[Editor's Note: All answers for Hammock are furnished by the two members, Andrew Thompson (AT) and Marc Byrd (MB).]

HC- Hi guys. It’s been a year since we last spoke (can you believe it?). What have you been up to?

MB- We finished our new record, Oblivion Hymns which was a great experience. We learned a lot of things working on this record. My home studio, “Breathturn” finally got finished. We’ve done some remixes for other artists. We’ve been approached with some really cool opportunities that could happen in the future; hopefully they will become a reality. Right now I’ve been dealing with neck and shoulder problems and have pretty much been laid out for the last six weeks. I think I’m on the upswing now.

AT- Mixing, mastering & artwork for Oblivion Hymns mostly. We are always writing & recording, of course, and have been working with Matthew Perryman Jones on something new and different for all of us. We also have an entire record completed that we recorded with Matthew Ryan. We’re waiting for the right time to put it out. We’re also making plans to expand our label and begin releasing music by different artists that we admire.

HC- I hear some choral elements as well as requiem vocals in your latest work, which also has the word “hymn” in the album title. What was a particular concept or aesthetic that you were trying to achieve?

AT- We really wanted to have the strings, horns & choir do the melodic heavy lifting on this record. It was a very conscious effort to compose with that aesthetic in mind. Taking our usual guitar elements & using them for the backdrop, rather than the focus.

MB- Well the title of the record came first. Normally the title is one of the last things to show up in the process. We wanted a noticeable connection with our last record, Departure SONGS. Hence the name, Oblivion HYMNS. We included a physical ticket to “oblivion” in the CD version of DS as well. It was all a deliberate and intentional connection. After making Departure Songs we both felt like we needed to do something different and create a very focused piece of work with an emphasis on the strings. Our manager, Johnny Pleasant, is the one who suggested the idea of using an actual choir on this record. We chose to use a children’s choir in order to keep a sense of vulnerability. Working with the kids was a great experience. I think the entire album feels like a requiem, a collection of condolence. Departure Songs was an album about living life within the midst of finitude; Oblivion Hymns is the passing away… the acceptance of saying, “goodbye.” An ongoing hymn to the temporary.

HC- In our last conversation, you conveyed that on the new album you’d be “taking a completely different direction”. Can you elaborate a bit on that? What new things did you try on the album, and what old techniques did you attempt to perfect?

AT- There are a few songs on Oblivion Hymns that we decided to wait to add any additional elements until we had the strings down first. It made sense to record our guitars (etc.) to not only what the strings were playing, but how they were being played. At times it was a little white-knuckle, going into a string recording session with nothing but our scores & the song’s tempo, but in the end, the experience was amazing.

MB- We actually recorded the strings on “Like a Valley With No Echo” and “In the Middle of This Nowhere” during the Departure Songs string session so we had an idea of where the album was going to go. We knew we wanted to do something “string heavy” and more in the neo-classical vein but we didn’t want it to sound like we were thinking about the process. A few years ago I fell in love with the soundtrack from the movie, The Fountain by Clint Mansell. That piece of work planted a seed in me to hopefully one day create an album that was overtly cinematic and sweeping in scope. We’ve always wanted to do something more orchestrated but I think we needed enough time to pass and enough growth to occur in order for the music to sound natural, like a true progression and not like we were trying to imitate something/someone else. The guitars are less linear on this album but also more experimental when it comes to the sculpture of their sound.

HC- Tell us about some of the collaborators or participants on the new release. For example, who’s playing the strings?

AT- It’s the Lovesponge Quartet mostly, some additional cellos by Matt Slocum. It was the usual suspects but we did get our dear friend Timothy Showalter from the band “Strand of Oaks” to come in and sing on “Tres Dominé”. It’s the last song on the record and definitely stands out from the rest of the album. The song feels like a post-funeral performance, an ending… like the moment people start walking to their cars after a graveside service. Timothy really captured that emotion and we could not be happier with his performance on that song. He is truly gifted as a vocalist & songwriter. Phil Madeira also played accordion.

MB- For this album we asked Amy Pleasant to create the artwork. She’s a great artist and since this record is different from the rest of our catalog we also wanted the artwork to be different. We are so fortunate to work with such talented visual collaborators like Amy, photographer Thomas Petillo, Jónsi & Alex, David Altobelli, and Alex Amoling, who as we write this is creating the first video for Oblivion Hymns. I think Amy was able to capture the aesthetic of the music and the meaning of the titles/stanzas. The only other album in our catalog that is drawing/painting-based is Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow, which is also another album that stands out from the rest of our work.

HC- I would claim that your music is often full of sorrow, melancholy and at times even grief. To what would you attribute some of these assessments, and how would you say making music has allowed you to communicate some of life’s struggles and woes?

MB- My very close friend, Chuck Dodson once asked me why the theme of impermanence is so prevalent in our work. I couldn’t elaborate too much at the time but it got me thinking and I can only speak for myself regarding this but when I was younger I experienced the loss of several people who were around my age. By the time I was nineteen there were some very close people to me who had passed away, several from suicide. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been through it, but when you’re used to hearing someone laugh and talk to you on a daily basis, when you talk back to them and make them laugh, when you share who you are with someone and overnight they’re gone… they disappear… It profoundly changes you and has a lasting influence on who you are and how you view the world. There are many times when we’re recording that I remember the ones I’ve lost and the absence they left in my life. Their memory fills me with so much emotion and as a result that emotion is present in the performance. I hope that in some way their presence/absence resonates through the music…

AT- Hammock definitely allows us to purge our demons. Working on this music has been a true catharsis from the very beginning, and hopefully has been a cathartic experience for our listeners as well. Marc has taken to calling it “Sad Boy” music, which does seem quite fitting at times.

HC- A lot of track titles read like poetry. They even seem to fit well into a micro story. Where do these come from or how do you come up with these words?

MB- I’m glad you picked up on this. The titles are usually the last piece of the creative puzzle we come up with but with this album they were pretty much the first piece. One Saturday morning this stanza kind of spilled out of me all at once. After a little editing I felt like I had a nice flow of words. The flow made more sense to me after my wife, Christine and I rented a house high up in the cliffs of Big Sur. Our view consisted of the ocean far below us and cliffs and mountains that surrounded us. I know it’s an old analogy but I was watching the ocean from an elevated distance. I could see all the waves coming in, each one a different piece of the ocean but not separated from the ocean. I was very struck by the idea that we all come from the same thing yet are unique and separate. In the ideal we’re all one, but I’m not you and you’re not me… I feel like this is a great representation of our new album. Each piece of music can stand on its own but the separate pieces are stronger and make more sense when listened to as a collective whole. So each title is also stronger when read in order… within the context of the other.

HC- I would still love to see you guys live. So when is that tour going to materialize?

AT- There are some things in the works on the live front and we’ll keep you up to date on that as it continues to develop. In the meantime, we are writing & recording for the next Hammock record already as well as a few other surprises.

MB- Yeah we want the idea of performing live to happen. Until then, we’re just gonna keep creating. In about a month we’re packing up our gear, computers and instruments and leaving for the mountains. We’ve got a cabin rented for a week. We’re going to set up a temporary recording space and figure out where we want to go with our next record. The possibility of the live experience is always an ongoing conversation. One day, hopefully soon, it will make sense.

hammockmusic.com

For some bizarre and unknown reason I always have difficulties covering the end of any festival. It is especially exhausting to gather all of my thoughts during the final few days of a sonic onslaught, which slowly gets stretched out over a week. The Seattle weather decided not to cooperate, adding to the fatigue, lassitude and the final burnout. On the fourth day of festivities I found myself waking up (or attempting to wake up) in the hotel lobby, as the torrential rain slammed the stranded pedestrians with its sideways wind gusts. After another long night I was writing the notes (or attempting to write), as the Seattle native Jeff McIlwain (Lusine Icl) was being interviewed for a festival documentary. The proximity to these artists provided an opportunity to run into Thomas Fehlmann, and somehow the day was going to unwind into something better.

The subtitle of the third Optical installment, Night Vessel, implied travel through some undefined and ambiguous spaces, ships docking in the blackness of a shadow, lights on water, and vague distant cities seen from unlit stretches of freeway. Yet what we witnessed with Margaret Chardiet’s Pharmakon project was anything but crepuscular. This was a blindingly bright ultra-high definition noise, manifest with explicit compositional punctuation and performative abandon. The roar of her vocal howl only exceeded by the wining, twisting torrent of contact-microphone amplified sheet metal. Chardiet’s presence positioned her as a musical godchild of sorts to Japan’s performance extremophile, Masonna. And anyone who’s witnessed Maso Yamazaki’s live incarnation knows what a compliment this is.

Across downtown at the Showbox, Juan Atkins was creating a marriage of Detroit techno’s repetitive phrasing and deep syncopated funk. Drum machine engaged in an endless dialog of call and response with arpeggiated synth, riding the rhythm into futuristic vistas glimpsed in the 80′s Motor City. Hamburg met Detroit as Thomas Fehlmann embraced Atkins, handing off the baton to Dr. Alex Paterson as The Orb launched into a subliminal ambient haze. For all the rain and hurricane winds outside, the interior of the club was a humid, light filled, and pulsating urban space filled to capacity with bodies in motion. Building from slower, more spacial ambiance and dubbed out downtempo beats, The Orb brought around some older favorites, including Little Fluffy Clouds.  This was a sound that looked back to that decade past of electronic music’s golden cultural ascent, yet didn’t deny the technological advances of it’s present reality.

The final night’s Optical showcase was made weighty not just by being the conclusion of the festival, but by the even more bleaker weather outside coupled with the evening’s theme, titled Black Noise. The showcase featured Blackest Ever Black label’s current rising (dark) star, Raime, in all-out sturm und drang mode. Keeping to the shadows on the peripheral of the stage, Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews let loose a goliath of strained acoustic instruments, guitar and electronics as a tidal ebb and flow of undeniable gravitational weight. This was set to a backdrop of Dakus Films‘ ultra high speed footage of abandoned industrial ruin, abstract figurative events and particle driven visuals of water and soil dispersion, synced to the drones, howls and hypnotic tectonic beats. I recommend that you pick up Raime’s Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (2012) for a taste of this sinister live performance.

Rafael Anton Irisarri’s The Sight Below created an unbroken thread of desolate, elegiac yearning for places and times now past. The opening field recordings of bubbling water, distant birds and deep grumbling bass established a perspective of remove, with a flashback into a space of events untouchable, inaccessible, and somehow incomplete. Hiss and a crackle slowly gave way into more controlled distortion, which slowly drowned out its harmony into a torrent of electric guitar and analog synthesizer rapture. This was certainly one of Irisarri’s loudest and most moving performances to date, which I’m hoping one day he would turn into an album. At this point in the evening’s proceedings it was announced that due to mechanical issues with his flight from Canada, the showcase’s headliner Oren Ambarchi would not be making an appearance.

Ambarchi’s performance, however, took place the following night at the Chapel Performance Space, which, with its vaulted ceilings and pristine acoustics, is one of the most reverential spaces for sound in Seattle. The sound explored lower frequency shifts punctuated by nimble resonances plucked from the electric guitar. These were neither limited to the sublimated ambient spaces heard on his recordings for the Touch label, nor the improvisational dissonance of his recent collaborations with Japanese guitar legend Keiji Haino. Instead it was a music encompassing facets of both. Culminating some fifty minutes into the piece with a crescendo of feedback, bass and frequency swirl, the room was filled with a torrent of sound, which slowly faded into soft hum and the silence of a rapt audience. Given the physical, aural, and sensory overload over the course of five days, there have been few festival conclusions that have so perfectly matched the overall cumulative effect of Decibel as this closing chapter. Sometimes the epilogue really is one of the more satisfying components of the story.

dbfestival.com

[ preview ] [ day one ] [ day two ] [ day three ] [ day four and five ]

In addition to the usual in-depth coverage by HC, this year’s write-up includes words by Jefferson Petrey, who was kind enough to lend us his ears and pen for the showcases we just couldn’t make. I am particularly indebted to his coverage of the last two days, which is most prominent in this final installment.

The most notable thing about Richard Chartier’s latest is that it starts with so many organic sounds. The naturalism is startling, given his repertoire often focusing on severe, digital minimalism. For Interior Field, Chartier used field recordings from a variety of spaces, both large and small around the world. The triangulation of location, focus, and experience informs the often haunting aesthetic of the album, about an hour of sound split into two halves. Fair warning that to best experience the album, I highly recommend a good set of headphones in a quiet space. I was not able to really appreciate the complexity and range of its sounds with my windows open (although one might argue that the environment outside merely adds another layer to the listening experience) or on my open monitors, where a conspicuous fan in my amp dominated over the subtleties of Chartier’s arrangements.

Part one starts with unusual concrete sounds that at first resemble water drops on a surface… or is that the creaking of wood? The ambiguity of the source of the sound is at first curious and then fascinating. Even the sedate drones that underpin the front end of the piece feel more organic in nature, as if they are environmental or contact sounds that have been manipulated and pitched down. Fans of Chartier’s knack for sculpting minimal microtonal drones will not be disappointed, though — he delivers that in spades here, building on the more acoustic sounds that start things off and then forming a subtly undulating fabric of sonic threads.

Sine waves, hums, hiss, and tiny drones all shift shape as gradually as they originally come into focus. They share the same drowsy, slow morph of his Recurrence album released last year, but the end effect and atmosphere are distinctly different. Chartier’s sleight of hand is more refined than ever here, with gradual changes in sound that seem so effortless they are almost unnoticeable at first. By the time I realize the sound has evolved, it’s in a totally different place and shape from where it started; that sort of slow motion is not easy to achieve.

The earthiness of Chartier’s arrangements here reminds me at times of the grimy, post-industrial landscapes of David Lynch and Alan Splet’s Eraserhead soundtrack. The second segment of the first half has a more overt rhythm to the sound, like moving parts patiently working in tandem, before settling back into a more comfortable, continuous low hum. I can’t fully do the music justice in writing about it here — there is something special about Chartier’s ear and abilities to finely design sound that really resonates here.

The second half of the album picks up where the first left off, although it feels like somewhat of a corollary to the broader arc of the first part. I say this because while it shares the same combination of natural texture and drones and atmosphere, it is far more subtle and more even than the front half. Continuous, steady rain provides the texture throughout most of the track, along with quiet, low drones that come and go even more subtly than in the first.

McMillan Sand Filtration Site

In an offline conversation with HC, Chartier revealed that the source of sounds in Part 2 of the Interior Field were recorded in near complete darkness in one of the chambers of the McMillan underground sand filtration tanks, used to store overflow storm water to prevent flooding. The sounds were captured as it the rain dripped down upon the large grids of sand, before traversing the four feet of depth into the reservoir. See photo above which should enhance this listening experience.

The distinction between the two pieces is I suppose like comparing two swatches in a greyscale: relatively different, but only on a micro level. However, they combine to form yet another stunning entry in Chartier and Line’s respective discographies. It’s nice to hear him working with field recordings in a way that feels so entirely different than a sound recordist like Chris Watson. Watson aims to preserve and emphasize the source material in as meticulous and pronounced ways as possible, whereas Chartier uses his recordings to help create a broader sound that seems more concerned with space and tone in nuanced and various ways rather than a focused fascination on the source itself. Highly recommended.

3particles.com | lineimprint.com

Review by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion.
Additional comments on source of the material in Part 2 by HC.

Exactly a year ago, Thomas Pujols released his fifth full-length as Nebulo. The album’s launch was celebrated with an exclusive mix, Cardiac Mixtape, on Headphone Commute’s podcast. Today we seem to replicate this past. Once again, the beloved Hymen Records releases Nebulo’s next full-length, Castles. And once again, we compliment the album with this mix.

“This mix is made of old tracks (1951 for the incantation for tapes / 1960 for Daphne Oram / 1991 for Sean Booth), very recent ones (like the Dopplereffekt EP released just this month) and 3 tracks taken from my new album out on October 29th on Hymen. The idea was to play with analog synthesis, (post)-techno beats and sonic experiments.”

Cover art is taken from Nebulo’s Basements series, available on Hymen as a digital EP. Grab your copy of Castles from ant-zen mailorder or directly from the label.

soundcloud.com/nebulo | hymen-records.com

[STREAM] | [DOWNLOAD] | [PODCAST] | [iTUNES]

The latest Facture release, and only eighth in its catalog, is a monumental body of work, spanning over 9 hours of music! It took me a while to consume this collection, and I just attempted going through the double disc! Besides the twelve pieces on compact disk, there’s also a double vinyl, and a DVD, the latter clocking in at over 60 tracks. Right away, I’m beginning to grasp the concept from the interwoven titles. Besides the title track named “Light Folds“, there are also pieces called “Light Folds Across The Swells” and “One Delicately Touches The Light Folds.” There are also tracks titled “Light Against The Swells” and “Dust Against The Swells” followed by another theme with “A Tear In The Sails,” “A Tear In The Sea” and “A Tear In The Sky“. As you can see, there is a knitted fabric of the motif, with variations of the phrasing. Of course, the words are not alone, and the braided statement is acknowledged in the sound.

The music comes on like a daydream. Fuzzy layers of memories peel off like membranes which are hard to forget. Some cling to the past, some evaporate in the future. Shuffling textures are juxtaposed with tranquil piano and the strings… and then the melody will swerve, inclining on another passage. Sheets of atmospherics are occasionally brushed off to reveal yet one more coat of lightly patterned story. Although mostly beatless, the implied rhythms in these acoustic vignettes do not entirely match up, and there are times when my mind clings to a particular sketch, only to change later when another melody is shed. Deconstructing the individual scenes into their components is fruitless, as they would be left naked and regrettably alone. Together, in this feverish flotation through sublime and subconscious, the music allows one to sail on a vapor of specter by sky and by sea.

A culmination of over two years of work, the project is a result of a collaboration between Bill Seaman (aka SEA, Attsea, Otic.Info.Set, sp.op.cit, Spilly and the Drops) and Craig Tattersall (member of The Boats, The Remote Viewer, as well as recording under The Archivist, The Humble Bee, and many others). Hence is the name of this collaboration (Seaman and Tattersall – get it?), in which the digitally exchanged audio fragments keep morphing, colliding over and over. Tattersall’s particular aesthetic of ‘dusting’ is heard as a treatment throughout the work, with tape degradation, slight glitches and noise. This, of course, is applied to his piano, guitar, and synth sounds, along with some field recordings and analogue loops. Fed back through Seaman’s imagination, the pieces picked up some DSP effects, time-stretched manipulations, digital distortion and bit reduction. And then back to Tattersall for some more abstraction. All merging into a blend of many genres and styles, too many to list here…

“The working process was quite exciting to hear what each had done with the tracks as an ongoing process… The project is incredibly rich in its subtle exploration of psychoacoustic spaces and layerings, and it is vast… The works form a series of plateau-like spaces where time is explored and erased, and an atmosphere for reflection and association is presented. Duration was not worried about and many of the works are quite long.”

This Facture release is especially ambitious. Besides the already mentioned media components, the deluxe and limited edition set contains four limited edition A6 prints inside some photographic glassine bags, plus an A2 double sided poster, a scent (huh?) and more, all wrapped inside a black bag, which is used for underexposed photographic paper. The visual works are just as important in this package as its sonic counterparts. Tattersall made some experimental pin hole lumen prints, “a photographic technique where you work with photographic paper within direct sunlight,” which, together with the audio, explore the concepts of light, time and space. I highly recommend you dive into this voyage on your own, and see where each dreamscape will take you…

billseaman.com | tape-dust.tumblr.com | fac-ture.co.uk

Hey Matthew. How is your summer/fall going? Doing anything fun before it’s over?
i’ve had a lovely summer [and fall] – the weather has been just gorgeous. as far as doing fun things – i was able to work on something out on the oregon coast right on the beach – i’m looking forward to sharing more details in the coming months.

I really wanted to ask you about the title of your latest album, Nightmare Ending. Where did it come from?
it is a double entendre that i created, i suppose – it is mainly about loosening restrictions on myself – but i really enjoy the contrasting feelings it creates.

How did this turn out to be a double-disk release? This may be a question for the label, but from the manufacturing point of view, wouldn’t there be some financial challenges in releasing a 2xCD at a “standard” album price?
i was not concerned with that – i was only concerned with doing what felt right and allowing the music to live and breathe. the label could maybe say something about the logistical part of it, i don’t know – but Temporary Residence has always been amazing about keeping things very reasonably priced and still creating beautiful and unique things – - it is one of the many things that makes them special and wonderful to work with – and part of why both artists want to be there and fans want to support them.

Following Similes, the album feels like a welcome return to the Eluvium music that many already love. Can you talk about the reception of the former and your feelings on returning to the latter?
people were very cautious of Similes – and perhaps at first it suffered a little bit because of that – but so many people are still discovering it or coming back to it and realizing that they have a connection with it, which makes me very happy —– Similes is such an important album for me and i’m extremely proud of it. As far as “returning to the latter”, i can’t really feel anything towards that because i don’t believe i ever left — sometimes people have a tendency to only see what is directly in front of them – and so from that point of view i could see many people seeing Similes as some major departure – but to me it is simply just another part of myself, or maybe the same things expressed in different ways – and i hope throughout my life as a musician i have many more opportunities to express myself in as many ways that feel natural and a major part of me while as well challenging me in new ways or perspectives. if people choose to not include Similes in the Eluvium picture purely because it has vocals, so be it — but that isn’t going to change my interest in pushing myself and pursuing what is of interest to me at any given moment – — that pursuance and that pushing of my self to do what feels right and what excites or challenges me is what has given me everything in my catalogue – and i wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.

You continue to work with Jeannie Lynn Paske on all of your album art. Can you tell us more on this collaboration?
we really enjoy each others art and company – she has a style that is very unique and it captures a wide array of emotions in a single piece – to me it fits with my music very well. our studios are right next to each other with our record room in-between us and it makes for a very creative and influential environment. we met working together at a record store and have always inspired each other since the very beginning – i knew that she was unique and insanely talented – and while driving up to see The Sounds of the Sounds of Science performed by Yo La Tengo one night – i played her some early music and we got to brainstorming on ideas of collaboration right away – so we ended up making a few stop motion movies together – years later we were married.

I’d love to see you perform live. Is there a chance for a tour?
i’ve had so many projects going on i haven’t had time to think about touring.  but i’m trying to focus on unique one off performances more than full on tours. i guess it might be a little dependent on where you live.

Back in early 2013 you mentioned that you are working on a new film score. Any developments on that which you can share?
i created original music for a film called For Thousands of Miles last spring/late winter — i haven’t had a chance to think about releasing the music yet — and i’m not sure what became of the film — it was a really wonderful work though – following someone who biked across the US and i guess some of the mental hurdles that go along with that – as well as feeling at home in that sort of environment– so it had some lovely narrative and absolutely surreal imagery — hopefully it gets released sooner or later – i’m quite sure many people would find it as moving as i did.

Read Headphone Commute review of Nightmare Ending

eluvium.net

After a three day silent retreat I return to the world. But before I dive in, I decide to set aside some time for a quiet morning. Perhaps I’ll sit on the pier looking at New York skyline for just a bit. Perhaps I’ll even close my eyes. And with the sounds of water come the thoughts of music. What should I listen to this morning that will slowly ease me into my daily routine? I don’t have to think long before the latest collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Taylor Deupree materializes on my mind. I witnessed these two amazing artists perform in New York, back in April of 2012, and since then I’ve been fantasizing about a possible album [as a matter of fact, my sources inform that this particular live performance "planted the seeds for Disappearance"]. And well, here it is… What better way to begin anew?

First a few quick words about the duo. Ryuichi Sakamoto is a prolific Japanese composer, now based in New York, with a career dating back to 1978, when he was a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra. In the 80s, Sakamoto turned to film and scored Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, which earned him a critical worldwide acclaim, not to mention an Academy and Grammy awards that he received for the film score of The Last Emperor in 1987. My personal journey with Sakamoto’s music started in the early 2000s, and finally culminated into celebrated works with Christopher Willits, Alva Noto, and Christian Fennesz. For a taste, I highly recommend you check out the latest, Ancient Future (Ghostly International, 2012), summvs (Raster-Noton, 2011) and Cendre (Touch, 2007), with the above mentioned artists respectively.

Taylor Deupree, of course, has appeared numerous times on my favorite rotations, most notably, of course, with releases on his very own 12k label. Deupree is also known for collaborations with many of my favorite contemporary artists. Of those names such as Richard Chartier, Stephan Mathieu, Marcus Fischer, and again Christopher Willits, come to mind. Among his many works, the solo albums, such as Faint (2012), Shoals ( 2010), and Northern (2006) are still some of my favorite minimal and ambient works. Over the years Deupree has developed a very organic form of microscopic soundscaping, creating music ideal for isolation, contemplation, and retreat. The assimilation of such elements combined with Sakamoto’s abstract piano experimentation is exactly what draws me to this latest release, and Disappearance truly delivers.

“Disappearance is a soundtrack for holding breaths. Sakamoto and Deupree lay down worn roads, but don’t leave signs, for a journey woven together by the quiet celebration of the fragility of nature and life.”

The music on Disappearance is both extremely minimal and infinitely complex. Numerous concentrated listening sessions reveal intricate details, from shuffling chairs, turning pages, to occasional delays of piano chords, distant children drowned in reverb, scratched strings, warble of old reel-to-reel and barely audible breath. The atmosphere is hushed, restrained and discreet, but it doesn’t drone away with basic tonalities. Instead, Sakamoto’s prepared piano sparsely dances over a chromatic and dissonant scale, while indistinct ambiance swirls in the background over slight scraping of pickup microphones, found objects and the sounds of the room.

One of the most interesting pieces on the album is the last track titled “Curl To Me”. The 12-minute study features the voice and a heartbeat of Aoba Ichiko (青葉市子). a singer slash songwriter from Tokyo. The muffled heartbeat echoes in my headphones as I walk on the street, and at times I forget that it’s the music and wonder if it’s not my own pulsing in my ears. This final piece creates a feeling of intimacy, punctuated even further with its cozy title, leading me on with my day, loving and warm. The overall result is a fascinating language of music, which can only be understood in solitude by a focused meditative mind. And that’s precisely how I tune in…

12k.com

Gui Boratto The K2 Chapter K2 / Kompakt Gui Boratto had been pumping out music for a little while before he connected with Kompakt and the kick-off of their K2 imprint, but it was on one of those K2 records that I first discovered what a talent Boratto had for smart, slick dance music. While I haven’t heard all of the catalogue, K2 always struck me as the logical extension of Kompakt after the label began to migrate toward less minimal sounds; going back through the Kompakt discography, many of its early releases would have fit right in with the K2 stuff much more so than any of the more broadly palatable stuff on Kompakt. I perceived it as the Kompakt guys’ way of saying, “Hey! We still got it.” And so these tracks are devoid of any of the pop flavor that helped make Boratto’s “Beautiful Life” track a breakout for Kompakt on his Chromophobia album, back in 2007. Instead they are clean and tightly crafted dancefloor tracks and DJ tools, highly functional but also executed with near perfection. “Sozinho” will always be a favorite of mine, with a slightly slower tempo and tinges of electro-house in its buzzing bass and distorted patterns, all structured within a neat and tidy techno framework. Paired with “Noronho” they are probably the “smallest” of the set, sounding more miniaturized and insular compared to the more bombastic warehouse reverb of “Chains” or the spatial play of “Gate 7.” Despite the fact that most of these tracks originally circulated 5 to 10 years ago (!) they still sound just as tight as ever. It’s nice to hear them collected in one place as a contrast to Boratto’s pop flirtations that have been peppered through his other output, showing that he’s a talent to be reckoned with regardless of genre.		Marcel Fengler Fokus Ostgut Ton French producer Marcel Fengler shows off his chops once again with his first full-length album for esteemed techno institution Ostgut Ton. His singles in the past have ranged from total techno bangers to leftfield, angular dancefloor gems, and Fokus seems to veer toward the latter, consistent with his other output on the label. Not every track on Fokus is DJ-friendly, but it does flow quite well as an album. It starts off slow with the beatless intro followed by the dreamy opening stretch of “Mayria,” all pads and airy, floating vocals until the beat comes into focus (fokus?). Even then, though, “Mayria” is not exactly a club track, its broken beat and bit-crushed percussion chug in syncopation with a bob of the head more than fancy footwork. On “The Stampede,” Fengler demonstrates the sound that he’s known for, a no nonsense techno track that is heavy on snare fills and looping sixteenth note repetition. It’s probably the most pared down of the album, focused almost entirely on rhythm and little else. With the full-length format, Fengler is free to color outside the lines more, and “High Falls” is such a case, where filtered pads are modulated in rhythm without a beat. “Distant Episode” also shies from the dancefloor, relying on looping textures and pads anchored by a muted, underwater kick drum that feels more like a pulse than a beat. It’s interesting to hear Fengler sprawling out over a full-length album format instead of his usual more concise EPs of the past. In that sense, Fokus is much broader in scope and sound; Fengler is still cranking out quality jams that work on a dancefloor and on headphones equally, but he also has more latitude to explore less functional music here.
Marcel Dettmann Dettmann II Ostgut Ton Marcel Dettmann’s second album continues his trajectory of deep, slick minimal techno. It starts off with a murmur in “Arise,” a prologue to the aptly named following track, “Throb.” With that a pervasive kick drum launches things into motion, and the track does just what it says it will, throbbing with a repetitive and constant synth pattern over the span of five and a half minutes. That Dettmann never introduces a single other drum sound in this one is surprisingly effective, letting modulation on the synth drive the entire track. Such is Dettmann’s modus operandi, putting the “minimal” in “minimal techno” with no qualms or frills. He reduces his arrangements to the bare essentials and treats every detail with attention. It’s not all completely severe, though, either; Dettmann breaks up the album with some interludes that are a welcome diversion as well as one obvious standout track that breaks away from the 4/4 kick. “Seduction” is a collaboration with vocalist Emika and is easily the highlight of the tracklist, positioned smartly in the center of the album. It’s built around punchy irregular kicks and Emika’s floating, ghostly vocal, recalling some of the more abstract tracks on Dettmann’s first album. My other favorite track is “Lightworks,” revolving around a startlingly melodic, dark synth pattern while some more subtle details propel it forward at a patient but steady clip. Elsewhere, beatless interludes like “Shiver,” “Stranger,” and “Outback” add some depth and contrast to the album’s sequence to great effect. Because Dettmann’s aesthetic tends to be quite minimal, I would say it’s not for everyone. But for techno enthusiasts, I think Dettmann II is almost as pure as it gets.		Holden The Inheritors Border Community James Holden’s second full-length album on his own Border Community imprint is likely to throw his fans for a loop. It couldn’t be more different from the neo-trance anthems that made a name for him 10 years ago, but those who’ve listened closely over the years will surely know his hand at work here. His first album, The Idiots Are Winning, turned his knack for pretty melodies and hardware grooves on its side, still delivering those infectious patterns and hooks but making it all a little rougher around the edges, willing to dip a toe into the unknown. The Inheritors, seven years later, pushes the boundaries considerably further and is surely transformative. It’s a triumph from a man who’s unafraid to take chances, to challenge himself creatively, to trump dancefloor conventions while still operating ostensibly within the periphery of dance music culture. Because of the nature of the gear used, there is something almost automatically timeless about these tracks, owing as much to the motorik sprawl of krautrock as techno. Lead single sets the tone well, with its swirling, squirming synth arpeggios that shimmer and shake. It’s an interesting choice for a single, announcing loud and clear that this is not another “Break in the Clouds.” It’s anchored by a plodding, slow kick and supporting toms and sounds that betray most dancefloor conventions, but it makes up for it with a lurching, infectious momentum. Paired with the title track, it’s the turbulent, writhing center of an album that positively vibrates with energy. Whereas Holden’s early trance tracks might conjure up visions of after hours sunrise or slow-moving cloud formations, these tracks are primal, nature untamed.

Sound Byte Reviews by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion.
Republished with permission of the author.

Daniel Lopatin migrates his Oneohtrix Point Never alias to Warp for this ninth (!) full-length album of electronic curiosities, and it’s a smart move. As his sound continues to shift focus and sensibility, it’s only fitting that the project moves laterally within the electronic music community in terms of a label to release its music. The sound of R Plus Seven is substantially different from its predecessor, Replica (Software, 2011), and even more so from Returnal (Editions Mego, 2009). The palette of sounds is largely around synthesized instruments and vocal synths and samples, things Lopatin’s played with in the past, but in a rather different way here. He sounds just as restless as ever, but these pieces are playful and joyous, bristling with energy as vocal cut-ups and samples flit around the mix.

Whereas Lopatin & Ford’s work on Software strikes me as overly schticky and self-consciously nostalgic (to a fault), R Plus Seven does not. There are nods to 80s computer genesis but without any of the clichés; there are no overt nods to John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder, Linn drum R&B, or Duran Duran. But there is something quintessentially 80s and MIDI music about the plink plonk of “Problem Areas” or “Along,” with their synthesized voices and fake flutes and sax sounds — refreshingly, though, it’s not reference intended as a means to an end. This is not nostalgia for the sake of it, but it is transportative in ways that feel both backward and forward-looking, mirroring the past but tweaking and altering it in ways that are often unpredictable.

The biggest distinction I made from the previous Oneohtrix albums I’ve heard (which only include the most recent couple) is clarity. These tracks showcase arrangements that are clean and clear, almost never diving into the hazy distortion of Returnal and instead emphasizing arpeggios, patterns, and sounds in the foreground. The cyclical patterns of “Boring Angel” and “Americans” that lead off are an accurate representation of what to expect in these ten interesting explorations, but there are plenty of surprises along the way.

The strange sputtering vocal bits of “Americans” that divide its first and second halves, for instance, are a welcome change, as are the weird synth voices and edits of “Inside World.” One of my favorite tracks is “Zebra,” falling in the center of the playlist, built largely around stuttering snippets of sound and chords, then evolving into a rich, layered tapestry of voices and sounds and ideas. It sounds to me like a convergence of technology both old and new, eventually mellowing into a more patient, leisurely vibe.

With R Plus Seven, Lopatin freshly succeeds in evolving musically, exploring some truly interesting and unique sounds while still remaining surprisingly accessible. In 2013’s electronic musical landscape saturated with talent and output, it’s a delight to hear such a singular and unique voice getting only stronger and more interesting. The album, by the way, is mastered by Valgeir Sigurðsson. The cover art is by George Schwizgebel, taken from the film Le ravissement de Frank N. Stein (1982). The release is available as a CD and a 2xLP, republished in Japan by Beat Records.

pointnever.com | warp.net

Review by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion.

Steve Elkins is a former private investigator, drummer for The Autumns, and author of “The Grammar Of Fire,” his true recount of being asked to lead a riot in the largest slum in India.  He is currently at work on his second documentary film, which explores how different cultures approach the unknown by struggling to visualize the invisible through either machines or the human body. His film, “The Reach of Resonance“, features John Luther Adams, Miya Masaoka, The Kronos Quartet and Bob Ostertag. The film explores music not as entertainment or self-expression, but as a tool to develop more deeply meaningful relationships with people and the complexities of the world they live in. It currently remains unavailable to the general public – check Screenings on the film site to see if you can catch it in your area.

* * *

What was the spark for investigating sound and performance art?

It was really numerous threads from my life that coalesced half-consciously over time. To take one at random: when I was in my late teens / early 20s, I used to get into long, intense debates about the nature of music with friends. They usually started after I shared some piece of music that had a profound impact on me, and they responded by saying something like “Is that even music?”, or come right out and say, emphatically: “That is not music!” I’ve found this to be a common reaction to a lot of the music that most deeply moves me, a reaction that haunts me to this day. Not because I think others should share my tastes or conceptions of what music is; in fact, I think it’s a testament to the transformative power of music in our lives that no one can come up with a definition of it that circumscribes each person’s relationship to it.

But what strikes me is that the gesture of saying “This is not music” is very different from simply not liking the music. It is a way of dismissing entirely the unique life experiences of a person that led to their particular emotional response to a sound. It illuminates a boundary which someone is unwilling to cross to engage with the intimate life experiences of another human being, to grant them a valid presence, a speaking role, in their life. In other words, I think that when we define something as being music, or not music, it is much more than an opinion. It is part of the process by which we define ourselves and our relationships with others.

And I think that when we create these borders at the edges of our experience where we sift out and discard what we perceive as “noise” from that which we invite into the narrative of our lives to open us up and maybe even transform us, we bump into a process that not only shapes us as individuals, but shapes every arena of society: politics, religion, science, culture, history, technology, etc. My increasing suspicion that music can be spy-hole into how these forces work, an epistemological magnifying glass into how we relate to others and create the societies we live in, was a conviction I could not shake. It led to seven years of work that became “The Reach Of Resonance.”

What are your thoughts on this form of music?

Well, I’ve never thought about it as “performance art” (the term you used in your first question), and I don’t think my film is about a “form” or “type” of music that can be easily lumped into some definable category. And this is important to me, because I want to draw a listener’s attention to that moment when they encounter music that cannot be easily described, codified, or recognized as part of a tradition and reflexively label it “experimental”, “avant-garde,” or “noise.” Because I think John Zorn really nailed it when he said that the moment we use words like these to categorize music – whether it’s “rock”, “jazz”, “punk”, “dada”, “beat”; or “isms” like “surrealism”, “minimalism”, “abstract expressionism,” etc – we stop using terms of understanding. We start using the language of money. These words are used to commodify and commercialize an artist’s complex personal vision, so that it’s easier for an audience to buy it and for a critic to respond with prepackaged opinions. They reinforce the personal and cultural entanglements that condition the way a person listens.

But there are non-verbal catalysts that open us up in ways that words simply can’t. A friend of mine once said, “You can argue with words, but you can’t argue with an act of love.” I think that music, like love, is one of those catalysts. It can mysteriously open closed borders inside us, and take us out of ourselves. The tension some people have to confront when they initially perceive a piece of music as noise may put a spotlight on what can cause that moment of transition, and that’s partially what my film is about. Rilke once said that he believed almost all our sadnesses are moments when we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. To keep them alive is what I hope for in music as much as life, and maybe that’s the most concise thought I can give you about the music I’ve been investigating.

What do you find important when it comes to documenting documenting this music?

I think it tells us a lot about who we are. We are as defined by what we push to our peripheral vision as by what we embrace. And we need voices sounding from our margins to wake us up to how we limit our world and what it could be. Tim Hodgkinson put it this way: “the culture of a society is in the first place a propaganda directed at its incoming members, its children, in the form of how they will be closed in to the world as that culture imagines it.” Artists are border dwellers, uniquely positioned to remind us where we’ve allowed the paint to dry on our experience of the world and people around us. I wanted to circumvent the cliche narrative that so-called “radical,” “fringe,” or “avant garde” art is merely a rebellion against the shared values of tradition and mainstream culture. I see it as a call for a deeper sense of community, for us to be more inclusive, patient, sensitive, and better listeners. I wanted to make a film that thought seriously about making and listening to “noise” as a process of compassion, not one of subversion, and find a language to communicate this to those who may otherwise have been denied this understanding within the vocabulary of mass culture.

Does the music in your film carry a higher social significance than conventional music? I’m bringing about the example of Adams listening stations and the playing of borders, as documented in the film.

No, I don’t think so. I think the social significance of art is in the way it transforms people internally, and all music has this potential, whether it’s John Luther Adams, Fela Kuti, New Kids On The Block, or Bolt Thrower. No matter how much a piece of art purports to be “about” important social issues, it will only be as socially significant as the audience makes it by the degree to which they carry it into their lives. The responsibility is really on the audience, and in this sense they are also performers.

When I first started working on “The Reach Of Resonance,” I was focused on investigating what you might call the “social significance” of certain musical practices, but in a different sense. For example, I wanted to probe whether improvising music in front of an audience provided unique insight into the thinking patterns and habits of people, and the ways they either challenge or ignore the personal struggles of themselves and their fellow musicians. I think I perceived all this at the time as a way of lifting a veil to reveal some underlying truth about people.

At a certain point, I became pretty interested in John Zorn’s game pieces as a demonstration of this. These are complex systems he devised for spontaneous composition by carefully selected groups of musicians on stage that were at first based on sports (Lacrosse, Hockey, Pool, Fencing, etc) then evolved into systems based on war games. I only have a cosmetic understanding of how they work, since the rules are handed down as an oral tradition, but one aspect of them is that any member of the group can change or take control of the dominant musical paradigm in effect at any moment by the use of hand gestures or file cards that instruct the conductor (known as the prompter) or other musicians. There are guerilla systems that enable a player to become a renegade and play as they choose, or take on compadres who lay musical landmines as sabotage. There are squad leaders who can call for operations like musical fencing with other players, and whose cohorts have the duty of watching out for a spy and stop them with a covert throat slitting gesture to the prompter. There are then systems of tactics that can be used to determine who did it. In a way, the musical development is always being determined by the most least patient person at any moment.

In the early stages of making my film, I thought this could be one exciting way to investigate certain social dynamics underlying musical communication, especially since Zorn emphasized that his game pieces are a way of making music that’s not about the “composer,” it’s about people and relationships. He stressed how important it is to carefully select a kaleidoscope of personalities that are aggressive, passive, humorous, and even assholes, because, in his words: “I basically create a small society and everybody finds their own position in that society. It really becomes like a psycho drama. People are given power and it’s very interesting to see which people like to run away from it, who are very docile and just do what they are told, others try very hard to get more control and more power. So it’s very much like the political arena in a certain kind of sense. Some players are really kind of conceptual, thinking about structuring a piece of music, using these signals and trying to create some kind of compositional flow in their heads spontaneously. While others are, you know, creating problems… those are all valid positions to be in in the society that exists on stage when these pieces happen.”

Although I did meet Zorn in New York City, I never interviewed him. There’s actually an interesting documentary that came out while I was making mine called “A Bookshelf On Top Of The Sky” which is partially about the difficulties of making a film about Zorn. This film is structured on the inherent problems of believing you can know someone through their art, or have any special access into their inner life through it. It’s an interesting counterpoint to the direction I was going, and I basically agree with everything Zorn has to say about this. Nevertheless, I held on to my interest in how one’s musical thinking may reflect a person’s “total reaction upon life” (to borrow William James’s description of religion), but it came out in a different way once the film was finished.

What is the shared musicality of all the artists? In what is the aesthetic they share?

Pauline Oliveros once speculated that we may one day be able to implant a “musician chip” into our bodies, which will enhance our capacity to be musicians. This means we need to know what a musician is, so that we’d know what should be encoded on such a chip. She hoped her chip would include the ability to perceive the interdependence of all people and life as the basis and privilege of music making. I would say that is one shared musicality of the artists in my film. They are sensitive to the ripple effects of certain relationships that most of us, consciously or unconsciously, ignore. And use sound to bring them to life in our nervous systems, in case we (like them) will not be able to react to the world quite the same way again.

What is your background with the form?

Mostly self education by going to lots of concerts and taking chances purchasing rare albums in underground record stores. My awareness of many of the musicians that wound up in my film was through a truly incredible person, Dean Rowan, who I met while I was working at a coffee shop as a teenager. He was studying to take the bar exam, not to become a lawyer, but so he could become a better librarian! He never had a tv… his living room consisted of a couch facing a pair of speakers, which he used to explore his absolutely massive collection of vinyl, 8-tracks, CDs, you name it, literally thousands of titles from ancient music to biker metal to extreme noise. At one point, he had to construct a separate building in his backyard to store it all. After he moved near Berkeley, I would often drive from Los Angeles to visit him and stay up all night drinking his favorite obscure micro brews while he introduced me to one life changing record after another. I began contacting some of the musicians from our listening marathons to interview them. My film was carved out of seven years of those interviews, though I discovered many musicians other ways as well.

Where can this form evolve?

One of the most compelling perspectives I’ve heard on this topic was articulated by Robin Fox, when I was in Australia filming an interview he was doing with ABC Radio. He was talking about how he had to try to define “experimental music” in his thesis, and came across Warren Burt’s idea that you can think of it as “advanced marketing research.”

Although at first that seems counter-intuitive, it got me thinking about how the music made by African slaves in the American colonies was routinely described as “noise” by their masters, and yet it engendered nearly all the music now considered to be our most sacrosanct indigenous art forms: gospel, blues, jazz, rock, hip hop, and countless hybrids. Nels Cline once told me that he never thought musique concrète would be commercial, but hip hop made it “top 10″ within his lifetime thanks to sampling. When I was a kid, punk and metal were perceived as a threatening noise of rebellion by the marginalized who loved it and the mainstream that hated it, but now those are two of the biggest commercial mass markets in music. I mean within my short lifetime, metal went from being branded as evil by major religions to being one of the major musical expressions of its own faithful. Looking further back, the organ was originally banned from the Christian church for hundreds of years after its invention because believers heard it as the devil’s instrument, but eventually they embraced it as the voice of their most sacred music.

What these kinds of gestalt switches indicate to me is that music can tell us a lot about the nature of perception. And that what we perceive as “noise” and the sacred are easily interchangeable. This change tends to happen in the span of a single generation now. I suspect that aspects of the music I’ve been documenting will inevitably become absorbed into popular culture and not questioned anymore. A lot of the technologies developed by artists in my film that were perceived as “weird” and “esoteric” twenty years ago are now used by virtually everyone in their phones. But wherever new institutions need to be questioned, new “noise” is likely to emerge. And the beauty is that we can’t predict where or how that will happen. That geography will change as our relationships to each other change.

steveelkins.net | reachofresonance.com

Interview by Patrick Miller exclusively for Headphone Commute

For the past six years, whenever a new record by Axel Willner hits the streets, I usually approach it in the most reserved and skeptic way. “Oh, here we go again,” I’m thinking, “an hour of the same repeating loops. Why would these loops be any better this time, and why is it The Field that does it best?” But as I place my trust into the hands of Kompakt, the doubting cynic slowly starts to fade away. For yet another round of circling music, it is somehow unique, hypnotic and sublime. And as each track approaches its five-minute luring center, I know that Cupid’s Head will stay in queue on long repeat.

Ever since Willner’s debut on Kompakt in 2007, titled From Here We Go Sublime, the scene’s dissenters often wondered, how long this beat can go and why. On the surface of each record, a repetitive phrasing of a four-second bar would leisurely evolve with minute changes, tiny shifts and microscopic blends. But somehow, throughout the years of slow and minim variations, with Looping State of Mind (2011) and Yesterday and Today (2009), it is The Field that keeps this heartbeat rolling on and on. Perhaps Willner has discovered a basic secret in which the rhythm becomes a mesmerizing daydream, spreading its pulsating fingers across your mind in soporific waves. Perhaps the elements he adds to trance-inducing patterns are not as simple as they first appear to be. Perhaps with Cupid’s Head he has perfected soothing soundscapes, which gently cover cadence with their dazed narcotic warmth. All this and more, is a testament to Willner’s success with misconstrued restraint behind his music. No doubt that Kompakt has correctly seen this from the start.

“When I started to work on Cupid’s Head, it was quite awkward”, says Axel, “I felt that I had nothing to put into a new album and I’m not the type to sit down and force something out in the studio. But then, after a few modest attempts, I got a first loop together and running.”

On his fourth full length release, the Berlin-based Swede slightly shifts a bit into slightly darker territory – a welcome move for those indifferent to joy. This aesthetic is mostly prevalent in “Black Sea” where after seven minutes of major-chord glitching strings, swirling pads and near-disco beat, the track abruptly shifts into a dire district, in which the synth arpeggios advance to psychedelic heights. The bass lead is almost 303 in nature, as its frequency and resonance are tweaked in opiate exhaust. On the title track of the album, an undecipherable phrase lays groundwork for rhythm, and this recursive loop holds on to cranium like high electric burn. As per Willner’s comments, it’s the loop in “No. No…” that laid the groundwork for this release: “an intense piece of concrete poetry dissolving in gorgeous swathes of sound…”

The Field’s etheric sound continues to soothe, anesthetize and drown. Like a headcleaner for muddled thoughts and scrambled state of mind, his music somehow launders all that’s crumbled, stiff and foul. Emerging from an hour-long traversal of these numb spellbinding edges, I feel like I have just climbed out of a gripping rabbit hole. But with its trip so magnetizing and enchanting, I’ll gladly plunge into the loop again, again, again, again, again…

kompakt.fm | garmonbozia.se/thefield

Chris Watson is one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena. He has been releasing his archival works on Touch since 1996. Among the many favorites, Headphone Commute has covered El Tren Fantasma, Cross-Pollination, and his most recent work, In St Cuthbert’s Time. Recently, Watson collaborated with Soniccouture on a project called Geosonics, Sampling Planet Earth, a Kontakt Player VST Instrument with hundreds of recordings from some of the world’s most extreme and inhospitable environments. Headphone Commute caught up with Chris Watson to find out about this project and more…

Hello Chris. Where are you and what are you working on these days?
Currently I’m composing a new work to be installed at opera North in Leeds from the 27th Feb. to 15th March 2014. The piece is titled Hy Brasil and will be an Ambisonic sound installation re-creating the soundscape of an island that may or may not have existed off the south west coast of Ireland during the 16th century.

Tell us about the Geosonics project. How did you become involved in it?
I was approached by Soniccouture to discuss the production of a new instrument which featured my location work from a selection of habitats.

How was this project different than your album releases on Touch?
The Soniccouture project required a series of relatively short clips from much longer sections of my recordings. These were to be themed around elemental sounds that were rich in harmonics but not linked to a narrative which is usually a feature of my other works.

For this humongous library of sounds, did you go out and record some things separately, or were these mostly sourced from your past archives?
As the Soniccouture tracks are from across the world they were all sourced from my catalogue of recordings.

Speaking of archives, how big is your personal private collection of recorded sounds, and do you think you’ll share any of it one day?
I have no real idea on the size or number of recordings I currently hold as I only have time to properly catalogue my work in post production after a specific project. I consider the Geosonics project an ideal way of sharing my work in a creative way.

Out of all the ‘inhospitable’ places that you’ve visited on earth, which ones are your favorite and why?
Iceland. It’s very accessible, sonically remarkably diverse and always a stimulating place to visit, record and hang out.

When you travel, how big is your arsenal of the equipment? What sort of interesting things may we find if we look through your bag?
This sounds like the sort of question I get asked by customs officers around the world! I take what I consider to be required for each individual trip. This always includes a spatial audio microphone set up such as a Soundfield ST 450, a Schoeps DMS array, a Sennheiser surround rig. Ultrasonic detectors, contact mikes, hydrophones, small personal mikes, and SQN5S mixer and Telinga parabolic reflectors. All recorded on to Nagra and Sound Devices hard disc recorders.

What would you say is the difference between the sound of nature and a man made sound? Would you be interested in recording a factory, an oil pumpjack or a washing machine?
I’ve recently been recording and working with a wide range of ‘man made’ sounds for projects such as Inside The Circle of Fire and Underground.

Finally, what are your thoughts on this particular interesting topic of mine: is recording an art form?
It can be, it’s all down to the presentation.

chriswatson.net | soniccouture.com

Kate Carr Songs From A Cold Place I think that it’s only appropriate, that I start my Flaming Pines Sound Bytes Special with a release by the founder of the label herself, Kate Carr. I’ve been following the Australian label for a few years now, since the 2011 Listen To The Weather compilation, followed by Carr’s own label debut, Summer Floods. In the process, I watched (and heard) the imprint’s, and indeed its curator’s fascination with nature evolve and grow into a catalog of incredible field recordings, many concerned with, and dedicated to the birds, the rivers, and the organic minimal ambient sounds these images and places evoke. In April of 2013, Carr spent a month in northern Iceland as part of the Listhus residency program. During her stay she collected many field recordings, capturing the sonic landscapes of an early Iceland spring. It is during this time of the year, when the migratory geese arrive for a stopover on the journey further north. The nine delicate pieces archive the sounds from the bird cliffs of Grimsey Island, the desolate rocky moors of the Skagi peninsula, the frozen inlets of Skagafjörður and the tiny fishing town of Ólafsfjörður. The natural settings, the fauna and the elements are perfectly captured by Songs From A Cold Place, at times making my living room seem frigid, as if a gust of wind has vaulted through my walls. Over these frosty sounds, Carr simply strums her guitar, a harp, a glockenspiel and a traditional Icelandic instrument called a langspil. During one of the pieces, I feel a shiver and slowly take another sip of my hot tea. Nevertheless, these sounds make me want to go to Iceland.		Nektarios Manaras Hovering After immersing myself in the chilly sounds of Iceland, I take the time to travel somewhere warmer. I land upon the sounds of Nektarios Manaras with his debut titled Hovering. Hailing from the Greek island of Chalkis, Manaras celebrates sea life, the ancient Metéora rock pillar complex of monasteries and dancing flowers. Here, once again, with the power of music, we are transported to remote lands and distant times. This is not, however, a “traditional” Greek sound. Among the many instruments, the bowed guitars, flugelhorn, monomer and fujara slowly sway to the jazzy rhythm of airy percussion. “As the music plays, whales slowly submerge and monks scale the rock face to pray while the earth floats its way around the sun. It is an album to soak in on sun-dappled days, as the sun sinks beneath the sea and everything for that one moment seems perfect.” The influence of jazz is clearly revealed as soon as saxophone comes in. This is a slow paced, smokey, and drowned out sound, one in which it’s easy to get lost, as the sun warms up my frigid bones, and casts its rays upon the waters of the seas. The music patiently unfurls, eventually stretching its ambiance into complex history of the ethnic sounds with “Anemone dance.” Manaras says the following about his debut release: “The main idea is that everything in the universe and earth is floating in such a beautiful way. That is the feeling I’m trying to capture with my music.” Although Hovering is Manaras’ first release under his own name, you can find more of his music with his band, Eziak, on the Greek Triple Bath label.
Yuco I’m Living With Melancholy in the Fog My Flaming Pines itinerary continues with a stopover in Japan. From the title of the album alone, I’m Living With Melancholy in the Fog, I approach the music rather cautiously, reluctant to be drowned in despair. Track titles such as “I broke up her marriage”, “Another death, another life”, and “A complete failure” hint at sadness shared within, but the music carries a hint of faith and even optimism. Shuffling background textures are cut with the clarity of guitar, piano and sitar. Major chords and melodies are predominant in this eight-piece release, dedicated to the expression of sadness for the aftermath of the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011. As you surely remember, on March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck the Pacific coast of Tōhoku. The music community united in a benefit compilation, organized by Keith and Hollie Kennif, titled For Nihon (Unseen, 2011), but it seems that waves of sound still vibrate. Perhaps, as science has already proved, these tides will never dissipate, but will forever retain the information of existence, even until to humans they sound like complete and total silence. Yuco is a project by two friends from Tokyo: Masayoshi Miyazaki and Hiroshi Kobayash. Although Miyazaki was living in China when the disaster occurred, he nevertheless felt profound heartache for his home, and picked up the instruments to capture his sorrow. The recordings are complimented with various field recording by Kobayash, to create an album filled with melancholy, grief, and hope.		Sashash Ulz A Piece of Water I pick up my bags and travel to Russia. Virtually moving across its vast landscape, I end up all the way in its most north-west corner, in the city of Petrozavodsk, capital of Republic of Karelia. My sonic tour guide is Sashash Ulz, and through A Piece of Water he shows me his homeland, stretching across the shore of Lake Onega. Located near the border with Finland, Petrozavodsk is nestled between the Salmon and Needle rivers which flow into the lake. The city carries a long history, dating back to 1700s, when it was founded by Peter The Great, for its natural ore deposits (hence its literal translation as Petrine Factory). “A resident of the town since the age of one, Ulz says his hometown is place of great natural beauty and power, and the site of his earliest memories“. The music on this Flaming Pines release consists of five lo-fi meditative tracks, with submerged pads, muffled voices, and field recordings. A Piece of Water conveys an intimate solitary soundscape reflecting off the beaches of the lake, but these textures just as easily mix with the sounds of an urban city, Ulz’s guitar, and the reverb of some cavernous place. The final piece, “Cold Spring Sea” features a beautiful honky-tonk de-tuned solo piano simply playing over the sounds of the waves. The album appears to be a ninth full-length release (by my counting), with many past limited editions appearing as cassettes on many small DIY labels, such as the Finnish Jozik Records, Russian Swollen Beam, and Petrozavodsk own Full Of Nothing. Fans of experimental collectible physical media will not want to miss out on this and many other Ulz releases.

flamingpines.com

Harmi Palda has been composing and releasing music since 2005. Those familiar with his sound have no doubt became fans after his Ad Infinitum album on Rednetic Recordings in 2009. Recently, Palda has announced a new album, titled Living Moments, set for release in 2014. To celebrate his work, Headphone Commute has invited Infinite Scale to compile a selection of his favorite tracks for an hour-long journey into the places unknown. As always, I hope you enjoy this installment and support the featured artists! Have a nice day!

infinitescale.co.uk

[STREAM] | [DOWNLOAD] | [PODCAST] | [iTUNES]

Nothing that is past is an object of choice. No one chooses to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about the past, but about what is future and contingent, while what is past is not capable of not having taken place….
– Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

The pleasure of returning to happy, beautiful art is straightforward. Such beauty can uplift, comfort, and illuminate. It is essentially a positive phenomenon, something that it is pleasurable to experience for the first time, and to revisit subsequently.

But revisited tragic art works differently. Aristotle and Edmund Burke first mapped this terrain: tragic art furnishes catharsis or purification, and sometimes audiences draw from it a salacious joy in watching hardship befall others. This is true, but today’s technologies afford an experience not possible for either Aristotle or Burke: that of revisiting tragic art, even gorging oneself with repeated listenings, readings, and viewings of tragic art. What draws us back? There is a thrill in anticipating the dissolution we know is in store. The first time we encounter a tragic work, our ignorance of its outcome vouches for the purity of our intentions. We may even momentarily believe that the events of a novel, film, or recording are happening for the first time, that they are not predetermined. Their illusory contingency gives us leave to feel sincere emotion at their conclusion, so shock at Emma Bovary’s suicide, desolation at the muted conclusion of Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest. And for me, melancholy at the operatic drama in Tim Hecker’s work, especially his latest album Virgins. So when we return eternally to a tragic artwork, is our motivation simply Schadenfreude?

I feel that there is more to our returns than sadism. Consider the preeminent medium of the return, the recording. Recordings are laboratories for studying how we re-experience art because we can listen to them again and again, enjoy their meandering triumphs, tragedies, and disappointments with the assurance that we know exactly what will happen. The mp3 does not do justice to our penchant as much as the twin circular phonographs, the record and the compact disc. Their circular shape recalls the Aristotelian model of the cosmos, with Earth at the center and other celestial bodies revolving around it. Early records were engraved with a spiral indentation whose last smallest revolution ended in a cul-de-sac, forcing the needle to jump backwards to its penultimate orbit, effectively closing the circle. If left unattended, such a record could play its last moments repeatedly, forever or at least until the electricity died. I ask you to regard recordings as orreries, mechanical models of solar systems whose orbits are already mapped, foregone conclusions.

The sixth-century poet Boethius wrote his Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution for treason. In it, Boethius rails against the fickleness of Fortune and her spinning wheel that raises a man only to fling him down. When Boethius asks his confidant Lady Philosophy whether God predetermines existence, Philosophy responds with an extended metaphor explaining human behavior as the relationship of celestial bodies to an unmovable center. Because Boethius adhered to a geocentrism derived from Aristotle’s, that center would have been Earth, with the moon, planets, and Sun all orbiting in perfectly circular trajectories. Philosophy states that this unmovable center is God, the seat of providence, literally seeing forward into the future.

Boethius saw the universe as a series of concentric spheres of movement, with each celestial body rotating about the fixed point of Earth. The motion of these bodies creates sound or, for Boethius, musica universalis. Wisdom demands reconciliation with God’s plan, and since God was the unmovable center of the universe, the wise man does not try to break free from his orbit around God. The closer our orbit to the center, the closer we remain to the “stable simplicity of Providence”; the further our orbit from the center, the stronger the “chains of Fate”.[1] Therefore, freedom results from harmonizing ourselves with God’s gravitational pull. One can only speculate as to how Boethius’ universal music would have sounded. To flesh out my metaphor: suppose that Hecker’s albums are Boethian orreries with their looped motives like bodies circling the Earth, or God. Hecker’s albums Imaginary Country and Harmony in Ultraviolet each contain first and last tracks that are essentially identical, meaning that back-to-back repeated listening would suggest seamless continuity from end to beginning – a perfect revolution. Several Hecker albums pit development against repetition. Hecker’s music develops through track titles and drama, but repeats itself through loops of short and long duration. The pleasure in returning to tragic art amounts to the pleasure in contemplating this astronomical clockwork. The vagaries, the incidental details, the untold number of little things that could have happened differently and yet must conform to that “citadel of oneness”, as Lady Philosophy calls it – all these things are subject to the Fate peculiar to the foregone conclusion of the already-made. An artwork revisited, whose orbit is as familiar as the lines on the face of one’s beloved, travels a spacious arc across the heavens. With each successive rotation, we come to know and love it more, and also to develop ever great appetite for its twinges of pain and disintegration. I have listened to Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972 perhaps over two hundred times, with its fragmented, noise-saturated opening of synths, forlorn Icelandic church organ, and piano. I listen today as I have listened every time before, from the time I realized I knew the album more or less by heart. Each time, I hear the same events as a thread, a tragedy, although no story line is necessary. The music is too good to require a program. My love stems from the fact that I know every turn of the piece, that it is an exquisite tragedy always ending the same way. Hecker’s albums are mechanical models that invite scrutiny with each additional listening because they are beautiful and because they end tragically. The recording spins, celestial bodies circle around, and Fate sits unmoved.

Ravedeath‘s “In the Fog III” contains two organ lines: a fast alternation between two voicings of the same pitch, and a slower cantus firmus, a simple argeggiated chord. The texture is eventually overridden with amorphous singing, organ undulations, and noise. The first time I heard this, I believed the falsehood that there was a drama unfolding before me. The second time, I began to recognize certain events, but the novelty was still pervasive. By the tenth time, the recording grafted itself onto my memory, with the trajectory of its orbits assuming a sort of normalcy. Of course, they will sound this way, and conclude in this manner. The only freewill in the tragic artwork is in the listener’s resignation, even acquiescence to processes she knows will end badly. There is no need to be a semiotician and impute agency into musical figures. The actors are we who revisit the artwork, happy that Fate will deal out no other outcome. In the tragic artwork, no new possibilities emerge. Tragic art contains its own apocalypse, well-known in advance.

So as this Boethian metaphor intimates, the moments of centripetal stasis, of resignation to providence, are not the most alluring quality of Hecker’s music, although they are quite beguiling. No, we listen repeatedly for the snatches of Icarian gumption, when a motive or theme suggests that it is possible to break away from the gravitational pull of Fate. Of course, to break away is impossible, and we listeners already knew it. Fate pulls initiative back down in its riptide. There is no redemption, and this is why tragic art draws us back. “Live Room” and “Live Room Out” are the centerpiece of Hecker’s latest album Virgins, and they illustrate this phenomenon as well as any of the best passages in his catalog. The former track seeps in tentatively with virginal keyboard as well as harmonium and room noise. The tide then flows with synths droning the ostinato, a chord progression that is lugubrious and beautiful enough to confound reason. Hecker’s sort of beauty possesses a sort of imperiousness, a medusa-like power that tears at our hearts rather than turning us to stone. But this beauty resides in the false supposition that it is possible to jump the track, to leave the engraved path. We savor the escape attempt every time we return, precisely because we know that escape is impossible, that Troy will always fall.

[1] Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Victor Watts (London: Penguin, 1999), 105.

Exclusive Article by Joanna Demers for Headphone Commute.
Joanna Demers is an Associate Professor of Musicology at USC Thornton School of Music. She is an author of Listening Through the Noise: the Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music (Oxford University Press, October 2010) and Steal This Music: How Intellectual Property Law Affects Musical Creativity (University of Georgia Press, 2002).

Who needs all hallows’ eve when you could feel the tremor every moment? Thanks to the mischievous mind of Black Swan, that certain type of fear comes in the form of music. But I don’t want to paint a picture of a horror movie sound track in this review. Instead, the sounds emanating from my speakers are full of shivers and unease. Of certain type of drone, if I may say, perhaps for bleeding hearts. These hums are punctuated by the elements of startled panic when the orchestrated hit rolls in [and I jump each and every time], but slowly even these sounds subside into a full-on cinematic score of stringed and brass overture. This is where the Redemption ends, and thick delicious dread begins.

Advised to be listened in headphones sans all equalization, in an uninterrupted session at the highest tolerable volume possible, the noir-fi sounds of Redemption descend into a dark abyss, the grip of which is cold and strong. Half way through the album, enveloped in silence, lavish hiss, and negative space, you wake up in another place, somewhere beneath the performance stage, perhaps six floors beneath the surface, where the concrete walls barely resonate with sounds from above. At this point, you’re unsure if the music is coming from an old Victrola buried in the catacombs, an echo of the soul imprisoned in the past, or maybe just within your head. You strain to listen, but the sound of pumping blood around your middle ear becomes too deafening to hear. And all that’s left is pure dismay.

The mysterious musician behind the Black Swan moniker has been releasing stage fright for the past three years, when In 8 Movements appeared first on Experimedia in 2010. The debut was followed by The Quiet Divide (2011), Heaven (2012) and Aeterna (2012), all released by the artist’s own Ethereal Symphony label. I’ve been a fan of all these sounds since the very first drone, and subsequently invited Black Swan to contribute a track towards my … and darkness came benefit compilation. There’s something absolutely gripping about this sound, in calm and yet unnerving way, which keeps me coming back for more and more. I wish there was a name for this fantastic genre. Hauntology may not be the right word, but it’s the first word that always comes to mind. And by the time you reach “Inferno” you’ll know exactly what I mean.

There’s much that I can say about this music, but what I can not do is analyze its source. Instead, I pour myself a glass of red wine, lower all of the lights (including the glow of the monitors as I type this), put on my favorite pair of headphones and listen to the awe unfold. Although I may be one of the few obsessed with Black Swan’s sound, I know that I’m not that far off, alone in the crevasse: Ghostly International has picked up one of Black Swan’s pieces to be featured on their phenomenal 2013 compilation, titled SMM: Opiate, among the likes of Simon Scott, Celer, A Winged Victory For The Sullen and many others. And yeah, of course, I recommend the latter as a physical release directly from the artist!

Be sure to read my past reviews of Heaven / Aeterna, and The Quiet Divide, download or stream an exclusive mix by Black Swan, Music For Masquerade, and finally check out an Interview with Black Swan!

swanplague.com

Travis Stewart’s follow-up to his stunning 2011 album Room(s) (Planet Mu, 2011) has taken some time to win me over. One reason it’s taken time to take hold of me is that Room(s) really wowed me in just how wildly different it sounded to me from Machinedrum’s early 00s material; I’d missed at least a couple along the way, and so I still had associated his sound largely with Prefuse 73-esque cut-up hip hop and downtempo tracks. Vapor City builds on the same lush palette of sounds Stewart explored with Room(s) and with Praveen Sharma as Sepalcure, touching on a variety of micro-genres like footwork and juke but this time fusing them with different elements like nods to jungle and chillwave.

Fans of Room(s) will find a lot to like here, and the shifts Stewart has made in his production are incremental and measured. Still, the skittery breakbeat of drum & bass is pronounced even as it takes a backseat to the uptempo bass music motifs that characterize many of its tracks. He also continues to exploit pitch-modulated vocal fragments and phrases in a way that is sounding less fresh every time to anyone who was surprised by Burial’s debut, but that doesn’t matter to me; the vocals always service his arrangements for the better, in my opinion. And so any lack of a powerful first impression is made up in patient listening with some really intricate production and effective arrangements.

A true electronic music Renaissance man, Machinedrum blends together current pop music standards and trends with his own extensive knowledge of experimental production techniques, delivering his quality signature on every thing he touches.

It’s also a very wise move that Stewart culled the track list down to only ten out of a purported 70 or so pieces he made in these sessions (the version I have includes a bonus track, “Overcome”). Only in closing track “Baby Its U” does it sound like a retread of his last outing; it certainly has plenty in common with the plucked and strummed guitar fallout of Room(s)’s “Come1,” but here it works quite well as an extended conclusion to the album. Elsewhere, smooth jam sounds find their way into subtly infectious tracks like “Center Your Love” and the downright jungly “Infinite Us.” At the core, though, Stewart’s knack for ascending chords and change-ups really guides the album. The most inspiring track of all perhaps falls in the center of playback; “Rise N Fall” soars with its nervous rhythm section and gliding vocals over a really satisfying low-end bassline. A downtempo chill-out track like “U Still Lie” is well positioned, preceding the more harrowing, frenzied arrangement of lead single “Eyesdontlie,” another stand-out among many.

Vapor City is another triumph from where I sit, an album that is best approached with a good pair of headphones and some patience to let it surround you. I’m curious to hear the trickle down of his other tracks — supposedly he may release more EPs or web-only content from these sessions — but as a fairly concise grouping of tracks and ideas, Vapor City is another resounding success. As you may have already guessed, with this release, Stewart moves from Planet Mu to Ninja Tune, which immediately books him for a 30+ city tour in support of the album. HC managed to witness this live performance out at Seattle’s Decibel and it was indeed one of the highlights of the festival. 

machinedrum.net | ninjatune.net

Review by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion.

The channels of digital distribution continue to grow and evolve. I’m not going to spend time attempting to cover the entire history of this evolution. Warp Records’ bleep.com, Boomkat’s 14tracks.com, Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud are just a few of examples of digital media delivery services, all trying to get an edge to attract the producer and consumer alike. So how does an artist or label select? A few years ago I noticed that Ghostly International rolled out a subscription service, offering individuals digital releases prior to the album’s street date, along with a few special perks, all for a modest monthly fee. The founder of the label, Sam Valenti IV along with his co-conspirator Miguel Senquiz, saw the potential of this novice approach, and opened up the platform for other imprints.

“A lot of fans didn’t want to be bothered to keep up with different platforms. They were asking ‘We like what you do with Ghostly, but why can’t you just make a service that sends us stuff as it comes out, like a subscription?’”

Enter drip.fm - a service establishing a direct connection between fans and the music. Subscription to a particular label (each offering their own schedule of releases for a matched monthly fee), gives a loyal follower an opportunity to receive anything and everything from a beloved curator. As an example, FatCat Records offers artist-curated mixtapes, rarities and classic albums from the vaults (including its 130701 offshoot), plus an additional 15% off all items from its online store for a monthly $9.99 charge. Morr Music offers every new label and sublabel release (including WAV downloads), exclusive material from its artists, guest-list giveaways, with a minimum of three submissions a month for $10. And if you think about it, the price is equivalent to the cost of a regularly priced digital album! A quick glance at a catalog of growing labels reveals some of the favorites, such as Ninja Tune, Domino, Hospital, Tru Thoughts, Ubiquity Records, 50Weapons, OM Records, Planet E and many others!

So what about the actual experience? Thankfully I have a subscription to Ghostly’s drip.fm service, so I can walk you through right now. Every now and then I receive an email in my mailbox, which is extremely clean looking [pretty important these days], with a description of the latest album and a direct link to the site. When I log in, I am presented with another slick interface of the album, but most importantly a clearly visible link to stream or download the album as a FLAC, MP3 (192 or 320kbps), OGG and WAV! I can also leave a comment on the release and socially interact with other subscribers. There’s a feed of all the past updates (with a countdown to the next release), or I can just go to my Library page where all of the albums and EPs since my joined date are available for download. As a member I was also invited to a few giveaways: there were tickets to Matthew Dear‘s tour, Heathered Pearls Loyal on vinyl, and even some Ghostly stickers and pins!

“Drip fits the gap of the superfan, the serious devotee. Maybe they’d only buy one to two records a year, but now they’re actually developing a relationship and getting a whole year of label releases,” says Valenti “Ultimately, the fans should feel like they’re connecting with the labels. The label’s personality should shine through, we’re purely just the place where it happens.”

Independent labels can sign up with drip.fm for free – the service only charges when the imprint makes money, so there are zero upfront costs. I’m hoping that one day the platform may be open to other taste makers, such as yours truly, where Headphone Commute can curate a sample subscription from a variety of labels (ahem!). Meanwhile, if you’re a follower of any of the featured labels, I think it’s a no-brainer decision on your part to check out the site and join today!

drip.fm

Interview quotes from FastCompany article by Nathan Mattise.

Listen… You could almost hear them walking on your grave… Bodies dragged across the future, smeared with blood and empty dreams… Listen… You could almost hear them screaming… Suffocating in the world that they together built, wrapped in silence that will still remain forever… long after they’re gone… They are all zombies now… Buildings rusting, curtains crumbling, children reaching, for the glow of digital and social decay… We have built this real nightmare… and together we will drown…

Words are nothing when compared to the feelings that this music brings. Dark shuffling rhythms, muffled fabrics, sinister asphyxiation. Sounds resisting all identification, yet triggering some recall from within. Sonic particles harvested from scraping, fondling and collapsing textures. Passages of flashbacks, turmoil and unease. These are the sounds of The Stranger, yet another pseudonym of James Leyland Kirby, for whom I have sung a many praises in the past. In the last few years, Kirby explored and subsequently released music inspired by the dusty 78 RPM records, under his The Caretaker alias. Those familiar with the project will no doubt treasure the records on his very own History Always Favours The Winners label. Among those, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011) and Patience (After Sebald) (2012) are my all time favorites. But for this release, Kirby is picked up by Modern Love – home to many great ‘hauntology’ masters, such as Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, and Vatican Shadow.

It’s a dream album for the label: perhaps the most ambitious of Kirby’s career so far. It’s complex, singular, enigmatic, percussive, dark, and you just can’t work out how it was constructed [...] It’s stark and unsettling, haunted, even troubling – but often just beautiful.

The music is without a doubt a little eerie, cinematic, and drab. But knowing Kirby’s fascination with ghostly melodies and their relation to the memories of past (real and abstract), adds a layer of somber nostalgia to the album. Watching Dead Empires In Decay is a tribute to the complex aspects of humanity, through every little action on this plane. Perhaps this apocalyptic interpretation of The Stranger’s shadowy stroll through the culture of decline is just my imagination. But it is the imagery which is triggered by his music. A triumph for the label! A hidden gem for those ‘in the know’!! Guaranteed to be on many [and mine] Best of 2013 lists!!! Highly recommended!

Read Headphone Commute’s Conversations with The Caretaker

thestranger1.bandcamp.com | modern-love.co.uk

Dominick Fernow seemed to appear out of nowhere. Like an obscure stalker lurking in the underground quasi-government, veiled in secrets, sinfulness and crime, Fernow creates sinister passages out of mischief, equal to their mystery through mediums and names. Releasing numerous cassettes dating back to the late 90s under his Prurient alias on his very own Hospital Productions, Fernow eventually developed a sound (and a cult following) under a guise of Vatican Shadow. Each release baring a military photograph and a title of some Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait or a CIA official, the extremely rare and limited releases (sometimes only 25 pieces) would feature two or more tracks of almost industrial, ominous rhythms, riding into the disquiet for ten minutes plus.

The project finally surfaced on the radar after a few of the collections appeared on labels such as Blackest Ever Black, Type, and Modern Love. Of course, there is a much deeper archive of releases under his many other monikers, not to forget Exploring Jezebel, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, and of course, his real name. Yet the subject of this particular coverage, Remember Your Black Day, appears to be the very first album proper as Vatican Shadow, as in material conceived and produced to be a full-length from the start. A glimpse at track titles continuous the ongoing theme of warfare conceptualization, with names like “Tonight Saddam Walks Amidst Ruins”, “Contractor Corpses Hung Over The Euphrates River”, and “Not The Son Of Desert Storm, But The Child Of Chechnya”.

“The album includes the most direct and propulsive Vatican Shadow material yet, continuing an evolutionary shift away from the complex, collage-based narrative of those cassette releases into more visibly direct contact with the listener. There is a functional connection to dance music here, honing in on the human element embedded within a subject matter so fraught with inhumanity.”

The music is minimal, hostile, and dark. Mostly based on repetitive patterns, the distorted yet perfectly balanced percussion drills through the concrete warehouse walls long into the night. If used as a soundtrack to the next generation first person shooter, the player would experience an unprecedented surge of adrenaline, nausea and revenge. The occasional use of distortion brings the dense atmosphere to near suffocating limits. The music appears to flow like water: both, as a life-giving force, and a device of death and torture. Pieces begin and end abruptly, sometimes in jarring and harsh way, like a slammed shut prison door or a gun butt to a temple. “I’m not naïve, and I don’t romanticize war,” proclaims the text on the back of the album sleeve, “the worse moments of my life have come as a seal. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience“.

As typical with Vatican Shadow releases, do not expect the sounds on Remember Your Black Day to brighten up your mood. Your best bet for a genuine experience is a gloomy rainy day, as you picture yourself crawling through abandoned buildings, the smell of burned rubber in your nostrils, the death of lost children embedded in your skin. If you’re just getting into Vatican Shadow’s sound, I recommend you pick up Ghosts Of Chechnya (2012), Ornamented Walls (2012), or a 3xCD 20-track compilation, It Stands To Conceal (2012) collecting multiple cassettes. Recommended for fans of Raime, Andy Stott, The Haxan Cloak, Demdike Stare and The Stranger.

hospitalproductions.net