Archive for the ‘Experimental’ Category

PREMIERE: Stream Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’s New EP, The Black Captain

Monday, October 12th, 2015

We’re pleased to present the premiere of The Black Captain, the companion EP to Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’s album Yield to Despair.

Initially intended as a bonus for fans who’d pre-ordered Yield to Despair, TTOL opted to name the EP in tribute to the late Pete Dunstan. It’s a heavily textured collection — more jam-oriented and ambient than its companion release — but TTOL have always been masters of balancing their extreme and complex pursuits with experimental noise and slow burn post-metal. The seven minute-centrepiece, “Reprieve”, is one of the best pieces of music they’ve put out in their decade-long career. Vale The Black Captain.

Noiseweek: David Bowie, Failure, Drowning Hose, Iron Maiden, Tortoise & more

Sunday, October 11th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

NEWS

Thank you to everyone who has expressed their condolences and celebrated the life of Pete Dunstan, AKA The Black Captain. Pete’s funeral service will be held at Fremantle Cemetary on Tuesday, with more details available on the Facebook event page. Pete’s co-presenters on Behind the Mirror presented a tribute show on Wednesday night, and Dave Cutbush dedicated his Thursday Out to Lunch show to Pete’s memory. Tangled Thoughts of Leaving have named their forthcoming EP The Black Captain in Pete’s honour, and you can read our archive of Pete’s thoughtful criticism here. Vale The Black Captain.

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Gail Zappa, the widow of Frank Zappa and the executor of the Zappa Family Trust, passed away this week at the age of 70. Rolling Stone have penned a touching obituary on Zappa, including quotes from an interview they conducted with her earlier this year about an Alex Winter-directed documentary about her late husband’s life which is due for 2017.

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The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame has unveiled its 2016 nominees. Among those included in the list are Cheap Trick, Deep Purple, The Spinners, N.W.A., Yes and The Smiths, as well as more recently-eligible nominees Nine Inch Nails. Artists become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first record. We’re now reaching the point where the acts at the centre of peak grunge and alternative — Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Jane’s Addiction et al. — are eligible for nomination, though they missed out this year. Fan voting is open now at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame website, with the inductees to be announced in December.

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Continuing on the award beat, the ARIA Award nominees were announced this past week, with usual suspects Courtney Barnett and Tame Impala earning a handful of nods. The Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album category leaves a lot to be desired — would it hurt to acknowledge something a little more boundary-pushing than In Hearts Wake or Northlane, when we’ve seen new releases from Tangled Thoughts of Leaving, High Tension, Dumbsaint, We Lost the Sea, Hope Drone and a buttload more I’m forgetting? Fuck it, maybe we’ll start our own awards. See the full-list of nominees at the ARIA website.

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Death and the Iron Maiden | NPR

“Whereas their forebears in Black Sabbath engaged the subject of mortality with low and slow misanthropy, Iron Maiden tackled it on frenetically paced, epically rendered cautionary tales, heralded by Dickinson playing the part of a maniacal prophet. The result has been one of metal’s most celebrated legacies, exuding a notion of the very glory and immortality the band’s songs depicted. Yet recently, Maiden’s lyrical themes, and that of many of their influential peers, have manifested as an unavoidable reality. The authors of the mortality narratives that have been heavy metal’s stock in trade for nearly 50 years are confronting their own.”

Why Noise Bands Are Playing at the European Organization for Nuclear Research | Motherboard

“The best parts in [Deerhoof’s] live shows are the points at which they push beyond the melodic and beyond the understandable, into the unknown, into the musical nether regions. But they do it from a basis. That was sort of what I noticed at their show and noticed that I had subconsciously understood the whole time—that a band like Deerhoof, they are doing what they do because they can’t help themselves. They want to start from a basis of well-known musical ideas and then want to push beyond that because they’re curious and they’re just pushing forward.
Which is really what we do here at CERN. The research that we’re doing here at CERN, we’re not doing this for a profit, we’re not doing this to make money. We’re doing this because we really just want to know what happened like a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. We want to know that. And to do that, we have to build a bigger detector to push back farther in time and higher energy to understand this. And that’s really the only reason why we’re doing this, because we’re curious.”

LISTEN

Tortoise — Gesceap

This beautiful synthscape is one of the most vital pieces of music Tortoise have released in their two decade-plus career. “Gesceap” is the first single from The Catastrophist, the follow-up to 2009’s Beacons of Ancestorship, marking the longest time between Tortoise albums. “Gesceap” bears no hallmarks of the jaunty rhythms that marked the previous record’s 11 tracks. This is soothing and uplifting, backed by jazz-inflected drum fills and a rich textural tapestry. The Catastrophist is out on January 22 through Thrill Jockey.

Drowning Horse — Echoes

Nothing comes easy with Drowning Horse. “Echoes” spends half of its length on building up tension, promising a cathartic release from a tension and menace that borders on unbearable. That release does come eventually on “Echoes”, though not in the form of a crushing crescendo as one might expect, but an otherworldly slow bleed of anger, like a resting predator that’s roused from its slumber only to return after a warning growl. The track is taken from Sheltering Sky, out October 22 through FalseXIdol Records and Art As Catharsis.

WATCH

Failure — Counterfeit Sky

Not many bands get a second shot at success — critical, commercial, personal, or however you define it. Even fewer make use of it the way Failure have. “Counterfeit Sky” is the most impressive and ambitious visual effort of Failure’s career. Forgoing Failure’s tradition of borderline cheesy performance-based music videos — the Undone and Stuck on You clips haven’t exactly aged well — this video is (or at least looks) big budget, high concept and timely in its release, given the hype around The Martian and NASA’s Mars announcements. It’s ironic that only now, two decades after the space rock opera that was Fantastic Planet, are Failure capitalising on the imagery of alien worlds. “Counterfeit Sky” is an appropriate choice for a single too; with that earworm of a chorus riff and the shimmering guitars in the bridge, it could fit on Fantastic Planet just as easily as The Heart is a Monster. With Troy Van Leeuwen back in the touring band for the next little while, there is no ceiling for the new Failure.

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving — Reprieve

The chaps from Perth’s most bizarre foursome push vans, flog merch, bang heads and generally faff about in this video for “Reprieve”, a compilation of tour footage from their most European jaunt. The track is taken from the aforementioned EP, The Black Captain, in honour of the late great Pete Dunstan. At the risk of being overly sentimental, I bet Pete would’ve loved this track. It’s a slow-burner in contrast from the majority TTOL’s recent output, but it’s a perfect encapsulating of the band’s ever-shifting dynamics — from tempered build-ups and understated riffage to a rousing but subtle crescendo that burns fast before giving way to a sombre guitar outro. The Black Captain is available now to those who pre-ordered Yield to Despair. Details on a full release are coming soon.

David Bowie — Blackstar

A one minute excerpt of new David Bowie music is still enough to get excited about. “Blackstar” accompanies the opening credit sequence of The Last Panthers, an upcoming British crime drama starring Samantha Morton and John Hurt. The series comes from screenwriter by Jack Thorne, whose credits include Skins, Shameless and This is England ’86. Bowie’s voice is sullen and sultry, like something between the Low, Outside and Hours eras, with more than a hint of menace. The Last Panthers debuts in the UK on Sky Atlantic on November 12.

Noiseweek: Sunn O))), Golden Void, John Carpenter, JAMC and more

Sunday, October 4th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

NEWS

A friendly reminder that Le Guess Who? in the Netherlands boasts the best festival line-up of the year. Deerhunter, Swervedriver, A Place to Bury Strangers, METZ, Blanck Mass, Lightning Bolt, Total Control; a Constellation Records-curated stage with Ought and Last Ex, and a Sunn O)))-curated stage with OM, Chelsea Wolfe, Magma, Julia Holter and Goatsnake. Ugh.

Speaking of which, Sunn O))) just announced their next LP: Kannon Kommeth, out through Southern Lord on December 4.

Per Pitchfork, director John Carpenter will be making his live debut at next year’s ATP Iceland in July.

SBS News mistakenly flashed a picture of music vlogger Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drop during their reportage on Chris Mercer, the gunman responsible for the school shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. More at Noisey.

Lush are reuniting to play their first show in almost two decades.

In other reunion news, per a recent Time Out New York interview, the Jesus and Mary Chain are working on their first new record in 17 years.

Pitchfork Radio will begin its first broadcast this Monday from Willy’s Detroit.

True Widow’s first two records, I.N.O. and As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth, are now available on Bandcamp.


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Something on the outside: Cold Chisel reconsidered | The Monthly

“Someone somewhere in Australia is listening to a Cold Chisel song right now. Perhaps it’s you, tarrying with the ever-present ‘Khe Sanh’, or with ‘Choirgirl’, ‘Cheap Wine’, ‘Breakfast at Sweethearts’ or ‘Forever Now’. Maybe, without even needing to tune the radio to the nearest Classic Hits station or dig out the records, you can hear those songs in your head, like I can hear them, as if each were a part of some interior musical script learnt off by heart so long ago now that you can’t recall a time when you didn’t know it. What can I tell you about Cold Chisel that you don’t already know?”

Dissonant Joy: A Guide to Europe’s Punk Foremothers | Pitchfork

“Early punk histories tend to focus on New York and London, with hardly any credit given to the movement’s mainland European acts—and even less so when the creative forces behind those bands were women. Additionally, the continental identities of relatively celebrated female UK punk cornerstones like the Slits or the Raincoats are often overlooked. So while many of these European punks didn’t necessarily wield a significant amount of cultural influence, their lack of careerist ambition to appoint themselves as the faces of a scene is actually what distinguishes them.
A bona fide embrace of amateurism linked many of these groups; for them, punk’s anything-goes ethos wasn’t just a line to tote about while quietly cultivating expertise undercover. For most of their male peers, punk underscored natural freedoms, but the style’s sense of possibility offered these women a sense of liberation that was more radical, and they committed to exploring punk’s limits with dissonant joy.”

An Excerpt from the Memoir and Cookbook Red Velvet Underground by Freda Love Smith (the Blake Babies, Antenna) | The Talkhouse

“Being a musician on tour was the life experience that shattered my uptightness and helped me embrace a more flexible diet. Touring in a band presents a host of particular challenges: how to stay stable in constantly shifting surroundings; how to stay sane in often-crazy circumstances; how to stay civil in the close quarters of a van with four other humans; how to stay healthy in booze– and smoke-filled bars — and on the slim pickings of truck-stop food.”


LISTEN

A Swarm of the Sun — Deliver Us From Our Dreams

Caspian and Mogwai meet in a starry sky in this cut from Swedish duo A Swarm of the Sun. Taken from the sessions of their latest record The Rifts, this is the kind of thing you want to listen to from the window seat of transcontinental plane journey, when you’re bleary-eyed and trying to determine if the sun is rising or setting behind the horizon.


WATCH

Golden Void — Burbank’s Dream

Is this real life or a video game? The Isaiah Mitchell-led Golden Void favour cheesy vistas and visual blending to accompany the bluesy Burbank’s Dream. It’s like a Windows Media Player visualisation come to life, but somehow it works. The track is taken from the group’s second record, Berkana, out now through Thrill Jockey.

Noiseweek: My Disco, Ought, Heat Dust, Black Wing

Saturday, September 19th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

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Hit Charade: Meet the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts | The Atlantic

“Millions of Swifties and KatyCats—as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy—would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America’s pop hits. It is an open yet closely guarded secret, protected jealously by the labels and the performers themselves, whose identities are as carefully constructed as their songs and dances. The illusion of creative control is maintained by the fig leaf of a songwriting credit. The performer’s name will often appear in the list of songwriters, even if his or her contribution is negligible. (There’s a saying for this in the music industry: “Change a word, get a third.”) But almost no pop celebrities write their own hits. Too much is on the line for that, and being a global celebrity is a full-time job. It would be like Will Smith writing the next Independence Day.”

The slow death of music venues in cities | The Guardian

““It often starts from a relatively benign decision. The Troubadour in London is up for sale because they had a noise complaint related to their use of the garden. Kensington and Chelsea borough said they couldn’t use it after 9pm, their drink turnover went down substantially, and now there’s no guarantee it’ll be a venue in future. Someone wants to build next to the Fleece in Bristol,” he continues. “Bristol city council have fought hard for them, but they don’t have any support in law and flats are going to be built 20 metres from the main stage. In the next couple of years there will be noise complaints that will cost the Fleece £12,000 to £15,000 to handle, and it’s not making that in profit. The Point in Cardiff: they installed £68,000 worth of acoustic baffling to stop the complaints from a new development, and servicing the loan put them out of business. These little things just build up.””

LISTEN

My Disco — 1991

The second single from My Disco’s fourth album is the opposite of what a single is supposed to sound like. 1991 sees the trio exploring the same sparse sonic territory hinted at on Severe’s first single, King Sound, but here, that aesthetic is taken to its extreme. While Little Joy was all sunny, mid-ranged guitars, 1991 suggests Severe is ritual music — ominous, reflective and reverent, made not just to be heard but felt in the flesh. I can’t wait to see this new material live. Severe is out through Temporary Residence on October 30.

Heat Dust — I Warm My Hands

I’m putting it out there: The Flenser is the best record label in the world right now. No one else is putting out such a diverse swathe of exciting music, from extreme black metal to conceptual doomgaze to genre-bending electronica. Take a look at that stellar roster: King Woman, Black Wing, Planning for Burial, Sannhet, Kayo Dot and Wreck and Reference. Heat Dust are one of the more conventional additions to the venerable collective, but by the sounds of the brooding, cerebral post-punk on I Warm My Hands, they’re an ideal fit for such quality company. Heat Dust is out

WATCH

Black Wing — Luther

This one’s all kinds of fucked up. Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer become pawns for a Windows Media Player visualisation filtered through a conspiracy theorist’s fever dream in the clip for the opening track of Black Wing Is Doomed. There’s nothing more to say about this one.

Ought — Sun Coming Down

The title track from Ought’s second full-length album is all jarring rhythms and discordant guitars, so it’s fitting the video match that mood with narrative dissonance and uncomfortable lightning cuts. Three girls ride bikes on suburban streets, shooting heavy looks over icecream and milkshake breaks. Shattered plates and glass flash in time with the beat. It’s uncomfortable and unknowable yet somehow welcoming, much like everything we’ve heard from Ought so far. Sun Coming Down is out now through Constellation Records.

Noiseweek: Hardcore Architecture, Flying Lotus, Windhand & Fait

Friday, September 4th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

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Inside Hardcore Architecture | Pitchfork

“Chicago-based artist and teacher Mark Fischer of Public Collectors has given us a strange and revealing new window on MRR and the ‘80s underground with Hardcore Architecture. Hardcore Architecture explores the relationship between the architecture of living spaces and the history of American hardcore bands in the 1980s. On his Tumblr, Fischer unites band info, demo tape, and record reviews culled from MRR issues from the ‘80s with Google Street View building images of the original contact addresses for bands. The juxtaposition of punk/hardcore/metal band names, ranging from the familiar (Sonic Youth, Judge, Didjits) to the unsung (Public Enema, Abra Cadavers, Death Puppy) plus text samplings from MRR’s quick hit reviews (“thrash” is inescapable) against images of fairly innocuous, sometimes charming, and often suburban homes (Fischer removes the exact street addresses from his postings for privacy reasons) gives us a different perspective on hardcore and its proponents. Ultimately, the blog tells a story about hardcore as a loose but passionate nationwide cultural network.”

How Flying Lotus Built Brainfeeder, His Spiritual Little Empire | The Fader

“This latest turn in Flying Lotus’ career hasn’t come out of nowhere. Born Steven Ellison, Steve to his friends, he has spent most of the past decade as the figurehead of the beat scene, an awkward term for a movement that sprung up in the late 2000s following years of experimentation at the edges of hip-hop and electronic music by artists such as Prefuse 73, Dabrye, and Madlib. A network powered by the internet and manifested through various physical nodes—the biggest of which remains Ellison’s hometown of Los Angeles—the beat scene reconfigured independent hip-hop by moving the focus away from rappers to instrumentals, and drawing on a wider sonic palette. It also helped make Ellison a household name, following a string of critically acclaimed albums on British label Warp Records and regular tours that had him circling the globe. In 2013, he was given his own radio station on Grand Theft Auto V, the fastest selling entertainment product of all time. He started 2015 with a six-month residency on BBC Radio 1. And now he has his own corner of a late night comedy show on U.S. television.”

LISTEN

Windhand — Hyperion

Windhand channel True Widow in this latest cut from Grief’s Internal Flower, which is shaping up to be a ripper of a record. It’s a surprise it took so long for that beautiful mix of doom and shoegaze to become in vogue, and her it works so well, with those ethereal vocals sailing atop an ocean of thick, plodding fuzz. And how fucking heavy is that riff? Grief’s Internal Flower is out September 18 through Relapse.

WATCH

Fait — Solace

Fait’s latest clip is low-budget — all harsh light and smoke machines in a darkened sound stage — but it’s an apt accompaniment for Elise Higgins’ latest offering of slow-burn builds and unresolved tension.

The Last Audio Cassette Factory

In this fascinating micro-documentary, Bloomberg Business profile National Audio Company, the Springfield, Montana, factory which now stands as the last bastion of audio cassette manufacturing. It’s a fascinating look into the staying power of analogue, the reversal of predicted technological trends and the business sense of defiant stubbornness in the face of presumed obsolescence.

Sounds Like Hell: Facemeat

Thursday, September 3rd, 2015

Like the bastard love-child of Devo and Mr. Bungle, Facemeat are an unpredictable, many-armed force of nature. Armed with a military-grade horn section, the seven-piece eschew any and all expectations of structure and genre, making their 13-track debut, Questions for Men, an unpredictable and wildly exciting hour of uneasy listening.

Behind all the gimmickry and anti-conventionality of song structure and instrumentation, Facemeat are formidable musicians. From the wandering bassline of “My Wife and Children” that recalls a more unhinged Gerald Casele, to the apocalyptic brass of Hanging From A Line — and who thought horns could signal the end of the world? — there’s an intricate method in all the madness, even if it’s almost impossible to pick apart. Adam Moses’ is an expert of vocal nuance, his sardonic delivery walking a narrow line between macho bravado, mental breakdown and uproarious laughter — the perfect balance for a record exploring the failings of modern masculinity. If Hell needs a house band, this is it.

Questions for Men is out now through Art as Catharsis.

Lycia — A Line That Connects

Tuesday, September 1st, 2015

As vital trailblazers of ethereal darkwave, Lycia have produced nine studio albums that have evolved along a fascinating path: from the austere and cold drum machine-driven dirges written by founding member Mike van Portfleet into astounding dynamic soundscapes of ornate beauty that took Lycia’s distinctive bleak emotion into remarkably diverse stylistic territories. This breathtaking flourish occurred alongside the addition of David Galas and then Tara Vanflower to the project, resulting in some of the best albums of Lycia’s collection, such as The Burning Circle and Then Dust and the monumental effort that was Cold.

After the release of Empty Space in 2003, Lycia went quiet, with the odd solo effort from each of the band’s three members popping up here and there. It seemed Lycia were done, their tremendous contribution to a particular style of music mystifyingly underappreciated outside of their passionate fan base. Ten years later, Mike and Tara sprung a surprise, emerging from somnolence with Quiet Moments. With Tara singing on only a couple of tracks, it carried the feeling of something more of a solo effort from Mike. Nevertheless, it was a powerful reminder of the tremendous quality of Lycia; that they had returned not out of nostalgia, but as a group getting better at creating engulfing and exquisitely devastating music.

Two years on from that return, Lycia has now released their tenth studio album, A Line That Connects. This new record sees Lycia as a trio once again, with the immensely talented David Galas returning to the fold. If, with the benefit now of hindsight, Quiet Moments represented exciting prophecy, then A Line That Connects is a splendid resurrection foretold.

The new record is not just epic atmospherically, standing by its end at an hour and nine minutes. To their credit, none of this has been achieved by producing anything that gives the impression of being thrown in to seal up empty spaces, even if some tracks might seem more like bridges between others due to their relative brevity. Lycia’s new work holds you fast throughout with sweeping winds of scintillating gloom, compelling you to savour the fascination of the distant horizon. Each surge brings with it marvellous contrast, in one moment cutting across your skin with an icy regard, then effortlessly seizing your hair and filling you with the sense that you could take off and soar.

The sound on A Line That Connects rises as a sheer surface from the outset, like a towering unearthly cliff. If one were to debate that it is their best album since 1996’s Cold, then it undeniably has the best production on any Lycia record so far. The album glistens sonically as a treasure fashioned with great care, without being antiseptic. The huge effect of synths avoids the pitfall of suffocating the guitars. Whether the latter engages in clean and delicate notes and strums or eruptions of ferocious adrenaline, the elements stay out of each other’s way. The bass tones ring warm and clear and the vocals are free to provide the variation in effect and style that characterizes the album as a whole. When reverb plays such a big part, and when each instrument is aiming for the colossal, this really could have ended up a mess of detail bleeding into the amorphous. Alongside David Galas’ mixing efforts, the persistent genius of James Plotkin with the album’s mastering is clear.

Breaking the album down track by track can only provide a false impression. There is something for so many different tastes here. And yet, the album’s title resonates truly. A brooding darkness courses through the songs, whether each individual piece is lulling you into ecstasy or snarling with menace. Isolated from the whole, listening to the Swans-like industrial death march of “Illuminate” then the invocation of the Cocteau Twins in “Hiraeth” (featuring the wonderful Sera Timms of Black Mare and Ides of Gemini in a guest vocal appearance), one could be forgiven for thinking it was two completely different bands. Done properly — to sit down and lose yourself in the entirety of the album from beginning to end — the emotional connection is deep, powerful, and obvious. Whether you are a fan of drone, ambient, doom and other heavy music, goth, darkwave, shoegaze, post-rock or that 4AD sound (I could go on and on here), there will be something here for you to derive much joy from, perhaps broadening your palate along the way.

A Line That Connects finds Lycia as good as they get, a reverberant reminder of their priceless ability to create an immersive atmosphere built from huge sound. Such a progressive outcome through stylistic diversity shows that the band has a great deal to offer still, and should win them many new fans. One imagines that, more than twenty years after first becoming a three-piece outfit, this new album is as reinvigorating for them as much as it is for those who have long held a love for their music.

A Line That Connects is out now through Handmade Birds and Thrill Jockey.

The Black Captain will be hosting RTRFM’s Out to Lunch from 12pm (+8GMT) on September 3rd, as well as September 10th alongside Dave Cutbush.

Noiseweek: Sunn O))), My Disco, Iceage, Pere Ubu, Heads.

Saturday, August 22nd, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

READ

South Of No North: Greg Anderson Of Sunn O))) & Goatsnake Interviewed | The Quietus

“Honestly, I’m both surprised and grateful about it every single day. When we first started no one, and I mean no one, really cared. And, if I’m to be really, really honest, we didn’t really care. Especially about what people thought. We just wanted to experiment and play music together, really the audience, the idea that people would actually listen to it was kind of an afterthought, we were really making music for ourselves – in some ways Sunn O))) is a very selfish project. I mean, we weren’t even sure if we were ever going to play live, we imagined that it would just remain a studio project. And then when we did start playing live eventually it really started connecting with people and honestly that kind of gave me a lot of hope for people because it’s obviously very difficult, very challenging music – I was like, ‘Wow! People can get into this? That’s awesome!’ Because you wouldn’t expect most people – or really anyone – to be that into it. So yeah, I totally see where you’re coming from and I kind of agree. I think Sunn O))) somehow connects with people on this super primal level – it’s very real, but at the same time the music helps create this alternate reality, and people seem to want to be in that dimension for a couple of hours or so.”

Does Anybody Even Have Time For An 80-Minute Album? | NPR

“It’s interesting to think about the different ways that album length has evolved over time. For most of history in the album era, it was defined by format — first the 45 minutes or so of an LP, then the 80 minutes of a CD. In the LP era, you really had to justify the additional expense of production and the fact that you’d have to charge more. With CDs, that was no longer an issue, and in the ‘90s in particular you had some people feeling “ripped off” if an album only had 45 minutes of music, so in some cases artists would put on CD-only bonus tracks to make it seem like they were making the most of the format. But then of course file sharing and digital files changed all that, and suddenly, you could have albums be as long or short as you wanted very easily. There was an initial trend toward shorter releases, experimenting with a four-song or eight-song release, like the mini-albums Robyn released in the run-up to Body Talk.

But the longer albums now, in a lot of cases, and especially in all of these cases you mentioned, is a way to say, “This is important. You are going to have to spend time with this.” It’s a little harder to make an “event” out of a release if it’s 35 minutes long. The initial feeing is, “This is all I could do.” Whereas these [long] releases convey the idea of sprawling masterpieces, and by extension, they are presented as demanding art. I do think that, even though artists want to say, “This should be taken whole,” in the vast majority of cases the albums are rarely ever experienced that way. It’s a little bit of a thing where artists present the work this way and the listeners kind of play along, and may even pay lip service to the idea, but probably the truth of it is that people are picking and choosing.”

Pere Ubu’s Dave Thomas talks being an underground legend and why he won’t call himself special | Noisey

“I don’t like photos. I don’t want to waste my time generating the limitless supply the industry requires. I know what I look like. I know what my mother looks like. I recognize her every time. What do I need a photo for? The government wants photos. Whatever the government wants I try to avoid. Good basic policy. I’m not in the business of being a pop star. I am a musician. The eye is a deceiver. It relies on the physical world and can be too easily fooled. It takes only 24 frames a second to deceive the eye into seeing real motion. It takes a minimum of 44,100 frames a second to deceive the ear. Sound is the authentic expression of human consciousness. The world is silent. Sound only happens inside the head of conscious beings. It is the by-product of consciousness. Why waste time with anything less?”

LISTEN

Heads. — At the Stake

Chris Breuer’s bass sounds like oozing pus, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Heads. imbue this slithering Melvins track with intoxicating menace thanks to the snarling tone of Ed Fraser’s flat-out evil intonations, along with his swampy guitar tones and the plodding rhythms. If the future of Heads. sounds more like this — brooding, meditative and plain evil — sign me up.

My Disco — King Sound

This is the the darkest track My Disco have ever made. While everything on 2010’s Little Joy was vibrant, King Sound is a faded strobe light in an empty prison cell. There’s a distinct Swans feel here, from the ritualistic rhythms to Liam Andrews’ prayer-like repetition of the song’s title. King Sound is taken from Severe, out October 30 through Temporary Residence.

WATCH

Iceage — Untitled (Live at Pitchfork Festival)

Pitchfork saved the best footage of last month’s Chicago festival ’til last, finally uploading clips of Iceage performing this new, as-yet-untitled track alongside The Lord’s Favorite. Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is as magnetic as ever, slinking and slithering around the stage, singing from the floor and equal parts confidence and nonchalance. No one else right now is making music or playing shows that feel so fucking vital.

Noiseweek: Dave Hill on High on Fire, Dumbsaint, Mess + Noise, Battles and more

Friday, August 7th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

NEWS

Steel for Brains is closing at the end of the year.
In a Facebook post earlier this week, music critic Jonathan K. Dick revealed that he’ll be shuttung down the amazing metal publication he started three years ago. Dick — whose writing credits include NPR, Pitchfork and SPIN — suffered a setback with his work earlier this year following the health problems of a family member, slowing down Steel for Brains’ production schedule in the process. There’s also a Steel for Brains book in the work, combining interviews from the website as well as unpublished material. In the meantime, if you’re looking for some heavy weekend reading, head on over.

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Dave Hill Talks High on Fire and Keeping It Goddamn Heavy | The Talkhouse

“For the uninitiated/fucking stupid, High on Fire has been a 100% reliable resource for Viking-worthy heavy metal Armageddon played by goddamn men since 1998, when main High on Fire dude Matt Pike rose up from the ashes of his other awesome band Sleep like some sort of shirt-hating phoenix to form yet another one of the greatest bands of all time. Ever since then, I and a lot of other people have turned to them for our recommended daily allowance of face-melting heavy music that makes you want get on the back of a horse with a torch in one hand and the reins in the other and give everyone in the nearest Burger King parking lot a fucking night that will haunt them for weeks. In short, they are the best.”

What Went Wrong at Mess + Noise? | The Daily Review

“Mess + Noise covered all the music that the rest wouldn’t touch. Along the way, it provided an important early platform for some of Australia’s best music writers — including Kate Hennessy of Fairfax and The Guardian Australia, and former M+N editor Doug Wallen, who has more bylines than you can poke a stick at. Anwen Crawford, pop music columnist at The New Yorker and The Monthly, once wrote for Mess + Noise under the pseudonym “Emmy Hennings”.
Moreover, the magazine (Mess + Noise began life in 2005 as a bimonthly print publication) nurtured a vibrant grassroots community — one that most Australians are probably unaware of, but which is celebrated the world over.
That’s probably the most staggering thing about the website’s sudden halt: Australian music has never been so healthy, nor so popular — from the DIY and punk scene in the nation’s capital to Sydney garage, Perth psych pop and the extraordinary energy coming out of Brisbane and Melbourne. Our underground artists feature on some of the most forward-thinking music websites across the net. Perhaps a savvy, homegrown, youth-focused publisher could find a way to exploit that kind of cultural capital …”

It’s Time to Put our Cameras Away | Pitchfork

“Sadly, memory-making as visual bootlegging is now wholly a part of the live music experience and it has been since the advent of smartphones. Watching people not watch, or watch through their screens, or simply hit record and clumsily loft the phone above them—what’s the purpose? To remember for all time? To share the experience? What friend is going to be impressed or even have the patience to watch a barely focused video shot from hundreds of feet away, the audio blown out, the shouted-along chorus of the superfan in seat 78JJ muting the band itself?
It’s time we stopped being so tolerant of these serial snappists.”

LISTEN

Black Wing — Death Sentences


Black Wing is all bombast and cascading synths on the second cut from …Is Doomed. Dan Barrett opts to let his voice sit low in the mix largely untouched by effects in the track’s earlier moments as he deadpans about heartbreak and words unsaid, before reverb consumes everything as the song climaxes. Black Wing Is Doomed is out through The Flenser on September 25.

Dumbsaint — Panorama, in ten pieces.

The new Dumbsaint is out today and is now streaming in full on Bandcamp. As with their past releases, the album features an accompanying full-length film component, a portion of which is also viewable on their Bandcamp page. Dumbsaint sound more confident on Panorama, embracing the anthemic and imbuing their sound with more cathartic, explosive post-metal tendencies than their past releases. It’s a kinetic and frenetic record that progresses from movement to movement without warning, and sure to be a hell of a trip live.

WATCH

Fridey at the Hydey

The 2013 documentary on the grimy North Perth haunt the Hyde Park Hotel is now available online. Now a swanky restaurant-and-bar, the Hydey was a rock ‘n’ roll institution for grimy punk and rock ‘n’ roll up until it closed for renovations and a rebranding in early 2010. Fridey at the Hydey interviews the people behind the venue and the scenes in a eulogy to one of Perth’s most beloved live music spaces.

Battles — The Yabba (live)

Battles continue their hype for record #3 La Di Da Di with a live performance of The Yabba, a nervous and jaunty cut from the new record. This panoramic video is excerpted from a larger performance the trio recorded and broadcast on YouTube for 24 hours earlier this week. La Di Da Di is out September 18 through Warp.

Noiseweek: Stars of the Lid, Battles, We Lost the Sea, Chelsea Wolfe, Lycia

Friday, July 24th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

READ

How Stars of the Lid Made Two Ambient Masterworks | Rolling Stone

Sometime after the release of their sixth studio album, 2001’s The Tired Sounds of the Stars of the Lid, Austin-borne drone duo Stars of the Lid quietly, patiently moved from obscurity into semi-obscurity, renown as the most acclaimed ambient musicians since the heyday of Brian Eno. The three-LP opus featured more than two hours of melancholy, wistful orchestral drones that swelled and dissolved, a home-brewed sound with the ambitions of minimalist composition and the insularity of indie rock. It didn’t make too much of a ripple upon its release beyond raves from alt-leaning press, but it slowly spread. In the 14 years since, a generation of similarly evocative composers — Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ólafur Arnalds — have risen to prominence in Stars of the Lid’s wake. Vinyl copies of follow-up, 2007’s Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline, have sold for more than $200.

My Internet Band Signed a Record Deal Without Ever Meeting IRL | The Daily Beast

“The fact that we’re even in a band is a little crazy. For one thing, I live in Colorado. Our singer lives in Brooklyn. Our bass player lives in New Jersey about two months per year and spends the other 10 months touring the world with his other (very successful) band, Revocation. Our drummer lives in Virginia and also tours internationally with his other (also very successful) band, Municipal Waste.
As if geography weren’t enough to overcome, consider this: I knew the singer and the bass player, but had never met the drummer. Our drummer knew the bass player but had never met me or the singer. Our bass player knew me and the drummer, but had never met the singer. The singer knew me, but had never met the bass player or the drummer.
Confused? Let me put it this way: there wasn’t a single person in the band who had met all three other members. By the time I met the drummer—making me the first member to have met all three of my bandmates—we already had the bulk of an album written and had a handful of demos recorded and released, and we were considering signing to one of two labels.”

Unpopular Opinion: Jack White is the Worst Thing that Ever Happened to Rock | LA Weekly

“It’s not just Jack White’s music that I hate. I hate everything about him. I hate him for making Eric Clapton look like Son House. I hate his stupid hats. I hate his “Look at me, I’m so obscurely retro!”–shaped guitars. I hate that his entire career is built on matching outfits and twee appropriations of what is actually good music. I hate him because Brochella is filled with guys in bucket hats and koi sleeves who know every White Stripes song but have never heard The Mooney Suzuki, The Oblivians, The Delta 72 or the approximately 50,000 other bands who did the same thing Jack White tries to do but way, way better.”

LISTEN

Lycia — The Fall Back

At a little over two and a half minutes, The Fall Back sounds like an interlude — but that doesn’t make it any less devastating. Lycia remain masters of soul-crushing soundscapes, and even with the odd major key melody, Mike VanPortfleet’s dispassionate delivery over makes for a truly depressing yet truly beautiful listening experience. The track is taken from the trio’s forthcoming album A Line That Connects, out August 21 through Handmade Birds.

We Lost the Sea — Departure Songs

Sydney outfit We Lost the Sea lean towards the blues on their first instrumental album. While lead single and opening track A Gallant Gentleman feels like a celebratory eulogy for the group’s late frontman Chris Torpy, the rest of the record takes on a distinctly more downbeat tone. Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise: the album’s copy describes the record as inspired by failed journeys, and the uncertain tone that permeates the record’s five songs seems like appropriate company for a road trip across uncharted territory. In any case, it’s a journey worth taking. Departure Songs is out now through Bird’s Robe and Art as Catharsis; see them on tour with Hope Drone this July and August.

WATCH

Battles: The Art of Repetition

Step backstage with Battles in this Ableton-sponsored as the trio work on their new record, La Di Da Di, out September 18 through Warp Records.

Chelsea Wolfe — Dragged Out (Live)

It’s remarkable that Chelsea Wolfe can capture the menace of their studio sound in a live setting. In this professionally shot footage of Dragged in Amsterdam from the forthcoming Abyss, Wolfe and her band plod through the song’s droning, sludgy verses while eerie samples — either sonically manipulated field recordings of wind, or a voice twisted and imbued with the creepiness of horror cinema — sound out beneath the deluge. Abyss is out August 7 through Sargent House.