REVIEW: "St. Vincent" by St. Vincent

Annie Clark hustles and bustles on St. Vincent

     Love an album that steps right into it.

     The self-titled fourth album from St. Vincent, or the girl also known as Annie Clark, picks up right where 2011's Strange Mercy left off with opener, "Rattlesnake." It surges ahead with grooves contorting and billowing from all angles. The beats are jacked-up and burbling as Clark takes her clothes off with no one around. Her voice is distressed and manic. She's sweating, sweating and by the end of this album, so too will you.

     With St. Vincent, released this week, Clark is quickly becoming a must-hear artist of any genre. She is joyfully weird with a voice broaching levels of ecstasy and devilment. She is frisky and sassy, but also a true master of the axe. Nearly everything on the album is enveloped in the light fuzz of distortion and it pinches the back of the neck until the drool flows.

     On "Birth In Reverse," the first released song, Clark's guitar does the Slip 'N' Slide. The tempo is locked into a rushing run, like a frantic, cinematic chase sequence through New York City. She's slipping over the hood of a taxi cab, diving left towards David Byrne’s house, bursting the ambling crowds like flocks of pigeons. Like most of this album, it’s very busy, but never overcrowded.

     As a lyricist, Clark trades comfort for mischief, unafraid to bend a sentence around the sound exterior. “Remember the time we went and snorted / That piece of the Berlin Wall that you’d extorted,” she sings, pure of heart, on "Prince Johnny." Her voice goes off on flight, reflecting on a smitten, but lost and deranged lover.

     Since her last album, Clark snuck in a collaboration with Byrne, the full-length Love This Giant. The pairing was perfect. The rhythms of St. Vincent are a direct trickle from the Talking Heads' reservoir. "Digital Witness," could have stemmed from those same recording sessions. It's a solid piece of funk with flatulating horns and a mind-tugging chorus.

     "Huey Newton" starts with a space-rock shuffle, then becomes a fractal explosion. Clark sounds like Alison Mosshart fronting Black Sabbath two hits from the crack pipe. Some of the crustiest, filthiest, wubbiest guitar ever break down the walls between the right and left speakers. The closer, "Severed Cross Fingers," is as lush as it is triumphant, the perfect lolling end to a bustling modern classic.

     Not only is Annie Clark, without any doubt, one of the great guitarists making current music, but she puts her talent to the most creative of uses, never settling to go straight. She loves to throw her sound into total disarray just to pick it back up. She nearly melts the recording studio down on "Bring Me Your Loves" with an onslaught of scuzz.

     Her penchant for experimenting with metallic textures and psychotic song structures gives her music a desperate need for return. She pushes the limits of what’s expected in a song and for that her name deserves to roll off the same tongue as Bjork, PJ Harvey, Erykah Badu, Laurie Anderson, the beautifully supernatural women of rock.

     On "Digital Witness" Clark sings, "I want all of your mind / gimme all of your mind." By the conclusion of St. Vincent it’s already in her lap.

Key Tracks: "Digital Witness," "Huey Newton," "Prince Johnny," "Birth In Reverse"

from: IMP

REVIEW: "†††" by †††

Chino Moreno puts the haze in the chamber on ††† debut

     The ghosts of Chino Moreno’s new-wave past have floated into the present for his newest project dubbed, ††† (“crosses”). The Deftones frontman linked up with old friend Shaun Lopez, from Far, and Chuck Doom for their self-titled debut album--a collection of songs both hazy and guttural. 

     Each track is kicked along by crisp, pricking hip-hop beats, but every noise around it is from the gallows. The opening track, "†his is a †rick," strikes the speakers with an incessant trap beat while Moreno sings tenderly against loops of feedback growl. The groove of premonition on "†elepathy" is darkly funky and so good it hurts. Lyrically, Moreno is prowling with his usual obscurity, dealing with shape-shifters, witchery, ghosts and demons like it’s just another walk through the graveyard on a foggy evening. 

     The Deftones relation is never lost. The songs exhibit the same groove and crescendo of Moreno’s prime-time act, but without the thrash-metal and punk bursts. Instead, the release is consumed by a thick layer of electronic atmosphere and distorted vibrations, something always leaking in the cracks of Deftones’ music, especially on songs like “Cherry Waves,” “Digital Bath,” and “Lucky You.” Here, though, it’s the focal point, not merely an embellishment. 

     ††† first started constructing songs in 2011. They released EP †, in 2011, and EP ††, in 2012, each consisting of five songs and each one appearing on the 15-track debut. The previous songs are subtly remastered with some added sonic flourishes, but they’re basically the same. Unfortunately, the anticipation was dimmed somewhat to learn only five songs were actually new. 

     The big surprise--and mild disappointment--here, is the real lack of experimentation. Given that this is Moreno’s third project outside Deftones, there was an anticipation of something beyond the folds of his previous work. It’s sharper and more focused than his first non-Deftones outing, Team Sleep, and less expansive than Palms, his project with members of Isis, but, in the end, it’s not a huge departure. 

     Many songs are centered on choruses chock-full of rock-and-roll grandiosity, not too dissimilar from the single “Minerva,” off Deftones' self-titled album. The big pummeling drums on "†hholyghs†" rise like oncoming waves before dissipating into haunted house sound effects. 

     "Nine†een Eigh†y Seven," "Prurien†" and “†rophy” move like a snow drift on a slow-wafting breeze. The album finishes in hushes with "Dea†h Bell." Moreno’s voice sails from the next room over, while a meek piano plays against a gear-cranking drum pattern. 

     The best song, “Bi†ches Brew,” was released with a video late last year. The pulse of a wavering bass moves with a lock-step drum groove through the shadows against the moonlight. It’s one of Moreno’s most haunting melodies with whispers looming from the corners. For pure metalheads, not exactly keen on the lightness of movement, there’s a quick dash of Deftones unrelenting at the end. 

     Moreno may be one of the fiercest screamers in all of metal, but Deftones have always been more than a metal band, fusing melody and atmosphere with crushing riffs. It’s a formula that has kept them ahead of their grouchy, nu-metal counterparts and that lies squarely on Moreno’s early inspirations and his persistence in staying out of the mold.

     He’s made no secret about his admiration for the emotion behind early Eighties new-wave and groups like Depeche Mode and The Cure. This new project takes those first musical awakenings and blends them with the modern day equivalent of moody, down-tempo acts like Burial, the xx, Zomby, even Massive Attack. †††, then, is a worthy extension of Chino Moreno’s musical mind. 

Key Tracks: “Bi†ches Brew,” “†his is a †rick," "†elepathy," “†he Epilogue”

from: IMP

READ ALSO: ††† / Color Film at Santos Party House, 2/12/14

††† / Color Film at Santos Party House, 2/12/14

Three crosses for ††† at Santos Party House, Feb. 12, 2014.

If, in the late 90's and early 2000's, you dipped your music tastes somewhere in the dip of where punk and metal met, last Wednesday night may have seemed a bit strange. Two side-projects of veteran frontmen of the stage played a packed Santos Party House: Chino Moreno, of Deftones, played with his new group, ††† and opening was Color Film, fronted by Daryl Palumbo, Glassjaw's nutcase vocalist. Each act an extension of their primary group, but each standing strenuously on its own.

Color Film, Palumbo's second side-project since Head Automatica, shambled onto the stage. Their songs were quick, tight driving post-punk. Richard Penzone, previous collaborator with Palumbo, shredded his guitar. Palumbo scratched and clawed his way through the set just as he's always done. The hand not holding a microphone almost constantly pumped the air with a fist. He's a Grade A maniac on the stage, staring outlandishly, cartoonishly at the crowd, in a state of childlike awe. 

Palumbo and Color Film drummer during set.

The band was loose, clearly still kneading the songs into shape, but what they left behind was promising. Last year they released Until You Turn Blue EP, but the songs in their set, "52 Minds," "Bad Saint" and "Small Town" might turn up on their upcoming full-length debut, Living Arrangements. 

Three lighted crosses at the back of the stage were bathed in color as the full five-piece live version of ††† hit the stage. Moreno, as usual, lastly emerged from the dark to rapturous applause. The crowd always swoons for the guy in whatever form he's appearing in and it was no secret he was the guy everyone came to see. 

The group's debut self-titled album was released the night before, but already, every word Moreno sang had an added echo from the crowd. Clearly, he was overjoyed to see the big turn out. On stage everyone was in sync, often breaking into big grins. Moreno was flanked on either side by his co-conspirators on the album, Shaun Lopez, from Far, and Chuck Doom. 

Their foreboding grooves translated perfectly into the live room. The atmosphere was amped. The entrapment of "†elepa†hy" turned the place into a Gothic dance-hall. "Bi†ches Brew" was a hallowing out of the brain with swervy bass poking the frontal lobe, turning clockwise. The cool trip-hop of "Blk S†allion" made it to the live stage for the first time and the stutter bass stabs of "†his Is A †rick" slapped up against the wall.

Lopez stood to the side, jet-black hair combed over, fiddling between a keyboard set-up and playing chiseled psych guitar licks. Doom, who Moreno called Dr. Doom when an audience member asked who he was, played the bass like a wet dolphin, always dipping forward, looking like souped up King Of The Hill character.
††† abandoned the stage briefly, returning for a moody rendition of "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus and finishing with "†he Years." As they dispersed for the final time the glowing crosses left the audience mired in a trance.

Chino Moreno (center) performs with ††† last Wednesday at Santos Party House.

READ ALSO: Chino Moreno puts the haze in the chamber on ††† debut

REVIEW: "Play With Your Toys" by The End Men

The End Men Work It Off with Toys

     Play With Your Toys by The End Men may have been recorded at Brooklyn's Well Rounded Hoodlum Studios, but often, it sounds like it's coming from the back room of a rickety old wooden boat where a single dimly-lit bulb swings with the waves.

     The album opens with woozy, ship-wrecked chanting on "Cleaning Your Mind," before lifting off with the psychedelic swirl of "Run Away." The song then spittles into a steady grinding blues riff--The End Men's long suit.

     The Brooklyn group are only a duo. Matthew Hendershot mans the guitar and growls, while Livia Ranalli drops an anchor with her drums. Their music exhibits all the trappings of the most basic blues, but with a more chiseled slant. "Into The Mines" flows like a sea shanty before Hendershot leads the listener into a dark soot-covered hole in the ground. The blues crunch of ZZ Top is heard on “The Ballad Of Billy Polk” and "It's All Wrong" is a tough, bare-knuckled stomp. 

     The songs are simple enough. Between the two of them, they use every bit of meat on their instruments. Hendershot challenges you up front, dares you to cross him. His voice is equidistant from Billy Gibbons's garble and Mark Lanegan's low-tide moan. 

     Ranalli has a pile of percussion before her. She remains in lockstep with the boozy guitar, but splashes, pokes and prods every piece of hardware between Hendershot’s riffs. Her backup vocals are ghostly and subtle, sliding right in next to the grime.

     They do plenty with such a lean set-up and create an atmosphere worthy enough to stretch over the 11 songs on Play With Your Toys. The swift accordion drifts of “Play With Your Toys Pt. I” and “Pt. II” are like mist teasing into the heavier tracks. On "Mental Trapeze" Hendershot trades a sack of nickels for sticks and seeds with a blind man on 27th Street. Later he makes a batch of chocolate brownies and descends into a creeping carnival waltz.

     The End Men are here to shake all the strange from your soul. Play With Your Toys was released digitally last February and is available for download and stream on The End Men’s Bandcamp. Their newest release is the two-sided single, "Work," from last September.

Key Tracks: "It's All Wrong," "Mental Trapeze," "Run Away," "Into The Mine"

from: IMP

Strip Of Six Photos

REVIEW: "Angel Guts: Red Classroom" by Xiu Xiu

The New Xiu Xiu Album is Hell (of course)

     Godhead of Xiu Xiu, Jamie Stewart, wants to bang on your eardrums with whatever scrap metal he’s got lying around and moan, closely, in your ear while he does it. Angel Guts: Red Classroom, the group’s ninth, is a tortuous, carnal art-rock listening experience.
     The odd title is shared with the Japanese erotic film by Chūsei Sone–the inspiration for the album. The plot of the film, from 1979, follows a love affair between a writer and his subject, a troubled pornstar. Sounds about right. Thematically and musically the album throttles the usual dark melodies and incantations Xiu Xiu (and, really, only Xiu Xiu) has come to be known for. The key difference here is the noise, noise, noise.
     It’s a lowly simmer to start. The first song “Angel Guts:” sounds like wind recorded through a cheap microphone, barely hovering above audible. “Archie’s Fades” evokes a desperation with a lurching drone and Stewart’s low-registering ache. On “Stupid In The Dark” raw driving drums keep the pace while Stewart jaws manically, shushing the sound around him when he wants your full attention.
     The Xiu Xiu formula is perfectly assimilated here. The palette of sound is very lean. Only analog synthesizers, drum machines and a drum set were used, making it much more sonically straightforward than past albums. With Angel Guts, the racket is the emphasis, the crushing weight of Stewart’s tumultuous thoughts. Twisted, alarming, industrial scrap sound blankets every song and sometimes overtakes it to the point of devastation. It’s not always best. Mostly, it lacks the songs that make a listener quiver with an unredeemable sadness (see: “The Pineapple vs. The Watermelon,” “Clover,” “Sad Pony Guerilla Girl”).
     Stewart’s absurdist erotic, oftentimes discomforting, lyrics still come through in whispers and wails and climactic releases. He’s the beast of his own work. His oddball clenching need for abject sex is still strong, especially on the song without a hint of metaphor, “Black Dick.” He snarls and orders for the expansive manhood of a negro male like he’s lying on his side and it’s the only cure to his anguish. It gets weird.
     The last half of the album is all sonic combustion, Stewart’s voice growing more panicked. “Lawrence Liquors” is pure war. The enemy is nigh. Helicopter blades cut through the jackhammer beat and distorted owls coo. Shrieking feedback assails “Adult Friends,” as if the wires were splintered, barely functioning. Menacing organ swells with a blunted drum walk on “A Knife In The Sun” until it dissolves in torrential screams from all sides.
     Every song on Angel Guts, from start to finish, morphs steadily into an urgent insanity. Play this loudly in your home and your guests will have heart attacks. People will shriek in their seats, maybe pull a gun on you. The final sound heard is a buzz-saw, plain, without effects, cutting right through your stupid head sideways. It is not pleasant.
     Angel Guts: Red Classroom is released February 4 on Polyvinyl. It comes on the high-heels of Nina, a strange hushed collection of Nina Simone covers released last December on Graveface.

Key Tracks: "Stupid In The Dark," "Archie's Fades," "Lawrence Liquors," "Bitter Melon"

off: I M P

The Jostling of Classic Art at an Arizona Gallery

from: Quiet Lunch Magazine

"Conscious Automata" by Daniel Martin Diaz (detail)

     Justin Bieber may the slickest pop star today, but what if he were a painter from the Renaissance era? What if his greatest subject was himself? Artist Mike Reynolds paints the singer decked out in centuries-old attire with classic sunglasses and a look of pure self-worth in his "Untitled 18 from JB throughout the Ages." It's a mash of the modern and neo-classical.
     Messin' with the Masters, an exhibit showing at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in the desert of Mesa, Arizona, puts forth works by current artists who seek to reinterpret some of the world's most famous paintings.
     Each piece in the gallery is based on a venerable work of art from the past. Renovation is the funnel for each artist’s modern creativity. The inspirational work tied to some of the paintings is seen in plain sight, while others cut it and twist it beyond all familiarity or borrow only the root idea.
     "American Gothic," by Grant Wood is flipped by David Bradley into "American Gothic, The Farmer's Daughter." It immediately pricks the eye with recognition. Upon closer inspection, though, it looks like the hippie children of the original painting's couple have run off to find a farm of their own. A suggestive dollar bill pokes from the elder's overalls while an Indian figure watches from the bushes.      

"Bon Voyage" by Matsuyama

     Tomokazu Matsuyama takes what looks like an old Samurai statue and punctures a New York tourist emblem into its chest. The piece, titled "Bon Voyage," exemplifies the globalization of society and the slow shredding of the classic art form.
     The history of art has always been a source of revelation for current artists. Inspiration itself is sparked from the discovery of past work and creativity stems from the reinterpretation of old ideas. This collection finds an engaging mix of light-hearted parody and grotesque re-imagining.
     Arguably the art world's most famous figure, the “Mona Lisa” gets a sublime rendering from Randy Slack in his "Mona Citrus." Mona gets the washed out treatment, half-drawn and blurred by pale shades of green and yellow. Behind her is a field of two-dimensional citrus trees.
      Conversely, the piece by Martin Wittfooth, "The Baptism," is a scene of nightmarish survival. A towering elephant walks with its kin through a lake of burning oil. The tough, canvas-like skin of the downtrodden beast smolders in its own flames.
     The most stunning piece is absolutely Christopher Ulrich's wall-sized reworking of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, "Last Supper." The characterization is rich and suggestive. Chubby angels with workingman expressions bathe a jeering dragon as Christ looks burdened and emotionally weighed down. To his right, a cast of sorrowful disciples wait on his word, each one with an eyeball-shaped hole in their palms. To his left a provocative group of characters look anxious and sinister.
     There is no limit to the painting's effects. The scene is loaded with tiny details, both historical and personal. Ulrich painted himself vacating the room, staring disconcertingly at his reflection in a hand-held mirror. This slice of vanity pulls the painting from its historical grasp and spreads it across the full timeline. Purely a masterpiece.
     Restructuring famous art to discover new perspectives is nearly as old as art itself. It can be an act of rebellion, shaking a fist at the establishment. Messin' with the Masters steers clear of that mentality. It signals a devotion to the forefathers, paying homage and respecting the challenge of reinterpretation.
     Messin’ with the Masters runs until Sunday, January 26th at the Mesa Arts Center.

"Last Supper" by Christopher Ulrich

REVIEW: "Cupid Deluxe" by Blood Orange

Get locked in Blood Orange's new groove

Dev Hynes's second full-length release as Blood Orange is a collection of lush and funky songs focused on the deep inner emotions of love's onset and it's ultimate estrangement. It's called Cupid Deluxe.

At the front door "Chamakay" shuffles in with a smooth drum beat and vocals from Hynes that yearn and burn. He exhales every note, breathing deep breaths of serial longing on the microphone. His ache is front and center. His harmonies are weighed down by it. The song fades off with a slather of saxophone, an instrument that resurfaces often throughout the record.

Hynes is a British composer and songwriter. He has recorded albums as Lightspeed Champion and also with the band Test Icicles. Blood Orange came about after the dissolution of that band and the hiatus of Lightspeed Champion. Coastal Grooves was the first Blood Orange release with an emphasis on electronica and an R&B mood.

The tools at Hynes disposal could all be from the Eighties. Mainly, the groove of a chunky bass, a spirited guitar, to-the-point beats, synthesizers that cup the edges, and that wandering sax. It flutters along with a jogging bass line on "Uncle ACE," while jabs of thick synthesizers compete with spiny guitars.

"Chosen" is a cresting wave of saxophone falling over an archepelaggio of crimped bass and guitar. "On The Line" meshes a hypnotic keyboard loop with a subtle bass grope. "Tell me baby are you mine?" Hynes asks with a desperate energy in a drifting duet with Samantha Urbani, who lends her voice to seven tracks. 

Hynes's songs are quick dents into the lovelorn psyche. Each one instantly catches fire and burns steady with a groove that churns. He is the male version of Solange, who he has worked with. They both  grace their flittering, midnight R&B with impish quivers. They both use their music as a vehicle of emotion.

On "You're Not Good Enough" a guitar twang dips into the sappy romantic tale of a love left unrealized. The vocals alternate between the sexes, each one equally distraught. Hurling from the record's blueprint is "Clipped On," a blend of early 90s, record-scratching hip-hop with a bass line Sade would turn into gold. 

As great as the songs on Cupid Deluxe are, they don't expand much. They get locked in their groove, then become prisoners to that groove. It's not always a bad thing, but there is a desire for surprise at times. 

Every track on Cupid Deluxe has a deep longing and emotional pull to it. With Blood Orange, it is a formula that has become Hynes's forte. With his pumping blood red heart infused with every note of his music he has birthed indie rock's version of "soft rock." 

Key Tracks: "On The Line," "Uncle ACE," "You're Not Good Enough"

from: I.M.P.

Quiet Lunch Video: Path Finder with Mark Dorf

Photo by Kareem Gonsalves/Quiet Lunch Magazine

QL:

Photographer Mark Dorf, from Louisville, KY, manipulates his 

images in a little white box in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He focuses on the wide-open spaces of nature and how they shift in an increasingly tech-first world. The environments he creates are bound with a sheen of lucidity. Continue to video at Quiet Lunch:

Photo by Mark Dork/Mdorf.com

30 Seconds By The Salt River/Take 1

( v i d e o )

REVIEW: "HAG" by Professor Divebomb

from: Quiet Lunch Magazine

Professor Divebomb cuts and pastes together HAG

     HAG, the new album from psychedelic, lo-fi artist, Professor Divebomb, is a swallowing cave of loose and disgruntled sound. It’s noisy and harsh, but also hypnotizing and druggy. The 16-track album is 44-minutes of swelling sonic carnage and curving tunnels of dark noise. It’s unpredictable and experimental in the most far-fetched meaning of the word–a weird record of doomed psychedelia.

     HAG was self-released in October on Professor Divebomb’s Bandcamp. Three EPs, Bynes, Greyg V and V Ceiling, were released in the preceding months. Divebomb’s last full-length was Greengold Workshop in 2010. According to Bandcamp, “Divebomb…carefully manipulates the sounds discovered in a plastic PC mic and from broken down keyboards, drum parts, punk dishes, etc.” The project, in that sense, is very experimental. It’s not songs you’re hearing, but manipulated and compressed sounds threaded together. Sometimes they interlock in strange, haunting harmony, and sometimes they do not, and a ruptured note sparks loudly.

     The tracks on HAG are mostly made up of cut loops and scraps of found sound with a garnish of hasty keyboard and guitar. First track, “Bald Oattern,” stretches slowly out creeping along with bells freezing and ringing against a walloping low-end tide. It’s a calm, indeterminate wave to the beginning of a very off-kilter junkyard of an album.

     “Huge Tongue” and “Intestinal Track” barrage the ear canals. Fortunately, neither run over two minutes and work more as padding to the greater whole. HAG doesn’t flow like a stream, but more like a churning, stagnant swamp of sound. “Thread Of The Noose,” which sounds like a plank of metal slowly coming alive, is too warped for comfort. Divebomb’s lo-fi recording technique can, at times, show a few scars.

     When everything runs together in fluid embrace, though, it’s a drooling, incompetent experience. A prime example of this is “Saliva Of The Tooth.” Held down by a wonky boom-clap beat, the song is loopy with hypnotic guitar strands that summon until it drops off into a slur of syrupy sound trails.

     “Faces Of The Ceiling” rides low on a meandering down tempo beat until melting into another time frame. Wounded feedback circles around the brain on “Dark Penetrations” until an avalanche of rigid guitar limps into the abyss. The two together make up HAG‘s Bermuda Triangle. The raw vibrations make glossed-over eyes fall directly to the back.

     The recordings are sparsely peppered with cut-and-paste audio particles from muffled nobodies. The scrambled dictation offers the only phraseology on the album and it injects strange visions. The voices are lost, poking through the noise. On “Slow Tattoo” an echoed organ walks in the twilight, pierced with snippets of hooting and hollering. It’s two minutes of serene buzz before crashing and morphing into “Plastic Bag,” a collapsing structure of chopped noise and harrowing inverted guitar.

     The final track on HAG, “Blood Of The Hoof,” drips like morphine through an I.V. with a loop that freezes you in place. It’s a welcomed breather after an album of scatter-shot sound lacerations.

     HAG is available for stream and for download, with Art Of The Hag, at Professor Divebomb’s Bandcamp page.

Key Tracks: "Saliva Of The Tooth," "Faces Of The Ceiling," "Dark Penetrations," "Slow Tattoo"

Year 2013

Greatest Music Releases of the Year 2013

Year-end Feature from Independent Music Promotions

From a "supergroup" expanding to a rock-and-roll legend, read our picks of 2013's best records.

REVIEW: "Excavation" by The Haxan Cloak

The Haxan Cloak conducts waves of doom on Excavation

     The music of The Haxan Cloak could be the internal soundtrack in Walter White’s head as he runs around Albuquerque covering his tracks. It’s dark, foreboding and urgent; the monotonous heartbeat of waking demons.

     Excavation, released this year on Tri Angle Records, is a jet-black pack of drone and ambient suspense. It doesn’t really exist as a set of songs, but more as a lurching morass of chemical sound. There are metallic thrusts of bass and industrial-grade beats. The sound constantly moves in and out of place, mimicking the slow and steady breathing of external beasts.

     The man behind the blackened soundscapes is Bobby Krlic, of the UK, and one has to wonder what working on music of this nature does to the solid mind. His last full-length album was 2011′s The Haxan Cloak. Excavation continues his slip into the sludge. It rises very slowly over the opening tracks, until suddenly the sound is everywhere.

     The swelling strings on “Mara” create killer-around-the-corner horror movie suspense. Play this, unknowingly, in the middle of the night and anyone sleeping will surely wake suddenly, fearing an approaching death. It’s dramatic and horrendously climactic.

     “Miste,” halfway through, opens the record a bit, allowing some pale color to leak in. A slithering bass line creaks along as the speakers fill up with the noise of dark matter. A slight rip comes through the black tarp on “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2).” As the track cranks up a little bit of sonic light pierces the veil with pitched swirling tones.

     The structures, at times, are reminiscent of the IDM brain-fuck lacings of Autechre, but with less bells and whistles, and an even bigger expansion of space. Silence plays as pivotal a role here as the noise. Krlic labors over creating something that mentally draws the listener into its grasp, then leaves them on the side of the road, bracing for the next creeping composition.

     “Dieu” pulsates darkly. It sounds like a bundle of leftover loops coming together and rebelling like the buckets and brooms in Mickey Mouse’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The final track, “The Drop,” defies most descriptors. I’d like to think there is an appropriate term to describe the song, but as it played over its twelve-plus minutes, I fell deeply into a state of psychosis and it’s debatable, yet, if I’ve pulled myself from it.

Key Tracks: "Miste," "Mara," "The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)"

from: IMP

REVIEW: "Reflektor" by Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire blow it on Reflektor

Arcade Fire don't know it yet, but they are currently in the throes of a creative death spiral. Reflektor, their fourth, is a bloated, disengaging, self-important yawn of an album.

The build-up to the record release was long and arduous with spray-painted logos on the sides of buildings, Saturday Night Live performances, self-effacing video promos, etc. The album, too, mirrors that lagging wait. The morsels of song goodness are buried in a sea of wafting production layers while the 'skip' button always beams in the eye corner.

The album, puffed out to 85 minutes and 14 songs, is split into two halves--a wise choice. The flatulent girth of Reflektor makes it a very tedious listen in one sitting. 

When every song is stretched out beyond it's intended structure the impact of brevity is lost. Every single song, even the two that clock in under three minutes, is a total slog. It's like quicksand to the ears. Each track gets stuck in its own groove, then remains suspended in said groove for an average of six minutes. There are no grand reconstructions mid-song, only a drawn-out, absorption of the same tired phrases and weak-as-hell rhythms. Little loops and tides wail along, but the groove remains. 

The only songs to actually benefit from this formula are "It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus)," "Porno" and "Afterlife," but unfortunately they don't appear until the very end of the album, all in one clump.

Singer Win Butler tries out his best David Byrne impression and gets achingly close on "Normal Person." The song could be one the Talking Heads jammed for about two measures two decades ago, but promptly threw out. It's this albums' "Rococo" (from The Suburbs), as far as total meaningless lyrical overreach. "Is anything as strange as a normal person?" he asks before examining his own social reality. Just boring.

On "Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)," Butler has the same pained quiver best used on "Ocean Of Noise" from Neon Bible. Here, though, light bongos put-put in the background and the break-down is so slight and lifeless, it makes this reviewer's head just want to roll right off its' neck. 

"Here Comes The Night" moves with a slow drip of senseless plucking piano until the drums show up and pummel the same exact chorus. "You Already Know" is limpid and pale beyond repair and "Joan Of Arc," which ends the first half, flat out sounds like shit. 

There are those good morsels, though. A nice low-down groove anchors "We Exist" and the rising chorus is more reflective of the group's sonic characteristics. The bass line rotates and the nah-nah-nahs are ethereal. The most quintessential Arcade Fire sound here is heard on "Afterlife," somewhat catchy and emotionally bittersweet, while "Porno" has a slick downtrodden buzz that is the brightest spot on the record.

The truly disheartening part of Reflektor is that it could've been whittled down to a strong, compact 10-song album and then it'd be worthy of the praise that's been wrongfully heaped upon it. Maybe this is what happens when a group wins Album of the Year after releasing two classics of millennial indie rock: Funeral and Neon Bible. 

The Suburbs, which won the Grammy and thrust them before a new, wider audience, ironically, started the group's current creative stagnation. That album and this new output lack the emotional urgency that made their first two so warm and sufficiently listenable. If this is the plateau Arcade Fire find themselves stumbling on going forward, you can count me out.

Key Tracks: "Porno," "Afterlife," nothing else