Friday, October 2, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

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Madlib – Beat Konducta Vol. 5 – 6 LP (Stones Throw/FUSE)

Posted: 02 Oct 2009 02:56 PM PDT

Your humble scribe loves the art of the mix tape. Mixes can sometimes be puzzled over ad-infinitum, questing for the perfect segue of sound and technique, others can be a pleasant confluence of happenstance and good-fortune. In the mix-tape big league, transmissions by Coldcut Journeys by DJ, Kode 9’s Dubstep Allstars Vol 3 and letsallmakemistakes by Matthew Herbert have been joined by the latest instalment in Madlib's Beat Konducta series to make it to CD.

Myself and Otis Jackson Jr. were born in the same year. Madlib's West Coast upbringing, I would hazard a guess, was somewhat different from mine here on the West Coast of Australia. Despite this, there is a shared musical inheritance, from classic hip-hop, through psychedelic rock, leading back to Bill Wither's Ain't No Sunshine. Now, I'm no soundboy crate-digging fiend, but so many of the snippets that have been assembled into Beat Konducta Vol 5 & 6 (a tribute to the late J Dilla), jog my hazy memory. There is more funk, swing and pure muscle-flexing musicality contained in this mix, than in anything else I've heard since, gosh, like Ike met Tina, you dig? After a couple of listens, I was like an excited kid, waiting for the next exhilarating change in vibe and direction. I've previously not been a particularly close listener to Madlib's multiple aliases (WHAT!!! I hear the cries of angry Lord Quas fan's swelling), but I'll make sure to check out further instalments from the Beat Konducta, as I heartily recommend to you, dear listener.

Oliver Laing

Madlib – Beat Konducta Vol. 5 – 6 LP (Stones Throw/FUSE) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Whyte Lightning/Caught Ship – Split CD-R (Bedroom Suck Records)

Posted: 02 Oct 2009 02:53 PM PDT

This split release is worth it just for the packaging – you get a CD-R with hand drawn scrawl housed inside a second hand (and heavily degraded) 7″ single sleeve which also houses an actual 7″ single which may or may not be the record originally found in the sleeve (for example, the copy I’m currently listening to has a battered white sleeve purporting to have been a Mental As Anything cover – the record itself is that Leif Garrett classic, ‘Special Kind Of Girl’). And to make it worth your money, from the info I can garner off the label’s (Myspace) website, it’s actually free – just send them your address. But I digress. The music…

Whyte Lightening make beautiful, woozy soundscapes and sing gentle folk-pop songs over them. Whitewashed texture loops float aimlessly by, stray guitar filigrees float in and out, heavily reverbed drums clang and clatter and multi-tracked voices drawl phrases like “We should get out more/Not try to sleep more”, surrealistically lulling you into the exact opposite of said stated intention. Caught Ship use more electronic sounds in their electronically looped sound fields. This time, the lyrics are spat out in a naive australianised Lydonism. The backgrounds float around spookily with trace elements of SPK style industrialisation slipping through. A highlight is the disc’s closing track, a 13 minute industrial-dub from Caught Ship that sounds like it could fade off the surface of the disc at any moment. The two artists make a slightly incongruous mix, but both are extremely enjoyable versions of lo-fi exploration with direction and purpose, rather than merely willful obfuscation. Who needs the American tape underground? This stuff is much better.

And if you don’t like it, you can always stick on the Leif Garrett 7″.

Adrian Elmer

Whyte Lightning/Caught Ship – Split CD-R (Bedroom Suck Records) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Various Artists – The Black Box (Flingco Sound)

Posted: 02 Oct 2009 02:53 PM PDT

I’d read about Buddha Machines and thought they sounded fun but that I’d never actually get near one as they’re a bit difficult to get down here cheaply. So when I was told there was a new version of one in the post for me to review, I was quite excited. All of which made The Black Box all the more disappointing. The Black Box takes the original idea of FM3’s Buddha Machine – a series of loops of sound which can be shuffled through and played around with – and turns it into really lowest common denominator trash. For a start, the second generation Buddha Machine’s main drawcard of interactivity is not present. So rather than being able to play around with speed and pitch-shifting (in themselves not even that remarkable) all the listener is left with on The Black Box is the ability of the first generation Buddha Machine – to turn the volume up and down, and to decide when they’ve had enough of each loop and jump to the next one.

So it’s left to the actual sounds to carry the day. I’m sure they’re probably marvelous somewhere further up the creation chain, but here they come as 2-bit (literally) microchip reproductions and are pretty much unlistenable. The tinny, electronic rendering is painful even when played through the machine’s speaker. Sticking a set of headphones on or trying it through a stereo system is asking for trouble. But it’s not even a lo-fi, reproduction-texture-is-an-intrinsic-layer-of-sound noise, it’s just literally unlistenable. Which is kind of the opposite of the ‘deep, dark and disturbing sound constructs’ the machine is billed as containing and which would actually be good. And to top it all off, the battery compartment (batteries not included) won’t fit the pair of AA batteries needed to run it AND allow the cover to fit on properly, so you’re left with two batteries clinging on to an open battery compartment.

Very disappointing.

Adrian Elmer

Various Artists – The Black Box (Flingco Sound) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

John Butcher Group – somethingtobesaid LP (Weight of Wax)

Posted: 02 Oct 2009 02:49 PM PDT

"As I chip away at, and redirect, the individual freedoms and responsibilities of improvisation, can I replace them with anything as worthwhile?"

This was the question that British Saxophonist John Butcher posed in the programme accompanying his octet's specially commissioned performance at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2008. On the strength of the live album documenting this performance, the answer is resounding in its affirmation.

Butcher's long association with British Improv; from the London Musician's Collective and the deceased head of all things mawkish and striving, Derek Bailey, to his international collaborations with the likes of Toshimaru Nakamura and Austrian group Polwechsel certainly highlight Butcher's polymath tendencies. For this outing, Sydney's Clare Cooper on harp and guzheng and Californian percussionist Gino Robair are part of an international ensemble that certainly know their chops.

This hour-long performance veers between the disquieting spectres of a thousand insects descending upon the set of Blade Runner, with the odd nod towards the shadow of Albert Ayler; hard-bop sax runs emerging from seemingly electronic scree. I say 'seemingly' as with many of Butcher's enterprises it is virtually impossible to tease out the acoustic from the electronic. Spectral voices of old answering machines invoke the atmosphere of a Cape Canaveral countdown, before the symbiotic interplay of Cooper's Guzheng and John Edward's athletic double bass slur into increasingly psychopathic vocal treatments reminiscent of a regular collaborator of Butcher, Phil Minton.

The concept of 'responsibilities', especially in the context of a contemporary musical performance may strike the listener as po-faced Marxism, but the John Butcher Group delivers handsomely on their leader's question. There is definitely ’somethingtobesaid’ here.

Oliver Laing

John Butcher Group – somethingtobesaid LP (Weight of Wax) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Slowcream – And (Nonine)

Posted: 01 Oct 2009 10:59 PM PDT

The work of Me Raabenstein under the rather icky-sounding Slowcream moniker explores the bolder ends of classical music, those noisy modernist bits that Classic FM prefers to avoid. Aside from Greg Haines mentioned on cello and organ on a few tracks it’s unclear how he works: presumably he constructs these grand pieces from uncredited samples, realistic synthesisers and digital editing. Regardless of the method, its refreshing to hear ‘new classical’ music by a laptopper looking beyond the bland confines of pretty chamber muzak and onto the broad gestures of the symphony.

Refreshing, yes, but ‘And’ is not entirely satisfactory, Raabenstein lacking the compositional muscle of an established classical composer, like Wolfgang Rihm, for instance. Rihm’s music may be utterly incomprehensible, but it is compelling, and it displays a confidence and surety of purpose that is absent here. There are plenty of spine-tingling scenes – sweeping string glissandi and portentous, looming bottom end – recognisable from the language of horror soundtracks, Lynch/Badalamenti is clearly an influence, but they come and go with little reason or logic. Raabenstein is less adept at creating genuine aural unease, those ear-hurting moments that Rihm and his ilk produce in spades, and the less said about the awful liner-notes the better. However, Raabenstein is on the right track and for that ‘And’ deserves praise, but listeners would do better sticking to the established canon.

Joshua Meggitt

Slowcream – And (Nonine) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

Richard Strauss: Orchestral Suites (Naxos)

Posted: 01 Oct 2009 09:39 PM PDT

In his acclaimed best-seller ‘The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century’ Alex Ross begins his study of modern music with Richard Strauss, well known to laymen for his Space Odyssey theme / late-Elvis overture ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’. Ross was referring specifically to his 1906 opera ‘Salome’, a visceral exploration of expressionism’s most harrowing extremes that perfectly captured fin-de-siecle paranoia. The latest disc in Naxos’s ongoing Strauss series features orchestral excerpts from the German composer’s later, tamer stage productions, but there’s still enough violent brass and crazed dance whorls to satisfy those keen on his edgier sounds.

‘Der Rosenkavalier’ of 1910 remains his most beloved opera, a comedic romp inspired by the Viennese waltz, of which this orchestral suite packs in most of the hits. For those, like myself, who cannot tolerate full operas this is all one needs, a lush, gay riot, like carousing drunk on vintage Blue Nun. His Wagneresque postwar morality play ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’ (’The Woman Without a Shadow’) is, as the title implies, more ambivalent, alternating reflective calm with rich romantic flourishes, while the final ‘Symphonic Fragment from Josephs-Legende’ is equally bold and jarring. Fans of the more rough-hewn ballroom grit of Tom Waits and Tindersticks ought to see how it was done here first: the veneer may sparkle with all the lustre of a chandelier, but the lights conceal the idiosyncratic style of a true maverick.

by Joshua Meggitt

Richard Strauss: Orchestral Suites (Naxos) is a post from: Cyclic Defrost Magazine.

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