This is the one you wanted. Sweetest mix of the century.
Be back soon. Going to read Being & Nothingness.
Isolated Lakeside Cabin Mix 1. The Great Valley - Lucky Me! 2. Boy Without God - Call A Yellow Taxi 3. Shai Erlichman - The Season 4. M. Mucci - Moments Between 5. Master Musicians Of Bukkake - Cascade Cathedral 6. Lungfish - Sands Of Time 7. Uriah Heep - I'll Keep On Trying 8. Mugstar - Technical Knowledge As A Weapon 9. Prince Rama - Lightening Fossil 10. Billy Nichols - Life Is Short 11. Imbogodom - Of The Cloth 12. PKE - Grounded 13. Talk Normal - Outside 14. DOOMSTAR! - Rainbow BLoodsucker
No posts for a little while so I got a coupla mixes for ya. This is the shittier one. In case you haven't noticed, I don't write about any hip hop on AGB. That's partially because I don't know shit about hip hop. But that doesn't mean I don't like it. Just the opposite actually. Anyway, here's my pitifully lazy attempt at making a hip hop mix.
I'll post the other one tomorrow.
Hip Hop O Rama 1. Nobody - Silent Movie Theatre Surprise 2. Oh No - Juke Joint 3. Madlib - Accordion For Raj 4. B.O.B. - My Sweet Baby 5. Wait What - Juicy-R 6. Flying Lotus - Table Tennis (Feat. Laura Darlington) 7. Janelle Monáe - Tightrope (Feat. Big Boi) 8. DOOM - Lightworks 9. Jay-Z - Empire State Of Mind (Feat. Alicia Keys) 10. Lauryn Hill - Final Hour 11. Strong Arm Steady - Needle In The Haystack (Feat. Roscoe & Guilty Simpson) 12. Mos Def - Life In Marvelous Time 13. Raekwon - Surgical Gloves 14. Dr. Dre - Still D.R.E. 15. Big Boi - General Patton (Feat. Big Rube) 16. Ol' Dirty Bastard - Cuttin' Headz (Feat. RZA)
Standard Form put out a limited edition 3" CD-R from the new master of minimal drone, Kyle Bobby Dunn. Only two songs, "Dissonant Distances" & "Senium III," but they're both around the 10 minute mark and are as gorgeous as can be. Of course "Dissonant Distances" has its moments of, well, dissonance, using a strange sort of muted industrial ambience. It's a bit more textured than his previous stuff, a little more static & crackle as opposed to smothered strings. Not what I was expecting and in a very awesome way.
The second track is the slow moving Stars Of The Lid style drone you've come to know & love. Soft, delicate, and smooth, anything but ambient background sounds. The layers of beauty suck you in & hypnotize you. Lovely tones emanating off the golden lakes in the clouds. Seriously special stuff.
I almost hope Dunn isn't going the route of Aidan Baker, putting out 30 releases every year because honestly, I can't do that with another artist who's this good. It's bound to either empty my wallet or put me in a deep funk knowing I can't have it all. Most likely the former.
David New's short portrait of composer R. Murray Schafer may only last a little over 6 minutes but every moment is loaded with cranked up ambient sounds, gorgeous cinematography, and life altering quotes. "If you listen carefully, your life is enhanced." "In a way the world is a huge musical composition that's going on all the time... We are the composers of this huge miraculous composition that's going on around us... We can improve it or we can destroy it."
Schafer believes recordings are not real sound. "A real sound, of course, is absolutely unique. It has an excitement about it and probably an authenticity of fidelity that will never be achieved by recordings." One of the most interesting concepts is how every sound "commits suicide." The aural experience is so subjective and context sensitive, that the very nature of sound is for it to be fleeting and non-reproducible. At the end of the film, all recorded sound is cut off and Schafer holds up a sign that says "Listen." The ambient sound around you, strangers' voices, the A/C, the wind, bird songs, these things become the finale of Listen making it a unique experience every time you watch it.
Just for the record, this is the same contrabass hero Michael T. Bullock that I've writtenabout before. This tape was released as "Mike Bullock" but I needed to make sure that you all knew this wasn't some new Mike who coincidentally had the same last name as another Mike I'm a fan of. Anyway, he's got a new tape out on YDLMIER and it's a little less sparse free jazz noise than usual and a bit heavier on the minimal drone. Which, of course, means I love the shit out of it.
Two side long pieces, the first a live track from Virginia in 2009. It starts out hushed and delicate, barely there high end lace drones fighting for air over the tape hiss. Very subtle, very beautiful. Slowly, an additional tone gets added here and there, creating a swirling shimmer effect that's still as quiet as can be. And then, just like that, the volume gets bumped up, and some distant muted deep engine rumbles perk up, eventually pushing the bliss out of the way, replacing it with a wash of gauzy static and stuttering machinery. Absolutely fantastic.
The B side is another beast entirely, sounding like it should actually be 3 different tracks. It opens with creaking & quaking, far away echos of heavy things being dragged across concrete floors, coupled with taps on the mic that makes me think it must be a field recording. Whistling wind and whispering moans fill the empty space for a bit until the organ comes in. God how I love organs. Bullock makes it somber & mournful, abrasive & gritty, at times the perfect foundation for a wall of harsh noise but never going that route, instead exploring its textures & letting it play with various bizarre companions.
Then something that can only be described as air scribbling comes in. I really have no idea what it is, how it's made, or even what to say about it. It just sounds fucking awesome.
The last few minutes are spent on a glitchy soundscape that I believe is crafted from "CD damage." Spacey static, scratching chaos, sonar blips, nothing I would ever expect to come from Bullock. But yet, here it is. Guy always catches me off guard. Like the closing moments with sounds of cicadas and an acoustic guitar loop. There's no WAY anyone saw that coming. And if you did, then go away because we can't be friends anymore.
Nekrasov's chaos is the best kind of chaos. Full on black metal noise. This is black metal, certainly, but there's so much fucking noise, too. Massive walls of distorted feedback totally obscure the vocals, riffs of static melt your face, neverending blast beats bore through your skull. The metal is evil and loud, but the noise is fucking brutal. "O Fool!" barely constitutes black metal at all, it's just one big slab of caustic insanity. But it's there, and that's what makes it so goddamn awesome.
A short & sweet EP given away for free by Nekrasov on Bandcamp. Hurry up and download that shit, then hurry up and wait until the next full length comes out on Crucial Blast.
Noveller's (aka Sara Lipstate) new record Desert Fires is a sweet dusty dreamer filled with textured guitar drones made all by her lonesome. That kinda means I have to love it. But even so, it's objectively a damn fine record and the opening track, "Almost Alright," is a perfect example of the delicacies making up the album. The video is pretty low key, Lipstate playing in a dimly lit cave with an overlay of hand scratched & manipulated 16mm film.
She'll be stopping at It's A Gift in Union Square on September 4th with Animal Hospital and unFact, which is obviously going to be a killer fucking show. So make sure you go.
Last year's 3 day Weirdstock festival thrown by the Whitehaus as a 40 year anniversary to the original Woodstock was a huge success, if not necessarily in the turnout, then in proving the fact that doing a 3 day DIY fest is totally in the realm of possibility.
AWESOME NEWS: the Whitehaus is bringing it back and they're calling in Weird Stalk, Too. The sad news is that instead of taking over the Cambridge YMCA for a whole weekend, it's going to be an all nighter at The Temple in JP. But that means lots of good things, too.
Like you don't have to take a whole weekend off to enjoy what's sure to be one of the coolest parties in Boston this year. And instead of feeling bad on missing half of the 40 bands like last year, you can make damn sure you see all of 'em this time. And it's not at The Y.
So the official lineup so far looks totally fucking rad. I'm super psyched about Kurt Weisman and Blevin Blectum, but there's also power drone fiend Double Awake, the self explanatory Metal & Glass Ensemble, California's chill creeper Dead Western, another one of Angela Sawyer's endless projects Preggy Peggy, circuit bending sound artist Omnivore, and plenty of Whitehaus mainstays like Many Mansions, Morgan Shaker, and Peace, Loving. And there's still more to be announced!
This shit is gonna be so so awesome.
August 20, 2010 The Temple 670 Centre St, Jamaica Plain 8pm - sunrise
SO MANY QUESTIONS. Did someone actually record 7 hours and 53 minutes of vacuum cleaner sounds? Did they go deaf? Did they just set up a mic and walk away? How much money was wasted on electricity? Has anyone listened to the entire thing? If somebody made these sounds in a different way (not using vacuum cleaners) and set it up as a sound installation and maybe even released it on a fat slab-o-wax, would you respect it any more than you do now?
First of all, my apologies for neglecting the show calendar on this incarnation of my site. If you're unaware, I've been scrambling to get my new site off the ground and have put most of my energy (show calendar-wise) on keeping the new calendar updated so that when my new site finally launches, that calendar will be nice and plump. But I figured since I'm using Google Calendar as the core, there's no reason I can't share it with you now and let you have access to all of my hard work of show compiling.
There's a couple of things that I've never explicitly said about the show calendar that I always thought would be semi-obvious, but I might as well get 'em off my chest now while I have the chance.
It's not comprehensive. At all. I do my best to catch all of the DIY & house shows before they happen, but living in Salem, a half hour outside of Boston, sometimes it's hard for me to stay in the loop. If you know of a show that you think me/AGB readers would be into and it's not on the calendar, please hit me up so I can spread the good word.
I haven't heard of all the bands that I list. Sometimes I'll put up a show where I haven't heard of a single band playing. That's rare, but it happens because it's going down at a super reputable place that I feel like I could just go to any show they're putting on and it will be awesome.
I'm going to try to update this as frequently as possible. Whenever I find out about a new show, it'll get posted.
Here's a tiny embedded one, but you'll probably want to check out the big one to get the full effect.
Another piece of sweetness from Land Of Decay, although this is the first one from them I've heard that is non-Locrian related. Neil Jendon is just a dude who makes some killer drone, and also used to be in Zelienople and runs the gutflora label.
Side A is really dense stuff, deep rumbling static with delicate layers of barely there shimmer lying beneath the surface. Sounds like massive earthmovers hauling down dirt roads, kicking up an impenetrable wall of dust behind them, and seeing the sun in sporadic blurs where the dust has thinned out just a bit. And as the enormous trucks move on, the rumbling fades, the dust settles, the sun shines. Bliss sets in, soaring drone in the wide open barely blue skies. It saunters right up to New Age and says "Fuck you, this is how it's done."
Flip it over and it's 20 more minutes of amazing fucking drone. It sounds like electronic static distortion ramped up and evened out to create a plane of intimidating drone, yet still with the twinkling euphoria thrown in. It gets increasingly intense, imminent fucking danger where everything's about to go supernova. Feedback, static, low end throbbing, more static, and then it just fades away into the deepest growl you've ever heard. I'm talking from the depths of the deepest trenches. That kinda deep. But then that, too, fades away, into some more heavenly drone like the end of the A side. Some seriously incredible sounds, totally lush, a little OPN type warbling synth with star dust and tape hiss. It doesn't get much better than this.
Male Fantasies is some supreme drone. Jendon has pulled out all the stops, going from crumbling static to glowing glory and everything in between, mixing it all together and making a DAMN fine album in the process. It's a limited tape (250 copies) and it's one of the best aqua colors I've ever laid eyes on. So vibrant and punchy! Love everything about this.
I generally try to stay away from reviewing records like Carnival. The ones where each song is different from the next and it's really hard to peg the album. I feel like I inevitably talk about the record on a song-by-song basis, and that makes me it seem like I don't "understand" the album. If I can't talk about the mood or overall sound, then it feels like I'm not doing my job right.
Sleep In's newest release from the inininfinitely unstoppable Enemies List is one of those records. He dropped it in my inbox over 2 months ago and I've been listening to it ever since, hoping to get a grasp on what kind of shit was going through this guy's mind. No luck. The only thing I've taken from my numerous Carnival listens is that 1: it's totally fucking rad and 2: it doesn't fucking matter if I can't pigeonhole this beast.
I could take the route and say Carnival is like a carnival, you get all sorts of weird shit and random experiences. But I'm not gonna do that. Promise.
So what does this record sound like? First off, it's pretty different from anything Enemies List has done before. It's not some twisted black metal Nahvalr, epic doom pop like Planning For Burial, or the industrial metalgaze of Have A Nice Life. Carnival isn't very metal at all. It gets heavy at times, but more like a psych noise freakout kinda heavy. There's backwoods swamp folk, electro-acoustic doom, warped guitar ambience, sprawling drone, feedbacked squalls, and plenty more that's just weird as fuck.
This is where I say, "But despite all these disparate sub-genres, Carnival still works because it keeps the thread of BLANK going through the whole thing." But I can't do that. I don't know what that thread is.
Despite not being able to decipher the overarching theme, I can still tell you Carnival doesn't seem haphazard or disjointed in any way. It works great as a record, everything flows and sounds perfect together. It's an album that's actually an album instead of simply a collection of songs. It's refreshing and original and 100% awesome.
Mysterious stuff here. Originally a ridiculously limited run of 5 or 6 copies on Winter Records, then reissued by Rhizome in a slightly more acquirable, though no less limited, run of 30 copies. No names. No liner notes to speak of (other than what I just mentioned). Song titles are dates. Just about as bare bones as it gets.
The music is where it's at, though. Three 20+ minute tracks (one nearly a half hour) of some long form drones that sound like bagpipe/harmonica/melodica/you get the idea, like the perfect union of Yoshi Wada and Eluvium. I assume it's recorded live using circular breathing, which makes this prime AGB material. I seriously love any/all of those instruments and turn 'em into some sprawling drone via circular breathing and I'm fucking GONE. Plus, the length of these pieces makes it all the more incredible imagining a single dude pushing his cheeks & lungs till the point of almost passing out.
This is some intense stuff, not exactly blissful but still quite a pleasant experience. Very hypnotic, open ended, intricate, layered drone, at times abrasive and enlightening. My wife Elise is pretty tolerable of most drone, but I'm fairly certain she wouldn't dig this. Which hopefully means you're all about this because I give Keep Breathing some of the highest praise possible.
Sloppy copy/paste 'cause I'm heading to work. "Amplified calculator being pushed into a desk fan." That means it's noisey & atonal & awesome as fuck. From a split The Haters did with Lockweld.
I got a heads up on Hard Format from one of the many TempRes Twitter accounts when they linked to the post on Eluvium's Life Through Bombardment. Hard Format is a super sleek site dedicated to showcasing some of the more finely designed & packaged music (like these Pan releases, Fennesz's Black Sea, Celer's origamied Mane Blooms). They seem to do a lot of scans, which I don't think are always the best way to display such beauties (evidence: Exhibit A / Exhibit B), but the attention to detail is really fantastic and all of the artwork really shines. Definitely a place that further proves music in a purely digital world will never win.
Update: No scans on the site. Everything is shot with a Nikon.
If you know what loons sound like, you've probably skipped all the text and are already downloading this. If you've never heard a loon call, either recorded or in the wild, then just start downloading now and thank me afterwards.
Loons make the creepiest fucking sounds out of any animal ever. The different technical names for loons calls are wail, tremolo, yodel, hoot, and various combinations like tremolo-wail but the word "ghostly" pretty much sums it all up. They sound like ghosts. Beautiful, horrifying ghosts. The specters of the northern wilderness that wake you up in the middle of the night and give you the sweats, who then soothe your fears and lull you back to sleep.
The first side is narrated by Robert J. Lurtsema who helps to identify the different calls. The second side is uninterrupted by humans, just 21 minutes of sounds like "Chorus From A Distant Lake," "Wails During A Thunderstorm," and "Coyotes Calling With Loons." So you can just throw that on and remember those late nights spent staring at the stars on a Maine lake.
The back of the jacket (included in the zip) has plenty of detailed notes, including some spectrographs showing what the different calls look like. So cool. But the best part of this whole thing (other than the recording, obv) is the "Important Note" that warns you not to play this record "near waters occupied by breeding pairs" because apparently loons are a bunch of pussies that can't handle some stiff competition.
A truly fine slow burning jam by Walls off their self titled debut on Kompakt. Listen to the song on repeat and it creates a nice ebb & flow of beats & drones. So super awesome. The video reminds me a bit of the artwork for Unknown Pleasures mixed with A Place To Bury Strangers' aesthetic.
Millipede is back with another dose of beautiful steel wool guitar noise on Install. To tell you the truth, it's hard to notice many differences between the new Full Bloom and his previous albums. I'm not just being a noise condenser, either. Millipede has a very specific sound and if you make 7 or 8 albums worth of it, I supposed it might become difficult to continue innovating. That being said, is Full Bloom worthy of your time? Hell fucking yes.
Millipede has got it made. He can keep putting out albums of caustic feedback and I'll listen to and love every last one. The intricately dense abrasive layers are endlessly enjoyable. There's so much to listen for and decipher. I could spend hours figuring out if it's a single guitar blown WAY the fuck out or a dozen acid spewing axes, hearing shapeless mourning voices, waiting for the next wave of crumbling corrosion to scrub my ear canals and peel the paint off my walls.
I suppose I should mention, as I do in almosteveryMillipedereview, that Skullflower and Yellow Swans are some big soundalikes, along with hints of Brian Grainger and My Bloody Valentine. But regardless of how many times I write about Millipede, no matter how many albums he puts out or how frequently you listen to him, one thing is certain. Every time you hit play, you need to blur your eyes and crank your speakers until they bleed. Make it fucking LOUD.
I got pretty psyched when I saw this record sitting in the back of the last crate on a small table at a record fair. One, because it's a bit strange. Obviously. Also, the "Unfair Hearing Test" was pretty intriguing. But also because I'm nearly deaf in my right ear.
Most of this record is geared towards a person living with someone who has hearing loss, rather than the actual person with hearing loss, so for me it's more novelty than anything else. It explains how to cater to someone who is hard of hearing, ranging from the obvious ("When talking to the hard of hearing, face him directly") to the ridiculously impractical ("When the hearing handicap joins a group, be sure he knows the subjects being discussed").
The best parts of Getting Through are all of the filtered & altered sound samples, trying to replicate what hearing loss sounds like, and what it's like for someone who has a newly acquired hearing aid.
And I'm 99% certain the whole record is to make you feel sorry for your deaf grandparents and buy them a pair of Zenith hearing aids.
You might want to grab the extra large version of the back cover which has some instructions for the record as well as the answers to the "Unfair Hearing Test."
The dude who runs the Pen & Mallet blog is also a music-maker as Aboombong, and a damn good one at that. He's got a few "name your price" albums up on Bandcamp, but "Daymare" is from my particular favorite, Asynchronic. It's a super lush muted free jazz/post rock workout, chaotic enough to blend everything together into a homogeneous blur of skittering drums & intense guitar noodling. Well worth your time, and I highly recommend checking out the rest of his stuff.
I Want To Review Your Music If you make music and you want it reviewed on my blog, just send me an e-mail. I would love to hear what you're making and give you a little more exposure in the process.
Disclaimer All of the music on this site is for promotional and sampling purposes only. If you enjoy it, please consider buying the record or going to see the band live. They will appreciate it, I promise. If you own the rights to a song on this site and you would like it removed, please contact me and I will do so as quickly as my tiny paws allow.
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