Our friend JOHN 3:16 (a quote I subscribe to as well as a band whose work is consistently brilliant) has paired with the Belgian project Be The Hammer and the pairing have produced an album that, while fresh and brutally punchy technologically, also has a flair for reminding the listener of everything from Skinny Puppy to Front 242, and perhaps a bit of Central/Eastern European post-punk.
This album is going to get a lot of attention, surely.
When I hear the words Avant-garde in relation to contemporary classical music, I think normally of some me composers who pull out old, clichéd tropes. This release from Kenyan composer Nyokabi Kariuki is so stunningly weird that the album has given itself the right to be termed Avant-garde correctly.
A friend whose work I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing in the past, Rettward von Doernberg, pointed me to a podcast from December of 2005. The music is well-done, deep electronic music, the sort I remember from the 1980s cassette scene. Slightly freaky tracks with hints of Tangerine Dream influence among others, it’s a rather charming compilation, and even though I’m 17 years late to the party, I’m always pleased to share good old Berlin School synth music.
If you want to hear the podcast or subscribe to it via Apple Podcasts, click here. Otherwise, Archive.org can point you to other sources.
2021 was a very solid year for electro-industrial record label Artoffact Records out of Canada. Some of the more incredible cuts from this compilation come from The Hafler Trio & Reptilicus, Cevin Key (from Skinny Puppy), Kælan Mikla with Alcest and of course, Canada’s own Front Line Assembly-related project, Noise Unit. A really good introduction to a pivotal record company.
The last week I was in the United States before heading off to China, I watched MEV (collecting Alvin Lucier with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, may their names be ever remembered) and Kayhan Kalhor the weekend before. It was an incredible week of music before heading to more surreal surroundings.
Jeff Gburek’s latest album comes at a time where Alvin Lucier, whose mark on contemporary classical and experimental music in general is impossible to overstate, continues to inspire musicians as time passes. It is a ghostly work, at once warm and organic, but imbued with a vibe of a 1950’s-era sci-fi movie.
Jeff expands further on the album at his Bandcamp site:
Apparently, this will be the last ediition of radio works under the Trans-Beskid monicker, and it’s a sumptuous
This will likely be the last edition of radio works with the appellation Trans-Beskid in the title. Although I am still working with radio captures from the summer of 2020 which were made in Poland near the Slovakian border, I have refined my process to include captures from last summer in Romania and Bulgaria and live input form radios here in Poznan on the evening the two pieces were performed. Adding the microfreak synth and adding working with tones derived from the overtone series of the Schumann frequency changes the game entirely. It’s more of a contemplation — which in the etymologies is like putting many temples together — contemplon of earth resonance. There is something in this that involves a 25 year cycle of work with shortwave radios and my plunge into deep listening strategies. As the light of Alvin Lucier leaves our sphere, I can only heave an electro-magnetic sigh and moan at the passing of someone I never met and yet celebrate, with this offering, one whose work helped me feel that same resonance more profoundly. Word up Alvin. Over and out. For those still Earth-bound: the download is pay what you wish, what you can afford, for the next 48 hours.
Jeff, as far as I am concerned carries the torch passed on by Lucier and Robert Ashley. It would be good to see him eventually work with a label which will give him the exposure he deserves.
Hungarian band CMC have been recording albums since 1989, and, had they received their fair due during the heydey of post-Industrial Electronic Body Music (EBM), they would have been recognized as competitors of such luminaries as Front Line Assembly and Front 242, but with a darker groove.
The band’s main actors, composer Vince Kósa and György Szász, have reactivated the band. The grooves are still as powerful as they were nearly 30 years ago, and it feels like they never went away. Three tracks are available to check out, and each will remind you of the days where EBM dance floors resonated with such music.
Perila i(Alexandra Zakharenko) s a composer from Berlin of Russian roots releases one of the heaviest and, frankly, bleakest albums of the year. I spent today trying to unwind a bit as the snow looked pleasant, but after watching Juraj Herz’s The Cremator, hearing this album left me in a somewhat dark place.
The sounds are deep and cavernous. It is, in fact, my favorite style of ambient music, as it becomes easy to get lost in the sonic abyss the artist is projecting through her lens. There are two standout tracks on this album; Vaxxine, with gives me the image of some hallucinogenic nurse injecting me with something horrible while singing the eeriest of lullabies. The final track, Fallin’ Into Space, ends the nightmarishly good album in the way a heavy trip is ended by gently floating down back to earth. A stellar, if creepy, album.
We have a new band to follow, and they’re out of Bulgaria. E.U.E.R.P.I. produce a sonorous and pleasantly dark ambient music that sounds heavily influenced by the works of Steve Roach, Matthias Grassow, or even Lustmord. E.U.E.R.P.I. have proven to be as masterful at using field recordings, blending them into their live performance as documented on this record. One to watch out for.
Scott Lawlor is an incredibly prolific composer out of Corinth, Texas. He’s collaborated with scores of musicians and has many fine albums under his belt, but this is a one-track piece clocking in at a bit over 1 hour and 14 minutes. It’s drone laden, cavernous in sound, and surprisingly warm, a bit like going for a walk under a volcano and feeling the magma and steamy water while you journey ever deeper into the bowels of the earth. Well done.
It’s a shame that Hualun, and electronic music artist from Wuhan, China, has only one track available to peruse on his latest CD. By the sound of it, the album is going to rival the slew of Japanese New Age reissues that have been coming out recently on various labels. It’s a mish-mash of synths, cosmic vibes and a light, airy drone which was pleasing to my ears. I await the full release, which is due on December 10, 2021.