskion Lix Tetrax Damnameneus Aision’ starts the B-side off in dark ambience; like being equidistant to a church organ recital of Charlemagne Palestine and the thermoluminescent hum of a suburb-sized power station. The title track’s mystic chords of startled ambience fade into the buzzing guitars of ‘The Book of Stars Vanishing’, reminding me of My Bloody Valentine and Svarte Greiner.

The title of the track ‘In the Karst Interior’ recalls to my mind improbably weathered limestone formations from my days as a geology undergraduate, as spooked razor sharp electronic sonorities squeal and peal. The longest track on Elegy for Beach Friday ‘Stop the Night’ is assembled out of swirls of synth-etic colour and rumbling mid-range. Flipping over the vinyl, the final chapter is introduced by another fantastic title – ‘How to Live in a Smashed State’ is the most abstract offering of the album, full of deadened bells, pops and static. The best is saved for last, as a space-bound stroboscopic pulse reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle fills the introduction to ‘Scarlet Thread, Golden Cord’, squiggly, sped-up conversations and muted arpeggios further this high-wire balancing act between uneasy listening and dronal anarchy. Elegy for Beach Friday is like being in a float tank, having a massage and the opening scene to 2001: A Space Odyssey all at the same time — curiously static and enigmatic in equal portions.

Oliver Laing

Bee Mask – Elegy for Beach Friday (Spectrum Spools) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Artifact – Archaic Line (Deadplate)

2012-02-01T12:49:23Z

UK-based electronic producer Artifact is a relatively new name to emerge on the garage / wonky house scene, but this debut 12” (the second release from Deadplate) offers up a compelling first taste, with all of the three tracks collected here making their own memorable mark. On the A-side, ‘Archaic Line’ serves up what’s easily the most headstrong offering to be found here, welding snapping 2-step rhythms to yawning sub-bass and rich layers of blurred out synth atmosphere whilst sending a veritable storm of bleeping ringtone-esque electronics roaring through every inch of space left in the mix, before the aptly titled ‘Deserted’ drops the tempos down slightly for a dubstep-tinged roll through eerie phased synths and cut-up female vocal samples, the entire track anchored by steely yet elastic sounding sub-bass pulses. Over on the flip, Graphics offers up a reworking of ‘Archaic Line’ that flips the controls towards gliding broken house, contorting the original’s percussion rolls into jagged bursts,whilst rattling 808 toms provide the rhythmic propulsion for nostalgic-sounding classic Chicago synths.

Chris Downton

Artifact – Archaic Line (Deadplate) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Noiko – Honey (Eta)

2012-02-01T12:48:09Z

Michał Kędziora’s project Noiko has a dry docked ship on the front cover with the illusion of it generating smoke out of a chimney that is not actually part of the ship. Take what you like from that, I am guessing that it is a ship yard, possibly Gdansk. However this sonic vessel starts with a faux horn, or perhaps a wryly askew field recording as it moves into static and hiss, the oblique clatter, glockenspiel and double bass. Elsewhere there are indications of piano, guitar, drums, clarinet and other instruments that could be either virtual or real. It is hard, or even impossible to separate the virtual, the sample from the real and I will not even endeavor with this redundant exercise. Needless to say this is a studio album that may not find itself replicated in a live setting, however giving it’s heavy leanings towards jazz, compositionally, aesthetically and it’s choice of instrumentation, then it could be adjusted to meet the demand. It is also an electrosacoustic album, and seeks to convey a lo-fi sensibility but it’s leanings are way too accomplished and even polished to really give justice to garage origins. It bespeaks of well honed ears of seasoned musicians with both compositional knowledge and a depth of interest in experimental music history, especially towards concrete music which I suspect when mixed with acoustic instruments begets the term electroacoustic. They even list that the mastering was performed “by Krzysztof Orluk with his analogue equipment. One of them is the prototype tube saturator constructed by Andrzej Starzyk, a Polish engineer and designer of the recording studio gear.” Such statements are indicators of the performers serious nature and geekish tendencies as well as being the qualities that find this Polish musicians album on rotation in my environ along with it’s rootless mix of sampling, jazz, minimal piano, electronic ephemera and field recordings.

Innerversitysound

Noiko – Honey (Eta) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Billy Dalessandro – Cracktime (Soniculture)

2012-02-01T05:28:47Z

Chicago-based electronic producer Billy Dalessandro has spent much of the past decade carving out a distinctive presence amongst that city’s techno and house scenes, with an impressive backcatalogue of releases on labels including Force Inc, Resopal and Siteholder. Two years on from his preceding ‘Polis’ collection, this fifth album on the Lisbon-based Soniculture label ‘Cracktime’ sees him crafting a distinctly early hours oriented collection that places its emphasis firmly upon classic Chicago jacking rhythms topped with a hearty helping of acid 303 squelch. From virtually the very outset the muscular tech-y rhythms fall pretty much straight into place, with opener sending sudden splashes of jazz horns blaring against a moody backdrop of burbling analogue bass tones and crisp 808 snares that carries more than a touch of noirish spy-jazz amidst its pressurised grooves, before ‘Pull My Finger’ tosses some additional electro grooves into the equation, sending dubbed-out 303 acid squelches swirling around a Green Velvet-esque unhinged spoken vocal and a stripped-back undercarriage of lithe robotic rhythms.

Elsewhere, ‘Here Comes The Bankster’ offers up what’s easily one of this collection’s most straight-out and free flowing acid techno excursion, sending precise spidery rhythms stretching out towards the horizon beneath layers of acid 303 textures and vast dubbed-out filter sweeps. The occasional stylistic digressions away from the dancefloor here also prove no less impressive, with the eerily atmospheric ‘Hypersleep’ pitting crashing Techno Animal-esque industrial hiphop beats against sinister swirls of almost Middle Eastern-sounding synths and terse spoken dialogue to spectacular effect, while ‘Jozal’ offers an IDM-kissed wander through brittle stuttering rhythms and blurred-out soul keys that almost teases with its comparative brevity.

Chris Downton

Billy Dalessandro – Cracktime (Soniculture) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Terranova – Hotel Amour (Kompakt)

2012-02-01T05:27:44Z

Its good to see Kompakt responding to contemporary dance music taste in this manner. The Cologne label has stuck to its guns through various shifts in techno and house production, at times sounding wildly out-of-touch, but Terranova’s Hotel Amour represents a credible attempt to address current interests. It finds the established German group fusing the gushing pop-house traits Kompakt (and Terranova themselves) is known for with the in-vogue neon tones and sharp structures of vintage Chicago. The two were never that far apart anyway.

So, we get the airy synths and smart claps of ‘Question Mark’, over which the voice of Thomas Hoffdig, reminiscent of Antony Johnson croon ‘I will meet you in the dark’ – a literal combination of Adonis and Superpitcher. ‘So Strong’ is more percussive, the vocal (by pop-techno veteran and Julee Cruise collaborator Khan) more resigned and shrouded in echo, while the title track looks to the jazz-house of Detroit with its strings and vibraphone lines. The dominant presence of vocals offers one method of breaking up the repetition, with most tracks stretching basic melodic ideas originally drawn 20 years ago (no bad thing when done this competently) but I find the vocals excessive and detracting. Hotel Amour‘s best moments are those that ditch the commercial imperatives and go for straight dancefloor tool functionalism: the soaring bleeps of single ‘I Want to Go Out’, and the Berghhain-esque shudder of ‘Take My Hand’.

Joshua Meggitt

Terranova – Hotel Amour (Kompakt) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Various Artists – Free The Beats Vol. 6 (Free The Beats)

2012-01-31T00:04:06Z

Try and pay attention to what you do semi-consciously when listening to music. It could be that you tap your fingers or your feet in time to rhythm, grandly air-guitar/drum along to Led Zeppelin, or nod your head with tacit approval to some beats. I am currently engaged in the latter while listening to Free the Beats #6, the latest in a quarterly series of curated releases of the best of Sydney’s underground beats scene. The importance of this shouldn’t be understated – we all of course know that the sage head-nod is, for beat-heads a universal sign of approval.

Of course it is here we mention that Free the Beats is a distinctly atypical beat release – and for that, it should be applauded. The compilations emphasise diversity in style, a DIY attitude and a shared love of synthetic sounds – dubstep, glitch, hip-hop and ambient – in order to ‘turn this fragmented scene into a community’. It should be added that music of ‘the community’ is in this case not defined sonically, but rather by the shared spirit in which it is produced and distributed. Though there’s not an acoustic guitar, nasal whine or political cause in sight, one could mount an argument that this is genuine ‘folk music’. Free the Beats is a stridently independent operation; burning all 100 CD-Rs, distributing this edition inside a denim rear pocket and generally doing it all on a shoestring with no recognised label in sight.

So I’ve taken this time to explain the good karma of the FtB project. But this would ultimately feel a little hollow – both from me as a reviewer and the curators and producers involved – if the beats weren’t top-notch. Which they absolutely, truthfully are. It fills me with happiness to be able to say so without any hint of compromise; Free The Beats Vol. 6 has been on rotation on my music player and my mind for the fortnight since it arrived in the post. It opens superbly – excuse my lack of familiarity with the producers here; I’d only ever heard of Elliot before – with the Monkfly cut, ‘Cosmic’ – a spacey future jam that shimmers and drops hard. From there it goes from strength to strength, the low-down hip-hop of ‘Ego Grinding’ fading into the short, experimental Elliot workout ‘Turntable Exercise’. As an opening salvo, it is mighty impressive and stands up well to any Australian beats release of 2011, let alone 2012. Though it’s difficult to maintain the quality and diversity of the opening three tracks, Free The Beats Vol. 6 does its best, with further standouts including the Flight Recorder effort, ‘Phase’ (from the superb recent EP of the same name), Admin Beats’ ‘Dangerous’ and the maddening (only because I can’t quite pick the sample, which is dancing just out of my reach) ‘Struttin’ by Rotes.

Let’s recap. Free the Beats is a brave and big idea. But no one has to patronise it by merely talking about how it augments and unites a fragmented, young, urban Sydney beats scene. We can talk about it – and hopefully people will talk about it – because it’s damn good; and given the porous state of Australian hip-hop at present, deserves to be heard.

Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo

Various Artists – Free The Beats Vol. 6 (Free The Beats) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Technical Drawings – The Ruined Map (Gagarin Records)

2012-01-30T23:40:09Z

Technical Drawings inhabit an under-populated region where the stray currents sparking off from electronica, modern classical and gamelan music meet. Not only a sleepy afternoon class at high school with a crotchety old teacher, Technical Drawings is the duo of Melissa St. Pierre on prepared Electric Piano and Jesse Stiles, who beavered away on Max MSP in a out-of-the-way textile factory, in order to produce this unique-sounding album. Like the organic techno of Reanimator’s Special Powers, or Viennese Duo Rotterdam, The Ruined Map does not easily fit into any category, preferring to carve out its own niche. The albums’ Modus Operandi is set from the opener ‘Marching Band’; short instrumental numbers full of old car parts, blasted cymbals and malfunctioning camera equipment. These items slowly assemble themselves into an itchy, irreverent vibe that would mix well with the much missed (around these parts, anyways) Stock, Hausen and Walkman.

‘Skullflower’ sounds like tropical punks Tetine, if their sole South American influence came from a transplanted steel drum busker in upstate New York (who only listens to Arthur Russell and Prince Jammy). This is lopsided boogie for open-minded dance floors. A gloriously overdriven distorto-funk emerges in the last minute, which could be nudged into epic ten-minute trance shuffle territory; yet it finishes thirty seconds later. A pile-up of Erik Satie, Dan the Automator and the Gamelan Orchestra of the Yogyakarta Royal Palace, ‘Underwater’ almost sounds as if the Sun City Girls were covering Luc Ferrari. The lone vocal number on The Ruined Map features Todd Jones, an ex-Hardcore Guitarist turned dub concrete Poet. ‘Strange Flora’ is a beguiling mix between modern urges and ancient spectres – Odysseus, landing parties (replete with weapons) and islands on the edge of the world. ‘Pacific Coast Highway’ finds the duo heading up the Oregon coast with Sun Araw and Talvin Singh, in a cavalcade of blunted tabla rhythms.

Clocking in at barely over thirty minutes, The Ruined Map doesn’t hang around. Where countless modern musicians push their release durations towards the limits of their chosen format, Technical Drawings inventive use of twinkling textures twinned with experimental pianistic techniques yields appealing results in a diet-sized, barely LP length, portion. Emerging from the textile factory, Stiles is now working as the Music Director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; I’d love to see choreography to accompany the itchy junglist rhythm of ‘Issue project redux’!

Oliver Laing

Technical Drawings – The Ruined Map (Gagarin Records) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Isaac Delusion – Midnight Sun EP (Cracki Records)

2012-01-30T23:39:16Z

Midnight Sun is the second release for French label Cracki Records, by duo Isaac Delusion. The EP combines pleasant poppy and folk elements with more electronic textures. The title track opens the record and is the album highlight –with creamy and warm keyboards providing the backdrop, the song is benefited from a propulsive drumbeat and snippets of vocal samples that brings up the intensity level and acts as an interesting counterpoint to some very laidback vocals, which bring to mind both Thom Yorke and Antony.

Coupled with this is ‘Waiting’, which finishes with an interesting electronic outro – while the EP includes an acoustic version that is pleasant enough, it loses some of the power in the simpler arrangement. Elsewhere the slower ‘Iron Man’ – sounding not dissimilar to Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’ – is the straightest rock song on the album. Compared to the first two tracks, it sounds a little cautious and hesitant.

Despite this, Midnight Sun is a very listenable EP, with immaculate and crisp production and pitch-perfect vocals. While it mightn’t win any awards for originality, there is something quite calming and oddly charming about it. There seems to be any number of directions Isaac Delusion could go after this, but for now this EP is one that will no doubt get repeated listens over the Summer.

Wyatt Lawton-Masi

Isaac Delusion – Midnight Sun EP (Cracki Records) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Erode – Horizon (Tympanik Audio)

2012-01-29T20:28:37Z

German electronic producer Alexander Dietz is best known for his role as guitarist for the successful German metal band Heaven Shall Burn, but despite this musical background this debut solo album as Erode ‘Horizon’ easily represents one of the least metallic / industrial releases I’ve heard from Tympanik in some months, with the eleven tracks collected here being geared far more towards lush, atmospheric IDM landscapes. For ‘Erode’ Dietz has called upon Mike Cadoo (Bitcrush, Dryft, Gridlock) for co-production duties, and in many senses it’s the latter’s characteristically detailed production aesthetic that really colours this intricately crafted collection. Opening track ’10950′ sees the slow trail of glacial drones and distant sampled voices slowly beginning to coalesce around elegant-sounding melodic synth arrangements and contorted breakbeats in a manner that calls to mind the N5MD label’s melancholic post-IDM explorations, only for crashing live drums and overdriven guitars to suddenly crash in over the top of the electronics as the entire track builds into a triumphant crescendo.

While the aforementioned track easily represents the one real concession to rockist behaviour here, ‘Detect’ ventures further out into dark brooding synthscapes, sending fractured, spasmic breakbeats rolling like distorted noise bursts beneath a foreboding backdrop of bass synths and forlorn-sounding strings, the entire track almost dropping out altogether before menacing Skinny Puppy-esque vocal growls begin to rise up amidst the glistening synth arrangements and flexing snares, heightening the sense of oddly serene tension generated. Elsewhere, the eight minute long ‘Overcome’ sees subtle hiphop influences infiltrating proceedings as a lurching, off-centre beats provides the rhythmic anchor for spectral layers of shimmering ambient synth pads, the entire track suddenly accelerating off into a burst of near-breakcore activity before settling back down into wide-eyed contemplation, before ‘Annoy’ drags things back down into the claustrophobic depths, sending a nightmarish tattoo of hyperaccelerated breakbeats rattling against a backdrop of darkly buzzing synth textures that calls to mind a spooky field of malfunctioning electrical transformers. An impressively crafted debut – in many senses ‘Horizon’ reminded me of Skinny Puppy’s recent ‘Handover’ album, a collection that similarly manages to navigate both industrial and IDM waters without ever really being subsumed in either scene.

Chris Downton

Erode – Horizon (Tympanik Audio) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Ryonkt – Troposphere (Twiceremoved Records)

2012-01-30T04:36:29Z

Ryonkt is the alias for Japanese artist Ryo Nakata’s guitar-drone project. On his fifth album, Troposphere, Ryonkt seems to leave behind the field recordings and gentle melodies and articulations of his previous releases and focus instead on the construction of thick slabs of pulsing, static texture, a subtler approach that makes this release a more demanding listen than one might initially expect.

There is no recognisable melodic phrasing across the album. The feeling of melody is still present, however through electronic manipulation what might have started out as melody has been transformed into droning meta-structures whose subtle changes and colourations require focused and attentive listening. While the album credits the use of guitar as the source of the sound on display here, in reality there is nothing particularly reminiscent of an electric guitar in the sound of the album. The expected sharp attacks of pitches have been stretched, distorting the timbre and expanding the one-dimensional texture of the electric guitar into a rounded sea of clouded frequencies, sounding surprisingly akin to the synth pads of an early Tangerine Dream recording. Subtle, repetitive pulses push the sound forward, with each layer of sound clearly audible so that the listener can flick their attention between different aspects of the wall of sound at will. The recordings never seem to get messy or unfocused however, there is a definite sense of structure on this album, it’s just that the structure is rather homogenous.

Overall, this album is static drone at its most uncompromising, and the value the listener will derive from the release is entirely dependent on how much interest they have in seeking out the subtle sound shapes that gradually form across these colourful and uplifting slabs of texture. For the listener that is seeking out some ethereal, spaced out drone, Troposphere will satisfy.

Sam Gillies

Ryonkt – Troposphere (Twiceremoved Records) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.