Patrick Wolf The Magic Position (05.2007, Fontana Universal) 7.0/10
Patrick Wolf is an Irish singer/ songwriter/ vionlinist/ self-recording/ child prodigy. Wolf started recording at a young age, and by the time he reached 14 yrs, he had caught the attention of Fat Cat Records, who supplied him with a computer and mixing tools to records his music. At age 16 he formed Maison Crimineaux. Now, his solo project has taken the forefront. The Magic Position is his 3rd release as a solo artist. It's familiar pop is layered with eccentric abstract sounds. The album is variable with dense electronic tracks to piano ballads. It is written like a symphony with swellings and recessions. Elegantly eclectic and charming though it may be, sometimes I find myself a little put-off by the drama. At times a little too youth angsty, his ultimate serious nature doesn't seem to mesh well with the album cover, which makes him look like Mad TV's "Stuart." His voice is a little distracting for me as well. Loungy at times, reminiscent of Bowie smashed with Manilow, he adds a very different voice to chamber pop. Overall its a fairly delightful listen, but laden with distractions.
Liars have created a quick follow up with this their 4th, but first self-titled release. Coming off the return to critical acclaim that Drums Not Dead provided (just as a note They Were Wrong So We Drowned is my favourite Liars album to date and it got wasted critically; goes to show what critics know…wait, uh, well FG are fake critics anyway :)) Liars seem to have taken some additional confidence in their abilities. The band continues on the chameleon path they have been driving over the years. Definitely the most accessible release since their debut, Liars has bridged the gap from Drums Not Dead to a poppier use of their precious drums and a further advancement into their meshing of experimentation and rock sensibilities. Unfortunately, while the album does find some points of enjoyment the majority is dry and lifeless. The Liars have always been known to challenge their fans and for me this is a blatantly challenging album in that it seems to lack any of the heart or fun of their previous releases. It is definitely new ground for the band (I can't argue creative stagnancy), it's just that I would never guess that making something so much easier to swallow would make it additionally more inaccessible. Leave it to the Liars to destroy all concepts of logic.
Wednesday, (8/29) Magnolia Electric Co. and Band of Annuals will be country slaying the Urban Lounge as slowly and delicately as possible for you.
Friday, (8/31) Sees another visit from Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum at the Urban Lounge (It seems like they were just here!). So yeah, get a dose of experimental rock from the oddly named troupe.
Saturday, (9/1) In the Venue will premier the first Fixed Gears Festival (which appears to be two standard shows wrapped into one with the word 'festival' slapped on top). Headliners Ben Kweller and hip hop star P.O.S. will be leading their respective supporting peoples through a pretty fantastic Salt Lake show. I’m excited for this one.
9/4 – Brian Jonestown Massacre – Urban Lounge 9/5 – Dirty Projectors, Yacht, Grizzly Prospector – Kilby Court 9/6 – Snoop Dogg – The Depot 9/7 – Loom, Lionelle, Chaz Prymek – Kilby Court 9/8 - Darron Hanlon, Uzi and Ari - Slowtrain 9/10 – Modest Mouse, Rilo Kiley – McKay Events Center (Orem) 9/12 – Okkervil River, Damien Jurado – Kilby Court 9/13 – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – In The Venue 9/13 – The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Urban Lounge 9/16 – Maserati, Block Moth Super Rainbow 9/19 – Jason Collett – Urban Lounge 9/21 – Two Gallants, Blitzen Trapper – Kilby Court 9/22 – Karl Blau, Navigator – Kilby Court 9/25 – Lavender Diamond, The New Pornographers – The Depot 9/26 – Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem – Thanksgiving Point 9/28 – Black Mountain, The Cave Singers (w/ members of PGMG) – Kilby Court 9/28 – The Smashing Pumpkins – McKay Events Center (Orem) 9/29 – White Stripes (hopefully more than one note) – E Center 9/29 – The Future of the Ghost (CD Release), Slajo 9/29 - Darkmeat, Dane The Death Machine, People Person Monster!- Kilby Court 10/4 – The Cure – E Center 10/6 – Deerhoof! – In The Venue 10/11 – Atmosphere – In The Venue 10/13 – John Vanderslice, Bishop Allen - Kilby Court 10/14 – White Rabbits – Kilby Court 10/15 – Interpol, Liars – McKay Events Center 10/20 – Pinback – The Depot 10/22 – Aesop Rock, Black Moth Super Rainbow – In the Venue 10/24 – Caribou, Born Ruffians – Urban Lounge 10/26 – Busdriver, Daedelus – In the Venue 10/26 – Tiger Army – In the Venue 10/27 – Architecture In Helsinki - In the Venue 10/27 – Menomena! – Kilby Court 11/2 – Regina Spektor – In the Venue 11/3 – Valella Valella – Kilby Court 11/4 – Octopus Project – Urban Lounge 11/7 – Do Make Say Think – Urban Lounge 11/15-18 – “High School Musical” on Ice Tour – Energy Solutions Arena 11/16 – Of Montreal, Grand Buffet – In the Venue 11/16 – Fog – Urban Lounge 11/16 – Of Montreal, Grand Buffet 12/4 – Pedro the Lion – Kilby Court
Goodies It's a great day for finding awesome youtubes! Check this out- the most high-production video ever release by Animal Collective for the new single "Peacebone" on Strawberry Jam.
Sigor Ros will be releasing a film entitled "Heima" along with their new album, Hvarf-Heim due out later this fall. Watch this new trailor and prepare to be mystified. (Fader)
I just stumbled across two videos for Uzi & Ari's new It Is Freezing Out. They are really interesting. Like little installation art pieces, these are probably the best local videos I've ever seen. Here are the videos for "Mountain/Molehill," and "Asleep In Armor."
I am pairing my reviews today, cause in my mind they are very similar. (not only because of their similarly seizure inducing album art) Two very hyped albums from dominant and celebrated indie overseas artists were released this week. I have been a huge fan of past work by both of the artists, but was very turned off by both of the albums on first listen because of their new, more pop sounds. It seems like 2007 is seeing a pop invasion. Even bands that you would never expect to add pop into the mix have done so: Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Liars, etc. A lot of artists are turning more mainstream, more accessible, more catchy. Why? I don't know. I have liked it on some albums, but on others I have been very wary. Including these two-
M.I.A. Kala (08.2007, Interscope Records) 8.0/10
Everyone is raving about M.I.A.'s new international blend. On first listen I was hopelessly disappointed. I was expecting, or at least wanting, to hear some of those deep base, tribal beats that I loved from Arular (named after her freedom fighter father). I should have expected that since she ditched Diplo her backing beats would be much different. After a few listens I started to familiarize myself with the new more delicate sound, which includes bollywood rhythms, sirens, gun shots, street singers and guest artists. Slowly I have warmed up to Kala (named after her mother).This time around her lyrics are a lot less sexually charged and a little more politically charged, causing a lot of online discussions and controversy. Recorded at multiple locations including Trinidad, Australia, London, New York, and Baltimore, this album has a more diverse and international sound. From her Pixie's cover to her Timberland collaboration to her children guest singers, this album is all over the place, but still somehow congruent. The album doesn't sound like it came from any one particular continent, its definitely international in every sense. I'm surprised how much I enjoy this album after my initial dislike. Standout tracks are "BirdFlu," "Come Around (with Timberland)," and "Paper Planes."
Architecture In Helsinki Places Like This (08.2007, Polyvinyl) 6.5/10
I can honestly say that at one point in time Architecture In Helsinki was my favorite band. Those days are gone. AIH has ditched their charming subtleties for pure obnoxious pop. Seriously, this album is pretty annoying. The music hasn't gone downhill as much as Cameron Bird's voice has. What once was a frail whisper of complexing lyrics has now become and a repetitive anthem shout. He sounds like a squawking chicken, especially on "Hold On." On first listen to that track I thought it sounded a lot like one of the most obnoxious bands of all time, the B52's. Later that day, I was listening to that track at work and my boss asked, "are you listening to the B52's?" so, I must not be too far off on my comparison. Losing two members, AIH created a new eletro-pop calypso sound. The twee is gone, and the catchy is in full force. One reviewer called the tracks "surrealist nursery rhymes," which I thought was fitting. I'm giving the album a lot of crap, but it's almost completely out of disappointment. If Places LikeThis was my first AIH experience I would have probably given them a higher score, but in comparison it just sounds so juvenile and in-your-face. I'll admit, there are a few charmers on this album. I like "Lazy (Lazy)" and "Underwater," but most the other tracks sound like they were shooting for radio play with this album. I guess that's ok, wait no, no it's not.
I have had an unshakable obsession with ambient drone in the last couple of years so I decided to write a little article on it. While there is something to be said about the processes taken to produce the music’s texture and at least some level of skill to produce the loops and chord progressions that create these melodious blankets – the music is cloyingly simple. Some may argue the complexity of it but the true brilliance of any ambient music is in its restraint not its compositional virtuosity. Really, it’s introspective, not necessarily based solely on its own audible utterances. It is interactive music, playing off the emotive and lulling spells it casts on its listener. It produces retrospection based on individual memory and hangs on the ability to submerse one’s self in something so blatantly simplistic, the enjoyment of which could be easily faked, I suppose. I mean, some of the compositions are so faint and repetitive that, unless you are being particularly attentive, they could be adapted to and blocked subconsciously by a listener’s brain. But its power is in its submissiveness and it’s that same submissiveness that makes its resultant satisfaction almost unverifiable, similar to any type of religious spiritual claim. That’s where we get into shaky territory I guess. Where I can boldly state that I have witnessed some people on this here earth force themselves into what they would later call “spiritual experiences,” ambient music can also be an emotional (or spiritual) ‘forcing-of-mood’ to the submissive. As Sassigrass has so aptly put it, “ambient music is the new emo.” This assertion was simultaneously hilarious and offensive considering Forest Gospel’s historied obsession the word “emo” as the invertible king of all joke’s butts. The reason it was hilarious is because there was a time when Forest Gospel listened to Dashboard Confessional before they were cool (something we later found out was impossible) and offensive because it rang of some truth. So here is the rub, ambient music isn’t the evolution of emo but the manipulation of minor chord compositions into such. Ambient music is (arguably) rooted more solidly in classical music than in pop punk but that is what makes it so deceptively manipulative for the perma-saddies. It cloaks immaturity in intellectualism. So basically, what I am trying to argue here is that I’m smart not sad. Don’t let poser hipsters discredit your belief in my self accredited intellectualism. Oh, it’s kind of hopeless at this point. In honor of its inevitable pop stardom, I am going to review my favourite “experimental ambient drone” albums here in a list. While I respect the originators of the form (Brian Eno, Arvo Part, William Basinski) I am most deeply indebted to these following records for my current, instant tear flow inducers (my obvious penchant for the topic will create a point inflation of sorts on scoring so adjust the rating according to your preferences)…
Belong October Language (2006, Carpark) 9.0/10
Disciples of Fennesz in the fuzz department, this duo creates some of the most achingly beautiful pieces among the group. Perfectly sequenced minor-chord masterpieces that have been run through the crackle of October leaves, Belong makes the perfect music for evenings in that month; hence the title.
Christian Fennesz electro acoustic explorations incorporate
glitch electronics helping make this the most beautiful and organic “electronic” album ever created. IDM fans should take notice because Fennesz somehow makes the crackles and blips from their undanceable beat-candied floors into shores of immeasurably rewarding composition. The 2007 reissue has two bonus tracks!
Definitely one of my favourite records of all time (regardless that it was released just of two years ago). Eluvium, A.K.A .Matthew Cooper, accomplishes here what every ambient artists strives for: looping washes of guitar that could seemingly play forever without ever getting old. This was what made me fall in love with this kind of music.
The Wind-Up Bird seems to be working on a far more narrative affair here than any of his compatriots on this list, shifting from desperate beauty to lilting ease to eardrum caving dissonance. Incorporating electronic flourishes to his mostly violin based compositions.
Tim Hecker has been a long time standard player in the experimental scene but released has transcendent high water mark only last year. Here he has created a gorgeous work of art and then has taken the time to meticulously deconstruct it until the gorgeous nature must seep through the recordings inherent destruction. Flawlessly sequenced.
Equal parts ambience and noise. Powerful tidal waves of musical movements drenched in static and feedback all while
incorporating vocal drones and occasional drums as well. Axolotl works with Violin manipulations among other traditional instruments though you probably won’t know it by his output.
Tired indeed, this may be the slowest and most mournful of the entire list. Stars of the Lid's palette comes from a decidedly more classical background of orchestration and saws your heart strings with violin bows. This is a long affair spanning the length of two CDs or three LPs.
The master of minimalism amongst the group, at least on this seminal recording, Keith Fullerton Whitman is the elder statesman of modern electro acoustics and definitely the geekiest as far as his obsessions with the methods and sciences of the sound he creates. Whitman even taught at Harvard following this record in exchange for using recording equipment there for Playthroughs’ follow-up.
Chiehei Hatakeyama’s electro acoustic compositions have been likened to pop ambience. While I wouldn’t go that far, Hatakeyama does go a long ways in creating a general lulling pleasantness free from care. Along with his drifting afternoon-by-the-lake motifs, Katakeyama occasional transitions his pieces into beautiful folk acoustic guitar lines.
Transitioning from being a hardcore band to an avant-garde one, Black Dice created a long stretcher of primal noise amongst its tidal waves. An undoubted high water mark for the band and an enthralling contribution to noise andambience as a whole.
Lightning Dust is yet another side project of the notorious Black Mountain. These Vancouver acid folkers are taking the genre by storm. Amber Webber and Joshua Wells supposedly started this particular project in 2000, but it wasn't until June of this year that we heard their first release. I have to admit, when I first heard Amber Webber's vocals on Black Mountain I wasn't a fan of the depressed vibrato and intense swellings. I guess she has grown on me. I actually really enjoy some of the vocals on Lightning Dust, especially on "Jump In" and "Heaven" where the couple's vocals are paired together. The music is extremely simplified, moving in slow gloomy gusts. It's like listening to a tired brooding storm, waiting for the lightning to strike, but it just passes over. This darkly psychedelic Space Rock album is sure to fit a somber mood more than most in its class. It's an interesting beginning in my newly created genre. slo-psych.
Retrospective Gregor Samsa 55:12 (2006, Kora Records) 8.5/10.0
Last years Gregor Samsa released 55:12 which happened to slip sleepily under the radar but to omit it recognition here would be criminal. The bands first legitimate full length after a bindle of EPs and a split release reminded me of my affection for post rock and slowcore (two genres that the band embodies) and provided an emblazoned hope for the future of that affection. The band doesn’t really tread any significantly new ground in the area, borrowing the instrumental leanings of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Rachels as well as (dual male and female) vocals that are as beautiful as forerunners like Idaho, Sigur Ros or anything like unto it. I suppose the area where Gregor Samsa succeeds while treading so much familiarity is by creating an album so meticulously gorgeous as to never make a misstep. The duration of the eight songs never once reveals anything beyond the search for triumphant beauty. "Even Numbers," the second track off the record, builds over the course of ten minutes, alternating vocalists and swelling with instrumental prowess before bowing out. This is meditative music that spans every mood in its 50+ minute duration. I think the band's Myspace page quotes it best: "Sounds like, slow and sad. Slow and happy. But never fast anything."
Hip hop heads will be rejoicing this week as super-tour “Rock The Bells” visits the USANA Amphitheater on Tuesday (8/21) with the likes of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan and similarly legendary and acclaimed friends Nas, Rahzel, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, Jedi Mind Tricks, Immortal Technique and more !?!
FG favourites, Portugal. The Man, avoid the capital for a set in Ogden at the Country Club Theatre on Thursday (8/23) where they will bust out a set filled with their newly blues infused indie soul rock! This will be a show well worth the trip.
The Twilight Concert Series will continue to display indie rock for free in its over sized setting with French Kicks and Calexico this week on Thursday (8/23).
The U’s Red Butte Garden will continue to provide the independent record worlds most acclaimed country hybrids. Sunday (8/26) will feature Alejandro Escovedo along with Son Volt for your Sabbath evening pleasures.
This is the most blatantly experimental and intriguing of the long form minimalist electronic albums that have been released this year. Unlike The Field and Pantha du Prince (sorry to keep coupling the three) Pole is not wholly interested in entrancing and comforting. On Steingarten Pole manages to make hoards of texture heavy effects that come off as organic…well, organic if you are an alien. The songs moaning bleats and skittering blips feel like an odd arrangement of interplanetary zoo exhibits whose handlers slowly reveal themselves to be as peculiar as the creatures they're exhibiting. Pole's blatant disregard for acute melody and their search for the accessibility of odd almost aligns them with electronic saboteurs Excepter or late Black Dice. Even with such comparisons Steingarten shows easily distinguished traces of the school of mainstream electronica from which it was forged. Steingarten isn’t going to be for everyone (and that is just in relation to those with electronic sympathies) but it scores just enough to be wholly worth the experience for anyone who develops the slightest interest for Pole's musings.
Patrick Wolf
Eluvium
