The Slovak artist Martina Slovaková, a student at the Bratislava-based Academy of Fine Arts and Design, has dealt with the national conscioussness and identity in her work for some time (and not only because of her surname - Slovak:) Her latest project, her BA graduation work, entitled …
I love it when musical worlds collide like this: Looping vocal hymn-maker Julianna Barwick improvised with NYC legend Ikue Mori on laptop and electronics at the White Columns gallery. And now the recordings will be pressed to vinyl courtesy of RVNG Intl. More like this, please.
Normally I think Ikue Mori’s music all sounds the same, and this doesn’t start promising, but after a short bit this actually is very enjoyable. Good duo!
I love it when musical worlds collide like this: Looping vocal hymn-maker Julianna Barwick improvised with NYC legend Ikue Mori on laptop and electronics at the White Columns gallery. And now the recordings will be pressed to vinyl courtesy of RVNG Intl. More like this, please.
Normally I think Ikue Mori’s music all sounds the same, and this doesn’t start promising, but after a short bit this actually is very enjoyable. Good duo!
I’m a very patient listener, but I have my limits. When this record came out, I bought it on the strength of Aufgehoben’s previous album, Messidor, an album that was mistakenly placed in the “electronic” section of Other Music (NYC), and, since it looked like Autechre, I had some reservations about it. However, that was pretty damn good, in the same vein as MoHa!. None of that, however, prepared me for Khora. When I saw the song lengths, I asked myself if I could listen to a nearly 30 minute track of this. Truth be told, some of you might pass on that, at least for a long time. I did. In fact, I didn’t listen to that last track until this past month. I have no idea why I waited.
Khora is a special beast, especially this last track. Its mystery is how it can pack so much dynamism within a seemingly static song. That is, if you don’t just listen to it, just like some eai, it will sound completely arbitrary and uniform, but just like eai, it can actually be seen as radically different from moment to moment. This last track is so good, in fact, that I consider it the ultimate rock instrument generated noise track I’ve ever heard.
When I first listened to this, I was trawling through Tumblr and came across this picture:
This isn’t a commentary whatsoever about the specific contents of the picture, but rather a personal experience tied to listening to this music. The sounds in this last track are chaotic, aggressive, and when I encountered this picture, it added some sense to the music of despair. In other words, this noise can take on a sorrowful tone. Indeed, portions of this track, especially around the 17 minute mark, sound desperate, out of control… And these feelings stuck. While driving back from my radio show last Sunday, I waited until I had 27 minutes left until I got home, and I put this on. This music fit the landscape so well. Most Midwestern terrain is best suited to epic tracks, long developments, and a tinge of sadness. The track retained the sorrow I felt in first listening to it, and it took on the character of the nighttime, and the emptiness of my drive home.
While I’m confident that some of the tone will translate to your own experience, I understand many people can hear many things in this. But unless you make it 20 minutes in, don’t judge this. It is a powerful piece of art with its own personality, but it also has a way to seem sympathetic to your moods. It presents itself as a unified whole, but underneath the surface clipping is a great, dynamic energy. Don’t pass on this.
When we visited Poznan, the guys from the electronic hip-hop project Napszyklat were just in the midst of recording a new LP. It’s already mastered and very soon to be out on Ampersand Records. The LP is called Kultur Shock and you can listen to a…
This is a selection of tracks by musicians encountered during explorations of the Eastern European sonic underground from May until October 2010. From Bucharest to Gdansk, from Košice to Prague, this is a reflection of…
PVT - Community Nice Nice - See Waves Growing - Challenger Masochistic Values - Girls Vs. Boys Nonima - Pi Doom Tickler - School Jungle Mud Pool Chris Rehm - Salivary Stones Nuearz - Modulation A The Books - A Cold Freezin’ Night Xiu Xiu - Chocolate Makes You Happy High Places…
1. Minamo - Individual Synesthesia 2. Swans - No Words/No Thoughts 3. E&E - Ash 4. Actress - Maze 5. Charanjit Singh - Raga Bhairav 6. Caribou - Bowls 7. Forrest Swords - Visits 8. LAKE R▲DIO - 13093 9. Graham Lambkin & Jason Lescalleet - Color Drop 10. The Ex - Maybe I Was The Pilot 11. Zs - Concert Black 12. Zs - Acres of Skin 13. Piresian Beach - Summertime 14. Sleigh Bells - Crown On the Ground 15. Pantha Du Prince - Bohemian Forest 16. DVA - Hap Hej 17. SLEEP ∞ OVER - Outer Limits 18. Sun Araw - Ma Holo 19. Zerkalo - Invisible 20. Future Islands - As I Fall
In writing this review, I attempted to count how many albums Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella have released over the past year, but shit’s just not worth tabulating. I can no longer keep up with what iteration of those Portland folk are still together (are Cerberus Shoal and Fire on Fire still active???) and when and who released what. For simplicity, let us assume that the number of releases Caleb and Colleen have secreted throughout the years is the very technical quantity ‘fuck load.’ I can almost surely (my faculties aren’t that certain) count on one hand how many albums Caleb, Colleen, Asian Mae, Rose Philistine, and miscellaneous strange Maine folk have put out under the Big Blood moniker this year—Dead Songs (Time-Lag), Night Terrors on the Isle of Louis Hardin (Cabin Floor Esoterica), Operators and Things (Dontrustheruin), PM50 (a compilation for Peasant Magik on which they appear), and now Dark Country Magic (Dontrustheruin) [that’s five, by the way]. So one could remark that that’s a mighty large number of albums for Big Blood this year, but given their prolific history, 2010 has just been another year’s work.
But one especially unique aspect to Big Blood’s 2010 output is how stylistically diverse it was. By their standards, Dead Songs was a straight-laced rocker, whereas the drone-folk of Night Terrors was their furtherest left of the dial and Operators and Things found Big Blood in their comfortable ‘freakier and folkier than Devendraohyoualreadyknowthejoke’ territory. This new venture, Dark Country Magic, is nestled between the aforementioned three. It combines the the group’s trademark weirdness with the strong, conventional songwriting of Dead Songs. Their magnificent song crafting shines through in more than one instance, but “She-Wander(er)” is without a doubt the highlight, another ‘track of the year’ in a long line of stellar Big Blood cuts (“Song for Baltimore,” “A Hole In One,” Oh Country (Skin & Bones),” etc.).
I never noticed until recently, but Big Blood are a band greatly influenced by their children, with references constantly popping up in Colleen’s lyrics. But not until Dark County Magic was this altogether obvious to me, with the critical mass of adorableness that is “Moo-Hoo” and the lovely collage insert of what I presume to be Caleb and Colleen’s children. While Big Blood may often employ dark themes, there never is a sense of despair in their music; there is always a shrining light. I’m constantly overwhelmed by an incredible joy for existence when listening, almost reborn. I think the influence of their children, the purity of youth, is partly responsible for this singularly positive aesthetic, and, in turn, why I love them so. As Danny said on his facebook, “Band of my life.”
