It has been a while since my last post and that’s not because I didn’t purchase anything. The only reason was I was too busy with other things. But here we are again with 2 purchases that have been on my wishlist for quite some years.
We see two albums by outsider Jandek here. Above is Ready For The House which is his debut album first released as The Units and below we have Chair Beside a Window which is his fourth album (or so). Both are the vinyl reissues on Jackpot Records as the original LP’s are almost impossible to find for a reasonable price. When Ready for the House first got released in 1978 as the Units it was not really well accepted. The person behind Jandek, who now even after several performances stays a mystery to most, claims in one of those pretty rare interviews that he sold only 2 copies in the first two years. For some reason it wouldn’t surprise me if this is actually true. This because the outsider music Jandek plays is in this special tuning (if it is actually tuned) with his voice is strange, to say the least. At that time something completely new and unheard, and even in these days after something that’s isn’t just for everyone.

The music is minimal, isolationist and dark. Music of a lonely soul.

Listen to the first piece of the album here:
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F10715255%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-cK9oX&secret_url=true Track 1. Naked In The Afternoon 1 by Jackpot Records

On Chair Beside A Window we hear a change compared with Ready For The House. While still being isolationist outsiders music we get to hear more instruments. But most notably we get to hear a female singer by the name of Nancy. This song is so dear to me. For all fans of Charalambides or Christina Carter and the likes this is a must to hear. It has the same intensity. Only this song makes this album worth checking out.
Nancy returns on more of the songs, but not as intense as the song Nancy Sings.

Listen to Nancy Sings here:

Both these albums can be seen as a great introduction to the mystical world of Jandek, though he has changed his style a lot during his now 34 year career as a musician.

Both albums are available from Jackpot Records, as well as the album Six and Six: http://www.jackpotrecords.com/products/search?q=Jandek&prod_type=INV

So while waiting for a new picture and or review please enjoy this video

Wow, it has been a special year. We had a bunch of new releases out there and another great amount of great live performances. As with everything there can only be one favourite though. And for this year music wise it clearly for me it has been Charalambides. In October I had the pleasure to meet Tom and Christina Carter for their performance in Amsterdam and perform as the opening act with my own musical project. I must say two love people. And not only the concert was good, also their new album Exile is really something.

Charalambides was formed in the early 90′s by Tom & Christina Carter and for a long period was a trio together with Heather Leigh Murray and Jason Bill in different stages.
The once married couple now play as duo.
My first encounter with their work was in 2004 with the album Joy Shapes (Kranky), which still is one of my favourite albums, where they presented their own specific style of psychedelic drones best known as New Weird America (a term that is as vague as the music).
Since that album they have slowly become less droney and changed more into the direction of folk songs. On Exile they continue this development.
While on Previous albums Likeness (Kranky, 2007) and, in less amount, A Vintage Burden (Kranky, 2006) the songs didn’t really grab me on their new album Charalambides know to touch the right button with about every song.

The 10 (there are 8 on cd btw, so avoid that one) songs deliver an intense feeling of melancholy with the delicate compositions and whispering voice.
Songs like Pity Pity Me are grabbing you at the throat with the minimal guitar sounds from Tom and delicate singing by Christina. One other song, which I saw mentioned at other websites as well, does speak out as well. The reworked song Long Last Breaths from Christina her solo album Lace Heart (Many Breaths, 2006, Root Strata, 2009) is presented here as Before You Go. This song delivers pure shivers. Where the original is minimal and soft, here Tom opens his guitar to create buzzing noisy drones.

Exile is a powerful statement by this duo who is their normal life aren’t together anymore, but in music seem to have grown even more together with their intense and delicate sound.
Without any doubt this deserves to be on the top of the list for 2011 and gets highest recommendation.

Listen to Before You Go on SoundCloud:

Buy the LP or CD through Kranky at http://brainwashed.com/common/htdocs/discog/krank158.html

There sometimes passes a record that you would call magic. This because it is has this special sound, something new. It might be a discovery or something you already knew but never really noticed.
The album Already Awake In The Night by the duo Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand (with help from David Trasoff on 2 pieces) is such an album. In this case it is discovery of a very special sound, something that is familiar but at the same time is totally new.

Already Awake In The Night is released on the Belgian/Indonesian label Ini.Itu (This Here, That There in Indonesian) which used to have a focus on sounds from Indonesia (in some form, field-recordings, instruments or anything else remotely connected) though stepped away from this with some of the last album.
Though, even with this step away the albums still have a focus on something non-Western. Like on this album where the duo is inspired by two Hindustrani raags, Raag Lalit and Raag Todi. Lalit is usually played before sunrise and Todi is usually played after sunrise, though here they are combined in one way so they would interact.

On side A we find the title piece which has Amelia Cuni performing her vocals with a bamboo resonator (although I have no clue what that is, but it sounds amazing), Trasoff on sarod and Durand on blown kalimba, sine waves, phase shifters and digital delays.
We get to hear slow transforming sine waves creating meandering drones over which the Sarod plays the ragas combined with the special vocals who are overtone and throat singing a Latin text from a Cistercian hymn sung just before dawn.
The piece reminds a lot of Indian music, but has influences from modern minimal music as well. It is a deep track with lots to discover.

On the flipside we find two pieces. Both are in the line of the one on the first side, but B1, Wavering Twilight, is without singing and B2, Morning Surge, is without sarod.
Though, while in the same line there are also distinct differences between the several compositions. Take for example Morning Surge where the singing by Cuni is going through  bamboo resonator again, creating a sound which sounds organic and unearthy at the same time.

The album is really consistent in sound and quality without becoming boring. The music is on the edge of Indian classical music, minimalism, drone and new age and knows to find its way in between these genres. And with the peculiar sounds used it proves to be really standing out among a lot of other albums.
A well deserved spot in my top 10 of this year, and really a shame it never got picked up very well. As such a hidden treasure.

Listen to two excerpts from this album through the Ini.Itu website:
Side A
Side B1

Already Awake In The Night is limited to 250 hand numbered vinyl pieces and is available through http://www.iniitu.net/

I wrote about this album earlier this year, so I will just copy the review I wrote at that time in July. Volume One made it to the top 10, volume two is also great but didn’t make it that far.

Spread over two slabs of vinyl, the first released in February and the second in May, Quadtych is the new album by Can Deas.

On his earlier work, My Guitar is Alive and It’s Singing (Blackest Rainbow, 2009), Deas played well focused melodic finger-picking style guitar. This work reminded a lot of contemporary guitar players such as James Blackshaw, but as well the more traditional Takoma style. Though with his specific playing he developed his own style.
With these albums another interest seems to come out. In the four pieces Cam Deas combines melodic parts reminding of ragas with minimalism and improvisation.
Throughout the four pieces (one on each side) we hear all elements back, but the main focus is on the more experimental side of the music with loads of droning sounds and extreme plucking of the strings.
In this sense Cam Deas drifted away from the more traditional playing. Only in the third part (Side A of volume two) the melodic playing returns. But on the flip side of that same record we totally forget about it when we hear Part Four with dissonant guitar tones which at first sound a bit annoying but after a few times listening starts working in a good way.

Unlike many of his peers Cam Deas shows a huge interest outside the more traditional field of folk guitar. You could of course mention the taunting with minimal music by James Blackshaw on The Glass Bead Game and All is Falling. But this is rather a step away from the guitar than in style, while Deas really takes a step further incorporating totally different styles, though sticking to only the 12 string acoustic guitar.

For me personally at this moment Volume One is the most intriguing listening experience because of the big variation and great experimentation. Though, Volume Two is still growing on me and might become to me as strong as One.
But safe to say: Cam Deas is at this moment the most interesting guitar player around.

The two vinyl LP’s are limited to 500 each, and the CD with all four pieces is limited to 1000.

Listen to a mix of the album:

Buy the album: http://www.presenttimeexercises.com/

For years I have been following the work of Gregg Kowalsky, first under his moniker Osso Bucco and later with his normal name. His break through must have been his first album on Kranky “Though the Cardinal Window” in 2006, after which a stream of releases on Root Strata, Kranky and other labels got released.

In the beginning Kowalsky was mainly active with laptop-based music (as far as I know the source of the sound) but after his first one on Kranky he switched to manipulated tape sounds. Which is since end 2006 he has been exploring.

On his latest album Battery Townsley out on the Italian label Senufo Editions run by Guiseppe Ielasi he presents us two of his tape works. On recorded live at the old bunker Battery Townsley and the other a studio mix by the same Guiseppe Ielasi.

In the tradition of his earlier tape works Kowalsky works here with various tape players situated over the room, all containing recordings of gongs, singing bowls and other drone creating instruments.
Kowalsky mixes these tapes walking through the room in such away that you are surrounded by the sound. On the LP this is mixed down to stereo which still delivers a nice stereo effect which moves you into deeper atmospheres.
The music reminds of the better work done by Eliane Radigue due to the used sounds, but at the same time is much more grainy.

On side B we find a mix of the tapes by Ielasi, which is a bit cleaner, though this doesn’t matter for the overall sound. It is a real pleasure to listen to the music. It works in a rather inspirational way without getting cheesy or new age.

Battery Twonsely is an album which shows one further step in the continues development by Gregg Kowalsky in his tape works. And it is clear he still has further grounds to explore in this one. If you never had the pleasure to hear his other work this is a great start, though the LP is only limited to 280 hand-numbered editions. So be quick to get one of the last available copies.

Listen to an excerpt of the live recording:

And buy the limited LP at the Senofo Editions website: http://www.senufoeditions.com/wordpress/?page_id=35
(I can hotlink to the samples on this side)

It has been a good year for me as Richard Youngs fan. The year started early with Atlas of Hearts, which was good. For a while my favorite album of the year (at that point). It got followed by a great split 10″ with Annelies Monsere, which has one track by Youngs which is just great (although Monsere her side is even more beauty). In July we got the EP I Dream of Mezzanine / Cloudplanes, which was quite disappointing. We also got a new album on Jagjaguwar with more traditional Youngs work called Amplifying Host in the same month and the year got closed with this album: Long White Cloud. Released as part of the subscription series from The Grapefruit Record Club.

Like every Richard Youngs album Long White Cloud is a discovery. Until the needle is dropped you do not know what you can expect. Youngs always has some kind of surprise in his music. Of course there are these things that make all releases without a doubt Richard Youngs, may it be his voice, the repetitive motives, the influences from folk music.   But, seriously most albums that are released after each other have another starting point and end.

For Long White Cloud this starting point is New Zealand where he stayed for a period before writing the songs travelling through the country. Inspired by the country he has written 5 different songs. Side North (A) contains 3 songs and Side South (B) the other 2.
In the different songs there are returning themes.

On Long White Cloud Richard Youngs has a pop-touch to the music, something we do not hear very often from his side. At least not in the way he does here. The different songs all sound pretty basic at first listen. But as mostly with his music it is the details that count.
Take for example the simple progression he has with his electric piano in Big Waves In An Actual Sea. He starts with two chords but builds this out to shifting patterns of various chords. It is the same with his voice, where it starts out with one voice he slowly turns in into a canon.

Throughout the other songs similar small details are used like finger-picking guitar or the repetitive distorted singing in Rotor-Manga-Papa-Maru combined with his clear vocals. All songs have their own secret slowly giving it self away.

One tracks specially stands-out. In the last song on the album Moutains Into Outer Space, which uses the same motive as the first song. It is one of those pieces that makes Richard Youngs so special among many other “singer/songwriter”, with his tragic singing. This singing is in big contrast with the chaotic guitar playing of finger-picking and delay effects. This song is a really energetic experience which just gives this album a little bit more compared with the two other LP’s released this year.

As a whole this is again a great Richard Youngs album, someone who always seems to surprise and almost never knows to disappoint. And for this year this one really stood out. Can’t wait for his next one coming out early January next year.

Listen to a Rotor-Manga-Papa-Maru through the grapefruit records club: http://grapefruitrecordclub.com/mp3/RichardYoungs-RotorMangaPapaMaru.mp3

Long White Cloud is limited to 320 and is available through The Grapefruit Record Club. http://grapefruitrecordclub.com/

If 2011 has been one thing for music it is without any doubt the revival of the Koschmische musik. Acts like Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never, James Ferraro and many more have released albums that in some sense grabbed back to the seventies electronic music like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and the likes. As I personally have a hard time listening to arpeggios a lot of this kind of music is wasted on me, though a few releases stood out this year. I quite enjoyed listening to Mountains, Expo ’70 and there was BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa.This last group has been working together now for quite some time and Big Shadow Montana is their 8th release since 2005. With the first releases the music is mainly drone and dark ambient, but since their previous release Space Finale (Edtions Mego, 2010) other elements have been coming in. Though, on there new effort it is the first time the music is created with mainly analogue machines (as far as I know at least). The LP contains two untitled pieces both just over 22 and 23 minutes.

My friends know it has never been a secret, my love for Six Organs Of Admittance (or I could even say everything Ben Chasny has done), so when he came to Tilburg on May 27th, 2011 to present his record called Maria Kapel in the Ursulinenkapel.In May 2010 Ben Chasny was invited by the Dutch festival organization Incubate for an artist in residence for their glocal project. In a week time Chasny was taken to several Maria shrines (Kapel) in the surroundings of Tilburg by a specialized guide who would explain the whole history behind the shrines and the region of Tilburg. With this experience Chasny started writing new songs which he performed live at the Incubate festival in De Pauluskerk in Tilburg on September 19th, 2010.

The recordings from this live performance are presented on this record, together with 2 additional pieces recorded in the studio at home.

For these songs Chasny went back to the acoustic guitar, something we didn’t hear him do for quite a while, with his last 100% acoustic guitar album being For Octavio Paz (Time-Lag Records/ Holy Mountain, 2003/2004).
As I had attended to concert at Incubate and already heard all the acoustic pieces, which I also recorded on video, I knew exactly what to expect.

Though the album starts with studio work for harmonium (what we also hear in the last track). A slow evolving drone piece that starts the atmosphere for the album good. Somehow with the first tones you can already feel the vibrations of the landscape around the center of Noord-Brabant, a mainly rural piece with in the heart the city of Tilburg, of the Netherlands.
The first acoustic song is called Riel after a village near the town my parents live (Goirle, both below Tilburg) and seems to describe the rural live in the villages in the area. It somehow seems familiar to me from the times I used to bike through the country side. I see the cows and the tractors with their trailers in front of me.

With this scene in my head I continue to the other songs and in the third song “Stone, Leaf and Pond” we get to hear what makes Chasny such an amazing guitar player. With his own style of finger-picking he makes a guitar sound as if you hear three different ones at once. But while it is all pretty technique he never looses sight on emotion in the music. It still fits very well with the scenery.

We also get to visit other villages and small towns, for example Dongen, which is to the West of Tilburg, where things get more hectic. Which might be the crazy traffic jams we get in the Netherlands some times. Though, form the hectic he goes to the slowness again, with soft humming.

For me this record is not only special because I attended the concert where it was recorded but also the memory of the place I used to call home, the city of Tilburg. Even after 13 years in the city of Amsterdam when I hear this music it makes me think of all things I have had there in the time I still lived with my parents. I even have visited some of the shrines myself, not to pray as I do not believe in any god, but more out of common interest in history and culture. And in this album I feel this.
Though, this does not mean this album wouldn’t touch you if you aren’t from this region. No I think anyone who comes from a place rural places, or cities near rural places, can relate to this music. And even for big city folks it can give this certain relaxing thing, this short escape from reality.

Maria Kapel in this case can be compared with For Octavio Paz very well, though where that album has more of a Central American vibe to it.
It has been a good year for me as Six Organs of Admittance fan, we got two albums (the other being Asleep Above The Floodplain) and some amazing performances. And with this one we say he is really back to his old level. The way we like to see him best.

Listen on Soundcloud:

Or see my own videos on YouTube:

Maria Kapel is released as limited LP of 500 in hand-painted sleeves with insert on Pavilion, which is Ben Chasny’s own private press label. It is told to be sold-out at the source, but again with google you might find some at some obscure small webshops.

http://sixorgansofadmittance.com/
http://inlog.org/2011/05/04/six-organs-of-admittance-maria-chapels-release-and-album-presentation/

Simon Whetham somehow appeared on my radar about two years ago. Since I have been trying to keep up with his work a bit. And I can say this is really satisfying. Specially when his CD Unheard Prayers dropped in. Not that this is really happy music, as it is totally the opposite, but we will get to that in a bit.

Whetham is a musician whose music is in the vague field of micromusic, drones, field-recordings and minimalism. Though, somehow he knows to stand out of most of the other music released in this field. This mainly has to do with his use of strings in certain pieces. His work can be found on labels such as Entr’acte, Mystery Sea, Install, Trente Oiseaux and many others.For his first release on incredible Dragon’s Eye Recordings he presents us a work that was inspired by a 4 day stay in Krakow where he was attending for a live perfomance at Audio Art. During his visit Whetham stayed in the Kazimierz area of Krakow, which is the old Jewish area during the Second World War. This area is now mainly know because the Nazis turned it into the Jewish ghetto during occupation. This place still breaths the air of this horrible time.

Inspired by this area Whetham started composing music.

The CD has three pieces of music on it and starts out with Part One (An Uncertain Distance), which is build up from unrecognizable field-recordings creating a haunting atmosphere. We hear scratching of metal, weird pops, the humming wind, radio statics and more.  The recordings are very well chosen to start this CD.

The second piece is Part Second (Paths, Crossing) is the longest of the three pieces. And not only the longest, it is also the one with most variation. At first we hear those field-recordings again, quietly. Slowly the volume increases and the first signs of (synthesized) strings appear, sad strings I must say. The sad heavy tones are in contrast with the recordings of birds singing their song. These birds amplify the feeling as they have been the innocent bystanders all the time, not aware of all atrocities done to the Jewish people.
While the strings fade the birds stay and new field-recordings are added. Soft drones of distant traffic and ventilation while there are the sounds of people working and talking. We get some time to rest, though a sadness stays.
Again we  return to the part where strings slowly fade in, this time as if they are playing in the room next door. Sad and slow. And after that again drones on the lower scale, but also soft piercing tones. A great piece which tells us so much. It breathes the area, you can feel the atmosphere as if it is surrounding you.

In the last piece Part Third (The Chamber) is more dense with thick layers of humming ventilation sounds and dripping water. Though in the end we get a piece again where very soft strings are playing while we hear cars passing by. It is as if we are taking a step away. Time fades away, slowly erasing history from this place.

Simon Whetham presents us something really special here, something that reminds us of the past. It is a damn fine piece of work showing a really good way field-recordings can be combined with classical music elements, something we do not hear very often.
Highly recommended.

Listen to Part Second (Paths, Crossing) through the Dragon’s Eye Recordings website.

Prayers Unheard was released on CD-R limited to 200 (sadly enough sold-out at the source, but maybe google can get you to some obscure webshop still selling it). Though, I heard rumors about a possible vinyl reissue. But if this will ever happen. Let’s hope it does.
http://www.dragonseyerecordings.com/catalogue/de5032.html