Category Archives: LISTENING

ACQUIRED: Squarepusher – KAMMERKONZERT (Limited Edition)

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The new one from Squarepusher, KAMMERKONZERT, just arrived. I’ve been listening to the download from Bleep since it released a couple weeks ago. This time around we hear Tom Jenkinson (the pusher himself) inhabit an entire jazz orchestra sprinkled with his trademark bass guitar gymnastics, electronic jabs and throbs, frantic drums (both real and programmed) and a full compliment of string, horns, and woodwinds played at a thousand notes per second down to softer, thoughtful, languid interludes. In other words, it’s a Squarepusher record all right. But die-hard fans of his drill & bass style might be disappointed in this much more organic, flowing, modern classical form (see also: ULTRAVISITOR), echoed in the album art that features multiple exposure black and white photos of what seem to be traditional acoustic instruments on a dark and mysterious stage. All very Blue Note Records-esque and it’s obvious that Jenkinson wants this to be considered a recording of a sweaty, intense live performance despite it all coming from just one guy. At times it can come off as a bit of an impenetrable whirlwind, but its mastery of the form is undeniable.

NOTE: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a hidden track on a vinyl record. It’s on Side 1 where after the third track there is a silent locked groove (meaning it will just keep spinning but not moving the needle forward.) But there is a fourth track beyond that that can only be heard by picking up the needle and placing it on the track manually. (You can see the gap in tracks in the photo below.) This hidden track is a short piece a la SOLO ELECTRIC BASS 1.

ACQUIRED: SUNN O))) – sunn O))) (Loser Edition)

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Received the new two disc self titled LP from SUNN O))) yesterday. “You should put that on right now and play it loud as fuck,” I was instructed. Not a problem.

If you are at all familiar with SUNN O))) then you have a very good idea of what this sounds like. If not, imagine if the universe were a couple of fuzzed out electric guitars played through a parallel universe of amps at a rate of several eons per chord and you might have some idea of what they achieve. While not everything is played at a glacial pace, “slow” and “massive” could be used to describe any of the songs. And with very little exception those guitars and their wavering, thrumming tones, vibrating both together and at time at-odds with each other, are all you hear. But it is such an all encompassing riot of sound that you will envision a vast symphony of players. When each song inevitably ends it’s as if a great pressure you hadn’t noticed building is suddenly lifted and the silence becomes briefly disorienting. At least if you are listening to it though a hefty sound system in a room at reasonably high decibel levels, and you should be.

LISTENING: Cylob – IN DYSTOPIA

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New Cylob!

I first heard Cylob way way back in the Rephlex days with songs like “Cut The Midrange, Drop the Bass” and “Rewind! (Vocal),” both of which can be found on the CYMPLY THE BEST 93-01 compilation along with many other greats. I played the hell out of both on my radio show.

The songs on IN DYSTOPIA feel both similar and far removed from the feeling of those earlier tracks. Here we have songs with unexpected chords and progressions, arpeggiated in lock-step, but also like a sort of free jazz where it feels like anything could happen at any moment. The unifying factor is the dominant use of vocoder, text to speech, and other robot-like vocal effects which, for me at least, are timeless. While I might have a tough time wrapping my head around some of those songs, I’m always drawn in by the vocals. Especially on the album closer “I Achieve Full Freeze” which I’m pretty sure is simply about vocoding. Can relate.

LISTENING: KLOUD

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I’ve been listening to a lot of KLOUD lately which I recently described as “lizard-brain levels of hard techno and I am here for it.” I know next to nothing about the artist behind the skin-tight full-head black latex mask, and I think both he and I prefer it that way. His music is simple (positive) and relentless. Perfect for background music while building plastic robot models, driving too fast, or filling a room full of mostly white dude-bros (see above). A lot of the tracks are pretty interchangeable, but “Synthetic” is one that I keep returning to.

LISTENING: Shane Parish – AUTECHRE GUITAR

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LP copy of the album on a wood floor. The art is a solid white background with a smaller solid gold/brown square centered in the middle with smaller text SHANE PARISH in the upper left corner and AUTECHRE GUITAR in the upper right.

The first time I heard about the album AUTECHRE GUITAR was also the first time I heard about its creator, Shane Parish. This was not a surprise considering I’m not exactly a “guitar guy,” much less a solo acoustic finger-picking style “guitar guy.” I am slightly more familiar with the work of Autechre, and the sheer audacity of the concept made me very excited to hear the result. Interpreting the duo’s challengingly slippery tones and chaotic machine music with nothing more than a single guitar and ten fingers made this my most anticipated album of the year.

In short: it’s mesmerizing. You certainly do not need to be familiar with the source material to quickly understand that Parish is not only a master of the instrument but also incredibly clever with the arrangement. Early copy for the album included the line “This record shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be possible at all.” That’s true, but it does, and we are better off for it.

Two notes:

  1. “Slip” contains the ambient sounds of birds chirping and a plane flying past, sounding so much like my own home recording environment that the cognitive dissonance had me questioning what I was hearing.
  2. Parish previously recorded a cover of Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th,” a song I have been waking up to every weekday morning for the past 20 years or so. His interpretation is beautiful.