Jakob Battick & Friends – Leper K

 
I think Jakob Battick is reaching maximum velocity and he hasn’t even put out a full length yet. Bloodworm Songs is his third EP in the past couple years, each with the promise of a long player on the horizon, and each one getting darker and weirder. This one is by far the darkest & weirdest yet, which means it’s fucking great.

There are two tracks that are straight up drone/noise, which is already another step in the “(not) folk” category, starting off with “My First Bloodworm Song (Up In The Sky),” a vintage sample heavy soup of murky squeaks and layered droney radio show intros, and then later on “Our Second Bloodworm Song (Fed Through Isinglass)” with a nauseating swirl of unnerving strings & creaking chaos. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a “folk” record start out with such bizarre sounds and then actually continue to keep up the mayhem, especially on a 5 song EP.

The other three more song oriented tracks are honestly some of the most depressing blackfolk I’ve ever heard. It’s slow and bleak, resonating through an empty attic with a dead body slumped over in the corner. It’s simultaneously warm & cold, a lush and collaborative ode to decay, feeling like it was recorded on a porch in the middle of a thunderstorm, damp & musty, collections of busted instruments played by weary ghosts, desperately trying to light a spark in the desolate prairie.

And then it finishes up with “Nine Brothers & The Wolf,” a revamped and extended 10 minute version of the 6 minute one on Heavy The Mountains, Heavy Are The Seas. That was easily my favorite track from that album and I was a little disappointed when I saw that out of the 5 tracks on this new EP, one of them was a repeat. But sweet fucking lord I am SO glad they re-recorded it, because the new version is a million times more bitter, doomed & somber soaked to the fuckin bone, a funereal death march of the greatest heartache and the most glorious bittersweet beauty, harmoniums squeezing the life out of your soul, vocals streaming with tears of despair & misery, strings & guitars dressing your heart up in burial robes, drums plodding to the torturous end, this is the most gorgeously melancholic song ever written.

I think I might not be able to handle a full length from Battick & pals, especially considering when I write over 500 words for a 5 song EP. Bloodworm Songs is just outstanding in every way, and knowing that each release Battick puts out is better than the last is enough to have me foaming at the mouth for whatever’s next. Plus he mentioned to me he’s working on a “curse songs” album, which is just the coolest fucking thing I can think of him doing. And this record has some insane packaging, with lots of layered black & white printed vellum and transparencies of appropriately grim imagery, courtesy of Horsehouse Ltd. Limited, obviously, and super fuckin cheap.

David Tagg – Wolf Suite I

 
The last I heard of David Tagg he made Pentecost, a soft pink album of reel to reel tape organ drones. According to Discogs, that’s the last thing he released, but he’s got a new album on Second Sun, which is a label that doesn’t churn out excessive amounts of records (in fact this is their first release for 2011) so it’s always a treat when one comes out and you damn well better pay attention to it.

“I Am The Wolf” retains that textured tape warble but mostly sheds the organcore from Tagg’s last, taking sides with his pal Brian Grainger and soaring through guitar drone fields. Three tracks, one 30+ minutes, checking in at just over an hour, allowing plenty of breathing room & exploration in the depths of loneliness. This is an album of non-depressive melancholy, a warm gloom that doesn’t suck you into a spiraling suicidal nightmare. Sadness is abound but it isn’t overwhelming, it’s like a dreamlike daze, walking through life noticing the beauty while everything’s washed in grey. Soft guitars smoothed out into a hiss filled plain, weaving tones dancing under patchy clouds of unspooled tape. “I Am The Wolf” is a gorgeously secluded island inhabited by your own hopes & anxieties.

This takes an approach that I can really appreciate, not the “all or nothing” style that’s so typical. There’s a delicacy that I can’t quite catch, and I think it has to do with the elusive emotions mixed with the album title and art. So there’s that ghostly rad/creepy dude on the cover, with a photo of a plane dropping bombs on the inside, and a dedication “in loving memory of Paul ‘Pops’ Sparber.” Maybe this is an ode to a family veteran who used to fly bomber planes and was known as “The Wolf?” Maybe it’s supposed to be a statement on the wolfiness of war? Or mmaayyyybe Tagg has dreams of becoming a pilot but instead of dropping bombs he drops stereos like Craig Colorusso’s Sun Boxes into wolf land, blasting “Wolf Suites I-III” with subliminal wolf messages so he can command a wolf army and turn Earth into Wolf Planet. Just a theory.

Tagg’s new record is truly wonderful, an endless haze of subtlety that does to sounds what sun beams do to afternoon mist. Whether he’s wielding a guitar or an organ, this dude keeps the tape aesthetic stimulating and he’s made sure he’s on my radar for future releases. “I Am The Wolf” is a fuckin winner.

Mountains – Thousand Square

 
FUCK. Mountains have blown me away with every release. After thinking I would never find out anything about the band behind the brilliance of Sewn, they caught me way off guard and dropped the stunning Choral in 2009 (original authorized review deleted from Blogger, eat a dick Google) and now Air Museum takes a new approach, totally exceeding the insanely high expectations I had for it. All you need to do is take a look at my last.fm stats to prove I’m not fucking around with this record.

Mountains have ditched the electroacoustic computer processing on Air Museum, instead opting for a more analog approach and running their usual instruments (guitar, accordions, etc) through pedals and synths and shit. So this is probably their least electronic based record but easily their most electronic sounding record. It sounds SO goddamn synthy. This is their trip to outer space. They’re not there yet, but they’re en route, soaring through the mesosphere.

This is what I want to permeate every moment of my life. Every little detail on this record is pure heaven. The opening track, “January 17,” has this sound that’s so subtle, but it fucking kills me every time. For the first minute, the song is all primer, chill smoothed out organ layers paving the way for the bliss to come, and a split second before it REALLY kicks in and gets all gauzy grandeur, there’s a quick bubbly sonar blip that just floors me. It’s so perfect.

Mountains bounce back and forth between straight up drone and pulsing minimal space techno, keeping a nice balance, never cemented in their textured planar earthly past but not jumping ship for the OPN New Age. They mix it SO well, the sterile jet cabin air static on “Newsprint” breathes life into silver woven blankets, preceding one of the most amazing fucking tracks EVER, “Sequel,” with its surging synth rhythm and gut-wrenchingly glorious sprays of warm golden euphoric harmonies, layers upon layers of sun drenched buzz & twinkle, humming the tune of Platonic perfection and painting everything in absolute beauty, mesmerizing & dazzling enough that Death could arrive and you wouldn’t even notice.

I had pretty much put Choral on an untouchable pedestal, imagining Mountains would never be able to outdo themselves. However, instead of making another but better Choral, they made something different but every bit as fucking great. Mountains achieved what Belong didn’t. They broadsided me, again, and this time I really thought I was ready for it. Mountains are fucking IT, man. They’re prescient visionaries. I want them to do something, and they say, “Ok, but what you really want is this.” So they do what they want and in the process make the greatest fucking records of our generation.

Brian Grainger – Triad (Of Overcast Repetitions)

 
Brain Grainger is an endless geyser of guitar drone with unmatched skillz. The dude just won’t fuckin quit. Last year alone he put out about a dozen albums (including those as Milieu). FUCK. There’s no way I can keep up with reviewing all the awesomeness. But Silver Horns Heard Over Green Hills was put out by Secret Station, a label I barely know from the free Lunar Testing Lab release, and it’s two discs so I figured it deserved my attention.

First of all, everything Grainger puts out is pure wonder. This is no different, except for the fact that there’s two and a quarter hours of wonder. I have yet to be able to listen to both discs straight through in one sitting. That’s good news, obviously, because there’s no such thing as too much drone.

There is an abundance of variance on Silver Horns, even for a minimal guitar drone record. Still, those 2+ hours have lots of themes & structures that run throughout, can you really buy cialis online making it impressively cohesive without ever becoming boring or tiresome, never turning itself into a chore. Grainger sweeps it all together in a massive pile of sadbliss, pouring thick coats of misery & futility over glimmering joy. There are murky deeps swarming with confusion and dark clouds rolling over gloom soaked valleys, drone that’s devastating in the amount of depression & dread it evokes.

But there’s another side of the story, which isn’t so much pure bliss as it is a warm blanket of hope, the silver lining, the knowledge that heartfelt praise is right around the corner and you just need to wait out the storm. It’s as beautiful & uplifting as hopeless drone gets, eliciting euphoria out of heavenly darkness in a way that only Grainger can manage. The bliss is there, it’s just more difficult to see. Once you hone in on it and can fully appreciate the breadth of Silver Horns, you’re golden, and it becomes one of your favorite drone records.

Fossils From The Sun – Tear Your Back Against The Wall

 
Fossils From The Sun is Ray Hare, who isn’t too prolific as FFTS but definitely gets his kicks playing in Century Plants with Rambutan/Tape Drifter Eric Hardiman, Twilight Of The Century with Hardiman & Rise Set Twilight (aka Michael T. & Linda Aubrey Bullock), or Burnt Hills. So, the guy’s obviously got some experience, and his newest disc on Tape Drift will drown your sorrows in a heaving pile of guitar’d FX.

Forever Came Today is a stripped down jam record with Hare grabbing his axe(s) ‘n’ pedals and just fuckin goin to town. Nothing fancy, no bells & whistles, just a man summoning dusty magik. This is some classic shit, caked in crust and buzz, buried in a coffin and recorded 6 feet under. These are songs that’ll both tear your heart out and then kick back a few beers with you.

The pieces here are way more developed & intricate than anything on the Zomes record, but I still get a strong sense of brotherhood between them. They’re gritty & muffled, they both start with a looped groove but where Zomes let that be the main event, Hare lets it grow and progress into something more elaborate, tweaking it each go-round, never meandering too far from home but always laying it down straight from the soul.

I love everything about this record. The gorgeous distortion, the brilliant simplicity, the off the charts chill factor, the layers of dreary melodies, the background scuzz & endless solos, the fact that Hare had the gravitas to sit down and make a straight faced guitar album and have it just fucking blow everything else out of the water. Seriously, you can’t fuck with the electric guitar. Clearly it’s all you need to make some badass dark & stormy creep dreams of beauty. A round of applause for Fossils From The Sun.

David Lacker – Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai

 
I’m not a really a jazz guy, so when the new Galtta tape label sent me the first batch of four releases, I was a little hesitant. But every once in a while something special comes along and shows me what’s up, like some of the Galtta tapes. Some of them were more straight jazz than the rest, but GALTTA-001, the split with David Lackner and John Swana was definitely weird enough for me to dig into and share with all yous.

David Lackner’s side is packed with some wicked electronics, which gives it an automatic +10 in my book. It’s super cool, not too ambitious or gaudy, and definitely made for couch melting. It does a killer job of keeping it nice & spacey, with radar echoes, arpeggiated bloops, lo-fi static buzzing, glitchy ambience, and robot love songs, conjuring sexy retro sci-fi chicks with white go-go boots & mod hair. There’s also plenty of traditional horns, saxophones, drums, etc, but pulling in some surprises too. One of the tracks, “Study In Clutter” is so out there, with boy-girl Sesame Street vocals and a very solid almost tribal beat with lots of handclaps, flutes, and some numbers station samples. Yeah, I’ve heard that done to death but it really works well here. Lackner’s tracks are pretty fucking rad and totally not your usual jazz fare. Wacky sounds abound on this side, giving me a reason to make a minimal http://www.cheapambienpriceonline.com ’60s existential sci-fi throwback because Lackner would be so goddamn perfect for the score.

John Swana is normally a trumpet dude, but his side of Struttin’ Around is completely lacking. Instead there’s classic synthy Moogy electronics, definitely making me think of some of the first jazz synths like old Francis Bebey or something. Swana’s style is similarly spacey to Lackner’s, but a bit darker, maybe more ambient and New Agey. He does a lot of exploring, weeding through exotic alien jungles in the dark without worrying about deadly creatures lurking, stumbling upon a mythical nightclub, lit only by the glow of fluorescent insects, where the celebrities lounge in smokey decadence and John Swana is the house band. Totally pretentious, obviously, but still utterly desirable. Swana kills it every night with splayed electronics boards & the occasional piano/drum/whatever backup, crafting an intelligent weave of loopy melodies, dim crackle, magic sex, and blorpy atmospheres. Chill party CITY.

I doubt Swana’s tunes always sound like this, and maybe Lackner also does some other more traditional shit, but the pairing of their sounds on this split is fucking grand. They just work so well together. And when you mix spacey electronics with jazz, I’m pretty much hooked. Galtta nailed it with their first release. Can’t wait to see where they go from here. Major cool points: stream the whole tape on Bandcamp (or grab one of 200 limited copies for a mere $4).

Kyle Bobby Dunn – Canyon Meadows

 
Kyle Bobby Dunn is making his way up the charts, through the ranks of hundreds of new droners, getting press & praise everywhere he goes, and making me giddy every time a new album comes out. A full length is up next on Desire Path and it is certain, outlook is good, signs point to yes, without a doubt, Ways Of Meaning is my favorite KBD record yet.

This new album continues what Dunn does best, overwhelming beauty without relying on crescendos or building to grandeur, understated & impeccably paired tones, but it progresses beyond the straight-faced neo-classical sounds from before and works toward something warmer, more light hearted, attention grabbing, and overtly pleasing. Meaning is primarily guitar & organ based, giving it an exceptionally church-like vibe without any of the religious or epic connotations. It’s easy to imagine how incredible these drones would be resonating through a church, making me hate myself all the more for missing Dunn’s performance at the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn last year.

The album works insanely well as a whole, one cohesive life-shroud of smothering brilliance, but each individual song is astonishing on its own. “Canyon Meadows” is one of the most gloriously uplifting drone pieces I’ve heard in a long time, it perfectly embodies an open field untouched by man, blues & greens saturated by golden hour, subtle shimmering & glistening sun on stillwater, the incomparable feeling of napping in a warm sunlight bath after days of dreary rain. Everything about the song glows hope and happiness.

This is the most delicate bliss I’ve ever experienced. 100% shining purity that doesn’t need to be cranked to 11 to get the job done. It swirls softly & effortlessly turns hearts into puddles of droney delight. To say this album is absolutely gorgeous is an understatement, and even though I always have high expectations for a new KBD record, this one still surprised me. I can’t stress enough how incredible it is. If your lazy ass is thinking “Ok, I’ll get around to it,” FORGET IT. Make this a priority and don’t sleep on it. You’ll be a sad sad person.

Ways Of Meaning officially comes out on May 3rd, with Desire Path giving it not only the usual LP & digital niceties, but also going full on “special art edition.” If you remember what they did for Solo Andata’s Ritual art edition (and minimally glamorous box set!) then you’re probably wetting your pants right about now.