Blog: Brainwashed

With a slew of vinyl releases in their backcatalog, this is the first digital release for the enigmatic ultra-minimalist electronic project, formed to pay tribute to the titans of drone such as La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros, and Charlemagne Palestine. Their approach definitely demonstrates their lineage, but it is never derivative or stale. The result is a beautifully sparse tapestry of analog electronics, which is both enhanced and slightly hindered by the purely digital medium.

The dichotomy at work through Kyle Parker's exquisite new album rivals the highest peaks of heaven and the lowest valleys of Hades. Mixing a bit of congestion within his soaring pieces, Parker—under the pseudonym Infinite Body—produces an album that borrows just as much from his noisier past as it does from Classical and Baroque masters long forgotten amidst the digital age.

'.'93 CURRENT 93'.', the ultimate Hallucinatory Gnostic Supergroup, will play two shows in The HMV Forum, Kentish Town, London on Friday 28 May and Saturday 29 May to celebrate 25 years of Current 93 and also to celebrate David Tibet's 50th birthday. Special guests are to be the unmatched NURSE WITH WOUND (28th), the glorious COMUS (29th), the ghostlike RAMESES III (29th). Other special guests will be announced.

Danny Hyde has made a short video montage with a personal message ( http://www.youtube.com/user/au ralraging#p/a/u/0/Cy2qgleuy84) to all who helped raise the funds to get his archives and equipment back out of storage, rescuing artifacts from who knows what! Thanks to everyone who helped.

New music officially out this week includes the final studio album from Jack Rose plus Joanna Newsom, Eluvium, Shearwater, and more.

Declaimed in a number of pompous and unhelpful reviews for mostly unintelligible or contradictory reasons, Marc Nguyen Tan's second full-length as Colder is, in reality, a dark and seductive electronic record with virtues to spare. Whether updating the anthemic possibilities of new wave or cross-breeding fake jazz with dub and cold motorik, Heat exudes a cool, sophisticated, and infinitely accessible atmosphere that is entirely unique to it.

This live LP (and download for those inclined) picks up where previous live albums left off and show another side to Will Oldham's work. Other live albums showcased his rock and folk inclinations but here his music sounds like it belongs on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry rather than in the clubs he usually frequents. Wonderfully performed and perfectly captured, Funtown Comedown sees Oldham push further into a mainstream country sound like he did on last year's Beware (though strangely includes no songs from that album here). However, [...]

Hardcore CV fans and anyone who's a connoisseur of "classic" industrial are always quick to cite this as one of the zeniths of the genre, and it isn't a claim that should be taken lightly. One of the darkest records ever made, it acts as the Maggot Brain to The Conversation's Mothership Connection: it's like when P-Funk were hanging with the Process Church and writing songs about finding decaying corpses of dead friends.

The meeting of one of Sweden's premiere drone noise collective and the electronic duo featuring the king of Elgaland-Vargaland produced this single track where no input mixing boards dual with amplified rakes and found instruments to produce an expansive drone piece that isn't afraid to get messy.

Since his recent reemergence, Matthew Bower has been more than happy to continue pushing his venerable project further and further into raw noise territory while bringing in a fair share of black metal influenced chaos to bolster the already maxed out volume levels. Here is roughly 100 minutes of pure feedback worship and dedication to distortion pedals. However, there's none of the noise rock tendencies of Xaman or IIIrd Gatekeeper, for better or worse.

Unlike previous solo efforts, here Baker is flanked by a concentrated orchestra, propelling his demur drones into consonant and complete compositions. The result is an album of staggering growth as Baker explores the elegant side of drone and the filth of classical percussion and strings that not only established Baker as an innovator but as a inventive curator of drone and its many variants.

The latest release from this up and coming Polish sound artist steps away from his usual preference for walls of digital noise and instead plunders through tapes of traditional folk music for source material, leaving enough evidence of its pedigree there, but taking it to far off realms of sound.

The first part of an expected trilogy devoted to iconic advances in technology, this marked the beginning of new stage in Jóhann Jóhannsson's career. While already established as an acclaimed composer at the time of its release in 2006, IBM 1401 was a bold leap forward in both concept and scale from all that preceded it. Although it was later eclipsed by the stone-cold instant classic that followed (2008's Fordlândia), it nevertheless remains a haunting, visionary, and unexpectedly personal work in its own right.

I long ago abandoned hope of a new Gil Scott-Heron record. Yet here it is: a delicate, intense, skeletal testament to his history, progress and survival. He covers Robert Johnson, Bill Callahan, and Brook Benton but this is a deeply personal album from which we all can draw hope; a beautifully convincing snapshot of an artist very much unbowed.

Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert's New Order side project began very promisingly with the popular and critically acclaimed single Tasty Fish in 1990, but the collapse of Factory left the duo in label limbo. Three years later, this (the duo's debut album) finally got released to lukewarm reviews and sales. Now that LTM has finally reissued it, I can confidently state that its unenthusiastic reception was entirely warranted. There are a number of remixes optimistically appended to this expanded edition to prop up the weaker songs, but they cannot hide the fact that this is [...]

The songs on Atlan have a spore like potency. While listening I get a feeling in the back of my brain that they are somehow reawakening the old and sleeping powers of the earth. It is an album that reaffirms for me that the roots of music are often to be found in the otherworld. With his unique ability to seamlessly bridge the primordial with the contemporary Soriah returns the first instrument known to humankind –the voice- to a place of high honor. As a Tuvan throat singer highly skilled in overtone chanting Soriah shows that the voice is also [...]

New releases this week include the new Silver Mt. Zion, plus Tindersticks, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Excepter, and Juliana Hatfield.

Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert's unabashedly poppy New Order side project has remained a largely forgotten one, aside from perhaps the small splash created by their debut single in 1990. While there are certainly some artistic reasons for O2's marginalization, the duo's most significant problems were bad luck, bad timing, and the chaos surrounding the collapse of Factory Records. Thankfully, LTM has now reissued both of their albums, giving them a long-deserved second chance to find some appreciative ears.

Dutch sound artist and Machinefabriek collaborator Wouter van Veldhoven has maintained quite a low profile since he began releasing music in 2005, quietly assembling a unique body of work with a minimum of fanfare or self-promotion. Fortunately, someone at Mort Aux Vaches noticed anyway and invited Wouter to drop by the studio with his arsenal of decrepit reel-to-reel tape players and home-built equipment for a live session of wobbly, understated ambient beauty.

Our Love Will Destroy The World's debut full-length (2009's Stillborn Plague Angels) was a strikingly ugly, cathartic, and demonic affair that seemed to take guitar-based noise to its logical extreme. It turns out that it hadn't, as Campbell Kneale's newest black-hearted slab of vinyl makes it clear that he has no trouble at all dreaming up ingenius new ways to be bilious and face-meltingly heavy.