Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Fossils + Boughner @ Loose Cannon



Wednesday, March 28 was supposed to be one of the landmark nights for the Hamilton noise scene. Local acts were to be joined by genre stalwarts Prurient and Burning Star Core. Thanks to the whims of the border agencies which kept the headliners from entering Canada (obscenity laws!!!), only the local acts were able to perform. Despite the logistical chaos of a wholly improvised show, the evening's performance proved solid enough. Fossils (David Payne, Scott Johnson, and Jeremy Buchan) & Matthew Boughner were able to invoke a variety of harsh soundscapes throughout their short but inspired set.





Sadly, my attempt to preserve an aural record of the evening was foiled by the incapacity of my $2 microphone to not be overdriven simply by the volume of the performance. The MP3 file below requires explanation, as the recording process did indeed alter the sound. First off, I was using a Creative Zen, which records and compresses data to MP3 in real time. To dampen the sound and keep the crappy vocal mic from distorting, I placed the recorder inside a cloth bag, which I then covered with my jacket and some random pieces of clothing that I found on the floor. Furthermore, I used my arm to cover this whole mound of crap for the duration of the recording. Despite my hand and at least five centimetres of cloth in the way, the volume level produced during the performance was enough to overdrive my microphone to the point of distortion. Since I was actually at the show, this new "filter" on the sound is an interesting addition to what was heard that night, and serves as a nice reminder of the aesthetic divergence of performance and the process of archiving. For those of you who were not there, consider this audio file to be tangental to the live performance, and in no way indicative of how the musicians wanted themselves to be heard.

You have been warned / invited to listen.

MP3: - Fossils, live @ Loose Cannon (compressed and contained through a voice recorder direct to MP3)

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity



Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
[Kill Rock Stars, 2007]

‘The Perfect Me’ opens the record at a riotous pace, and listeners will quickly understand that the Deerhoof of 2007 is a more precise animal than evidenced by the noisier songs of their early output. This time the San Francisco trio wants to rock in a slightly more conventional manner. Of course, for this arty band convention is a slippery concept. Think of how David Bowie returned to the fold by releasing his famed Berlin records after Station to Station and you might get a sense of how Deerhoof views convention. Some of the band's ideas are a bit retro: the slinky riff at the heart of ‘Believe E.S.P.’ comes straight from 1973, vintage Orange tone intact. Others are a little more inspired by modern electronic cacophony.

Throughout the album, drummer Greg Saunier provides a loose, busy, and muscular rhythmic foundation that sounds like how drums were played before metal made precision famous. The chorus of ‘Matchbox Seeks Maniac’ would not have sounded too out of place in one of Pete Townsend’s operas. Of course, the band’s fractured, video-game-like compositional aesthetic keeps things far more interesting than simple rock nostalgia suggests. And Satomi Matsuzaki’s twee vocal performance of fairytale-epic lyrics is as childishly saccharine as ever. All this cacophony might be expected by longtime fans, but it is this album’s melodic cohesion that ranks Friend Opportunity among the best of this prolific band’s career.

MP3: Deerhoof - The Perfect Me

Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow



Rainbow
Boris with Michio Kurihara
[Inoxia, 2007]

Longtime Boris fans have come to expect a different approach to hard rock composition with each new release. Originally famous because of their extended, fuzzed-out drone records and extended Sabbath odes, the band has also been known to engage in several detours into more traditional songwriting. For their new album, Boris have teamed with current Ghost player Michio Kurihara, who is one of Japan’s more fiery guitarists. Naturally, there are solos aplenty scattered throughout this album’s nine tracks. The album opens with the slow burner “Rafflesia” before moving to the late-60s lounge-inspired “Rainbow”. If you are into the band's more psychedelic side, you might want to focus your attention on the strong middle and end sections of this release. The lengthy feedback-and-tom interplay of "Fuzzy Reactor", for example, will extend many a horizon.

Many of the songs on this album sound entirely in line with the emo-cum-shoegaze compositions found on 2006's Pink. This tendency is perhaps best exemplified by “Starship Narrator”, the third track on the album, which is notable for Kurihara’s tasteful harmonic phrases. While in many respects Rainbow is the most accessible release in the extended Boris discography, some might prefer the more restrained chaos of this record to the epic bombast which brought the group to the attention of heavy music fans around the world.

MP3: Boris with Michio Kurihara - Starship Narrator