Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue (Warp/Inertia)

Published by Adrian Elmer at July 2, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

Whilst the recycling aspects of post-modernism can leads to lots of lazy garbage, in the right hands, such as those of one Stephen James Wilkinson, the results can be simply dazzling. Holed up in his studio in Wolverhampton, England, Wilkinson has made a handful of releases for Mush Records and now joins Warp’s journey from iconic 90s electronica into kaleidoscopes of indie-electronic offshoots, with this album. And it comes out only 3 months after his latest Mush release – that the quality control is so high with that kind of output rate is quite remarkable.

It really is a grab bag of ideas. At different times, bursts of pastoral English psychedelia of the late 60s, 70s funk and disco, crunchy chiptunes, slick R’n'B, glitchy electronica, West Coast 70s cool, abstract hiphop and folktronica can all be heard. But what holds it all together is a gauzy, semi-hauntological haze blanketing everything. Like the drum loops in ‘Jealous Of Roses’ which sound like they’re coming from the club next door while the guitar and vocals are being recorded echoing around the bathroom of this one. Or the opening guitar of ‘Cry! Baby!’ resolutely lo-fi before the slightly of kilter rhythms spread across the stereo spectrum to underpin the 60s folksy lead guitars and keys, only for bursts of distorted sub-bass to try and grab a foothold. Or ‘Sugarette’s reverb drowned synth washes which frame 8-bit blips and staccato analogue bass synth noodlings. Beautiful stuff.

When I read back through those descriptions, it makes it sound like a sprawling mess. But it most definitely isn’t. The aforementioned use of post-modern recycling is used here not as pastiche, but as elements to be bent into the shapes that Bibio desires. Yes, they remind you of other things, but they are never merely a symbol of those other things, they are building blocks which are used to create a new, cohesive whole. Ambivalence Avenue may be a title trying to play it cool, but Wilkinson sounds excited by the possibilities of music from all over, and the results are themselves supremely exciting.

Adrian Elmer

Leonel Castillo – El Nino (Greener)

Published by Joshua Meggitt at July 2, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

The psychedelic techno produced and championed by the likes of Donatto Dozzy and Cio D’or is fast becoming one of the most influential sounds in (underground) dance music. Informed by the heavier strains of post-Basic Channel dub techno and the linearity of trance, this ‘headfuck techno’, as the blogs put it, delights in long, slowly evolving tracks slotted into long, tightly controlled DJ sets. This 12″ by Argentinian mountain dwelling recluse Leonel Castillo adheres to this structure, at least in part, whilst injecting a subtle touch of Cadenza-esque swing.

It’s the dark yet kooky title track that most captivates, ten-minutes of warped clanging and dank reverberation, wrapped around a warped passage of German speech by Der Himmer über Berlin. This functions like vocals in Thomas Brinkmann, looped into a rhythmic device (particularly effective to those not understanding German), chunks ricocheting off into delayed abstractions, with the sung nursery-rhyme section particularly disorienting. ‘Luvia de Estrellas’ is more straightforward, tinny arpeggios morphing into bounding synth stabs, with a twinkling break like Matthew Johnson. Lucas Mari remixes both, available digital-only, turning the former into droning ambience, and the latter into staggered breakbeat, but neither match the hypnotic power of the originals.

Joshua Meggitt

Chihei Hatakeyama – Saunter (Room 40)

Published by Joshua Meggitt at July 1, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

For all of Brisbane label Room 40’s buy-on-sight quality control it’s almost impossible to pin them down to a particular sound. Most releases however lie somewhere between the extremes of free-improv-chaos and carefully constructed aural bliss, with their latest, the aptly titled ‘Saunter’ by Tokyo-based laptopper Chihei Hatakeyama, arguably the most shamelessly beautiful recording the label has yet released. In approachability it tops even DJ Olive’s ambient works ‘Sleep’ and ‘Triage’, which challenged through duration and limited dynamic range; the six perfectly formed pieces which comprise ‘Saunter’, evoking ‘the transition from autumn to winter’ and reflecting Hatakeyama’s immersion in new domestic surroundings, are as attractive as these intended themes sound.

‘Saunter’ proceeds similarly to Hatakeyama’s 2006 debut ‘Minima Moralia’ for Kranky – gently wavering sine tones immersed in hazy webs of treated acoustic sounds and field recordings – with a less hurried pace, and a greater degree of developmental coherence. Each track follows a standard trajectory, loose, sparse patterns shifting and splitting into dense and more active arrangements, governed by an elusive yet detectable logic which moulds these pieces into complete and polished wholes. In ‘Treads Echoing Far Away From Sea Coast’, warm digital streams shimmer and fold, each tone gradually becoming clearer, cleaner, and more independent. Brief piano lines lie buried within ‘The Room in Past’, creeping to the surface, both raw and treated, before twisting completely into hazy threads of electronics. Guitars are treated similarly, their particular resonances more suited to Hatakeyama’s approach: ‘A Stone Inside the Box’ pits lazy runs of acoustic fingerpicking against gritty electric attacks; the closing ‘Landscape on a Hill’ cuts and reverses high-pitched notes, leaving these to slowly collapse into mournful electronic tones reminiscent of Klimek.

Despite running times of up to ten minutes, and a reliance on a restricted tonal pallette, nothing on ‘Saunter’ outstays its welcome. This I would put down to Hatakeyama’s earnest, clear-sighted approach to composition: there is none of the twee faux-naivete that too often affects work produced by his fellow countrymen – Shuta Hasunuma or Takagi Masakatsu, for instance. Consequently ‘Saunter’ is a rich, compelling success.

Joshua Meggitt

Gable – I’m OK (Loaf Recordings)

Published by Adrian Elmer at June 30, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

This is a wonderfully out there 20 minutes of abstract pop. The French 3-piece, Gable, are obviously sonic grandchildren of the kind of thing Syd Barrett is famous for. But, if you’re going to be choosing your grandparents, you could do much worse than Syd Barrett. And Gable do enough with their influences to make it clear this is not pastiche. I’m OK starts out with a raw acoustic drum and snare wishing it was part of of a dubstep production, but the looped banjo filigree and and Tunng vocalisations steer it into its true place at the heart of weird glitch-folk pop. ‘Debut’ features non-sequiter spoken lyrics with a cut and paste approach to song construction, complete with snatches of big band brass stabs in place of a lead instrumental break.

Mandolins, nylon string guitars, toy pianos, xylophones, bells, strings and other at hand instruments are carefully sequenced amidst stray samples and grainy processing. With 13 tracks crammed in, some are obviously brief sonic ideas – the 55 second ‘Mon Cote Feminin’ a duet between cartoon punk guitar riff samples and melodica; ‘And’ a vignette of a single riff played out on all manner of electronic and acoustic instruments – but all feel somehow complete and purposeful. And some of the longer tracks, clocking in at just over two minutes, such as ‘Arm and Nose, Arms and Noise’ and ‘Sans Du Feu Dans Mes Mains’ are a reminder of the amount of detail that can be packed into small spaces. They feel like relative symphonies of pop songs with static and guitar but contain nothing extraneous, make their point beautifully and move on.

‘Charming’ is one of those reviewer words that gets thrown about to describe creative, loose, kitchen sink style releases. But it really does work for me in this case. A handful of simple sung hooks interspersed across a kaleidoscope of stray sounds and quirky jump-cuts. It doesn’t outstay its welcome but makes its brief running time count for much more than seems possible. Highly recommended.

Adrian Elmer

Various Artists – Brand Neu! (Feraltone/Inertia)

Published by Adrian Elmer at June 29, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

It’s a great shame that the entire contribution of Neu! to contemporary music has been reduced to a single rhythm conceit – the grand Motorik. While the liner notes of this compilation sees many of its contributors acknowledge the Germans’ contributions to everything from graphic design to musical minimalism to electronic/electric hybrids, listening through to the tracks it quickly becomes apparent that it is the motorik that has been the main criteria for track selection. This is sometimes a blessing but more often a curse.

For a band like Oasis, this compilation has the positive effect of recontextualising their work into a more experimental frame. For most of their releases post their Britpop heyday, they have been criticised for being unfocused and self-indulgent. But their ‘Can You See It Now? (I Can See It Now)’ fits in snugly amongst bands with far greater underground credibility, it’s lack of pop hooks rendered redundant as they show an ability to roll along abstractly and atmospherically with the best (and add the very obvious nod to the Velvet Underground to their long catalogue of ‘Artists We’ve Ripped Off’). Pets With Pets probably come closest to straight Neu! pastiche with ‘We Only Found This Plate’, though I can’t help but find the obvious drop in tempo as the hi-hats switch from 8th beats to 16th beats and their drummer struggles to hold the timing annoying, no matter how many times I listen and try to read the “I wish I was faster” refrain as self effacing. By contrast, Foals seem to channel the ideas of Neu! rather than the actual sounds, to great effect. Cornelius gets all psychedelic-funky with ping-pong guitar improvisations over a juttery version of ‘that’ beat. Holy Fuck and Kasabian add a Kraftwerkian edge to their ‘Super Inuit’ and ‘Stuntman’ freakouts respectively. School Of Seven Bells do their thing on ‘Device (Feur M)’ (one of the few previously unreleased tracks in the set) with low-key electronics taking front and centre place, their usual shoegazing guitars a little more subdued than normal. The only other true rarity is the last ever track recorded by Klaus Dinger (Neu!’s drummer) before his death in 2008. It sounds like the demo it undoubtedly is, but is unhinged enough to hold its place (just).

I have mixed feelings about this compilation. When I originally heard rumours of it, I was truly excited at the prospect of particularly hearing one of my favourites, LCD Soundsystem, in the context of a Neu! tribute. But their contribution points out the downside of this compilation. ‘Watch The Tapes’ is, of course, a track I have heard over and over in my listening to their own album. The vast majority of these tracks are already released elsewhere on the different artists’ own releases, and are all their own work, not Neu! covers. This in itself, is not a problem – the tracks are, without exception, all great. But that curatorial process mentioned earlier becomes a problem. In this context, choosing all the tracks based on a level of allegiance to the motorik means that each artist ends up sounding less inspired than they actually probably were when creating their tracks. Instead of the motorik being but one of countless influences colouring their own long form releases, it reduces them all to sounding like they’ve unimaginatively ripped off the exact same thing.

I really love the music found on this disc. But my recommendation (granted – a much more expensive and involved one) would be to track down the separate releases by each of the artists to hear them in a broader context, and to, of course, get the original Neu! albums. I think this would give a much truer indication of Neu!’s influence and the scope of where their blueprints have been taken by these diverse artists. It would also alleviate the horrible notion, (no doubt) inadvertently propagated by this compilation, that Neu! themselves were merely one-trick ponies.

Adrian Elmer

Lullatone – Songs that Spin in Circles (Audio Dregs Recordings)

Published by innerversitysound at June 28, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

It is easy to be completely taken by Lullatone’s sixth album, bright lullabies constructed in deceptively simple presentations. The basic concept for this album is akin to the first track ‘A Mobile Over Your Head’, in that it is a child’s toy for fascination, and a device to lull to sleep. Also the construction of the pieces has a charming minimalist cyclical approach that incorporates its subtle changes amongst bright gleaming surfaces of revolving intertwined tonal plays. The use of vocal cycles, mostly intonations, sometimes tongue clicks or shhh’s, adds to this effect and has a genuine charm. The bossa nova of ‘A Plastic Bag in the Wind’ is particularly compelling; its childlike intonation attunes to lullaby purpose while hiding the formal aspects, rendering it somehow perceptually naïve. It like others are the beautiful lies we intone to youth, hiding the dark aspects of humanity and the world we lull them to sleep with bright happy songs of constructed joy, hoping that the gleam will never rub off.

‘A Merry-Go-Round in the Park’ is a quiet instrumental with heartbeat and glockenspiel like simplicity, a few effects and the introduction of drifting tones. ‘An Old Record on its Player’, gives the soft crackle loop of a finished record on a non return arm of an old player as the sopherific tone and melds it with bright wrought sine waves. ‘A Carousel on a Slide Projector’ again has the tuned down tones of a slow music box delivery, with slightly warped or muffled tones. ‘The Whole World While You Are Asleep’ is the perfect ending to the idea, with muted wind chime like melodies and an intermittent lapping wave recurrence all doused in a sonic cotton wool.

Lullatone consist of Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Seymour from Nagoya and their album is a concept based on the music for babies idea, in particular their first born child. Their specific musical orientation has found them being a perfect partner to the Hello Kitty Brand having released two ep’s in conjunction with this brand. It has also found them on childrens TV programs in Japan as well as well respected indie labels around the world. Their ‘Minimalism is Cute’ mantra of conceptual construction and orientation finds easy and willing listeners to this well wrought optimism.

Innerversitysound

Cernlab – 52.09 (electroton)

Published by innerversitysound at June 28, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

electroton
Hailing from Karlsrhue Germany, Marek Slipek, a communications designer, also conducts a lab for sound research and conceptual design with cernlab. Firstly it is not exactly clear that the cernlab referred to is indeed the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), or a project of Marek Slipek that references the name as a form of homage. However if you refer to the principles of Slipek’s cernlab listed below, especially the fifth, it doesn’t seem like an exceptional concern.

52.09 is a nine track album released on Nuremberg based Electron and consists of tracks marked delay 01-09. The tracks hold together in the stylistic manner similar to the device names: acid, electro, trip hop and minimal techno. The rhythms are often exploratory beyond these stylistic constraints; the sounds are honed to a precision and form that exudes the long performance history aspects to Slipeks art. Cavernous and industrial often, yet the sounds sparkle and glisten, in difference to the bleak take these sound concepts usually hold. An often ominous or immanent atmosphere is created by the conjunction of patterned repetitions, which build a psychological tension and leave residual trace. There is a wide influence of dub in the album within its formal construction and its affinity with sculptured bass forms as inherent to its identity. A predominate emphasis is on a textural interplay of rhythms, whether they be crushed frequencies, crackles, bright full tones, signal like or sharp beats. There is a significant amount of construction that suggest that the 101/303/909 are the key instruments that have influenced Slipek’s musical development and he masters the vocabulary of sounds developed from these machines in the 90’s with an aplomb not necessarily evident in the decade itself.

Generally speaking it is a well wrought musical form within the realms of musical forms that are not necessarily the immediate currency of today. But I still eat bread even though people tell me it holds little nutritional content and is really a form of delivering glue to your stomach. Given that perhaps we can never know of the true value of our work except in retrospect through another’s eyes I leave you with cernlabs self-definition in five sentences:

“First: I am because I calculate
Second: computer crashes caused by exceptional errors are part of the system
Third: there would be boredom without error
Fourth: fortuity is an inevitably occurrence based on the immutable laws of nature
Fifth: the sun is blue, if everyone agrees on it”

Innerversitysound

Bolaphone – The Four Rabbits EP (self released)

Published by Wayne Stronell at June 28, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 1 Comment

Bolaphone - The Four Rabbits

Bolaphone is a beatsmith from the Czech Republic, I first stumbled upon his abstract beats through his releases on the Ground Floor Records net label, and later through commmunications and musical exchanges on a forum we both frequent. He’s an all round nice guy, humble and hard working, and he gives us his music for free, so we have to listen yeah? Well, we should, because he approaches his abstract productions from a different angle than most, offering a fresh pallette of sounds and textures.

The new EP, The Four Rabbits contains four tracks showing the Bolaphone beats, each one varied, plucked from film noir and other darker reaches, fleshed out with intricate and subtle electronics and processed sound, building to a growl. The organ is a prominent instrument for this EP giving a live jam feel to the compositions, elevating the tracks from not just beatscapes, but a soundtrack to an unmade movie.

With great haste, get over to www.bolaphone.net or www.myspace.com/bolaphon and link yourself with The Four Rabbits, and add some abstraction to your day.

Wayne Stronell

Monk Fly – Streetisms Volume 1 (The Frequency Lab)

Published by Wayne Stronell at June 28, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

Monk Fly - Streetisms Vol 1

Monk Fly is a Sydney producer, DJ and musician influenced by everything from jazz, hip hop, dubstep, jungle, wonky beats and environmental sounds. Monk Fly, together with fellow bass-head Jonny Faith, hosts For The Heads, Sydney’s only weekly future beats radio show, and also the only regular club night, Headroom, dedicated to exploring the outer reaches of wonky abstract beat territory.

Following on from his acclaimed dubstep 12” release, An Afternoon With Camilla, Streetisms Volume 1 further develops Monk Fly’s take on dubstep, incorporating wonky abstract beats not unlike those of Flying Lotus, Rustie, Quarta 330 and Zombie. The first in a two part series dedicated to investigating the gritty, lo-fi bottom end of bass music.

This digital only release offers up five fresh new tracks, destined to cement his name as a producer to watch, the production sounds massive, I just can’t wait to hear this on a big sound system! In the interim, go check out a recent two part live laptop set at www.fortheheads.blogspot.com.

Wayne Stronell

wiQwar – wiQwar (Warnotwah Recordings)

Published by Wayne Stronell at June 28, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

wiQwar

Musician/producer Russell Wickwars has gained quite a reputation for his live shows, with help from his brother Lewis, showcasing their laptop/guitar/ukulele sets alongside artists such as King Creosote, David Thomas Broughton, This Is The Kit, The Owl Service, Nancy Wallace and Essie Jain at festivals throughout Europe, including the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival in Fife. Radio has been kind to the Norwich based musicians also, BBC Norfolk being big fans, as well as Australia’s own Sideways Through Sound Radio show.

The sound encompasses diverse musical influences, the obvious being folk and traditional celtic ancestry, creating a whimsical pop folk landscape. All their sounds come from home-made recordings of acoustic instruments, including beaten guitars, melodica, ukulele, glockenspiel, kalimba and a vast array of percussion, all processed, sequenced and built into beats and soundscapes, accompanying finger picked guitar melodies drawing comparisons to Rick Tomlinson (Voice Of The Seven Woods), Tunng and Zak Riles.

There is a folk-art, DIY, cottage industry ethic in everything about this release, from the multitude of acoustic instruments played well, and sometimes not so well, to lo-fi made at home approach to the production, and carried through to the cute diorama that’s used for the cover art work.

A beautifully relaxing record of soothing soundscapes and melodies, it makes you feel a contentment with life.

Wayne Stronell

Declining Winter Interview

Published by Bob Baker Fish at June 28, 2009 in Interviews. 0 Comments

This is a short interview with one of my favourite musicians, Hood alumni Richard Adams that I did for Inpress about 4 months ago. The reason I post it now is because that not only is Goodbye Minnesota (Sensory Projects) such a great album, they’ve just released a download only remix album with some really great mixes from the likes of Bracken, Remote Viewer and Part Timer. Check http://sensoryprojects.com.au for more details.

Perhaps one of the most criminally underrated indie bands of the last decade and bit have been Leeds based quintet Hood, a band who have continued to create some of the most beautiful experimental melodies you will ever hear. They’ve remixed Mogwai and collaborated with Anticon, but are now they’re on an indefinite hiatus. Two years ago Chris Adams came out with his solo project Bracken and unleashed We Know About the Need, a gorgeous nuanced opus of understated electronica. His brother and co conspirator in Hood Richard Adams has taken a little more time. His project, Declining Winter’s debut release Goodbye Minnesota is nothing short of stunning. It’s impossible not to be seduced by the gorgeous shimmering instrumentation, simple textural sounds, violins, acoustic guitars gently plucked, basic percussion given plenty of space and of course the incredible winsome vocals that resonate so readily in Hood. It’s an album of sparse stately beauty, reminiscent of well, Hood.

“There’s definitely still a link there,” offers Richard Adams. “There’s no point in pretending the link doesn’t exist. Sometimes I think that people can be so scared of sounding like something that they end up losing everything. But to be honest I don’t sit down and think about it much. As long as I like it I’m fine with it.”

It’s quite curious. In going solo Adams has not taken the opportunity to establish his credential too far from Hood. This is not a long awaited doom techno record, or an opportunity to delve into deep funk. Instead everything feels easily traced back to his day job, and by extension his soul.

“I’m not the kind of person who will just lurch off in a different style,” he confirms. “This is what comes out when I make music. I wasn’t at any point thinking I better not make this sound like Hood, but there was no conscious decision to make it sound like Hood either. It’s what came out really. People have said that if you play mine and my brothers records together you get a Hood record. It’s two halves of one thing really.”

There is very little urgency about Adams and it’s incredibly reassuring. He’s not particularly good at selling his music, and seems content to let the music do the talking. Everything appears simple. Hood is not playing at the moment so now he has time to do things for himself.

“It’s an experiment in writing my own songs,” he says. “That’s literally it. It was either Chris writing the songs, the complete band stuff or either a collaboration with me and him. This is just an experiment for the first time in writing my own songs start to finish, doing everything rather than giving my ideas to others. Just a creative vehicle for me to write music really.”

But he enjoyed the process considerably.

“I think because I’m such a control freak, I’ve got my own ideas about stuff. It’s like I was set free really,” he confesses laughing. “I could put on all the parts that I wanted. Sometimes you have to go through committee you know.

In fact the success of Declining Winter, which has included putting a band together for live shows, has led to an curious problem. Where to now?

“My major issue about going forward with it is whether I still do it on my own or whether I get the band involved. At the moment I’m doing it myself but I’m still undecided. I’m trying to avoid it being diluted by others. I think the way forward may be a half and half approach. I don’t want to stick to the limited stuff I can do, but I don’t want to lose the themes I’ve developed also. I’m still undecided.

Bob Baker Fish

Various Artists – Rhythm (Cherry Music)

Published by innerversitysound at June 26, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

Rhythm

When I look at a table I see a tree. When I look at a plane I see a bird. Call me obtuse but the abstraction of nature into formed objects does not strike me as an ambiguity or something to create a movement around. So when it comes to listening to a compilation of field recordings of industrial machinery, robotics, adjustments of a car mirror, boat ropes, streetcar, rainclock… ,as presented on this compilation Rhythm , I am almost ready to go marching down the street with a placard bearing ‘don’t just protect your environment, create it’. That the sense of field recording presented on this disk is of some of the highest standard these ears have heard yet and that the subject matter is not of the obvious nature sounds is quite an obtuse joy.

Peter Cusack’s (England) ‘Through the Robots’ opens the album with a pristine rhythm sound movement of the abstracted sound world that is high tech industrial endeavor of the robotic construction within the Jaguar car manufacturing plant. It is quite a swingless noise affair, oh joy! Erick La Casa (France) matter of fact documentation of a mill in ‘Clisson: Moulin de Gervaux’ captures all the sounds of the movement and play of the building condensed and heightened showing all the movements and tensions of this active building. Takahiro Kawaguchi (Japan) recording ‘for example #01’ is the strangest placed on the album as it is a atmospheric recording set in a rural setting with a repetition of the number one at distinct intervals. Dale Lloyd (USA) ‘1928 Australian Streetcar’ is just that, a journey in such a streetcar, (American for tram), presumably through San Francisco, with all the ensuing noise of the device, passengers and environs.

It’s almost a disappointment that this album closes with Walter Tilgner’s (Germany) ‘Tag, Mittelspecht’, which is a gem of nature recordings from his Spring Concert in Riverrain Forest album. It is hard to discern whether it is a condensed and constructed nature symphony or a presentation of found sound. Tilger (born 1934) has a long history in this field and a great number of releases to his name and the general idea of field recordings owes a great deal towards this tendency. That this album ends in this place, which is perhaps a sense of its forms beginnings, is interesting in the idea of the compilation as a through international survey of the contemporary practice of field recordings.

Innerversitysound

Felicity Mangan – Lumetorm (Sound & Fury)

Published by innerversitysound at June 26, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

Having spent November and December in 2008 in Estonia, as artist in residence at MoKs (Center for Art and Social Practice) during the winter period, Felicity Mangan has created Lumetorm, literally meaning Snow Storm in Estonian. The compositions on this album derive from an assortment of sources ranging from field recordings (birds, frogs, wind, babies, street noises, windchimes…) to the more traditional instrumentation of the guitar, or to the more oblique such as paper bags. As composition it pertains more to the idea of sound design, whereby the elements of sound are manipulated for effect, and the performance nature of Mangan’s work tends to be an effects driven construction of collated and improvised sounds.

As a work it is described as “Fragile Compositions gently crafted” and to a great degree this is true as it is not bombastic or confronting as sound collage but spatial and discrete; purposefully environmental sound. The notion of a constructed picture of snow storm is not as apparent, certainly there is a sense of detachment and the knowledge of place and location of the recordings of sound is conveyed, as much by the information as by the sound, but as an entrance to the idea of a snow storm the album lacks descriptive power. While the demand for declarative precision may be misplaced, the ability to make clear knowledge and precise descriptions through sound is perhaps part a sense of what the term sound design pertains. The greatest sense of this within the album is on ‘Autumn Cusp’ which builds a complex array of sounds into a quiet sonic fury enveloped by a cloud of static noise.

‘Tea Tree’ with its strangeness of atmosphere and melodic guitar line is excellent as well, yet a too short or underdeveloped piece. The final track ‘Frogi’ combines a number of field recordings both as loops and collage suggesting clearly a nature tableau which besides it’s constructed nature differs little from the experience of an evening within a wetlands hinterland or similar frog habitat. That these final two pieces are detached from the idea of a Lumetorn suggests a seemingly incoherent design strategy by Mangen for this album which in retrospect diminishes an experience that within it’s boundaries was generally a quiet treat.

Innerversitysound.

Purple Brain – RVNG PRSNTS MX7 & MX7SEVEN 7″ & CDR (Rvng Intl.)

Published by Wayne Stronell at June 25, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

Purple Brain

The re-edit has become a respected medium of late, where the mashup often has become a cliché, the re-edit heads for higher ground, where it gains the respect by staying true to the original, not venturing too far from the original template.

Purple Brain are a new outfit in the re-edit game, and they hail from our own shores, and its great to see some great quality in this field, gaining comparisons to Finders Keepers and Dirty Edits with a finely tuned ability to dig up those hidden gems very few people have heard, and assemble them in a coherent presentation. Purple Brain have packaged together an intriguing set of 7” vinyl and CDR mix for our education.

The 7” opens with a re-edit of ‘The Riot’ by Barry Devorzon & Perry Botkin Jr, a highly percussive funk track, before Purple Rain assemble a plodding tribal dirge for ‘Purple Brain Theme’. Their re-edit of ‘To The Comrades’ by Bahumutsi Drama Group heads into afro-rock territory, the whistling intro leading to an afrocentric dancefloor pleaser. This is definitely top shelf material.

Nicely packaged with a mix CDR, Purple Brain dig even deeper, pulling out some absolute gems, and mixing them into a psychedelic haze, adding cruelty by not telling us what gems are included here, a sample spotters dream… It’s a massive melting pot of krautrock, latin, jazz, funk, soul, electronic, psychedelic rock, afro-rock, progressive rock, disco and avant guarde, containing the re-edits from the 7” vinyl also.

This is an engrossing psychedelic trip, dipping into the unknown chasm of untapped psychedelic goodness. Tune in, turn on, and drop out.

Wayne Stronell

Adam Trainer – Twice Worn (HellosQuarerecordings)

Published by innerversitysound at June 25, 2009 in Reviews Issue 23. 0 Comments

Adam Trainer, member of the Perth indie band Radarmaker and presenter on RTR FM, presents a debut album Twice Worn combining instrumental and processed sounds as a unified entity. Introductory track ‘South China Sea Two’ fuses soft and melancholy piano movements with glitch interruptions. Static tones and melodic interplay are essentially the order of the day for Trainer where cutup meets instrument meets field recordings meets laptop. While some tracks are drones overlapping and intertwining, others find brighter instrumental sounds holding the foreground while the interplay of experimentation shades the corners of Trainers world. Long drawn out vocals On ‘Cabrini Green’, almost a subtle wail, in a Radioheadesque manner, are manipulated as tonal abstraction rather than intonation. ‘South China Sea One’ is the albums standout track with a coherent melodic guitar instrumental combined with insistent static and electronic interference jostling without upsetting the experience.

The sense of collage and minimal technology promoting maximal experience is high on these glitched out minimal collages and would appeal to listeners familiar with the works of Fennesz, Phillip Jeck or Candlesnuffer.

Innerversitysound