Cumulus - Nothing Matters (Headway Recordings, 2012)

I'm lost. I remember being guided by someone who's role in this I no longer recollect. Something happened. Gaps in memory. Pain. Abandonment. Confusion...

If it sounds like a Tarkovsky film, that's because this album could pass as a modern score to one of those classics like "Stalker" or "Solaris". A meandering character attempts to discern his reality and destiny through a series of interactions with humans, entities and/or oracles.

Cumulus creates rhythmic droning patterns that are reminiscent of those long panning camera takes that seem to last an eternity. When the percussive elements are introduced, they are as subtle and necessary as a heartbeat. His narrative is lush and epic, incorporating field recordings that seem to be memories filed away in the back of your mind since you were a child.

This music is an existential journey ripe with doubt, pain and fear, but one that is contrasted with a familiar sense of hope and a longing for contentment and peace.

Buy this limited cassette / listen to samples HERE

Black Dog Productions - Bytes (Warp, 1993)

In the mid-to-late 80's the new sounds coming out of Detroit and Chicago inspired even stranger mutations in England.  The Black Dog released their first record in 1989, part of the initial wave of homegrown UK techno. Technically, Bytes is a compilation of material previously released as DJ-friendly singles and EPs, produced by various combinations of The Black Dog's three members under a variety of one-off pseudonyms. 

The music could initially be mistaken for the work of some Derrick May alter-ego, but there's something else going on here, a different kind of structure being assembled out of the same parts. Instead of America's pummeling four-on-the-floor, the rhythms have a kind of Afro-Caribbean intricacy, venturing into 6/8 times, polyrhythm and polymetry. Everything from acidic synth bleeps, stoned log-drum jamming, blossoming analog chords, and classical counterpoint jostle for your attention, assembling themselves Voltron-style into shambling grooves. This approach to rhythm was soon to be reified as IDM, but this is raw stuff, good on headphones sure, but not "chill," even when it's being pretty.
America's techno was characterized by its own strange futurism, but Britain's techno was truly weird, reflecting not only the Detroit-esque industrial decay of Midlands cities like Sheffield, but also the ancient landscape outside the cities: fens and heaths, deep woods, burial mounds, stone circles. There is a palpable sense of the occult here, of a ritual enacted by Crowleyan candlelight rather than the fluorescent glow of a space station.
Now that hardware-based techno is being rebooted by noise-scene veterans and youngsters who missed it the first time around, an album like Bytes can gesture at directions not fully explored by the original pioneers. Let's hope some of the new generation return to the strange grottoes first explored here.


--This review was written by John Brinker.






Get it Here

Tashi Dorji - Improvisations for Guitar (Headway Recordings, 2012)

Bhutanese guitarist Tashi Dorji is an exceptional musician, and a multi-instrumentalist who happens to excel on guitar. Live you can expect either an intense avant garde onslaught of Derek Bailey style electric or beautiful experimentations mostly on the acoustic, which is what is presented on this cassette release.

Over the course of about forty minutes, Dorji runs the gamut of his instruments possibilities. From pastoral pieces to John Fahey-inspired americana to Indian raggas to stabbing primal aggression. All of this is provided with a constant sense of grace and humility.

In the new school of experimental guitarists, Dorji fits well alongside Bill Orcutt and Glenn Jones.



Purchase the cassette here

Happy Birthday, Herman Poole Blount, AKA Sun Ra

"Not to be confused with the Egyptian god Ra", says the Wikipedia entry. Its quite difficult not to confuse this legendary figure with a god.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, Sun Ra always pushed the limits musically. He did it all. Sometimes he'd play piano / keyboard solos, sometimes he'd be with a traditional quartet doing ragtime, swing, or bebop. I was always fond of the bizarre free jazz sounds and vocal incantations that seemed to conjure aliens from what he seemed to think was his home planet.

Beyond the jazz music, he was also one of the first artists to incorporate experimentation with electronic keyboards. In the black and white video below, its shocking when you suddenly hear that virtual sound. It creates a confusion in your mind, a sort of retro-futurist synesthesia.

Until his death in 1993, he continued to play as often as possible and just got further and further out. The bandleader Marshall Allen has kept the Sun Ra Arkestra going. To this day, you can go see them perform and still feel the spirit of the great otherworldly one himself.

"I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos." 

Padang Food Tigers - Ready Country Nimbus (Bathetic Records, 2012)

This record is so relaxing that I feel its actually in the bath with me, so meditative that it seems to have become a part of my breathing, and so reflective that it could never be background music. What is most striking is that it never fails to lose the aesthetic of pure art.

 Absolute beauty shrouds this release by two thirds of the drone folk project "Rameses III". The duo intertwines processed field recordings, acoustic guitar, bells and a divine sounding banjo, always in the driver's seat on this recording. What in the beginning sounds like it could be background music quickly draws the listener into a thorough introspection.

 I was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure. This album has been the first effective tool in remedying that situation. The pastoral instrumentation drones alongside chirping birds and children playing, creating an avant garde sound that actually comes across as accessible.

 Padang Food Tigers has been released on Bathetic Records. You can listen / purchase the LP HERE and it is available in the itunes store.