Big bundle of experimental jazz and improv albums arrived from the Finnish label TUM Records on 13 October 2011. All these releases are very well produced records and are smartly attired in colourful triple-gatefold digipaks with generous booklets of notes and photos and abstract painting cover artworks. Olavi Trio & Friends features the trombone...
Toil and Trouble Hubble Drums (NORTHERN SPY NS 015) by Hubble is mostly the work of Ben Greenberg expressing himself freely with impressive guitar licks and overdubs, arriving at some mutated form of Terry Riley repeated loop sections, filtered through dirty amplifiers and a rock-music mentality. If Sonic Youth hadn’t fallen under the spell...
A Guide for the Dead through the Underworld (CARRIER RECORDS 012) would be a useful manual for any human being, in particular Orpheus when he made his fated voyage through the dead zone, and of course Dante in his classical take on the numerous tortured souls he expected to find writhing in Sinnersville, even...
The News from Neptune Following in a haphazard American tradition of home-made instruments and objects that are half-sculptures are Neptune, who have been in existence for about 17 years and have over two dozen releases to their credit, yet Silent Partner (NORTHERN SPY NS013) is the first thing I ever heard from this highly...
Under Japanese Influence Expo 70 are Justin Wright and Matt Hill. On Blackout (DEBACLE RECORDS DBL054) they play a couple of half-hour cosmic improvisations using guitar, moog, Korg, drum machine and bass guitar, doing it live in parts of New York while they sat on the floor wreathed in a crepuscular haze. Pretty good...
Renewable Sources Energy (BIOMETRAX BIOM01) is the promise of Biomass, a Californian project put together by Walter Ovtha Woodz, and the title of a CD he released in September 2011. Tangible releases like this are probably just the tip of the biomedical iceberg; Biomass is more of an immersive experiment of sorts, involving meditation...
Get Knotted A fine baffling patchwork piece is The Knotted Constellation (Fourteen Rotted Coordinates) (MONOTYPE RECORDS MONO039). Over 32 minutes it’s hard to comprehend exactly what Kim Cascone is doing, but he starts with field recordings of church bells which he proceeds to mangle, overlay and roll up into balls of aural dough as...
The New York label XI Records has compiled TOOT! (XI 135) a three CD set of the music and sound art of Charlie Morrow, an American sound artist and composer who has been making music for about 50 years and yet does not appear to be that well-documented in terms of tangible releases. When...
Arrived 10 May 2011 from New York City: The Paranoid Critical Revolution with Euphobia (SYSTEMS NEUTRALIZERS 02). Guess what? Glenn Branca has a record label and this is its second release, an essential heft of avant-dissonant guitar rock music hauled off by Reg Bloor and Libby Fab. Bloor plays all the guitar, did the...
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