Blog: Brainwashed

Little Annie (/annie/)'s latest full-length album, Genderful, is the second release with pianist Paul Wallfisch. The duo have some NYC shows scheduled and Annie has a European tour brewing with Baby Dee, supporting Marc Almond, where the two will be performing together on stage for the first time! Read on for the announcement from Annie herself...

Look for new releases this week from Lair of the Minotaur, Matthew Herbert, Dosh, and a wider scale release of a Johann Johannson disc that was out last year.

This brilliant and mind-bending solo opus by Natural Snow Building's Mehdi Ameziane was originally issued as an LP by Dull Knife in 2009 and sold out within hours. Fortunately, it has now been reissued and remastered and augmented with a massive amount of bonus material for those of us that weren't fast or well-informed enough to catch it the first time around.

While perhaps known better for their lush, hazy guitar abstractions, the duo of Melissa Arpin-Duimstra and Scott Cortez are not afraid to push their sound even further into the reaches of the sonic galaxy, as this new reconstruction proves. Originally issued on a tiny Peruvian label in 2007, Chorus was a conscious attempt to remove guitars and instrumentation, and simply work with the sound of Arpin-Duimstra's voice. For its reissue, the entire album is reworked yet again, using the tiniest of vocal fragments to weave a beautiful atmospheric tapestry of sound.

Recorded live in January of 2009, this collaboration is one that is more organic than a lot of what Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke are known for: no laptops here, the former only provides guitar, the latter piano. Meanwhile, Keiji Haino acts as the focus, providing his idiosyncratic vocals with flute and electronics, with the result sounding like ethnography from another planet, spiritual sounds that simply are extra terrestrial.

Philippe Petit's recording career has always been characterized by his dual passions for reinvention and fruitful collaboration, but this audacious and imaginative album still managed to blindside me. A turntablist/laptoppist/self-de scribed non-musician by trade, he has nevertheless managed to produce an ambitiously wild, weird, and noise-damaged avant-jazz opus with the aid of a bevy of talented pals (including a very unexpected Graham Massey on bass clarinet).

After many years, the third instalment in Nurse With Wound's classic Automating series of compilations has been unveiled. Digging up old nuggets from the last 26 years, this is another trip through the dustier, forgotten regions of Steven Stapleton's back catalogue. Not quite as dazzling as the previous entries in the Automating series, this compilation still shows the strength of Nurse With Wound's expansive approach to sound and most importantly, saves me a lot of leg work in tracking down old compilations.

Despite being one of the most compelling entities to emerge from England's fertile '80s post-industrial scene, Zoviet France remain a largely unheard and somewhat mythical band. Obviously, the main reason for their relative marginalization is that their albums (aside from a few late period ambient works) have historically been quite hard to track down. I suspect that was true even during their prime, as I am certain that I would have bought an album packaged in a canvas sack or between roofing shingles if it had appeared in one of the record stores I frequented as a teen [...]

For Nigel Ayers the systematic derangement of the senses has never been enough. From the beginning of his career he has sought nothing less than the total disarrangement of reality. Using slowed down voices, sludgy bass, noisy analog synthesizers, guitar and weird effects, these unorthodox statements from his first band sound as if they were made in an atmosphere of cerebral discord. Conventions of musicality are thwarted in favor of shoestring arrangements gelled together by intuition rather than adherence to preconceived formulas. Traversing terrains that range from the psychotropic to psychotic, the collected works of The Pump make for [...]

Plenty of new releases due this week including Monster Movie, Sharon Jones, Crowing, and Jim O'Rourke and some reissues due from Elliott Smith.

High Place's second proper full-length album is a gutsy and daring surprise, as Mary Pearson and Rob Barber have cast aside much of the childlike innocence and fragility that characterized their earlier releases in favor of a darker, more muscular new direction. While I still prefer the quirky, blurred pop from their past, the shift towards a sharper-focused, more visceral sound works far better than I expected.

Although many of these songs were made available previously on an identically named and highly limited edition album from 2004, this is not technically a reissue as the material has been reworked and the album has been quite expanded compared to the original. The quiet white light at the core of the music has been refracted and split into a rainbow of strings and woodwind, all arranged by Maxim Moston (best known for his work with Antony and the Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright). The sweetness of the songs become even more [...]

Rather than the work of ironic hipsters or bandwagon jumpers, the duo of Sean Hewson (of Eternal) and Chrisian Savill (of Slowdive) is the real deal. Given Savill's genre-defining guitar sound the two bring a classical sense of pop know-how and the ability to craft undeniably catchy songs that could be from another era, but make for irresistable listens in 2010.

New releases are due this week from Ken Camden, Wooden Shjips, Matthew Herbert, and Thomas Fehlmann, and re-re-re-re-reissues are due from Galaxie 500 and Nick Cave the Bad Seeds.

This is one of the cases where the artists' environment clearly comes across in their recorded output. Hailing from Norway, the duo of Pjusk weave digital soundscapes that are cold and icy, yet have an inviting warmth to them, like a fireplace heated cabin amongst the frozen tundra. Their second album is a gloriously minimal piece of subtle melody and texture that reveals more the closer it is listened to.

Hz was initially a series of six EPs, released monthly, then compiled into a six disc box set, and later a two disc compilation. In my opinion, the then-duo of Robert Hampson and Scott Dawson reached the highest peak in their quest to take the sound of the electric guitar as far as it could go. Evenly split between astronomical ambient abstraction and a nascent take on post rock, this set was the final one where the duo's history as Loop was still shining through. The result is two hours of the best experimental rock and ambient [...]

An obvious choice for a single, Keep Slipping Away is one of A Place to Bury Stranger's most immediate and gratifying songs. Live, it provides a little relief from the Strangers' onslaught, but keeps things upbeat and, maybe more importantly, provides an easily remembered hook. On 7 it's the A-Side to Hit the Ground, a killer punk-rock/surf-rock hybrid that probably deserved a place on Exploding Head.

Miguel De Pedro continues to find ways to make his already motley discography more diverse and unpredictable. After manipulating and distorting the sounds of Mille minimal techno, glitch, techno, rave, and having an almost intimate encounter with ambient something-or-other, Kid606 is now taking a stab at analog noise. Without his signature beats and usual goofiness to aid him, Miguel sounds a little lost. But, even with its numerous lulls and head-scratching moments, Songs About Fucking Steve Albini is one of the better things the Kid has released in the last few years.

Scorn's third album was a groundbreaking and seminal release, as Napalm Death's former rhythm section finally shook loose the last vestiges of their metal past to attain the sinister strain of dub that they came to be known for. Unfortunately, it was also one of the last times that things went well for the project, as Mick Harris would soon be hit by the mercurial Nick Bullen's departure, creative differences with Earache, and a precipitous decline in the popularity of the isolationism genre.

Bill Fay says David Tibet is probably the only person who would have released this 2CD set. The first disc covers demos and live material from 1970-1971 with Fay's singing, piano, guitar, bass, and drums combining at times to astonishing effect. The second, lighter disc, recorded at home in 2008, begins with Fay's vocals added to a Michael Cashmore instrumental from The Snow Abides and ends with a song written by his brother, John Fay.