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.


 

Listening Mirror - What's Wrong with Miracles? (Twice Removed, 2012)

Crawley, UK artist Jeff Stonehouse has just released one of the most compelling records of his genre in recent memory. With an impressive sense of patience, he offers three eerie yet elegant twenty minute tracks of dark ambient / minimal soundscapes.

Showing a tenacious grasp of sound sculpture, Stonehouse's delivery is reminiscent of music that might be composed for film score and recorded by a perfectionist engineer. Sparse guitar and striking piano chords are bathed in reverb, creating a feeling that would be just as at home in a long Tarkovsky take as it would in a bleak sci-fi or quiet horror film.

This is heavy and lovely material. Fans of Vidna Obmana, Lustmord, and the darker side of Steve Roach take note.

Listen / Download Here

Cut Hands - Afro Noise (Very Friendly, 2011)

To "cut pure human states" and produce "the most extreme music ever recorded" was the mission William Bennett had in 1980 with his power electronics act "Whitehouse". When industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle and SPK began to calm the storms within, Bennett took his intentionally vile, lecherous and abrasive sound and visual to new heights, disturbing all who witnessed it.

More than 30 years after the inception of Whitehouse, a new project emerged, one light on the noise but heavy on the listening experiences of tastefully aged pair of ears. Cut Hands is a tribute to Bennett's interest in Congolese and Ghanaian persussion. These polyrhythmic African drum sounds are slathered in industrial reverb and complimented by delicately placed ambient textures, drones and even orchestral feeling electronics. All of these elements work incredibly well, creating a surprising groove with a full range of emotion. All this and Bennett's tactically cerebral expertise continues to shine through, never betraying his original essence.


Read full review of Cut Hands - CUT HANDS on Boomkat.com ©