KILLED in CARS: Aleph Naught - The Dreams In The Witch-House (Small Doses, 2009)

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Aleph Naught - The Dreams In The Witch-House (Small Doses, 2009)

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This was limited to 66 copies, which the label page is showing are sold out. Given Aleph Naught has put out a couple free things online, I think it should be safe to pass this along. I was listening to this record, and looking stuff up on it when I learned that Anthony Mangicapra did the artwork for this. I met Anthony recently, and he was a great guy, really cool to talk with about music. I need to get around to reviewing his music, too. For the time being, I'll cover this album, which is an EP, to be more precise.

Some might call this dark ambient, and I see the dark aspect to it, but there is really no comparison to Lustmord or anything like that. This is more heavy, undulating synth drone, with the volume pushing beyond the canvass in redlining pulses, streaks of melody paradoxically high pitched, but pressed low in the mix. The feeling is that of attending a rehearsal of five minutes of Gubaidulina and sustaining blunt force trauma to the ear. The volume distorts the sound, the textures flatten and stretch, all the while pushed by a persistent, increasing melody below.

For the record, I don't like when distortion is used to sort of "cover things up," so to speak. I really enjoy the sound of static and distortion, obviously, but unless there is more, or unless it is fantastic distortion, it sort of makes the music anonymous or cheap. The flip side, with a few records I've posted, and this, is when it comes out natural, or measured, or fits with the piece (or whatever), it really can add something, both aesthetically, and intellectually. I think the things that I take the most from this is the static is a sort of framing mechanism for the core melody that I mentioned. It sort of encapsulates a central melody within a ring of static. That is, the sound distorts at certain volumes, and if you think about your speaker array as being able to organize air for a certain distance, that distance from your speaker, its outer reaches, is the frame. Here, the volume distorts at a certain level, and is at the forefront of the music, thus the outer border I'm talking about.

Very cool, short, and although not revolutionary, expertly executed.

Download.

2 comments:

Anonymous, December 17, 2009 3:26 PM: hi, thanks for taking the time to write about my release. AN
pabanks, December 18, 2009 2:26 PM: Great. Keep up the good work!

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LIVE MUSIC REVIEW

Mortal Engine
BAM, Brooklyn, New York
December 12, 2009 7:30 PM

The NYC night air was frigid, but the sky was clear, the winds were minimal, and the crowd at the BAM was on its best behavior. I was almost certain to enjoy this show regardless of quality, but I'm happy to say that I don't need to lower my standards to report it was better than expected. To get a brief idea of what this looks like, aside from the following, see the above video. I'll briefly talk about the three notable aspects of this show: first, since this is a music site, the music; second, the video, which was stunning; third, and most important as this is a dance, I'll make a couple comments on the dance.

I think that in my entire time in New York, including at the No Fun Fest, this is the largest crowd I've ever seen for a show that featured music like this. From the preview, I knew that Ben Frost was a contributor (as a track from his Theory of Machines is prominently featured), however, during the show, I felt I was hearing Fennesz, Ryoji Ikeda, random Raster Noton, Pan Sonic, and Sachiko M. I was thrilled by the variety of the sounds. "We're winning," crossed my minds, as the crowd genuinely enjoyed the textures and movements of the pieces. Later, re-reading the playbill, I realized that all of the music was Ben Frost, and that some of the pieces for the show were originals. Now, I had not thought of Frost as someone this capable, and I should say that his works in each of these styles so closely match established figures in each genre, that I was a tad disappointed. However, despite showing the ease with which one can approximate the electronic noises I love, I should say that these sounds were enormous, sophisticated, and carried the performance admirably.

The main attraction for most has to be the visuals. While the NY Times called them amazing, but devoid of emotion, I found them to be extremely emotive. There were blurring effects, aptly accompanied by Frost's noises, that made characters feel stuck together, pulling close while gravity endeavored to tear them apart. Other moments conveyed genuine fear, as black figures chased and consumed solitary white ones, perhaps a tangle with death (one that, in a subsequent part, had the white figure pinning down a black one, perhaps showing man more up to the challenge of death). The video highlighted body parts, darkened figures and hid movements, all the while emphasizing human patterns with geometric, colored shapes and flashes, alternately obscuring and accentuating each exchange. The highlight was the end, when the auditorium filled with smoke, and figures slid around through the shadows as green lights gave the crowd the sense of forward movement into a distant point, an event horizon perhaps, as the focus then moved to figures, at first trapped, then freed from the lights, who climbed away.

Lastly, the dance was not so much dance as it was a study in body movement (although, of course, that IS dance), or at least, there was much less traditional dancing, and more of a hybrid of contortionist-type movements and character acting, the bodies holding the crowd rapt with their animal like movements, movements that became amoeba like, powerful yoga poses in one instant, wall poses and gymnastic lifts the next. Each set of music created a mood, and this mood was distinguished further by unique types of movements. When combined with gorgeous lighting and projections (soft, diffuse, then hard, angular), the emotional impact, contrary to the Times' review, was powerful. If nothing else, dance can heighten your sense of how music is used, and give you insight into the choreographers aesthetic logic, a sort of passive look into an alternate interpretation of the sounds and visions in your imagination. If Chunky Move (the dance group) comes to your city, GO!

MILES DAVIS

By 1973, Miles had gone crazy. I often ask myself, in reference to an athlete lost to excess, or an artist that has burned too brightly, does the caring person in me have the ability to bring myself, should I somehow be granted such powers, to erase great works of art by curing the illness that brought them to be? Here, the case is simple: would I be humane enough to let Miles free of his demons, knowing that doing so would erase all the art he made in the midst of his madness?

If I were alive and asked this in 1975, I would certainly say yes. The music in question was largely, perhaps near-unanimously, reviled by critics. Miles, his health shattered, had just retired for what was to be five years. Dave Liebman was solid, but was also one of very few longstanding sax players to pair with Miles without subsequently gaining worldwide fame (I'm still waiting on a Gary Bartz revival - I'll lead the way). Miles had unleashed masterpieces like On the Corner, Get Up With It, and garnered neither the younger black audience he wanted, nor the sales of his prior albums (namely, Bitches Brew).

However, time has a way of changing things. Miles' work from this period has seen a decade-long critical resuscitation, the dry clicks and repetition of On the Corner a false ancestor of dubstep, the pulsing ambiance of "He Loved Him Madly" was ahead of Eno, ahead of dark jazz, and ahead of about ten other genres. Miles was more mournful in his playing, the searcher was more lost than ever, and his body matched his tone: brittle, thin, static then frenetic (could be the coke there). Given all this, I don't know if I could let Miles go if that meant this art would go away. Whatever was chasing miles over a quarter-century ago, it lead him into areas so far ahead of his time, it is staggering.

EXCEPTIONAL NEW RELEASE

Your Snakelilke King, by the duo of Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance under the name Blood Stereo, was a steady climber throughout the year for me. The first thing that caught me, as is often the case, is the stunning cover art, which, luckily for them and for me, came to my attention when I was deeply into dance a while earlier in the year. I also had wanted to check something out by Dylan Nyoukis, as I'd heard his name bandied about by some other writers that I trust, but was kind of put off by the album with the cover of him naked.

Enter Your Snakelilke King. The second track, "The Taking of the Tonic," is what originally caught my ear, as it started off with the sort of high pitched, spare vocal spikes that would be common on a Keiji Haino record. After that portion, there are layered vocals, scratching textures, and a sort of propelled development through the rest of the track that simultaneously has a circular motion to it, a sort of swirling vortex in the speaker array. In a way, the vocals mimic something from Burning Star Core's more saliva-based excursions, which is a good thing.

After I was thoroughly taken by the second track, I gave the opener, "The Giving of the Grape," a more attentive listen. The track starts very similar to Tony Conrads Joan of Arc, so much so that at first I wondered if the track was realized by recording the pedals and keys of an instrument. This descends into the chaos of the remainder of the track, replete with violin scratches, frenzies and abutted by synthetic tones, closely recorded bubbling and crackling. The 20-minute journey can't be summed up completely here, but the message I hope you get is that this record is effective in track development, all the while being texturally complex and dynamic. In short, Your Snakelilke King, sold out in the 330 copy vinyl edition, but still available in other formats on Pan, serves as a perfect entry point to Nyoukis and Constance, and is a fantastic "noise" record, period.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Aleph Naught - The Dreams In The Witch-House (Small Doses, 2009)

2 comments:

KiC CHANNEL (coming soon)

KILLED in CARS

LIVE MUSIC REVIEW

MILES DAVIS

EXCEPTIONAL NEW RELEASE

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