AMG review round-up, volume XV: sleepytronix

well, speaking of nosaj thing, that review i linked to is nearly nine months old at this point, and i have fallen way behind in my amg review rounding-up. no wonder, looks like i only did five last calendar year. my project for the month of february is to write a record-review-a-day (falling behind there too: only 15 for the first 24 days, though it's actually 27 if you count all publish-able pieces of writing – bios and cp previews – so that's not too shabby – or alternately it's only 18 days if you don't count the weekends, fewer for snow days and holidays...) but i thought as a corollary to that i could get up-to-date on these round-ups. so, here's one.

in something like ascending order of mellowness:

Nosaj Thing: bio and Drift review

California has long been a prime breeding ground for instrumental hip-hop, from DJ Shadow's pioneering work in the form through Madlib's tireless explorations and iterations, and that's never been more true than in the late 2000s, as a cresting wave of interest in the work of the late J Dilla helped to spark something of a stylistic resurgence, while a handful of Los Angeles-based producers coalesced into a recognizable local scene centered around the venue Low End Theory. That scene's first prominent breakout star was Steve Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, who earned widespread notice with his 2008 Warp debut Los Angeles, but 24-year-old Jason Chung (Nosaj Thing) followed shortly thereafter, dropping his aptly named LP, Drift, the subsequent spring. As with FlyLo's work, Nosaj pushes well beyond the customary bounds of hip-hop into glitchy IDM, ambient, and even dubstep territory, foregrounding highly abstract electronic textures more reminiscent of artists like Prefuse 73, Aphex Twin, and Burial than the beatmakers referenced above, with hip-hop's rhythmic drive never entirely absent but often reduced to a spare, skeletal framework. But despite some clear stylistic parallels, Drift is a notably more austere, measured work that feels classically restrained in comparison to the fragmentary, static-soaked clutter of Los Angeles. With a distinctive sonic palette of muted squelchy synths, wordless vocals, and largely inorganic-sounding percussion, the album is curiously playful in spite of its somber, almost funereal tone, as it floats from the airy twinkles and reverberant handclaps of the opening "Quest" to the denser, menacingly murky electro-funk of "Coat of Arms" and the sinuous "1685/Bach." The album's latter half takes on an unexpectedly spiritual cast, partially due to Nosaj's use of decidedly churchy, organ-like textures. Though brooding, minor-key tonality and middle-range tempos remain dominant nearly throughout, the brief, nearly beatless "2222" and hazily serene "Us" introduce a welcome note of warmth and reassurance, before the murmurs and heartbeats of "Voices" usher in "Lords"' climactic, doom-laden choral fantasia. It's quite a stunning sequence, and evidence of the breadth of Nosaj Thing's compositional prowess, which extends from a fine ear for minute detail to a rare sense of album-length sweep.

Hess is More: bio and Hits review

An impish musical humorist -- though by no means a novelty artist -- Mikkel Hess makes his U.S. bow with this career retrospective, drawn from his three albums and a couple of singles, whose very title, though seemingly straightforward, comes off as somewhat smirking: he may have reached number 11 in his native Denmark with the perky instrumental "Ssshhhh," but he's still hardly anyone's idea of a hitmaker. The most striking and memorable thing here is probably the occasionally anthologized "Yes Boss," a provocative curiosity that manages to be at once droll, seductive, and unsettling: over a sultry, percolating electronic groove, punctuated with torpid, dub-inflected brass outbursts, a deadpan Hess conducts an enigmatic but sordid-seeming "job interview" with vocalist Bang Chau, who responds in lush and suggestively breathy harmonies. It's a fantastic and fascinating track, equally effective as a work of conceptual comedy and an alluring piece of music. Though it takes an entirely different approach, the goofy, hooky electro-pop jingle "The Magic Invention from the Divine Business Research Center" similarly satisfies on multiple levels. Most of the collection's other vocally based inclusions fall somewhat short of these highlights, either because their humor is a bit too one-note (as on the cabaret-style waltz "In the Fridge," which grows a bit stale despite a delightfully hammy R&B turn from the incomparable Dean Bowman) or simply because the music overshadows the lyrical content. But Hess' considerable compositional and production abilities are on display throughout, from the jokey, meandering house pastiche "Would Would You Like to Disco" to the beguiling "Piano Waltz" (not actually a waltz, but rather an oddly fluid conglomeration of a haunting, lopsided piano figure with a reggae-ish bass groove, assorted percussion fragments, and other unexpected sounds). Oddly enough, the instrumental and near-instrumental selections tend to be just as humorous, and certainly just as quirky, as the tracks with lyrics, employing a skewed, lightheartedly kitschy sensibility (making prominent use of whistling, for instance) that calls to mind the work of Arling & Cameron and child-minded musical cartoonists like Plone, Komeda, isan, and Norway's Toy. That said, Hess is very much a distinct individual, and Hits offers a highly enjoyable glimpse into his idiosyncratic world.

Meanderthals: bio and Desire Lines review

Desire lines are undesignated paths created by foot-traffic erosion simply because they're where people want to go. Desire Lines walks -- strolls, ambles, struts (occasionally), and yes, meanders -- down well-trodden and welcoming musical trailways, toward no destination in particular, just for the simple pleasures of the journey. The routes are familiar and instinctually inviting, even if the signage is vague and imprecise: dub, psychedelic, downtempo, ambient, post-rock, folk, with occasional spur trails pointed toward the Tropics, or the discotheque, or into outer space. (Because Meanderthals are a triumvirate of dance producers, the road map reads "electronica," even if most of the sounds come from instruments being played in a room -- an Oslo studio to be specific -- during a handful of loosely convened live recording sessions.) The clearest, newest-looking signpost is marked "Balearic Disco," and indeed, mirrored shards of diasporic disco fallout are littered liberally along the way, though rarely are they spiky enough to spur feet into action. Mostly we glide by, basking in the sun-drenched acoustic strums and steel-pan patters of "Kunst or Ars," wallowing in the murky bass and intoxicating haze of "1-800-288-Slam," lingering amid the languid pulse and pianistic ruminations of "Bugges of Room." Fussless and fluid, loose but never lazy, Desire Lines is another fine feather in the caps of Rune Lindbaek and Idjut Boys, who now take their place alongside fellow travelers Studio, Hatchback, and Quiet Village as creators of some of the finest, hippest, and coolest chillout music of the late 2000s.

Nite Jewel: bio and Good Evening review

The home recording project of an L.A.-based multimedia artist/philosophy student who wields an eight-track cassette recorder and cites freestyle divas Lisa Lisa and Debbie Deb as among her primary influences, Nite Jewel's effectively self-released debut album holds the potential to be many things, few of them particularly promising: dryly intellectual, artily indulgent, self-consciously ironic, vapidly modish, unlistenably amateurish. Indeed, it can be a bit off-puttingly stuffy, with an occasionally discernible whiff of pretension that may incline some more critical-minded and discriminating listeners to dismiss it out of hand, and its production values are undeniably negligible, but taken on its own terms Good Evening is a good deal more singular, intriguing, and difficult to characterize than one might initially suspect. A perplexing conflation of rudimentary electronic dance-pop with wobbly lo-fi experimentalism, it lacks the energy and melodic distinctiveness to be effective as either pop or dance, but it works quite nicely as mood music, maintaining a similarly beguiling, woozy atmosphere across its ten tracks. Ramona Gonzalez's analog synthesizers and high, swooning vocals, swathed in tape hiss and bleary-eyed reverb, offer a warmth and tenderness that are largely absent from her darker, moodier cohorts in the Italians Do It Better camp, and though she may have all the right '80s signifiers in place to evoke that label's achingly stylish post-disco mode, there's something guilelessly genuine and personable about her approach, knowing as it may be. (The inimitable, idiosyncratic Arthur Russell has been tossed around as a reference point, and while she can't measure up to his uncanny appeal, it's a surprisingly relevant comparison in terms of both sonics and overall effect.) Good Evening's weakest point, aside from the non-issue of its non-danceability, is its songs: as an undifferentiated half-hour mass they're perfectly fine, but apart from the meekly melodic "Artificial Intelligence " and a wormy synth line or two on "What Did He Say," nary a hook pokes out from the haze, and not simply because Gonzalez keeps her vocals smothered and distant. So it's a welcome change of pace when the album concludes with a cover of Roxy Music's "Lover," which might qualify as the album's best track simply by dint of having a perceptible tune and structure.

Infantjoy: With review

Infantjoy's With is part appendix, part follow-up to the duo's well-praised debut, Where the Night Goes, featuring several remixes of that album's tracks (variably referred to as "revisions," "reflections," and "adjustments") and several new original pieces that were apparently inspired by these reworked versions. In any case, it's a companion piece that also stands well enough on its own, a fluid whole ably inhabiting an elegant, cinematically ambient space, with only one truly jarring disruption. The new tracks are largely effective mood pieces, taking up the first album's Erik Satie fixation in their gently musing piano lines but introducing a darker undercurrent of anxiety and urgency in their rhythms and intermittent electronic bleeps. The subtle but pervasive eeriness fits into the album's vague preoccupation with ghosts and spirits, as evidenced by Paul Morley's spoken ruminations on the supernatural in "A Haunted Space" and "Absence" and the Sarah Nixey-sung cover of Japan's "Ghosts" (reprised here in a hovering, skeletal remix by Populous). While generally in keeping with the prevailing mood, the reworkings (which are interspersed throughout the running order) tend to stand somewhat more apart from the pack, both for better -- isan's typically glistening take on "Composure," which they've liberally sprinkled with flittering shards of crystal, and Tunng's application of folksy pluckings and queerly muttered interjections to the closing "Arrival" -- and for worse -- Handshake's mix of "Someone," which sounds haunted all right, but in a violent, glitchified way (at least relative to its surroundings). It's not an unmitigated assault, but it definitely feels disconcerting and somewhat baffling in this context, and (perhaps along with the nifty but decidedly beat-driven Lodge remix "Exposure") prevents With from functioning as a fully cohesive ambient work. Program out that track and you've got a smooth, intriguing, and decidedly pleasurable journey.

Dntel: Early Works For Me If It Works For You, Something Always Goes Wrong,
Early Works For Me If It Works For You II, and This Is The Dream of Evan and Chan EP reviews

From the glitchy, careening beats and hauntingly melodic synth flutters of Early Works for Me If It Works for You's striking opener "Loneliness Is Having No One to Miss," it's clear that Jimmy Tamborello, in this early phase of his electronica career, was taking his cues from the towering British figures at the forefront of 1990s IDM: Autechre, Aphex Twin, µ-ziq, and so on. At the same time, perhaps ascribable to his Californian context or his emo bass-playing background, his tracks lack the distancing austerity and arty abrasiveness that mark much of those artists' work, instead embodying, in embryonic form, the elements that would become hallmarks of later Dntel releases: an understated melodic sweetness, hazy, dreamlike textures, and above all an undeniably human, organic warmth. These qualities tend to be somewhat overshadowed here by playfully fidgety beat programming, which doesn't necessarily play at cross-purposes so much as it forms a striking counterpoint to the underlying moodiness, with results that aren't nearly as meandering and restless as they may seem at first. A superb aural research project from a student of the abstract electronic greats, and a fine start to an enjoyably inventive career.

Susumu Yokota: Mother review [plus others here]

The 2000s were a staggeringly productive period for Susumu Yokota. Starting off the decade by releasing one of his most gorgeous and enduring works, the majestically serene Sakura, he continued issuing albums at a rate of more than one per year, the majority of them forming a loose series of kindred but conceptually distinct explorations of similarly organic, generally hushed musical territory. As the decade drew to a close, the ever-industrious producer came up with yet another way to traverse that same terrain with Mother, his fifth release on Lo. It's not too much of a shakeup from his recent ways of doing things: for one thing, much of it continues his subtle preoccupation with triple-meter time signatures; for another, like much of his late-2000s output, it's an album of collaborations with vocalists, among them his Lo/Leaf labelmates Nancy Elizabeth, Casper Clausen of Efterklang, and Claire Hope and Panos Ghikas of the Chap, as well as Japanese singer Kaori and Yokota's frequent partner Caroline Ross. But despite being perhaps his most vocal-based and song-oriented record to date, it's also perhaps his calmest, most fully ambient outing since Sakura. Some tracks feel more than others like proper fully formed songs: the loungy bossa-like opener "Love Tendrilises," the Chap's subdued but typically curious "Tree Surgeon," and Nancy Elizabeth's "A Flower White," whose reliance on a looped acoustic guitar figure makes it one of the more pedestrian things here. But even on these more vocally overt pieces, Yokota's focus on texture and utterly relaxed pacing tends to eclipse the centrality of melody or compositional structure, making for a masterful sympathetic fusion of song and ambience. And without taking anything away from the fine contributions of his collaborators, Mother's most satisfying moments are those where the vocals are most fully subsumed into Yokota's hazy, limpid sonic meanderings, becoming just one textural strand among many. The album closes with its only fully instrumental piece, a Harold Budd-like solo piano meditation that resonates marvelously in its simplicity, in the way that even a fully enjoyable evening of socializing can make a later moment of solitude feel infinitely precious.

King of Woolworths: Rediffusion review

Jon Brooks' third album as King of Woolworths finds him continuing to explore his fascinations with vintage film soundtracks and library music, analog synths, and 1960s lounge exotica. The lovingly crafted and unfailingly pleasant results are reminiscent of similarly inspired acts like Air and Stereolab, and of fellow downtempo electronica artists like Lemon Jelly and Boards of Canada. That may make Brooks seem like an imitator of already derivative artists, but he clearly has a flair for the material and his own remarkably authentic approach to it, as well as a knack for sweet if forgettable melodies. Although whooshes and burbles and all manner of grainy synth textures abound, he tends to downplay any electronic elements that sound more recent than the mid-'70s. Only a few tracks ("Big Sur" and the mildly menacing "Yellow World") have beats big enough to overtly reference dance-based electronic forms (most notably trip-hop), while much of the album, starting with the lovely two-part clarinet-led opener "Coccolo," is almost wholly organic in feel, if not in substance, hitting many of the primary reference points (vibraphones, harpsichords, wordless vocals, lush string orchestration, Latin percussion) of his target styles without seeming especially corny or gimmicky. In all, an enjoyably chilled-out and cohesive effort. "The Loner" is a cover of the theme to the 1970s British TV series Budgie.

various artists: Teaism review

A compilation album celebrating the "art and culture" of tea? Leave it to the quaint, whimsical Brits at Static Caravan records to come up with such a quaint, whimsical, British idea. And why not, indeed? The collection opens, fittingly, with the click of a stove burner and the wail of a tea kettle, accompanied by Max de Wardener's meditative autoharp. Beyond that, most of these tracks have relatively little overt, audible connection to the subject at hand -- somewhat disappointing, but not overly surprising since this is a primarily instrumental affair. However, as several of the song titles suggest, many of the artists involved claim to have prepared their contributions while sipping a particular tea, or to have attempted evoking the feeling of drinking a certain variety. The result, especially in the album's first half, is a whole lot of calm, soothing, slow-moving pastoral electronica, from the grayscale drones and flutters of the Break-Ups' "Assam" to project coordinator Inch-Time's chiming, ISAN-esque "Snow Jewel" and AM/PM's expansive, vaguely Asian-tinged "Shennong," named for a Chinese emperor. The always-intriguing Tunng shake things up with the album's first proper song, a cut-and-paste shanty about the Boston Tea Party, complete with a computer voice reciting the names of the participants, entitled "Shove It." Also of especial interest are the sax-and-trombone-led microtonal jazz of Root70's "Immaculate Conception" and the peppy, playful glitch-IDM of Qua's "Lapsang Souchong (Iced Tea Mix)," whilst "Dollboy" sing restfully of the proper way to brew and Cibelle and Josh Weller reimagine Earl and Lady Grey as a disillusioned, fortune-seeking couple in their jaunty, folky closing duet. Nothing here is terribly riveting or dynamic, but it does make for an exceedingly pleasant, relaxing listen -- a perfect accompaniment, no doubt, to drinking a nice warm cup of tea -- as well as an appealing way to explore a loosely connected group of mostly British and Australian artists (only a handful of whom have previously recorded for Static Caravan) who are engaged in gently exploring the intersection of folk, electronic, and avant-garde composition. A nice bonus are the droll line drawings by Roy Ananda, which notes the similarity of a teaspoon to a catapult and a tea bag to a yoyo, and imagines a teapot as the hybrid of a watering can and a piggy bank.

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Komorebi review

Yuichiro Fujimoto's debut album is a quiet marvel, an intriguing, peculiar, and ultimately delightful work of minimalist construction. These home-recorded pieces, most of them two to three minutes in length, feel more like tentative exploratory sketches than compositions per se. Suffused with a simplicity and ephemerality that recall the elegant spirit of Japanese ink-brush painting, they find an equally resonant visual counterpart in Fujimoto's own crude, childlike drawings and curiously arbitrary, hazily graceful photographs that adorn the booklet. Pieces typically consist of one or sometimes two instruments (piano, acoustic guitar, thumb piano, toy piano, glockenspiel) played in an improvisatory and sometimes strikingly rudimentary (but generally consonant) fashion, occasionally with a slight amount of electronic sound processing, and sometimes accompanied by a backdrop of found sound (children's voices, birdsong, ambient rustling). The audible evidence of the recording process seems to be as significant and at least as deliberate as the strictly musical content, ranging from the relative cleanliness of the bell-and-shaker duet "See Water" (the only piece with any real discernible structure, in the form of a gradual accretion of sonic density and digital delay) to a slight, soothing analog hiss beneath the spare guitar meditation of "Slow Boat" to the heavy, churning tape hum and almost painfully distorted piano meanderings of "Kujira." While Komorebi is, on the whole, a calming and delicate album comparable to the gentle likes of Fujimoto's countrymen Motohiro Nakashima and Lullatone (all of whom share a penchant for bell-like tones), its primary motivating concern seems to be not tranquility in itself but rather a patient, deliberate attunement to momentary experience and the detritus of the everyday, with results that can be contemplative, innocent, whimsical, unsettling, or simply indeterminate.

Johan Agebjörn: bio and Mossebo review

The material on Johan Agebjörn's debut album, much of which predates his work with Sally Shapiro, is a good distance from the melodic dance-pop of that project, which was overtly influenced by early-'80s Italo-disco -- although Shapiro's instrumental album closer "Sleep in My Arms" suggested something of what was in store. In a sense this is another sort of throwback, to the even earlier ambient explorations of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream, but this kind of music arguably has little use for concepts like progress and timeliness, and Mossebo's lush, limpid soundscapes are equally redolent of contemporary artists like Susumu Yokota. Agebjörn himself cites the celebrated early-'90s work of Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Future Sound of London, as well as his fellow Swede Krister Linder (Yeti) and the Norwegian Biosphere, as primary influences, which gives a good idea of what to expect here, though Mossebo definitely rests on the more placid and soothing end of things. As suggested by song titles like "The Sound of Snowflakes Touching the Ground" and "Putting More Wood in the Fire," there is something palpably Scandinavian and wintry about the album's tone, less due to icy twinkling synths (as in his work with Shapiro) than a gentle, glacial sweep that suggests the quiet grandeur of the Northern lights. Sonically, there's an even blend between electronic sounds (hazy synthesizer washes, gently pulsing clicks and hums) and organic ones (most notably Lisa Barra's entrancing wordless vocalizing, but also occasional pianos and field-recorded sound effects.) A handful of the pieces are entirely beatless, while only the vaguely electro "Ambient Computer Dance" has anything approaching a danceable groove. Mossebo functions well as a fluid but slightly varied whole, although the two-part "Siberian Train" offers something of a respite from the unmitigated new age serenity -- the first half, which Agebjörn record in 1996, has a darker, foreboding cast that sets it apart from the rest of the album. It's accomplished, if not entirely distinctive mood music, and well worth experiencing, though clearly a different animal from the Agebjörn of Disco Romance.

Eluvium: Similes review

For an artist whose primary emotional touchstones are stillness and serenity, Matthew Cooper refuses to stay in one place for very long. Starting from the leap between the hazy textural washes of his first album and the unvarnished solo piano meditations of his second, the ambient composer/producer has taken a departure, slight or striking, with each new release, seemingly making an exercise of finding continually new and different sonic and compositional approaches to similar spiritual terrain. Similes, Cooper's fifth full-length as Eluvium, and first since 2007's sumptuous, symphonic Copia (discounting the like-minded, limited-release “solo album” he issued under his birth name in 2008), is no exception, as his first foray into working with two elements whose heretofore conspicuous absence has largely defined his output: percussion and vocals. If the arrival of that news prompted any consternation among the Eluvium faithful, the results ought to lay any fears to rest: Cooper's unerring instincts have always been among his greatest assets (along with the genuineness and utter conviction that mark everything he’s done), and he’s hardly made his first false move here. Neither, by any means, has he made a beat-driven pop record. The “percussion” takes the form of soft, gentle clicks and pops (and a few distant, barely-there thuds) which turn up on half of these tracks and bear, for the most part, only a casual resemblance to anything that might be called a “beat” (the primary exception being “The Motion Makes Me Last,” whose soft but insistently galloping pulse does indeed create a stirring, quietly exuberant sense of motion beneath the prevailing calm.) The vocals, though nearly as unobtrusive (and relatively sparse), are a striking, almost magical development – long-time listeners may find the emergence of Cooper’s voice after so many years of silence to be particularly affecting and even revelatory, even though it’s as understated an instrument as we might have expected all along: he sings in a sober, pensive near-monotone, with slight Ian Curtis echoes tempered by the baritone richness and introspective, bruised-heart resonance of Lou Barlow and Bill Callahan. Cooper’s cerebral, abstractly insightful way with language has long been evident in his well-turned if rather fussy song and album titles; those qualities are certainly present in his lyrics as well, but hearing him intone his own words renders them somehow less ponderous, more yearning and introspective, as well as gently, wittily self-aware, especially since many of the lyrics here feel like glosses (similes, perhaps?) for the ineffable, absorbingly ruminative experience of listening to Eluvium’s music (“overanalyzing how the leaves eclipse the light/constantly find meaning and naivete inside”) and the perhaps not dissimilar sensation of creating it (“I'm a vessel between two places I've never been.”) And that experience has never been more absorbing, ineffable, or rewarding than it is here. Despite its innovations, Similes is entirely grounded in the ambient compositional techniques that Cooper has spent his career mastering – not just on the three shorter instrumental cuts but also the vocal pieces, which even at their “poppiest” (the stately, baroque “Weird Creatures”) feel more like laconic meditations than proper songs. Copia’s lush, variegated organic textures, Accidental Memory’s tenderly tinkling pianos (albeit more heavily processed and ring-modulated than ever before), and even the softly whirring guitars of Lambent Material all turn up here, but the closest reference point is invitingly warm, expansively droning Talk Amongst The Trees (whose title is referenced in one of this album’s first lyrics) which up until now was arguably Cooper’s zenith. With Similes, he’s made his most touching, certainly his most engaging work yet, and against the odds, somehow the most quintessentially Eluvium release to date.

AMG review round-up, volume IV

got enough of a backlog now that i can put these up in semi-thematic installments; this volume comprises much of my output from april, but also some pieces from march and may, covering wispy, dreamy, mellow ambientish music, plus a little bit wispy dreamy punk rock. mostly new(ish) releases [incl. several featured on my friendsoffriends mux, and my best-of-08-to-date lists] but also a couple of overlooked classics:

Keith Fullerton Whitman: bio, Playthroughs review

"The entire album consists of nothing but processed guitar tone, though since the guitar is all but imperceptible as a point of origin for this music, the emphasis is squarely on "process" and "tone." The process, which involves running a guitar-generated signal (not the actual guitar sound) through a carefully arranged sequence of programmed Max/MSP modules, effects pedals, and other signal processors, is described in loving detail by Whitman, at heart a true academic, on his website. For the vast majority of potential listeners, of course, the explanation is just that -- academic -- but, unlikely though it may seem, this is an album that richly deserves many listeners, because the tones it contains are nothing short of breathtaking in their beauty and simplicity.

It's difficult to qualitatively distinguish Playthroughs from much of the ambient, drone-based music that's out there, although it does have a conspicuously unpretentious and inviting quality -- a sense of openness that must be ascribed to the unabashed consonance it retains (there are strikingly few instances of true dissonance to be found here) in spite of its constantly shifting harmonic content, which creates the sense of a continual unfolding or blossoming. It's equally hard to comprehend the evocative and emotional effect of this music, and harder still to describe it: it seems to function on a fundamentally different, precognitive level. But simply put: this is some of the most soothing, stimulating, and spellbinding sound that has ever been put to plastic. Without doubt, a masterpiece of modern minimalism. Emphatically recommended."

The Mountain Goats: Get Lonely review

"Thematically at least, Get Lonely is the sparest, bleakest record in the Mountain Goats' discography. Much was made of the unprecedentedly autobiographical content of The Sunset Tree and We Shall All Be Healed, and it is true that they conveyed a sustained emotional potency that was largely new to Darnielle's repertory, but both contained so many lyrical loose ends, disjointed perspectives, and ambiguous imagery that it was difficult if not impossible to glean any consistent context in them, let alone a coherent through-line. Get Lonely, on the other hand, is practically monotonous in its lyrical focus. Every one of its songs features a first-person narrator in a state of desolation, near-desperation, solitude (always), and grappling, more or less explicitly, with the psychic effects of recent loss: extreme listlessness, emotional paralysis, intermittent attempts at deterministic redirection; nightmarish delirium. In most of them, almost nothing happens; the plot of "Wild Sage" consists of its protagonist leaving the house, walking outside, falling down by the side of the highway, and lying there. Sometimes he can't even leave the house. It's a break-up album -- an almost uncharacteristically straightforward conceit for Darnielle -- the chronicle of a person dealing (or attempting to deal, at least on his best days) with loneliness, grief, and the pangs of memory. Whether or not it's a literal chronicle of a period in Darnielle's life (he had, at the time of its release, been married for many years) is irrelevant; forgiving a slight turn for the phantasmagoric towards the end of the album, it's hard to deny the fundamental, emotional truth contained in these songs, especially as conveyed by his uninflected, almost painfully restrained delivery. "

Retribution Gospel Choir: bio and Retribution Gospel Choir review

"Less a side project than a sort of alternate reality version of Low, Retribution Gospel Choir allow Alan Sparhawk, guitarist and songwriter of that legendarily quiet, minimal slowcore outfit (along with bassist Matt Livingston, a recent addition to Low's lineup) the chance to play music that, while still pretty minimalist, conceptually anyway, and often fairly slow, is definitely not quiet. Make no mistake, this is capital-R Rock music through and through, of the gruff and gloriously hazy variety typically associated with the stoner '70s and alternative nation '90s -- dense and thorny, with pummeling drums and grungy guitars galore. But at heart it's not particularly far removed from Sparhawk's primary concern: Low are a quintessentially '90s band after all, initially conceived as a nonconformist response to the grunge explosion but certainly not a wholly contrarian one, and the Low of the 2000s have amply demonstrated their propensity for rocking out in a flannel-flavored vein, at first on 2001's Trust but most notably on 2005's The Great Destroyer, which would have blended right in had it appeared ten years earlier. (Meanwhile, Sparhawk's status as a closet guitar god was well established on 2006's free-form one-man band turn Solo Guitar.) So fans of Low will find plenty to embrace here, especially those who have relished those recent developments; by the same token, Retribution Gospel Choir could well still try the patience of nonbelievers, as turning up certainly hasn't purged Sparhawk of his searing intensity or his elemental, no-frills songwriting style."

Dräp en Hund: bio and Be Yourself review

The two Swedish girls who make up Dräp En Hund were thirteen when they released Be Yourself, although playing dress-up in frilly ruffled blouses and cloche hats on the cover they could have passed for half that age. You might contend that they're playing dress-up here musically as well, precociously imitating their punk-rock heros - PJ Harvey, The White Stripes, Sonic Youth - with utterly rudimentary musicianship and songwriting - but that's selling the duo short. What have the great classic punks been if not a bunch of kids playing at being in a rock band? (Most of them just weren't quite this young.) Make no mistake, Alva (bass) and Gabbi (drums) own the attitude - they chug and clatter their way through the choruses of the aptly-named "God Damned Destroyed" with uncompromising abandon, there's a blank-eyed disaffection in the vocals on "Hate You" that's downright chilling, though otherwise the whole record splutters with sloppy enthusiasm. They do show their youth somewhat in the lyrics, with a certain wide-eyed positivity in the title track and "We Are We" ("we are going to be friends forever/the whole life/a very long life") that is nevertheless infectiousness, and references to sex and drinking that (thankfully) don't quite carry the ring of true experience (though the pummeling, stone-faced "Don't Drink" could be a vintage straight-edge anthem: "you destroy your life/ you destroy your dreams/ and all you want is more.") But while they may at times (inevitably) come off as cute - they are thirteen-year-old girls, after all - they're hardly cutesy. Even so, Be Yourself might not have much value beyond its undeniable novelty, if it weren't for the considerable amount of melody in their slow, simple, rough-hewn songs, all of which were composed by the duo save for a typically bled-raw thrash through "Seven Nation Army" that makes the White Stripes' raucous original sound prissy by comparison. As it is, it makes for surprisingly listenable sludge, performed and recorded with an almost adorable crudeness that fits its unabashed, youthful energy.

Hanne Hukkelberg: bio and Rykestraße 68 review

"Recorded after six months spent living in Berlin (and named for a street address there), the second album by Norwegian songstress Hanne Hukkelberg may be moodier and more mature than her endearingly light-hearted debut, but it's nearly as sweet and, in its way, just as playfully inventive. The occasional electronic elements of Little Things are absent, and the "noise" quotient is relatively subdued, but there's still plenty of atmospheric clutter and clatter: clinking bottles and kitchenware; a bouncing ball; "tea-strainer guitar"; an excellently played typewriter on "The Northwind"; Obelix the cat purring on his own ode (which can't help but recall likeminded noise imps -- and Hanne's former Leaf labelmates -- Psapp); and the Rykestraße itself providing urban ambience on the languorous opener, "Berlin." This bevy of found-sound sources commingles seamlessly and invitingly with the array of "real" instruments -- piano, accordion, prominent double bass (both bowed and plucked), glockenspiel, bass clarinet, and so forth -- to create an impressionistic, Old World Continental vibe with echoes of cabaret jazz, sea shanties, and the fusty, haunted soundscapes of Tom Waits. The effect, though evocative, is kept understated, never overshadowing Hukkelberg's resonant voice, a magnificently versatile instrument that evokes the high lonesome clarity and playful warble of Jolie Holland or Regina Spektor as well as the intoxicating swoops of Billie Holiday, and contributes as much as anything to the richly imbued charm of this album. (Her voice itself creates some of its most memorably personable moments, including the layered speaking and self-harmonizing on the creaky, slightly spooky "Fourteen" and extemporized-sounding passages of wordless a cappella noodling on "Berlin.") Rykestraße 68 is occasionally reminiscent of those artists musically and compositionally as well, blending as it does strands of folk, pop, and jazz, but a closer point of reference would be Fiona Apple's work with Jon Brion, particularly the defiantly idiosyncratic art pop of Extraordinary Machine -- it's equally visionary and emotionally flush, though if anything more accessible."

Silje Nes: bio and Ames Room review

"Even though many of the pieces on Silje Nes' debut album feature prominent melodies, delivered in her wispy, winsome sing-song voice, it seems somehow imprecise to think to them as 'songs' in the conventional sense. Uncomplicated, but not overly simplistic; fragmentary though not unfinished; individually distinct but clearly kindred, they're more like exploratory meditations on texture, ambience and deregulated musicality, some of which occasionally happen to take song form. By Nes' own description, the process of recording is central to - in fact, inseparable from - her compositional method, and [all but one of] the selections here are solo bedroom creations spanning from over a period of four years, presented, with rough edges intact, as an remarkably fluid whole. Incorporating a wide array of instruments and sounds, from delicately plucked and strummed guitars, cello, glockenspiel, melodica, and trumpet to warm keyboards, toy-like sound effects and all manner of drips, clicks, burbles and chimes, with Nes' breathy, muted vocals often serving as just another layer (or several) of sonic texture, Ames Room often recalls the gentle, whimsical folk-electronic hybrids of Psapp, Múm, Juana Molina, and even Four Tet in his calmer moments. The dreamy art-pop of fellow Scandinavians Stina Nordenstam, Anja Garbarek and, in particular, Hanne Hukkelberg is another relevant point of comparison, as is classicist lo-fi indie rock, a la the quirkier aspects of early Liz Phair, Mirah, or Lisa Germano. But while this barrage of comparisons hopefully conveys some sense of what Ames Room sounds like, it risks overcomplicating the album's endearing idiosyncrasies and overshadowing its artless sweetness and intimacy, the rare, ineffable qualities which make this a truly singular release - one that's all the more precious considering that Nes originally created much of this music without necessarily intending to share it with a wider audience."

Theodore: A Summer She Has Never Been, A Winter She Fears review

On his cryptically-titled Lo Records debut, Greek-born sound-impressionist Theodore weaves together sampled morsels of organic instrumentation and natural sounds with subtle electronic inflections to create hazily sweet, gently somnolent music reminiscent of Iceland's Múm, Japan's Lullatone, Britain's Plone, Norway's Silje Nes, and perhaps especially France's Colleen, with whom he shares a fascination with music boxes and antique-sounding instrumentation. To a great extent, Theodore forgoes the more straightforward folk and pop tropes of most of these artists, though there are subtle hints of Eastern European folk harmony, and decent amounts of acoustic guitar and other plucked string instruments here and there - including what sounds like a bouzouki on "Madam Ortance" - as well as a lusty sea-chanty accordion waltz underpinning the seedy-sounding "Montmarte." On the other hand, he's just as likely to evoke Western classical music as familiar ambient electronic forms; the album is rife with lush, lugubrious orchestral strings, and (recalling all of the artists mentioned above) all manner of bells and chimes. Overall though, the effect of the album is too diffuse and rarefied to sum up with any set of specific stylistic reference points, despite a constant, almost cheeky tendency for allusive arrangements and melodic borrowings. "Every Garden Has A Corner For Children" loops a polyphonic music-box snippet of "Auld Lang Syne" atop a bed of gently static white noise; "Mia Bella Fiorentina" distills the famous aria from Bizet's Carmen into a supremely languourous, murky wash of sound; "After Silence" sneaks in an arhythmic fragment of "Edelweiss" alongside its solemn, oddly chromatic, strummed folk dirge, and perhaps most unexpectedly, opener "I Dreamt I Was Throwing Stones At The Sea" treats Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Music of the Night" (from Phantom of the Opera) with a stately, almost classical reverence, as a sweetly chiming lullaby over lapping digital waves. Curiously, while these assorted, practically canonical melodies aren't extensively disguised, the settings they're presented in are sufficiently tweaked and removed from their original contexts as to make them nearly unrecognizable on a conscious level, at least at first listen, making them appear instead as haunting but unobtrusive shards of memory within a mysterious, transporting dream. Very much like a dream, A Summer She Has Never Been... can be whimsical and sweetly nostalgic, but it's too strange and otherworldly ever to become cloying - and at times it grows downright unsettling, even without rising above a serenely submerged whisper.

Rothko: bio and A Place Between review

"A thoroughly ambient work, not unrelated to but notably more placid than Rothko's early output as a three-pronged bass guitar post-rock group, and sparser too than Mark Beazley's "solo" work under the moniker, if only by virtue of the fact that he collaborates here with just one other musician, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Caroline Ross, instead of all of the members of her group Delicate AWOL. Ross contributes vocals, either hushedly sung or spoken in a near-whisper, on many tracks, as well as diaphanous flute clusters, occasional (or extremely unintrusive) guitar work, and pen scratching sounds on "Divided Lines." Apart from several instances of sweetly simple, Satie-esque piano, the rest of the luxuriously uncluttered sound field consists of Beazley's bass, whether engaged in deep, extended, gradually shifting tones or lithe, melodic upper-fret filigree or distant, unhurried overlapping parts; often it's a multi-layered combination. Even at its densest and most richly textured, the album never rises above a whisper. Though underpinned by adept musicianship, careful compositional structure, and inventive arrangement and recording choices, A Place Between is utterly unfussy, warm and inviting, content to drift blissfully subsumed in a humble glorious haze."

Susumu Yokota: 1998, Symbol, Distant Sounds of Summer, Wonder Waltz, Love or Die, and Skintone Collection reviews

"Possibly the most unique item within Susumu Yokota's highly idiosyncratic oeuvre, Symbol finds the multifaceted Japanese electronica master defying and muddying genre distinctions to create sui generis compositions of considerable beauty and strangeness. That's not exactly new territory for Yokota, but this time there's a gimmick: the album is consists primarily of fragments taken from classical pieces, many of them highly familiar, if not always readily identifiable, by the likes of Debussy, Rachmaninov, and Beethoven -- with a particular reliance on Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" and Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" -- as well as bits of more recent works by John Cage and Meredith Monk, whose unearthly voice becomes a focal point for several of these tracks. But while Yokota cuts, pastes, and plunders the world of art music with a palpable exuberance akin to the mash-up artists, his contemporaries, who were doing similar things with pop, the results are more nuanced than merely novel. Nor is it entirely out of step with his previous work -- it's not as serenely ambient as the beloved Sakura (though it is generally quite soothing), and it certainly has little to do with his various dance-oriented releases, but it retains the meticulous, multilayered compositional approach of albums like Grinning Cat and The Boy & the Tree. And although the presence of electronics is kept relatively understated, the elements with which Yokota weaves together his mad grab-bag of orchestral motifs, frolicsome fragments of flute and piano, and stately string passages (there are sometimes as many as seven classical samples in a single four-minute piece) will be immediately familiar to his listeners: subtly burbling beats, wordless ethereal vocals, vaguely Asian-sounding percussion loops (as well as a marimba ostinato that could pass for a Steve Reich sample). Indeed, without the obviously recognizable nature of his sample sources (which, depending on your perspective, could be a source of distraction or a point of engagement), it would be difficult to distinguish many of these pieces from "standard" Yokota compositions -- a feat which is in itself quite an accomplishment. That it's also a fascinating and rewarding listen, and an undeniably gorgeous bit of craftsmanship, arguably elevates Symbol to near the level of its inspirations, or at least positions it as a curious bridge between too-often estranged musical worlds."

"Without relying on an obvious gimmick, like 2005's Western art music pastiche Symbol, or an overtly conceptual approach, like its immediate predecessor, Wonder Waltz, Love or Die simply offers another reshuffling of Yokota's familiar assortment of musical fascinations, and the result may be the clearest encapsulation yet of his unique, multifarious vision. Love continues Waltz's conceit of using exclusively triple-meter time signatures, but while that album was a fussy, stylistically sprawled collection that sounded like it was trying desperately to explore as many rhythmic iterations and textural juxtapositions as possible, these tracks are far more fluid and cohesive, and somehow less rhythmically overbearing even though they have possibly the most prominent beats of any of his ostensibly "ambient" albums. Eschewing vocals (and collaborators of any sort, for the first time in a while), and generally limiting percussive content to a single looped phrase per track (be it a jungle-esque breakbeat, a stately, minimal jazz groove, or a straightforward three-legged disco glide), he hones in instead on lush, consonant sonorities and lyrical melodic structures not unlike the classical music he vivisected to create Symbol. While attending closely to musical and textural nuance, Yokota allows his compositions ample room to breathe, making for a record that feels more relaxed, and is easier to relax to, than anything he's done in years, even if it has little in common with the minimalism of his earlier ambient work. For that matter, it has little to do with most of what is typically thought of as "electronica," even though it features as many synthetic instruments as "real" ones (pianos, most notably) -- you might find parallels in the more melodious end of Aphex Twin's output, or Boards of Canada's pastoral reveries, but it's closer in effect to a sort of futuristic chamber music, one unabashedly fixated on sweetness, purity, and beauty. The ponderous track names may be rather ridiculously bombastic (if appropriately flowery and evocative), but the music itself is appealingly unassuming and gentle, making Love or Die less of an emphatic declaration than a strong understatement."

[also of note - Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique review]