We’re approaching the midpoint of 2025, another turbulent year for life in general but an excellent one for music. This month we catch up with ambient reveries and no wave rackets, piano elegies and punk rock pranks, and a South American cello project inspired by alternative erotic practices. It’s a mixed bag, but a full and interesting one, and we hope you enjoy it. Contributors include Ian Mathers, Bryon Hayes, Christian Carey, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Bill Meyer and Tim Clarke.
Aarktica — No Solace in Sleep (Projekt)
Jon DeRosa has made a lot of music over the past 28 years, and for much of that time has been known for interspersing his ambient work with surprisingly straightforwardly sung (if still lambent) songs. Rarely has he been as stylistically consistent over an LP as he was on this, his 2000 debut as Aarktica. Now remastered by Taylor Deupree for its 25th anniversary, No Solace in Sleep consists almost entirely of DeRosa’s guitar. There are some submerged rhythms here, a choral-feeling arrangement there, but otherwise it’s just endless pools of his beautifully enveloping playing. Slowly assembled at night after losing hearing in one ear, there’s a gloomy comfort to even the harshest efforts here, and even at over an hour it never wears out its welcome. It’s sneakily influential too, elements of DeRosa’s work here having been showing up not just in ambient but in goth and metal circles over the decades. The remaster brings these songs a bit further from their hissy four-track birth and the result feels even more monumental than the original.
Ian Mathers
Bag People — S/T (Drag City)
Bag People were a short-lived outfit who transplanted themselves from Chicago into the grime and soot of New York’s lower-east side in the early 1980s. They fit in alongside that city’s no wave contingent but retained enough midwestern muscle to temper arty abandon with propulsive rhythms and a coruscating chug. The cantankerous sonic maelstrom hovered on the precipice of outright chaos, but Diane Wlezien’s vocal howl positioned Bag People in the Venn diagram at the point where Sonic Youth, The Stooges, and The Slits intersected. Forty years later, Drag City has unearthed some long-forgotten tapes, the only proof of Bag People’s existence, and polished them up as best they could for our consumption. The angst and nihilism are palpable in these energy-filled tunes, which sound just as ferocious now as they must have when the band laid them to tape.
Bryon Hayes
Lawrence English — Even the Horizon Knows its Bounds (Room 40)
Soundscapes for museum installations can be the quintessence of ambient music but often are unimpressive on their own. Lawrence English’s soundscore for the Naala Badu building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, demonstrates that work meant to be unobtrusive can also retain interest in closer listening. In Gadigal, Naala Badu means “seeing waters,” and English responds to this idea with washes of synths that ebb and flow like waves and aquatic field recordings. A minor-key piano progression provides a balladic rejoinder. Several guest artists — Chris Watson, Jim O’Rourke, and claire rousay among them — join to ride the waves alongside English.
Christian Carey
Goldmund — Layers of Afternoon (Western Vinyl)
The last time we caught up with Goldmund, that is, pianist Keith Kenniff, he was reinterpreting Civil War songs for solo piano on the lovely and evocative All Will Prosper in 2011. This time Kenniff mines a less conceptual vein and enlists the violinist Scott Moore for moody original reveries. “Darnley” brings the piano to the front, its pure melody oscillating against a crackling popping room sound. Moore enters half a minute in, swooning and lush where Kenniff is elliptical. “Before I Sleep,” likewise, finds mournful beauty amid lingering chords and a rush of layered string sound. Here’s a record that will envelope you like a pearly fog and leave you lost in your own thoughts and memories.
Jennifer Kelly
G*U*N*N* — S/T (Going Underground)
Another excellent punk band in the venerable Orange County tradition (smartassery, suds and lots of skateboards…), G*U*N*N* has finally gotten around to releasing a full LP after six or so years of gigs, 7” records and a handful of tapes. Given G*U*N*N*’s…um, informal approach to existing as a functioning band, it’s a surprisingly substantial album: 14 tracks, averaging two minutes in length, replete with fun samples and a long, pranksome reggae outro. In some nods to punk tradition more broadly, G*U*N*N* includes songs titled “Pig Champion” and “Stukas over HB” (Dickies, anyone?). But the band is at its best when it embraces its own antic violence, on tracks like “Annihilation” and “No Hope.” As G*U*N*N* advises, you’d do well to “Stick with the Plan”: skate an empty pool, vandalize some private property and turn up the tunes.
Jonathan Shaw
Kovaa Rasvaa — Tarinaksi Paketoitu Valhe (Svart)
Finnish crossover music that derives its principal interest by keeping the thrash and the hardcore elements at odds with each other. Kovaa Rasvaa writes songs that tend toward the fast and nasty, and tunes like “Nokkakolari” and “Romahdushäiriö” will remind you of Kreator or Voivod, while “Kolmiomainen Nolla” and “Keinotekoisesti Valmistettu” (holy shit!) might make you remember the Electric Deads or Terveet Kädet at that band’s most melodically speedy. For all the stylistic fireworks, Kovaa Rasvaa has a sharply resolved sound. And it's pretty cool to engage a record that’s so stridently Finnish in its insistence on that language’s rhythms and specificity. If you want the lyrics or the Bandcamp text in English and you’re not a fluent Laplander, you’ll need Google translate. Maybe just learn Finnish to sing (and shout) along.
Jonathan Shaw
Johnny Maraca and the Marockers—Little Heart (Perenniel/K)
Rock ‘n roll doesn’t come more basic than Little Heart, a stripped down, flirting, snarling collection of ripped leather romanticism, sourced from Oakland, CA. A trill of organ, a quiver of bass, and then the beat crashes through, drums thumping the fours, guitar slashing in time. Johnny Maraca has a rough, boisterous way of delivering a song, tough but tender. “And I know, how your little heart beats,” he shouts over the irresistible clangor of “Little Heart,” the dangerous guy with a killer smile. Has it been done before? Certainly. Is it worth doing again? Yes, indeed.
Jennifer Kelly
Paal Nilssen-Love Circus with the Ex Guitars — Turn Thy Loose (PNL)
Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love’s Circus started out as a vehicle for him to sustain his involvement with Brazilian songs and forms during the pandemic. That didn’t last; the original septet of Scandinavian-based musicians developed a unique approach to songs of all sorts founded on the agreement that any musician could introduce any song from their collective book at any time. If that sounds to you a bit like the Instant Composers Orchestra dynamic, you’re not wrong, and you might appreciate this recording, which presents the beginning of the Circus’ next phase, which occurred when guitarist Oddrum Lilja left the band and all three guitar-playing members of The Ex joined. The arrival of three newcomers disrupts the immaculate trust and rapport that the Circus had developed, but since they have a deep respect for improvisation as a relational enterprise, their presence is more that of periodic game-changers than total wrecking balls.
Bill Meyer
Pyrex — Body (Total Punk)
Jackhammer punk from Brooklyn judders on a pogostick across a beer-sticky floor. Pyrex makes the kind of hopped-up, anxiety-attack thumpers that foment mosh pit casualties, though that shouldn’t stop you, if you’re so inclined, from full-body participation. All eight cuts make anatomical references from the vortex howl of “Reflex” to the razor-cut “Never Endings” to the nearly anthemic, power-chord-ripping “Digits.” That’s about right for an album that’s pure viscera. Body, indeed.
Jennifer Kelly
Paula Sanchez — Pressure Sensitive (Relative Pitch)
The liner notes of this South American cellist presently residing in Europe reads, “This album is the result of performative experimentations with cellophane and erotic encounters of transparent asphyxiation.” Now, there’s an explanation that raises as many questions as it answers! Particularly since a blindfolded listener might not detect the cello, the plastic or the erotic activity, but instead attribute this recording to oil-thirsty door hinges and tectonic plates. However you explain it, this is vibrantly physical stuff, sound that you can feel in the act of feeling. It’s also rather like the blind philosopher’s assessment of the elephant; having had the good fortune to hear Sanchez in diverse settings at Music Unlimited 38 in Wels, Austria, I can attest to her facility at playing parts and rocking the fuck out matches the performative noise-making of this CD.
Nick Storring — Mirante (We Are Busy Bodies)
The Portuguese word mirante denotes a scenic outlook. Canadian composer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Storring has a family connection to Brazil, so he’s had some time to view the country close-up, and it only takes one listen to know that he’s steeped in the country’s sounds. Dozens of instruments (all played by Storring) appear on Mirante’s seven tracks, but easy-flowing melodies articulated by plush keyboards and complex but uncluttered pulses expressed by a rich array of percussion dominate, while strings and voices flesh out the harmonies, giving the music a humid travelogue vibe. Storring’s pieces do not recreate Brazilian styles; he seems to be more concerned with expressing his feelings about the place, which are warmly conveyed.
Thor Harris is perhaps best known for his contribution to the hard-touring and super-loud iteration of Swans that created albums such as To Be Kind (2014). During those tours, Harris could be found bashing all kinds of percussion on stage, often shirtless, his hair flailing and his muscles rippling. Harris’s new album is much gentler, despite the number of instrumentalists he’s mustered around him. There are over a dozen players on Heathen Spirituals, but they’re all playing in a restrained, minimal fashion on these three long pieces. “Anne Sexton’s Monocle” has a rapidly pulsing undercurrent of marimba and vibraphone, over which strings and woodwinds play slow, drawn-out phrases. The effect is akin to Philip Glass’s score for Koyaanisqatsi, soundtracking time-lapse footage of clouds scudding across the sky. “Heathen Spiritual” is slower and more mournful, with a less agitated pulse at its core. “Christmas Eve at the Wizard’s House” builds from a slow marimba line in 6/8, the other instruments dancing around it like tiny wooden characters. Pay close attention to this music as it dapples past and more rewards can be found, such as the occasional choral voices that emerge in the mix. It’s powerful in a gentle, insistent way.
What mysteries can imbue five ascending dyads! Composer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Storring demonstrates the phenomenon six and a half minutes into the second part of his Music From 'Wéi 成, but that delicate moment is only one in a kaleidoscopic entrenchment of tones, colors and sustains that codify and unify this latest project from the imaginative and prolific Toronto-based musician.
Storring has one of those rare compositional voices that combines consonance and dissonance in a way that elucidates narrative rather than relationship. That musical moment just mentioned tells the story. Something approaching a major foundation, or at least it has major inflections, buoys those crystalline ascents that eschew while never quite shattering the serenity. More remarkable than all of that, all sounds in this project emanate from a single source. This is an album of piano music, but it lives in that space carved out most vigorously over the past decade or so by those treating the piano as the totality it always has been. Edgard Varese wanted to forget about the antiquated instrument, but Storring, like other sympathetic minds, exploits every one of its many sonic characteristics. Uniquely though, his is a dense but surprisingly calm world of simultaneities. Over several years, he crafted music to accompany a dance project, recording in various locations and on various pianos, ultimately offering a multileveled aural experience as diverse but as consistent as the family of instruments he employed.
It happens way too often, but where mere verbiage is concerned, moments must suffice until the trip is taken. Dive in anywhere! If rhythmic intrigue is the order of the day, dig into the quasi-funky breaks opening the penultimate section. It’s got some Reichian phase but magnified, as if those 18 musicians were told to step up the pace and spread out! If reflection comes closer to the desired effect, the fourth section’s initial and overlapping pointillisms and arpeggios should fill the bill. The clumsy word repetition doesn’t even begin to describe what occurs as this music drifts forward, planting seeds of harmony and counterpoint only to abandon them in favor of high-register grindings and industrial scufflings, and then the distant screech and cicada whirrings of stroked wire as mode and chord are supplanted by their polar opposites. Bass harmonics and mid-level sustains flesh out the sparse but ironically full texture as the music inhabits neither one world nor the other, form and structure in constant but felicitous erosion until those arpeggios return in a different register.
Enough of moments! This is a continuous work that should be experienced just that way. Unlike so many other projects, it isn’t just that the piano’s sound worlds are emphasized. All manner of morphage and manipulation detaches element from element, a decay from an attack, a sustain from the velvety hammer blow birthing it. These miniscule considerations are disassembled to be reconfigured, layered and set stark against a dynamic background in constant and orchestral flux. Admirers of the piano’s traditional languages will revel in their spacious appearances, while those in search of the more radical need only wait until the next transition. The album’s beauty is forced to roar in and out of focus as often as it reflects. The music itself brims with the fluid energy of rapid-fire discovery still maintaining time to breathe. Through it all runs the obvious and infectious joy of creation, spontaneity and considered craft in gloriously recorded tandem.
The first section of music for Yvonne Ng's choreography "Sleeping, Tucked in the lonely Purple" produced by tiger princess dance projects and Theatre Gargantua in Toronto. Nick Storring — Fender Rhod
nick storring -- sleeping, tucked in the lonely purple - I
Seth Graham’s art work alone might be a reason to buy this release by Canadian musician/producer Nick Storring. He sent this to me with several other releases by Canadian composers and performers of various stripes. Some rock/blues solo guitar, some new classical, but this one…I wasn’t sure at first. And as one accustomed to placing music in some sort of context this left me a bit stumped. But…
Nick Storring - My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell (Orange Milk)
released March 27, 2020
RIYL: Sandro Perri, Arthur Russell, Andrew Bird
My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell is quite the charming album. Said to pay homage to the music of Roberta Flack, the song titles actually originate from Flack lyrics. It’s perhaps a peculiar revelation for the listener but one that speaks to the album’s intimate and playful journey. My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell is warm and welcoming experimental music with traces of jazz and pop that is hypnotizing in its scope. Using acoustic and electromechanical instruments exclusively with only minor electronic processing, Nick Storring weaves a rich tapestry of sounds and moods. Over six pieces and 46 minutes Storring creates a musical fantasy world full of whimsical enchantment. My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell is a captivating album begging for repeated listens and one of the year’s best.
