twenty

157-166


Asencio/Chenard - Ocean a vendre/for sale (Ambiances Magnetiques) 2002

A duo recording driven primarily by Sylvie Chenard, who is a multidisciplinary artist with several Ocean/Whale based sound works. Working in guitar and electronics she is joined by Jon Asencio on electric bass for free play that is in line with the Quebec label's aesthetic. Leans to the side of soundscape over melodic exlploration... may not be for people who like even their free jazz with a little structure.
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Robert Ashley - In Sara (Lovely Music, Ltd.) 2002

Ashley reads a 128-stanza poem by John Barton Wolgamot wherein the same line introduces a sentence that constantly changes four elements, the names or lists of names and the active portion of the sentence. It blurs the line between Dada, concrete poetry, sound art... mostly because of it's effects that accrue slowly and through near-repetition. In that way it is also not unlike interesting minimalist music like Steve Reich's or Terry Riley's. It features underlying music by Paul DeMarinis on Moog synthesizer.
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Ask - Formulary of Curses (Discus) 2004

Larger ensemble recording by Discus label boss Martin Archer. Ask features a primarily jazz mode, but one open to processing and manipulation of sound. For all of that though the core is much more rooted in individual participations than in group dynamics. Balanced and interesting play.
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Wendy Atkinson - Trim (Smarten Up & Get to the Point) 2003

Atkinson is a Vancouver-based artist with ties to long-standing art-punk duo Mecca Normal. This solo album is an improbably ambient exploration using all manner of electric and acoustic bass as a starting point. She manages to discover interesting textures by flattening rhythms down to still points and layering them or pulling them apart to discover their warm hearts.
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Aube - Cardiac Strain (Alien8) 1998


Aube/Knurl - Split (Alien8) 1997

Aube (pronounced Obey) is the alias of Japanese artist Akifumi Nakajima. His works are typically begun with a simple single sound source that is then given extremely radical processing in order to create gigantic soundscapes that belie their humble beginnings. For Cardiac Strain the sound of a heartbeat is turned into something urgent and enormous, which perhaps is really what the heart signifies ultimately. For the split release with Toronto's Alan Bloor whose alias is Knurl, Nakajima uses the sound of a telephone to create a gradually building alarm clarion. The other aspect of Aube's works is their usual very limited runs, making them quite collectable. For Bloor's side of the above split he is much more visceral and "hands on" using amplified sheet metal run through all manner of distortion. The result is more typical of what is conjured when the term "noise music" is mentioned.
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Melanie Auclair - Puce a l’oreille (Ambiances Magnetiques) 2004

Debut album for this excellent singer / cellist. She is joined by choice artists from the Ambiances Magnetiques roster including label head Joanne Hetu and guitarist Bernard Falaise. The results are eight medium length pieces that have a surprising attention to detail, but without sacrificing compelling musicality. Acoustics are given the foreground, with the smallest sounds of things standing tall and strong.
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Autechre - Chiastic Slide (Warp) 1997


Autechre - LP5 (Nothing/Warp) 1998


Autechre - Gantz Graf (Warp) 2002

This duo are long-haul electronics wizards that have come up through the ranks shoulder to shoulder with Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. And also like those two they are fans of throwing endless curveballs just when critics come near to pegging them. Usually tagged with the much-derided IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) description, they often create abrasive sounds atop near-trance beats that have the tendency to suddenly shift or drop off just when the rhythm becomes comfortable. Unlike their labelmates Autechre seem to prefer sticking more closely within a purely electronic framework... though what they do there melts the selfsame framework down to slag at times. From Chiastic Slide there is a more regularized approach that hits the margins of Trance and Drum and Bass... but by Gantz Graf "playing nice" was something that came up less and less frequently, preference given to rapid eye cuts and crippled beats.

nineteen

147-156


Asa-Chang & Junray - Jun Ray Song Chang (Leaf) 2002

This made it to #4 in The Wire's 2002 top 50 list (if that sort of thing makes you respect things more). It's a weirdzo cross-ethnicity hybrid of live tabla (by Asa-Chang) and electronics with elaborate triggers (Junreitronics) developed by Hidehiko Urayama (who never appears in live performance). The tabla sound is present acoustically, but it also sets off samples of voice and other sounds that lock to the rhythm, creating a tight-knit yet disorienting soundscape. The album eludes classification, containing elments from but not conforming to techno, world music, abstract electronics. Not necessarily easy listening, but intriguing enough to easily absorb your attention.
++++++++++++++++


Masayo Asahara - Saint Agnes Fountain (Discus) 2003


Masayo Asahara - Saint Catherine Torment (Discus) 2005

This is an invented alter-ego of Discus label boss Martin Archer to try on another skin and create a slightly different version of his prog-rock inflected experimental jazz. Both releases are competent in the explorations, but neither significantly deviate or stand out from the Discus herd.
+++++++++


Koji Asano - Sunshine Filtering Through… (Solstice) 1999


Koji Asano - Monsoon (Solstice) 1999


Koji Asano - Giant Squid (Solstice) 2003


Koji Asano - Wind Gauge (Solstice) 2003


Koji Asano - Zoo Telepathy (Solstice) 2003


Koji Asano - Sanctuary on Reclaimed… (Solstice) 2005


Koji Asano - Takoyakikun (Solstice) 2005

If Koji Asano were a criminal he would provide a momentous task for investigators to profile... being incredibly prolific and equally eclectic. Releasing over 40 albums in the last decade (not necessarily unheard-of in experimental circles) he restlessly crosses genres from solo prepared piano, to electroacoustic compostion, to small ensemble chamber music, to progressive rock and traditional Japanese themes. Predictably not all the releases are equally engaging, but they all are approached with a level of dedication to the project. My favourite from the above is probably Monsoon, a four track exploration of sparse prepared piano.

eighteen

139-146


Bees - Free the Bees (EMI) 2005

I'm usually pretty mistrustful (distrustful?) of current bands who draw this obviously from 70s sources... but The Bees are so fidgety with it, never settling on just groove music or psychedelic exploration or Beatles rip-offs. In a way they're a little like Beta Band (coming to them soon), but much more accessible, less idiosyncratic... except maybe for the song about chickens. There's only room for a few of them on planet Earth.
----------------------

Belle & Sebastian - Fold Your Hands Child… (Matador) 2000

There's an element... even in a collection this large and widespread... of cohesiveness that sometimes shuts off certain avenues of perfectly respectable music. I have nothing against B&S. I find their music pleasant, infectious... toe-tapping fun, really. The word most often used to describe them, and bands from the branch of their family tree, is twee. Twee means precious, delicate, gentle... lots of strings. And again, nothing against that stuff... it's just that there's a LOT of it, both currently and historically, and B&S are excellent at distilling this music down to it's most appealing elements. But I don't have shelf space for the wing it would open up should I delve into this sub-genre. Instead I'll hold onto this playcopy, not one of their better albums, because it has no cover... and save my cardigan for cold autumn nights.
____________________


Bellini - Snowing Sun (Monitor) 2001

In the 90s, with the rise of grunge, there was also the rise of angry girls with guitars... which supplanted then was supplanted again by sad girls with pianos. In that time bands like L7, Babes in Toyland, Bikini Kill et. al. roamed the land with varying agendas and levels of phlegm. Ten years later only a few are still (albeit barely and for the wrong reasons) making news: Courtney Love of Hole no so much for music and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill who shifted gears, formed Le Tigre and proved that growth and change is possible. It's a side effect of the still-male-centric business of music that strong women who break these barriers are more quickly cast aside... or made to remodel themselves (I'm looking at you Alanis). Bellini is a band on a small label with a strong front woman and a sound like Steve Albini's wet dream who, if they had been fronted by Steve Albini or his non-union equivalent, might have generated a lot of buzz... but not so much in reality, though.
______________________________


Belly - Star (Sire ) 1993

Speaking of girls and guitars... Tanya Donnely is someone who's still hanging around and making music for a small group of fans (I'm not sure if I should include myself since I've not heard any new music in the last decade). Starting out as second banana to Kristin Hersh in Throwing Muses she moved on to second banana to Kim Deal in The Breeders (a side project to The Pixies that became full time after their collapse). Jumping off that bandwagon after The Pod, The Breeders first album, Donnely formed Belly... a group that embodied some of the best elements from her two previous bands. Now Star still sounds pretty good... a little dated, a little bland in places... but the standout tracks like "Feed the Tree" and "Star Dog" still kick ass.
______________________

Danny Ben-Israel - Kathmandu Sessions (Locust) 2004

Another realm I wouldn't normally part the beaded curtains and enter into is the world of "lost" 60s and 70s recordings, but it is a realm covered by Destination Out in Exclaim! and that means it is occasionally my duty to essay it. Locust records digs around in the dirt that hold everything from Garage Rock to Psychedelic Weirdness to Leftfield Folk. Danny Ben-Israel covers all three of these bases with a swirly mess that is simultaneously Hippie-like and still manages to call them all dirty bastards. This obviously scores points with me. If you can imagine The Doors where Jim Morrison was less self-constructed and more indebted to Nepal than Rimbaud... that would sound a little like this.
_______________________________


Benoit Pioulard - Precis (Kranky) 2006

Wünderkinds can be pretty annoying. Especially when you're a lazy dude approaching or past the cutoff point where most people would take a "debut" album seriously. Benoit Pioulard is the nom de plume of 20 year-old Michigan upstart Thomas Meluch. With this first official release on tres cool Kranky records he manages to infuse moody ambience (which would be enought to get him noticed on the label) with a melancholy tunefulness that resembles Elliott Smith at turns. That's just overdoing it if you ask me.
_________________________


Dan Bern - Fifty Eggs (Sony) 1998


Dan Bern - New American Language (Messenger) 2001

Fifty Eggs was sitting in the cheapie bin at Digital World and I noticed it was produced by Ani DiFranco so I took it home and gave it a shot. It reminded me a little of Hamell on Trial for it's irreverence and self-aggrandizing gusto. With songs about having very large testicles and about intergalacting procreation of the spaceman/monkey evolutionary nature it was easy to enjoy but hard to take seriously. Sometime between then and New American Language either Bern or someone around him decided to get a little more serious about things and the result is a more mature, less scatalogical album. Instead of Cartman and Kenny groin-level humour we instead have deeper meaning cut with a slightly more crass Freedy Johnston/Jonathan Richman wit.

seventeen

130-138



Beat Happening - Black Candy (K/Sub Pop) 1992

One of the sounds that helped define the now-useless term "Indie Rock" was the kind of childlike approach to songwriting that Beat Happening utilized. Far from being a gimmick, it was simply the noise made by people who loved getting together to make music but were too excited by it to wait until they were really professional. Essentially it was the DIY of punk rock stripped of fashion and posturing (at least overtly). The trio hammered out three chord anti-anthems... and Black Candy was their attempt at darker themes and swampier production in the vein of The Cramps or Deja Voodoo. It never really got that heavy, though... instead you end up with a six-year-olds' version of dangerous rock. The song "Cast a Shadow" has been covered by BMX Bandits, Adam Green (of The Moldy Peaches) and Canada's own West Coast indie pop darlings Cub.
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Beck - One Foot in the Grave (K) 1994


Beck - Odelay (Geffen) 1996


Beck - Mutations (Geffen) 1998


Beck - Sea Change (DGC) 2002

OK... I let you in on my non-funk biases when talking about Beastie Boys... so it should come as little surprise which four Beck albums I have in my collection. The first, One Foot in the Grave, comes appropriately right after Beat Happening on the shelf... given that it features Calvin Johnson of that group and it came out on the label run by Johnson, Olympia's K records. The music reflects most starkly what's at the root of all Beck's music: grizzled Folk Blues mutated by the street level Hip Hop he grew up with in California. Mutations and Sea Change are my favourite sides of the Beck coin... downbeat and moody; is it a coincidence his non-smiling face are only on these quieter albums? I will concede that Odelay is a masterwork, though it seldom is the one I reach for when I'm playing a Beck album by myself. All the elements are balanced... the production is, er, slammin' (?)... and his freaky Rorschach test lyrics are at their best. Respect.
++++++++++++++++++++++++


Bedhead - Beheaded (Trance Syndicate) 1996

Middle album of three superlative efforts by this great Texas quintet centered around the brothers Kadane, Matt and Bubba. They play a slightly countrified (i.e. echoes of pedal steel) version of the slow-core dynamics employed by other groups like Codeine and Seam. I was playing this in the store on Wednesday and three young ladies all started grooving to it... always a good sign that an album's worth it's weight. They get the slow dynamic build-up just right, but also infuse it with a kind of vague malaise that keeps it on edge even in the quietest parts. After the dissolution of Bedhead the brothers reconvened in 2001 as The New Year.
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Beef Terminal - Grey Knowledge (Noise Factory) 2002


Beef Terminal - Isolationist (Noise Factory) 2003


Beef Terminal - Anger Do Not Enter (Noise Factory) 2005

Beef Terminal is MD Matheson of Toronto, ON... and Noise Factory is the post-rock/electronic label who brought us the first Broken Social Scene album... back when they were merely a duo. Despite the fairly visceral name, BT's music centers around nicely layered and delay-enhanced guitar figures that suggest bleary eyed early mornings and over-heated Summer nights. Of the three Isolationist has the most to offer... introducing some slight force in its rhythms and a live, organic drum feel that buoys the more ephemeral melodies. Anger Do Not Enter relies more on (purposefully?) outdated drum machine sounds that have a little touch of sterility that does the music no favours.

sixteen

122-129


Anandan/Goldstein/Wiens - Speaking in Tongues (Ambiances Magnetiques) 2003

I've been pretty lucky with neighbours for the decade-plus tenancy in my apartment. There was the guy who lived in the basement apartment who fell asleep after tossing frozen pizzas in the oven and letting them turn into charcoal over the ensuing 6-7 hours. There was the guy who lived in the back apartment whose alarm clock wouldn't wake him up so, consequently, it would blare on for 30/45/60 minutes at a time... and he'd set it for around 6am. It woke me up alright. But for the last few years it's been pretty peaceful, and even when there is noise late at night I'm usually pretty understanding about it... I was in my 20s and I made noise and got away with it... pay it forward, or whatever. The only exception comes when a fairly sleep-disrupted week rolls around and the 5-6 hours I have coming to me gets shot down when someone decides that 4am would be the best time to listen to gay-ass RnB... just below my bedroom. More to keep my sanity in balance than any real escalation of weaponry, my response was to get up around 8am the same morning and loudly do my dishes while listening to this free jazz at a "pleasant" volume. You should never use music as a weapon... and in a way I wasn't, because this is a great album from Montreal scenesters using instruments that aren't traditionally linked in improvisation. Seldom abrasive and often sublime. I wouldn't mind waking up to it after a night of drinking... hopefully they didn't either.
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Angel - S/T (Bip-Hop) 2001

This label skirts the edges of many established genres in electronic music: ambient, microhouse, drone, etc., without getting mired in what turns from genre to generic. Angel is a live entity with two heads: Ilpo Väisänen, who is a member of Pan Sonic and Dirk Dresselhaus, who records as Schneider TM. For the purposes of their live performance the artists combined homemade instruments (typewriter as synthesizer, broken guitar) and wits to explore the point where music becomes chaos theory.
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Animals on Wheels - Designs and Mistakes (Ninja Tune) 1997

Of the small but solid stable of artists who inhabited the Ninja Tune label in the 90s (Amon Tobin, Coldcut, Herbaliser), most stuck closely to a turntable/sample based sound that re-imagined 60s/70s jazz fusion as something denser and weirder than it had in reality been. Andrew Coleman was out on his own limb at this time. As Animals on Wheels his music had more in common with contemporary UK Drum N Bass than Bitches' Brew. With a greater emphasis on polymorphous beats and other obviously electronic sounds he crossed the threshold into the modernist stream of synthetic music.
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Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works v.2 (Sire) 1994


Aphex Twin - Drukqs (Sire/Warp) 2001

Richard D. James is one of those anomalies in electronics where he is miles away weirder than your average bear, but still manages to be one of the most recognized names in his field. Whether his eccentricities are contrived or earned is moot, his knack for making music across the spectrum from early Acid House to post-classical composition is inarguable. Selected Ambient Works V.2 is a two disc set that challenges through its sheer simplicity and minimalism. Tracks are often simple loops that repeat as to become hypnotic. His mastery of this is knowing how much work the listener will be likely to invest in either engaging or ignoring the sounds he presents. Drukqs is also a double set that wavers between twisted but concise explorations on prepared piano and more disorienting explosions of digital beats and squelches that verge on danceable before tying together all your shoelaces.
++++++++++++++++


Pierre-Andre Arcand - Atlas Epileptic (Ambiances Magnetiques) 2004

AM is a Quebec label whose sister imprint, Empreintes Digitales, does electro-acoustic music (essentially sound design recorded and mixed from any number of "actual" sources). This disc, which also has a visual component, runs closer to that end of things... though perhaps it is on the more "musical" of the labels for its employment of Max/MSP software in sound creation. Whichever... the result is a crisp and abstract product that I honestly have not yet found a way to fully absorb. As with many artists in this mold the work is dense and detailed and requires more than superficial attention to truly appreciate. So it's something I'll have to return to, later and extract its secrets.
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Martin Archer- Heritage and Ringtones (Discus) 2004

Martin Archer runs Discus records and the largest part of its output features his music... a move not uncommon but unavoidably trust-straining. This release is a little gem in his discography... with contributions by such luminaries as Ingar Zach (Huntsville), Simon H. Fell and Rhodri Davies... it combines original compositions (Ringtones) with covers of tried and true themes by folks like Duke Elllington, Bert Jansch and Annie Briggs. A neat blend of jazz/improv and folk ideas.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Arkitekchur - Should (tbtmo) 2003

This one really worried me... I mean from the standpoint of pulling out of the envelope and seeing the cover, then moving on to the textual content. I thought I was in for some heavy dogmatic lifting. As it turns out the first piece is very gentle and beautiful delay-saturated guitar piece that stretches out over fifteen minutes of repeating figures... a far cry from the noise I was expecting. Without any overt post-9/11 reportage in the sounds of the album there is an "elephant-in-the-room" kind of paranoia that the listener brings into play, freeing the artist(s) to work from a much subtler distance. It doesn't all work to perfection... some of the shorter pieces lack weight... but the long tracks hit a wonderful balance between beauty and ugly truth.

fifteen

114-121


Bastro - Diablo Guapo (Homestead) 1989


Bastro - Sing the Troubled Beast (Homestead) 1990

You could more or less look at Bastro as an "in between" group. A couple of years earlier in Louisville, KY was a bunch of scrappy teens who played blistering post-hardcore under the name Squirrel Bait. One of those kids, David Grubbs, was a bit older and when he moved to go to school in Chicago this was the new group he brought with him (including Clark Johnson, another Squirrel Bait alum). The last piece of the Bastro puzzle was the addition of drummer John McIntire who was already studying and living in Chicago. Diablo Guapo was a slightly more sophisticated version of Squirrel Bait's speed/style mix... while with Sing the Troubled Beast a new experimentalism, both in composition and instrumentation, opened up. The aggression and tension that defined the earlier band was still present, but Grubbs began working with forms of minimalism and repetition to create that tension. Meanwhile a few of the other ex-Squirrel Bait folks were working in Slint; Grubbs put Bastro to sleep and began Gastr Del Sol, a collaboration with Jim O'Rourke that also featured John McIntire... who in turn was working towards the beginnings of Tortoise. More on all of the above in coming months.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Bauhaus - Mask (Beggar’s Banquet) 1981


Bauhaus - Sky’s Gone Out (Beggar’s Banquet) 1982


Bauhaus - Burning from the Inside (Beggar’s Banquet) 1983

Naming your group after a German art movement most famous for their furniture design might not be the cleverest thing to do... but it was the 80s. If you know these shadowy Englanders for anything at all it's probably for the Hallowe'en favourite, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," which ironically never appeared on any of their albums... only as a single. Because of that song and their black clothed visual presentation they often get lumped in the goth category of music genrification. In reality they are probably closer to glam, if anything... proving this with covers of Ziggy era David Bowie and post-hippie T.Rex. Instrumentally the group let the the bass and drums (David J and Kevin Haskins) propel songs with inverted funk/dub signatures while guitarist Daniel Ash's fragmented textures gave things a tense, disjointed feel... occasionally alleviated by prettier twelve string acoustics and other such stuff. Vocalist Peter Murphy cemented the whole goth label with his vampire-chic high cheekbone emaciation and Transylvanian tenor. There was a definite temptation to mock these guys... but if you got past that, the music they made was quite compelling. It was as off-kilter and more consistent than Bowie's best mid-70s output, and it offered a nice middle range for those who wanted a challenge in their listening... but weren't ready for the wigglier stuff like Brian Eno's solo albums (Eno was another Bauhaus cover subject). On a personal note... Burning on the Inside was among the first ten compact discs I bought after going digital.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Bay - Alison Rae (A Noise Annoys) 1995

This is one of those weird random albums. I ordered it based on a three or four sentence description in release sheets from Cargo Records in Montreal not long after starting work at Backstreet. I was just getting into Elliott Smith's self-titled solo album and other such sad and quiet acoustic stuff... and Bay seemed to fit the bill. As it turned out... and this was something I didn't twig to until later... it was also my introduction to Aidan Moffat, later of Arab Strap (see earlier)... but since he was not a singer but a drummer in this outfit my prolonged ignorance of the fact is a little more understandable.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Beachwood Sparks - Make the Cowboy Robots Cry (Sub Pop) 2002

I've always meant to go back and get one of these guys' full lengths... maybe it's not too late? Celebrated and criticized for their homage/appropriation of the country-folk-rock style popularized by Byrds, Flying Burrito Bros, Buffalo Springfield... on this e.p. they showed signs of branching out into a more modernistic world with help from Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL and The Postal Service (before that group's first release). It unfortunately turned out to be their last release. Pleasant and catchy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Beastie Boys - Check Your Head (Capitol) 1992

OK. I may have mentioned this earlier... but I am in no way funky. We non-funky people cope with our unfunkiness by poking fun at casually funky people. People like, say... Ultimate Frisbee teams. I've found myself in situations where I've had to satiate these casually funky people... thus I eventually purchased this album by the Beastie Boys. Well... to tell the whole truth... it actually came into the store second hand and had some scuffing which made a couple of the later tracks unplayable, so I brought it home instead of throwing it out. It has proven to be a good tool of appeasement when asked for "funky" music by people for whom James Brown or Parliament is a little "challenging." There are definitely other albums in the collection that would fall under a sub-heading of "social play" albums... albums for specific situations or specific crowds. Now this is not to say I dislike this album... or the Beastie Boys... it's just that, well... you wouldn't bring an albino sunbathing, would you?