Little Women - Throat

Little Women
Throat
(2010, Aum Fidelity)
RIYL = Zs, Talibam!, MoHa!

Wait, what did I say about Zs and New Slaves? Oh yeah, that it was absolutely enormously monstrously terrific, or something, and that you weren’t likely to hear anything like it this year. While that remains largely true, Throat, the debut album from Little Women (which proceeded New Slaves in terms of release dates) is, well, lets call it a, um, lets call it the only album with an internal weighting system (un)balanced enough and the exterior costuming belligerent and malevolent enough to have a chance at breaching New Slaves to crumble its internal organs to the floor. Surely Little Women and Zs are like minded enough in their crunching aesthetic to be friends in the real world – they’re certainly contemporaries – but what is this music of not an assault? Its cantankerous tones battle absurdly like the razor pronged talons of an industrial garage cock fight. But if I must compare, if Throat demands to be slotted up next to the very best albums released so far this year (which it undeniably does), know that, straying from the consistently demonic New Slaves, Little Women also offer valleys of beautiful reprieve, sections classy enough to share breathe with Joanna Newsom’s immaculate Have One On Me. I suppose that is the key here. Little Women present a jaw dropping dynamic of primal explosiveness in step with elegance and melody, structure even. There is a fluidity from one end of spectrum to the other that proves Little Women are beyond gifted in their ability to both hone in on the essence of their instruments, turning out a cordial listening experience, and likewise to allow their instruments to own them and burst forth in animal bits of terror. Because Throat is an animal. A birdlike creature really. Dual headed, represented by byzantine squawk and purr of alto and tenor sax, the creature patters about maniacally crashing into any and everything in its path. The bone structure and legs of the creature (of which there is approximately five – legs, that is) are represented by the maverick drumming, and the body as a whole, a static glitching façade, by the constantly contorting guitar work. It’s a new breed with very few reference points. Sure, there is a beak, but two of them, and legs, but five. And the fact that it is never clearly concrete, almost a hologram, is equally troubling. What is it? Jazz? Rock? Noise? Yes, yes, yes and no. I’m having a difficult time dialing back my enthusiasm about the one actually, so just know that it was really hard for my not to preemptively anoint Little Women’s Throat as the best album of the decade and we’ll call it even.

-Thistle

Ben Frost - By The Throat

Ben Frost
By The Throat
(2009, Bedroom Community)
RIYL = Jasper Tx, Machinefabriek, Animal Hospital, Lawrence English

Ben Frost’s music carves at your nerves. On his last record, Theory of Machines, Frost created a tension filled industrio-noise masterpiece filled with delayed climaxes of other worldly proportions. It was one of the few records that I have heard that can be more aptly described as an experience than simply as music. You don’t just listen to it, you experience it. On By The Throat, Frost takes the experience of Machines up a notch; in fact, the album title says it all. There is something about this most recent Frost album that just devours you. Listening to this album has plunged me into a stark mindset, more claustrophobic and paranoid than I can ever remember feeling. The album art is actually a pretty successful portrait of the music Frost has created. By The Throat sounds and feels like a pack of wild beast, strung out, starving and circling you in preparation for an attack. The music is constantly teetering on the edge of that moment just before they lunge for your throat. I guess it is also important to note some of the contributors playing on By The Throat. Frost has pulled in a pretty impressive array of musicians including Amiina, The Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara, some Swedish metal band called Crowpath and fellow Bedroom Community compatriot, Nico Muhly. Yet, even with those big names, By The Throat is in every way a Ben Frost album and it is all the better for it. And, as a Frost creation, it is difficult to describe. There is definitely a compositional feel along with a lot of electronics, some field recordings and guitar torture. By The Throat finds a prefect middle ground between neo classical, drone and noise. And, while sometimes those genres can turn flat and flacid, By The Throat is an album that does not allow for passive listening. There will never be a time when you can just play the album in the background as the casual accompaniment for some frivolous activity. No, By The Throat is simply too emotionally confrontational and too aurally invasive to be an after thought. With growling and howling from instruments and real wolves alike, Frost's work burrows deep, digging its claws into your psyche. Frost’s composition boasts a ferocious muscularity and a grizzly aura that feels too real to be labeled as horror. Really, there is some mad gluttonous grit and terror at work here that provides just about as powerful a musical experience that one is likely to have. Make room in your top ten of 2009 and welcome the new king of compositional doom.


-Thistle

Pre-order and get an immediate download from Bedroom Comunity here.

There Are No Others, There is Only Us... Directed by Marc Silver, Scored by Ben Frost. Absolutely gorgeous.