Director: Danny Perez
Producer: Gary Hustwit
Music: Animal Collective (Josh Dibb, Noah Lennox, David Portner, Brian Weitz)
Cinematography: Ryan Samul
Editor: Danny Perez
Distributor: Swiss Dots
Released: January 26, 2010 (Sundance)
Running time: 53 minutes
Size: 3 GB
Time for something different now.
This Animal Collective visual album, directed by Danny Perez who has been performing live projections with musicians such as Black
Dice and Panda Bear.
They will not release a separate sound-track since the video and audio "are intended to be seen and heard in tandem."(hence the term "visual album")
Also it's only going to be released as a DVD.
Artist: Boards Of Canada
Album: Music Has The Right To Children
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 2000
Genre: Electronic, IDM, Downtempo, Ambient
Label: Warp, Music70
Size: 130 MB
This an awesomely epic EP that hold I very dear.
Especially the second track "Amo Bishop Roden" is a masterpiece in it's own right.
Calm, dreamy and the perfect tonal extrapolation of "Music Has The Right To Children".
This record works on me the same way as Tim Hecker's "An Imaginary Country" does:
I either imagine myself driving through a cold, snowy, quiet city, or I in fact AM on my way through the city - usually with public transport.
And when I do, everything seems so completely out of place. Everything, everybody just floats by, like a time lapse video.
Listening to "Amo Bishop Roden", you're caught in the timeless stream of sound - it is so far away from the vicissitude around you, the fast pace of life. You instinctivly begin to question all this without even knowing why, but you're sure that something definately is wrong. Maybe because you feel reminded of the carefree when you were little and how there was no such thing like deadlines.
At least that's the way how I feel.
Maybe you'll experience a similar sentiment while savouring this gem.
Artist: Boards Of Canada
Album: Music Has The Right To Children
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 1998
Genre: Electronic, IDM, Downtempo, Ambient
Label: Warp, Skam
Size: 350 MB
So I decided to share this classic with you.
I´ve been thinking about wether or not I should write somewhat of a review about this and I still don't quite know.
While I do have my own opinion on this album and I do not praise pitchfork as the ultimate index for what is good music and what isn't, I do agree with this particular review. Forwarding without it gnawing at my conscience.
Artist: Peter Evans Quintet
Album: Ghosts
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: March, 2011
Genre: Avantgarde Jazz, Electroacoustic, Post-Bop
Label: More Is More Records
Size: 411 MB
Lineup
Peter Evans: Trumpet
Carlos Horns: Piano
Tom Blancarte: Bass
Jim Black: Drums
Sam Pluta: Live processing
Young American trumpetist (or is it trumpeter?) Peter Evans gathered a group of gifted musicians to create a distinctive sound mixing Bop with modern elements realized by Pluta's live processing. The opener ...One to Ninety-Two already introduces those shifts in styles starting with hard bop and moving into more free jazzy territories throughout the song. One moment you might feel like dancing and a heartbeat later the music takes unpredictable paths. This works fine thanks to the great use of live processing creating several layers of Evan's trumpet playing. But the musicianship beside Evan's great playing is not to be neglected. The rythm section stops and starts, changes pace, Carlos Horns takes over when Evans drops out. It's the collective and the innovative live processing making Ghosts my favourite jazz album of 2011. Don't miss this!
Artist: Fuck Buttons
Album: Tarot Sport
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: August 21, 2009
Genre: Electronic, Drone, Noise, Soundscapes
Label: ATP Recordings
Size: 431 MB
Ok, first of all, this is probably one of the most intense live experiences I ever had. A constant bass knocking out your conscious perception, taking your mind somewhere to space. An additional kick that makes your nose itch and your intestines shake. A continously more dense wall of sound(-scapes) that ultimately makes you fall completely into a mesmerised state.
They are like a more accessible, shoegazy version of Black Dice on downers..
Well whatever it is - I'm still lacking proper words to describe this stream of awesomeness - this definately is the perfect music to have sex to.
Just like their live-performances, all the pieces on this record are coherent, a subtle transition being all you'll notice.
Trying to find decent live-videos I realised that you can't display a Fuck Buttons concert that way. It's impossible. Why? It's a physical experience. That eventually can evolve into somewhat of a out-of-body experience - in...specific cases, given the corresponding amount of..inspiration, I suppose.
Listening to Fuck Buttons on your stereo does have a similar effect though - especially if played on a decent volume - so make sure you have your eyes closed.
Artist: On (Sylvain Chauveau, Steven Hess), Fennesz
Album: Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: July 26, 2010
Genre: Ambient, Drone, Soundscapes
Label: Type
Size: 237 MB
So this is indeed something I found intriguing and original, when I first heard about it.
On, consisting of French composer/producer Sylvain Chauveau and Chicago-based percussionist Steven Hess, approach their music in a rather unconventional way: at first improvisations are recorded in a studio and are then given to a guest musician who is to "rework" their music. That doesn't mean that he is simply remixing it but more putting it in and out of context, arranging it, adding to it, practically forging a record from the components given to him.
This isn't completely unheard of, of course, since .O.rang had been experimenting with a very similar idea when recording "Herds Of Instinct", especially when it comes to putting the recorded material out of context and making it part of something completely different.
At their last record "Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night" this task was taken over by Helge Sten alias Deathprod. This time it's - my beloved - Fennesz.
The result comprises drony soundscapes, gently added white noise here and there and a slowly evolving cacophony that merges into repetitive, hypnotic patterns. Fennesz' fingerprint is pretty obvious, yet the record doesn't feel like another one of his, but indeed more like countless musical textures filtered through Fennesz' mind.
This album isn't an easy listen at first, especially with the feedback-fueled opening.
If you take your time though you might find this actually quite enjoyable - personally I liked the homonymous "Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not".
Find Type's comment here.
I must admit I don't think I could put this in better words than the label itself - only more personal, subjective.
Artist: Ben Frost, Daníel Bjarnason
Album: SÓLARIS
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: November 11, 2011
Genre: Modern Classical, Ambient
Label:
Bedroom Community
Size: 195 MB
"We have no need for other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is."
Poland's Unsound Festival commissioned Ben Frost and Daníel
Bjarnason to create a new piece of music inspired by Andre Tarkovsky’s
1972 Solaris - of which the original novel was written by Polish
author Stanislaw Lem - as 2011 marked the novel's 50th anniversary. The piece then has been performed live by Frost,
Bjarnason and Krakow’s 28-piece Sinfonietta Cracovia - intensified with visual manipulations of the original by Frost's mentor Brian Eno and Nick Robertson.
I'm truly grateful I had the opportunity to witness this..let me call it.."happening" myself.
SÓLARIS imaginates the spooky silence, the loneliness in space of the science fiction-dystopia as a man-machine-sound, an eerie blend of Bjarnason's classical arrangement and Frost's numbing minimalism.
Combining the warmth of a string orchestra with prepared piano and waves
of guitar, for "Solaris", they took Melodyne, (music software
designed to improve music and pitch), and "turned it against itself and
encouraged it to misbehave." --> source
I don't feel I should tell you much more about what this record sounds like, but instead you should take a listen - probably while watching the film on mute.
This is a very interesting project that consists of weird, happy, hippiesque seemingly meaningless vocal loops, math-rockiesque intervalls and rythms mixed with african beats and low-frequency stoner-riffs.
If you´re patient, you might actually really enjoy this!
When the guitar kicks in at 2:05 in "Calonge Terrassa, Kalon-Jah! Tewra-ssah!" the songs becomes just..DOPE.
Bandcamp:
"A traveling circus from Barcelona. Two guys and a dozen instruments.
ZA! are: PAPA DUPAU (guitar, trumpet, kalimba, perc, voc) and SPAZZFRICA EHD (dr, perc, keys, fx, clarinet, voc)
This multilayer supersonic-orchestra combines African beats, noise, math rock, vocal-loops, free jazz, analogue electronics, sounds from the shepherds of Tuva, Balinese polyrhythms, Mauritanian trip hop, Dadaism, distortion, dance and drones – “POST WORLDMUSIC” may be the name of this danceable hybrid.
ZA! – that means countless shows on the highest energetic level, including international festivals (SXSW, Primavera Sound, Sonar Festival), art performances, tours in UK, USA, Spain, Portugal and Germany. They played with noisebands (Lightning Bolt, ZU, Yellow Swans), rockbands (El Guincho, Delorean, Agent Robbons, Mark Eitzel) or freejazz artists (Peter Brötzmann, Paal Nilssen Love), because they love sharing stages with other musicians and creating new music altogether. PAPA DUPAU and SPAZZFRICA EHD have performed improvised and unique shows along with DAMO SUZUKI (Can), Angel Deradoorian (DIRTY PROJECTORS), Les Aus or Nisei. When the audience didn’t stare stunned at the stage or had their faces clenched in joy, they just danced. Live the ZA!-protagonists are connected through their music, they become one body. The physical is neither surface nor underground – it is scope, structure and instrument. A perfect balance between control of gestures and uncontrolled emotions.
The two Catalans have released two albums so far – their last genre blending record “Macumba o Muerte” (Acuarela) was rated as one of the best albums of the century by ROCKDELUX, the main Spanish indie magazine, and was awarded by the “Spanish Independent Label Union”. ZA!’s third album MEGAFLOW will be released by DISCORPORATE RECORDS, Acuarela and Gandula."
An incredible live band.
Sadly I only found a few videos that don´t do them justice:
But I highly urge you to look for live performances at Primavera for instance.
This is only the free Release, not the full album.
The full album comes with the Vynil, I suppose.
Artist: Xiu Xiu, Grouper
Album: Creepshow
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 2006
Genre: Ambient, Drone
Label: States Rights Records, Slender Means Society
Size: 132 MB
Take Grouper's timeless realm of eery soundscapes and add severe tearfulness from Xiu Xiu's i-hate-myself-days.
The title is a reference to Creepshow, a horror anthology film.
Harris wrote on her MySpace page: "We both had immense terror of terror films when we were children and was in lathe of these feelings that we explored the subjects of the record."
Just letting you know that we´ll be using split archives and LinkSave.in from now on.
I know this might slow down the process, but as the amount of readers is increasing pretty quickly, we have to take certain security measures.
And after all, we all want the files to remain active, right?
Visitor pass is the same as the one you´re familiar with.
End of transmission.
Artist: Alice Coltrane
Album: Journey in Satchidananda
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 1971
Genre: Avantgarde Jazz, Hindustani Classical Music, World
Label: Impulse!
Size: 271,6 MB
"The compositions here are wildly open and droning figures built on whole tones and minor modes. Pharao Sanders' playing on the title cut, "Shiva-Loka," and "Isis and Osiris" is gloriously restrained and melodic. Coltrane's harp playing, too, is an element of tonal expansion as much as it is a modal and melodic device. With the drone factor supplied either by the tamboura or the oud, the elongation of line and extended duration of intervallic exploration is wondrous.
Truly, this is a remarkable album, and necessary for anyone interested in the development of modal and experimental jazz. It's also remarkably accessible."
- allmusic
Great album to lose consciousness to. You may be familiar to the sound of the album (or rather the harp) since it found it's way into Flying Lotus' work. Brilliant!
Artist: Kayo Dot
Album: Coyote
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: April 20, 2010
Genre: Avantgarde, Experimental, Prog Rock
Label: Hydra Head
Size: 231 MB
Wiki:
"Coyote is the fourth studio album by Kayo Dot, released April 20 on Hydra Head. The album was written, according to frontman Toby Driver, as a single, narrative-driven, long-form composition written with story and text provided by a close, terminally-ill friend of the band, Yuko Sueta, in the final stage of her life. Coyote was once again engineered by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Six Organs of Admittance, Wolves in the Throne Room) in Seattle, Washington, forging a new genre of "goth fusion" which combines elements of early Cure, Faith and the Muse, and Bauhaus with Herbie Hancock's psychedelic album, Sextant, and Scott Walker's recent album, The Drift. The lyrics and story were constructed with deliberate melodrama to pay homage as well to the intended gothic vibe, expressing the protagonist's loneliness and longing to be in a better place, and her journey through her own personal looking-glass through a hallucinatory world of fear and wonder."
Artist: Ground Zero
Album: Consume Red
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: January 15, 1997
Genre: Electronia, Experimental, Noise, Free Jazz, Rock
Label: Creativeman Disc., ReR Megacorp
Size: 441,6 MB
"Consume Red might be second to Scott Walker's The Drift for most intense listening experience ever. Continuing "The Drift" comparison, aesthetically only, its what Ground Zero does with space contrasted again the noise and buildup that makes this record so intense. It doesn't bludgeon your face off, it just makes your knuckles go white. Its certainly a draining experience, as the more it goes on, the more you wonder what's next. This is "The Night of the Hunter" rebirthed in musical form."
- Simeon88
Yap, this shit is INTENSE. The first 15 minutes might be a bit repetitive/exhausting, but it's worth it. This album will kick you out of space.
Artist: Three Trapped Tigers
Album: Route One Or Die
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: May 30, 2011
Genre: Electronica, Math Rock, Experimental, Noise-Rock
Label: Blood And Biscuits
Size: 285 MB
After three ep's, this is the debut lp by the truly awesome english Three Trapped Tigers - and is definately one of the strongest debuts I´ve heard in a long time.
The band started out as an improvisational duo that eventually became a trio and made it´s name as an impressive live act.
Soundwise they generally sound like Aphex Twin and Venetian Snares met up with a less dubstep/jungle-oriented young Jojo Mayer and a drummachine.
Unlike their early they add...BIG FAT RIFFS THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO DESTROY YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD.
IDM takes turns with breakneck-beats and aggressive noisy walls. And still never sounds out of place, every movement sounds likes the logical conclusion.
You should definately get your hands at this.
Artist: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez & Lydia Lunch
Album: Self-Titled
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: October 8, 2007
Genre: Fusion, Spoken Word, Prog-rock
Label: Willie Anderson Recordings, Rodriguez Lopez Productions
Size: 177 MB
"Omar Rodriguez Lopez & Lydia Lunch is a collaboration between Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group and spoken word artist Lydia Lunch. The EP was released on October 8, 2007 in Europe.
Rodriguez-Lopez had been a fan of Lydia's work and invited her to the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival when The Mars Volta curated it in December 2005. The meeting eventually resulted in their first recorded collaboration with the intention to record more in the future.
The music was recorded in Amsterdam and New York and Lydia's vocals were recorded at her own studio in Barcelona.
Cover design is by Sonny Kay. The symbols on the two buckets on the cover are Arabic coca-cola labels."
Omar's sexy prog-rock music combined with Lunch's nihilistic monologues is just pure sex. (strange sex though)
Alien8:
"Fantasma Parastasie sees the pairing of Aidan Baker, of the Ambient Doom band Nadja, and Tim Hecker, two of Canada’s brightest musicians in the world of abstract electronic music."
Not quite as calm as I´d expected this album to sound like - it felt like it was neither Hecker's nor Baker's touch that could be heard. What we hear instead are noisier landscapes that slowly disintegrate.
Artist: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
Album: Mutations EP
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 2009
Genre: Electronic, Experimental, Futurejazz
Label: Ad Noiseam
Size: 200 MB
Ad Noiseam:
"A bridge between their first album on Planet Mu and the forthcoming second one on Ad Noiseam, the "Mutations EP" is The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble's coming of age. Profound and organic but dark and impressive, it is a perfect rendition of the ensemble's live shows and the proof that there is still something fresh to be done at the meeting point of post-rock, jazz and drones. A deeply emotional and original trip."
Artist: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
Album: Here be Dragons
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 2009
Genre: Electronic, Downtempo, Futurejazz
Label: Ad Noiseam
Size: 245 MB
Ad Noiseam:
"For their second full length album, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble set their sails towards uncharted territories and unveiled a new symbiosis of warm electronica and dusky yet clear acoustic instrumentation. Familiar yet unsettling, varied yet coherent, dark yet warm, the highly detailled maps of "Here Be Dragons" form TKDE's most personal and crafted release, a mesmerising combination of traditional and modern sounds, and a highly rewarding album."
Artist:Oneohtrix Point Never
Album: Rifts
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 2009
Genre: New Age, Drone, Noise, Experimental, Ambient
Label: No Fun Productions
Size: 729 MB
The 'Rifts' trilogy comprises of the first three full length records - Betrayed in the Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind as well as selections from rare and out of print cassette and CD-R releases, with recordings spanning as far back as 2003. Fully re-mastered for digital audio.
Chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that it curated in May 2011.
That other review took too much time already..so here´s what you need to know:
Kayot Dot's first release, a yet quite maudlin of the Well-esque approach. Hallucinatory, lucid dream astral composition..
Quite aggressive, enjoy.
Looks like I finally won´t come around somewhat of a "review".
Well it´s going to be much less of a review but more of a plain info output.
What we have here is nothing less than an Austrian underground-supergroup consisting of members of noise-rock trio BULBUL (Raumschiff Engelmayr, Derhunt, DDKern), Maja Osojnik ((Rdeča Raketa, Maja Osojnik Band) and Susanna Gartmayr.
Bulbul is a pretty well known noiserock-outfit that has been around for slightly more than 10 years now. Drummer DDKern is known from various projects, notable Fuckhead and KernQuehenberger - and by the by is easily one of the best live drummers I´ve ever seen. Anyway.
Usually when people state that a specific band totally defies genres, this is usually not quite the truth. With Broken.Heart.Collector this is definately not the case. You truly can´t push them into any scheme.
With most of the members sporting influences ranging from free jazz to noise improvisations as well as any hard hitting style their output is as diverse as can be.
Drony soundscapes, jazzy rythms, math-rockesque beats, noisy walls, psychedelic realms, danceable kicks, there´s everything.
Maja vocals can be a salivating crunching, a black-metalesque grunting or frigid like a bird's chanting. Her lyrics are..sometimes reflective, sometimes surrealistic.
The whole album has been recorded as a live-recording in little more than one week.
To me it is one of the most rewarding albums of this year and I can only recommend to you to check out this incredibly tight (live-)band.
Favourite track: Another One Bites The Dust. ;)
Released at Interstellar Records, a label one or the other album here will be coming from too
"Celestial and SGNL>05 reintroduce the control tower and female character themes; specifically, a central "mother" tower ("Celestial (The Tower)", "Divine Mother"), which is built ("Constructing Towers"), decayed ("Deconstructing Towers"), and finally crumbles ("Divine Mother (The Tower Crumbles)" which isn't featured until their SGNL>05 EP). As well, the SGNL theme is introduced ("SGNL>01" through "SGNL>05 (Final Transmission)"), and the mosquito (Mosquito Control) is linked through the artwork on both releases."
Artist: Isis
Album: Celestial
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: 2001
Genre: Post-Metal, Sludge
Label: Escape Artist Records, Hydra Head/Conspiracy Records
Size: 519 MB
Isis' first full-length.
Wiki:
"Celestial and SGNL>05 reintroduce the control tower and female character themes; specifically, a central "mother" tower ("Celestial (The Tower)", "Divine Mother"), which is built ("Constructing Towers"), decayed ("Deconstructing Towers"), and finally crumbles ("Divine Mother (The Tower Crumbles)" which isn't featured until their SGNL>05 EP). As well, the SGNL theme is introduced ("SGNL>01" through "SGNL>05 (Final Transmission)"), and the mosquito (Mosquito Control) is linked through the artwork on both releases."
My apologies to everyone glancing at this blog for putting out all those gems completely commentless, but at the moment I just don´t have the time to write thoughtful reviews..
I do hope to get back to them some time, but for the moment this will have to do.
After having left his recordings on tape to rot for more than 20 years, Basinski finally reused them..the result: a more and more distorted, minimalistic, epic loop, taking the listener to a journy far outside their body..
This may be interpreted as metaphor for men's life - hundreds and hundreds of the same loop over and over, slowly dissolving - wether you feel or not feel to see it that way is up to you.
Either way: enjoy!
Artist: Tim Hecker
Album: An Imaginary Country
Quality: Lossless FLAC
Released: March 9, 2009
Genre: Electronic, Ambient
Label: Kranky
Size: 316 MB
This is easily one of the most favourite albums that I own..dynamic ambient.
Take the public transport, drive through the city, listen to Tim Hecker with closed headphones.