Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

TE Morris – Newfoundland

Christopher Nosnibor

TE Morris, founder and front man of esteemed purveyors of post rock Her Name is Calla has enjoyed a lengthy detour as a solo artist over the last few years. He’s a man who’s overflowing with ideas and material, far more than one band could ever contain, and with the members of Calla strewn about the country, developing new material on top of rehearsing is a slow process. As such, the solo career, which has spawned a slew of albums and EPs, has been a very necessary outlet. When the creative juices are flowing, you just have to let them run. However, he’s announced that his focus from hereon in will be on the band alone, and that Newfoundland will be his last solo release.

Because Her Name is Calla is very much about collaboration and the organic development of material, with the individual members each contributing in various ways to the dynamic of the sound, Morris’ solo recordings have always stood apart from the band’s output. and while much of his solo material is sparse in its arrangement, often comprising only acoustic guitar and vocal, there is no sense that these are offcuts or outtakes of would-be, could-be Calla songs.

Having said that, Newfoundland, for the connotations of discovery, of new ground and of possibilities, and despite the implications of context, which carry a certain sense of closure as the ‘solo’ chapter of Morris’ career comes to an end, is the solo work which sounds and feels most like Her Name is Calla. And in doing so, it feels like Morris is returning home. Newfoundland is a work built on layered instrumentation, bringing texture and sonic depth to the songs.

The piano is prominent across the album’s thirteen tracks, and Morris’ haunting voice which often soars toward an otherworldly falsetto is a constant here, as ever, and fans of both Her Name is Calla and Morris’ previous solo work will be both unsurprised and no doubt relieved to learn that it’s a characteristically reflective, introspective and melancholic set of songs.

‘The Sea of Tranquillity’, a ten-minute epic, drifts through a succession of moods, the soft piano augmented by mournful strings as Morris emotes on being lost in space. It’s touching, moving and powerful in a restrained, refined way. ‘A Year in the Wilderness’ finds organ and a swell of strings add drama and a sweeping, cinematic feel to the song, which contrasts with the hushed intimacy of ‘How Far Would You Go to Disappear’ which immediately follows. ‘The Mountain’ again hints at the beauty and enormity of nature and at the same time the challenges of a personal, emotional mountain, and builds to a crescendo worthy of Her Name is Calla as he ascends toward its ragged peak – a triumph riven with an ultimate sense of failure, as he sings, defeated, ‘I let the woodlife crawl over me / And eat me from the outside and in’.

One of Morris’ distinct trademarks is his ability to pen lyrics which are simultaneously intensely personal, yet elliptical, conveying manifold shades of anguish, grief, turmoil, distress, reflection, and, very occasionally, joy. He does it all in a way which is subtle and elegant, and there’s a rare grace to his songs.

With its samples and distant electronic beat, ‘Trials’ marks something of a departure and shows Morris extending his sonic palette, a trajectory furthered on the yawning drone of ‘—‘ , the album’s third untiled track .The final track, the nine-minute ‘Lasting Words’ makes for a fitting sign-off, as he sings, relieved, elated but conflicted, ‘I don’t want to hear the silence / And I can’t wait to start again / Trying not to break away.’

In short – and as expected – it’s a beautiful record, and one that’s heavy with emotion. Such sorrow rarely sounded so magical.

 

 

TE Morris

Newfoundland Online at Olynka Records

Napalm Records – 27th May 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

The promo write-up is right in observing that it’s ‘hard to imagine something called Krautgaze could be nurtured anywhere other than in Berlin’, describing the city as ‘the perfect breeding ground for a band like Suns Of Thyme: the five-piece lets space rock, shoegaze and psych with a nostalgic twist masterfully collide with death rock and the likes of Velvet Underground on its sophomore album Cascades.’

But to my old ears, as much as Cascades is shoegazey and psychedelic, what’s most striking is that the album’s nostalgia harks back to the goth sound of the mid 80s. It’s not the bleak post-punk sounds of Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Sisters of Mercy which filter into the sound of Cascades, nor the art rock of Bauhaus – the bands that defined goth without actually being goth, because goth didn’t even exist at that point – but the more accessible alternative bands that merged in their wake.

Loping drums drive fractal guitars that bend and shimmer on opener ‘Do Or Die’, a track which combines the gothy indie rock of Rose of Avalanche with the psychedelic grooves of The Black Angels, all under a vaguely Madchster haze.

There’s a undeniable indie rock / pop sensibility in evidence here, and ‘Intuition Unbound’ points straight back to 1986, amalgamating the celtic guitar motifs favoured by bands ranging from Ghost Dance to Balaam and the Angel via later Salvation. In some ways, it evokes a strange nostalgia for a strain of music that’s strangely detached from its origins and somewhat diluted in context of its roots, but it’s clear Suns of Thyme have both sense of thyme and plaice, as well as an aptitude for a certain sense of (melo)drama: ‘Ich Traum Von Dir’, while still evoking the spirit of 80s goth proffers forth credible moping and a disconsolation that’s actually quite affecting. It’s also a decent tune, and above all, tunes are what matter. There’s no shortage of them on Cascades. ‘Schweben’ builds a mellow shoegaze vibe over a lazy, motoric rhythm, with hints of Chapterhouse, but equally shoegaze revivalists like The Early Years.

And so it is that Cascades is an album that crosses a range of styles and periods, and in some ways, it’s difficult to disentangle nostalgia and anti-nostalgic kneejerk (of course, much of this is very much about a personal reaction on the part of one man who just so happens to be the reviewer), It isn’t always east to extrapolate sincere homage from the minefield of dubious dredging of the past. But Suns of Thyme manage to draw together a sufficiently broad range of ‘retro’ elements and combine them with some songwriting that’s savvy enough to give Cascades a life of its own.

 

suns-of-thyme-cascades

Suns of Thyme Online

Crónica – CRÓNICA109

Given Ran Slavin’s broad artistic pursuits, which span video installation, sound and film, and his far-reaching interests which manifest in the exploration of the tensions between opposites, Bittersweet Melody is something of a summation of his preoccupations.

Just as ‘bittersweet’ is one of those words that encapsulates contradiction and juxtaposition, so Slavin’s latest album is built on contrasting sounds and forms. Culled and curated from pieces of work from Slavin’s archives and a release from over a decade ago, the material which comprises Bittersweet Melodies has been disassembled, reassembled and generally re-rendered.

A mellow organic drone hovers and hums through ‘Saturday’s Dress’, but the ambience is disrupted by very mechanical-sounding pings and spring and microtonal bleeps by way of irregular rhythms. A repetitive thrumming hum provides the framework for the minimal yet dense and sinister ambient hip-hop of ‘Category: Murdered Entertainers’, with distant snippets of exotica adding a heightened sense of the unfamiliar to its curious texture. Elsewhere, polyrhythmic percussion collides with stuttering trip-hop beats and eastern-flavoured scales entwine luscious soundtrack strings. Frenetic drum ‘n’ bass ballasts against shimmering electronic froth and looped vocal fragments wash in and out of rumbling scrapes, fear chords, dissonance and a rich soup of sound from all corners of the globe and of the recesses of the mind. Woozy ambience and glitchtronica waft into passages dominated by dank pulsations and murky, shadowy shapes.

The fragments evoke neither nostalgia nor excitement, but a sense of displacement, or alienation. How else does one respond to pan-cultural motifs overlaid and strewn with dancehall music and digital blips but with a sense of vague bewilderment? Slavin does not contrive to create a typical collage mash-up: Bittersweet Melodies is something altogether more subtle in many respects. Moreover, the contrasts and oppositions are moulded and melted into one another to as to become complimentary. Strange, disorientating and uncomfortable, with a lot happening simultaneously, but complimentary nevertheless.

 

 

Ran Slavin

 

Ran Slavin Online

Someone Good – RMSG – 18th March 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Reading the info accompanying the album, I was relieved to learn that it has nothing to do with football. Granted, it says more about me than it does anything or anyone else, but I’ve never been a huge fan of sport. It probably never helped that apart from being quite a handy medium-pace bowler with a nifty Yorker, and a decent cross-country runner (I discovered early on that by getting a move on, I could be back in the changing rooms, showered and reading a book before anyone else got halfway round the course. I loved reading, and hated communal showers), I was shit at sport. It also happens that many of the kind of people who are big sports enthusiasts simply aren’t my kind of people, and I consider fantasy football leagues the biggest, stupidest waste of time going. But let’s not focus too much on the cover art (I’m thinking that despite Tuttle’s Australian background that it’s baseball rather than Aussie rules, but what do I know? And what do I want to know? It could be squash or lacrosse for I care. What matters is that Andrew Tuttle’s fantasy league is about a utopian environment. Said environment sets social interaction against total isolation, self-reflexivity against self-confidence.

It’s an interesting proposition, and Tuttle plays an interesting and rather unusual array of instruments in order to create the sonic structures by which to explore this concept: computer, synthesiser, banjo, and acoustic guitar. Hardly your average configuration for music making. But then, Fantasy League is not an average album, in any respect.

Broadly speaking, it’s an ambient work. Banjo and guitar are present, but woven subtly into shifting, drifting soundscapes of drones and undulating widescreen sounds. Bubbling, bleeping electronics, ripples and swishes are all fundamental parts of the album’s sonic fabric. The strummed and picked strings add a unique slant amidst the burrs of fizzing treble bursts which erupt, wibbling every which way: with hints of hillbilly blues over a static hiss on ‘Forgtten Username?’ and gentle folk motifs informing ‘Forgotten Password? before insect scutters scrabble all over and devour them, the resultant output sounds like country music from another dimension. Elsewhere, there are Tangerine Dream-like moments, notably on ‘Public League’, where multiple time signatures pulse and interweave to form a sonic latticework.

What renders Fantasy League so intriguing and compelling is the way in which Tuttle distorts the familiar: the sounds themselves are no challenge to compute or comprehend, but the way in which they’re juxtaposed and twisted together is uncanny, as if Fantasy League is a soundtrack from a parallel universe. And it sounds like a place well worth visiting.

 

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Gizeh Records -GZH66 – 20th May 2016

Christopher Nosnbor

On her first album since 2009, Christine Ott presents eight pieces which touch on a range of moods and emotional states. While the piano is the central instrument, the multi-instrumentalist calls on a host of additional players to incorporate strings, drums and harpsichord to create a suite of music that’s beautifully detailed. In some respects, Only Silence Remains resides in the neoclassical bracket, but equally, there are elements of post-rock and avant-garde here, and ultimately, it boils down to being music. Exquisite music, at that.

Indeed, what’s perhaps most striking about Only Silence Remains is just how subtle yet simultaneously deep it is. That most probably sounds like a contradiction, but in a time when so much music is very much geared toward instant gratification, the hook, the immediate grab, and even orchestral works are so often centred around a certain hook, whether or not associated with a major film – and more often than not, they are associated with a major film, earning endless airplay on Classic FM – Only Silence Remains is an album which requires time and contemplation.

Only Silence Remains is certainly of a standard that would sit comfortably on any film soundtrack, but in many ways, it’s above that kind of mass-market reduction of anything that’s vaguely classical in its form to ‘soundtrack’. Only Silence Remains is a magnificently singular work, and is also, in its own right, simply a magnificent work.

‘Raintrain’ moves from a sad, lone accordion to a woozy, strolling jazz-informed double bass via a delicately dropping piano. From mournful shanties to pastoral hues, Ott evokes life, in all of its colours, expressing ups and downs and myriad in-betweens.

The nine-minute ‘Tempête’ begins dark and haunting, before a chorus of, inhuman strings rise, shrieking against scribbling insect walls of sound, plunging into unseen depths down, down, into the bleak ‘Disaster’. Featuring a narration performed by Casey Brown in a cracked monotone, until finally, a lone piano drifts into silence.

Skipping lightly from twinkling wonderment to brooding drama, she demonstrates a musical intuition that’s truly exceptional. To describe or define the ways in which the music reaches in and touch the listener’s soul is nigh on impossible: it simply does.

 

 

Christine Ott

Only Silence Remains at Gizeh Records Online

Verlag System – VS011 – 29th April 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

As the title reasonably implies, this is a soundtrack to a bleak landscape. The expansive instrumentals may hint at the potential for travel and movement, but they’re pinned to insistent motoric rhythms. The effect is at once spacious and claustrophobic. The stark synths call to mind New Order’s Movement, but they’re balanced by warmer, fuzzy-edged analogue sounds, which creates a different kind of feel, less morosely bereft and more abstract than figurative in form. Building some dense thrumming throbs and deep grooves, it’s eminently danceable for the most part. That said, there are some deep, sombre pieces which are less percussive: instead, the rhythms emerge from the regular pulsations which form a nebulous sonic body.

Single ‘The Possibility of an Island’, here remixed by GMR and Montxo Burgess is a sedate and rather grand piece, with hints of Visage’s ‘Fade to Grey’. Built around a simple chord sequence and heartbeat bass rhythm, it carries intimations both of 80s vintage and a certain sense futurism. Taking its title (presumably) from Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 science-fiction novel set in a dystopian future bereft of emotion and human contact, it echoes with isolation.

‘Ziggurat’ creates a vast, rippling desert of sound that undulates and pulses toward the whooshing gusts of air that encircle ‘Saturn Radio Waves,’ with fragmentary sounds of human voices drifting in and out.

Thrumming, looping motifs evoke a robotic, dehumanised world of synthesis and desolation. And yet through it all shine bright shafts of light, brave and optimistic, like the rising of a sun over a newly discovered world.

Dystopia

Staubgold – 3rd June 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s an immense claim that heralds the arrival of Telebossa’s second album, namely that they’ve achieved what many artists have failed to achieve during an entire lifetime of work in creating their own musical language. It’s a claim which almost inevitably colours my first hearings of the album. However, putting this line of discussion aside momentarily, it’s clear that the duo, consisting of Chico Mello and Nicholas Bussmann have evolved beyond the Brazilian Bossa Nova tradition, earning the support of Van Dyke Parks in the process. Parks’ previous collaborations are wide-ranging, and include Randy Newman, Brian Wilson, Joanna Newsom and Skrillex. It’s in this context that it’s perhaps easier to get a handle on the kind of musical progression that Garagen Aurora represents, drawing as it does on a vast range of different inspirations, while retaining links to tradition, and Parks’ woodwind contributions on ‘Nao So’ add depth.

The album begins with some vaguely jazzy scrapes, but the tone and mood soon alters on ‘Basta’ as a lone piano forms a delicate backdrop to Chico Mello’s haunting vocals. Whereas cello and guitar formerly defined the Telebossa sound, vocals and (‘robot’) piano are now the core features. The tension builds as woodwind discreetly enters the field.

The rhythms which pulse and thrum on ‘Funeral De Um Lavrador’ provide an unusual and unexpectedly contemporary feel to a more traditional sounding composition.

The interludes – there are four short instrumental fragments in all, which punctuate the album to good effect – are radically different in style from one another and from the songs themselves.

The chamber-jazz instrumentation in the first half of ‘O Luar’ has a certain swing to it which again contrasts with Mello’s affecting voice, which takes the lead as the tracks drifts into a hazy, woozy, sedated state. ‘Chevrolet’ shimmers and shudders, rippling oscillations build a languid, shady atmosphere, and hints of Scott Walker permeate the production.

The words are taken from the texts of ‘metaphysical engineer’ Fernando Pessoa, and appear in the booklet that accompanies the disc in English translation, and are worth engaging with, as they do add further dimensions to the work.

If the notion of a new musical language seems to suggest something unfamiliar and inaccessible, then on the surface, Garagem Aurora appears not to fulfil this: the sounds are familiar, the forms are immediately recognisable not only as music, with melodic motifs, rhythmic order and a certain sense of dynamic flow all inbuilt, but as songs, with structure, form, melodic and rich in emotion, steeped in longing. But in its carefully-composed and intuitively balanced approach to the incorporation of so many disparate elements, Telebossa really do offer something new.

 

Telebossa

 

Telebossa – Garagen Aurora at Staubgold Online

Folk Wisdom / SObject – March 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

IDM is one of those terms that sits a little uncomfortably. Not as uncomfortably as EDM, which is something of a tautology (granted, salsa, swing, and Ceroc is dance music, but in contemporary music circles, dance music is electronic by nature), but even so. The ‘I’ implies a certain snobbery over other forms of dance music, as if they must collectively be UDM (Unintelligent Dance Music) or DMM (Dance Music for Morons). Even if that is the case, isn’t it for the listener to decide whether the music is ‘intelligent’ or ‘dumb’? No matter: following on from Air Effect with Christian Fennesz, instrumental electronic duo OZmotic return with Liquid Times, an eclectic blend of forms which, as the blurb notes, embraces ‘IDM, ambient, nuances from techno, noise and glitch music.’ Nuance is indeed the operative word here, and precisely the key to the album’s success.

Fennesz, who also serves as a member of the live lineup, again features on two of the tracks here. Elsewhere, the duo have enlisted German producer Senking to remix two of the album’s tracks, as well as Frank Breitschneider: both are affiliated with Raster Noton, which more or less speaks for itself, being the label at the forefront of all things experimental.

So, that’s the form and the roll-call. As for the actual music… There’s a lot going on, in that nuance-heavy world they inhabit, with slow drips and creeping ambience, hums and drones which expand, rumble and eddy amidst jittery electronic buzzes. Low rhythms build murkily and the pieces unfold and evolve subtly. Extraneous sings – hooting owls, insectoid scuttles, scratches and clicks, and light veils of static all contribute to providing a layered sound. At times expansive and cosmic, at others more microcosmic, there’s always something going on, not only on the surface, but beneath.

Rising tides of distortion rupture smooth soundscapes, creating waves of tension which gnaw at the nerves. ‘Rhyzome’ operates within different parameters, exploiting the tropes of classical music and film soundtrack, paired with drum ‘n’ bass, hefty beats and resonant bass sounds booming dramatically before tapering down to a hushed discomfort, while ‘Diaspora’ (one of the Fennesz tracks) introduces abstract guitar drones which evoke Sunn O))) and Earth as they simmer in a squall of needling synths and mutant saxophone, rising into something resembling a conventional progressive riff that’s finally swallowed by a black hole of noise. There are some dark, heavy passages here, which throb and pulse. Flickers of the metallic and robotic bleep and scrape against thick curtains of sound to forge a dark cybersonic sonic vista. The Kraftwerkian closer, the Breitschneider remix of ‘Sliced Reality (and a world apart from the original version which also appears here), evokes sparse, dystopian sensations.

All of the different facets of the sound are drawn together seamlessly, coalescing into something unique and engaging. And while you can’t actually dance to it, it is, without doubt, intelligent music.

 

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OZmotic Online

Music Information Centre Lithuania – MICL CD 089

Christopher Nosnibor

A retrospective collection is perhaps the most instructive place to begin when being introduced to the work of a late artist with a substantial body of work to their name. And so it was that Fonogramatika, 26-track collection culled from seven projects from between 1970 and 1981 featuring the work of Lithuanian composer Antanas Rekašius (1928-2003), as performed by the six-piece Apartment House ensemble came into my possession for review. My first contact with a composer clearly of some renown, but of whom I had absolutely no prior knowledge. A small amount of research revealed the composer is believed to have committed suicide, aged 75, after suffering poverty and depression.

There’s nothing depressive about the quirky music on offer here: indeed, there are humourous touches at every turn in Rekašius’ lively, unconventional and often quite audacious musical works.

Anton Lukoszevieze’s substantial liner notes (subtitled ‘Unsettling Scores and Unstable Tendencies’) are informative, and help to provide some kind of handle on Rekašius’ work, but needless to say it was extracting the disc from the incredibly heavy-duty and immaculately-presented four-way gatefold sleeve (really, the packaging super, and you really can feel the quality) and actually hearing the music therein which proved more instructive.

Rekašius’ style is often informed by jazz, but with a keen ear for atmosphere and experimentation, using the instrumentation of a chamber orchestra to create a range of effects. There’s a fluidity to the compositions, and a certain deftness which makes for rapid and often unexpected transitions from sparse, stark atmospherics to wild brass. The strings howl and mew, bend and bow, and Rekašius makes a trademark of combining dissonance and subtle melody. In fact, it’s the fact that there are strong, albeit brief, passages of melody, and a ken for swinging rhythms and off-kilter repetitions that render the works so beguiling: the listener can marvel at the scope and style of the compositions, the apparent randomness and the dynamics which are worked into the pieces, because yes, it is all very clever. But equally, it’s possible to simply enjoy the music.

Often, the music is jarring, but Rekašius invariably pulls back from the brink of spine-jangling awkwardness with cadent musical flourishes which are pure joy. Wild cacophonies, lumbering menace, twisted folk fiddle and notes that simply sound ‘wrong’ all contrive to keep the listener alert and entertained. ‘Atonic I’ (the individual tracks on each album are known by number only, with the exception of those from Phonogram) evokes the soundtracks of old, silent movies. If anything, Fonogramatika demonstrates just how able Rekašius was at turning his hand to different styles and making them work, while at the same time adding his own idiosyncratic stamps to them. The musicianship of the Apartment House players shouldn’t be underestimated, by any means: they play with nuance, intuition, and passion.

It’s now 13 years since Rekašius’ death. While his work has been performed in the United States, Italy, France, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Hungary, as well as Lithuania and Russia during his lifetime, his substantial output, which includes nine symphonies, 12 ballets, seven concertos and an opera-oratorio, Rekašius’ legacy seems rather limited in most territories. Perhaps the release of Fonogramatika will go some way toward addressing this, and earning Antanas Rekašius wider posthumous recognition.

 

Rekasius

 

Apartment House Online

Silo Rumor – May 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Given the ubiquity of music, perhaps now even more than at any time in human history – and music has been an integral part of life for as long as we know, in ever-evolving forms – it’s something that is generally taken for granted. Few consider the function, or functions, of music, and those who do are more often than not academics: the average individual is unlikely to devote a great deal of time to dissecting precisely why they listen to the music they do, or what it is that specifically draws them to music. That said, the more avant-garde and theory-based the art becomes, so more consideration is given to its purpose, and in some respects, this seems somewhat paradoxical given that much of the work in this sphere is not what the majority would necessarily consider ‘music’. And so we have Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s Tunnel Vision, a collection of pieces recorded in and around the tunnels of Porto. Part field recording collage, part abstract, part ambient soundwork, the album’s seven segments are not overtly musical, in that they do not feature any of the conventional features of ‘music’.

While the concept of ambient music is now well established, and the theories around it also representing well-trodden territory, it’s still worth considering the purpose of an album like this. What kind of experience does it offer the listener? Specifically, what is the point? After all, Tunnel Vision is, ostensibly, little more than drones, moans, hums and thuds with occasional snippets of voices. And if anything, it’s not really ambient: it’s far too tense and unsettling for all that.

‘I’m what some people call The Tunnel. Whereas most are drawn to what’s on the surface, in the skies, or in space, I’m drawn to what’s beneath the surface,” says the anonymous speaker on the tile track. He continues: “Space seems exotic, mysterious, because it’s distant, far away enough not to fear… the underworld is a void that sits right beneath our feet. It evokes fear…” And while Tunnel Vision is concerned broadly with the use of ‘resonant spaces’, the overall mood and texture is very much of the space below than the space above and around. The purpose of this music is to evoke the space which frightens us, which pricks those subconscious fears through the medium of sound. It’s about conjuring the unfamiliar and appealing to the senses in a way which unsettles them by means of the concordance of the rumbling of distant thunder which rolls beneath a shifting soundscape of mournful brass and unexpected clashes of sound.

The three tracks which occupy side two are noticeably longer, than the four on side one, and feel more formed, building on the atmospheres which emerge through the layering of long, low hums and drones, twittering flickers snippets of voices and thuds and clumps.

And so it is that one does not listen to Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s Tunnel Vision for its musicality, or for entertainment. Nor does one interact with music on this level for relaxation purposes, but instead to confront subconscious and primal fears. To marvel at the mind which could create such sonic challenges, and to feel a sense of discomfort that’s essential to moving out of one’s comfort zone and instead be shaken into feeling something that evokes a response beyond immediate comprehension.

 

Silo Rumor

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha Online