Other Music Update (February 9, 2000)

Other Music Update
February 9, 2000

In This Week's Update :

Vladislav Delay CD (collecting two previous 12")
Clicks and Cuts compilation
La Guepe V.3 compilation ('70s European producers do Brazilian music)
No New York Japanese reissue
Coil
Apestaartje 3" CD
Empire State
Third Eye Foundation
Sin Ropas
Lambchop
Kletka Red (members of the Ex, the Necks, Ne Zhdali)
Arling & Cameron
Tim Feleppa
The Glove Compartment
David Coulter
Coyle and Sharpe
Extended Organ (new LAFMS project)
Sparklehorse

Featured New Releases :

VLADISLAV DELAY "Multila" (Chain Reaction, Germany) CD $14.99
Vladislav Delay has produced one of the finest electronic LPs of 2000, and
only five weeks into the year! This is a record not to miss, compiled from
two of Delay's 12"s. It starts off with clicks and rattles that patter from
speaker to speaker. Then, slowly, the bass tones appear, dubbed out,
distant, untraceable rumblings. Over which Delay shapes vinyl surface noise
into ebbing and flowing patterns, and forms his beats with an accumulation
of sounds rather than laying them out in any kind of obvious way. As you go
further into the disc, a conga sound muffled under 15 layers of blankets
inside of an oil drum provides a steady beat for the next 20 minutes or so,
as the rest of the music goes in and out of watery, silty and dusty
dancefloor rhythms. His long tracks are drawn out in a pointillistic
excess, the points blurred, bleeding into each other; as he constructs
layer upon layer, you're drawn deeper into his world. A new record,
"Entain", on Mille Plateaux, will follow at the end of the month. [JS/RE]
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[V/A] "Clicks and Cuts" (Mille Plateaux, Germany) 2xCD/3xLP $17.99/$17.99
Before the arrival of the epochal "Clicks and Cuts", electronic music had
been forced into an lull in which the old was dying and the new could not
yet be born, as Antonio Gramsci once said. This compilation represents a
new paradigm, one that breaks the spell cast by Autechre and the their
all-too-faithful acolytes. It's true post-minimalism, taking unanticipated
risks, creating both rhythms that provide momentum without a 4/4 time
signature and melodies that are as visible as a leaf in the surface of a
frozen lake. Though the diverse grasp of artists here concern themselves
with rhythm, getting Technics time is not a priority. The temporal scale
here is at once grand and miniature; the pauses and gaps within reveal
glimpses of huge structures. [TH]
CD /perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=71875080792&refer_url=email
LP /perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=71875080791&refer_url=email

[V/A] "La Guepe Vol. 3: Banana Ticoco" (Dare Dare, France) CD $24.99
On the La Guepe compilations of late '60s and early '70s material, each
track is the offspring of complicatedly different origins, combined in an
effervescent, danceable style. While Volumes 1 and 2 were unthemed, Volume
3 (subtitled "European Airlines to Rio") contains a sharp, perplexing
versions of samba covers next to funky, catchy original bossa and batucada.
Brazil's musical influence, as it spread throughout Europe, mutated
deliciously. And more than anything, these tracks show that span of
Continental (mostly French, Italian, and Spanish) responses to the
stylistic mess that was Tropicalia, in '70s dance tracks that put weird
sounds into fresh combinations: erotic batucada funk, afro-latin-brazilian
percussive groove soul, Brazilian funk that's one step away from Jorge
Ben's best moments, '70s electrofusion jazz art pop, so much more. This
collection of rarities renews itself with surprises around every corner and
pleasure throughout. How many compilations do you know of that contain
psychedelic samba produced by Hungarians? I _adore_ this CD. [RE]
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[V/A] "No New York" (Island, Japan) CD $34.99
This is it: the Art Bomb, The Infinitely Hot and Dense Dot, the classic and
long-out-of-print 1978 album that unleashed New York's No Wave scene like a
virus into the hothouse of music. Producer Brian Eno rounded up four bands
that welded the blistering ferocity of punk to short, mysterious art
gestures and abandoned pop like a dead skin, and let them blurt out four
abrasions apiece. D.N.A. (including both Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori!)
curdles James Brown's yelps and the scratch of funk guitar into a spastic,
twitchy, anti-tonal fit; Brown's also a distant reference point for James
Chance's group the Contortions, who de-funk and de-tune "I Can't Stand
Myself" and throw in three more spattering, flesh-loathing quasi-grooves. A
very young Lydia Lunch fronts Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, who have
something to scream about and genuinely cannot play their instruments at
all (Bradley Field is credited with "drum"). And Mars are the deepest
mystery of all, sexy and gruesome, smearing psycho poetry and unconscious
tics across the stereo field. An essential document of an incredible
moment. [DW]
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COIL "Astral Disaster" (Threshold House, UK) CD $19.99
Another fascinating journey through Coil's unique elektro-ambient realm.
Features radically reworked and restructured material originally released
by Prescription Records in a limited edition of 99 vinyl copies in 1999.
This new edition also includes additional material. "COIL are creating
lunar conciousness musick for the forseeable future. It goes against
previous magickal currents we have invoked. We are letting things in we
shut out before. The feminine. The tidal. The cyclical. And so on."--John
Balance. Gorgeous, lengthy soundtracks to your mind. [JG]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=502195840532&refer_url=email

[V/A] Apestaartje (Apestaartje) 3-inch CD $6.99
Twenty minutes of impossibly high trills, bursts of thick electronic textures
that spool to a halt and reverse, and gently strummed guitars, processed
and left plain. Artificial tinkles evoke thin scratches and shudders of
glass, melodic in inference. Influenced by electronic minimalists (like
Fennesz or the drier parts of Gastr del Sol's "Upgrade and Afterlife"), but
not minimal itself. An immediate, linear recording that only exists for the
second it's played, that doesn't linger. Transparent, spindly cobwebs of
sound. Three tracks, 20 minutes. Limited to 500. [RE]
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EMPIRE STATE "S/T" (Warm Electronics) CD $13.99
Several years ago in Athens, GA, a band named Beekeeper drew a lot of
attention. But their existence was short, and leader Josh McKay moved on to
form the much-acclaimed Macha, while brothers Jay and Tim Nackashi joined
forces with Lambchop trombonist Alex McManus, birthing Empire State. This
trio combines homemade instruments with standard rock ones in a collection
of pop songs, rhythmic experiments, strange sounds and cinematic
instrumentals. Empire State's finest moments are the instrumental passages
and experimental segments, where waves of hypnotic percussion mix among
strange melodies created by their eclectic array of instruments: China Man,
Marxophone Guitar, Whirlying Xylo Can, Autoharp, Horn Boxes, Roto Chimes,
and more. Empire State's odd arrangements sit in an indie-rock framework,
managing to be familiar and original at once. [PW]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=68959301012&refer_url=email

THIRD EYE FOUNDATION "Little Lost Soul" (Merge) CD $12.99
Matt Elliot's newest album is an exploration of the dirge, gothic in theme
but throwing light and hope at goth's clutching of oblivion and darkness.
As Elliot feels his way through curtains of sound, he's reaching not just
for pain, but for a catharsis of it. This is clearest in the requiem for
his cat, which (while it could be less maudlin) surprises in the way he
manipulates vocal samples to shift from mechanical (thereminesque) to
human, and back. He transforms the human voice with dexterity as he
ululates, fragments, re-speeds, and vibrates it, only ever drifting into
cliche with the Gregorian Chant samples that signify emotion more than
expressing it. The beats here are torn, nearly hurt, made of creaking
chairs, chopsticks against tin buckets: they are an angst that seeks
relief. Though this album doesn't knock me on the floor like previous ones,
he wants to make sounds have the palpable effect of awakening. And that
urge (plus the music that springs from it) is still beautiful. [RE]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=03617294742&refer_url=email

SIN ROPAS "Three Cherries" (Perishable) CD $13.99
A collaboration that stays true to each member, this 8-song EP draws
countrified guitar picking from Califone, experimental noodlings from the
Chicago Underground Duo and electronic inklings from Brokeback. Tim
Hurley's (Red Red Meat, Califone) muffled and gauzy vocals support the
simple melodies like the handle of a jack-in-the-box slowly turns to reveal
the dynamics inside. 'Little Cheater' begins minimally, with strumming
acoustic guitar countered by a slide guitar, quieting while building
tension with the acoustic bass. Then, with underlying keyboard strains,
they end it all with a backwards twist of the crank. As all the instruments
come together, all that is left is for the lid of the box to click. Other
interesting sounds speckle the songs, such as rubber band boings and
musical saw-like emanations. Sin Ropas' slow expectant build is much more
exciting than a surprise pop could ever be. [LG]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=66384900102&refer_url=email

LAMBCHOP "Nixon" (Merge) CD $12.99
The last time country and soul music were married in grace was during the
Stax/Muscle Shoals era. Lambchop, from Nashville (at least in the same
state), and took those same vows, took them to and from the heart. This
13-piece group is barely dominated by singer/lyricist Kurt Wagner's
laid-back, gravelly, Randy Newman-esque speak/sing style. Their studied,
specific and fierce musicianship comes through in measured arrangements;
like the High Llamas or Belle and Sebastian, they have the ability to rock
mellowly, achieving a full sound without having to turn the guitars up too
high, leaving room for horns and strings. A lush, full and layered record
that, in a lot of ways, is about the grandiose failures of the ego and
small, realistic successes of the soul. [LR/RE]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=03617294752&refer_url=email

KLETKA RED "Hybrid" (Red Note, Holland) CD $13.99
Kletka Red consists of Andy Ex (The Ex), Leonid Soybelman (Russian group Ne
Zhdali), Tony Buck (from Australia's The Necks, also Ground Zero) and Joe
Williamson. Their last CD, on Tzadik, was a flapping, breakneck ride
through and over Klezmer melodies. This one has a broader range but a
similar approach, embellishing Russian folk music and Greek Rembetika
(where they make the somber go sing-song, and turn tunes tuneless in
places) with punk glory. Their elbowing blasts of guitar lead the way
through the songs, imitating tolling bells and wheels; meanwhile, the
percusion chugs, limps, and scrapes along. 47 minutes; definitely for fans
of The Ex, especially those who loved "Scrabbling At The Lock". [RE]
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ARLING & CAMERON "Music for Imaginary Films" (Emperor Norton) CD $12.99
Mssrs. Arling and Cameron aren't stretching drastically for this, their third
full-length album since abandoning their "Easy Tune" moniker. Fitting
together lots of familiar motifs and vintage touches, their spazzy punchy
cheesy horn-punctuated bounce aims a little more for the dancefloor
(esp. on '1999 Spacelab'), mixing in jungle beats under dominant horns
and theremin. These should give you an idea of what's here: A mock-
Hitchcock soundtrack slams stately with thunderous emphasis and steady
beats. A disco track appropriates the melody to 'Fly Like an Eagle'. A fake
spy-soundtrack/dub theme for a drug-sniffing dog yields a half-smile.
Ornamental sitars and tabla glide over a easy pop/country loping song
that nearly turns into the "Sesame Street" theme. Somewhere between
'70s TV themes, lounge, and disco -- silly, brainless pop with a wink. [RE]
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TIM FELEPPA "Ammonia Storm" (Mold on an Orange) CD-R $11.99
Feleppa comes off as recluse, a musician that sits around all day holed up
in his apartment, bound to the 4-track, recording some of the most
interesting cut-and-paste homemade rock/found sound collages to date.
Though essentially in the style of early Guided By Voices, he also knows no
limits of genre, song length, or copyright. This record exudes a beautiful
air of craftsmanship, much like a carpenter would take time to sand each
sharp edge, so does Tim form his 30-plus-count conglomeration of songs with
dangling guitar rhythms, weird samples, and pop vocals in filtered layers.
I imagine Tim Feleppa to be a man who can't help but be creative in
whatever he does. [LR]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=09999119182&refer_url=email

THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT "s/t" (Mold on an Orange) CD-R $9.99
THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT "Giving Up Air" (Mold on an Orange) LP $7.99
This collection of home recordings has something in common with the works
from the Elephant 6 collective, in that everything's thrown in the mix,
formed into 25 tiny pop songs. There's cut-up tape collage, well-placed
samples, hooks, memorable songwriting, creaky, blatting guitars, and use
themselves as their own chipmunky backup vocalists. They also use samples
of world music, a number of charged and real answering machine messages,
warbling mystery vocals, fake Highlife guitar, and skittering beats in the
service of misty, growly, flailing, surreal songs. The Glove Compartment,
actual brother to Tim (above), has created a psych-pop classic for a new
era with humorous touches: it's weird, but not weird for weirdness' sake.
The LP has an overlap of around 10 tracks; the feeling throughout each
release is similar. [PW/RE]
s/t CD
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Giving Up Air LP
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DAVID COULTER "INterVENTION" (Young God) CD $12.99
Coulter, formerly of the Pogues and Test Dept., has, over the past 10 years
(this CD covers 1990-1999) teamed up with Marc Ribot, Ghedelia Tazartes,
Phil Minton, and others to make music for dance, installations, and
performance. His specialty is the odder instruments--singing saw, fiddles,
didjeridu, euphonium, horns, violectra, paper, jew's harp, and terracotta
pots--and he shifts the familiar to the unfamiliar and back again in
thirteen pieces of thrum and drone. He cherishes each instrument's
particular sonic qualities, milking the juxtaposition of textures in
(mostly) the duo formation. There's an abstract ethnicism here, a warm
concentration that elevates longer jams of sawing chords and overlapping
solids above hippie wuss. He uses melodies (vaguely British or Appalachian
folky ones) inconsistently, and through an abstract psych filter: they
don't follow expected paths or established repetitions, and have a tendency
to veer off in the middle of cycles. The vocalists coo spikily, and one
track has some poetry. An unkempt, interesting record. [RE]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=65845700102&refer_url=email

COYLE AND SHARPE "Audio Visionaries: Street Pranks and Put Ons" (Thirsty Ear) CD $14.99
At first listen, the work of Coyle and Sharpe recalls that of Bob and Ray:
tag-team comedy delivered in the driest possible manner, with both partners
playing the straight-man role as they conduct a series of outrageous fake
interviews with each other. The difference here is that Coyle and Sharpe's
outrageous interviews are real, and involve a third, unwitting partner. The
pair spent hundreds of hours trawling the streets of San Francisco,
microphones in hand, politely confronting the Man In the Street with all
kinds of absurd situations. They offer imaginary jobs that resemble
medieval tortures, solicit volunteers for bizarre surgeries in the name of
market research, and so on. Their delivery is impeccable, lending them such
credibility that the elicited responses become the real punchlines, even
more surreal than the setups that provoke them. One listens, amazed, at
what the Average Guy can take seriously. While this disc doesn't reach the
same comedic, head-spinning heights of their previous "On the Loose", it's
still a fine document of these pranksters' original and inspired work. [AL]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=70043570772&refer_url=email

EXTENDED ORGAN "XOXO" (Birdman) CD $13.99
Visual artists, long-time inverters of sound and image Paul McCarthy,
Fredrik Nilsen, Joe Potts, and Tom Recchion (all part of the nebulous LAFMS
scene) team up yet again for another piece of disorienting, disturbing
sound. It's similar to what Recchion did with his solo album a few years
ago, but here, it's beatless. Ambient waves (literally: water figures
prominently) and trickling piano merges with the solemn chanting of idiots
(their challenge to language, you can almost hear words but instead there's
just the dulled vocalizations of an ancient madman/duck). Waterfalls of
distorted urban canyon echo over the moving of boxes across an empty
warehouse, inhabited only by the high whistling and moaning of the damned.
Music made with fragments of Optigan, prepared guitars, Kurzweil, Roland,
and even smaller fragments of radio signals pace like the bell curves of
improvised music, starting and ending pointedly slowly, building to peaks
of energy in the middle. [RE]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=60728700262&refer_url=email

SPARKLEHORSE "Distorted Ghost" (Odeon) CD EP $6.99
Mark Linkous' newest (six songs, two of them live, in front of an audience
of maybe three people) doesn't escape anything he's done before: soft,
pretty rock with vocals scraped across corrugated cardboard, and a dour yet
hopeful worldview. Produced _big_. [RE]
/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=01704695052&refer_url=email

This week's newsletter bestowed upon you by Robin Edgerton, Lisa Garrett,
Jeff Gibson, Tim Haslett, Andrew Leigh, Lyndon Roeller, Jeremy Sponder,
Phil Waldorf, and Douglas Wolk.

Thanks for reading.

-all of us at Other Music

15 E. 4th Street
New York, NY 10003