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ACID
MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. - Electric Heavy Land
CD - Alien8, Alien CD34 - £14 Three tracks of stoned-out psyche-metal with krautrock over-tones. Card gatefold packaging. |
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ACID MOTHERS
TEMPLE - Father Moo and the Black Sheep
CD - Swordfish, SFAMCD1 - £12.50 A more ambient AMT than usual, boasting "demonic cult scriptures of dubious eroticism". |
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DEREK BAILEY
- Pieces for Guitar
CD - Tzadik, TZ7080 - 38'19" - £13.50 Previously unavailable recordings from 1966 (probably) of Derek playing his own compositions. The booklet notes relate that around this time, Derek was listening to Anton Webern's compositions every day, and it shows. These are atonal, pointillist pieces, but not pure impersonations of Webern - they feel looser than Webern's tremendously tight structures. Rather than the absolute compositional rigour that Webern subjected himself too, you feel a greater freedom at work here. These are essentially improvisations, albeit amazingly intense and concentrated improvisations. Essential for anybody seeking to find the roots of Derek Bailey's guitar technique and style. |
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KEVIN
BLECHDOM - I Love Presets
CD - Tigerbeat6, MEOW 044 - 14'18" - £7.50 Solo project from one half of Blectum from Blechdom, in which the trademark whimsical electronic noodlings are augmented with comedy vocals. The CD opens with the fantastically fun, Pokémon inspired "Interspecies Love Is Alright" ("my momma's gonna kill me when she hears this song...") and continues in much the same manner. The whole thing sounds like the work of a hyperactive child who's drunk too much Coca-Cola and found herself trapped in Maplins after hours... well maybe a sex obsessed teenager rather than a small child if the lyrics to "Mr. Miguel" et al are anything to go by. The disc climaxes with Kevin's all too faithful cover of Tina Turner's "Private Dancer", right down to the cheesy 80s synth sounds. This is the sonic equivalent to Lucozade, and too much could be... well... too much; but there's only five tracks here, so it's tricky to overdose. |
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CHICAGO
UNDERGROUND DUO - Synthesthesia
CD - Thrill Jockey, THRILL077 - £9 Cornettist and knob-twiddler Rob Mazurek and avant jazz drummer Chad Taylor collaborate on this combination of... well, avant jazz and electronic knob-twiddling. Doesn't sound like much, but very good at its best. |
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TONY CONRAD
WITH FAUST - Outside the Dream Syndicate: 30th Anniversary Edition
2CD - Table of the Elements, SWC-CD-3 - £26 Conrad's noisy and drone-laden 1972 collaboration with Faust is remastered, and re-released with a second disc of previously unreleased material from the same sessions. You also get a 32-page booklet and a poster for your money. See also: Thuunderboy! |
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DOO-DOOETTES
+ KEIJI HAINO + RICK POTTS - Free Rock
CD - PSF, PSFD-131 - £15 A live recording of a performance in Pasadena in 1982. Free jazz meets Psychedelia. See also: Keiji Haino |
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MORTON FELDMAN
- String Quartet II
DVD - mode, mode 112 - 6:07'07" - £35 Here's an event. Morton Feldman's second string quartet is so long -- over six hours in this uncut performance by the Flux Quartet -- that it is almost never been performed in its entirity. David Harrington, violinst with the Kronos Quartet (who played a cut version) has said "I think marathon runners must go through the same thing we do when we play the Second Quartet". Painful for the performer, maybe, anything but for the listener. In common with much of Feldman, the piece is predominantly quiet, meditative and still. Essential for avant garde classical fans, possibly interesting to fans of bernhard günter (Feldman is a massive influence on him) and worth a look for everybody else, too. Note that this DVD version has no visuals, but allows you to hear the entire piece with no breaks. |
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GODSPEED YOU!
BLACK EMPEROR - Yanqui U.X.O.
CD - Constellation, CST024-2 - 1:14'58" - £12 Nothing massively new here, apart from the ! shift. This is the tried and tested GYBE [insert ! as appropriate] formula on the whole, but this time with Steve Albini supervising the knob-twiddling. The record is certainly superior to the last album, and the arrangements are played around with a little more (not all the tracks start quietly, build up, and calm down again; there's a bit more variety than that this time). There's even some phasing on one track, adding a slight psychedelic touch (though only slight). Please be aware that, within the inner sleeve-notes, GYBE advise their buying public to "avoid giving money to predatory retailers and chainstores". |
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JACKIE-O
MOTHERFUCKER - Change
LP - Ecstatic Peace / U-Sound, E#70f / u-sound vol. 11 - £13 Country-tinged psyche-folk post-rock with hints of John Zorn and Godspeed! |
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JAN JELINEK &
COMPUTER SOUP - Improvisations & Edits, Tokyo 09/26/2001
CD - Sub Rosa, AS04 - 49'28" - £11 A meeting between German glitchmeister Jelinek, and Japanese electro-jazz trio Computer Soup. The result is eight tracks of reverberant and occasionally humourous electronic soundscapes. |
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KEIJI
HAINO - Next Let Us Try Changing the Shape
CD - Swordfish, SFKH001CD - £12 6 loopy pieces (that is to say that there's a lot of loops about), featuring Haino's voice, guitar and guitar samples. Likened to an electric Derek Bailey in places. See also: Free Rock |
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KOMET +/vs
BOVINE LIFE - Reciprocess +/vs. 01
CD - BiP-HOp +/vs. Fällt, Bleep 10 - £11 Komet and Bovine Life have tracks alone, in collaboration and remixing each other. The usually metallic electronic sounds are all present and correct. Nothing mould breaking, but a very nice listen. |
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WOLF
KRAKOWSKI - Goyrl:Destiny
CD - Tzadik, TZ7166 - 51'41" - £13.50 Yiddish folk songs combine with the blues, tango and reggae. |
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LIGHTNING
BOLT - Wonderful Rainbow
CD - Load Records, LOAD041CD - £11.50 According to the press release, this has "bass so nasty it seers human flesh on contact and drums so mighty they liquefy brain cells on impact", so have a bucket of sand and an elastoplast ready for this one. Extreme heavy rock likened to the Ruins and the Boredoms. |
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PIERRE-YVES
MACÉ - Faux-Jumeaux
CD - Tzadik, TZ7078 - 54'45" - £13.50 Delicate electronics meets very French classical instrumental music. |
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ANGUS MACLISE
- Astral Collapse
CD - Quakebasket, Qb-16CD - £12.50 The ex-Velevet Underground drummer's experiments with tape collage and noise. The odd drone, synth-chaos and poem are thrown in too, for good measure. |
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TAKAGI MASAKATSU
- Opus Pia CD
CD - Carpark, cd17 - £11 Delicate little flickerings for the first half of the CD, with the second half taken up mostly by a large composition using environmental sounds. Rather lovely. |
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TAKAGI
MASAKATSU - Opus Pia DVD
DVD - Carpark, 16 dvd - £16 Different music to the CD, but in a similar sort of style, accompanied by a series of short films, some quite abstract, others apparently having been the source for the environmental piece on the CD. |
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MERZBOW -
Cycle parts 1 & 2
CD - Very Friendly, vf001cd - c.1:10' - £12.50 Two more tracks to turn your speakers into industrial fans. Merzbow crafts sounds of barometer-crushing atmospheric pressure. |
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MERZBOW
- Merzbeat
CD - Important Records, imprec-004 - £11 Over 50 minutes of aggressive, psychedelic, analogue, beat-oriented noisiness. Kid 606 describes it as one of the best things Merzbow's ever done, so if you respect the opinion of Kid 606 then there you go. |
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NATHAN MICHEL
- abc def
CD - Tigerbeat6, MEOW 046 - £12 Rather more careful and thought out than most Tigerbeat releases, even bordering on pointillism at times. But the sound sources are familiarly quirky, and the mood is generally one of quiet amusement. Like a chilled out DAT Politics. |