Cyclic Defrost Magazine

School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms (Speak N Spell/Inertia)

Posted: 06 Jan 2009 05:55 AM CST

After a somewhat mysterious introduction to the sound of New York trio School of Seven Bells through their song ‘Chain’ on Ghostly Swim, a compilation put together between Ghostly Records and the Adult Swim cartoon network, anyone would have expected their debut Alpinisms to sound as sweet and pop-like as its precursor does. Instead, Alpinisms is decidedly fierce and authoritative - in a good way.

It was the clamouring of delicate synth lines and ethereal vocals from the sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza which sparked my initial interest in the group, with third member Benjamin Curtis providing the indie-cred as ex-guitarist from Secret Machines. While ‘Chain’ might be the prettiest moment, it’s certainly not the best - that’s instead left to the chaotic harmonies that cluster around the arrhythmic drum beat of ‘Iamundernodisguise’ and the peripatetic rhythm of ‘Face to Face on High Places’.

This collection has an intensity that belies School of Seven Bells’ relatively small membership, encompassing a multitude of voices, ideas and most importantly, these rhythms. Shifting, unpredictable clatterings of percussion and beats continue to provoke the ears into repeated listens, and even during the midsection of the album when the songwriting does fall a little flat, it’s that rhythm that sticks in your mind again and again. Partly, it’s to do with the production that pulls it out of the lower registers and firmly ensconces it as a vital part of each composition, but the other part is the sound that swirls around it. There is more than a hint of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine reverb yet it doesn’t seem to be an influence the group is denying. Though it may wash over you as a whole, the subversive undercurrents on Alpinisms will continue to play out with a ferocity that - as odd as it sounds - makes the sugar-coated vocal delivery all the more intriguing.

Poratz - 28.50 (Electroton)

Posted: 06 Jan 2009 05:10 AM CST

poatz
Patrizio Orsini (Poratz) dj's in Tuscany clubs, previously he played guitar and is involved with computer programming and backing vocals in an indie band.

Let us presume that Poratz is a construct and the question of location, identity and personal activity are not the question at hand. Music as synthetic act, constructing a sonic text to be taken alone as such. Is this even a possible?

Listening to 28.50 I am stuck by a history of past listening, an informed sonic landscape, IDM, if we could conceive of it as a land of its own in the formative sense of the device genre. As a descriptive information act a data list of inhabitants of this land would follow. This list could be in the form of a comparative notion (i.e. holds the rhythmic and atmospheric richness akin to Germ (Tim Wright) circa 1993-4 or Sandoz (Richard H Kirk) of the same time frame). So the sound is not only located comparatively in time and genre but as well in comparison to previous texts thus inflating or deflating it depending on your perspective. It would give you a location by which to investigate further. So would Orsini's own list of influences: "like kpt michigan, prefuse 73, pulseprogramming and schneider tm".

Yet such a reading is outside the music. It is concerned with the music's relationship, not the sonic text itself. There is a need to be dry, like the samples, programmed discrete parts of relationships outside cut up and patterned programming forming rhythmic inter-text remaining within. Electronic pastiche of emotionally ambivalent sound reflecting precision and device, disguised humanity within structured entity. Excuse me, that last sentence involved certain value judgments that are perhaps not to be included in an act of clinical assessment. Even programming and the cultural products of this area of science do little to disguise our humanity. I know truthfully an examination of the programs, techniques would convey with greater precision the music itself. But for one moment consider the act and then try to describe any track precisely without reduction would become an extended technical manual. How much simpler it would be just to be able to produce a score!

Perhaps the route of 'letting the artist speak for himself': "poratz is above all one thing: rhythm! Masterly woven out of dry samples and beats. Dark and metaphorical. enriched with nearly breathed, discretely knotted musical relations and references firing at the auditorial cortex….with no doubt poratz belongs to the causative agents — his reward is dopamine." However this is not necessarily the artist it is probably the person who formed the press release at Electroton.

So abandon these paths to explanation. Tuscany to me is visual at a distance, it is the realm of the armchair traveler, it is all the architecture and art that has been romanticized by modernity. It is a well laid table of earthy fare supped slowly enjoying each mouthful of artisan prepared food. It is 'a room with a view' meets Jeffery Smart. It is a hundred and one representations which are abstracts of Tuscany itself. Poratz's 28.50 is an electronic Tuscany. Is this close enough that you could hear it?

Innerversitysound

Soil & “Pimp” Sessions – Planet Pimp (Brownswood/Inertia)

Posted: 06 Jan 2009 04:06 AM CST

Soil & Pimp Sessions

Tokyo-based six-piece self-styled ‘death jazz’ band Soil & "Pimp" Sessions first formed towards the start of the decade amongst that city’s club scene, when founders Chacho (aka ‘The Agitator’ – vocals) and Tabu Zombie (trumpet) started incorporating live instrumental performances into their DJ sets. Since being the first unsigned act to play at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival in 2003, they’ve certainly been an extremely prolific outfit as well, managing to release no less than four studio albums in as many years. Given the increased international attention afforded to preceding efforts ‘Pimpoint’ and ‘Pimp Of The Year’, it’s perhaps no surprise to see this latest fifth album ‘Planet Pimp’ emerge through UK tastemaker Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label, and in many senses, it seems them poised for crossover success and considerably larger audiences. ‘Hollow’ certainly provides a more than worthy introduction to S&P’s signature ‘death jazz’ aesthetic – read; hot jazz action fused with furious rock drums, and while it certainly threatens to accelerate off into John Zorn-esque territory at first with the sort of drums that would make Slayer fans salivate, beneath the cymbal fury it still manages to play things fairly straight, ending with the sort of stadium-friendly grandiose finish that has you somewhere imagine lighters being held aloft, ‘Champagne Supernova’ style. It’s perhaps a good encapsulation of much of this album’s general approach – while the appropriately titled ‘Storm’ and ‘Mingus Fan Club’ manage to pack in plenty of furious rock drummer fills and tweaked-out, sinister analogue synths, the predominant instrumental undercarriage is unlikely to seriously scare off your average Compost / Exceptional Recordings fan. ‘Planet Pimp’ certainly comes loaded with plenty in the way of impressive fireworks, but I was still left with the sense that S&P are best caught live, with the exhuberant ‘hypeman’ presence of frontman The Agigator (a crucial live element to their performance) strangely subdued amongst these 14 tracks.