Review: Noseph Janner / Levvels - Destroyed Minutes / Levvels of Death

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(Cassette, Metaphysical Curcuits, 2013)

The first release from the brand new label Metaphysical Circuits, a sort of the next venture after the end of A Beard of Snails label, presents the “split” cassette between the two different solo projects by Owen McLean. Both sides present radically different approaches to raw, analog electronics. One is a glistening ride through komische school of progressive electronic, the other is much more raw and abstract, with leanings to the academic experimentations of early synthesizer vanguards.

If you’re a more “melody-friendly” type of person, you should fall in love with the Noseph Janner side. The short tracks are more like impressions, brief vignettes than fully realized songs, something like short exercises in synthesizer bliss. Moods and atmospheres change at a kaleidoscopic pace, leaving the analog territory for some more “live” instruments, like the lazy, piano-driven “Solar Surfer” which sounds like a loose cover of Readiohead’s “Pyramid Song”. Cosmic and New Age imagery permeates both the music and the track titles (like “Satellite Soul Vision”, “God Vision”, “Star Ocean”, “Planet of Sirens” etc.) - many tracks have the word “vision” in them, making them into transmissions from the subconscious or psychedelic experiences. That was the visionary side.

Now the abstract side by Levvels. “Levvels of Death” is almost completely anti-melodic, with McLean pushing his synthesizer(s) to the limit with noise-laden, thick and often harsh walls of pulsing, wailing, droning sounds. If Noseph Janner was the more beautiful side of space with colorful galaxies and shining stars, Levvels is the sound of coldness, vastness and emptiness of cosmos - imagine you’re an astronaut and some part of your space vessel begins malfunctioning. Levvels is the soundtrack to the space travel gone wrong and the fear.

Former Selves - Calico Sunset

Another fine piece of impressionistic, sleepytime ambient music with a soft, smoothened edge, like the setting summer sun. Little waves on the lake. The gradient of the evening sky. Reeds swaying slowly in the breeze. Everything cools down. One deep breath after another. Nothing stands in the way. The air is clear. Take a dive.

Review: The North - Glaciers

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(Vinyl LP, Captcha Records, 2013)

Oh dear, oh dear, why on Earth have I been missing out on Captcha Records for so long!? One of the finest experimental/psych labels around and I haven’t checked them out even once. I feel like an asshole now. Time to make up for my ignorance, starting with a stellar new record (very soon to be released on vinyl) by the Norwegian producer Snorre Snøjøst Henriksen working under the very fitting (considering where he’s coming from and the nature of his music) moniker The North. Everything around this release is made out to make the listener feel cold, even the artwork itself, filled with white and blue colors, as well as abstract, jagged shapes made out to look like the surface of a weathered mountain glacier. But despite that, and the heavy atmosphere of music, it’s not that entirely cold.

The blurb on the label’s website brags about the album’s inspiration taken from both krautrock artists and the more modern-age technoid explorers, and I’m inclined more toward the latter group when listening to “Glaciers”. In fact, I’m really reminded abou the output of the UK’s dark techno label Modern Love, especially the work of Andy Stott or Claro Intelecto, althought with a slightly more ambiental - and sometimes, indeed! - kosmische musik edge. The first track, “Serpen’t Tail” is steeped in vast, endlessly reverbing ambience, evolving toward a lethargic, slowed-down techno beat in a glacial pace. Henriksen takes pride in fiddling with textures in moods - the track is alternatively uplifting and full of light, as if the spring sun was shining at the glacier, making it shimmer beautifully; but then the dark clouds come and cut off the sunlight, bathing the music in dark basslines and thumping, cavernous industrial techno aesthetic.

Second side’s “Night Train” begins in a more oldschool, proggy fashion. Some might think of the more synthesizer driven moments of 70’s progressive rock, others’ minds will surely wander towards the oeuvre of John Carpenter. It’s certainly less dark and more dynamic, driven with classical sequencers and rhythmic analog drones, divided into several movements, some being quieter, building up the tension before finally releasing the disco fever of Giorgio Moroder’s glowing moments of fame. It’s a time travel to the past, leaving behind the cracked, icy caves of side A in lieu of hot club nights, although with a bit of darkness and mystery still staying, expressed by reverbed, moaning vocals in the back of the relentless techno beats. It’s way faster than “Serpent’s Tail” and immensely dancefloor-friendly, as if crafted to be played at house and club parties. If the first track gave an impression of an introverted, headphone-based listening experience, the second track will blow that away and make you blast it away through your speakers at top volume.

Despite its name, “Glaciers” is a hot record - at least side B. While side A does exactly what it promises on the cover, freezing the listener and sending shivers through their body with its lethargic tempo and ghostly atmosphere, side B quickly melts all the ice and snow away and raises the temperature bar dangerously quickly. One of the most surprising, and interesting records I’ve heard recently. Highly recommended.

Sungod - Crash Galactic

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Back when I posted Sungod’s “First Matter” on the Blogger based Weed Temple, it was an album filled to the brim with white hot, mind-melting stoner/space rock jams very much in the Hawkwind school of thought. “Crash Galactic”, the 2012 release by the same band, doesn’t rock as much, this time going for a more mind-expanding approach, doing less freakout jams and more droning nirvana sessions. It’s partially psych folk, partially New Age, partially kosmische musik and partially psychedelic rock free jam, but all in all it’s a 70+ minute long spectacle of cosmic powers and great, great music for trips of all kind (including the sober inner-self meditational trips). Recommended!

Adderall Canyonly - Btonal

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This album is an approximation of what would happen if the guys from Autechre in their “Untilted”/”Quaristice” era were devoid of state-of-the-art Max/MSP software and instead left with some shitty synthesizers and/or some ancient computer software. Strangely cut-up, often abstract, yet always beat-driven pieces call to mind the “mutant techno” aesthetic - it’s rugged, noisy, but strangely danceable (even if it would require a mixture of strange drugs in order to become danceable). Scummy, acid-soaked mutations of IDM and techno music reign here, leaving the kosmische version of Adderall Canyonly far, far behind. If you enjoyed Moon Pool & Dead Band, there’s quite a chance you’ll love this one. Highly recommended!

QUICK EDIT! Turns out that it’s from a split tape between Aderall Canyonly and a Texan brain-melter Kösmonaut  (real name: Patrick R. Pärk), who delivers side B in a similarly dancefloor-friendly fashion, except with less inclinations toward noisy bleeps and bloops and more towards endlessly unfolding classic prog-electronic epic suite much in the vein of Klaus Schulze or Harald Grosskopf. Check that one out, too! Top notch!

Misled Navigator - VI

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The tag list on the Bandcamp page of the simply named “VI” album by Brooklyn’s Evan DeJesus (who makes music under the moniker Misled Navigator) doesn’t give any clues about any particular style or genre that can be expected, instead putting everything under the deceptive cloak of “experimental”. But don’t worry, there are no harsh drones or electoacoustic PhD thesis in there. In fact, “VI” is supremely laid back and relaxing, at times recalling the later albums of Blues Control (especially “Valley Tangents”) or the later, more synth-oriented wave or krautrock on the edge of 70’s and 80’s when they started mingling with synth pop. And if you pardon the minor occasional compositional slips (like the sloppy drums here and there or hitting a note slightly too late), you get an auteur compilation of urban scenes steeped in a psychedelic sauce.

Review: Samantha Glass - Rising Movements

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(Cassette, Constellation Tatsu, 2012)

The cassette synth scene can be divided into three basic “schools of thought”: one school follows the jagged, raw electronics of the earliest masters, providing punctured, difficult and highly abstract compositions - either with a rhythm or rhythmless. The second school follow the star-gazing Germans and New Age post-hippies in their journey to explore the inner self, with deep, sprawling tracks that often take up entire sides or even CDs. The third school follows the sunny, carefree happy synth psychedelia of Harmonia or later Cluster, making compelling, catchy, yet hypnotic poppy structures.

Samantha Glass, the alias of a Madison, WI resident Beau Deveraux, represents the third school. Despite the grim looking cover, there’s no cold, windswept ambience to be witnessed here. While I tend to fully agree with label’s descriptions of the albums they release, often praising their spot-on sense of writing, this time I have to disagree with Constellation Tatsu. The blurb on the website says: 

The abandoned lodge emerges from the dark, wet woods. It is warm and light inside – carpeted halls and wood banisters welcome your step, draw you deeper past branching rooms. What mysteries, forgotten treasure, and danger await within these decrepit walls?

 Now put the cassette in the player or play the first track from the Bandcamp page. Where are the dark, wet woods here? Maybe if we were talking about a rainforest in the summer or palm tree woods then it would make sense. But dark? No way! Actually, “Rising Movements” is one of the warmest, most sun-lit cassettes I’ve heard in quite a while. Listening to this tape is like taking a bath in the warm, calm waters during the summer evening, the soft light washing over you. The 5 untitled “movements” (named simply “Movement”, duh) are a soundtrack to a luxury yacht marina filled with relaxing, well-to-do people sipping drinks and having a great time in the hot, hot sun. And there’s nothing sarcastic or critical about this description. This album genuinely recreates the laziest, most mellowed out moments of hot summer told in a language of electronic krautrock and analog synthesizers. Fuzzed out guitar licks hover in the background, bass guitar joins the pulsing, rhythmical electronic train, the sun shines through the leaves.

To put it bluntly: Samantha’s Glass “Rising Movements” is pure, unlimited bliss. Don’t believe what the others tell you.

Astral Tomb - Δ∞I

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With the cosmic cover, mysterious symbols in the album’s name and the self-description of “ambient trance rituals for multi-dimensional consciousness” you just know that the sounds composed by the mysterious “Psycrocosm” try to reach the outer limits of mind-expanding music and push them even further. And while the music on the album isn’t nothing new - just a pile of distorted, warped, tightly sequenced cosmick analog synthesized sounds stacked as high as the sky. Recommended for headphones listening. On the floor. With the eyes closed. I’m not kidding you. Let the following passage be a perfect testimony to the shamanic mission of Astral Tomb:

An open invitation to worship at the altar of sonic vibration in order to unify the internal clairaudience with the greater Cosmos. May this be your soundtrack for going deep within.

Review: Piotr Kurek - Edena

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(Cassette, Sangoplasmo Records, 2012)

Those who already learned to recognize Warsawian trippertronic magician Piotr Kurek’s work as ecletic, clever bricolages of carefully chosen samples and folky instrumentarium might have quite a bit of surprise with “Edena”, Kurek’s newest release, offered on the ever-solid Polish label Sangoplasmo. While the Suaves Figures project was already a hint of the shifting aesthetic, the modular-analog-dusted influences fully bloom on the newest release, going for the retrofuturistic prog electronic journeys with a touch of Tortoise-like sophistication here and there.

The opening track “Becoming Light” is also the most minimalistic one, relying on slow-paced sequences, gradually getting stacked with new levels of complication, becoming little baroque symphonies for modular analog synthesizers. It also bears a strong influence of 60’s experimentalism, going for the hyper-energetic electronic nirvana in the vein of Terry Riley’s 1967 masterpiece “A Rainbow In Curved Air”. Characteristically for Kurek, the sounds here are rich and whimsical, going for the kaleidoscopic, “happy-go-lucky” electronica with a penchant for some masterful sample collages. Like the cut-up female voices and brilliantly sparse xylophone workouts on “Tonal Colors”, effortlessly gliding through a Technicolor rainbow of retro psychedelia.

But the vocal harmonies really get the spotlight in the main track, “Edena”. The looped and stretched vocal melodies blend perfectly with the somewhat haunting, almost Amon Tobin-like atmospherics (of the lighter kind). The synthesizers still make a strong presence, with almost skeletal pulsations creating the basis for further elements of sound. The following “Untitled” has the sourest, sombrest tone of all the tracks on the album, gradually obtaining a dissonant, droning, somewhat depressing tone, a’la Oneohtrix Point Never before he went all plunderphonic.

The last two track come back to the more traditional Piotr Kurek zone, with rich sample play and synthesizer soundscapes creating a fun source to work on. “Goddes Eye” (named curiously similar to Julia Holter’s “Goddess’ Eyes”) confronts heavily trippy Stellar Om Source-like  saxophone/synthesizer solos with vocal collages, blending together deep opera bartione (or maybe even bass?) with normal, somewhat soul-like singings. The closing desires is the most “traditional” track in Kurek style, harkening back to the “Heat” cassette, released on Digitalis Ltd. Quirky strings and microsamples of uttered phrases provide a backdrop for the snakelike melody and a plethora od dusted sounds. The cassette ends with a noisy, heavily electric “guitar” treatment and ominous, calm notes from an old-timer synth.

Piotr Kurek proves once again that he’s one of the masters of Polish trippertronic scene, constantly one-upping himself into new levels. He’s one of those guys who don’t get lazy and fucked up because of the hype they get, but rather get even better and feel the need to create some new exciting shit in order to pursuit their singular Vision. Let’s support those fuckers.

Review: Personable - Spontaneous Generation

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(Vinyl LP, Peak Oil, 2012)

Los Angeles synthesist M. Geddes Gengras (the mysterious M. of his name still being an unsolved mystery of the psychedelic underground) is a man of many trades; when not exploring Berlin school and early electronic aesthetics under his real name (he just released a fresh LP on Holy Mountain, entitled Test Leads), creating blissed out psychedelic folk as 1/2 of the Antique Brothers or jamming together with Cameron Stallones a.k.a. Sun Araw and the righteous Rasta brothers from The Congos in the heart of Jamaica he is also dabbling in the world of rigorous, modular techno with his Personable project.

The harsh, blown-out beginning of the opening “Billions Of Christic Atoms” abruptly gives way to a highly disciplined minimal techno squeezed between endless successions of a sequenced theme treated with a slight reverb and delay job to enhance the experience. The techno beat in this one is almost unnoticeable at first, but soon carves its way through the eternally kosmische-gazing stylings of Gengras, transforming the space-age bachelor pad equipped with state-of-the-art hi-fi system into the austere club dance floor, offering hypnotic cuts into the beat-based based world straight from the future. Or maybe it’s just loungey prog electronic music masquerading as a set of three drawn-out dancefloor bangers? Later on into the track, the somewhat danceable structure gets transformed into more of a highly detailed, high-speed and constantly looping “furniture music” without ever really changing, creating an image of just standing in a club and nodding the head a little.

Don’t worry though, because “Series of Energies” is sure to kick you out of the stupor - this one doesn’t have the previous track’s predicament (maybe because it’s way shorter) and stays a straight-up acidic techno piece all the way through, bouncing and echoing as it progresses, without ever losing the dancey vibe, even despite its raw, minimal nature (the only semblance of melody here is a radically chopped, glitchy sequencer - which strangery works). If Ged Gengras leaves the long track format (by this I mean 20 minutes and more) to synth improvisations and ambient pieces and focuses on shorter tracks when it comes to techno music, then we might have something goooood coming up. “Spontaneous Generation” is an album with potential - the one Gengras failed to fully harness, but at least we’re sure everything to make a great analog techno music is there.