Adult Contemporary (2016)

Somewhat sadistic, but approachable for the way that Rossetto arranges sound such that it feels both navigable, and like a sort of ride with a clear trajectory- Side A is all cavernous spaces collapsing around the listener, while B has her lost at sea where the forces manipulating things are immense and invisible

bandcamp / -o-

Comme un seul narcisse (2016)

boomkat / -o- / norman

Yodh (2016)

Yodh's atmosphere comes along with its songs, rather than being written into them, which means that it is refreshingly devoid of cued ambient bits and post-rock influences (yay!!!!!!). It is ugly and beautiful all at once and this is achieved through the spontaneous act of making, not some compositional contrivance. In an interview with Stara Rzeka the musician opines that black metal and doom metal are devoid of testosterone and more "like a ghost" than anything, which is something I clicked with right away and recalled when listening to Yodh- it is unapologetically a genre piece, but the band finds a ghostly sadness within this, leaving no need for counterpoint

bandcamp

Tide Ripples (2016)

The layering of what appears delicate to the point of being ephemeral- Asuna has 22 minutes each song to make something monumentally delicate before stripping unexpected layers away and leaving others, actively avoiding density and leaving the listener feeling elated

bandcamp / -o-

Only the Youngest Grave (2016)

Seems driven by the desire to uncover a human past in the landscape but rather than rekindling a relationship with the elemental (as in the Scandinavian tradition), finds a kind of abandoned occult sadness (as in the British tradition), which is to say that it's all bones and no spirit. A few things strike me every time (one good, one subjectively not good_)- I have no idea what makes good music much less good mixing but the sparseness of Only the Youngest Grave allows me to hear around the noise in a way that I'm not accustomed to (good!), and also I am all attention whenever the music wanders, but it every now and then builds instead (repeated motif, click distortion pedal) which is a thing I am most allergic to thanks to post-rock but which is quite moving if you are into that, and which I consciously overlook as the noise actually overrides the loud-quiet dynamic and maybe inadvertently distracts from it. So there's something for everyone there

bandcamp

You're Welcome (2016)

A song-cycle which doesn't dictate a narrative, but which takes form around what the listener brings to it. You're Welcome Here has been the most devastatingly sad thing heard all year as well as the most life-affirming, the best background noise as well as the most 'present'. The fact that it comes full circle (as in a dream) jolts us in its absence when it is over, asking to be heard again and giving structure to the life of the listener whether she is achieving things or not (I never am!)

posh isolation / -o- / norman / spotify

Live at Issue Project Room (2016)

-o- / important records / boomkat / bandcamp / norman

Hearing Music (2016)

Although new age music found an audience willing to overlook or even embrace its dorkiness via obscure tape rips in the music blog era, it was only recently that it became properly accepted and even declared fashionable. Far from cashing in on this via unearthed archival material Hearing Music offers nothing in the way of antique synths and dolphin noises for new age fetishists- rather it sits on the threshold of 'tasteful' minimalism and forays into the kind of sounds one would expect with that recently de-stigmatised genre tag, which is to say soulful repetition and rainy elegance

numero / -o- / boomkat / spotify

Dreamboat (2016)

mie / -o-

あいしゃ (2016)

Akio Suzuki moves a radio through public spaces, its hums and static drones echoing and reverberating in these 'found' environments, and making for a surprisingly musical instrument. The additional indeterminacy of people interacting in these spaces makes composers of them if that's what you get from it, but to me it grounds the music in 'the world' and brings it to life.

-o-

Nettles (2016)

Don't be scared that it's an ode to person and place (even Neil Young made "I'm sorry. You don't know these people. This means nothing to you." a voyeuristic nightmare that the listener couldn't help but share in)- A Pot of Powdered Nettles is an open-invitation welcome to the farewell ritual which is, in spite of its players' links to unsettling and abrasive musical projects, peaceful and affectionate.

house of mythology / stream / -o- / stream(2)

Moenai Hai (2016)

Juntaro Yamanouchi returns after disappearing for fifteen years and out comes Moenai Hai. It all begins with laughter which heard in light of the imagined Juntaro-the-person could either be life-affirming (a welcome back to the world of the living) or alienating (when we begin to think who or what caused the laughter). Surrounded by its sparse and tense ambient pieces is the fifteen minute The Gerogerigegege, an unexpected statement of intent from the officially living Juntaro which also happens to be the year's most beautiful guitar piece. The others might be private despair pulled from recordings of public spaces, but this one is performed to feel and to stir feelings in the listener as well- it is impossibly destructive but also pleading, desperate, and alive

-o-

Pèkisyon Funebri (2016)

Segondè Saleco saw Mohammad's landscape trilogy to a close with abstracted elemental power- sounds were processed so that they did not have a human cause- they emerged vibrating with the inevitability of seismic activity rather than some musical composition. Pèkisyon Funebri is free from this conceit but of course the discoveries made through it have become Mohammad's sound, meaning that we are still hearing tones and textures and processing them through space and duration (which is what gives them this imagined physical quality), while Mohammad also allow themselves parts and passages where we can hear the instrument being played (!). The piano in Az álmok itt érnek véget (rész 3) feels earned, while the opening of Qoxra and voices of Ankourajman remind us that rather than being used simply to pigeonhole, Mohammad's music has been described as both metal and folk to better understand their sounds and concepts ('the elemental')- these moments are heavy metal both quieter and louder than expected, and the cello screech in the latter humanises the group which again tends to (obsessively) sound anything but. On that last one the music was neither dark nor light but indifferent as the landscape it was evoking, but Pèkisyon Funebri veers into both doom and sentiment- its grandiose abstractions become metaphysical (rather than superphysical) and its human moments jolt us into the present- this is our funerary passage

stream / buy

Megafauna

Whiiirrrr bllllmmmmmm reeeee thck thck whirrrrr (repeat)

Um

The last time I heard something this silly I was sitting at work listening to a grown man w/ hammered dulcimer singing about how the plants were gonna eat me. I tried buying the t-shirt but the thing broke on the website and I have this (thing) where I blame myself and not the website when that happens and I always think it's a sign or something, that sign being evidence of the Scrooge McDuck that looks over me but doesn't give enough of a shit to stop me spending money on food, that sign telling me it's just not worth it and to give up and just go eat something. He (SMD) draws the line at grown men w/ hammered dulcimers singing about how the plants are gonna eat me, but is okay with regular pie+sushi+sandwich lunches. Enough of those and I'll never be able to buy the damn t-shirt! He knows it, and I know he knows it. If he knows I know he knows then he's not just looking over me, and the thought of SMD being anywhere other than strictly above me (e.g. in my brain or in possession of a family member) is far more frightening than anything found on Megafauna. It's scarier than Goblin's Suspiria too, but not quite as pretty. And because Megafauna sits somewhere between grown man w/ hammered dulcimer (...plants...eat me) metal and Goblin's Suspiria, it's sillier but also prettier than all of that.

Crucially though the Goblin connection goes deeper than the similarity of sounds. Unlike other black metal weirdos that shoot for atmosphere over impact, Megafauna sounds like Yoga scoring the kind of suffering that aforementioned weirdos think atmosphere evokes. I don't want to call it a parody or anything, but it's like Megafauna is the soundtrack to the act of listening to black metal and feeling something (sadness, affirmation of nihilism/misanthropy/whatever). Detached yet curious, knowingly silly, admittedly moody, and importantly, very pretty.

try
buy

that present (2014)

I'm gonna get you that present. Give me all your money, baby.

On the one hand, fleeting moodpieces. On the other, atmosphere (pulling that one out, lazily explaining why something appeals as being more than just the sum of its parts without having to put anything into words) and thematic coherence as flow (again...).

Which might describe the movie quite well, actually. Maybe it's secretly a musical!

Less about the presence of silence than the last JVW record I heard, more about the layering of cacophony into something pissed off, indifferent, and thoroughly felt. Cynics snort at rockist + Romantic clichés, but it's nice to think that if it's all gone to shit then what remains is love. And if that's too gooey, we've still got the Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light series for those who like their drones mortal.

try
stream
buy

(Dead) 2013

Oooooh I don't know, I put it up there with The White House!!!! Challenges and forces its audience to react while maintaining a level of admittedly unconventional entertainment and payoff. No senseless (noise philosophical) migraines, all mindsplit feels.

mega / buy

Pharm

There's a dry scream and then a 4-song conversation between the dirge-like and the frightened and hysterical. The former makes for a heavy and intoxicating listening experience, the latter's outbursts make you stop what you're doing with sweaty palms and look over there somewhere, sort of really stressed out. Crawling on Bruised Knees is like holy fuck. No idea why some noise releases make it out of the darkndoomy/s&m pit o despair and into the attention of 'hipsters' (malleable as always, here meaning I don't actually know, everyone?) and some don't, though it might have something to do with the lack of s&m, nazi shite, and c.p. found here, leaving just darkndoom and tracks like Crawling on Bruised Knees. THAT, the general public (hipsters) can handle, I think (evidently).

try / buy / spotify

The End (2013)

Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel) farewells Black Boned Angel, his less prolific (only (at least) an album or ep (or both) a year!) genre project (whereas BCM seemed to deal nonspecifically with anything 'abstract'), the genre being drone doom metal. He employs a three step process to let it go without freaking him or his audience out too much- summarization, play, open-ended conclusion. All three components head toward the same point, that being mental/emotional transcendence. Even its most oppressive sounds let the hopeful ones escape and flourish, not competing but working together as they knowingly build Black Boned Angel's final work and ode to the coexistence of beauty, ugliness, hope, sadness, lightness, and heaviness in the best music of this kind.

try / thrill jockey

THE PEARL V2 (2013)

Ensemble Pearl is a group consisting of Stephen O'Malley, Atsuo, Michio Kurihara, and William Herzog. Other than Kurihara, all of these people played on Altar. The group's name comes from a Brian Eno and Harold Budd album from 1984 called The Pearl. On The Pearl, the musicians played quietly and sparsely to give silences a presence and make every detail equally important. Rather than being cosmic, its trick was focus. A microscope rather than a telescope, the effect was nontraditionally or obversely sublime. Ensemble Pearl was conceived by O'Malley as a commission for a theatre piece. The music itself reflects of O'Malley, Atsuo, Kurihara, and Herzog's chemistry, O'Malley's admiration of Eno's/Budd's focussed sublimity, and his life's work playing and pioneering the music he loves. Ensemble Pearl is built from multiple histories but it is also spontaneously rockish. It is allegedly informed by spectral music, but also phenomenology, "stoned discovery," and an intimate "back to basics" creative approach. In its non-competing, that is naturally occurring, intuitive environment/atmosphere, its histories come into play unselfconsciously and are all the while bound by the same vision and focus on a Pearl-ish sparseness. A chamber piece does not feel out of place surrounded on either side by guitar songs. Michio's guitars yearn in that distinctly Michio way, but he has abandoned the individual ego for something bigger. O'Malley mimics Dylan Carlson. He repeats phrases but changes them slightly. We're asked to pay attention but these phrases are returned by a guitar that sort of distracts as its strange playing makes little sense next to O'Malley's rigidity. Ensemble Pearl is not Altar and it is not Monoliths & Dimensions and it is not Rainbow and it is not Hex and it is not surf music or country music or rock n roll and yet it is an unselfconscious stoned discovery/uncovering/interplay of all of these things. It works because of the collaborators' expertise in and dedication to form, and of course understanding of when to merge a sound, offset a sound, sit out for ~10 mins, or lead the others in trying to imitate or channel the wind and waves (oh Michio!). As focussed/collaborative as it is, its images are ambiguous and if they were decided on, its discrepancies come down to each individual. The cover is a planet and a woman and whatever the viewer sees. Not simply a case of microscope v telescope, Ensemble Pearl could be a physical Hex-ish ghost town, a scene of the fury of the elements, or a psychological state (elated or despondent). Its vision/focus is ambiguity, the important thing is whatever the listener hears.

A-

try / buy

MORE LIGHT (2013)

Colin Stetson is a saxophonist who uses circular breathing and well placed mics to play/record in a way that sounds like he's using loops or even a 4-piece noise band, but it's just him (!), and there are no loops or tracks, and so every sound is alive and real and immediate. His drones soothe and his melodies repeat and whirl. He wails as he breathes circularly. We hear his hands move to create the minimalistic whirls and their movements are percussive. Often when people write about him they either exhaust the less strange suggestions on thesaurus.com for searches 'difficult' and 'beautiful', or they write about catharsis, delayed gratification, masochism, minimalism, and drone. This album is the final entry in his New History of Warfare trilogy and as with the others, it is concerned with loneliness. But it is also different. Bong Iver rocks up and not only sings into a mic that isn't placed near/on Stetson's sax (I have no way of confirming this), but requests that typically Iver-ish multi-track on his falsetto. Vernon's additions upset those invested in the purity of Stetson's method. Or who just don't like Vernon. I don't mind Vernon and I appreciate the contrast. Because contrast is such a big part of To See More Light. As the trilogy's final entry, it's important that it displays a wide variety of sounds and emotions. It's physical as ever (as well as thesaurus.com search 'difficult') but spiritual. Hypnotic but gruelling. Cold but heartfelt. Lonely but searching. To See More Light is darker than ever because sometimes it goes from an anxious, rapid anger to completely losing itself and slowing down and wandering alone having expelled its evils and presumably passion/spirit along with that, that's where it's darkest, where it goes from angry to devoid (of anything other than its own lack), but then sometimes this thing happens where it finds hope or a redemption somewhere/somehow having been 0 and it doesn't end there but rather we get to see it ascend and improve and it's so fucking beautiful that you might just cry when you hear it. To See More Light didn't have to be hopeful and it didn't have to be different. But it's both and it's incredible.

A

try it out cheapo / buy it cheapo