Pterygium / Stoic Ubiquity

Doomy is easy. Doomy is down boys. Glum and doomy. Being young and of unhappy hormone is an excuse. Noise is easy. Easy making. Easy listening cos only noise people bother with it. This is easy listening. It has no material terror in its acoustic properties. It has not a single formal surprise. You know what you are gonna get 20 seconds in. Vertical atmospherics in standard issue warehouse reverb. Routine genre cliches can be crossed off for those of us playing doomy boy noise bingo: fragrant white noise wash, wafty synthetic choir (the worst), distant static, film/tv dialogue, soft crackle to peaks of static, winning hum, stench of faded goth. It is inexcusably ordinary and coy. What can be done? Is it just the mood I am in today? Bored of doomy down boys and the lumpen mud they reduce the world to. Now if this was three 15 year old girls at the controls....that would be different. Yeah! It isn't though, is it?

Thought it was a good name for 20 seconds....but I'd misread it as Pteryglum. 

Tori Kudo / The Last Song Of My Life

Is this the sound of music melting?
The disassembly of an ensemble?
I call the pine beams and frame prone in the field my 'wooden house'.
As wet clay rotating like a drunk on the wheel is a pot.
The nodes of rhythm slalom in loose correspondence, so time warps and is hard to gauge. How long is it?
It is frequently fantastic, like a dream.
A melodic figure descends again and becomes a theme.
It is being played live to accompany a film. The images are absent. Sometimes, an illustrative surge of silent film piano cuts against the cycled undertow. Falls of brass, accordion, piano, guitar, voice, topple forward into the same confined space. The whole never stops shifting.
It has a group mind and one mind...the liberated kind.
The rare, rare, Tori Kudo kind.
Not many antecedents.
Attending closely is hard but loving it is easy. 

Wilder Gonzales Agreda / I Was a Teenage Post-Rocker

Released in May, 'I Was A Teenage Post Rocker' is a four-track album by the Peruvian electronic composer, writer and philosopher, Wilder Gonzales Agreda. Track one, 'Sierra Florian', fidgetty with arhythmic radiator-clang percussion, is followed by 'Fearless Muziq' a feint galactic smear of flubs, dribbles and pops that de-evolves into a buffering signal of broken sonic data. 'No Habia Hispters...' is a slow alignment of squash-ball percussive pulses with a rising loop of cotton-cladded sawtooth synth and a wave of softly abraded metal discs that settles into a more locked and hypnotic Ciani-like motion with a Stockhausen palette. It could have gone on much longer like this for me and the fade out suggests there may be a longer version somewhere. Agreda's compostions here are eventful and creative and the sense of play and humour makes them much more listenable than many of his peers, however, sometimes a stronger commitment to duration and intense immersion helps to leave a more lasting impression, and this is more than evident in the monumental closing statement, 'Et Etereo', which magnificently winds itself out over an entirely called for 28 minutes of multi-planetary terrains as if piped directly from the mind of Olaf Stapledon.

Ann Ihsa (アン・イーサ) / Ann Ihsa Solo (緑の人)

Even if you are predisposed to this strain of very reserved and fragile Japanese song (think quieter Tenniscoats, Reiko Kudo, Jon the Dog), you might still need to pick the right moment of the day for this. With minimal means, slow and deliberate forward song motion, and a narrow range of expression, Ann Ihsa will still draw harder hearts than mine close and whisper unto them delicate nothings of feathered keys and guitar, roughly glued patches of field recordings, timid drum presets and a winning whole of light-headed, pearly tumesence.  

Quimper / Dejado

Operates like the cough syrup-dosed recall of a lost Leloux film, tremulous and unsteady, a sticky ebb and needy pulse of antique futures that is made out of a charming, geeky devotion rather than a distant poster print cool. The guiding aesthetic and patina of acoustic wool keeps everything together. The melodic and percussive invention and just audible vocals serve the atmosphere and thematic conceit a little too slavishly at times, putting BG in front of a potentially more engaging foregrounded M or even TEXT. 

Kramp / Nervous Rattles

Grainy, interior music for clear ears and headphones. Shuffles along a little meekly at first but is heard to best effect on 'Red Faced Demons', rich with congealed tape warp and stress, distant Yoshi Wada-like pipes and frosted with fairground shrieks and close copper cymbal ticks and splash. The housebound guitar of the final track, 'Outro', is a quietly satisfying conclusion.     

Linus Vandewolken / Het vlier, een hommel op aarde

Ideologically, if that is any way to apprehend art at all, albums like this can trouble me, such is its leave-it-in-any-setting prettiness, its take-it-anywhere good manners, its clinging to the bosom of folk identity, its auratic distance (even flight) from any form of the ugly deep trough of now, that it must be reactionary. And yet, two tracks in to this 15-track album of music played on the near extinct and mostly fretless Flemish hommel, a long spell is cast that makes me stare at the grain of wood in my desk and fall into that coveted mode of deep listening where every thumb abraded string resonates with a plain and restful truth. 

Blake Hargeaves / Improvisations On The Pipe Organs Of Europe

This record might read different to Europeans, I guess. Is it stodge and reverence and old stone and the low stink of hymn books? Something bound to Bach and rules and the virgin? Blake Hargreaves is a new worlder like me, excited enough to find something exotic in a grand tour of old organs and a close enough listener to finger new feeling from each encounter. There is nothing abusive in the improvisation here, no flock-bothering atonality or shrill modernism, no Charlemagne Palestine key-jamming, mass saturation or extended technique, just onward steps of refined inner logic (or the wandering anti-logic of a reverie), extrapolations of musical thought and excerpts of dialogues with tradition and the materiality of acoustic time and space - recorded here to beguiling effect.   

Prana Crafter / Bodhi Cheetah's Choice

The tilting of music-release culture (or commerce) that has formed a Himalayan supply-side range of product that dwarfs its audience in number, time, energy and labor should at least have this upside: if you want to make music for a micro niche-within-a-niche audience spread all over the world, you can. Similarly, if you want to pursue an ancient (in pop years) and arcane (to pop ears) path no one is going to stop you. So, this must be the most fertile and potent period for the expression and expansion of musical freedom in the age of mechanical reproduction (and its subsequent digital echo). And it might be. It is difficult to survey it in real time (it was probably once a manageable feat).

Records like this only make the case for a cultural stasis and retreat. It is the musical equivalent of staying in a Malay jungle until 1995 convinced that WW2 rages on. This is not a hard listen. It rolls along. The players are very competent. They are feeling something and connecting as they play. They create a feel. They are working in a clear idiom. It is too sincere to be pastiche. BUT the date stamp matters. If this was made in some cabin in the Washington woods in 1967, I could like it more. I am no more able to offer an aesthetic assessment of this than I am to write a critical appreciation of a piece of reproduction antique furniture. Plenty of artists are taking psych to new places. Maybe this band will, too but I suspect the fact that the 'Limited Edition Copper & Bone Swirl Vinyl' version of their album has SOLD OUT tells me everything I need to know for now. I am not singling this release out, it just represents something that I see a lot from the supposed liberated margins of music production.  

Rose Mercie / Rose Mercie

This came out in 2018 and was actually recorded further back than that. They are a French quartet whose publically-professed points of reference, the Shangri-Las, Raincoats, Rosa Yemen,  Electrelane & Josephine Foster, draw out a pretty neat pentagon of turf for what they do best: a kind of rattly, roomy, rural folk-pop with unstable joints and affecting, unobvious vocal lines and harmonies. Lots of charm.

Michael O / Power's Out

Like lots of small labels that struggle to get singles and cassettes released, it is a shame that Fruit & Flowers looks kinda dormant right now. Hope it's not a fatal bedrest, cos they had a nice thing going mostly based around stuff like this from Michael Olivares (ex The Mantles): slight, mildly depressed, unvarnished pop made with thought and feeling and much harder to do well than the thousands who try imagine. Think top tier Flying Nun and early Pastels if you need the quick ref.

  

Blóm / Flower Violence

Unpitying proletarian punk liberated by rage and mutated by improv (as found- and-noted accident), reploughing old fields oblivious to the fact that they have long since been concreted over and sold to land banking developers. Words circle back with double force. Strong, affectless vocal. Chrome-y, hit-all-pedals guitar. All told, an apt and urgent thump elevated by the right kind of excitable pretension. 

Various Artists / CosmoPraesidium

This is a loose and unhurried collection of folk, psych and dusty, field scratching that encapsulates nearly all of what Eiderdown do so well. The selections span porch-caught guitar wandering (Jon Collin, Phil Neff, Alex Archibald), galactic reverb exploration (Natalia Beylis, Ecstatic Cosmic Union Orgastra, Prana Crafter) and acoustic experiment (Coyote Teeth providing the most succesful example). Sometimes feels as though it has all fanned out from a primordial single playing of 8 Miles High but it is a testament to the curatoril care of the label and it is all for a good cause, too - with proceeds going to food banks in Washington, NY and Cali. 

Rabbit Island / In The Forest, Far Away

This wants to sound like a song made up at bedtime to soothe a child. The non-rhymes are cute. The too-many-syllables-for-the-line-meter are cute. The Oz accent is kinda cute unless you can't get Wake In Fright out of your head. The  unfurnished room acoustics are cute. The trouble is everything is cute, defiantly, unfailingly cute.And the effect is as ultimately irritating and empty as those gift shops that sell upcycled plant pots for 15 bucks and plain card birthday cards with line drawings of balloons on them. 

  

Santa Sprees / Sum Total Of Insolent Blank

Modern music feels like it is in reverse. There is a lot of it...probably way too much. Nearly all of it is very familiar. This was sent addressed to my old blog and I only played it because the description in the email was real funny but it turns out Sum Total Of Insolent Blank is going somewhere entirely of its own accord. It does not seem accountable to the present or many of the comforts of the past although that does not necessarily stop the X-meets-Y type descriptions that are the easiest way to mainline the core content of most reviews. A quick survey of links throws up the names Pere Ubu, Daniel Johnston, Sun Ra, The Residents but I think these could all be just a code for "strange" but equally grasp at trying to describe an album that is vast in its scope, invention and orginality and boasts a lyrical and musical wit that is funny, sad and poetic. It is over 90 minutes long...and kinda all over the map but very much one distinct thing at the same time....I wrote n told em it will be a hard sell....and they seemed to like that idea....and in a way that says everything about how you begin to make a record like this.

Beatrice Dillon / Workaround

I wanted to like this more. So much more. My third fairly attentive listen now and unfortunately I think I know it does not have any great secrets left to offer up. It is pleasant. Its surfaces are modern and clean and careful and mannered and arranged just so. Like nice tiling rather than the rush and pulled rug logic of the best footwork and dub which it estimates in a kinda deskbound way. It is all a little untroubling and easy to know. I think she definitely has the potential and capacity to do something great. Something stranger, less in step, more other.

Frans de Waard, Takuji Naka & Tim Olive / False Mercury

The parameters for this kind of music might seem different but when you listen to enough you are still trying to filter out the massive quantities of ho-hum and get to the good stuff. Sometimes I think it is the time you listen. I have listened to quite a bit from this label (845audio) over the long hours of Templetown lockdown and most of the releases maintain a good standard, generally interesting and full of sonic detail. They are mostly in the rinse, cycle, repeat mode of drone, click, whirr applied in thinnish washes and waves. Gentler, satisfying explorations, then. And the fetish-sating sleeves don't hurt at all in the sell especially for anyone keen to accesorize with their soft furnishings, ceramics and pot plants like me.

CB Radio Gorgeous / Babylon

Chop and churn punk a bit by the numbers across the whole EP but some neat drum falls and snatches of declamatory vocal that suggest they could become something more. I prescribe a month listening to Rosa Yemen or Suburban Lawns or something to help them transition quicker. However bits of the last track 'Babylon' have some good signs of pleasing non-crowdpleasing behaviour.

   

Jade Hairpins / Harmony Avenue

"You'll like this, Pammy. You will! I promise." Well, I don't. Actually, three tracks in I started to hate it. I hate it even more after a week. Hollow and whacky when I want insightful and mad. Polished and trite in a restless, needy, jumping-around-in-front-of-your-parents-face manner, in a way that makes you desperate for something relentless and real. I only kept listening to find out which track I hated the most. I am sure they are nice people.

Jordana / Classical Notions of Happiness

OK. OK. Front loading the positives: it is a good title, a good look, a few pleasant tunes, an occasionally interesting lyric (mostly the more awkward ones..."What about your mom? How about your cat?"  - a sense of an individual at work albeit one at war with the temptation of acceptance and fashion and success. Which is a shame. On the whole it mostly sinks with little resistance into a bog of cliche. Jordana might find a way out but now it is merely OK. OK? 

M Takara & Carla Borega / Linha D'Agua

When sleeve notes do you no favours (jeez they have "a near telekinetic understanding"). This has got some moments when it gets more untethered and goes-a-searchin, like on the final track but again it is another album long on atmos and intros that lacks pretty much anything else and or much that would bring me back for a second helping. I guess it might lure people who haven't yet heard Can or The Boredoms do it better, deeper, longer. 

 

Anthony Shadduck Quartet / Double Quartet

This kind of hangs where you want it to hang for a while. Then falls away into nearly nothingy jazz tootling. Perfect coffee shop muzak. Sadly pointless.

Yves De May / Local Subjectivity

Heard this again after a few years. At certain moments in the day, it is still really nice even though it troubles me how easy it would be to play in the coffee shop on the corner (this is quite a common and useful check I run through my critical head), Go away bad thought. It is fine. 

  

Miaux / Black Space, White Cloud

And after the neg vibes purge, here are some simple goodies. Love the back story and atmos on this but that would not be enough on its own. So, yeah, very simple pleasures but let us take them where we can get them, eh?

The Girlpope Lesson

This might let something or other leak out and I SOOO want to avoid this being another music-is-the-soundtrack-to-my-life blog (where the life is clearly the MAIN feature and fuck I have done that!) but I saw Girlpope a bunch back east a long time ago and their name was good and they had lots of energy and even a few tunes you could recall and even sing along to. Then what happens? Must have been some of their earliest shows. I noticed later how they popped up in all kinds of silly settings supporting bigger bands, trying to make it, desperately, desperately, desperately trying to make a job out of joy. And I only pick them out now because they stand for a billion provincial bands. Harmless, cute, capable of a few moments of diversion for kids who don't get to see that much or who just need something to hop around to when they are making out or getting wasted. It is a service of a kind. And then this. A title that Ween or Weezer might like (I don't know, I smiled). Cover design left to your buddy...oh dear. Then the music...must have fallen for some of it myself cos I didn't think so badly of em once....of course it is derivative and everything sounds like take number four...and it is anaemic and strained...but it also sounds so depserately, desperately, desperately desperate...like your fave pet dog running around the yard trying to prove she is ok when you are about to take her to the...V E T S. Is it important to investigate these feelings? I said this time I will do the uncomfortable stuff and say what I HATE (that is easy in a way)...but the H U G E   F  A  T  middle of ordinary is where the real pain is. 

Jay T Yamamoto / Lo-Fi

I like what this label Cassette Art Classics does. I am really glad it exists. I occasionally listen to the stuff they drop and generally listen. When I do, it is just once in BGM mode while doing something else. I admire people who can attend to it properly and attend to its preservation...I think. I guess they are all boys-men doing this and buying this. Jay T Yamamoto is the right side of alright, the pick of the releases I've heard so far on CAC. It is easy to process and file away and I am not sure it contains a single surprise if you know this terrain but there are cool things along the way and it is pretty eventful. Side B when the dogs and high choirs come in is the best bit. I wonder if I am the only person in the world to review it. I will come back to CAC for more and won't know why exactly but the covers and the world they are part of are worth a look. 

Backlog

I am going to go through stuff that was sent to my old blog - some of which I've reviewed elsewhere - people were still sending me links for months after I stopped posting. Lots of good and bad to share and quite a bit that has not been covered much in other places especially things from the MOUNTAINS dropped thru Bandcamp.    

Sweet Whirl / Something I Do

Another thing pushed my way - I am toooooooo passive that way sometimes - with conviction and enthusiasm. I could see why it would fill a hole. It is sympathetic and stretchy and pliable enough to sound like its sentiments extend to YOU...yes YOU...and I think it is quite sincere...but until the final refrain "loving you is just something I do"  - which is direct and unfussy and I like the way it leans on the vernacular without breaking it - but its effect is lost because the only good bit is put back to the end of a laboured song that is flattened by its over produced under production (you know the way) and weary of-the-moment (that moment now being five years long) Lana-lite vocals. I told her, "Has potential though" - and this time I wasn't lying!!

Zach Phillips / Bezoar

I am so behind with stuff. Luckily I always put things that look interesting to one side knowing I will get back to them eventually sometimes I even drop reviews in comments and other places. This is an example of that. Pretty darn shocked to see this dropped in DECEMBER 2019!! Anyway I am here now and even getting to a second listen - Zach Phillips' songs and arrangements always reward a few listens - it lives up to the highest Zach standards. Small, modest, slightly derailed pop music with a dressing of Mayo Thompson phrasing.   

Other Lives / For Their Love

This could have been difficult for the old me. See my friend LOVES this band and insisted I listen to their "acclaimed" new album. And I did. To the end. Sadly....tt sounds like what it is: a lot of time, money and effort (God hear that effort) being thrown at very thin excuses of songs. I don't know how but it manages to sound smug and apologetic at the same time. I told my friend that rich people make lousy records because they don't need to find cheap creative solutions....y'know, they can just bring in a choir or a brass section or hire someone to fix the mix...she came back with a very clever retort that I am not going to reveal until I find a clever answer.

Ohmme / Fantasize Your Ghost

Makes me a little sad to find something this digestable, this unremarkable on a label like Joyful Noise. Like a lot of modern records it lacks a degree of madness and vulgarity and the will to avoid some easy tropes of the age or offset them with some politely positioned experiments. It is not bad but not bad is not good enough. I want them to be better. I want them to try harder to be better. It feel like things came to them too easily. Plenty will like it but plenty like a lot of things. 

New seeds

This morning I was driving and thinking but not thinking and my mind went up and down the freeway and at one point I was trying to remember how this sounded and then trying to remember to remind myself to play it once I got home and I actually remembered and impressed myself in the process.

Too small a thought? Maybe. But these are my pages now.

Here we go AGAIN

OK. Here we go again.
I am able to do many things.
Maybe I can even sustain a blog for a bit longer than the last time.

I will start positively with a few random favorites but THIS TIME I will not walk away from writing negative or ho-hum reviews. I felt pressure before to like everything bands sent me or tried hard to find something positive in them. I know I am older. Maybe I am a bit wiser. We'll see. Go easy if you find me.