Review: Oneohtrix Point Never / Rene Hell - Music for Reliquary House / In 1980 I Was a Blue Square

(LP, NNA Tapes, 2012)

American future-gazers Daniel Lopatin (that’s OPN) and Jeff Witscher (Rene Hell) have harnessed the vintage electronic techniques and redefined them in thrilling and unexpected ways. Oneohtrix Point Never started with massive, stripped down analog drones that gradually worked their ways into kosmische musik worship, to later become more experimental, plunderphonic, using samples and creating collages. Rene Hell made a sharp break with the anemic ambient or noise projects to create a completely new entity: stylish, sleek, modern and actually adventurous. His style was like the IDM for the analog synth revival, flickering with mangled samples, tight rhythms often bordering on techno and rolling krauty synth lines.

It’s actually strange that the idea of a split release between the two didn’t come up earlier. On both sides, the musicians present their own, idiosyncratic approaches to electronic music, reinforcing their image and sounds, as well as experimenting insome new areas. Dan Lopatin continues his romance with creating new patterns entirely out of samples on side A, entitled “Music For Reliquary House”, after a performance he did in a New York museum of art. This is Lopatin at his most abstract and abrasive, often falling into a flurry of brutal, shard-like glitch clusters that mess up the entire recording and add a special, cracked-like, distorted quality to the constant stuttering in unknown languages. Sometimes he will reach back to his soothing beginnings and throw a dreamy, angelic drone to serve as the background to the pointilistic carnage piercing the listener’s ears with high-pitched precision.

Rene Hell’s side is definitely more melodic - and if I never thought it would be possible to call Witscher more melodic and song-like than Lopatin, Jeff’s compositions do actually possess a sense of melody - and some breathtakingly beautiful melody at that. Take the opening “Meta Concrete” as an example, with a cinematic piano line constantly pierced by jarringly modern electronic glitches, which sounds like a soundtrack to an upcoming film by Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze, this time set in a near future, with an obviously sci-fi twist, but still retaining the somewhat unreal, surrealistic imagery. At other times, Witscher will indulge in MIDI madness, like on overtly sterile and glitch-ladden “Bridge”. However, despite being constantly and relentlessly attacked by brutal, bare-bone power electronics, Rene Hell’s side always stays surprisingly modern and beautiful, soaring bold and proud with melodies and intense synthesizer sequences.

The split LP between Oneohtrix Point Never sees both artists switching roles, this time it’s the latter that takes role of the “relaxing”, more “conventional” and “song-like” part, providing a slower breath and a bit of rest from the glitchy, musique concrete fragmentation of the former musician’s side. An adventurous listen, where two visionary creators pay homage to their avant-garde forefathers. Recommended.

Brandon Locher - Conversations, 2012

Brandon Locher’s “Conversations, 2012” are not as much a musical record but rather an experimental spoken word piece following the same line of reasoning as Alvin Lucier. These two recordings are kept in vein of Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room” soundart piece. In Locher’s words:

After the first conversation “Person 001: Hello. Hello?” was recorded and documented I then proceeded to call another random person with a playback recording of the previous persons’ response. The person that is being called and recorded is fooled into thinking they are talking to an actual person when only they are responding to a recording of the previous conversation. As I move through the same process for each conversation, more information develops, and the concrete themes and ideas start to form more complex exchanges between the people and the recording.

The result is pretty strange and sometimes pretty awkward. Can be damn entertaining though. Don’t expect any relaxing ambience - this is kept strictly to the spoken word level. Hello? Hello? Heeelllooo?

Review: Echthros - Iyov (Assonance Records, 2012)

Echthros is the cinematic, atmospheric project of Bartosz Frąckowiak. Released in a beautiful, high-quality artwork on the up-and-coming Polish label for dark and experimental sounds, Assonance Records, Echthros explores the themes of despair and loss in six monumental, powerful tracks. These themes are no accident here, because, as the author explains on his Bandcamp page: “Iyov (…) is the biblical Job”.

The very opening “Underneath” begins with the sound of a thunder and rain, a field recording document gradually transforming into a heavy, ominous drone cathedral echoing the work of Sunn O))), especially their church-based Domkirke. But the guitars don’t kick in just yet, the first track is just a preparation for the things to come, and Echthros prepares us for a real ritual music/dark ambient feast with wonderful and spine-chilling Eastern Orthodox choral music. Needle-like whistles add even more coldness to the already frightening and uninviting wall of low vocals, like the long icicles hanging from the ceilings and windows of an old monastery the listener finds accidentally while stumbling through the winter night.

The descent into the night wouldn’t be complete with some heavy, sustained guitar torture. The second track, “Iyov” brings the Sunn O))) style guitar drones, stretched and harsh, but here they’re not as soul-crushingly heavy as the sounds of the American duo, instead they create a sort of hoarfrosty, vibrating tapestry which seems to be the logical progression of the chanted prayers of the previous track. From now on, the cascading guitar drones will be on almost every track of the album, marking their unavoidable reign over the rest of the elements. There are however moments of resting from the constant amplifier worship, like the heavenly “The Opponent”, which is a treat for David Tibet acolytes, setting Current 93-like spoken word passage against the vocal-based light ambient track. Or the shortest track on the album, the nearly 4 minute “A Prayer”, which is based on an old Russian melody, a bassy and mysterious Orthodox prayer which could only come from the frozen and undiscovered Eastern wilderness.

The music is perfectly complemented by the album packaging, which is a strong point of Assonance Records, always striving to give the highest quality and unconventional ideas for their CD’s. Printed on heavyweight paper, the front cover depicts Job (or Iyov) himself, a simple yet powerful image perfectly channeling all the suffering and sorrow Job had to go through. The inside features the lyrics in English and Russian to all the spoken and sung pieces on the album (including the Eastern Orthodox invocations and prayers!). A perfect album for the cold, black winter nights. Enter the dark realms.

Listen and download for free from Bandcamp

Buy the CD version from Assonance Records