Monday, February 7, 2011
Mekhala Bahl
Drawings and Paintings by Mekhala Bahl. One of my top 5 favourite working artists right now.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
Sharon Van Etton - Epic (2010, Ba Da Bing)
A hearty staple in my musical appetite over the last few months has been Sharon van Etten's Epic. It's good ol' singer songwriter heartfelt crap, and it's lovely. It's also really fun to throw your voice around while singing along in the car, and don't worry, you will learn the lyrics quick cause they are very repetitive. All of the afore mentioned attributes of this album sound negative, but seriously are somehow positive on Epic. It's just plain good song writing. It's serene, beautiful, graceful, and subtle. It's country, no, no it's not.
Sharon Van Etten - Don't Do It
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Ultralyd - Inertiadrome (2010, Rune Grammofon)
RIYL = Lightning Bolt, MoHa!, that last track on They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top
It seems that I’ve been trudging around waist-deep in deep-waste muck lately. Musically. Just a lot of murky, brooding, gnashing tunes, and Inertiadrome is no different. The constantly evolving (and devolving) Ultralyd makes good on their album title (best album title of last year, for sure) with a heap of gravel-spitting, clay-cracking, noise-rock and spilt jazz. “Lahtuma” starts things off, lurching forward with a lovely line of gear-grinded bass and some kinetic drumming that motors forward endlessly. Fact is, Inertiadrome is built on the rhythmic propulsions. That bass, those drums; the engine of this album. Laid atop them – their gears and their gears and their gears – is a mix of squalid, ear-purging skronk. This is a pack of dirty, endlessly rifting instrumentals meant to drive you six feet into the ground. This is all no suprise of course, when you take into consideration that Ultralyd is one half MoHa! and the other half Kjetil D. Brandsdal (Noxagt) and Kjetil Møster (The Core). I noisy supergroup, indeed.
Ultralyd - Contaminated Man
Zs - New Slaves II: Essence Implosion! (2011, The Social Registry)
RIYL = Little Women, MoHa!, the listed remixers
Essence Implosion! is the beast, cut belly to back to belly, twisted and pulled, stretching like a slinky, and losing its entrails and everything in the process. (As if the original New Slaves wasn’t gruesome enough for you.) Aptly titled, the follow up to 2010’s album-of-the-year is not merely a “remix” album, despite what the details imply. One almost wishes those cursory details didn’t exist for fear they would suggest this as bypassable; a novelty; a throwaway. Of course, those conclusions couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, though, the source material here is mined from that great and singular beast: New Slaves. However, indentifying those samples amidst the tectonic grumbling of Essence Implosion! is messy, approximating to picking through, by hand, the chaotic viscera twisted out of the beast. Like its predecessor – and very much unlike its predecessor – New Slaves II burrows into various guises, each equally maddening, each tied to the first with threads of muscle, each peppered with rust and grind. It’s a pretty grin-inducing affair and a wonderful compliment to the astoundingly versatile Zs album it apes.
Zs - New Slaves [Weasel Walter Remix]
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Rich Kelly
I don't know how it is that I just stumbled across this guy. Posters, sketches and paintings by Rich Kelly.
Aeroplane Trio - Naranja Ha (2010, Drip Audio)
I expect to write a fuller review of this album on Foxy Digitalis in the near future, but as for now, hopefully this brief paragraph will do. Drip Audio was kind enough to send me copies of three of their most recent releases and, I must say, I’m completely smitten with each. I’ve already spilled my fanboy guts all over Subtle Lip Can. Now: Aeroplane Trio and Naranja Ha. This album is absolute gold. From what I understand, the trio – consisting of JP Carter on trumpet/cornet, Russell Sholberg on bass/saw, and Sky Brooks on drums – formed over eight years ago and have never before Naranja Ha released an official album. That means there is 8+ years worth of skillful refinement and chemistry bred into this sucker. The group works from a hook-laden jazz template that swings and grooves happily before they blotch and smear their improvisations into more sickly territory. Naranja Ha is both slickly palatable and free-flowingly manic, never bowing down to conventions, but rather incorporating them into something more dynamic and interesting. The tug and pull is wonderful, ranging from ridiculously catchy to squalidly free form. I am by no means up on contemporary jazz and its touchstones, but I couldn’t imagine a more solid entry point than Aeroplane Trio’s Naranja Ha. As it stands, Naranja Ha promises to be a go-to jazz album in my catalog for years to come. (And, I haven’t watched it just yet, but it should be noted that the album also contains a DVD with a short documentary and live concert. Bonus!)
Whitehorse by Drip Audio
James Blake - James Blake (2011, Atlas/A&M)
Yes, Forest Gospel loves James Blake just like everybody else. Erin says, Bon Iver. Nick says, Jamie Lidell. Forest Gospel says, move over Justin Bieber. Is there even a point to posting this? Which is a funny thing to say since the album hasn't even been released yet.
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