Fishing With John - Neko Shokan

Read my entire review on The Silent Ballet.

Take one look at the album cover. Accept it. It really is the album cover. The Hallmark faerie didn't accidentally switch it with a get-well-soon card. The choice to employ a cuddly kitten as the ambassador to your third album, as Fishing With John has done, makes a lot more sense if you are a cat enthusiast and you are a regular writer for "Kitten", a Japanese magazine about cats, which Yusuke Igarashi is. I'd expect that the music on Neko Shokan ("Cat Correspondences") would be a precious soundtrack to watching cute animals do their thing, a saccharine ode to all things young and innocent. And that's pretty much what we have here!

Fabio Orsi & Valeri Cosi - Thoughts Melt in the Air

Read my entire review on The Silent Ballet.

What is so striking about Thoughts Melt in the Air is its vibrant optimism. These songs are nailed perfectly, and do what good drone and free noise should do: create a new world for the listener. The pieces sound alive, like they have conscious intentions. The pacing of this album is excellent, solidifying this duo as icons of top-flight experimentalist noise-scapery. Fabio Orsi and Valerio Cosi have collaborated a lot in recent years, and I will be paying close attention to part three of their "Apulian Trilogy". Bravo.

Mokira - Persona

Read my entire review on The Silent Ballet.

Mokira has made a mature-sounding album. It's also pretty: pretty boring. The spark of life is dim. I hear his previous album, Album, is much better, and I'll go find that one. As a fan of ambient music, I believe there are other musicians doing this sort of thing much better.

The Spacemen 3 ode "Oscillations and Tremolo" takes the cake, though, for its flaccid attempt at profundity. Just as the title suggests, it's a slowly-metamorphing series of synthesized patterns. The only time I found this song interesting was while out on a long walk, when the negative space between the oscillations gave way to the constant sound of traffic. The song became a ghost of its former self; almost unheard. You can perform this experiment on your own, by the way, by repeatedly cupping your ears with your hands, but Mokira does it for ten minutes - beat that! If you're just relaxing at home without loud background noise, this track just reeks of annoyance. It's like waking up at 8 a.m. in the abandoned post-rave factory and realizing that someone left the strobe light on. Ugh. Take me to Denny's.

Zu - Carboniferous

Read my entire review on The Silent Ballet.

If you've been listening to Zu throughout their 10-year rise, you know they are liable to mutate into new, adventurous versions of themselves on each record. This album showcases an advanced leap in song-writing; their finest work thus far.Carboniferous is just their third full-length, but they've collaborated on up to fifteen records and splits. To call them "jazz" at this point proves you're reaching for a description that used to work. Even back then, it was a stretch. When it comes to labeling music, I'm more like Aldous Huxley, who said that "any attempt to reproduce these musical statements in our own words is necessarily doomed to failure." Music as exciting as Zu's cannot be captured in the medium of the written word. It's a mystery to be lived.

Greg Malcolm - Leather and Lacy

Read my entire review on The Silent Ballet.

The guitar sounds Malcolm creates are as varied as an ecosystem. For being a bit on the strange side of things, the music is refreshingly relaxing, much like watching a fire. The songs on Leather and Lacy are much in the style of Malcolm's album Hung on Campbell Kneale's (of Birchville Cat Motelfame) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. For someone to appreciate jazz and express that appreciation in this way astounds me. I've never heard jazz that sounded like this. I've never arrived at an understanding that remotely resembles what Greg Malcolm has done with these songs. They've become dirges for a distant future, when our civilization has transformed into something simpler. Percussive dialings, shimmery scrapings, clean melodies, musty desert wind. It's all so strange and wonderful, emotional and timeless. This is wise and magical stuff. Pull up a log and lean in.

TSB - Yeah, I still do that

The Silent Ballet is a great gig, and with writing a review every two weeks it allows my writing to get a lot better. It is music criticism perhaps, but I've improved my approach and recently have gotten more creative with how to describe music. My most recent reviews reflect this, if you're into reading them. The Klaus Nomi review was voted "review of the week" on the site:

Angel - Hedonism - Noise
Klaus Nomi - Za Bakdaz - space kabuki countertenor
Breasts - Breasts - acid psych-lounge
Amateur Takes Control - You, Me and All the Things Unsaid - generic post rock

Comatone & Foley - Trigger Happy - Awesome electronic debut
Bohren & der Club of Gore - Dolores - Album of the year
Fjordne - Stories Apart From The World - top ambienttronic artist
Skeletonbreath - Louise - dark folkiness

Growing - All The Way - not great (which is fun to write about)

Tamagawa - L'Arbre Aux Fees

I am back in action. 2008 was a hard year for me to write in. The process of watching my best friend grow a human, give birth to Everest and then adapting to taking care of this crazy animal is exhausting. And just reading that feels like an understatement to me. So with great pleasure, I return to the fold of talking about unknown or awesome music.

This entry revolves around an artist named Tamagawa. I have noticed that many of the Japanese artists I enjoy seem to title songs and albums in languages other than Japanese. I can't read Japanese so that's nice of them. Fjordne is one such artist, using a name that sounds, well, Scandanavian. Tamagawa is/are apparently French but uses a very Japanese sounding moniker. I don't understand where these names are coming from, but it's keeping me on my toes. You just don't know who is who in this world wide web of anonymity.
Tamagawa go through a label called Basses Frequences. Yes, that is spelled correctly. And the dude who runs it has kids and is passionate about music. Plus the site is a dot-Org, so simply by that alone it can be deemed safe and wonderful to deal with. All the releases (including a few Aidan Bakers) on this label come in unique packages, such as metal tins, but Tamagawa have taken it to a new place, forcing me to ask, What is an album, and how can it be presented? This music comes on three mini CD-Rs, so it's a whole album's worth of music (and such lovely music it is) spread out into three suites. The whole album itself comes in a giant plastic sleeve, with a paper sheet donning images of an on-stage lantern which you can cut out and piece together as the carrying box for the little CDs.

With so much digital information serving as "albums" now it's usually common to have ONE image to "describe" an album for, what seems, eternity. No one will remember the back cover to, say, the latest Coldplay album. It's that front cover only. The whole "3 mini CDs in a box" phenomenon is delightfully stubborn on this front, especially when it comes in the mail and you really don't know what to expect from it as you flip through the little cards that also come with the music and paper doll box. The music on these discs is drone-driven, but the drone is really just home base for Tamagawa to play with lots of styles and sounds. A little post-rock even rears its pretty head amongst this noise. The thing that binds it all together, though, is the warmth of the sounds. Even when it gets really loud (one of the cards strongly recommends playing this music loud) it is not abrasive. It's warm. Fuzzy and glowing. Crystalline in tone but without hard edges. Hypnotic, tranquil, all things I want out of drones. It's one of those sound collections that can be highly engaging or very helpful in aiding a meditation session. If you like your sound blistering and warm and friendly, here you go. Apparently there's only a few copies of this album left for sale, and after that they are gone forever.

PS. Tamagawa is on tour in the US and Canada, so check that myspace page. New York gets a bunch of hits. Jim? You know need to hear things that you aren't working on in your studio.

Angel - Hedonism

Read my entirely strange review at The Silent Ballet.

Hedonism is a fascinating and raw barrage of industrial environments and textural found sounds. Pregnant women and people who are ill may react violently. Listener feels subjected to a medical experiment. Advanced listeners uninterested in "safe" music will have much to explore. Album feels devoid of emotion at times. Occasionally annoying to listen to. More often feels vivid. Requires full immersion and trust in Angel to bring you somewhere you have never been before. Listener will be challenged. Potentially very rewarding. Headphones a must.

Klaus Nomi - Za Bakdaz

• Read my entire review at The Silent Ballet.
• 
  
• Za Bakdaz is a posthumous operetta. If you have never heard Klaus Nomi, please go listen to him right now. It is unlike anything you have ever heard. While there have been a number of countertenors (men who sing in a higher range; in this case soprano), no one compares to Nomi's range or thespian mystique. His stage persona was like a kabuki robot from the Weimar Republic's golden era wearing a monolithic bow tie and was as much a part of Klaus Nomi as the music. To be in the same room with him was transformative and other-worldly. And fun! It's been twenty five years since Nomi died of AIDS-related complications in 1983, so Page Wood and George Elliot, Nomi's consistent collaborators, decided to un-duct-tape the old shoe boxes of tapes and takes, piece together fragments from the Eighties and capture a semblance of Nomi's vision for his epic, unfinished space western!
  

The SEVENTEEN: 2008

SEVENTEEN. The number of my life. It has been the one I and others have chosen, non-arbitrarily as the one that shows up "at random" more often than any other number in English speaking reality. People perpetually use it to exaggerate in stories. Its multi-syllabic nature is a favorable feature when trying to embellish. Seventeen. The day of my son's birth. The number of weeks in an NFL season. The number of chapters in Finnegan's Wake. It's a novel, a musical, a song or five, a movie, a magazine. Locusts. Chlorine. NC-17. It's around.

One of these days I am going to figure out what it has to do with the nature of the universe. But not yet. First we have music. This was a decidedly vocal-less year by comparison to every other year I have listened to music. The number one reason why is having become a writer for The Silent Ballet, an instrumental music website. Wow, how times have changed. So with a 17-gun salute and in a slightly particular order, I present the 17 Most Bestest Albums from 200n8:

Maninkari - Le Diable Avec Ses Cheveux
Here is the list of instruments used for this album: Viola, drums, cymbalom, santoor, keyboards, piano & samples. Intrigued? It gets better. This is this French duo's first album, and it is a double album of post rock drift and middle eastern tinged tribal clouds and jazzy shufflings. No, one CD cannot contain this awesome, truly unique sound. If you are looking for something new and adventuous, look no further. Listen

Russian Circles - Station
Someone needs to say this. Station is better than Enter. There. Yes, Enter has more complex riffing and Station seems the simpler of the two. So it is like this: If you could make chicken kiev, country style grits, streudel, mole, and saltwater taffy every day, you probably would. But is that more sustainable than, say, a nice, juicy grass-fed hamburger? What is going to be more satisfying in the end? Often enough, simpler methods lead to a more sustainable result. Station is like that. The song-writing is better. It sounds simpler, but it took a lot more work to get the quality pacing this album possesses. Listen

The Abbasi Brothers - Something Like Nostalgia
Off the Dynamophone label, this is one of the freshest, lovely debuts I've heard. Conceptually, it's diverse and full of strong, warm musical theater. Piano and guitar. So much can be done. Each song on this album could be a theme song on a movie soundtrack. Just about every one has a melody that strong. Dynamophone has a penchant for the "relaxed". This is one of their most dynamic-relaxed releases. Listen

Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker - Fantasma Parastasie
What makes this drone weather-scape album better than other ones? It's quiet by being loud. It's denser than mousse cake in a puddle of lead. The layers seem infinite. The number of melodic changes is also very high for a work so slowed down. The evolutions still take me by surprise. These guys are good. Listen


Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Dolores
This ended up being the number one album on The Silent Ballet. I really can't say it doesn't deserve it. The patience of Bohren is astounding. It invokes a light of hope in the middle of a relenting black. Like Grenouille of Perfume seeking out his inhuman dreams. I happened to review it, as well. I felt it was the best review I wrote all year. Good thing. Listen


Upcdowncleftcrightcabc+start - Embers
I don't know why people dog on this album over at TSB. It's an album that has left the staff divided. "It's an Explosions in the Sky rip-off" is a common sentiment. I can understand that. At least two of the tracks sound like they could be EITS, but with less emotional oomph. But UpcDownC rock hard. There is serious drama on "Get To The Chopper" and "McDoomish". Maybe it's not genius, maybe it is a guilty pleasure, but it's compelling. The use of a string ensemble in conjunction with UpC's precise, angular melodies is also a delightful choice. The guitars sound good and rich when they get heavy. I'd call this album infectious. Not convinced? Too bad for you. I can't stop listening to this thing. Listen

Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion`s Skull
Expansive dark country music! Dylan Carlson, the founder of Earth, is getting better with age. This is undoubtedly the most accessible Earth album. It has a poignancy rivaled only by Bohren's Dolores. The songs all feel extremely natural. Earth truly are masters of their own universe. Listen


Portishead - Third
Few bands are this good. Another planet good. Fewer bands can be all like, We are going to ignore the band for ten years and then make a record and have it be ground breaking. Each song is ridiculously original, except for the couple that sound like Portishead. What a rip off. Wait, they created that sound! What a band. Listen


James Blackshaw - Litany of Echoes
Extremely talented and young James Blackshaw rips a new one. Don't take that the wrong way. I only put it that way because some people came down on this album, like they were expecting it to get crazy or rock out or something. No, it doesn't change all that much. Jimmy B is a meditator, and a damn fine one at that. Tireless hands on a 12-string are joined by piano and strings on this gorgeous piece of work. Track two is one of the most breath-taking songs I have ever heard. Listen

Svartbag- Svartbag
Psych-kraut-trance-tronica with a real drummer. This was a surprise gem. I mean, 'svartbag' doesn't exactly sound all that endearing. More like a bad joke gone worse. But I don't speak Danish. I do, however, speak in the language of cerebral spinal fluid boiling bejesusness that this album speaks in. This is one of those amazing albums whose creation I do not understand. Being a musician, I love that. Black Capricorn is one of the best tracks of the year. It's in 5-4 time! As a whole Svartbag is gem after gem, well-paced and intrepid. Listen

Grails - Seek Refuge in Clean Living/Doomsdayer's Holiday
If you didn't notice, these two albums which came out in 2008 are kind of short. What's a Grail's fan to do? Burn a CD with both albms back to back. And wow! It feels like it's supposed to be that way. Grails' black tar and incense-infused psychosis starts like a sober trip to India on Clean Living, and then the tour bus gets sucked into the vestibule of hell and salvation on Doomsdayer's. Both are very strong records. I don't get what all the fuss is about, with Grails releasing too many good records in one year. This band is on another planet. Go there to wonder and tremble. Listen

*Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill* *Julia's Pick*
If this was your first listen to Grouper, you might say 'Hey, that's a lot of reverb.' In reality, her previous records had way more of it. Dragging is Liz Harris' cleanest sounding album, and it's gorgeous. I find melodies from this album arriving in my head, they stay for days, and when I finally realize it was Grouper, they disappear into the ether. This is a beautiful record, one with a title that suggests something very difficult, which is what Harris said this record was: Lifitng the veils of reverb and echo enough to make out her voice and guitar with clarity was a big challenge. I hear she doesn't like doing live shows either. So, this was an emotional break out. Lovely. Listen

Philip Jeck - Sand
Philip Jeck! Never heard of him, you might say. That is ok. This man uses found sounds to create collages, basically. But listening to the fizz and fanfare of Sand wouldn`t lead you to believe it was put together with a bunch of scraps fathomed by others. It is an entirely natural world. A world of momentum. Of moving particles and their destruction and reconstitution. Jeck does all this on turntables, and to actually know that makes the experience of listening to Sand that much more amazing. Listen

Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
In case you haven`t heard, this band is really good.
Always.
And Happy!! An absolute disaster your life could be if you don`t put Sigur Ros in it. Hyperbole, no.
Listen


Disinterested - Behind Us
Why mess with a good thing? Drifty, post-rockish shoegaze can be delightful. Just because an artist doesn`t push a genre to new limits doesn`t make his album wonderful. I do not think Behind Us came out this year, but we have been listening to it a lot. It has been a consistent album to throw on as the day winds down. I find that each composition is pretty different from the next, and the album is very cohesive. It is too pretty to deny, really. Listen

Stars of the Lid - and Their Refinement of the Decline
I know. This came out last year. And I also said it was one of my favorite albums from last year. But, what the fuck, no one can stop me. This is one of the best albums of the decade. Stars of the Lid are in a class all their own. Its drifty, orchestral washes were there through my wife`s pregnancy, it was playing when she was in labor, we played it for three weeks when our new baby was out and all boiled monkey-looking with us. We sleep to it. It became our album of 2008. The theme to our new family. Listen

Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Again, I know. This also came out last year, but damn it. We listened to it THIS year. It colored many a sunny morning. It`s like going to church and singing with the choir. So happy! And brilliantly conceived. A record we will go back to year after year. A keeper. Listen

Girl Talk recognizes the END

Girl Talk is a one man band dude who I've never listened to, but I find it very interesting how devoted he is to December 21, 2012. He is planning to play his final show EVER on that day, due to the world ending. Come on, man! It's regenerative. It's not BLACK, FINIT, THE END. It's the end of the world "as we know it." Perhaps this man is using the date as a publicity stunt. Keep your ear out for Girl Talk in 2013 and beyond. If he plays a show, he's shit.

DJ Gig

I will be DJing in downtown Vancouver on October 4th at my friend Simon's art opening. I was specifically asked to do ambient/drone to open the night and then dark and bizarre to end. Just perfect. There's bound to be a bunch of Maninkari, Philip Jeck, Grails and the like. Can't wait.

Reviews on The Silent Ballet

I`ve been writing a bunch of reviews for TSB, four of which have been published. My writings get published every other Thursday. I am getting better with each attempt, and the one coming this Thursday is probably my most well-written. Here are the links to the work I`ve done thus far:

Endif
Christophe Bailleau & Neil Williams
Gel-Sol
Life Toward Twilight
Hermelin

I`d never heard of any of these artists before I listened and wrote about their albums.

Righteous Label: Dynamophone

Dynamophone is in San Fran, and they specialize in ambient and "euphonic experimental" music. Ha! Euphonic. Maybe you thought they meant "euphoric" but no!

eu·pho·ny /ˈyufəni/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[yoo-fuh-nee] –noun, plural -nies.
agreeableness of sound; pleasing effect to the ear, esp. a pleasant sounding or harmonious combination or succession of words: the majestic euphony of Milton's poetry.

I have two releases of theirs and plan to get more. Disinterested is my favorite when it rains. A glorious post-rock perfection, the album is made with all guitar, and Matt Brown's intent was to do just that: Make ambient music with just guitar. Julia and I are in love with his record. "Disinterested" isn't exactly the most gripping name for a band. I am skeptical of the intent with that one, but perhaps Brown is "disinterested in sucking at making music?" Who knows. His music is great.

The other album is by A Lily, who is James Vella of Yndi Halda. This is the PRIME album to listen to as you go to sleep. Here's why it's better than most, according to me: It starts off very active. Perhaps you brush your teeth or fold some clothes or coo your baby to sleep before actually slipping into bed. This is when you put that on. Or maybe you read in bed for 20 minutes before you actually blow out your lantern. Perfect. A Lily has figured that out. Sonically, it's very bright and chirpy. Children chatter and get blipped into skittery rhythms. Glockenspiel plonks and guitars blink. It's very happy music, clearly written by someone in love. The last two tracks are strictly ambient, however, and comprise almost 40 minutes! Slow drifters to ensure the traffic doesn't keep you awake.

Radio Head Games II - Infant Counter-attack

"What's a bit of rain?" asked Thom Yorke. Watching Radiohead play in the rain with my wife and baby and friends rivaled many of my more emotional/tuned-in moments of recent years. I didn't even expect to go to this concert, which made it all the better. No expectations. A last minute decision to attend. Julia and I got all giddy just thinking about bringing our 5-week old baby Everest to his first show.

I had given up on getting a ticket to see Radiohead a couple months ago. I'd never seen them before and really wanted to, but after a string of communications with asshole scalpers on craigslist who were selling at twice the initial cost (see Part 1) I decided it wasn't meant to be.

But that changed when we learned that our friend Drea was coming from the Sunshine Coast to see the show. We took a look on craigslist, and wow, finally people had posted tickets online for less than a hundred. Some even went at cost or lower! Still, there were douchebags who were selling at $120 and up. So, I posted this ad:
And whaddaya know? Someone actually appreciated this humor and offered his ticket $10-cheaper at 70 bones. Nice. I went to get it wearing the yellow Radiohead slicker that Jessika gifted me last year. Success! All those fuckers on the Web who claim that "real fans" pay whatever it takes to see their favorite band can suck my balls. I am going to see Radiohead, at what it actually cost!
Sigh.

Now where's that baby?

We got Everest all dressed up, thematically, for the show. He had more Radiohead gear on than either of his parents. Plus he got in for free. First Radiohead concert at no charge. And wow, he was alert for a bunch of it, listening intently, so it seemed. At the least, he was not phased by the volume of the affair. Babies dig loud noise.

Once the rain started, we hid Everest inside our raincoats. Julia held him for an hour straight at the end of the show as we danced.

Radiohead are absolutely amazing. I had a religious experience at this show. That doesn't usually happen, but I had no expectations, Radiohead are one of the best bands operating on planet Earth, and I was with the people I love. The makings of a holy moment.
Every song was a revelation. The stage design was impeccable, with low-energy LED tubes creating a chandelier diorama. I could barely see the band. But then the video screens kicked in, and wow, I didn't need to really see them. I usually feel like I absolutely have to see the players, so I can watch how they play these songs, but I didn't care. I rose to a state of pure bliss.
They played "All I Need" and I absolutely lost control over my filters, the ones that hold my emotions at bay. This song is the song that best characterizes my love for Julia, at least in the way that I hear it. Hearing it live lifted me out of my stiff new-dad self. I started crying as I sat on our blanket, soaked with rain, watching Julia dance with Everest 20 yards away. At song's end, I bolted to their side, kissed my wife with tears in my eyes, kissed my baby, looked to the heavens as they cried into my eyes. What in the world.... This was a holy moment. So beautiful.

ANd it only got better. Every song was played so well. Radiohead has such amazing control over their live sonics, it's just astounding. "Talk Show Host" was stunning to hear. "The National Anthem" took off to a new level of awesome chaos. Everest breastfed during "Karma Police" and then fell asleep. "You and Whose Army" provided the most eerie visual moment, as a black and white camera was mounted on Thom's mic, and he stared into it with one good eye, out at the audience. I turned to Julia and said, "That was pretty good." A measured understatement.

Again, words. Useless. Don't miss Radiohead. Too incredible to miss. Honest, mind-blown reaction.



Here's the set list:

1. 15 Step
2. There There
3. Morning Bell
4. All I Need
5. Where I End And You Begin
6. Talk Show Host
7. Nude
8. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
9. The National Anthem
10. Bangers And Mash
11. Faust Arp
12. Videotape
13. Karma Police
14. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
15. Just
16. Exit Music (For A Film)
17. Bodysnatchers

First Encore
18. House of Cards
19. Optimistic
20. You And Whose Army?
21. Planet Telex
22. Everything In Its Right Place

Second Encore
23. Reckoner
24. 2+2=5
25. Paranoid Android