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Secret Pyramid- The Silent March (Students of Decay) 2014

Posted in Drone, Secret Pyramid with tags , , on November 7, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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Students of Decay released one of my favourite records of all time, Peter Wright’s At Last A New Dawn. That was all the way back in 2007 and since then they have been releasing appealing slabs of drone, ambient and experimental electronic music out into the world. This year I had the good fortune to get myself a copy of the shimmering beauty that is Kyle Bobby Dunn’s The Infinite Sadness of Kyle Bobby Dunn which if you haven’t head it is an absolute treat for those of us who enjoys our trips to the drone/ambient sector of experimental music.

A record that doesn’t stray too far from the drone ambient axis is this mesmerising dose of loveliness. Secret Pyramid is the name used by Canadian musician Amir Abbey. The Silent March was originally released in 2011 on cassette by a small Canadian label however after releasing Secret Pyramid’s Movements of Night last year Students of Decay thought it may be a good idea to give this a wider release.

I for one am glad I did. I only received my copy a few days ago and I can’t stop listening to it. The Silent March consists of seven slowly evolving drone tracks that somehow still manage a dull shimmer under some pretty overcast sky. Sadness can be a beautiful thing in music and this record is a prime example.  The acoustic guitar based Come Down Gently mines similar (although much more subtle) territory to Earth’s recent output over the last  few years ago. It sounds to me almost like Stars of the Lid  descending into western gothic territory. Quite lovely really. I’m a sucker for this kind of sound and if you do enjoy the drone work of Kevin Drumm, Stars of the Lid, Kyle Bobby Dunn or even Richard Skelton you’ll need to listen to this.

It will be officially released on 11 November in Vinyl and download formats. If you are extra smart can i suggest the two CD set which also includes Movements of Night as well.

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Machinefabriek – Secret Photographs (Important) 2013

Posted in Drone, Machinefabriek, Music with tags , , on March 9, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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I’ve become a little obsessed with the works of Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek over the past 18 months or so. It all started when I  first  heard the amazing Veldwerk compilation which was almost the perfect blend of field recordings, drone, noise, electronic manipulation and sonic experimentation. Since then I’ve tried to track down most of his readily available records and not once have I been disappointed.  I think the main reason for that is that Zuydervelt isn’t beholden to one particular sound. Although it was his processed field recordings that sucked me in, it is commissioned  works for dance and film that keep me coming back.

The soon to be released Episode 23 of The Antidote Podcast will feature two of his more recent works, the challenging Doepfer Worm  and the sublime piece written for the Moscow Ballet, Attention, the Doors Are Closing, and because this blog doesn’t necessarily focus on new releases I thought I’d start with Secret Photographs, the 2012 soundtrack to the film of the same  name.

I’m not sure if the film has seen the light of day as yet but it was to focus on the photographic obsession of Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a 1930’s gangster that spent his final days in Spain. After he died a large  number of photographs were discovered and sold on ebay. The director of the film Mike Hoolboom managed to purchase them and the idea for the film began.

The soundtrack is made up of three long pieces which span a total of 70 minutes or so. Each of the tracks focuses on a minimal, shimmering drone. That seems to be a term I’ve used before but to further clarify – Secret Photographs is drone in a fragile, Stars of the Lid kind of way rather than the painfully pitched drone work of say Hototogisu. This album is a great staring point for anyone interested in minimal drone work. Indeed it is in a select group of records that manage to stay true to it’s ascetic without ever becoming boring. Simply stunning.

 

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Birchville Cat Motel – Nurse (Fencing Flatworm Recordings) 2004

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on January 2, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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Well here we are in 2014. This bog (typo and it’s staying) was sadly neglected in 2013 for a crapload of reasons. Firstly Ingmar from evolkweenthemusical and I started The Antidote Podcast which meant that a great deal of my listening time was spent absorbing new releases to pontificate about. Secondly I had a third kid at the end of 2012 and that little rotter decided that sleep was for pussies and thirdly my job got superbusy which has been tremendously stressful but also fun. In any event the opportunities I had to listen to records for this blog were severely compromised. So I had to make a decision about whether to keep this blog going or just letting it slide into the digital ether. In the end I’ve decided that this blog will become much more active in 2014 – but the focus will change to concentrate to records that I need to share with others rather than to offer my thoughts on records that I think will generate traffic. At it’s height this blog was getting crazy numbers of visits and it was even named one of the best music bogs in Vice magazine. That was great for my ego but I think I lost sight of the reason why I started this bog in the place. So there you go – no more negative reviews. If I didn’t like it you will no longer find it written about here. DBS will  now only have reviews of records that I think noise nerds are going to enjoy. So here we go.

Let’s face it 2013 was a pretty ordinary year for music and  I wasn’t particularly inspired by much which essentially meant that my non-podcast purchases focused on nostalgic trawls through discogs and ebay. Nurse was a late night purchase on ebay which I discovered when I was looking for out of print Whitehouse records. Anyone who has followed this bog since it started in 2006 will know that the work of Campbell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel has been pretty well covered. In fact at least two of his records With Maples Ablaze and Our Love Will Destroy the World (the title he later took to name his new project when Birchville was retired) are in my top 20 records of all time. Although I enjoy his rock-pig and psychedelic guitar records such as Bird Sister Blasphemy and Astro Catastrophes, I think his best work is defined by his shimmering, ecstatic drone work. 

Nurse consists of one half hour untitled. The thing that sets it apart for me though is the use of beats. It almost starts like a Vladisav Delay minimalist techno record before the high pitched drones cascade over the top and a sublime white noise drone takes over. Yet like the best drone this record took me on a journey. There are subtle and not so subtle interjections of noise and found sound which makes this one  of the best things I heard in 2013 especially as many noise artists started becoming more overt in there explorations of beats. I can’t recommend this enough. There are copies on discogs for sale which aren’t prohibitively expensive – yoiu may want to check it out.

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Slomo – The Bog (Important) 2008

Posted in Doom, Drone, Music, Slomo with tags , , , on April 7, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Now here is a band that should be much more well known than they are. Towards the end of last year they released their new record The Grain and when I found out, well – let’s just say that I was pretty excited. You see Slomo have released two of my favourite records – 2005’s The Creep and The Bog which came out on Important in 2008. Since then though, nothing, absolutely fuck all until now  of course. But first I think  The Bog is worth bringing to people’s attention. I reckon it may be  one of the strangest things that Important ever  released. Slomo are a duo from England who specialise in a slow moving, doom/ambient/creepy vibe – think what it would sound like if Mike Connelly asked Steven O’Malley to help out on a Failing Lights record. The band describe their sound as highly ritualised glumbient. I love the term glumbient but it may not quite encapsulate how sinister the music can be. The album itself is a  one hour long meditation in blackened dreamscapes and the threat of the unseen. I don’t listen to that much doom or black metal anymore but The Bog has been something I have gone back to  again and again. If you stumble over a copy on your travels it might just be worth picking up.

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Mike Shiflet – Blurred and Scorched (Wachsender Prozess) 2012

Posted in Drone, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , on February 25, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

Blurred & scorched

Hey did you know that Mike Shiflet snuck out another CDr in 2012? Me Neither. But thanks to the power of the twitter and the majesty of bandcamp you can snaffle a copy either digitally or a physical CDr if you so choose. I would have got myself the CDr but there is no international shipping so usnon-american noise people will have to make do with the digital version. It should not be a real mystery to anyone who reads this blog regularly that I appreciate Shiflet’s art. In fact he produced my two favourite records of last year. There is just something about the gritty, intense drones that Shiflet produces which do for something for me. Although Blurred and Scorched may lack some of the shimmering epicness of The Choir, The Army, it’s ten tracks are great examples of agitated experimental drone music. It’s the type of sound that is meditative and challenging at the same time. If I had heard it last year it would certainly have sneaked into my top 10. Shiflet along with Aaron Dilloway and Kevin Drumm are currently making up my unholy trinity of US experimental artists right now.

At the moment (until the end of February) Mike is using the proceeds of the sale of Blurred and Scorched to help some fellow Ohian musicians with their medical bills. Coming from a country with universal healthcare I find the thought of that kind of depressing but please make sure you pick up a copy before March and while your there get yourself a copy of Llanos and Omnivores. Both classics.

www.mikeshiflet.bandcamp.com

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Locrian & Christoph Heemann – S/T (Handmade Birds) 2012

Posted in Christoph Heemann, Doom, Drone, Locrian, Music with tags , , , , on October 16, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Here are two artists I don’t know a lot about. I knew about Heemann from his collaboration with Merzbow and work with Nurse With Wound and the Chicago duo Locrian have made a previous  appearance on this site with their Rain of Ashes record. Before listening to this record I kind of knew that Locrian mined a drone metal sort of sound palette. That sort of sound  feels very stale to me now. The  number of submissions I receive from bands who still play it have not instilled me with a great deal of confidence that there is anyone thinking freshly about metal in a drone  context. When this arrived I was in two minds whether I would listen to it but I did and I’m glad I did. This is a truly great record. It is also a pretty difficult sound to pin down.  There is a shit load going on on this records four lengthy tracks. The first track Hecatomb is one of my favourite pieces of music mright now. It’s roots are obviously firmly in a drone metal context yet it is the injection of Necks style piano and  a feeling of improvised abandon with the guitars which lend the music an open, expansive feel. The second track lifts its skirts to reveal its blackened metal soul whilst the third track Edgeless City is an excursion through ambient drone with a sinister edge that gradually becomes much more oppressive.The final track, The Drowned Forest sees the artists getting their inner druid on for some ritualistic vocal action which become more intense as it progresses. It’s strangely beautiful and overwhelming all at once.

2012 has seen some excellent collaborations and split LP’s. Swanson and Shiflet, Dilloway and Lescalleet, Shiflet and Panzner, Blankenship and Reed have all produced amazing records this year. Add this too the pile.  This record has restored my faith in  bleak metal.

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Bee Mask – Elegy For Beach Friday (Spectrum Spools) 2011

Posted in Bee Mask, Drone, Music with tags , , , on October 10, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

I have seen some unbelievably great shows this year. One of my absolute favourites was back in July when Rites Wild and a rather unimpressive local act supported the great Bee Mask aka Chris Madak. Of course with any great show there is always great merch and I just so happened to get myself a copy of Elegy For Beach Friday before I left.

It is difficult to describe the experimental  electronica that Bee Mask produces. It is fair to say that on this record, the foundations of the  sound is rooted firmly in drone territory but infused throughout are Caretaker-style nostalgia, bubbling electronica, buzzing insect-like sounds, broad sweeping elegiac passages of sheer beauty, synth excursions and clouds of opaque and menacing drone. As an album, Elegy works extraordinarily well notwithstanding that it is a compilation of rare vinyl and tape tracks from 2003 to 2010. In fact rarely has a record had such an effect on me as this. It is one of those records that seeps into the consciousness and is an almost perfect rendering of great electronica that explores  beauty, menace and sadness. Bee Mask has a new EP on Room 40 and his new Spectrum Spools release of new material arrives in a few weeks. Don’t be surprised to see either of those reviewed hear soon. Elegy is mesmerising and fantastic.

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Mike Shiflet – Sufferers (Type) 2011

Posted in Drone, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , on August 10, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Type records have been releasing some absolutely cracking records in 2011/2012. Two of the finest are the Mike Shiflet records Sufferers and Merciless. Both records were recorded just before Shiflet’s ground breaking Llanos record of last year. Sufferers came out at the end of last year and is my favourite of the two. It’s always hard to categorise Shiflet’s music. I suppose the starting point is to call the tracks on Sufferers drone but I just feel that the use of that term is just not quite right. There is a melancholic deliberateness to the work here.The sound moves incrementally and  in some ways it has the overall feel of an ambient version of Wolf Eye’s  Burned Mind record of a few years back. There is a lurching post apocalyptic field recording quality to the first few tracks but it’s Shiflet’s use of volume and intensity of the sounds that makes Sufferers a couple of steps away form an ordinary drone listening experience. This is drone for the rust-belt noise guys – the sort of thing which seeps into your consciousness to leave you just a little creeped out and extremely unsettled.  Tremendous.

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Pete Swanson – Man With Potential (Type) 2011

Posted in Drone, Music, Pete Swanson, yellow swans with tags , , on July 31, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Sorry I haven’t been around. Life has kind of gotten in the way of updating this site as much as I would like to. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t been listening to a shit-ton of great music but in between the impending arrival of my third son, selling our house and a fucking horrible bout of Influenza A, the desire to type out my thoughts on records kind of collapsed. I even had to miss Keith Fullertom-Whitman’s recent show at the IMA because of the evil flu. One show I won’t be missing no matter whether I get sick, my kid gets born early or some other life issue is Pete Swanson’s gig at the Judith Wright Centre in August. The Yellow Swans are my favourite band –  period. I think for the last Yellow Swans record I reviewed here, Going Places, I said that the band just kept going from strength to strength wit this continual ability to make a better record that their last. I think Pete Swanson has managed to continue this quality into his solo work.

There are records of the past few years that i call my “Holy Shit” record. Albums that are just so flawlessly fantastic that  they attain the right to be called instant classics. In that group I place Black To Comm’s Alphabet 1968. Burning Star Core’s Challenger, Yellow Swans Going Places, Mike Shiflet’s Llanos, Daniel Menche and Kevin Drumm’s Gauntlet, Cane Swords’ Big Warmup In The Mouth Of Eternity. I also think that Man With Potential is up there with those records. Man With Potential sees Swanson embrace electronica and variations of techno, dub and minimalist beats and inject it with a giant dose of melancholia to replicate the rave at the end of the world. It’s stunning stuff. An album that is such a leap to the left of the  tremendous guitar  drones of the  I Don’t Rock At All. This is vinyl only but for a couple of bucks boomkat will sell you the mp3. One of the best records you’ll ever buy.

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Mike Shiflet – Gutter Divas (Dokuro) 2010

Posted in Drone, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , on June 5, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Mike Shiflet has had a great run of releases recently and I promise I’ll get around to posting on them soon but I really wanted to write about this one. Gutter Divas was a cassette only release from 2010 which appeared in very limited quantities on an Italian label, Dokuro. There are still copies floating around on the internets but you need not  worry about such things because for  couple  of bucks you can get your own copy straight of Mike’s bandcamp site. I actually find it extraordinarily difficult to write about Shiflet’s music. He has graciously agreed to an interview but  for  a man who makes a living  cross examining witnesses I’m really struggling to come up with a set of questions that don’t sound lame.

Anyway, Gutter Divas is a two track release which focuses on static-heavy drone. The first track Gutter Divas uses sudden changes in volume to, I don’t know, raise  the tension and  … look what I think he does is smash the passiveness of the usual listening experience that tends to be the fall back position of people like me who are huge fans of the meditative qualities of drone. Drone is an overused term on this blog  and it has a many variants as any other genre but I suppose what Shiflet achieves is a more restless, industrial, overt form which is like a caffeinated ambience. The second track, They Don’t Have The Heart to Tell You is the type of straight up drone record where the subtle insertions of other frequencies and sounds and variations in volume keep the track from being purely static. Although it feels like much less is going  on than the first track, it is far more aggressive in the fact that the drone used is the type that changes the  listener’s ear pressure (which I actually like a fair bit). Gutter Divas is the Shiflet record I listen to the most and a pretty neat starting for those that have never heard him before.

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CM Von Hausswolff – 800 000 Seconds in Harar (Touch) 2011

Posted in CM Von Hausswolf, Drone, Music with tags , , , on June 4, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

I the last few years of his life, Arthur Rimbaud, lived in Harar Ethiopia where he made his living as a coffee merchant and arms dealer. It was the place where he first started suffering the symptoms of cancer which would later claim his life at the age of 37. A playwright, Ullrich Hillebrad sent Swedish sound artist and composer  CM Von Hausswolff to Harar to record sounds for some music that he wanted Von Hausswolf to develop for a play based on a letter written by Rimbaud.

Von Hauswolff manages to  get a large number of field recordings from his stay in Harar as well as some notes from an ethiopian string  instrument called a krar which he then creates into pieces of the most exquisite minimalist drone. The first two tracks, Day and Night,are like a perfect amalgam of two of my favourite records, Russell Haswell’s Wild Tracks and Kevin Drumm’s Imperial Horizon.  The remaining two tracks are not quite as strong as the two openers, but the third track Alas! is what I reckon Stars of the Lid would sound like if they scored a horror film. Glacial tension if you can imagine such a thing. I suppose another way to hear it is  as an interesting link to Von Hausswolff’s interest in EVP’s and other  spooky things.  The final track is much more challenging.   A Sleeper in the Valley is an oscillator overlaying a morse code rendition of one of Rimbaud’s poems. Awesome? Shit yeah! And pretentious as fuck I might add but when the record sounds this good I  don’t really care.

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Bruce Russell and Roy Montgomery – Split (Grapefruit Records) 2012

Posted in Bruce Russell, Music, New Zealand Bands, noise, Roy Montgomery, The Dead C with tags , , , , on April 28, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

This vinyl release is coming out on Grapefruit Records. a subscription style label in the vein of Three Lobed. On this release we find two of the towering giants of the New Zealand underground. The Pin Group’s Roy Montgomery and the Dead C’s Bruce Russell. My love of the New Zealand  avant garde music scene should be of no real surprise to regular readers but I had very different reactions to the two tracks on this album.

Lets deal with the track that confused me. Bruce Russell’s track is titled Mistah Chilton, He Dead. I’ve listened to it a stack of times. In the car on the way to the tip, through headphones on a long walk and at the supermarket and a few times after my kids have gone to sleep and the house is quiet.  There is no doubt that it is a tricky track to write about let alone come to terms with. There is a squealing, frantic quality to the sound that during its earlier stages reminded me a little of some of John Zorn’s more brutal outings. It sure as shit ain’t the Dead C. It has a bit of the lo-fi about it, it’s not exactly drone but it is not noise as many of us understand it. It has its charms (especially the last seven minutes) but I didn’t a great deal of pleasure from it. And goddamn it, if there is no pleasure in noise then what is the fucking point. I felt the same way about Russell’s work in A Handful of Dust. I just didn’t get it. I am obviously the wrong audience.

The flip side by Roy Montgomery is a very different sound altogether. This is pure chiming guitar drone pleasure. Emotional melodies float over the top to create quasi folk-like psychedelia. It is absolutely gorgeous – an avant garde take on emotion and bliss. Pure pleasure.

I am keen to read other reviews of Bruce Russell’s track. I may be missing something. I’m just not sure what it is.

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Mike Shiflet & Joe Panzner – Split (Rubber City Noise) 2012

Posted in Joe Panzner, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , , on April 25, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

This year Mike Shiflet has turned up on my noise radar in a serious way. I had no idea the guy even existed until he teamed up with Daniel Menche on the mighty Stalemate. I’ve now become a bit obsessed. Shiflet’s bandcamp site is a treasure trove and if you haven’t heard his record of last year, Llanos, then you are missing out of something very special indeed.

I was pretty happy when Rubber City Noise (the label that released the fantastic Cane Swords record last year that would have easily been in my top three releases of last year 2011) sent me a copy of Shiflet’s split release with Joe Panzner, a fellow mid-western noise guy. Each artist contributes a 22 minute track. Shiflet’s is titled Recollect and may in fact be the most accessible thing he has done. It is a stunning piece of ambient drone work which begins as a beautifully meditative composition until the comforting tones are stripped away to reveal its desolate heart. An amazingly emotional track from Shiflet which abandons the austere distance of some of his earlier work.

Joe Panzner’s track is titled Reconstruct and begins as a jittering, stuttering noise track that recalls Jazkamer at their Merzbow like best.  Yet lurking under the barrage of fuzz, feedback and static is a Stars of the Lid style drone. It takes a fair bit of active listening to hear it but as the barrage dies down and brief glimpses of calm return the drone shrinks away. It is one of those tracks which combines everything that is wonderful in drone, noise, experimental weirdness. It is a remarkable composition. Utterly amazing.

Both of these tracks contain some of the finest experimental sound you will hear all year.  Rubber City Noise is in danger of becoming one of the best labels around right now and you’d be mad not to get a copy of this. Another absolute winner.

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Max Bondi – Convolution (Tartaruga) 2012

Posted in Drone, Max Bondi, Music with tags , , , on March 13, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Tartaruga records make beautifully packaged CD’s of weird electronica and experimental goodness. Max Bondi’s Convolution is their latest release and is due out on 28 March 2012.  Convolution is Max Bondi’s second full length and is another reason why 2012 is  starting out as one of the best years for experimental music. Records like Convolution are difficult to pigeon-hole. Each of the tracks explore a single theme. The first two give variations to low end, slightly animated electronic drone but track three, Overcoding, give a burst of Oneohtrix-style bubbling synths. Other tracks explore dark ambient drone (Ori) and the hard to define electronica of Tim Hecker. All of the tracks are tightly defined, you won’t find anything hidden in the layers here but each track seems to build on the one that has come before and the album is most successful on tracks like Faltung which combines constantly repeating synth lines with undercurrents of drone. Repetition is one of the big themes of Convolution and it may be why Boomkat compared this record to the abstract minimalism of snd. There is a lot here to enjoy and if your thing is challenging electronica then Convolution is well worth a listen. If you are keen to hear what all the fuss us about you can listen to Convolutions here.

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Gyps – Den (Self Released) 2012

Posted in Drone, Gyps, Music with tags , , on March 12, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Sorry I haven’t been around but I’ve been a bit preoccupied with trolling through bandcamp looking for undiscovered gems. This is the first record I want to bring to your attention from my new obsession – Gyps amazing record, Den. Gyps is the side project of  Xander Witt, a musician based in Athens, Georgia. Xander also plays in the very fine Muuy Biien (which is also worth your time tracking down). On Den, Xander manages to concoct a glacial, guitar based drone in a similar vein to Stars of The Lid. But whilst Star of The Lid manage to evoke a feeling of calm, Gyps creates an atmosphere of shattering sadness. He is also not afraid to abandon the formula half way through a track to pile more emotional bleakness and a certain dark ambience. If you love the style of drone that Stars of the  Lid produce you are going to wet yourself when you hear this. Den is already destined to be one of my picks for 2012. A shockingly, brilliant, strange, sad record. You can pick it up here.

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Cane Swords – Big Warmup In The Mouth Of Eternity (Rubber City Noise) 2011

Posted in Cane Swords, Drone, Music, noise with tags , , , , on February 20, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

At the end of last year I stopped posting as much as I should have. I’m not sure why. It may have had much to do with the lack of sleep that my kids inflict on me on a regular basis. So sometimes I feel a bit of a prick because there are records that get sent to me that really blow me away. When I first heard this I emailed the  band to get some further info. I certainly don’t post on everything that gets sent my way but I do listen to all of it. Cane Sword’s Big Warmup In The Mouth Of Eternity was a record I fell hard for and one that should have been in my top five of last year. So I feel really shitty that after telling the band how much I dig their record I didn’t end up posting on it – and that was March 2011. Again, I can’t stress this enough, I feel like a prick.

So, anyway, with that out of the way lets talk about Cane Swords. Cane Swords are the “house band” of Rubber City Noise a record label/performance space/equipment manufacturer run by Curt and Karl from Akron Ohio. Big Warmup was originally released on cassette but you can download it for free from here (and while you’re there click on all of the  Black Unicorn stuff – amazing). Cane Swords record their material live and in one take. They have some idea of the theme when they start  but the sound is built through live experimentation. In my email exchanges with the band they pointed to the strong cathartic and hypnotic thread and when I first heard it I was reminded of the Yellow Swans, the sci-fi B movie records of Merzbow and maybe a bit of Oneohtrix Point Never. But that only tells part of the  story because Big Warmup contains influences in drone, noise, experimentation, dark ambience, pop and  hypnogogic electronica. It is a complex, immense record which contains everything I like about experimental music. I may be a prick for not posting earlier but you’d be a prick not to hear it.

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Daniel Menche – Feral (Sub Rosa) 2011

Posted in Daniel Menche, Drone, Music, noise with tags , , , on May 11, 2011 by noisenoisenoise

Since Menche reactivated as a recording artist last year he has produced some of the strongest and strangest work in his catalogue. There are four tracks on offer here. Two being some of the nastiest recordings I’ve heard Menche make and the other two much more mellow – if you’re idea of mellow is the creeping realisation that the world will end.  What I think Menche does on the second track is explore a much more dark place than he has in the past. This isn’t so much about the blood and energy  flowing through nature but more an exploration of the blacker, hidden side both in its dark recesses and its ultimate destruction. The word “desolate’ gnaws at me when I listen to Feral. Devastated, forsaken, hopeless, ravaged.  The thing to listen to on Feral is the  lower registers. This is where I think Menche excels. Feral One is all noise nastiness with emphasis on giants swarms of static and enveloping clouds of blackness but underneath all of that  is a bass level. There is life underneath the noise but it requires some deep listening. The spooky, chalky, bone  fossicking which made an appearance on his Coultis collaboration is on display  in Feral Three but only lasts momentarily before what sounds like the digestive process of Cthulu takes over  before changing into what sounds like a field recording of a wind, sleet and hail event in Menche’s beloved forests.   Feral Four sees him bringing a lighter touch once again but somehow the creep factor delves into dark ambient territory and is one of my favourite Menche tracks period. Feral is one of the most diverse records of his catalogue. Worth tracking down.

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Daniel Menche & Anla Courtis – Yagua Ovy (MIE Music) 2011

Posted in Daniel Menche, Drone, Music with tags , , , , on April 27, 2011 by noisenoisenoise

Yet another helping of Menche-y goodness – this time on vinyl and scheduled to be released in June. I am a huge fan of Menche’s collaborative work and this time he gets together with Anla Courtis, the Argentinian  experimental guitarist. I’m a tad embarrassed that this is the first time I’ve heard a record featuring Courtis. After hearing this, it certainly won’t be my last.

Yagua Ovy is based on an Argentinian Werewolf myth  of the “blue dog”. The two tracks are an amalgam of Menche’s processed field recordings and Courtis’s instrumental experimentation. The two work very well together. Menche’s treated nature recordings are always disorienting. Actually strike that – most of what Menche does full stop is disorienting. To hear and then try to process the sounds of nature after Menche has finished often leaves me with the feeling that something sinister had been created. Nowhere have I had that effect more than on the first track, Runa-Uturunco,  where walls of static and squall wash over and often intimidate the creepy ambience created by Courtis. What Courtis does has to be heard to be fully appreciated. It is almost like someone is walking through fields of discarded bones – a chalky, hollow, percussive effect which lasts for the first seven minutes before yielding to  cacophony. I almost felt that I was being stalked.

The second track El Relincho has Courtis’s guitar experimentation overlaying what initially sounded like static but once the track progressed, revealed itself to be akin to someone struggling through banks of snow. If I felt like being stalked on the first track, the second is all about fear and flight. It’s both ominous and terrifying.

Menche says that the sound he creates is very controlled and is designed to provoke the listeners imagination. I think this is one of the best representations of that intent. Excellent. If you are lucky enough to have kept your record player then Yagua Ovy can be pre-ordered from www.miemusic.co.uk

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Dove Yellow Swans – Live During War Crimes 3 (Release the Bats) 2009

Posted in Drone, Music, noise, yellow swans with tags , , , on April 17, 2011 by noisenoisenoise

After the Yellow Swans broke up they released the final chapter in the excellent Live During War Crimes series. Like the first two records, Live During War Crimes 3 captures the band in full frontal assault, harsh drone territory. The four untitled tracks on display here are almost overwhelming. They each churn away as if the shimmering transcendencies of their later work got taken over by the forces of evil. The first track in particular is something so brutally oppressive listening through the full 25 minutes seems foolish in retrospect.

It is only on the fourth track that light and oxygen are allowed to filter through the noise and its 25 minutes strikes a fantastic balance between noise, experimentalism and drone. In many ways it is closer to the tracks on Burning Star Core’s Papercuts Theater – a record that is undoubtably heavy going but ultimately  rewarding …. once my ears were able to tease out the subtlety.

Live During War Crimes 3 is not a place to start if you’ve never heard the band before but for Yellow Swans tragics, this tricky to track down, final hurrah is worthwhile getting. Track 4 especially made me miss them all over again.

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Jim O’Rourke – Long Night (Drag City) 2008

Posted in Drone, Jim O'Rourke, Music with tags , , on March 27, 2011 by noisenoisenoise

Last year my slowly dying indie store got a consignment of super cheap Drag City and Kranky stuff. Stuck in that consignment was a couple of sneaky copies of Jim O’Rourke’s double CD opus, Long Night … and freaking long it is – its two tracks coming in at 78 minutes each. Ridiculous on the face of it, but this might be one of the best ambient drone records you’re likely to hear.

This was recorded in 1990 when he first finished college yet it’s easy to think of O’Rourke in the context of his hook friendly rock albums like Eureka and Insignificance or his membership of Sonic Youth but O’Rourke’s early history spanned not only the experimental Americana of Gastr Del Sol but also slow burning drone pieces.  The repetitive tones on Long Night move microscopically yet purposefully when they do. The real question I had when I listened to Long Night was “Is it any good.” I mean I enjoyed it and this sort of stuff works for me but I’m not really sure why it does. I suspect that the tonal calm allows me to drift off because there is nothing that deep listening would accomplish here. There are no hidden noise subsets of recognisable forms peeking through the clouds of drone. It is  a simple movement of sound through different pitch. When the sound is pitched low the sound becomes almost liturgical. In the last twenty minutes of the first track the tones move around to such an extent that they almost create a tune of sorts. Almost.

If the first track fell passive the second epic is a much more forceful drone piece. It’s use of movement throughout makes it a much more interesting piece than the first track.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore the different side to Jim O’Rourke, this might be the record for you. For drone nerds it is definitely the shit.

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