Winter

Subtle – Winter (2002) self-released

1. 12/21/02 12:00-12:37am

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The third installment of the Four Seasons. Winter is the one outlier. The entire EP is a single improvised session. The experience is extremely desolate, aligning it much closer to it's namesake than the other EPs. This also makes it the most challenging of the seasons. Aside from being completely free-form, Subtle toys with preconceptions of live improvisation, using samples & field recordings. Percussive elements are impossible to identify, including whether they're sampled or not.

The one constant is Alexander Kort's cello. It's the glue that binds the track together. The band remains highly restrained, slowly building up a dialogue. The hesitation doesn't lift up until the second half of the recording. The keyboards are terribly low in the mix, but if you turn up the volume you uncover a wealth of electronics, adding much more to the improvisation. From here on out the days only get longer.

Destructo Swarmbots

Destructo Swarmbots – Clear Light (2007) on Public Guilt

1. Banta
2. Phases
3. Fireberry
4. Sipping On The Fog

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This is massive. Celestial. The closest any human being can come to replicating NASA’s Voyager Recordings. Destructo Swarmbots is the project of Mike Mare. Sometimes there’s another guy involved, it’s difficult to say really, since Destructo Swarmbots is painfully inept at disseminating information via the internet.

Mike Mare is currently in dälek. dälek’s Alap Momin mixed Clear Light, while James Plotkin mastered it. Mare recently collaborated with Isis guitarist Mike Gallagher to create a gem of an album, aptly named, Amigos de la Guitarra. You’d think with such high profile associates, more people would be aware of Destructo Swarmbots and his guitar wielding ways.

Alter Egos

3-2-1 Activate!/Tub Ring - Alter Egos (2007) self-released

1. 3-2-1 Activate! - Eraser
2. 3-2-1 Activate! - Now It's Got a Hold of Me
3. Tub Ring - This Is The Sound
4. Tub Ring - Touch

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Here's a picture of 3-2-1 Activate!:


now here's a picture of Tub Ring:


Let me explain: Tub Ring fell apart in 2006. At the time the band was without a drummer, then their guitarist & bassist left, leaving the core duo Kevin Gibson & Rob Kleiner. They managed to replace the missing members, but used this high turnover to explore a different musical side.

3-2-1 Activate! (god what a horrendous name) is a band that explores the poppier, more conventional tastes of Kleiner & Gibson. The "same group of people being two different bands" is not anything new, but it's a concept that isn't very popular, mainly because it's confusing as all get out, regardless of how well you try to explain it.

Things do get pretty confusing however, because the band really didn't know what to do with their new persona. During all this regrouping & creating a new band, Tub Ring was writing and recording a new album, The Great Filter. Instead of using 3-2-1 as a vehicle for their poppier output, they just incorporated the more traditional song structures and catchy hooks into The Great Filter. The result are 3-2-1 songs that show up on the Tub Ring album. There's even an iTunes single by Tub Ring, that's actually a 3-2-1 song. Instead of clearly diving the two bands, they just mashed them together.

This split CDr, which was handed out at the CD release show for The Great Filter, only adds to the confusion. As a split, it clearly delineates between the two bands, but you'd never guess that from listening to it. "Eraser" conveys what 3-2-1 was going for. It's straightforward. Too much so, it's pretty bland, and verges on sounding contrived. "Now It's Got a Hold of Me" sounds like Tub Ring however, nothing very "pop song" about it. The Tub Ring songs are fantastic, they're infinitely more energetic and dynamic than anything on The Great Filter. The split is worth it for "Touch" alone (T.S. Elliot references never hurt either). As a whole, the split doesn't sound like two different bands. It sounds like Tub Ring for the most part.

I'm not forgetting any cover art, there isn't any. It simply comes in a paper sleeve. Fans were pretty upset with The Great Filter, since the 3-2-1 influence really detracted from what makes Tub Ring so great. This actually upset the band, and now they have something to prove, which they intend to do with their next album, which they just finished recording.

Heroin + Dub

De Facto - Légende du Scorpion à Quatre Queues (2001) on Modern City Records

1. Legend of the Four-Tailed Scorpion
2. Mattilious Creed
3. AMkHz
4. Hoxadrine (Live)
5. Muerte Inoxia
6. Vesica Pisces (Live)
7. Cordova
8. 120E7 (Original Version)
9. Exit Template

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Not that I've ever done smack, but this album tastes like heroin. It's trippy. Not in a psychedelic sense, but in a spacey, detached, opiate sense. De Facto ceased to exist when band leader Jeremy Michael Ward died of a heroin overdose in 2003. They started, however, as a side project of At The Drive-in, with most of their output taking place in 2001, as At The Drive-in was self-destructing (i.e., more hard drugs).

This album brings the dub, and heavy. This is one of a few of the albums that I own, out of hundreds, that requires turning the bass down. And of those few albums, this is the one I have to turn the bass down the most. I've never heard an Ampeg ever sound this thick & heavy. The entire album was recorded live to cassette, so the fidelity can only be best described as having "tape grain." While it may not be high in production values, it's perfectly fitting for this dub. The melodicas, (which duel at times) with their drugged, high pitched warbling, are captured beautifully, with no distortion or clipping. As I've mentioned the bass is a heavyweight, not to be messed with. If you can find Legend of the Four-Tailed Scorpion on vinyl, the bass is hefty enough to compromise foundations.

De Facto recorded everything live, so the two live tracks from a 2001 tour of Europe sound no different than any of the others. Actually that's a bit of a lie, they're the strongest tracks on the album. That's only due however, to the energy of their performance. Ikey Owens' keyboards on "Hoxadrine" is probably the highlight of the album, as is Jeremy Michael Ward's sound manipulation two thirds of the way through "Vesica Pisces."

If anything needs to be reissued as a boxset, it's the De Facto discography. Each release was issued by a different label, most of which have long since vanished. I'd say "all of which," except I'm unsure about the France-based Modern City Records. They still have a website up, but it hasn't been updated for over two years.

A live version of "Cordova" can be found on the sister album, Megaton Shotblast. Super high quality studio recordings of "Vesica Pisces" & "120E7" are on the single, 456132015.

Flying Low

Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily - Flying Low (2004) self-released

1. Einsamall
2. Shutters
3. Long Walk Home
4. Dishes in a Red Dress
5. Farrage
6. Apology Knot
7. Flying Low
8. Crone
9. Stitch
10. Carriage
11. Muir Waltz
12. Long Walk Home, II
13. From Here, It Is Quiet
14. Dolmen
15. Dish in a Red Dress, II
16. Flock
17. Andast

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Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily, when filled out with Marika Hughes, make up the delightful 2 Foot Yard. This album however, sounds nothing like that band. If anything it most resembles Kihlstedt’s Tin Hat Trio (now just simply Tin Hat,) but that’s still quite a stretch. Kihlstedt is probably best known for her role in the art rock performance group Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, as their resident violinist. Shahzad Ismaily is most active with the conspiracy loving Secret Chiefs 3. What these two multi-instrumentalists have recorded is one mixed bag:

Flying Low was written for Jo Kreiter and Flyaway Productions’ 2001 premiere of “Maybe Grief is a Good Bird Flying Low”— a contemporary dance piece about the ways in which women deal with grief.

In other words, Flying Low is the soundtrack to a modern dance piece. The result isn’t quite cinematic, that’s much too grandiose a term, but it’s definitely visual. The music has enough space incorporated within it to let motion & movement breathe, to augment it if you will. Since the music was written to aid a visual element, it doesn’t easily leave an impression. So it’s easy to dismiss Flying Low as having very little depth to it, which is a huge mistake. The album has plenty of ambient moments, and simplistic instrumentation, but giving it your undivided attention it will expose a rich complexity in timbre and a wide array in exotic tones. Not only are both musicians multi-instrumentalists, but the instruments they use are one of a kind. I’m not kidding. Kihlstedt uses a homemade “trumpet violin,” which she uses in many of her projects, Tin Hat & SGM included. A violin is married with the horn of a trumpet, which sounds like the ghost of a violin emanating from a giant gramophone. Other, less unique instruments utilized are Chinese banjo (which sounds exactly like you’d think), zither, and bass harmonica (think harmonica, but larger than a brick). Flying Low has plenty of ambient moments, soundscapes, and at times builds up to resemble French jazz. Yet it never remains on any element long enough to be defined by it. There is practically never a break, as it flows from one track to the next, enforcing the album’s fluidity, and reminding you that it is in fact a soundtrack.

The entire recording was produced and engineered by SGM member, and all around audio guru, Dan Rathbun, at his Polymorph Recording Studio. To say the production (both in terms of audio & packaging) is “top notch,” would be an understatement. The album comes in a hand folded, mucus color card stock, with graphics silk screened by Kilhstedt herself. The ink is a glittery magenta, which is infinitely more elegant than it sounds. Included with the album is an actual bird feather. When I purchased this many years ago, it was described as “very limited” in quantity. While the packaging is strictly DIY, the CDs themselves are legitimately printed, so I’d guess the album is limited to a couple or few hundred copies.

NASA Voyager recordings (UPDATE)

Eight months ago I posted this mighty fine gem. Five half-hour tracks. It's the only thing I've posted on this blog so far that I myself haven't ripped & uploaded. I wasn't happy with the fact that the first three volumes were 320 kbps while the last two were only 128 kbps. That's why I stick to my own rips, as a way of quality control.

While the quality of those last two volumes wasn't ideal, I couldn't not share the links, as they were some of the most hauntingly beautiful sounds I've ever heard. Luckily I just stumbled across better links, these here are all .flac

Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 1
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 2
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 3
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 4
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 5

MAXIMUM VOLUME YEILDS MAXIMUM RESULTS

Sunn O))) - Oracle (2007) on Southern Lord

i/1. Belürol Pusztít
i/2. Orakulum
ii/1. HeliO)))sophist

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zwwmx0tyiz5

Don't let the tracklisting fool you. This beast is two discs and clocks in at a hair over 80 minutes. This is probably my favorite Sunn O))) release, recorded around the same time they collaborated with Boris. (Atsuo handles drum duties on the first disc.) The first track originally appeared on some compilation of songs featuring Buddha Machines, the second track was written for an art instillation performance, and the final track, the second disc, is an "audial collage" of live performances from Europe from July 2005.

"Belürol Pusztít" is, hands down, my most favorite Sunn O))) track ever. Not only does it employ a Buddha Machine, but it also features Joe Preston on jackhammer. As ridiculous as that sounds, the jackhammer works phenomenally. Attila Csihar does his signature vocals on each track, but subtly stands out on the epic "HeliO)))sophist," where he really flexes his vocal range, sounding even more inhuman than he does on disc one. He subsides midway through the collage, where the guitars duel in a manner reminiscent of the GrimmRobe Demos, then returns to close out the disc.

This version of Oracle is limited to 2000 copies. There is a 12" version of 7777 copies that omits "HeliO)))sophist." The vinyl version, when purchased directly from Southern Lord, comes with a "misprinted" copy of the CD, which is identical to this version, except it lacks the second disc. ("HeliO)))sophist" is listed on the tracklisting, hence the misprint.) I'm unsure of how many copies of the single CD version there are. I'd fully endorse the vinyl version, but it's a massive shame that "HeliO)))sophist" is so exclusive. As a collage, it really is a step above your typical live Sunn O))) recording. & heads up, the mp3 tags might be a tad mixed up in terms of disc numbers.

Pardon the shlock

I've had over 11,000 visitors in less than a month. So I've added some Feedjit widgets to help me get to the bottom of this.

Subtle – Autumn (2002) self-released

1. Coldcoals Camera Action
2. Arsenic Chic
3. Bluerose Charade
4. 6 Small Men In A Giant Robot
5. Earthsick

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y4ndeu5mczn

Today marks the autumnal equinox, so I’ll post the second of the Four Seasons. What I love so much about this project is that each EP is solid, and together they make an even greater body of work. Autumn is pretty similar to Summer, rather ambient, without much song structure.

The production is extremely fitting. The band recorded everything themselves, using laptops, in kitchens & on rooftops. But you’d never know, it doesn’t suffer from weak production values that are integral of lo-fi music. They somehow use their limits to their strength, resulting in something that’s raw. Not in a “rough around the edges” sense, but something that’s unadulterated and feels genuinely improvised.

“Earthsick” is not only the closer, but the word itself is the mantra that opens the EP and is hidden throughout the other seasons. The lyrical content, straddling between stream of conscious & dreamt nonsense, manages to invoke some nebulous longing, or maybe some type of collective regret. As difficult as it is to identify, you are well aware it originates from your dreams, or maybe your imagination, or old photographs you’ve never actually seen. Regardless, it’s quite familiar, which makes it much easier to venture off & explore the unknown.

Free Moral Agents

Free Moral Agents – Lay Down 12” (2003) on Pete Records

A1. Lay Down
A2. Lay Down (Instrumental)
B1. What I Really Think
B2. The Mortgage Banker vs. The Savage (feat. Subtitle)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2mjdylz2amm

Free Moral Agents started out as the solo project of Isaiah Ikey Owens. This man single handedly played keyboards for most of the SoCal ska scene of the mid to late 90s. Sublime, Reel Big Fish, Long Beach Dub Allstars, The Aquabats, The Hippos, Rx Bandits, the list doesn’t stop. He was recruited to join De Facto, which eventually evolved into the Mars Volta. Nowadays he’s popping up on albums by Saul Williams, El-P, Busdriver, and even Mastodon (Blood Mountain, to be exact).

This 12” is FMA’s first release, and happens to be their most orthodox, in hip hop terms. Owens produces all of the music, with the exception of the last cut featuring Subtitle, DJ Nobody is responsible for the drum programming. The title track never stood out to me in any way, not that it’s bad, it’s just not exceptional. The B side slays however. The MC is some fellow who simply goes by the name J, and his rhymes verge on slam poetry. Pretty thought provoking stuff.

The warping at the end of Subtitle’s guest spot is a taste of FMA’s full length that came out a year later. It takes a giant leap away from hip hop, and just trips absolute balls. Everybody’s Favorite Weapon is on my list of favorite albums ever. In the five years since it’s release I’ve yet to find anything that comes remotely close in the level of surrealism & melody. J left the group in 2006, and in the wake of his departure FMA has become a full fledged band. They’ve also seemed pretty incompetent at releasing their follow up album. The Honey in the Carcass of the Lion was originally slated to be released in the fall of ’07, and the most recent news on its status is a release for spring of ’09 (. . . ). This delay has allowed Earth to beat FMA to the punch, with their 2008 album, The Bees Made Honey In the Lion’s Skull.

It’s worth noting that the group Look Daggers is current, band-era FMA with Visionaries member 2Mex on MC duties. Naturally I’d be all over that, but my feelings about 2Mex are pretty mixed.

And another thing I need to point out, even though I’ve already written too much for this 12”. The first song on the B side is called “The Way I Really Feel” on the outer jacket, but is listed as “What I Really Think” on the record itself. I don’t know which title is correct, even after digging through the ASCAP database. And Pete Records is long since dead, a real shame since they had a pretty interesting roster.