Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

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William Gardiner – Onliving (Self Released)

Posted: 21 Jul 2009 07:44 AM PDT

For the sake of all, I hope that the combined arts (music)/law degree that 21 year old William Gardiner is about to complete at the University of Sydney is followed by a decision to pursue a path in the music field rather than the law field! The world doesn’t need another lawyer, but music this good deserves to be followed by more from the composer.

This debut release is a 20 minute suite in four movements for a chamber group consisting of piano, cello, clarinet, violin, flute and Gardiner’s own electronic manipulations. There are discernible influences from across the broad spectrum of the classical tradition, from delicate romanticism through to enigmatic minimalism. The overall mood is gentle, and Gardiner’s compositions stay within traditional melodic and harmonic structures, but ‘The Loving Bells’ hints at some Second Viennese School atonality while ‘Running’ plays with Reichian repetition in its dominant piano. Gardiner’s electronic manipulations are subtle, but most clearly demonstrated in the opening ‘Reverie’ where hi-pitched violin improvisations are given tails of echoes and mild pitch shifting.

The sweep of the composition is beautiful, with motifs slipping in and out across the four pieces and a strong sense of grand sonic movement. Gardiner has orchestrated an excellent collection which, while obviously formative and with influences still clear, marks out an exciting range of territory for him to explore with future work.

Available via WilliamGardiner.com.

Adrian Elmer

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Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963 – 1972) DVD 10 Disc Set. (Reprise)

Posted: 21 Jul 2009 06:58 AM PDT

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This year, a man not known for his sense of irony, Axel Rose, finally delivered something we've been waiting on for over a decade, Chinese Democracy. Unfortunately the reaction in China mirrored the rest of the world- not interested. Yet even this procrastinating and exacting multi millionaire metal-head had had nothing on Neil Young’s long promised (23 years) archives project. It’s apparently a chronological collection of all of his songs, suddenly freed from his infamous whims and flights of fancy, where he could impetuously shelve songs or even entire albums, go off and record in an entirely new genre, and then promptly get sued by his record company. Yet I’m getting ahead of myself, that will probably be Vol.3 or perhaps Vol.25, who knows? In the digital downloading, torrent sharing disposable music world of 2009, this incredible box set stands alone. It will appeal to more than the fat bellied washed up ex hippie, or even your casual stalker with a Neil fetishist. It takes you back to the first time you ever bought a record, the exacting exploration of an artifact, as you paw through the 128 tracks (12 hidden), 60 of which are previously unreleased versions mixes or just damn rare, the beautiful 236 page book of pictures, lyrics, newspaper articles and intimate letters to his mother, the stupid fold out poster of a filing cabinet drawer, and the almost hidden box that contains the link to the free MP3 download files, and the curious writing pad you that will never use.

Ever the terrible salesman, three of these 10 DVD (in the main audio – the images being an old tape machines turning) discs have already appeared in the last couple of years, notably some of the live material. Yet getting to hear the early music from the Squires, Neil’s high school band more than makes up for the disappointment that it’s not all new old stuff. Here you can really hear the influence of the British invasion of the 60’s, particularly the Shadows and the Beatles. On his first recorded singing performance I Wonder Neil barks short and sharp, Hard Days Night style and you have to strain to hear the Neil we know, yet he later rejigged this song for Zuma’s Cry No Tears. So like an elephant Neil never forgets.

The second disc takes in his Buffalo Springfield days, these incredible songs like Expecting to Fly, which is an apt description of a band that should have gone on to super stardom but inexplicably never did. This is a time of Mr Soul and Sugar Mountain, songs he would repeatedly return to. Later while solo, his mannered version of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere from a promo 45 features a flute solo, and I've Been Waiting for you (which he played in Melbourne recently) appears here for the first time without the terrible vocal treatment of his debut album. It's on this disc that Neil finds both himself and Crazy Horse, a band of earnest slightly inept rockers who give Neil the freedom and feel to finally be true to himself. And from here it's an explosion of creativity. The three Topanga Canyon discs are mostly album tracks from his self titled debut, from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and After the Goldrush, The one new track with Crazy Horse, Everybody's Alone is an absolute cracker with a great solo, making you wonder what exactly Neil was thinking in excluding it. There's a couple of unreleased live tracks from Crosby Stills Nash and Young with a bit of live rapping and a different hidden version of my favourite ever Neil track Don't Let it Bring You Down. Later there's a couple of versions of Heart of Gold, and the incredibly rare (and killer) Bad Fog of Loneliness, but in the main it's album versions from Harvest.

A huge highlight is Neil Young's first film, Journey Through the Past (1973), a marijuana cloud put to celluloid, with live performances from Buffalo Springfield and CSN&Y alongside Neil's nonsensical ponderous mysticism. "We've translated it into words in order to reassure ourselves," offers a heavily stoned Stills, "and some day the reassurance by words wont be necessary anymore." This pretty much describes the film. Thank god for the music.

Each song has it's own photos, lyrics and extras, though there's a bunch of strange hidden short videos verging from Neil carefully accosting a record store clerk selling bootleg live albums of his material, to finding his lyrics to Cripple Creek Fairy, describing what Needle and the Damage Done means, and reading out a review describing him "as stimulating as watching your nails grow," This is Brewster's Millions for Neil fans, 1963 – 72, and it's only the beginning. 23 years ago Neil made a promise. In 2009 he’s delivered and it’s well worth the wait.

Bob Baker Fish

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Pawn – Kitchen (Symbolic Interaction)

Posted: 21 Jul 2009 02:58 AM PDT

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Hideki Umezawa (Pawn) launches Symbolic Interaction's pragmatism series with this 4 track and 4 remixes Kitchen ep. Combining piano and guitar acoustic elements with kitchen noises, sampled and manipulated, in an electro-acoustic frame with a bright minimal landscape pervading the sensibility. 'Oven, Sink' opens, fixing the glitched out rollicking static with melodic continuity of the piano guitar interaction. Geskia offers a two part remix, the first taking the samples and electronic elements and exploring their state, creating beat and structure from elements akin to fractured drum and bass glitch experiments. The second remix of 'Oven, Sink' adds mother and child cutup samples and concentrates on the acoustic elements, piano and guitar largely unprocessed with a busy yet discrete play of scattered electronic noise and patter.

'Cup and Dishes' moves around the samples sharpened with a quick clatter and water elements arrive appropriately. All the play here duels with the bright guitar elements which underpin the content and help avoid experimental extremism for its own sake. While the original bustles with quiet action the Chip remix strips back 'Cup and Dishes' to the acoustic elements adding a muffled heartbeat, stutter effects and a vocal as instrument highlight. 'Oil & Bread' the longest track holds the greatest depth of sound manipulation and movement, replacing the overly busy scape for the length of play each sound possibility holds. It also holds a somewhat warmer acoustic feel with greater success at the melding of electronic and acoustic elements. The Fjordne remix really takes advantage of this temperament remaking it into a dubbed out cycle with wavering background and a hint of carpeted crackle lining its domain eventually overlaid with a bright clutter on the dubbed out frame.

Kitchen is a revealer in general, of sound sources not disguised, yet profoundly changed, and experimental play jostling with traditional acoustic elements defining a skill not oblique to either a history or future sense of sound domains. Hideki Umezawa’s frenzied quiet aesthetic is sound nectar.

Innerversitysound

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Pefkin – Zugunruhe (Sound & Fury)

Posted: 20 Jul 2009 11:06 PM PDT

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Gayle Brogan, founder of Boa Melody Bar exercises her free-folk persona Pefkin on Australian label Sound and Fury. Lets first examine the title, Zugunruhe, which describes anxious behavior in migratory animals and to be quite frank if this album was designed to elicit this state in the listener it is quite accomplished. It had me wishing to move from its general vicinity marking its success at being a form of aural discomfort. Do not mistake this quip for a question in regards to the compositional or performance skills of Gayle Brogan, it is not. Close listening takes you through the prickly soundscape constructed as haunting, as in 'Shells', to view it's form of processed guitars and vocal manipulations of harmony. 'Third Part' sees movement in form from the acoustic, including analogue electronics before opening up the analogue squelch assault of 'Ancient Wings from the Printing Stone', combining motifs of the idea of free-form construction in a psychedelic melange that almost disappears into a surreal abyss.

The title track is the gold of the album, it really does document the word with precision, encapsulating the mood and psychological state in the listener akin to treatments of anxiety that Hitchcock sought in 'The Birds'. While this sort of cathartic psycho-acoustic creation is not my cup of tea it is precisely the ability to create it that is a skill worthy of note. Often this skill asks the question of what treasures lie underneath the armour, or is merely a projection though music of a psychological state, if we were to take it as merely a natural form. The closing track 'Remember the Words' is a quiet brittle folk moment, broken half way through by electronics emulating a warped harpsichord, this sums up the deliberate discord of the album.

Innerversitysound

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at 5:22 PM