Posts Tagged ‘instrumental’

Listen: ‘Ritual Control’ by sleepmakeswaves

Posted: 13 March 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Australian instrumental post-rockers sleepmakeswaves have released another single from their forthcoming album "It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It" following the addition of two more US shows to their growing world tour dates.  The band took to social media to tell fans about the new single: 

"’Ritual Control’ was first demoed as ‘Dr. Riff Has Arrived’. I still wonder whether we were mistaken to have not kept the old title.  Otto originally presented the song skeleton to us with the concern that maybe the riffs were "too dumb". In fact, Tim and I responded, they are the *perfect quantity* of dumb. Sure, these riffs aren’t going to earn a PhD. But they will hold down a full-time job, get the kids to school on time and read the occasional piece of challenging non-fiction on weekends. Courageous and heartfelt conversations like this are the core of what effective post-rock songwriting is all about.  New album out next month!"  -Alex

Listen to ‘Ritual Control’ here:

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The new album It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It, released on 12th April, was produced by the band themselves, at Golden Retriever Studios in Sydney, Australia. Written during the pandemic, it was originally recorded during 2022 just before the band embarked on a 3 month tour for their previous EP trilogy ‘these are not your dreams.’ Further recording was completed in 2023, including string arrangements by Simeon Bartholomew (SEIMS). The record was then mixed by Andrei Eremin (Closure in Moscow, Tash Sultana, G Flip, Luca Brasi) in Philadelphia USA and mastered by Jeff Lipton and Maria Rice at Peerless Mastering in Boston USA.

The first single ‘Super Realm Park’, prefiguring the record as a whole, is a majestic return to the classic hallmarks of the band’s melodic post-rock sound, whilst introducing new production and arrangement elements. Fans of the band’s heavy bombastic aggression will resonate with tracks such as ‘All Hail Skull’ and ‘Ritual Control.’ They also shine with invigorated melodic and emotive performances and arrangements on tracks like ‘Black Paradise’ and ‘Terror Future.’ Retaining their signature approach to heavy dynamics and crescendos the band are still at their unmatched peak when they turn their hand to cataclysmic emotional epics such as the title track and the album closer ‘This Close Forever.’

The band released a statement to fans, saying: 

"The mysterious phase of nothingness, crucial to the smw creative process, is over: our new album is finally done. Thank you so much to all our listeners for your patience. It has been a slow but intense labor of love and we are proud of the songs on this record, and grateful for the many people who helped bring it to life. Hope to see you on the road in 2024, more show announcements to come, and we truly hope the new music we’re about to release resonates with you in the same way it does with us.   Love smw”

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Elizabeth Joan Kelly – LF17/Edinburgh

Posted: 25 February 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Mortality Tables are blasting out the second series of LIFEFILES releases at quite a pace, and LF17 is the seventh release in the season.

Describing LIFEFILES as ‘creative exchanges’; the premise is simple: ‘Recordings of places, people, objects, moments in time, environments and quotidian events are shared with a range of artists working with sound. Those artists are then free to respond to the recordings in any way they like, either through manipulation or composition.’

LF17/Edinburgh is Elizabeth Joan Kelly’s response to a set of recordings made in Edinburgh in August of 2021 by Mat Smith, namely Emeka Ogboh ‘Song Of The Union’ installation, Calton Hill (24.08.2021), Princes Street Gardens (24.08.2021), and Car on Calton Road cobblestones (25.08.2021).

The titles are plain, factual, locational, without any sense of the temporal or any indication of connotation, association, or resonance. And this is fitting, since the three compositions – ‘Calton Hill’, ‘Princes Street Gardens’, and ‘Calton Road Cobblestones’ are gentle, electroambient works which speak little of either the time or the place. These pieces are very much responses to the recordings themselves, rather than their location. Based in New Orleans, and purveyor of ‘post-apocalyptic junkyard drone pop’, Kelly has brought her own perspective to the source materials. Of course, this is precisely the spirit of the project – to see how each artist interacts with the material to forge something new, and the fact that each artist will have a completely different approach is what makes this so interesting. Because when given material and parameters, however much freedom an artist has, those parameters will also have a bearing on the output alongside the variables of the input itself and the artist’s methodologies.

In Elizabeth Joan Kelly’s hands, the sounds of a vibrant city are rendered, smoothed, with cross-hatching, delicate shading, some light smudging, a soft blending, by which everything clamorous is faded out to leave a slow hazing. There is, ultimately, no sense of Edinburgh itself here, and we find ourselves adrift, drifting on slow tides of sound with no connection to time or space. It’s not an unpleasant experience, by any means.

LF17/Edinburgh couldn’t be further removed stylistically from Ergo Phizmiz’s release, The Tin Drummer Has Collapsed, which came out only the week before. Where there was collaging, there is blending, mixing, reshaping, and where there was noise, there is calm. Neither release is in any way ‘better’ than the other – just different. And these differences are to be embraced.

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ZAHN – Adria

Posted: 19 November 2023 in Albums
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Crazysane Records – 24th Nov 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The press release describes Zahn as a ‘German post–modern noise rock ensemble’, while their bandcamp bio offers ‘A bold escape from your daily life through technicolor transmissions of post–rock, krautrock, dark jazz, noise–rock, post–punk and electronic music. Influenced by the likes of TRANS AM, THE JESUS LIZARD, METZ, THE MELVINS and TORTOISE’, adding that ‘Adria is a compelling soundtrack to a 1980’s anti–utopian road movie!’

As a prospect, it’s head-spinning, sounding like an everything-all-at-once hybrid, and the actuality isn’t much different. There are plenty of driving grooves, largely propelled by solid bass and insistent drumming, but there are also some angular riffs and big splashes of noise.

The first track, ‘Zebra,’ boasts a bulbous bass with some big low-end and some easy, noodly synths which wibble and wander agreeably and mellifluously… and then towards the end it builds and distorts and things get altogether more twisted and less pleasant. And this is a feature characteristic of the compositions on show here. They don’t mash everything into every second simultaneously, and there’s none of that jazz / Beefheart kind of stuff that sounds like each band member is playing a different tune in a different key and time signature all at the same time. There are times where that kind of avant-gardism most definitely has its place, and works, but this isn’t what Zahn are doing here. In keeping with the road movie concept, the pieces are constructed around transition.

The ten-minute ‘Schmuck’ is a magnificent example of their ability to do mellow, with clean sounds and even a tinge of a country twang, it swings along breezily and evokes sunshine and expansive vistas. Then, near the seven-minute mark, the bass steps up to a crunching grind and things get a whole lot noisier, from where it builds into a big, driven riff which crackles with energy. ‘Yuccatan 3E’ is another colossus of a cut, running to almost nine and a half minutes and manages to take it time in pushing outwards and working a single passage for a fair while, but equally packs in at least three or four songs’ worth of ideas.

The changes feel organic, and sometimes emerge gradually, and at others there will be a sudden and unexpected swerve, and there’s so much happening that the absence of vocals barely registers.

Because the mood, tone, and tempo differs so radically between songs – and between sections – Adria very much does feel like a journey, through space and time. ‘Apricot’ is a sparse synth work with crispy vintage drum machine snare cutting through quavering analogue synth sounds – then, without changing the instrumentation or the simple repetitive motif, it goes massive. A post-rock Depeche Mode chronically undersells it, but it’s as close as I can get, at least off the top of my head. The final minute is an extravagant climax, and truly magnificent.

The majority of the album’s eleven tracks run past five minutes, with the majority sitting more around the seven-minute mark, but the eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Faser’ is the album’s megalithic centrepiece. It blasts hard with a fuzzy, scuzzy repetitive riff cycle with stoner rock tendencies, and it’s dynamic and exhilarating. Dropping down to bubbling synths in the breakdown around six minutes in, the threat of a re-emergence of the heavy lingers suspensefully. When it does land, it does so with a vengeance, before transitioning once more into something altogether different again, skittering its way into Krautrock territory.

The power blast of ‘Tabak’ hits square between the eyes and feels unexpected however expected it actually is. These guys are absolute masters of the unpredictable and varied structure, and conjure some highly evocative and atmospheric passages, and while the playing is technical, it’s not technical for its own sake: there’s nothing showy or extravagant, and the focus is very much on the compositions, the structures, and the impact. ‘Amaranth’ piledrives a full-on doom riff, slogging away at it for what feel like an eternity. It’s a heavy trudge, and really hits the spot – again, when you least expect it.

Adria straddles many, many genres, and does so in a way that’s incredibly imaginative. The key to its success is its execution, which balances precision with passion.

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Listen: ‘Schmuck’ by ZAHN

Posted: 2 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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German post–modern noise rock ensemble ZAHN will release their second full–length album Adria on 24th November. Adria offers a bold escape from your daily life through technicolor transmissions of post–rock, krautrock, dark jazz, noise–rock, post–punk and electronic music. Influenced by the likes of TRANS AM, THE JESUS LIZARD, METZ, THE MELVINS and TORTOISE. Adria is a compelling soundtrack to a 1980’s anti–utopian road movie!

Adria was mixed and mastered by Magnus Lindberg (RUSSIAN CIRCLES, CULT OF LUNA) at his Stockholm studio. The cover artwork, based around photographs by Lupus Lindemann(KADAVAR), was designed by Fabian Bremer (RADARE, AUA).

The album is a testament to the incredible power of this trio and its ability to effortlessly ensnare your attention for the duration of a ten minute–song of purely instrumental music. Over the course of the album’s 11 tracks ZAHN emerge as a form of PINK FLOYD of noise rock, relentlessly pushing the envelope on what’s already accomplished while remaining tasteful and tasty at every corner.

Listen to ‘Schmuck’ here:

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Listen: ‘Etreintes’ by Christine Ott

Posted: 22 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Two years after Time to Die, French composer Christine Ott returns to Gizeh Records with her fifth album, Éclats (Piano Works), a collection of twelve pieces for solo piano, twelve impressionistic miniatures, instrumental and cinematic fractals celebrating the beauty of life.

‘Étreintes’ is available on all streaming platfroms now and Éclats (Piano Works) is out November 3rd.

Listen to ‘Étreintes’ here:

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Justin Walter – Destroyer

Posted: 13 October 2023 in Albums
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Kranky – 13th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

One thing I’ve learned as I’ve grown older (apart from the fact you never grow younger, despite the fact that I was amused to recently stumble upon the ‘people also ask’ Google question prompt ‘Is Benjamin Button a true story?’), is that a diversified appreciation of music is particularly useful as you come to recognise the diversified nuances of mood. Adherents to a single genre: how do they deal? How do they find the right soundtrack?

I’m not previously familiar with the music of Justin Walter, but the accompanying notes inform me that it ‘veers between nebulous and numinous, coaxed from the translucent tonalities of his signature instrument, the EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument)’ and that ‘Destroyer, his latest, and third for Kranky, marks his most multifaceted work yet. Inspired by minimalistic urges (evading grandiosity, condensing scope, embracing spatial restraint) tempered with the drama of triptychs (becoming, destruction, aftermath), the album’s 11 tracks thread.’

If the album’s title implies aggression and obliteration, it’s overtly organic analogue synth vibes are quite the opposite. That isn’t to say it’s all shades of mellowness, because Walter weaves in extraneous noise and all sorts and messes with the dials to render soft tones bent and broken, twisted and warped to create a less than silky-smooth air of tranquillity at times. But at others, there are some simply magnificent passages where you feel calm and at ease. The title track is exemplary: it’s an ambient work at heart, soft, supple, gentle, but with serrated edges and spiny burrs that occasionally break through the surface.

Walter obviously has a clear sense of flow. The eleven pieces on Destroyer flow seamlessly from one to the next, and as a consequence, Destroyer feels like an album, despite the contrasts which present themselves across the work. The flow begins with an instant attention-grab in the wibbly shape of ‘For Us’, which blasts in with a blaring drone over which phasey noodles tangle over in ever-increasing layers with adrenalizing effect. While the majority of the album is rather softer, a defining feature of the composition is the exploration of interplay between tones and timbres and the notes their timings gradually shift to create the subtlest of tensions. This is particularly noticeable duribg the second half of the album, which feels slower, softer, and more soporific than the first half. Close your eyes, exhale slowly, and you really start to absorb Destroyer. And you have every reason to do that.

‘Cliff the Cloudcatcher’ is a gentle, bubbling synth piece, while the eight-minute ‘Inner Voices’ is a mellifluous movement in many directions simultaneously, which pulls together to take form, becoming graceful, and in places the sounds mimic woodwind, but sculpted into something otherly… backwards, perhaps, and the sounds bend and push and pull – gently, but they do – before a darker turn around two minutes in brings shade, clouds thickening and becoming denser.

Destroyer distinguishes itself from so many other ambient-orientated works by virtue of its dynamics. There are some thick, tones and dense blankets of noise which present themselves, often emerging from cloud-like drifts of near-nothing. But these moments of rising tension resolve to easy washes and ripples of sound, to cloud-like softness.

And this is the album’s real accomplishment, in that is balances many shades, many tones, many textures. Those darker passages serve to remind that life isn’t all easy or plain sailing, and that plans can go wrong. You can set the controls for plain sailing, but there will always be disturbance, disruption. Whatever you plan or expect, there will always be deviation.

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Watch: ‘ZEHN’ by ZAHN

Posted: 5 October 2023 in Reviews
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German post–modern ensemble ZAHN have today shared a lyric video for instrumental track ‘ZEHN’. Yes, you read that right.

“The video to our new song ‘ZEHN’ is a poem for instrumental music enthusiasts. A silent movie. A song for the deaf. Nina Walser (Friends Of Gas) is singing you a ditty but you won’t be able to hear it. Just read along and listen and it all will make perfect sense.” – ZAHN

It’s a proper headfuck, and proper good too, and you can watch it here:

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Grails – The Burden of Hope (reissue)

Posted: 25 September 2023 in Albums
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Neurot Recordings – 29th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m finding myself on something of a Neurot trip this week, following my fervent frothing over the mighty new album by Great Falls. As if to prove that the label has been putting out outstanding records for a very long time (and with unstinting singularity, presenting a broad stylistic range, too: this is anything but heavy), twenty years on from its original release, Grails’ debut is getting a reissue. While the nice coloured vinyl pressings (in ‘Coke bottle clear’ and ‘beer’ hues) aren’t necessarily for everyone, the release does afford a timely opportunity to reflect on the debut release of a band who have gone on to forge a significant and varied career, with their latest album – number eight – being released next month.

Steve Von Till’s comments about hearing the demo for the album, on which the offer of’ the release was made, reminds us of the musical landscape of the time in 2002: ‘Most instrumental music at the time was trying to emulate Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Mogwai, but this was different. This seemed to have elements from more diverse sources that I loved such as Dirty Three, Comus, Richard Thompson, and Neil Young, not to mention, who in hell would dare to cover Sun City Girls?’

There was a lot of instrumental post rock around, and while there was a wealth of great bands around, locally as well as nationally and internationally, it’s fair to say that a large proportion of it was much of a muchness, with myriad explorations of chiming guitars and slow-building crescendos.

The prominence of acoustic guitars, softly picked and strummed, and rather unconventional use of violin creates an unusual dynamic on these compositions, which tend to be sparse in arrangement and with considerable space between both the instruments and the individual notes, and the crescendos are few and far between – the first doesn’t arrive until over halfway through the third track, the slow, meandering ‘The Deed’, when the swell of guitar pushes upward through yawning strings and finally the full drum kit crashes in. But the impact is less from whacking on the gain on the instruments, but the musicians utilising the dynamics of playing, and the simple equation that playing harder is louder. Against the prevailing tide of pedal boards as big as drum risers packed with effects, this stands out as being not only very different, but bold, the emphasis on the tones and timbres of the instruments in unadulterated form, the sounds the result of technique.

The soft piano of ‘In the Beginning’, when paired with picked guitar has an almost pastoral feel; the heavy smack of a drum feels incongruous before a soft yet almost clumsy waltz emerges briefly, and structurally, the pieces seem to belong more to jazz than anything else, although ‘Space Prophet Dogon’ (the Sun City Girls cover) draws together elements of Celtic-influenced folk and psychedelia, and goes for a long toe-tapping groove over a crescendo by way of an extended climax. It takes a certain courage to fly in the face of fashion in such an obtuse fashion, as well as to play in such an intimate way that you can hear the sweep of a finger across a fret, where natural reverberations become as integral to the sound as the notes themselves. This is nowhere more apparent than on the hyperpsarce intro of ‘Broken Ballad’, a sedate almost country-tinged tune and one of the album’s more conventionally-shaped pieces. The slowly-unfurling ‘White Flag’ shares a certain common ground with later releases by Earth: slow, spacious, revolving around a simple, picked guitar motif, but it does swing into an exhilarating full band finale that’s different again.

Closer ‘Canyon Hymn,’ presumably a reference to Laurel Canyon, the name of the and when they recorded the demos which would become The Burden of Hope, is by no means an anthem or a theme, but encapsulates all aspects of the album’s range within a soothing five minutes. If the title, The Burden of Hope, implies a certain weight of responsibility, the music it contains sees that hope take wings. Twenty years on, The Burden of Hope sounds uplifting, and still fresh.

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David Colohan – Sargasso Sky

Posted: 29 August 2023 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 28th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The Sargasso Sea is a unique place on earth: situated within the Atlantic ocean, it is the only sea without a land boundary – a sea within an ocean, in other words – its borders defined by sea currents. Its name is derived from to the vast ‘sea’ of free-floating seaweed called Sargassum which occupies the space, and it’s an ecosystem like no other, the aquatic equivalent of the Amazon. And yet its existence appears to be considerably less well-known, despite the success of Jean Rhys’ 1966 novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which has been adapted for film, stage, TV, and radio and has been lauded as a pivotal work of postcolonial feminism. And it’s this book which I think of when I hear the word ‘sargasso’ – although clearly, it has absolutely no bearing on this album. What even is a sargasso sky?

The liner notes paint the scene, where ‘A sargasso sky shimmers above a twilit American shoreline, slipping in & out of time. Via a way slowed down take on jazz fusion, limpid pools catch its reflection, ebbing & flowing with the soon to come stars… The cover images taken at Marblehead, Massachusetts depict something of the aura of an area that H.P. Lovecraft considered life-changing. Step into the sea & sky….’

There are many layers, then, to this release, which extend far beyond the surface of the music itself. But when it comes to the music, Colohan presents ten pieces, all comparatively concise (only four extend beyond the five-minute mark, and none reach beyond eight), and the form is ambient yet structured, with rippling washes of synth gliding over the mellow mists of sound which float invisibly through the air. Despite its title casting its eye above the horizon to the sky, parts of this album is given to a preoccupation with the water, still, as exemplified by titles such as ‘Sacred Teeming Waters’ and ‘Longshore Drift’.

Whereas much ambient music is formless, abstract, the instrumentation vague, on Sargasso Sky, David Colohan offers musical works with structure, and with the implementation of identifiable instruments.

‘Longshore Drift’ is led by sparse piano, backed by a sliding, bulbous synth bass that’s extremely eighties in sound, and elsewhere on the album, long resonant voices dominate, from flute to organ. These are clearly synth voices, sounds conjured digitally in response to creative needs but also evolving technology facilitating new music. There are some bold drones which surge and swash on ‘Anoint’, and ‘Summers Old as Stars’ brings late 70s and early 80s synth stylings to the fore, with hints of Tubular Bells and Vangelis, and the myriad music of this era which remained anonymous. But for all that, Sargasso Sky is subtle and it’s still not overtly electro for the most part, and it’s not of the prog persuasion either. But what is it? Certainly, there are parts which do very much pursue progressive forms, and Sargasso Sky is very much an exploratory work: spacious, undefined by limits of composition or instrumentation.

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Hellas – If We Had Met Earlier Things Might Have Turned Out Differently

Posted: 22 August 2023 in Albums
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nynode intermedia – 7th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, a title just captures the imagination. And in some respects, art – be it a book, an album, or a movie, will take one unawares in the same way as a new person. Sometimes, it’s something unexpected at precisely the right time, discovering something you don’t even know you need until it’s there. To select a quote from what may appear to be an unlikely source, ‘just when you least expect it, just what you least expect’, sang The Pet Shop Boys on ‘Love Comes Quickly’. It’s a great line because it so succinctly summarises the unpredictable nature of life, and this wordy title tripped a similar trigger, which, I accept is uniquely personal…. But then, in the personal lies the universal. It must be so true for many that we’ve met the right person, but at the wrong time, for whatever reason.

And so it is that I’m spiralling on a chute of reflection, a wall of mirrors inset with faded and distorted memories of people I’ve met and lost along the way as I begin to ease myself into what ultimately proves to be a remarkably diverse album, with deft compositions flitting between retro electronica, sparse techno, trance and shoegazy electrombience – and a lot more besides. Other times, mood-dependent, I may find the perceived lack of identity frustrating, the gentle mellifluousness without any obvious focus nigglesome, but right here, right now, I’m ready to experience transportation. And having emerged from a journey for the artists, If We Had Met Earlier Things Might Have Turned Out Differently feels like a suitable soundtrack.

As the accompanying notes recount, ‘Hours of recorded improvisations were arranged afterwards to slowly shape what would be the new sound of the duo. After three years of experimenting and writing various compositions the album slowly began to unravel itself and took its final form. Eleven unique pieces — deep explorations of sound — that all have their own story to tell are assembled in this collection of snapshots from the past years.’

In some ways, then, If We Had Met Earlier Things Might Have Turned Out Differently is more of a work of sculpture than composition, moulding and shaping the recordings into pieces with form and structure. Rising from a mist of gentle ambience, ‘Arbour’ soars, but is pinned down by a solid martial drum and ambulant, bulbous bass.

Listening to the ominous discordant experimentalism of ‘X’, I reflect on the fact that there was a time I’d have found this boring, just as I’d have cringed at anything remotely jazz-flavoured and sneered at anything overtly dance, before the clattering mess of ‘Techno | Hovestaden’ arrives, chanking and chiming over some ponderous keys, rippling piano, and evolving drones. In the background, as the piano plays mellow chords, there’s a banging tune giving it large way off in the distance, and it’s like hearing a neighbour’s music through your own. It’s irritating, but it’s real: as William Burroughs wrote, ‘life is a cut up’.

‘Ghost’ is suitably eerie, and ‘Shinjuku’ goes all-out tweaking electro, straddling late 90s dance and new age which just shouldn’t work and I should detest, but having lived through this and experienced a somewhat fractious relationship with tunes like ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘Sadeness Part 1’, I’m rather more at peace with the incorporation of diverse elements to conjure sensations of spaciousness and spirituality, as long as they don’t involve pan pipes. Gotta have limits, y’know. This doesn’t actually sound like these musical forebears, but it feels as if there’s a certain context and progression at play here. The present only exists because of the past.

We’re plunged back into ominous drone territory with ‘Odessa’, and its warping grind which quavers up and down is most unsettling, building to a droning roar that’s hard not to equate to missiles and jets as the oppressive buzz grows louder.

The looming brass and slow, deliberate percussion of the spacious ‘Noon’, as it trickles slowly toward the album’s soft ending, with clattering percussion slowly marking a long wind-down before ‘Tide’ smoothy washes everything away to a smooth, blank state once more.

So what does this say? It says Hellas have conjured a majestic work from – well, who knows what source material? How much of this album came to fruition in the wake of its recording? And how much does it matter? It’s not as it’s an AI work, contentiously bypassing human input: pianist Peter Sabroe and drummer Jeppe Høi Justesen, with the assistance of producer Brian Batz have created something with personality, intricacy, depth. If I’d have heard it ten years ago, I’d have hated it: now… it reaches me. It’s an accomplished work, subtly complex and possessing significant depth. It’s amazing how things can turn out.

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