Showing posts with label Gesaffelstien. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gesaffelstien. Show all posts

Thursday 10 September 2015

On The Hi-Fi - Part !!!


The fog has lifted slightly but I feel like I can barely string a cohesive sentence together. I'm strugglin to get past 'I like/don't like' sort of writing at the moment. Deep analysis might be out the window until my brain gets flowing again. Sometimes it seems you need to be a musicologist to review this (above) kind of shit but no, I'm gonna give it a Space Debris crack. This is very bloody good. Before we had jungle we had the polyrhythmic mentalness of this Latino shit. Some of this music is as outre as Miles in the 70s while some of it sounds like it could have been off the soundtrack to The Love Boat. Many a legend is to be found on this comp that came out 20 years ago including Palmieris Charlie & Eddie, Joe Bataan, Ocho, Grupo Folklorico etc. This new version has an added cd with 8 tracks that weren't on the original collection.  Do I need to mention Cuba, Boogalooo, Salsa Classic, Puerto Rico, New York, Fonkay or whatever? This is Superfly, sometimes soulful, jazzy, summertime and everything else in between! Makes you want to drink cocktails in the sun and dance like you think you are the greatest dancer ever.


LIVE IN ALCALPULCO - DDAA (1981) (Tape 2)
Well I was not expecting this. I had previously heard DDAA's Nouvelles Construction Sonores Sur Fondations which was a lengthy drifting sonic art collage released in 1991. When the opening tune Ready With The Answer came on with it's rubbish bin percussion and mental guitar I was so shocked I thought this was a different group altogether. It caused a flurry of research and no it wasn't two different groups, it was the one and only DDAA. As far as I can tell they were a 3 piece who had formed in France in 1979. This release is surely where Sun City Girls got all their inspiration. Live In Alcalpulco is fabulously minimal stuff that sometimes sounds like a Middle Eastern no-fi Slint gone acoustic with drums made of cardboard. Then it goes psych post-punk like a No-Wave group stranded in the desert jamming while imbibing mushrooms then incredibly inventive drones, space invader noises and gamelan-esque percussive sounds enter the fray. The crowd of two like it a lot and clap enthusiastically (surely this is a faux-live record). I thought I was hip to all the under-underground classics by now, but no way, I was not even aware of this double cassette until today. Subterranean Gold!


I have been waiting for a new release from Gesaffelstein since his classic Aleph from 2013. I guess this isn't the true follow up to that masterpiece of 'beautiful paranoid atmospheres, bangin streamlined EBM and Cold Rushes.' It does have the cold and paranoid atmospheres but not so much the bangin club tunes. I assume Maryland is a horror film because this is quite the grim soundtrack. An hour earlier my brain had been comparing Burzum's ambient black metal tunes to those of the mid 90s electronic doom/gloom-core variety ie. Miro, The Mover, Reign etc. so it was weird that this turned up as surely Gesaffelstein loves all that stuff. Wall Of Memories could be a Burzum track with it's simple but bizarre piano phrase that is chilling to the (hard)core. Could a horror score be album of the year two years in a row?

*The Space Debris airwaves have been featuring the aforementioned Burzum plus the likes of Bathory, Ulver, Celtic Frost, Wolf Eyes (??), Bene Gesserit, Skin, Swans, Crime & The City Solution, Clint Ruin & Lydia Lunch, Terror Danjah, Isolee, Ricardo Villalobos, Arthur Russell, Future, Young Thug and er.....Gong. A little old school hip hop has been on the decks too including the likes of LL Cool J, Schooly D, EPMD, Slick Rick, NWA, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Dr Dre etc. with a blog post coming up on these ye olde artists and the current state of Hip-Hop.

Sunday 25 January 2015

John Carpenter - Lost Themes

WHAT THE FUCK???


What a nice surprise to brighten the gloom of my past week or perhaps add to the gloom but that will make me happy. Why didn't someone think of this earlier? Just get John Carpenter the music composer to do albums without the films. The films, have been nowhere near as brilliant and influential as his scores. I don't necessarily hate his movies but I think his scores are 20th century masterpieces. I dunno if I've heard anything by him from this millennium, though. Anyway lookout Zombi, Pye Corner Audio, Drokk and Umberto the real deal is here to give you a run for your money as just a recording artist. I'm a little excited by this prospect I must say. Halloween 1, 2 & 3, Escape From New York, Assault On Precinct 13, Christine, The Fog and Prince of Darkness are among my favourite pieces of music of all time! I'm not the only one who thinks this. Check out industrial music, 90s Memphis Rap, Techno, Doomcore et al. as well as 21st century genres like Deep-Tech and Ratchet. I was only saying the other day right here on this blog that John Carpenter might be the most influential musical artist of the 21st century. His music is universally adored and held in high esteem. Let's hope this record lives up to our expectations. If not, don't worry there will be another Umberto record around the corner (I hope) and whoever else Carpenter is currently influencing like Xander Harris, Gesaffelstein, Shay & Sinista etc.



This sounds very good indeed. It more than makes up for the lack of a new Umberto album last year.

Thursday 19 December 2013

2013 Best LPs



eMMplekz - Your Crate Has Changed
Semi lucid ranting over hallucinatory electronic dub splatter.

The Focus Group - The Elektrik Karousel
A spooky and disorientating trip out to melt your mind.  Psychedelia for now and never.

Ensemble Skalectrik - Trainwrekz
Transmissions from.....somewhere or nowhere.

Gesaffelstein - Aleph
Beautiful paranoid urban atmospheres, bangin streamlined EBM and cold rushes.

Primitive Calculators - The World Is Fucked
More confrontational than ever. Age has not mellowed Australia's greatest post-punk band!

Tim Hecker - Virgins
The ghosts of 20th century's monumentalism.

Umberto - Confrontations
The soundtrack to match the alien invasion movie in your mind.

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
It was hard to resist those tunes on the back half of this album in the end. Get your singin & dancin shoes on.

House In The Woods - Bucolica
Rural isolationist journeys into sound.

Lieven Martens Moana - Music From The Guardhouse
Dolphins Into The Future's main man delivers another warped environmental electronic masterpiece. He's on an oceanic roll.




The others I also liked

Skull & Shark - Lazerhawk
Ooga Boogas - Ooga Boogas
New Dark Age Of Love - Xander Harris
Fire Funmania - The Horrorist
Cold Mission - Logos
Cortex Meridian - Panabrite
Devesham Dub - Ekoplekz
Earl Grey Whistle Test - Robin The Fog
Secret Songs Of Savamala - Howlround
The Harbinger Of Spring - Children Of Alice
She Beats - Beaches
Testpressings 1-3 - Demdike Stare
Watching Dead Empires In Decay - The Stranger

The others that I didn't

James Ferraro - Cold,
James Ferraro - NYC Hell 3am
Stellar Om Source - Joy One Mile
Grouper - The Man Who Died In His Boat

On The Fence

Tomorrows Harvest - Boards Of Canada
I dunno if this is great, just ok or a complete waste of time (and I love their other records).
A Fondness For Hats - Moon Wiring Club
Only got it today, I'll get back to you on that.
Night Slugs All Stars Vol. 2 - Various
It's good and all that but it sounds more like the recent past than the future (as many claim it to be). Then again it's good though....or is it?....
Living In The Past - Manix
Well the title says it all but when those mentasm stabs kick in towards the end it's a little bit awesome.
Empty Avenues - John Foxx & The Belbury Circle
A charming new pop direction for GhostBox or 'sounds a bit like Nik Kershaw singin over a crappy library record?'

Stay Away From My Eardrums Pleaz

Lorde
Lilly Allen
Arcade Fire
And most of what's on my Channel V ie. 10,000 of Mumford's sons.