Thursday, January 23, 2003

Brokeback - Looks at the Bird



BROKEBACK
Looks at the Bird
[Thrill Jockey, 2003]

Beautifully laid back and contemplative, at the same time Looks at the Bird demonstrates the breezy sentimentalism and instrumental proficiency typical of Sea and Cake and Tortoise type TJ releases. Brokeback is actually the side project of the bassist for the latter group, and the heritage of jazzy post-rock which brought Tortoise to fame informs much of this album. Indie kids will in fact recognize many notable guests, including the late Mary Hansen *honour_her* of Stereolab fame.

Many of the compositions have an improvised feel to them, and yet they remain highly structured and narrative in style. In fact, there is perhaps an equal amount of computer processing as live instrumentation. The melodies are elaborate and touching, and yet one cannot help but smile at the kitchiness of the compositions. The lyric-free voices of many of the album’s pieces are perhaps the first indication that all is not serious with Brokeback’s aesthetic. Listen in the morning and enjoy the afternoon...

MP3: Brokeback - Lupé

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Fennesz, O'Rourke, Rehberg - The Return of FennO'Berg





Fennesz, O’Rourke, Rehberg

The Return of FennO’Berg
[MEGO, 2003]

In a world of J-Lo and Nelly (Nike??), thank the many non-existent gods for Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, and Peter Rehberg. Some might say that this review is an excuse to put a picture of a penis in the Sil, and yet I can’t help presenting this record to you as one of the most significant releases of last year. Everything is fair game for these laptop virtuosos, as cheesy house is sodomized by blues references, glitch gets intimate with chamber music, and ambient finds a soulmate with rock guitar chords. Sound difficult? Certainly. Yet, after several listens, the orgasmic sublimity of “A Viennese Tragedy” – appropriating Mahler, among other things – threatens to transcend everything you think you know about music. Gossamer ‘strings’ juxtapose musique-concrete textures to brilliant effect. Led from this peak to the haunting closer “We Will Diffuse You”, you begin to realize how profound deconstruction-as-creation can be.

Quite simply, this is a masterpiece.

MP3: Fennesz, O'Rourke, Rehberg - A Viennese Tragedy

Thursday, January 16, 2003

Venetian Snares - Winter In the Belly of a Snake




VENETIAN SNARES
Winter In The Belly of a Snake
[Planet Mu, 2003]

Sometimes it's cold in Winnipeg. maybe that's why the city has for a while had such a great musical tradition. Releasing 3 full-lengths over the past year alone, Aaron Funk has proven himself an interesting and prolific musician in control of his digital tools.

Quietly you find yourself falling down "Stairs Song", a melodic trope repeated while suggesting its own decay, while the highs in "Gottrahmen" and the bass in "Suffocate" sigh in melancholy. Many stringed instruments are filtered in the process; funk knows the eroticism in torturing his subject, as proven by his exquisitely controlled DSP abuse. And yet, he remains polite beneath his exterior: melodies and beats are frequently sentimental and sometimes a bit too obvious to be truly "out-there" experimentally speaking.

There's even a lyric or two (Danzig!?!); the opener "Dad" is beautifuly tragic pop featuring Aaron himself in song. An underlining beauty and fragility in Winter ensure the repeated listens which truly illuminate this music. certainly the evolution of drill and bass post label_host Muziq's output. One gets a sense of the typography in which he locates beats, surfaces, and passages of narrative composition: dark, but not as cavernous as his earlier "Doll Doll Doll".

Snares's abrassively succinct and complex programming throught the album truly demonstrates that there is a interesting and accessible ghost in his machine.

MP3: Venetian Snares - Stair Song

Thursday, January 02, 2003

godspeed you! black emperor - Yanqui U.x.O.

cst024covmed

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Yanqui U.x.O. [Constellation, 2002]
[Constellation, 2003]

For those of you who don’t have access to music channels outside of corporate interests, I introduce you to one of Canada’s most important and innovative ensembles. For those who have been following Godspeed and related side projects since 1997's monumental F#A#∞ LP, well it’s just another year isn’t it? And yet with this release a more overt political message is added to the usual apocalyptic anxieties for which the band have become known. The title of this disc refers to the barbaric artefacts of the military-industrial complex – landmines and other unexploded ordinance – which sublimely graces the life of many a poor non-western farmer. Marcel Duchamp’s famous Mona Lisa meets the paranoid-psychotics of previous Godspeed records: Yanqui you asshole, you’ll end us all.

The music is itself less atmospheric this time, although the famous Godspeed quiet-loud orgiastic zenith is apparent in several sections of the 3 pieces provided on this disc. Ethereal passages of string and guitar texture allow deep contemplation, subsequently to crescendo to heights of mechanistic grandeur wherein the listener is happily crushed beneath the Juggernaut of rhythmic bombast. If you have any aesthetic sense you will be amazed by what can still be accomplished in the wasteland of the post-rock idiom (yes Timmy, rock has been dead a long time). Those interested in more avant-guard explorations, however, might be disappointed with Godspeed’s reiteration of their previous compositional styles.

Some die-hard Godspeed fans might also frown at Steve Albini, who recorded the album, as there is an obvious avoidance of the recording process itself as compositional element – Godspeed themselves might have felt the same when they completely remixed the record without his involvement.

Certainly not the most innovative recording of the year – I’ll leave that to the MEGO crew, among others – nevertheless Yanqui U.x.O. is one of the more interesting releases you will find in 2002.

MP3: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 09-15-00 (part one)