Ducktails - "Acres Of Shade"

Acres Of Shade

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A. White House With Green Shutters (10:00)
B. Surfs Up (10:15)


Matt Mondanile returns with a brand new tape, leaving behind his previous style of lo-fi bedroom psych-pop. With this release, he's opted for swirling synths and baked out psych-drones, swaying in and out of tune and time, lulling the listener into a great, deep slumber-esque trance. This is definitely something for nighttimes.



7.6/10



Information on release: Cassette released by ARBOR. Limited to 100 C20 tapes with full colour covers and printed labels.

Windy And Carl & Heavy Winged - "Monolith: Earth"

Monolith: Earth

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1. Windy And Carl - Intelligence In Evoluation (29:00)
2. Heavy Winged - Wool And Water (23:04)
3. Windy And Carl & Heavy Winged - Monolith: Earth (23:45)

"The Monolith series combines two artists on the same one-sided, reverse-cut LP by hard-panning one recording to the right and the other recording to the left. By adjusting the panning controls on his or her turntable, the listener is free to control the degree to which the two recordings melt into one."


What a wonderful, wonderful concept! A single sided picture disc LP showcasing two great bands in collaboration but with a peach of a twist: you get to select the extent of each recording when playing back the entire mix. To put it simply, Windy & Carl are the left speaker, Heavy Winged take the right speaker. You go left, you get all of Windy & Carl. If you go right... well, I won't insult your intelligence.

With the fannying about and playing aside, what does the music really have to offer? You often wonder when it comes to something physically conceptual if the music will ever live up to the hype. In this case, being the great fan of Ambient and Drone that I am, I'm left feeling at least fulfilled. And while it isn't the most satisfyingly brilliant record, it does have it's pros. For starters, the entire Windy & Carl track alone is breathtaking. Reminiscent of one William Basinski, the track bleeds seamlessly from start to finish in a beautiful array of sounds and noises only building to a Drone to the close of the almost half an hour effort.

And again, on it's own, the Heavy Winged track is good. It's abrasive and iratic. It's what you'd expect from a Noise Rock song. The sad thing is that combined, with both tracks panned perfectly left and right, as the collaboration was intended, I'm not so sure. They do add to one another but there's a total lack of a sense of completion within the music. It seems a little bit of a mismatched effort and while I understand that Ambient over Ambient or Noise over Noise would be completely conterproductive, I think that it could have been much, much better.


6.3/10

Grouper/City Center - "Split 7" "

Split 7"

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A. Grouper - False Horizon (4:22)
B. City Center - This Is How We See In The Dark (3:46)

Two new tracks featured here from both Grouper and City Center. On side A we have a Liz Harris continuing everything that was wonderful about Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill: haunting vocals, this time layered to greater effect, strumming, reverberated acoustic guitars and sweet, if not awfully morose, melodies. As I've said before, Grouper goes from strength to strength with every release and False Horizon is no exception.

With side B comes a refreshingly dense, dreamy number thick full of distant, beautiful vocals and lovely, reassuring nursery rhyme-esque instrumentation. It's lullaby-ish qualities are a welcome change from the often upsetting nature of Grouper's music. Jingling bells and papery percussion accompany swirling noises of somnambulant rhythm. I love this. I really, really do.

8.4/10



NB I'll be working on contacting City Center to aquire more of their music because it is simply stunning.

Alva Noto - "Xerrox Vol.2"

Xerrox Vol.2

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1. Xerrox Phaser Acat 1 (12:11)
2. Xerrox Rin (0:51)
3. Xerrox Soma (7:11)
4. Xerrox Meta Phaser (6:23)
5. Xerrox Sora (6:54
6. Xerrox Monophaser 1 (8:04)
7. Xerrox Monophaser 2 (5:31)
8. Xerrox Teion (2:03)
9. Xerrox Teion Acat (5:26)
10. Xerrox Tek Part 1 (5:28)
11. Xerrox Monophaser 3 (6:14)

Finding the words to describe volume 2 in Carsten Nicolai's Xerrox series isn't easy. What we have is a dense and rich atmosphere of vibrant sounds and dreamy drones that flow and merge seamlessly into one majestic opus. While the intention was to hark back to the idealism of film score, employing a linear aesthetic to the music, you can't help but feel that there's something much greater here. The theme itself would require the use of other means of sensory stimualation, but I feel Alva Noto has done more in this collection of sounds than what any picture or word could possibly add to or expand on. Using samples and collaborations from his recent tour of the USA, we find weathered borrowings from Stephen O'Malley and Michael Nyman as well as rehashings of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto's encore from 2004's "Insen" tour. This is an out and out masterpiece. A true work of great art.

9.3/10

Emeralds - "What Happened"

What Happened

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1. Alive In The Sea Of Information (8:02)
2. Damaged Kids (15:01)
3. Up In The Air (4:02)
4. Living Room (16:43)
5. Disappearing Ink (13:32)

It's difficult to place Emeralds. At their core, musically, what you get is vast and expansive synth drones. While there's still hints of Noise and of Ambient, it'd be wrong to say Emeralds are one or the other. What I can say, however, is that whatever they're doing works and it's nothing short of magical. The Ohio trio produce some of the most touching and brilliant soundscapes, coupling great walls of synth and noise with Mark McGuire's twinkling guitar leads and flashes of feedback. It's unfair to say this early on in the year that I've picked my top album for 2009 but I honestly can't help myself. This is what experimental music is all about.

9.1/10