transcendent

Until The Quiet Comes Comes

/ David James / 1 Comment

Just because.

This has been out over a week and the leak for half that, but tonight, alone, listening to the proper stream on NPR, my excitement is reborn.  There are details, sharp edges and vocal snapshots bursting out at me, entire stretches brimming with instrumentation I haven’t noticed.  I listened to the leak ten times and haven’t heard the album like this.  My thought confirmed:  the vinyl leak is muffled, distant and compressed sounding.  Everything’s in there, buried then rendered in high fidelity.  I kept wanting to lean inward and focus on the elements I knew were inside.  It’s a treat to know that what I’ll be receiving in a couple weeks is even better than what fans have been going nuts over.

Stream the entire album here:

Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes

[NPR stream]

Thanks, NPR.  Also a question: why can’t your player embed?

Also here is the video for first single Putty Boy Strut.  Regardless of how you feel about this song, remember that with this man’s work, it’s all about context.

[Pre-order the album from Bleep, especially if you want the ridiculous collectors edition like I do.]

Gang Gang Dance – 4ad Session

/ David James / 2 Comments

This video is old and I haven’t written a post about Gang Gang Dance in a while, but neither fact matters.  This is a freewheeling ode to getting high on your music.

I really can’t say more.  Watch the video.

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Diamond Terrifier – Kill The Self That Wants To Kill Yourself

/ David James / 2 Comments

Having already introduced Diamond Terrifier here, I’ll strike the heart of the matter: Sam Hillmer’s debut solo album is one of the most transcendent pieces I’ve heard all year.  Simultaneously an abstract yet tactile experience, Kill The Self That Wants To Kill Yourself is dark and beautiful and weirdly refreshing.

The first sound heard on the titular opener is a warming synth pad straight from Brian Eno‘s playbook.  Dream sequence, loving eulogy or triumphant reunion; it’s a lifting wind over which Hillmer solos to melodic catharsis.  Arresting in its direct simplicity, this track eases us into the unshackled gravity of romantic disorientation.  Slipping on a shattered cloudy fabric Oneohtrix Point Never might wear, he never lets the human presence or real instruments drift out of mind.  As the album deepens it never loses grip on the tangible reality of its construction: guitar, handclaps, cymbals and the commanding saxophone are practically visible, yet even the drone swells and programmed drum bits crackle and hum right before me.  There is so much life stabbing outward from the perceptual dervish at the center of this album.  Kill The Self That Wants To Kill Yourself, beyond being one of the greatest titles ever, feels like the beginning of a new fruitful path for Hillmer.  I just hope this doesn’t preclude growth (and future albums) in his main band.  Zs are, after all, one of the most interesting bands I perpetually neglect to share.

I will rectify this.

Here’s a track from the album.  Like I said yesterday, it works best as a single piece..  this is still great.

Buy this at Northern Spy.  As I said before, they are quick with help and priced beyond fairly.

For fans of: Zs, Don Cherry, Fennesz, John Fahey, John Coltrane, Sun City Girls, Coil

The Necks – Sex

/ David James / 1 Comment

Long ago I was shown The Necks.  The internet was not such a hospitable place and my search for an album to sample was fruitless.  Alas, after the buzz wore off they were forgotten.  Now, thanks to a helpful soul on a forum, I was reintroduced to what is quickly becoming a new addiction.  Here is their first album in its entirety.

The band, comprised of Chris Abrahams on piano, Lloyd Swanton on bass and Tony Buck on drums, unspools boundless jam fireworks outside of any specific genre or time.  There’s the interplay of jazz, an often motorik pulse of krautrock, and space based atmospherics of kosmiche all woven together in a pristine spartan construction.  They make an hour disappear without breaking a sweat.

I don’t like doing research simply for the sake of posting on here so I must return at a later date when I’m fully immersed in The Necks.  For now, enjoy the debut and seek out more if this is your kind of thing.  And please, buy their music if you enjoy it.  Everything they’ve released is available on their site:

thenecks.com

Cleanse Your Brain

/ David James / 1 Comment

Miles Davis wants to rinse your skull out.

Continue reading →

Demdike Stare – Elemental

/ David James / 2 Comments

Demdike Stare hit my radar when a friend insisted I listen to The Stars Are Moving because it was totally my sort of thing – and a massive understatement.  Liberation Through Hearing was not only on my Best of 2010 list, but part of the Tryptych compilation serving up a universally praised 160 minute slab of deep nocturnal bliss across three albums and discs.  Having so much aural brilliance to chew on felt like an embarassment of riches before the craving for new material hit well before a year had passed.  Thankfully the duo of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty were busy interlocking the pieces on an even more audacious free fall into the abyss with a 4 EP / 2cd set which stretches their sound in increasingly hypnotic new directions.

The music here is given more space to move and to sit still.  There are great leaps beyond their established spooky dub dream style into riots of kraut percussion, melodic poems buried in noise fields, and climaxes of bloody tribal warfare.  This is nothing short of the full realization of their shamanistic trance ritual ethos, both more explicitly sculpted and expansive than all prior work combined.  Songs cover wildly varying grounds – from beatless waves of digital grain to mountains of swarming disembodied vocals – while retaining a unified identity that would make the cover artwork jealous.  Elemental strikes this perfect duality of technical bass mastery and unhinged manace, igniting every dark pleasure center in my auditory complex.  It’s a soundtrack to my strangest apocalyptic dreams and the kind of art we could only wish more artists knew how to craft.  This is a self contained cult in album form, a ritualistic palate cleanser which will make other music obsolete for a while.

Elemental, in its 2cd form, is fully streamable on soundcloud, right here:

For those lacking time or attention span, a couple highlights:  cinematic Mephisto’s Lament and steamrolling Erosion of Mediocrity both destroy worlds and illuminate vastly different aspects of this set.

The fidelity is great but buy the real thing to fully absorb the meticulous near-chaotic detail in Demdike Stare’s work.  If you’ve got the fetish and the cash seek out the extremely sold-out 12″ vinyl set from sellers on discogs or ebay.  If you want to hear this masterpiece in optimal form for a reasonable price, grab the 2cd set, featuring alternate edits and new cuts fleshing out the experience; believe me, they’re essential and can’t be considered bonus.  Keep in mind that this is selling out quickly as well!

For fans of: Shackleton, Actress, Oneohtrix Point Never, Coil, David Lynch, Joseph Conrad, exciting nightmares

Colin Stetson

/ David James / 10 Comments

Colin Stetson has created most physically thrilling music in years.  The sheer power and intricacy of his saxophone work sets my mind racing with awe and excitement, and leaves me to rue the day I laid my own instrument to rest in its case for years.  It’s taken me nearly a year to come to terms with what he’s unleashed and finally share my thoughts in written form.

Not only is this man setting the vanguard for new music and expanding perception of what an instrument can sound like, he’s unspooling aggressive hair-raising songcraft in an unprecedented, instantly recognizable timbre and taking everyone along for the ride.  As intimidating as the notion of groundbreaking forms of woodwind communication seems, the music itself is open and inviting, something which can and will stop your mother in her tracks as she asks, just what is that?  And then: how does he do it?

I’ll begin by going back to what I started writing about Stetson when his second full length released last spring:

As an incorrigible music junky, I’m always trying to peek over the horizon, searching for those incandescent bursts heralding a surprise.  The elated rush of discovering and absorbing the truly new has no sensory equal.  Looking over my musical history, it seems most of my favorite albums were of this stripe: works not only deserving my love, but challenging or entirely sidestepping my perception of interesting music – making an impact in the very nature of what I find pleasurable about listening.  This blog was born of my desire to share that feeling as much as I could, and this post is as true to that aim as any I’ve ever written.

This is all to set the stage for my statement that Colin Stetson, with his release New History Warfare Vol. 2 – Judges, has created something truly new.

Stetson records in a tactile environment throbbing with tidal bass with details crackling like dry leaves against skin – I can feel its physical impact on my body. Two major factors drive this sensation: the performance itself and the unique recording process.  Constellation MVP and newly christened engineer Efrim Menuck (of Godspeed You! Black Emperor) documented his sound in a fairly unorthodox manner.  One listen through and anyone would feel suspicious about the claim that the entire album was captured via single takes with no overdubs; it’s an intricate, dense layer cake of ideas and epiphanies, and it’s always moving.  The truth is this: using over 20 microphones positioned throughout the room, including contact mics on his throat and the instrument itself, every song was recorded in such a way that the multitude of angles could be folded and mixed together by engineer Ben Frost into the crystalline vision it is.

Stream the full thing.  Now.

* Download The Stars In His Head here (right click and save) *

So that answers the question of how he does it and finally casts light on my few organized thoughts on the groundbreaking album.  In the meantime he released the Those Who Didn’t Run EP and laid bare the sheer tidal force of his recording process with two 10 minute cuts demanding attention and awe in visceral fashion.  Side A presents a rhythmic onslaught courtesy of his bass saxophone and Side B weaves an astounding counterpoint with an Alto, twin of the very horn resting less than a dozen feet from where I sit.

Each of these pieces sets me loose in an undulating labrynth of sound, bouncing off the walls riding a burst floodgate of energy straight toward the exit; the first full of low frequency mirth and massage, the second a stone hummingbird skipping across rapids and over waterfalls.  They’re each an imaginary car chase down a pair of rabbit holes nobody knew existed a year ago and they set the stage for understanding the monumental accomplishment of the album they follow.

Stream this now, ok?

No amount of description or anecdote can prepare you for hearing this magic yourself.  I could remark at the way it can bellow and sway like giant redwood trees in a hurricane, or blast images through my subconscious: ancient armadas cast into space, airborn mountains crashing to the surface, or pews and pipe organs and church spires crumbling in earthquakes.  I could mention the explorations of Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp, Don Cherry and Marion Brown and, hell, Pharoah Sanders and how – only cumulatively – they could prepare you for this adventure.  I could mention that no prior knowlege is required in the least to enjoy this untethered journey into the heights of creativity and musicianship.  To hear this is to witness the vision of a man exerting himself with superhuman effort and poise to craft intensely visionary music with tectonic force.

[please purchase either release from Constellation – the EP is on 10″/digital while Judges comes on vinyl with the CD and digital code included]