Goodness

Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans - Electric Fruit

(Thirsty Ear, 2011)

Contemporary jazz--the good stuff--the stuff that peels itself apart limb from limb, lurching and creaking, banking towards every wall at once before reverse-cohering, enmeshing into some glottal lip-purse; the kind of stuff hell-bent on engining forward, pushing, ever pushing, finding the boundaries (are there pushable boundaries anymore?) that we don't even know exist and making beautiful war with them--contemporary, or should I say free--no, lets say forward-thinking, avant garde: this album in there somewhere, these players--Mary Halvorson with her lightly dissonant strumming and plucking, Weasel Walter with his machine-gun percussion, cluttering, Peter Evans trumpeting bursts flitting up and down the scale--are of that kind, and Electric Fruit, then, is one of the more enjoyable free jazz--or whatever--albums that I've heard lately.  The interplay here is as playful as it is disorienting, dismantling and destructive.  A really wonderful record from three of my favorite players.

Viodre - Interpol Alchemi

(Hospital Productions, 2011)

Like death, or like Graham Lambkin had he swallowed a microphone for Amateur Doubles (maybe he did) and instead of simply driving his Honda patiently (or whatever it is he did) decided instead to drive the thing through a building, then drove it through a crowd of zombies, then drove it into an ocean of lava, or like pulling apart, cord and wire by cord and wire, the instruments and amplifiers of doom metal band mid-set, or like recording and listening to the hellish mullings of sediment and magma stretching together and twisting apart, the elements of that monumental taffy machine at work below our feet, or like John Wiese’s essential masterwork, Soft Punk, if it were Soft Doom, or like, though hopefully not—and as I’ve already stated—death: that’s what it’s like for me when I’m listening to Interpol Alchemi.

"Incon, Ceph."


"Far surface delir"

U.S. Girls - U.S. Girls on KRAAK

(KRAAK, 2011)

I've never been able to get into U.S. Girls, though I've wanted to.  Megan Remy's project felt like the female counterpart to San Francisco's The Hospitals (RIP) in some ways, which was always a really exciting prospect.  Previous releases though, while interestingly caustic, have been somehow (and it's hard to describe why exactly) just not quite enjoyable enough for repeated listens.  U.S. Girls on KRAAK, however, finds Remy's U.S. Girls project really finding its feet, offering squawk and squalor in addition to hooks and a really bizarre, kind of wonderfully terrible cover of R&B classic, "The Boy Is Mine."  And it makes me so happy because I've expected that Remy had this record in her, after listening to her previous work, and it really is really good.  Certainly worth your time.

Pierrot Lunaire - Turn Back the Hands of Time / Lantern Floating Vessel

(Hooker Vision / Fadeaway Tapes, 2011)

Of all the 2011 that I’ve heard now in 2012, Pierrot Lunaire’s two cassettes, Turn Back the Hands of Time and Latern Floating Vessel, have wowed me most. He released another 2011 tape too, Exercise in Futility, but I haven’t listened to that one yet. But I will. I will listen to any- and everything I can find from him (including the new Hooker Vision 7”). Strictly on the basis of these two tape being, well, so weird and weirdly amazing. A mix of blurred vocals, tape manipulation and distorted saxophone, Pierrot Lunaire sounds (particularly on TBtHoT) like The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss if it were wonkier and infused with the out-jazz dissonance/melancholy of Sean McCann. Which means (if you are familiar with those references—and you should be) it’s really really really really really good, which in turn means that it more than good.

from Turn Back the Hands of Time:


from Exercise in Futility:

2011: Still Glittering...(Pt. 1)

Balkans - Balkans

(Double Phantom, 2011)

For those with This Is It-era Strokes still on rotation, here's a solid alternate (thanks Olive-Music).


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Flossin - White Anaconda and the Rainbow Boa

(Overlap, 2011)

What?! Zach Hill, Matmos, Christopher Willits (and two other guys) made a record of cluttery, blustery awesomeness? Many thanks, Anti-Gravity Bunny.


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Brian Grainger - Forcefield

(Milieu Music, 2011)

Milky-sweet, atmospheric, attention-worthy drone action from Mr. Grainger, a clearly underrated (and insanely prolific) experimental mastermind (thanks J. Davenport).

Jowita Wyszomirska

GAHZA - GAHZA

(Self Released, 2011)

Can someone tell me whether this is good or not?  I think it might be.  I'm on guard though because there's a blatantly high level of idiocy here, no doubt about that.  Not that that's always so bad.  But, all idiocy aside, there's a curious amount of possible genius as well.  Possibly.  I can't tell.  I can't stop listening to it either, so I guess that's a good thing.  GAHZA's a free-blitzing chipmunk Armageddon--taste freely.

Andy Curlowe

Naturally occurring noise

Is this literally not better than most of the noise music being played right now?  Or, I want to go to there.

Jessica Bell

Quicksails - SIlver Balloons in Clusters

(Deception Island, 2011)

I don't go in for a lot of the synth-based experimental stuff coming out lately.  Or, rather, I have no real impulse to even listen to it.  It's probably as good as anyone is saying it is, or something.  (Are people saying it's good?  What am I even talking about?)  I get confused.  And I'm am getting older.  I mean, I'm almost 30.  Pretty soon here you won't be able to trust anything I say.  Wow...I'm almost 30.  It feels like I shouldn't be writing a lame music/art blog if I'm going to be 30 years old.  And I have a kid.  I should have a job or something.  Or something...  I definitely shouldn't be awake at 3:30 AM posting blurbs for cassette tapes.  Cassette tapes.  People are still making cassette tapes and people are still listening to cassette tapes and I am almost 30 years old and I remember when I had my first cassette tape (Kris Kross) and I remember when Asaad Salleh made me a cassette with Snoop Dogg songs on it back when Snoop Dogg was Snoop Doggy Dog and how he was cussing a lot in the songs but he never cussed on MTV and I felt guilty about listening to him so I destroyed the tape by pulling out all the tape innards and my mom walked in and was way confused and said Why are you destroying that tape? and I said I didn't know.  And now I listen to stuff like this.  Weird stuff.  Am I an adult?