Sunday listening

A short compilation of dark ambient / drone / microhouse generally disquieting music for lazy days, hangover days, and those times when the world needs to be shut away. Thanks to various sources for the recommendations.

1. Sigha - Light Swells in Distant Space - Hot Flush
2. Burial - Forgive - Hyperdub
3. The Radiation Line - Brandishing the Light Eternal - Little Rock Records
4. Roly Porter - Kaitan - Subtext
5. Murcof - Maiz - Leaf 
6. Stonemaker - Slow Death - Bandcamp
7. Mark Ward - From Sea To Sierra - Soundcloud
8. Plastikman - Okx - Novamute
9. Fantômas - Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me - Ipecac
10. Plastikman - Drp - Novamute
11. aTelecine - Stardream (Shitpump mix) - Pendu Sound
12. Down - Jail - Elektra
13. Pink Lillies - Track 03 - Bandcamp
14. .at/on - Lost Things - Complementary Distribution 
15. Ø -Viimeinen Monni (The Last Catfish) - Sähkö
16. Cappablack - Tokatonton (ft Emirp) ~scape
17. Monolake - Television Tower - Imbalance
18. Murcof - Unison - Leaf
19. Monolake - Bicom - Imbalance
20. Prefuse 73 - Point to B - Warp 
21. Felix Kubin - Hello - A-musik

The Lay Llamas - Vatican Zombie (Jozik Records)

"The Lay Llamas is a tribe that in the year 2092 AD starts a trip from an unknown region of Nigeria on a self-built spacecraft (track A1) to reach a planet that they continued to observe every night from the earth and inexplicably attracted them. Once there, explore the planet (track A2) until they meet a totem called the Big Snake (track 3) who will point the way for the purification and elevation to a higher state of consciousness (track B4)"
Cheers to Rocket Recordings for bringing this to me.
Treading the fine line between epically psychedelic and bonged-out-their-nut-pretentiousness, this concept EP is a very cool piece of work out on Finland's Jozik records. On C30 cassette. There's bits of Caribou and Manitoba in there, touches of Can, a little Boards of Canada and the smudgy thumbprint of Hawkwind smeared across the whole thing. Somehow managing to maintain a solid narrative over messy, semi-improvised instrumentation, Nicola Guinta's Lay Llamas elevate brain-rotting fuzz and lurching dynamics to new heights of awesome.

I guess I'll have to buy a cassette player and mail-order from Finland.

Pink Lilies

One of the most sonically varied albums that Glasgow has produced in 2012. It may clang and loop and crush your inhibitions for nearly four hours straight, but this journey is highly recommended. Pink Lilies is drone. Sleep. Buzz. Weed. MDMA. Teetotal. Warm. Sticky beneath one's feet.

Free to download/stream from _ULTRA yonic presents...

Mong Sunday Drones

A few pieces of brain-stretched beauty to indulge on the Sabbath. Thanks to Warren Ellis or the recommendations. And for no particular reason - Orange Fucking Goblin.

Sigha - Abstractions I-IV

Sigha - Abstractions I-IV (Hot Flush, 20 Feb)

Awww yeah. Sigha's new 12" for Hot Flush expands his range even further and confirms him as one of the most consistently interesting producers of modern electronica, blending industrial, drone and techno to brilliant effect. Whilst previous EPs have been a solid blend of techno and dubstep, with one more surreal number tacked on, Abstractions is firmly centred around Sigha's more disturbing machinations, with only How To Disappear working a conventional techno groove. Opener Something in Between Us is a beatless, glacial drone sketch, channeling a fair dose of Eno or Ulrich Schnauss and building up a wall of ambience that peters out far too soon for my liking. Working with a similarly frosted aesthetic, Sigha continues with the Autechre-esque Where I Come To Forget, which delivers a pallete of blips and snarls that continually threatens to morph into breakbeats, but resolutely fails to ever kick off. The absence of notable breaks and drops will doubtless infuriate, but the cold, mechanistic feel that permeates the record translates beautifully to repetitive, minimal structures.

As the title suggests, Abstractions appears to composed of extracts from live jams, with more attention given to sculpting sounds than to crafting DJ tools, however How To Disappear's eventual four-to-the-floor rhythm makes for great dark techno. With its gasping reverb and three-note melody, it sits somewhere between Sleeparchive and Regis and begs to be given a workout on full soundsystem. Closing off the record is Drown, and appropriately aquatic, polyrhythmic dub-techno number that feels similar to the Black Dog's more recent industrial experiments, albeit without their gift for a strong technoid narrative. Whilst the overall minimalism and lack of drive may render the EP less accessible to some, Sigha's ear for sound and dynamic continues to improve, and it's an enjoyable challenge to DJ with.

Demdike!

Demdike Stare Mix - MovingMetals by modernlove

None More Screw; Flight of the Bumblebee

The famous hyperactive beast, made over 9000%* slower and turned into a terrifyingly high pressure drone. This is not a dancefloor track.

Vatican Shadow - Pakistan Military Academy

Vatican Shadow - Pakistan Military Academy (Hospital Productions)

Shallowrave are big fans of Muslimgauze; Bryn Jones' output of truly surreal electronica, with its penchant for fucked up time signatures, eastern instrumentation and deliberately wrong production levels, is full of hidden gems I'm still discovering. I've been inundated lately with suggestions that I check out Vatican Shadow (solo project of Dom Fernow from Prurient & Cold Cave), who have had a whole bundle of accolades thrown at them lately, most of which reference the quintessentially lunatic style of Muslimgauze. It's a valid comparison, as VS utilise many of Jones' technical tricks - warping tapes, skipping beats and generally adding in at least one thoroughly sickening moment per track. As well as the aesthetic similarities, track names are equally long-winded and descriptive; Prime Minister Defiant As Pakistan Outs CIA Agent, closes off this particular 12", and Vatican Shadow imbue Bryn Jone's signature skewed aesthetic with more contemporary middle eastern issues; the death of Bin Laden and the Arab Spring unsurprisingly contributing much of their imagery.

However, casting aside Vatican Shadow's cursed compliment - their slew of recent releases have been great genre-crossing material, managing to channel the best of hip hop, techno, classic braindance, drone and noise, driving it all through a filter of sandblasted desolation. Whitewashed Compound Stealth Helicopter Crash opens the EP with Murcof-inflected noise compositions, skull-crushing Merzbow-isms and folk-drone hybrids that wouldn't sound out of place on a Carl Sanders record. Following it up with the cinematic Staccato Bursts Of Gunfire, which comes across like finest Shackleton, it's not exactly easy listening. Continuing through smacked out breakbeat and hard-wired techno, Fernow achieves a breadth of vision rarely seen from modern producers, clinically engineering a myriad of styles and conjuring a twisted, paranoid atmosphere. Deserving of recognition and a joy to listen to, Fernow's work is a genuinely pleasant surprise.

KXP - Cymbalim

This is the first track I've heard from KXP's new EP Easy. Continuing in a similar vein to their excellent self-titled LP, this is a sublime blend of expressive percussion and hypnotic synth drones, and is augmented here by Mordumi's psychedelic visuals.



And here's a little gem from their previous album, performed live at La Plage Du Glazard:

Shackleton - Deadman (King Midas Sound / The Bug Remixes)

Shackleton - Deadman (King Midas Sound / The Bug Remixes) - Honest Jons
This little beauty opened Shackleton's fabric mix, and following the rave reviews that picked up, a remix package was pretty much inevitable - our love for Kevin Martin's various aliases and Shackleton is pretty evident, and considering the beautiful artwork and packaging that Honest Jons affords it, I had to pick this up on sight. The original, with it's repeated "everyone starts from point one" refrain, instantly-recognisable Darbuka percussion and moody textures is classic Shackleton - spacey, futuristic and disconcerting, and at a slightly less hectic 133bpm, more techno-compatible than other Shackleton. Coupled with the dark artwork, it's a great head-trip.
With Hitomi taking on the Skeng riddim on the recent Infected EP, Kevin Martin's various aliases seem to finally be convering and tying together the best of his art. His two remixes, one As King Midas Sound, the other as The Bug, both channel the same apocalyptic, dread-fuelled feel, along with the soundsystem-approach to fullness that's become his trademark, though the lines between have not yet totally dissolved. Notably both version render the original almost unrecognisable, were it not for the vocal loop bookending both tracks as intro and outro.
The Bug's Crackle Dub channels the same granite-heavy production style as London Zoo, with epic snares and molasses-black subs struggling for superiority, whilst Hitomi's ethereal vocals are reduced to an almost imperceptible ghostly shimmer, buried in crackling static in the high end.
As King Midas Sound, Martin channels a much softer dark-ambient feel, with slowly pulsing kickdrums and layers of imperceptible noises, but the presence of Hitomi, this time much more prevelant in the mix, instantly ties the two tracks together. With it's more gentle washes of sound, and hints of melody breaking through, the Dub feels much more appealing than the Bug's version, and, intentionally or not, is perfectly styled for the current wave of dark-ambient / beatless techno / industrial that seems to have taken over from anonymous techno collectives as this years in-thing.

Raime - Raime EP (Blackest Ever Black)

Raime - Raime EP (Blackest Ever Black)
I picked this one up from the shop the other day, having seen the massive coverage afforded to the Raime / Regis collab, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Blackest Ever Black's further releases. The three tracks of asphyxiatingly heavy blackness on this EP pass between techno, drone, dubstep and electronica, without ever earthing themselves or committing to a style. Building a delay-heavy kickdrum pattern that never quite delivers the reassuring 4/4, Retread envelopes the beats in subtle synth swathes and washes, before a rich choral layer breaks through the murk, and the light starts to part the clouds. Again backed with rattling kickdrums, This Foundry lopes along at a disquieting 110bpm, recontextualising the grandiose voices of Retread as slow-attacking synth stabs and introducing a distorted sub-bass blast that growls away, deep down in the subconscious. Closing the EP is the apocalytically-titled We Must Hunt Under The Wreckage Of Many Systems that again rolls along somewhere to the left of techno, never quite stable or solid, before the synths drown out the percussion and the darkness falls still again. Despite the slow tempo, there's heavy aspects of Shackleton about Raime, with a similar pallette of tribal-inflected percussion and disquitingly EQ-synths, and an equally dark attitude to songwriting, though there's also something for the Throbbing Gristle fans, the dub-heads, and those drawn to the hard-edged bleakness of Surgeon and Sandwell. Melting the best aspects of minimal, electronica, dub and drone into one coherent whole, Raime is one of the most interesting acts I've heard in a long time.
Special music.

Ekoplekz live set

(From FACT Magazine)
We've blogged before about the uniquely dark stylings of Ekolplekz, and since then, his 12" for Punch Drunk has been on continual repeat on the stereo. Connecting the dots between Daphne Oram, Merzbow and Bass Clef, he imbues the lead-heavy textures of industrial noise and radiophonic soundscaping with a warped sense of rhythm and deep skanking vibes. Whilst Stalag Zero / Distended Dub touched on Throbbing Gristle, Einsturzende Neubauten and the post-punk sound, his live set is a more melodic and spacier proposition, full of depth and warmth. Here it is on Fact magazine's soundcloud.


Ekoplekz' blog, World of Eko, is a great resource for the discerning analogue fiend - full of snapshots of vintage hardware, links to some beautiful soundscapes, and some seriously cool artwork.