Haiku Review: Hautain - Glass Desert (self released, 2010)

Hautain - 1


Glass Desert (download)
/windstorm sand nightmare/
/gritty blasts of feedback skree/
/scraped rusted machines/

Video: Koen Holtkamp - Loosely Based On Bees (Excerpt)

Koen Holtkamp, half of the masterful field recording/drone duo Mountains, has a new solo record coming out on Thrill Jockey called Gravity/Bees. There'll be two side long tracks and this is a video of an excerpt for "Loosely Based On Bees," a blissful droney piece using the sounds of Philly bees. Honestly, I could use some more bee buzz on this song but who knows, it might show up somewhere else in the full track. This is shaping up to pack a hefty dose of awesome and if we're lucky, it might even be better than Holtkamp's last solo outing, Field Rituals. But at the very least it's getting the deluxe mini-LP treatment from TJ with a custom letter-pressed jacket and everything.

Wrnlrd - Death Drive (FSS, 2010)

Wrnlrd - Grave Dowser


Wrnlrd's new bit of what the fuck is coming out soon on FSS. Black? Sure. Metal? Mostly. Scratchy drone, static soul, and whatever else the dude wants to throw in? Obviously. It's less than 20 minutes long but Death Drive is a twisted beast that defies logic & explanation aka pure gold.

It opens innocently enough with a few tracks of buzzing black guitars, blasting & chugging drums, and inhuman Cerberus snarls. The first is pretty straightforward, nothing too out of the ordinary for weirdo black metal, but each track delves deeper into the totally fucking bizarre. There's horn n shit, sludgy grit, buried epic solos, chimes & general wonky-ness.

But by the time it gets to the fourth track, "Luster," it rips out its metal heart and goes for the delicate & dejected solo piano. Definitely not unheard of on a black metal record, but this one seems to be lacking a certain darkness. It sounds almost like it could be found on Lambent Material if Eluvium was feeling sad enough. So obviously it's awesome, just more added weirdness. But Wrnlrd saved the biggest mindfuck for the end. It starts as a droney harmonium/accordion sounding piece, bubbling up from the swamp, that shifts gears into a full blown nightmare of metal fury. It makes no sense and is totally fucking brilliant.

Death Drive is a snack size chunk of insane black metal that's off the fucking wall. Wrnlrd killed it with this new one and FSS is bestowing it upon us in the form of a sweet 10" (or digital if that's your thing (idiot)). Should be out around Thanksgiving, perfect timing for scaring the shit out of your relatives.

Will Thomas Long - Sequoia (basic_sounds, 2010)

Will Thomas Long - Sequoia


As many already know, the incredible husband-wife drone duo Celer ceased making music once Danielle Baquet-Long died last year. However, Will Thomas Long, the other half, continues creating and just released a new EP through the new netlabel offshoot of my most favoritest sites ever, basic_sounds.

Sequoia is one 22 minute track dedicated to the memory of Will's late wife. It's a minimal mournful elegy of outstanding beauty. It sounds very much like Celer, slow moving and subtle. The few tones resonate through open snow fields, intertwining amidst barely shifting air currents. It's simultaneously restrained & expansive, dense & delicate.

I'm glad Will is still making music, and that it's just as fantastic as the work he did with Celer. I'm also glad basic_sounds is taking a step towards more formal curating through a netlabel. This release is kind of a no brainer, considering who's involved and I'm really fuckin psyched to see what else both of them have coming up in the near future.

Locrian - The Crystal World (Utech, 2010)

Locrian - At Night's End Link removed by request.
Locrian - Elevations And Depths (Excerpt)


These dudes just don't know when to stop. Which is definitely a good thing for us. The world could never have too much Locrian. Especially when they get exponentially better with each new release being even more amazingly badass and in a totally different way than the last. The Crystal World (with Steven Hess of Pan American, On, etc adding some percussion & electronics) takes the blackened ambient heart of Locrian's other albums and juices it up, dropping all the metal baggage, creating a dark as fuck stillbirth of a noise record.

As much as I love Locrian's heavy riffs, even without them this might be one of my favorites of theirs and is easily the best crafted. Lots of warped vocals, like the bleak tortured screaming on numerous tracks, or the shamanistic meditation oms & haunted angelic serenades on "At Night's End," which is the most killer fucking track there is. It's a slow candle burning walk through a moonlit church until halfway through the song, the riffs & drums come crashing in and the chanting blows up, filling the entire nave with the lost hope of redemption. Plus, up until that point on the record, it's all subdued meandering darkness, nothing too loud or epic. It totally catches you by surprise and is all the more crushing because of it.

That's about as heavy as it gets on The Crystal World, though. Sure there's doomy percussion and buzzing guitars, it wouldn't be Locrian otherwise. But the emphasis isn't on the devastation, it's on the textured desolation & hidden tragedy in every day life. Swirling pianos mix with mournful riffs creating a beautiful mess of faux sweet dreams. A thick crust of crunching feedback crumbles away into a slow motion avalanche of demon alarms and rupturing stone howls. Black as fuck nightmares caused by buried hatred, the distant scars of pain & anguish fade into a massive wall of endlessly beautiful gray static.

Locrian keep outdoing themselves. I remember hearing them for the first time and thinking, "Holy shit there's no way they could get any better than this." And EVERY record is better. I couldn't have been more wrong. The Crystal World is Locrian at the top of their game but I'm not going to say they can't do better because they obviously can and will. I can't think of a single reason not to find this record as soon as it comes out and play it every day until your death.

P.S. This review is for the LP version. The 2xCD version has a second CD (duh) with an extra hour long track that Locrian didn't want to split up to make it fit on an LP.

Double Awake - Leaving Nowhere Forever (self released, 2010)

Double Awake - Drooling Tears


This dude kinda came outta nowhere in Boston. One night I went to a noise show where he was opening for Geoff Mullen & KFW which he totally owned, next thing I know he's also playing in the psych outfit Mind Yeti, booking shows as Slow Blood Music, playing live every chance he gets, and banging out screen printed CD-Rs like a motherfucker.

Leaving Nowhere Forever is Will Mayo's newest disc of synthy drone noise. Compared to his previous efforts like Infinite Classroom and Not Enough Noise In Vermont, this one's definitely my top pick. Real classy stuff, gritty & smooth, moody as fuck, waves of a static sea swirling all over each other. It's 4 tracks, 3 new "studio" pieces and a killer 28 minute live set from Problem House.

The best part of all this is he's finally got some web presence. He started up a Bandcamp page where you can download Leaving Nowhere Forever as a pay-what-you-want deal. There's only one other EP up at the moment, but the plan is to make the rest of his previous CD-R's available as well. Trust me, you want to get in on this.

Video: Kyle Bobby Dunn at First Presbyterian Church (Brooklyn)

Kyle Bobby Dunn playing live in a church with a string & brass ensemble 2 weeks ago. God fucking dammit why didn't we all go to this? Also, wait until the end... wtf is that all about?

Brandon Nickell - And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You (Isounderscore, 2010)

Brandon Nickell - And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You


Brandon Nickell is one bad motherfucker. The dude owns the incredible Isounderscore label, runs, like, 8 miles a day, puts together kickass shows, and makes ridiculously awesome noise. Also, he must never sleep.

His new poetically & cryptically tongue twisted album, And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You, has been in the making for years and it's finally seeing the light of day. I can 100% money back guarantee it was totally worthwhile to wait that long because this is a fucking beast of a record.

The 12 minute opener is a game changer. Album openers got a lot to live up to after this. Coupling high end tinnitus inducing bells with soothing somber organs equals uneasiness that knows no bounds. It's constantly vibrating, like a sea of electrons buzzing around a nucleus hell bent on explosion. Metal bowls, clanging chimes, a fury of burning metal that somehow manages to be highly enjoyable & pleasant.

The title track drops it down into the purest evil dronenoise I've ever heard. Maliciously relentless on your eardrums, panning and growling, screeching and crackling, this is honestly one of the best pieces this year. I'm damn near certain this is what it sounds like getting your head stuck in a hornet's nest that's being struck by lightning. Oh my fucking GOD it is so intense. The record could've just been this one track and people would still be praising him.

3 more tracks & over 20 minutes to go, you get yourself into some serious shit. Static poison blow darts knock you out so you can't run away and a pack of striped hyenas brutally assault you with cattle prods. Haunted minimalist house of glowing specters, creaking sparks, & piercing refractions. Swirling luminiferous aether, a scathing plasma seeping into your pores, taking over your body one cell at a time.

Nickell is clearly a supreme crafter of sound. And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire is easily one of the best noise records of 2010. The guy just totally fuckin nailed it with this record. If I have to wait another 5 years for Nickell to put out another record this insanely good, that's just 5 more years spent obsessing over this.

Video: Tim Fite - We Didn't Warn You

"We Didn't Warn You" is one of the standout tracks from Tim Fite's latest freebie Under The Table Tennis, an insanely good & bizarre hip-hop album about the current financial shithole the USA has gotten itself into. The video, inspired by Clu Gulager's short A Day With The Boys, is full of wacky kids playing Red Rover in the forest, vomiting strawberries, and burying their friends alive. You know, the usual kid stuff.

Fennesz, Burning Star Core, Noveller at The Middle East

Noveller: SWF old age ambient guitar loops, dusty tumbleweeds skipping across baked clay, hazy mirages, droplets in a well, muted sea glass shard kaleidoscope

Burning Star Core: solo rumpled silk violin drone, empty checkered floor kitchen freakout, Zorn farm animal smash, Patton porpoise whirlpool, high speed alien cartoon sputtering nonsense, Jupiter wind, scratchy atonal Burning Disco Core

Fennesz: it was fucking Fennesz, live, shiver inducing LOUD guitar drone perfection, a walking masterpiece, not enough words for that kind of beauty

More/bigger photos on Flickr.


Noveller



Burning Star Core



Fennesz

Lawrence English, Taylor Deupree, Xela at Art@12

Xela: black lazer echos in rusty warehouse, harmonic ghosts haunt drippy caves, tectonic plate shift, mouth of hell opens wide, crumbling apocalypse

Taylor Deupree: yellow leaf drone, gauzy uphill water, muffled papers shuffle, forest heartbeat, distant birds, suspended dust in a sunset lit attic

Lawrence English: eye of the tornado, glass bottles & cellar doors bash your skull, visceral static bliss, squawking puffins, waves crash, fucking loud as fuck

Xela


Taylor Deupree


Lawrence English

MP3: Young Adults - Wasting Time

Young Adults - Wasting Time


Boston's gloomy post punkgazers Young Adults are back with a legit debut release, the limited Black Hole 12" on AMDISCS, and it's fucking GRAND. All the tracks from the demo earlier this year find their way onto Black Hole but they're way more lush, full force high quality tunes that sound 10x better now. "Wasting Time" is killer, a lethargy fueled anthem made for blasting your way through Contra.

No DL link by request, sorry chums.

Video: The Station - No Homo

Two reasons I'm posting this. 1: The phrase "No homo" is endlessly funny. 2: That dude with the soul patch and emo hair is super hot.



via TDW

Woolgathering - Jamaica Plain Bedroom Recordings (self released, 2010)

Woolgathering - It's Called "Found Footage," Not "Worthless Filmstrips."


The dude over at Mango Nebula, the totally rad Boston based blog that keeps you abreast of all the new cool shit going down around town, is a sweet creator of lo-fi bedroom folk pop.

Woolgathering, which means something along the lines of absentminded daydreaming, is pretty straightforward stuff, a lonely guy singing soft with a guitar and the occasional glockenspiel. Great lyrics & voice, solid picking, and poor recording quality with lots of hiss, but for demos it sounds damn good and I wouldn't mind some of this haphazardness finding its way into a legit record.

Grab digital copy for however much you want on Bandcamp, or swipe a limited hand numbered/doodled physical copy for a mere $5.

P.S. For context, Woolgathering is also the same guy I caught bein a boss at Weirdstock playing rockabilly guitar for Cave Bears.

Linda Aubry Bullock - Ray Of Dark (Sedimental, 2010)

Linda Aubry Bullock (with MTB) - Line's Dead


The name Bullock gets tossed around here a lot. Michael T is a pretty cool dude, quite prolific. But his multi-talented wife, Linda Aubry Bullock, is an equally wondrous music maker and she's got a brand new disc on Sedimental of outstanding solo and collaborative works.

Ray Of Dark is 6 tracks totaling almost 50 minutes with 2 solo pieces, 2 with her husband (together as Rise Set Twilight), 1 with Eric Hardiman (of Rambutan/Tape Drift), and 1 with Ray Hare (of Fossils From The Sun). All 4 occasionally get together to play as Twilight Of The Century, and the first 4 tracks on Ray Of Dark are a direct reaction from one of their performances in Albany of '08. But even though this album is peppered with guests, their sound is never strong enough to dilute what is still thoroughly a Linda Aubry Bullock record.

The opener is the title track, one of the solo pieces, a perfect intro to Bullock's gritty post industrial mind. Tons of echoing & reverb, like a more chilling/less cheesy Jason Voorhees theme. People mumbling, chanting, yelling, and singing, the sounds of walking through an Arabian midnight market with electronic squawks, distant air raid sirens, creaking aluminum floorboards, & rusty buzz saws. I don't want to say that Bullock shows all her cards right in the beginning, but "Ray Of Dark" is crazy good and easily one of the best on the album. If you can get through that 11 minutes of awkward anxiety, you're a fucking champ and you'll make it to the end. Promise.

The rest of Ray is just a clusterfuck of cautious ambient doom. In every nook & cranny there's hidden terror & vertigo, each moment is paused in hesitation, waiting to raise your hackles, paranoid & filled with unnerving nausea. Of course, you're all alone while listening to this. In the dark of night, waiting for somebody to come home, clutch your cup of coffee and pull your knees closer to your chest. Crank it up, beware of "The Story Of Mike" and let the grinding engines permeate your walls & your bones.

Update: Apparently there was a little bit of confusion about the origin of some of the songs when I read the statement on Sedimental's site. Here's the factual shit straight from Mr. Bullock:

"...tracks 2, 3, and 4 were not composed by Linda, but they are all (like the title track) based on a live recording of Twilight of the Century, and they were all commissioned by Linda for this collection. So in addition to composing some of the music on the CD herself, she curated the rest of the album."

Also re: the title track: "Apparently the guy singing in the background is singing some famous French pop tune from the 70s" LOOOLL