Milieu - The Loneliness Of Empty Roads (Second Sun, 2010)

Milieu - Untitiled 1


Milieu is one of the many names Brian Grainger uses to make music, as well as the name of one of the labels he runs. The Loneliness Of Empty Roads is out on one of those very labels, Second Sun, which he co-runs with David Tagg.

Grainger improvised Empty Roads live on tape, with no overdubs, and managed to come out the other side with an endless drone affair of impeccable beauty & sadness. 3 long tracks of unwavering melancholy, apocalyptic Six-String Samurai type shit, and lovely lush isolation.

The drones here are bare bones, not much in the way of dynamic fluctuations, just a mood set on woe and left to its own devices. Solid sounds that go on for miles of emptiness, with the sole intent of hypnosis, forgetting pain & responsibility. There's one track that's less drone than the rest, with a mournful scorched guitar singing the blues. It still has a drone heart, though, interminably walking down deserted roads with nothing but the dust at its feet and the sun on its back. No goal, no end of the line. Just trying to find the perfection in sorrow.

The near half hour long closer is the grandest, yet most subdued ode to solitude I've ever heard. It's pure elegance, soaring guitar drone made for total body levitation. Resonating chords that will stay with you on the cold forlorn nights. The power of this drone is unlike any other, making its way into your bones and showing you the loveliness of loneliness. It doesn't get much better than this.

MP3: Petrels - Silt

Petrels - Silt


William Walker was a pretty astonishing fellow. He single-handedly saved the sinking Winchester Cathedral by diving for 6 hours a day for 5 years, working in complete darkness, and using more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks. BY HIMSELF.

Petrels is making an album honoring this man. "Silt" is the first taste and it's a gorgeous bubbly drone with uplifting organs, shimmering & grand. It's the sound of an underwater hero. Can't wait to hear the full record, which is due out hopefully later this year.

AGB Radio 10/7

image via

Ahahaha so my first radio show yesterday was a bit of a disaster. I had no idea what I was doing. But I got music to play and I was able to talk so I guess that's all that really matters.

That does mean, however, that I wasn't able to record my show the way I planned. To compensate for my idiocy, I created a mix of yesterday's playlist. So you're getting basically the same thing, except you won't hear me rambling and fucking up which record is on which label.

Here's a massive mix for you. Also, I added an .m3u this time. Let me know if that's helpful for anyone or completely unnecessary.

Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio 10/7
Eluvium - A Life In Tides Less Current (Leaves Eclipse The Light EP)
Belong - A Sunny Place For Shady People (Tour EP)
Andrew Weathers - Skin Holding Atoms In (A Great Southern City)
Ben Frost - Through The Roof Of Your Mouth (By The Throat)
Brandon Nickell - The Roughest Jewel In Your Glittering Crown (Second Key) (And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You)
Bitchin' Bajas - Zone 4 (Tones & Zones)
Greg Davis - Regarding Wave (Part 1) (Regarding Wave)
The Idealist - The Knives Are My Eyes (I Am The Fire)
Linda Aubry Bullock - Stage Evil (Fossils From The Sun) (Ray Of Dark)
Master Musicians Of Bukkake - The Heresy Of Origen (Totem Two)
Mugstar - Today Is The Wrong Shape (...Sun, Broken...)
Tiger Throat - This Brave Waning Light (Tiger Throat)
Nadja & Ovo - Movement 3: Put Some Sugar In My Cup, Please (The Life & Death Of A Wasp)
Umberto - In The Name Of Zuel (From The Grave...)
Marinos Koutsomichalis - 6 (Malfunctions)
Violet - All Records Collapse (Violet Ray Gas And The Playback Singers)
Double Awake - ...Why I Can't Be Everything I'm Not (Leaving Nowhere Forever)
Strotter Inst. - #1/45rpm (Bolzplatz)
Inhibitionists - With Milky Brushes (Lithium Salt Mines)
Reuben Son - B.2 (Glowing Departures)
Noveller - Toothnest (For Chris Habib) (Desert Fires)
Expo '70 - Analog Dreamscape (Sonic Messenger)
Max Richter - Infra 2 (Infra)

Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio Starts Today!

So before I did Anti-Gravity Bunny, I was the General Manager, Music Director, and DJ at Salem State's radio, WMWM. It was the best. I loved it. I graduated and stopped doing it. Now that I'm doing the graduate program at Simmons, I'm getting back at it. FUCK YEAH DDUDES.

Here's all the details. Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio is a title-in-progress (I'm open for ideas). You can listen to it online (and only online, no FM, no AM, sad face) from the Simmons College Radio site, Backbone, or right in iTunes (under College Radio). Currently it'll be every Thursday from 3-5:30 starting TODAY. I'll attempt to keep that time slot every semester but we'll see what happens.

In addition to listening live, I'll be posting the entire show here for downloading hopefully the day after (aka every Friday) so you can listen to it over and over again wherever you want.

I'll be playing all of the type of stuff you usually see here on the blog but I'll definitely be expanding the tightly curated AGB roster to include other awesome shit. So tune in today and every week from today to get your face explod-gasm-ed like that bro up there.

Nick Hennies - Lungs (Full Spectrum, 2010)

Nick Hennies - Sympathy


I hope you remember Nick Hennies from his ode to his grandfather, Lineal, because that album was spot on beautiful. Apparently the dude is a drummer and his new disc on Full Spectrum is profoundly minimal ambient drum drone.

When I say minimal, I mean the first sound doesn't show up until about 20 seconds in. This is as sparse as it gets unless you're going the 4'33 route. Hennies has crafted an amazingly gorgeous drone record that is almost entirely ethereal. It's barely there and it never moves. And I'm pretty sure there's no processing either, meaning all of these sounds are coming straight from the drums. It's incredible.

The few sounds that do make up Lungs are found mostly on the two centerpiece tracks, "Lungs" and "Second Skin With Lungs," which are bookended by two short songs of exactly the same length & title that differ only slightly in content, "Sympathy." "Lungs" is made up of stretched out rubber bands of varying sizes vibrating at an insane rate, making a highly textured & tense drone, occasionally pulsing and throbbing with an industrial darkness. Then "Second Skin With Lungs" (super gross name, btw) comes along and you're not sure anything's even playing until a few minutes go by and an ominous doom rattle appears. It's 15 minutes of the sound of a silently massive black cloud hovering overhead as it waits to unleash a flood.

This is the anti-background music. The only way to listen to Lungs is with noise cancelling headphones in a coffin at the bottom of a mine. It's futile to try otherwise (as I sit writing & listening on this fucking train). Make sure when (not if) you pick this up, you give it your undivided attention. Otherwise you'll just be wasting your money.

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