A Beautiful Place in Your Headphones
Back in 2005, we wrapped our review of Boards of Canada’s The Campfire Headphase by calling it the end of a trilogy of albums suggesting the life cycle: birth, growth, death. Eight years later, Scotland’s Sandison brothers present Tomorrow’s Harvest not merely to resurrect their wobbly, yellowed electronic sounds for their rabid fanbase, but to call those noises forth much like a medium beckons angered poltergeists.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews Boards of Canada
Old Dog, Old Tricks
Industrial sound is often the background music for a tortured existence, and few artist manage to pull it off like veterans Skinny Puppy. However, there are plenty of observers who suggest the group’s sound and influence never fully recovered from the dawn of the 1990s, as the band approached an ill-fated contract with American Records. This being said, the following words about new album Weapon will either relieve you or further cheese you off.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews Skinny Puppy
The Finest in Jaz
Joy Division. Adam & the Ants. Judas Priest. Pet Shop Boys. Midnight Oil. Nirvana. Pop Will Eat Itself. Tool. What do all these musicians have in common? At some point on The Singles Collection 1979-2012, you can draw a direct line to something in their sounds—and the sounds of countless others—from something in the work brought together here from the famed British rock collective, Killing Joke. Centered around oddball lead singer Jaz Coleman and guitarist Geordie Walker, with longtime partners Paul Ferguson (drums) and Youth, a.k.a. Martin Glover (bass), even the questionable parts of their expansive career influenced something in your MP3 collection. Read more…
By Adam Blyweiss Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews Jaz Coleman, Killing Joke, Youth
The Goa Way
London’s Ben Watkins is the man at the center of the Juno Reactor universe, having single-handedly kept electronica’s Goa trance subgenre in the public consciousness. Problem is, the JR catalog pulls from a surprisingly shallow well of punishing industrial/techno beats and Eastern-influenced wails. The Golden Sun of the Great East doesn’t feel or sound like music that’s been around for 20 years, but the formula has been for sure.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in Reviews Juno Reactor
Reality Bites
Don’t let the brightly-colored packaging fool you. The Terror, the 13th studio album in The Flaming Lips catalog, is possibly their darkest release yet. In spite of the band’s legacy of playfulness and mischief, key band members Steven Drozd and Wayne Coyne recently hit rough patches away from the studio and stage. Oklahoma City’s favorite sons have long implied that life couldn’t exist without love and joy. The Terror makes the hard admission that you can indeed carry on minus these connections, but boy, does it suck.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews The Flaming Lips
‘Sweatting’ to the Oldies
He may have enough Bandcamp pages to fill both hands, but they only show that Justin Sweatt really loves his nostalgia. The Austin, Texas, electronic musician performs as Xander Harris, a character name pulled from TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His new LP, The New Dark Age of Love, has cover art riffing on the soundtrack to middling ’80s Brat Pack vehicle She’s Having a Baby, and what’s on the inside often suggests BBC DJ mix shows from the early days of techno and trance.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in Reviews Justin Sweatt, Xander Harris
Set Fire to the Rain
The notoriously wet, gloomy reputation of the Pacific Northwest nourishes a particular quality of somber electronic music. Acts like Skinny Puppy, Assemblage 23, 16Volt and even Ben Gibbard’s mewling Postal Service literally work under dark clouds from Oregon through British Columbia. Shaun Frandsen runs his Glis project out of Seattle, and on Phoenix, his third full album for Alfa Matrix, it sounds like he’s really starting to bloom under these conditions.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in Reviews Alfa Matrix, Glis, Lauren Krothe
Many people on this planet, facing an unfortunate separation by time, have never experienced The Doors in a live setting. Only through words, film and old recordings can we get some impression of Jim Morrison’s on-stage rants and rhythms, the likes of which, all considered, were best enjoyed by a lucky few. However, halfway through a live performance of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, don’t be surprised to fall into a kind of trance—one aroused by seductive words, snake-charmer musings. Your sight will go gauzy, and you’ll get it: The spirit of the The Lizard King is alive and well. Read more…
By Adam Blyweiss Posted in Reviews, Show Reviews Barry Adamson, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sharon Van Etten, Shilpa Ray
The Twilight Series
Belgian record imprint Alfa Matrix has spent 12 years making interesting new excursions into metal and dark electronica. They have at their disposal a wealth of earnest goths (Diskonnekted, Ayria) and a number of established rivethead veterans (Mentallo and the Fixer, Leæther Strip). It’s unclear how much this really good label wants to wade into the mainstream, but The Lovelorn Dolls seem to lead them too far out from shore with their debut LP, The House of Wonders.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in Reviews Alfa Matrix, The Lovelorn Dolls
Material Witnesses
Strut Records announced its revival, of sorts, as part of the Berlin label, !K7, when they put forth their third release since almost dissolving in 2003, Funky Nassau—a fantastic compilation highlighting the sounds and artists who passed through Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. Now five years into its deal with !K7, Strut curates what could serve as a bookend set of dead sound: music from the legendary ’70s and ’80s label, Celluloid Records.
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By Adam Blyweiss Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews !K7 Records, Bill Laswell, Celluloid Records, Strut Records
