Cyclic Defrost Magazine |  |
- Cougar – Patriot (Counter/Ninja Tune/Layered)
- Various – XVI: Reflections on Classical Music (Decca)
- “Two Two Two” 222nd Emission Special (Part 1 of 2) – Extended Playlist 310809 – www.2ser.com 107.3FM
| Cougar – Patriot (Counter/Ninja Tune/Layered) Posted: 01 Sep 2009 12:03 PM PDT
Cougar is probably about as rockist a release as you’re going to find on Cyclic Defrost. The first few tracks of Patriot had me thinking of The Mars Volta, without quite the manic ADHD edge. But the opening ‘Stay Famous’ and ‘Florida Logic’, and certainly ‘Thundersnow’ further in, contain the kind of jerky stop start arhythms, intricate snare rolls and multi-guitar attack to put them in that ballpark. As a result, my initial reaction was rather ‘ho-hum’. But towards the end of ‘Florida Logic’ a glitch-cut guitar chord to signal the entry of the song’s climax demonstrated a twist in the path and things picked up a bit for me from there. Aaron Sleater’s (I’m presuming) input on laptop and synth is what gives the American five-piece a point of difference and this culminates in ‘Heavy Into Jeff’s (reference lost on me) bitcrushed heaven of lava guitar smudge, grating synth and dubbed out rhythm. It’s the highpoint of the album for me, and serves to show exactly what the mix of Four Tet and Fugazi mentioned on the Ninja Tune website might sound like. ‘Daunte v. Armada’ late on the album brings in the Nick Drake also mentioned in the band’s influences, as well as some pitch shifted percussion used to great effect, almost sounding like a Cuban rhythm section at a Scottish prom. Some other textural changes, such as muted brass and hammered piano strings on ‘This Is An Affidavit’ add extra interest along the way. There is, ultimately, still the uncertain shadow of prog-rock hanging over Patriot. Many may see this as a great selling point and will love this. For me, it gives a little too much license for meandering noodling, particularly in later, mellower tracks on the album, or for triple-guitar indulgence. Inspite of the electronic trimmings this is, at heart, a fairly traditional guitar band album. But there’s certainly enough of interest here, even for someone like me, to suggest that Cougar are worth watching to see where post-rock might be headed. Adrian Elmer |
| Various – XVI: Reflections on Classical Music (Decca) Posted: 31 Aug 2009 10:25 PM PDT
Online retailer Boomkat have been harping on about classical-inspired ‘home listening’ music for years, but it’s always existed as a vague, untidy category (with an awful name, kept here in quotation marks), lost somewhere between ambient, glitch, shoegaze and new age. Nor has it ever seemed particularly dynamic: for key practitioners like Sylvain Chaveau, Max Richter or the folks at Type, ‘classical’ means melodic, minimal and melancholy, a simplified vision of the already-barren language favoured by composers like Arvo Part and Steve Reich. As the name suggests, ‘home listening’ favours chamber instruments – pianos, strings, the occasional mallet instrument, but most important is the laptop, used to process the aforementioned instruments, and add cosy, atmospheric accompaniment with hazy synth pads, digital clicks and tones, and field recordings. ‘XVI: Reflections on Classical Music’ is among the first attempts to clarify and collect ‘home listening’ artists under the one roof, and make explicit the connection with classical music – it’s even released on classical giant Decca. Compiled by Me Raabenstein, whose own ‘Suburb Novel’ under his Slowcream moniker is included here, ‘Reflections’ is a necessarily varied collection, best taken as Raabenstein’s subjective view of this nascent ’scene’. In ways Raabenstein is an odd choice of curator, his own work looks more to classical music’s extremes than to it’s approachable and (to the artists found here) more influential middle-ground, but he’s clearly aware of what’s required: the key players are mostly all here, along with some fresh faces and established pioneers, and there’s enough of a thread to draw things together, albeit loosely. ‘Daydream’ might well be the lamest, laziest title for music of this sort, but it fits, and it’s a fine start. Led by snail’s pace marimbas and a gloomy Detroit-esque synth chorus, ‘Daydream’ is much like Dial label-owner Lawrence’s regular house work, only slower – Milt Jackson meeting Morton Feldman. The measured plinks and thunks of Hauschka’s ‘Zuhause’ rope John Cage’s preparations into more organised loops, while alva noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Moon’ is representative of their highly influential electroacoustics. Murcof’s ‘Maiz’ explores gargantuan shifts in detail, taken from his seminal Martes album which the Mexican artist has never bettered. ‘Andover’ by classical pianist and techno producer Francesco Tristano is stunning, notes falling like snow flakes before a rich bass pad looms in, and Greg Haines’s ‘Snow Airport’ is equally stark, weighty string passages slipping and sliding like loose tectonic plates. Exquisite too is Akira Rabelais’ ‘1382 Wyclif Gen. ii. 7′, constructed from found, decayed tapes of Finnish folk song, then processed through Rabelais’ own disquieting Argeïphontes Lyre software. Some of the selections are less well-suited, Final Fantasy’s baroque pop for instance, and Slowcream’s contribution, marked by an incongruous vocal moan and tinny rhythm, is hardly his finest. Nor is Phillip Glass’ naive Bowie remake ‘Heroes’ his, although it’s refreshing to have an orchestra here. The clear highlight, though, is the Zauberberg piece from Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project, a thunderous bass drum pounding through the German forest, and through German musical history. For Voigt, classical music is a vast and forbidding discourse, one that can’t be reduced to simplistic ‘home listening’ cliches. Raabenstein did well to secure Gas for ‘Reflections’, as it is artists like Voigt that best understand classical music’s past, and point to it’s future. Joshua Meggitt |
| “Two Two Two” 222nd Emission Special (Part 1 of 2) – Extended Playlist 310809 – www.2ser.com 107.3FM Posted: 01 Sep 2009 03:13 PM PDT We celebrate two-hundred and two-ty-two times on 2SE-air this week – another great opportunity to indulge in a bit of numerology. All good things come in TWOs! SO good we have decided to celebrate with a DOUBLE DOSE!! ————————- Monday 7 September 09 More themes at your leisure, please, to extendedplay@2ser.com . Peter-Thomas-Sound-Orchester – Exiting Two Tones Andrea Parker – In Two Minds (Da Bottomed Out Mix) Fortran 5 – MS20 Wire – Two People In A Room The Fall – Crap Rap 2/Like to Blow Eyeless in Gaza – Two The Clean – Billy Two School Of Two – All These Dead Yo La Tengo – By Two’s Klaus Beyer – 2000 Jahre Weihnachten Mexican Institute of Sound – Two Protools Concierto Hawnay Troof – Two Week Bruise M.I.A. – XR2 Daedelus – I Took Two Foetus in Excelsis Corruptus Deluxe – Death Rape 2000 John Foxx – 20th Century Miss Kittin & The Hacker – Indulgence Two Lone Swordsmen – Circulation The Residents – Smokebeams Front 242 – Agressiva Due Freeform – Twentytwo Fila Brazillia – A Zed and Two L’s Do you like our playlists? |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Cyclic Defrost To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
