Category Archives: Avant Garde/Noise
Doron Sadja – Residuals (Shinkoyo)
Doron Sadja
Residuals
Shinkoyo
Link: Doron Sadja Official Site
When you first tune into Residuals, you have to check and re-check that you are actually playing something. Don’t fret, there is something there, much like the Hindu Creationist story: First comes a thought.
For the listener, the thought of you listening is as affective as you actually listening to something.
Then out of the darkness comes light.
For Doron Sadja, out of the silence comes sound. And that sound builds until something magnificent.
Residuals is built on four parts. If you look at the first part only, you get this escalation of sound. It grows, it expands, it gets louder. This swelling wave of sound finally engulfs you with feedback and power. Through patience, what Doron Sadja creates is intense. By Part II, you experience the sound for all of its resilience. The composition changes like a supernova with incredible sonic power. The sound may dissipate, yet listen closely because it’s important. Sadja builds an ambient soundscape that is absolutely incredible.
What I would have liked to have happened was for Part III was to continue this peak and valley process by progressing forward while exploring new territory. However, Part III becomes disjointed from what you have just heard, starting over as a new vision or perspective. After you get through the subtle shock of re-positioning your mind and your focus back on track, Sadja begins to let things flow again and continues his stance until Part IV builds to a climactic peak.
Where bands like Whitehouse experimented with noise or Lab Report with electronic manipulation, Doron Sadja experiments with the movement of sound, and to me what he does is like a tsunami that many sound experimentalists fail to successfully create.
Justinus Primitive – Children of the Law of One (I Had An Accident Records)
Justinus Primitive
Children of the Law of One
I Had An Accident Records
Link: Official Site
Dead Can Dance ruined me. Even though their music is not considered traditional in the sense of traditional music, they painted a grand illusion at making it so. Fixated on their style throughout the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, they set a precedent for experimental chant.
All of this warped around fringe Hip Hop artists like Disposable Heroes of Hiphopracy to Tha Akoholics. Pepper in strange noise meanderings from the Tzadik label or strange conceptualizations from bands like Zoviet France or something from the Peter Namlook school of electronic music.
Then Beck came along and made slacker Hip Hop cool. And that is where I think Justinus Primitive lies between. There are elements of all of these things that although funnel itself to a prospective outlook, the Chicago artist just doesn’t come across as effective.
On Children of the Law of One, it becomes commonplace to have a song that includes some strange visage of chant, then the next song exploring the elements of Hip Hop that is more story telling than impacting, alternating between the two.
It’s a strange concoction that never quite combines. It’s either one or the other, and each side creates dissonance between the two. As he pulls references from holy figures from around the world, and end of the world ritualistic drone stances, it’s hard to be convinced unlike say Burhan Ocal who reverberates is voice into your soul. Now that is frightening and exciting in a spiritual sense at the same time. I get neither with Justinus Primitive.
Although his Hip Hop stance is more confident in skill, I feel like this album does not push the limits of what it is capable of. Maybe he should take more clues to bands like Lichens or DRMWPN to fuel more drone and of his style that bleeds into the familiarity of Primitive’s Hip Hop style.
Barry Adamson – I Will Set You Free (Central Control)
MP3: Barry Adamson – “Destination (Mush Remix)”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:42 — 10.8MB)
Barry Adamson
I Will Set You Free
Central Control
Links:
Barry Adamson Official Site
Barry Adamson on Facebook
Post punk icon and true visionary by every sense of the word, Barry Adamson started his career with the early 80’s post punk synth pop band Magazine along with Howard Devoto of the Buzzcocks. Playing bass guitar on all Magazines’ albums and a brief appearance on one Buzzcock album, Barry went on to play on Devoto’s solo albums as well as Devoto’s next band Luxuria. He continued on to play on the New Wave band Visage’s first two albums Visage and The Anvil.
After Magazine broke up, Barry moved to record with Nick Cage and the Bad Seeds first four albums that include From Here to Eternity, The Firstborn is Dead, Kicking Against the Pricks and finally Your Funeral…My Trail. In the late 80’s Barry finally went solo releasing the EP The Man with the Golden Arm followed briefly by his first album Moss Side Story. Barry has also contributed works to soundtracks which most notably include Oliver Stones’ Natural Born Killers, David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and Danny Boyle’s The Beach.
I Will Set You Free marks this British crooner’s tenth studio release with an unmistakable cacophony of musical styles that makes every track unique and drastically different from any other track on the album. It is safe to say that this album has it all ranging from pop, jazz, punk, rock and R&B.
From the opening track “Get Your Mind Right” you realize with its hard-hitting rock rifts over a purely funk rhythm section that this album is a pure joy ride from beginning to end. Sounding as good if not better than the iconic Tom Jones, Barry can belt out a lyric like no other, and it is totally evident on this first song.
The next track “Black Holes In My Brain” is a very jazzy but soulful little ditty that is funky and upbeat with a hint of pop in its soul. It is highlighted by a brief Cab Callaway moment towards the end of the song which is truly genius and fitting. The next song “Turnaround” is a pop song that truly shows off the greatness in Barry’s voice.
Next up is the R & B piece entitled “The Power of Suggestion” which has a quirky sound that is very much like a Jack Johnson song. The following track and first single, “Destination,” is an adrenaline high power punk rock song that is a throwback to his early musical career.
The next track “The Trigger City Blues” is by far the most interesting piece on the album. Part spoken word, part electronic, but altogether telling a story of a crime of passion, including sound effects, gives the feeling of a frame story. Starting quiet and building to an abrupt end, the track leaves with a sort of unfinished easiness but leads nicely into the following song “Looking to Love Somebody.”
The last three tracks off the album include the rock inspired “The Sun and The Sea,” the deep pop soul song “If You Love Her” and the late 80’s synth pop flavor of “Stand In.” The latter song sounds a lot like a cross between Gary Neuman meets The Cars which rounds out this gem of an album.
Swilson – Demonology (Cheap Satanism Records)
Swilson
Demonology
Cheap Satanism Records
Links:
Listening to Swilson’s Demonology is like clicking on that video that you know you shouldn’t, but you do anyway. And half way through it all, you feel dirty and ashamed that you depraved your peepers on such lucid porn filth. You are not sure if you should celebrate the act like you would making it out alive in a survival horror film or you should hate yourself for stooping so low.
William Burrough’s famous philosophical tract implies that you have to be in hell in order to see heaven. This album is a modest example that demonstrates that.
“Polyester Shirt Polyester Pants” is no Limp Bizkit in terms of enunciated sing alongs, but it comes close to being engraved in your brain with no meaning as to what the hell it all means. Maybe it’s when he sings, “I’m in the lavatory wracking my brain” when any form of “what the hell’s” get overruled by a “what is this guy on?”
And with “Electric Aborigine,” the most fortified rocker thus far, turns into an “Ew, I just jammed to that” when the lyrics, “Take your clothes off little girl,” is sung.
To add a Twin Peaks element to this UHF of an album, the music as a whole has a coolness factor to it that you instantly bond to if you consider latching on to something like Jesus Lizard or Rapeman, just not auditory in your face like the brazenness of the ‘90s noise scene. Extract the dirtiness of the style and you have Swilson.
That being said, “Planet of Sex” sounds like an homage to The Fuggs. A lackluster attempt at french pop with “La Diosa Verde,” where sarcasm is not as effective as say the hippie communal campfire rant “Dealing With Death” and the simple folk-laced title track.
What just happened? One side of the album is not like the other. Where we were beaten over the head with blatant strangeness, the back half tries to justify it all with poetic similes and sincere societal rants. Well, about as sincere as Swilson will get on an album like this.
The Marshmallow Ghosts – The Marshmallow Ghosts (Graveface)
The Marshmallow Ghosts
The Marshmallow Ghosts
Graveface
Rating: 3 out of 5
Link: Graveface artist, The Marshmallow Ghosts
As a child, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House was a staple soundtrack in the house. Not just for Halloween, the spooky sounds and ghastly groans would echo throughout the rooms. “The Chinese Water Torture,” “A Collection Of Creaks,” “The Birds,” “Things In Space,” this Disney album delighted and frighted many kids in the ‘70s so much that it became an inspiration to many, including the Graveface collective. And luckily for us, this is third in what is now an October tradition for the label.
The Marshmallow Ghosts is a self-titled release in coordination to a feature film they call Corpse Reviver No. 2. The album spins like the Chilling, Thrilling Sounds, even with “Shrieks” paying homage to the immense ghastly ghoul that howls in the dead of the night (if you know of this album, you would be able to decipher exactly which sound effect that is from my description).
The self-titled album features the best in collaborative efforts including Graveface’s Black Moth Super Rainbow, Lady Lazarus, Casket Girls, Hospital Ships, and Dreamend. As the album unfolds, you hear distinctions by the bands, but a cohesive trend of strange noises and ethereal soundscapes work together to conjoin it all into a strange aura of horror movie soundtrack freak-outs and abysmal haunting. What really pops out in the album is the estranged dissonant pop the label is known for as we transcend from creepy background music to the forefront and its ‘60s wig-out on “The Hearse Song.” It’s as if Herschell Gordon Lewis made ‘60s pop with David Lynch, while “The Attic” sounds more like Shoegaze loveliness converted by ‘70s existential realities than simple horror movie fodder.
“Trick” may be striped with bouts of spookiness, but “All Skin And Bone” is more ethereal in a Love and Rockets breathy montage. It does not bode well for the horror element of the album, but songs like this are nonetheless a good thing. By adding in these pieces, or avant-garde ambient noise collages like “Shall I be ‘anna’ or ‘anna’ be I?,” you can enjoy it beyond the witching hour.
The Marshmallow Ghosts present Corpse Reviver No. 2 Trailer from Graveface Records on Vimeo.
