Ross on Friends

A quest to find all of the world's "...wordless sound poems."

[rossonfriends]

Weekly Report 1 [8/14/2014-8/21/2014]

BMB - Fist/Splinter

Timely digital release. Though many have tried and failed (not died), few can match the glorious racket of BMB/British Murder Boys. It’s everything beautiful and wrong about EBM, industrial, techno, post-punk and noise rolled up into a molotov cocktail of UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ.  Make it never stop!

Bass Clef - Bugbranded

Ping-ponging modular wonder from Bass Clef. Lively synth explorations on top of a warm techno pulse, perfect for twirling your glowstick in the waning summer days.

MM/KM - MM/KM

ALL HAIL. An oldie but goodie. Demented house from Mix Mup and Kassem Mosse. Still holds up beautifully, slams when it needs to and confuses when it has to.

H.S. - A Verdigris Reader

Drippy, murky, low-rolling stuff from Huerco S. Like his last few outings it’s slow and confounding, but it still has the warm, throbbing heart of house/techno buried somewhere beneath the rubble. Good stuff.

[rossonfriends]

Minor Science - Noble Gas

Slippery, confused house (but not Confused House) jams from Trilogy Tapes. The grooves have clearly been sipping too much lager and slosh around without inhibition. Minor Science plays it to great effect, surprising you when his tracks snap into focus. The EP really picks up steam for the back 9, starting with Hapless. It kicks around with a heavily reverbed drum keeping time, and some hard-to-source but altogether pleasant noises dotting the landscape. When Hapless turns its chug into a gallop, after Barry White has intoned “What am I supposed to do now?” for the 100th time, you can’t help but get nodding along. “The Beckoner” plays the same track, wavering in and out of focus, with just enough of a pulse to keep you going. It’s got a solid kick, but a wheezing bass tone, scittering vocal samples, and a few other tracks push it into left-field. “Foggy Situation” rounds off the EP by ditching some of the oddness and going for straight prettiness. Oddly enough, Minor Science pulls it off. Another solid outing for Trilogy Tapes.

[rossonfriends]

BMB - Live in Tokyo

Techno's original bad boys bring the noise.  A career highlight for both Surgeon and Regis, this release fuses everything noisy and left-field in the latter day discographies–pummeling high-frequency whines, gut-wrenching low-end, clearly disturbed vocals.  Unlike pretty much everything else released under BMB/British Murder Boys moniker, it takes a full 19 minutes for anything like a beat to drop in, but damned if that 19 minute wait isn't worth it.  "First" sets the stage with a long drone punctuated by whirring noises and screams to massively hypnotic effect.  It all touches down for a full-throttle rendition of "As Above so Below", which takes BMB's penchant for grinding industrial beats and post-punk atmospherics to a new level, complete with a searing vocal turn.  Finally, they nuke the site from orbit with the noise-workout "Final", all machine-gun blasts and screams.  I've enjoyed pretty much everything these chaps have done, and this tops it all.  The mission of noise-techno fulfilled.  

[rossonfriends]

Pinch B2B Mumdance Mix

Yes go get the CD mix now, but this free, eh em as long as you share on Twittersphere or Facebook (seriously guys I would rather pay for this stuff).  Anyway, it BANGS.  Terminator/Brad Fiedel synths are window dressing for some serious low end and drum work.  Get on it.

[rossonfriends]

_moonraker - Lowjit Vagrants

And here we have one of the most compelling releases from an amazing run from an amazing label. Trilogy Tapes appears to be in some sort of golden age at the moment, from the damaged techno of Tuff Sherm to…this apparent transmission from techno deep space. After so much industrial techno from across the shore it took some boys from Philly (?) to make weird techno fun again. Yeah this includes a lot of high pitched whines, not-quite–4/4 beats and warbly synths galore, but damned if it doesn’t sound a peach in the waning days of summer (yeah this was released ages ago, I’m slow get over it). The boys behind _moonraker take some of the basic tools of the noise-techno-not-techno movement (if you want to call it that), add a smidge of psychedlic, synths straight out of Space Quest IV, some hints of melody, and just the right amount of grit and throw it into an interstellar grinder. Oronimbus starts things off in proper fashion, with squirly synths and a bit-crushed lead giving way to a galloping thump. It call comes off like the mothership touching down–magnificent. Plot Query might be the highlight of the record for me, it’s certainly the most straightforward missive here, as _moonraker indulges some normal-ish techno impulses to swimming effect. If Side A is the welcoming party for our new deep-space-techno-overlords, Side B is a completely different animal. After the calming ambient interlude of Cyan Lean, things get real with the positively martial Tilt March. It’s the march to our destruction at hands of the techno kind. AHH SO GOOD!

[rossonfriends]

HATE - BAD HISTORY

The lovable lads from Liverpo…I mean Manchester break off some serious breakcore soundsystem damage with this tape. Comprised of three heroes from the Modern Love staple, G.H., Andy Stott, and Miles Whittaker, HATE consolidates everything they do well—murky, down-and-dirty sonics with hefty bass and evil, distortion-laden jungle. Along with the Test Pressing series from Miles’ Demdike Stare and Millie (again, Miles) and Andrea’s (again, Andy) Drop the Vowels, BAD HISTORY represents the best of the recent jungle/’ardcore revival. Yes, it’s mostly tracks that have been around for some time (especially what’s available in the digital version), but damn if they don’t sound as up-to-the-microsecond new as everything else on the market. A few of the tropes from jungle’s heyday are deployed—namely, the breaks and the BPM—but they’re used as a springboard for the kind of magnificent sonic experimentation the Modern Love crew is known for. This isn’t a simple retread. Injustice is a prime example, while the drums are filtered and echoed into infinity and occassionally time-reversed, they always bang the way you expect hardcore to bang. Bass synths wobble away while some stuff in the treble range comes off like a swarm of buzzsaws. Another highlight, Cunning Love, takes the same kind of scalpel to the drums, overlaid on some downright romantic pad work and R&Bish vocal samples. Pretty Boys Don’t Survive Up North uses the same toolkit to more menacing effect.

Everything is squeezed into a megamix on the cassette along with some new stuff, all smashingly good. If you can find the thing in stock, GET. IT. NOW. Awesome stuff.

[rossonfriends]

Ben Frost - A U R O R A

All apologies for the delay—I was finishing my thesis (and what were YOU DOING?). Anyway, onward to Ben Frost’s A U R O R A.

Yep, it’s as good as they say. Believe the hype. Ben Frost’s official follow-up to By the Throat takes the same eye toward sound design and focuses it completely on knocking you on your ass. Where By the Throat could be considered some mutant form of ambient, black metal and noise are the clear reference points for A U R O R A. This also deploys some weapons-grade percussion work from Liturgy drummer Greg Fox (assuming this is all due to him and not co-conspirators Shahzad Ismaily and Thor Harris, also performing yeoman’s work), that transforms Ben Frost's soundscapes into a beautiful black-metal-rave hybrid. A close cousin might by Pete Swanson and some of the other folks who are trying to connect the dots between harsh noise and dance forms, but I think Frost has found an utterly unique sound. A U R O R A contains a mix of live instrumentation, analog and digital sources that are all blended beyond recognition. The heavily distorted drums on Nolan, the prickly noise that begins The Teeth Behind the Kisses, the high-pitched whine of Venter, the ominous bells throughout the album. I’m not sure I’ve heard such an eclectic mix in some time, and it’s clear that Frost will use whatever tool necessary to get your attention. This is some seriously confrontational music that operates with a cosmic sense of scale and drama. Honestly, if this weren’t backed up by some incredible music it would be utterly ridiculous.  Damned is he hasn't pulled it off, almost every track is a highlight.  The album truly peaks in the middle stretch starting with the percussive bombast of Secant, which sounds like a mutant hybrid of Van Halen synths, some incredible drum work, and mountains of distortion and noise. Everything explodes in Diphenyl Oxalete, leading to the supernova that is Venter—A U R O R A’s centerpiece. Ventner is a masterpiece of sustained tension through sound design, with synths straight of Tim Hecker dancing around some bit-crushed drums, rolling tom work, and an occassional piercing shriek. It’s the soundtrack to everything falling apart. Slow effing clap.

<a href="http://benfrost.bandcamp.com/album/a-u-r-o-r-a" data-mce-href="http://benfrost.bandcamp.com/album/a-u-r-o-r-a">A U R O R A by Ben Frost</a>

[rossonfriends]

KWC 92 - Dream of the Walled City

So this was unexpected.  After record after glorious record of baked-into-the-pavement-underground-probably-hardware-based techno (Jahiliyya Fields being a damn glorious exception), L.I.E.S. delivers the Bladerunner sequel I never saw coming.  Lots of producers have tried to tap into whatever astral plane Vangelis occupied for Deckard's exploits, and this is one of the few that effectively mines the same emotional and conceptual territory.  It's odd that it's so evocative of Bladerunner, given that it doesn't trade in the same OMGJUNOSYNTH new age synth runs.  On the surface, Dream of the Walled City has much Earthlier concerns than Vangelis' creations from infinity and beyond, inspired by the "walled city" Kowloon in Hong Kong rather than the cityscape of our future nightmares.

And rather than killer Rutger Hauers and Darrell Hannas, the enemy is the city itself.  The echoed sub-bass synth of Tai Tam Tuk sounds like the walls closing...it's beautifully haunting.  Night Drive deftly employs sampled drums and rumbling low-end synthwork.  And for the rest of the LP, KWC 92 bring SUCH an atmospheric sound--samples of what sound like fluorescent lights popping on and off, incredibly lush synthwork that's not afraid to punch things up with bass weight, and longing orchestral themes.  Hats off, seriously deadly stuff. RIYL ANYTHING.  

[rossonfriends]

Filter Dread - Space Loops

Yes it's cassette only, yes you'll probably have to get it from overseas.  Yes this is some kind of hipster totem to show off to your loser friends that are staring at their iTunes visualizers waiting for the next...maybe this is why I don't have a lot of friends.  (Not everyone can get a spiffy Nakamichi tape player basically unused from their parents, but I digress).  ANYWAY, this is absolutely worth the hoops you need to jump through to listen to this.  And this actually seems well-suited to the format, it being a collection of grimey, thumpy, psychedelic vignettes presented like they were just committed to tape in a 3 am jam session on Geidi Prime.  That's not to say that this feels thrown together, it actually works beautifully as a long-player and has all the cohesiveness of a radio mix.  As for the sounds, Filter Dread is much more comfortable with grime (the adjective, not the genre) than his other nu-grime compatriots like Slack, Logos, and SD Laika, who channel Autechre and the new UK baseheads with pristine future music sound palettes like the Night Slugs crew (esp. Jam City).  Space Loops feels like party music for a smoke out session on the predator home world.  It's bubbling with all sorts of fantastic time-reversed/heavily filtered drum loops, chopped and screwed voices in the distance, and solar flare synth stabs.  The sounds seem to emerge from a gas cloud haze at half speed.  It sounds like this should be some kind of half-baked mess, but it's really really damn good.  Bust out your black light, get out that copy of Aliens vs. Predator (for the Jaguar of course), and let the night roll in.  Hats off!

[rossonfriends]

Joe - Punters Step Out / Club Scared

Dance music is serious business.  Apparently everyone is sad, smokes cigarettes while staring at the wall, and listens to the thud of a kick drum punctuating the cracks of a hammer against a broken pipe.  Somehow most innovative dance music has really turned into a sad sad early David Lynch film.  I like early David Lynch films, but I also need my fill of Buckaroo Banzai.  Joe, that irrepressible dance maven from the UK, has turned up the first dance track that made me seriously lawl.  Honestly, I turn on Punters Step Out after reading the Boomkat review (spoiler alert: they say it's good).  The first minute or so sounds like maybe a well-manned Claro Intelecto track, some kind of dub-inflected blah blah, all well and good so far.  The beat drops out and all of a sudden...Krusty the Clown turns up with his funhouse organ.  Forget everyone re-appropriating the sounds of the 80's, this guy's aped the sounds of the organ grinder circa 1880.  Then we get the loud hum of 60 Hz power line noise, the tell-tale sign of a half-plugged in audio cord, and then a...samba bit with some bass weight?  After so much tape-fuzzed psychedelic beat music, this was the first piece of dance music to actually catch me off guard in a long long time.  Club Scared is also good and brings the funky, but it's more of a comedown after a night of camaraderie with the evil clown from IT.  Bravo Joe bravo.  Bravo bravo bravo.

[rossonfriends]

SD Laika - Idiot Thug

I'm finally coming around to the whole instrumental avant-grime thing.  Between Logos, Filter Dread, Miss Modular, Sudanim, Visionist, etc. etc. things are looking on the up and up.  It feels like true future music.  To a certain degree this new scene–whatever you want to call it–feels like it's breaking free not just from grime, but from any and all genres.  Yes, there are some nods to grime (full disclosure:  I missed the first wave of grime being stateside and not all that cool at the time) with the bitcrushed angular synths and that persistent gun reloading sample (unlike a lot of the samples used in footwork, this one doesn't grate for some reason).  Otherwise it's a complete free-for-all.  And SD Laika might be the most out there. This anonymous beat-slinger sounds more influenced by Untitled-era Autechre and Actress than Wiley.  Laika's music bangs from time to time, but the rhythms struggle to find the grid.  Any melody seems incidental and instantly melts into the racket of machine noise. Yet, like Autechre and Actress, Laika gives you just enough accessibility to hold on for the ride. It's absolutely brilliant, and this mix bodes well for whatever Laika has in store for an upcoming release on Tri Angle.

[rossonfriends]

Donato Dozzy - Electronique.it podcast (EP 200, Roma)

A reminder to myself and others that this mix must be appreciated, which has really held up since it was first posted some 10 months ago.  It caps off a hell of a run for Dozzy, between K, Voices from the Lake and Plays Bee Mask!  Somehow the man can do gorgeous zero-gravity-ambient-techno AND the kind of Italian hardcore-infected-tribal-techno that's on display here.  Go on a long run and enjoy the whizzes and the non-stop thump thump thump.    

[rossonfriends]

Autechre - Exai (Part 1)

Well this is embarrassing.  I can only speak authoritatively about the first half of Exai, because I've only listened to the second half a few times.  All 20 tracks do form some kind of cohesive whole, but the front half is one of the best hours of music Autechre have ever composed.  So, this post only addresses tracks 1-9.  It's odd that a lot of the press surrounding this album has called it "difficult".  And it's a doubly weird thing to say decades after Metal Machine Music, after the rise and fall of the noise scene, after Merzbow, after the Boredoms, Mouthus, and To Live and Shave in LA.  The sound of Autechre lately has been downright lush.  If anything could be considered difficult about Autechre, it might be the (occasional) apparent lack of clear structure or logic in how their sounds are sequenced.  Still, this isn't noise music, and as weird and seemingly random as Autechre seemingly get, you can always hear the ghost of techno and rave in their music.  Little burps and gurgles might shoot off in a million directions, but they all average to point in the same direction–forward.  

ANYWAY, this album is absolutely freaking gorgeous to listen to.  You want to get lost in the world they've built here.  To call it an aural sculpture would do it disservice, it's an aural...universe.  With this record, Autechre have consolidated all of their strengths in off-the-grid drum programming, ambient synth pads, and a restless mode of composition to capture the music of electronic sounds trying to break free of the machine.  irlite (get 0) is an early highlight, and shifts between 4-5 motifs, beginning with a maze of pings and echoes and quickly shapeshifting into a haunting ambient track underscored by a buzzing bass synth.  It's sci-fi space-time electronic music with a complicated soul.   vekoS showcases the banging side of Booth and Brown, with a twinkly synth circumscribing drums that never seem to follow the same interval twice.  Autechre have always been brilliant at giving you the sense of structure and forward movement without much to hang on to.  And finally, there's bladelores.  This is without hesitation one of the best tracks of their career, and a real highlight of 2013.  It's propulsive, beautiful, and confounding.  Snare drums ping-pong around the simple motif of a repeating synth pad with some filtering.  Then the synths build with a few simple tweaks they evoke a sense of drama that's downright Wagnerian.  It's breathtaking.

[rossonfriends]

Patricia - Body Issues

Another great slow-cooked techno missive from the Opal Tapes camp.  It took some time for me to get excited about this release since so many folks are trying out the same style with diminishing returns.  Patricia gets one fundamental thing right here:  if you're going to do heat-treated four-to-the-floor either make the thing noisy/weird enough to keep it interesting or make it a BANGER.  This record uses a lot of flange and tape-satured sounds to keep you off-balance, but at the end of the day the thing gets your butt on the floor and keeps you there.  Even the elegiac album highlight Josephine has an eye on both your heartstrings and the disco ball.  Body Issues also has an ace up its sleeve–playfulness.  Patricia keeps things 4/4, but it's limber and dynamic, keeping this a bit fresher than some of the nth-generation industrial techno that's content to plod along with a kick drum and hammer noises.  And, of all things, Patricia actually shows some editing skills here.  Each track solves the Goldilocks problem of techno/not-techno: it says its thing, lingers in your consciousness for a bit, then gets out of the way for the next choice cut.  RIYL Huerco S., Opal Tapes, Actress.     

<a href="http://opaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/patricia-body-issues" data-mce-href="http://opaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/patricia-body-issues">Patricia - Body Issues by Opal Tapes</a>

[rossonfriends]

[PHYSICS] - Spectramorphic Iridescence

Yeah, the cover's awesome. This seemed to fly under the critical radar last year, but it's a ripping corker (not sure that's a real phrase but it sounds good)!  On initial listen it can come off as another overly-precious Radiophonic synth-noodling exploration–stick with it.  What I love about this record is it takes all of the signifiers of the early practitioners of Radiophonic-flavored hauntology and bends them into something unexpected and beautiful.  The music has a clear forward momentum but it's almost suspended in fluid.  There are beats, and they certainly have shades of Belbury Poly, but they're a little noisier and carry just the right amount of bass weight.  There are some spooky synth pads straight out of 60's education television, but they're given weird little flourishes and occasionally put in the wrong place.  Some cuts are quite pretty, for instance opener Anodyne Dream or closer Ultimate L, while others like Random Water sound like, eh em, random effects from the Enterprise bridge mixed in with some white noise and played underwater.  It also doesn't hurt that [PHYSICS] keeps things tightly coiled, which is honestly a rare thing among synth-cadets.  And unlike many Radiophonic-aping records, this uses older maybe even passé sounds in a genuinely surprising way, using your expectations against you.  It's a neat trick, and I think [PHYSICS] is on the same wavelength as Oneohtrix Point Never.  RIYL OPN, Belbury Poly, Mordant Music, Pye Corner Audio.

<a href="http://digitalisrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/spectramorphic-iridescence" data-mce-href="http://digitalisrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/spectramorphic-iridescence">Spectramorphic Iridescence by [PHYSICS]</a>

[rossonfriends]

Regis - Boiler Room Mix

I'm way late to the party on this one, but seriously good mix from Regis.  Many have tried and failed (not died) to replicate his wall-of-sound gunmetal gray industrial techno sound.  The man just performs alchemy with 4/4 techno drums and slow moving industrial scrapes.  You know what you're in for with Regis, but who can complain when it's this good?

[rossonfriends]

Arca - &&&&&

All of our lives are touched by Kanye West.  The Great One's many tentacles reach far and wide.  From his heaven-high perch he has reached to the gutter, to the lo-fi techno, avant-noise, industrial techno whatsit stuff I typically listen to.  So, Arca, or Alejandro Ghersi from Venezuela (so says the Oracle of Google™) was apparently a collaborator for Kanye's recent Yeezus album.  More importantly, he has put together a fantastic 22 minute collage of nimble hip-hop/R&B-like beats, ambient, screw, and some more hard-to-describe moments that you might expect from someone like Oneohtrix Point Never (and the screw connection isn't lost on me).  It's presented as a single seamless track, but clearly breaks down into a series of distinct passages (and hint hint the Soundcloud page lists some 14 tracks).  Some are beat-less, shimmery and pretty, others quite distorted and kick drum heavy, and others are pretty unclassifiable.  There are pitched down screams, screwed poppy R&B hits, sub-bass tones, aquatic squirts and blurps, and shorts bursts of new-age synth.  No one moment overstays its welcome, and despite so many quick transitions everything moves along swimmingly.  While the man uses his fair share of funky fresh (yes sir!) beats, I wouldn't call this a beat tape or anything like what you'd expect from the LA beat scene.  It's too idiosyncratic, too all over the damn place (in the best sense of the word).  And at the end of the day, you can't beat that price.  Highly recommended.