Small Wonders #2

Machinefabriek – Zink 3″ CD-R
Cut Hands (www.cuthands.net)
Super limited 3″ CD-R from the always excellent Machinefabriek (aka Rutger Zuydervelt). Hot on the heels of his 2006 release on Lampse, <i>Marijn</i>, comes this one track affair on Cut Hands. It’s roughly fifteen minutes of beautiful billowy drone. Fans of Fennesz, William Basinski, and Tim Hecker should take note. Zuydervelt is coming into his own in this game, increasing his output exponentially every couple of months. Unfortunately this 3″ CD-R is most likely out-of-print at this point, being limited to a meager 75 copies. Look for my review of his easier to find, <i>Weleer</i> double CD also being released by Lampse in the near future.

Tetuzi Akiyama/Oren Ambarchi/Alan Licht – Willow Weep and Moan For Me 3″ CD
Antiopic (www.antiopic.com)
This is a three way collaboration between abstract guitar hero Oren Ambarchi (best known for his opening tape piece on SunnO)))’s <i>Black One</i>), avant-garde maven Tetuzi Akiyama, and minimalist composer Alan Licht. It was recorded live in 2004 but not released until August of last year. Definitely not the most engaging thing any of them has ever done. Ambarchi employs his trademark processed guitar while either Licht or Akiyama plays slide guitar over the top of it. Not bad, but you could definitely find better things in any of their catalogs than this one off piece.

Raglani – Of Sirens Born CD-R
Gameboy (www.gmby.net)
The Gameboy label brings us this full-length, 40 minute CD-R from St. Louis artist Raglani. Its first two tracks, “Rivers In” and “The Promise of Wood and Water” are exercises in sine wave drone not unlike something Keith Fullerton Whitman or Ethan Rose might produce. The second half of the record is different, with druggy fuckery sounds similar in nature to Double Leopards or Vibracathedral Orchestra. If this is any indication of what’s to come, I can’t wait.

Pocahaunted – Water-Born CD-R
Not Not Fun (www.notnotfun.com)
This CD-R from Pocahaunted comes in a ziplock bag with photo insert and a braid of fabric. It always makes a cool sounding record even better when you know some care went into the packaging. Hand-made in an edition of 100, this one track is like what would happen if Birchville Cat Motel ate that band Beach House for breakfast. It’s slow and beautiful with ghostly female vocals underneath a wall of distorted strumming that eventually overtakes the piece. Fucking rad, two thumbs way up!

Rameses III – Honey Rose

Honey Rose features themes 1 through 6 of the soundtrack to Jon Spira’s film Suityman. The ambient score of this short album, including on track 1 recorders and steel guitars perfectly matches the cover art, a still from the film, of an endless field. Incidental sounds of birds fluttering, footsteps and running water provide ambience to the first theme.

Theme 2 features echoing acoustic guitar somehow distorted slightly and soft vocals. It reminds me of a cross between the soundtrack to Zabriskie Point featuring Jerry Garcia on acoustic and the music from David Byrne’s story of Texas’ sesquicentennial, True Stories.

It’s an impressionistic score featuring echoes and reverberations and a chorus of sounds that brings to mind long experimental pieces by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The 4th theme brings us back to gentle acoustics and accordion. At this point, it reminds me just a tiny bit of Willy Nelson’s original score for Brokeback Mountain, two guitars, one playing gentle, country slide.

The sound of reverberating steel guitars across a golden field, accordion, recorders and banjo provide the ingredients to this six theme piece of beautiful film music.

Broadtosser – Poison No. 9

Broadtosser, part of the burgeoning Chicago local scene, combine elements of Patti Smith, straight rock and artists from diverse scenes such as X, AFI, the Stooges and Slint. The spooky lyrical venture of “Little Spider” evokes images of crisp leaves drifting towards the sidewalk at dusk on a brisk Halloween. Very similar to AFI’s composition The Art of Drowning, Broadtosser creates a symphonic elegy in “Cherries Red” with guitar distorted to the point of thinness and a punchy bass, poking through the din with bright riffs. While in “Poison No. 9″, Broadtosser goes back to their rock hard roots in a well formed tune even the most discriminate listener can enjoy.

With a spookier tone, akin to some of X’s more country influenced tunes, Broadtosser gets harder on “Little Spider”. References to the Little Miss Muffet yarn start off the number, with Sara Jean’s lyrical muscle ever present over the reverberations of grimy, distorted chords. Double hit snares lend a certain echo to the drums as well as Sara Jean’s voice becomes more intense. Near the two-minute mark, Broadtosser takes a turn bringing images of campfire tales over Viv E’s throbbing bass lines with noodling overtones. As with many other aspects, Sara Jean lets herself go into high pitched yelps as the song gets harder and harder.

“Cherrie’s Red” is more indie than the other tunes, with a Slint-esque flow encompassing the sometimes-mellow sometimes-gritty piece. Marked by a sheer lack of dither, the beginning section of “Cherrie’s Red” brings Sara Jean’s vocals to the forefront over gentle drum taps and far spread guitar chords, in contrast to the intricately strummed noisy intro. The piece shifts between quiet, near-accapella verses and the Stooges’ early sloppiness. This works well for the song, accentuating the unorthodox structure of the piece. Unable to distinguish between verse and chorus, Broadtosser guides the curious listener to focus less on the sound itself and more so on what they’re saying.

“Poison No. 9″ – my personal favorite – begins with a pristinely executed drum rhythm which Broadtosser builds upon with choppy guitar and a melancholy lead riff, reminiscent of slower AFI tunes. Guitarist/vocalist Sara Jean’s voice carries out lengthy poetic verse in a near croon before gaining a certain veracity in the chanting chorus. The sobbing guitar riff follows the chorus setting the tone for the next wispy verse; the pattern continues for two and a half minutes uninterrupted, when the song takes an abrupt turn, speeding up, becoming harder as the guitar goes from quiet strums to gritty power chords. Atypical backing vocals from Liz Ele – drummer – and Viv E – bassist – harmonizing to repeat “You know I won’t come back” before dropping out as the Sara Jean’s voice builds with the cars to a backbreaking crescendo, with distortion even grimier than before.

Broadtosser is, by far, one of the best groups I have reviewed for DOA. With Sara Jean’s eloquence, Liz Ele’s intricate drumming and Viv E’s expressionistic bass lines there is little to critique, leaving me waiting for more material from this bastion of the Chicago underground.

Deerhunter – Brooklyn – Silent Barn, New York – 2007-04-27

It was disgusting. My cigarettes melted into the back pocket of my pants. My matches sopped up fluid like a sponge. And I could feel rivulets of sweat flow between my buttcheeks on their way down to my socks. With eyes stinging and mood irritable, I pushed my way through the sea of hipster humanity with equal parts stomp and shove, and whenever I got a cock-eyed stare, I broadcast my death glare, the same glare you get from Satan before he sodomizes you with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, everyone brought that look tonight.

In an overcrowded DIY space in scenic Bushwick, Deerhunter, Awesome Color, and two bands I missed because I was pounding beers and getting chiefy, dove into this stew of human humidity and tore through manic, if rambling and incoherent sets. Me and mi amigo Carlo arrived just in time to have the doors shut behind us and the human body count ceased increasing. Silent Barn was fucking packed, one of those shows where you constantly feel on the verge of freaking out with claustrophobic paranoia. But there’s nowhere else to go, so you swallow your fear and your beer and hope the building doesn’t collapse. We slithered to the front as the crowd reluctantly split to allow Awesome Allison to the “stage” (read: carpet on the floor) with her drums in tow. After a seemingly endless tuning session with “Mr. Me Too” bouncing over the loudspeakers, Awesome Color announced that it would start with a new one, and off we went.

For being here only three months, I’ve seen Awesome Color five times, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. This occasion falls in the “by accident” category. As it delved into the stoner solos and rumbling drums of this new number, the crowd spilled into the Color’s personal space, and lead singer dude didn’t mind a bit. By the end of it’s set, Awesome Color had played four songs for over 30 minutes, and not one of them recognizable as anything but a drawn-out jam. Sure, the élan was there, but once again they brought this extra (annoying) dude up to sing while the crowd hoisted the guitarist and itself atop its collective hands. But I can’t complain- some girl rubbed her huge tits on my back and handed me a pounder as her fat ass stampeded passed me. I still feel I got the better end of the deal.

After a quick reprieve in the refreshingly cool basement, we wandered back up to find out why Deerhunter, five young upstarts from the ATL, kept sucking up hype like a media vacuum. The lead dude is Holocaust skinny, but I think I read somewhere that he has some genetic bone/skin/face disease that renders him this way. Cool. I can dig that. Carlo fought for a spot on a table behind the band and we lorded above our indie subjects like King Bungholes of Asshole Mountain. Not a bad spot to nab, I tells ya.

Having only heard its songs from MySpace, I thought Deerhunter’s live set would be much more ethereal. Instead, it attacked its shoe-gazer-esque tunes with punk abandon awash in noisy abrasion. Our skinny leader spent much of the set perched above the drums standing on something or someone as the band stood in a semi-circle around him in a vain attempt of transforming into some sort of retaining wall. No dice. The crowd flopped into the Deerhunter compound as each member reveled in his instrument and the attention. And the group didn’t let up. Running through a solid 30 to 45 minute set (give or take; the heat first attacks one’s sense of time before it even sucks saltwater from each and every pore on your body), both band and fan released whatever frustration plagued them as each had suffered in this semi-sauna. The arguments about Deerhunter’s originality, whether it loots or loves its inspirations, evaporated into the air as the set steadily increased in lunacy and energy. The band strolled within inches of an apex, ended the set, and swam through the crowd to the fresh air outside, never again to return to the stage. That’s it. Over. Thud.

In the end, I was glad I spent $8 to be uncomfortable and hit on girls that were (and still are) way out of my league. Maybe the show lacked some final, indescribable ingredient that I was subconsciously hoping for. I don’t know. I’d rather be introduced to Deerhunter this way than picking up the album (which I didn’t). But the moment I knew everything would be ok, for me, the bands, and the masses, was when the same fat chick that so graciously handed me a beer caught me in her gaze from the front of the crowd and gave an excited, sloppy wave, raging and rocking all the while. If her fat ass could reach the action on the front lines, crushing one pucker-lipped hipster at a time on her way, then we all can. Fucking life affirming.

Corbi Wright – All The Little Ways

Albums like Corbi Wright’s All The Little Ways are often difficult to review. Each song features only her voice with the accompaniment of a piano or a guitar and they are all extremely similar in style and tempo. There is a struggle between the album and the songs themselves. The album itself fades away into the background nearly immediately and is easily forgotten once it has finished. Just the plinking of a piano and indecipherable vocals ring through the head as if all the songs have melted together into one.

The choice here is to forget about this as a collection and rather take it song by song. Individually they offer the listener the chance to explore the details of her words and the voice that brings them to life. The album opens with Wright’s shaky voice over spare piano chords in “Love Will Win”. She sings of a struggle where she is unsure of the outcome and her voice sounds like it’s on the edge of being happy, but something is holding her back. “Is This the Season” follows with her voice over selective notes on an electric guitar, played very softly. Her voice is different here. No longer does she sound shaky and unsure, but rather deep and sad with the voice more like a lounge singer. She has a very interesting way of letting her voice help tell the story by acting as character in the scene.

Wright’s debut has a timeless quality about it help to give each song an individual charm. Like the songs of Norah Jones, Wright has a voice that can easily span generations. Although, unlike Miss Jones, Wright hasn’t figured out the key to captivating an audience and holding onto their attention with ups, downs and everything in between. I thought for sure she must have at least one song that goes even a tiny bit beyond the starkness so heavily leaned on in every song. In the song “Can You Boogie?” she doesn’t even crack a smile let alone begin to move her feet. Wright even admits, “I don’t want to let myself go”. And she certainly doesn’t come close to a boogie while she sings “Can you boogie woogie?” in a melodic high-pitched tone followed by several “la la la’s”. But her voice does let go at different points within the song and begins to show less softness and even the guitar sounds harsh and angry in spots. However, in “Now And Then” she quickly returns to her soft, melodic ways over spare piano chords.

All The Little Ways is not an album designed to provide the listener with an overall experience that easy flows from one song to the other. To put the album on and expect it to shine all the way through will just leave you with disappointment, even when after the fifth listen you can’t remember a single song. However, what this album is designed to do is provide with you a series of songs that, individually, will give you an experience within themselves. Corbi Wright’s soft yet slightly scratchy voice can soothe your troubles and provide you with a story, but unfortunately a listener can only handle so much of her before it all blends together and becomes boring.

Jatun – S/T

Jatun, the Portland, Oregon duo of Alan Grosvenor (guitar, keys, bass, loops) and Scott Worley (vocals, keys, guitars, laptop), use swirling electronics, treated guitars and fuzzy beats to craft an eclectic mix of trippy electronica on their self-titled debut album.

The 13 tracks on this hour-long musical voyage explore many facets of the electronica genre from celestial chill-out to vocal-less trip-hop to fuzzy space-rock and even catchy synth-pop. In fact there is quite a bit going on at all times and it is a lot for the listener to decipher as the many layers of these electronic mini-symphonies require a few spins before it can all be digested. But after indulging repeatedly, the listener’s appetite for luxurious electronica will be satiated, especially if taken with the advice of the band and a set of headphones is used.

The mostly instrumental compositions take cues from the progressive and gauzy electronic swells of M83, the floating and expansive melodies of Blue States and BT and the subtle electronic skittishness of Royksopp. But even with all of the different styles and influences appearing on this ambitious endeavor, Jatun manage to use them for colors that add texture and substance to their own sonic arrangements. The few vocals appear only fleetingly and are shrouded in a haze, amount to only a whisper and are quickly washed away by the music.

The pieces range from short and sweet synth-based space tunes to long, sweeping cinematic soundscapes to melodic tracks with electronic beats, bass and guitars. All are enhanced with a plethora of instrumental flurries that vary from track to track and drift in and out of the mix. These adornments include soaring, celestial guitars treated with lots of sustain and reverb, swirling synthetic sound waves, deep, resonating bass, and bristly beats, often heard floating on a bed of multi-layered electronics with nebulous sound treatments.

Although at times some of the tracks feel a bit cluttered with blurred melodies and too much fuzz, these minor flaws don’t detract much from the overall effect. And even with the track to track tempo and style variations, the album doesn’t feel rambling. These changes of pace are not a distraction but actually a welcoming trait as Jatun don’t get bogged down in any one style and manage to keep it fresh and stimulating for the full sixty minutes.

Autonym – Shall We Skip To Excessive Celebration?

Will Angelos is pissed off. Majorly pissed off. In fact, this guy can’t stop bitching about shit. He voxes for the hardcore/ punk outfit Autonym in a strained, raspy holler, posts quite a few malignant blogs on the band’s myspace page (/autonymla) and absolutepunk.net, and is writing an internet-only novel (which I’m sure he bitches in and about). While I can’t say that I’ve looked for the novel on the net, I perused the blogs and found a man with a bone to pick with just about everything illogical. Raising awareness, or at least raising his pen, seems to be Angelos’ M.O.

But on Autonym’s debut Shall We Skip To Excessive Celebration?, Angelos doesn’t complain or rant like a dude going on about how bad his job sucks. Instead, Angelos picks different characters, sometimes more than one in a song, to make his point. Take “Battered Wife Syndrome”: “I won’t speak unless spoken to first (That’s right)/ Damn right you won’t.” The album’s lyrics seem to explore the blandness of life, and, more importantly, the awful things that people allow to become mundane as they’re kept in the dark by their own fear of what’s actually happening in the outside world. That being said, my CD insert lacked lyrics to the middle four songs, so maybe the words really explore the vulnerability a man feels while racing naked through the night-drenched streets, escaping the demons of his own imagination. It’s all up in the air at this time.

Musically, Autonym’s abrasive attack is not unlike the short bursts of grinding guitars and strangled vocals of Daughters. Finished in fifteen minutes, Shall We Skip to Excessive Celebration? doesn’t dwell on anything for too long; riffs are only heard once and then burn out like fireflies. Because of the high riff turnover, the album, though short, needs a few listens to fully sink in. At first, I was not into Autonym, but as certain riffs, specifically the dark rage of “The Luminary” and the heavy, odd rhythm of “The Sinner and his Patient Wife,” grabbed me. The calm segues, featuring bells and cheesy dance beats I could have done without, but with such an onslaught of rusty industrial nails, the palette-cleansing effect was welcomed. While not as engaging as it will someday be, Autonym is a band on a mission to attack, destroy, create, and employ, and with energy and passion like this, it will be digging and discovering new and better battle plans soon enough.

Emmure – Goodbye to the Gallows

Once again with a Victory Records release, cockiness outweighs quality. Boldly stated as “The Hardest Album of 2007,” their recent signee Emmure doesn’t quite reach that pinnacle on Goodbye to the Gallows. Yes, it’s heavy, but that alone doesn’t make it worthwhile by any means.

“A Ticket for the Paralyzer” is instantly one big breakdown fest of an intro, and suspiciously similar to The Acacia Strain’s “Carbomb.” Every Time I Die’s clean vocals are borrowed in the next song, “10 Signs You Should Leave,” then balanced out with the typical low/high metalcore screaming you’d expect. The Emmure formula establishes itself quite quickly, it’s basically a combination of fast parts and heavy breakdowns until any particular song ends.

“Travis Bickle” delivers two minutes of a heartbeat with rustling leaves. I don’t know the “deeper” meaning behind this, but I think it sucks. The lyrics are also in a sad state of affairs. “And it’s sad to say that I still cry to the Bayside CD everyday / Don’t you know those song are about you? / Check tracks 8 and 9 / Then call me back.” A nice advertisement for their label mates, if nothing else.

The illustrations at least make the package attractive on the outside, complete with mystical images of a boy’s stages after hanging himself in the woods. If you’re looking for any originality, it’s not here. If you could care less about such things, be my guest.

Antelope – Reflector

Dischord’s Antelope makes stripped down art-rock that makes bands like Shoplifting and Ratatat sound like the London Philharmonic. The beats rarely vary within a song and sometimes get shared between songs. A cymbal crash and an extra snare hit pass for drum fills. The guitar melodies consist of simple patterns of notes. The singing alternates between forceful and laid back, owing to the fact that the members of Antelope share time at the mic. Reflector sounds simple.

Odd things happen when you listen to an album like this. By paring things down so far, Antelope makes you pay attention to the little details. “Contraction” has a one-note bassline that hits only when the bass drum hits and the drums don’t change. The guitar line has a kind of Mexican feel to it. “Dead Eye” doesn’t have any guitar — just bass, drums, and vocals. Most of the songs have just verse and chorus with no additional ornamentation. So with not much to go on, you pick up on little things: a guitar note just mis-timed (as on “Concentration”), the way a downbeat can sound like an upbeat (“Mirroring”), the way a premature lyric can change the rhythm of the song for a verse or two (“Justin Jesus”).

“Fire on the beach / Water in the air / A synonym / An antonym / Another word for fire / A fisherman” — these lyrics, from “Justin Jesus,” could be from an early Talking Heads album. Intentionally oblique but with enough potential that you could probably arrange them in some way to create your own narrative.

The catchier numbers make you wonder how another band would have handled the same material. Power chords? A drum fill here and there? Some kind of extended bridge? All of these have been dispensed with. There’s nothing to distract you from the core of what’s being conveyed. This is skeletal music. In fact, it would be more interesting to hear how Antelope would apply its reductionist philosophy to someone else’s music.

The best songs — “Reflector,” “Mirroring,” “The Demon” — really stick with you. It’s funny to think that Dischord made its mark early on by issuing the fastest, chord-driven punk out there. But even then, you had Minor Threat covering “12XU” by Wire. And it was Wire who first made the transition from punk to bare-bones art-rock sound cool. Reflector is Dischord’s Chairs Missing, and that’s pretty cool.

The Breakfast – Moxie Epoxy

Though I’ve devoted much effort to overcoming it, I’ve always had a problem with jam bands and their derivatives. Instrumentally, many are not only technically proficient but often times genuinely explorative, utilizing their intrinsic musical freedom to traverse each desolate, over wise impenetrable space found on the insides of their own skulls. Yeah, it can amount to a fair bit of overindulgent wankery, but keeping a fair balance yields pleasant results.

However, the same isn’t to be said of the lyrical endeavors; in my experience, hackneyed harangues abound, brimming with orations which may make fine fodder for conversation in a hot-boxed room dense with the smoky remnants of herbal gratification, but set to music these sermons sound a bit trite and serve only to rob the instrumental aspects of the music of depth and inventiveness.

Oh, yeah, The Breakfast.

Moxie Epoxy is their sophomore album. At times, the album is framed by ineffaceable funk jams that absolutely beg for movement from the listener(s), at others by classic rock throwbacks, and even further by spacey wanderings best exemplified by opener and stand-out track “Psygn.” Despite ineffective, lame lines such as, “No matter how different we can all agree / It does us no good to not be alive – survive,” “Psygn” goes the furthest of any songs sonically with an atmosphere suited for space and a spirit unfettered by typical rock conventions.

“Good Things,” a misstep both lyrically and instrumentally, betrays the band’s best qualities by opting out of fun, frenzy, or exploration in favor of melancholy and balladry, sulking on for nearly six minutes of what feels like insincere sentimentality. “Tricky Ways” apes countless classic rock groups all at once with a tired tale of a disloyal significant other, complete with shallow, sappy addresses along the lines of, “I’m always good to you, woman / But your love brings me misery.”

The Breakfast’s performance on Moxie Epoxy is commanding and undoubtedly skilled, but such playing demands greater vocal conduct and much more intriguing content. As is, there remains a large divide between the dexterous instrumental presence and the dismal singing.

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