DIRTY PROJECTORS - Swing Lo Magellan

In a case of impecccable timing where theirs happens to be the first of three just-left-of-centre American indie acts (along with Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective) whose '09 breakouts are just now getting followed up in somewhat quick succession, Dirty Projectors' newest finds Dave Longstreth and co. retaining Bitte Orca's sudden synth bends, R&B proclivities, inhumanly heavenly harmonizing and guitar wizardry while slightly paring back/stripping down (with handclaps and programmed rhythmic hiccups often replacing a drum kit, and more space generally left in the mix) and getting bucolic and folky with the early-'70s production and earnest lyrics of the title track, "Impregnable Question" and "Impossible Tune."

"There’s always been something referential and self-aware about the music in Dirty Projectors’ catalog, but the process seems exceptionally open on Swing Lo Magellan...Maybe it has to do with the fact that the material was written in upstate New York, Longstreth isolating himself and, according to press releases, writing approximately 70 songs in the process (pared down to 40 demos by the time the rest of the band joined him). This is Longstreth distilled, an emotional clarity and depth that surpasses the rest of his material." - Consequence of Sound/TIME

"For some, the stripped-back approach will come as a disappointment. Aside from the acid guitar blasts in opener 'Offspring Are Blank' and the stuttering rockist wig-out 'Maybe That Was It,' the sort of assertive confidence that made  Bitte Orca such an irrefutable pop statement is largely missing...If it diverges in small ways from its predecessor,  SLM is on the whole a worthy sequel , a continuation of an art-rock trajectory that we can't really afford not to follow along its recalcitrant, wayward path." - The Quietus

CAN - The Lost Tapes (3CD)

A successor/sequel in many ways to 1976's Unlimited Edition, The Lost Tapes exhumes thirty more tracks from the archives, from live excerpts to 'ethnological forgeries' and such revelatory works-in-progress as "Dead Pigeon Suite" and "A Swan Is Born," respective early takes of Ege Bamyasi's "Vitamin C" and "Sing Swan Song."

"Can released 12 albums, and a number of outtakes have dribbled forth since. But for the krautrock aficionado, the tease that 100 tapes of unreleased material was sitting around was almost unbearable: akin to knowing the Holy Grail was sat in a cupboard in Cologne. Finally, Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and band associate Jono Podmore have dug in, and the results are pretty stunning: three CDs drawing on film soundtrack work, live material, experimental segments and sprawling jams that show the workings of later Can favourites." - NME

"Drive was Can's trademark, powered not just by [Malcolm] Mooney's aggression but by Michael Karoli's tattoo-needle guitar style and (especially) the drumming of Jaki Liebezeit, in which the delicacy and invention of jazz was applied to a series of rigidly mechanised beats, a kind of percussive hypnosis driving the others forward without fear. In time, as Mooney was replaced by the ethereal Damo Suzuki, the drive became more of a glide, the sound spun out until it was almost translucent, but the band retained its eerie power: heavy when featherlight, direct when delirious." - The Quietus

"At its root, this collection is a testament to the groove. Jaki Liebezeit says: 'The idea to keep the rhythm was forbidden in times of free jazz. There was no groove. But in Can, the rhythms were always defined. I had a lot of critics in the beginning because they said I am repeating all the time, it is monotonous and I have no ideas. If you change your standpoint all the time, no one will understand you. So I keep a standpoint and go on. I must obey the rhythm.'" - musicOHM

VA - LateNightTales by Belle and Sebastian (Volume 2)

B&S's first contribution has now sadly fallen out of print; what better time, then, for these Scots to submit a whole new set of cross-genre finds? Another solid entry in this mix series.

"Their scene-straggling 2006 LateNightTales included pure pop, '60s psych, '70s rock, West Coast harmonies, beat groups, folk balladeering, punk, indie, girl groups, and bossanova; this new selection only delves deeper into their shared influences and inspirations, along with a subtle nod to digging for rare sampled beats, not perhaps a trait usually associated with B&S. Worldwise psychedelic breaks thread the mix together, with two tracks from Broadcast bookending a first half that includes late-'60s dreamers The Wonder Who? and Joe Pass, father of Ethio-jazz Mulatu Astatke, harpist Dorothy Ashby and the 21st-century beats of Gold Panda." - LateNightTales

DIRTY THREE - Toward The Low Sun

Three: The holy frickin' trinity. The first group number always capable of a majority vote. The power trio. The magic number.

There's something special about the number three that transcends cultures and customs, geography and generations. And music definitely gets it, too. Whether you're talking jazz or metal, three is the first number wherein one gets to experience—if the elements are just right—the beautiful way that human minds can both support and tear at one another from an always changing balance of power. Like a game of rock, paper, scissors, each instrument usually holds a characteristic edge over one, while being subservient to another. Let's examine the power trio, shall we? (This is kinda flawed as an analogy, but bear with me...) Guitar is, by virtue of frequency, far clearer (and therefore seemingly louder) than the bass. But drums are the instrument that control a guitar's ability to truly live up to the promise of its riffs in the eyes of an audience. And yet without the bass, the drums usually lack the rhythmic support and constance to achieve a blissful groove. Anyway...there must be something to it, right?

Dirty Three think so, but the manner in which—over the course of eight albums and numerous EPs— they've taken the above parameters and turned them inside out has been nothing short of utterly unique. And at the risk of incurring the wrath of my eleventh-grade English teacher, I'm not being flippant here: there is NO band out there that sounds like these guys do. And a lot of it has to do with the way that they use the power of three to their advantage.

Three generally works because you can have one musician each responsible for one of the basic elements of rock: 1. the high end; 2. the low end; 3. the beat. But Dirty Three don't care 'bout no three elements. Supplanting the bass guitar with a violin is the instrumental trio's first bold move, but they're just getting started. Each player then uses their playing to crap all over the most sacred commandments of their chosen tool. 

Warren Ellis—even at his most tender—is a vio-lent-inist, wielding his bow in a manner that tears at the very literal and figurative fabrics of his strings and melodies. Far from being mannered or precise, he is the aggressive dramatist of their music—squealing, crying, sighing, spitting with love and pith. An outback Oscar Wilde who sucks the dusty marrow from every last inch of his own sorry bones.

Then there's Jim White, the drummer. Solid, controlled...no way. White drifts and slides, scuffs and trips, stampedes across his taunt drum skins like the feet of a hundred thousand beetles carrying a wounded elephant  on their backs. He and Ellis stand musically facing each other. One pushes. The other pulls. Ellis bows left, White slams right. At the centre of this teasingly tottering dance—the fulcrum of their seesaw—is...the guitarist? The most unreliable timekeeper in music?

And yet, this too is true, for Mick Turner is the keel, the ballast, the root of Dirty Three's confounding configuration. As still musically as he is on stage, Turner paints (both in real life and here) the unacknowledged arch of stage under which Ellis acts and White dances. It is a truly selfless role, but one that the band would be hopelessly lost without—all grand gestures and physical emoting without any context.

If we're being truthful, Toward The Low Sun, their first record in seven years, is not their best record. But from a band as peerless as this (and promising a fix as unique as they do), it's still a damn sight better than most of what you'll find out there. And, if their recent extended absence has left you one of the uninitiated, it just might be the perfect way to ease you into their catalog. (Should you then find your curiosity piqued, may I present the three best Dirty Three albums, in no order, of course: Horse Stories; Whatever You Love, You Are; Ocean Songs.)

FIELD MUSIC - Plumb

Considering that their last effort—the superb Measure—was this writer's fave album of two years ago, I'm more than a little excited by the Sunderland band's latest arrival. Often, it is this type of setup that leads to a burst bubble or two, and it needs to be said: that Plumb doesn't quite, well, measure up to its predecessor. Much of this, however, has to do with pure numbers.

Even though it was a little under the radar, Measure was a behemoth 20-song, 80-minute album, towering over not only the rest of the band's catalogue, but many other records of its ilk at the time. This grand, proggy ambition was stunningly tempered by the fact that it was peppered with song after song of memorable melody and lithe, spiky riffs. Plumb is half Measure's overall length—in effect, it's that record compressed—but has only five less songs. Quick math tells you something has to give. In this case, it's the way that Plumb 's tiny songs refuse to settle on any one tack for long.

So whether it's an a capella section ("How Many More Times?"), a jittery bout of tom-tom driven rock ("It's Okay To Change"), or a slice of chamber pop ("Sorry Again, Mate"), if you blink, you'll often miss it. Of course, the funny thing about Field Music (and what ultimately saves them) is that for all of their restlessness and the rapidity with which they apply and then dispense with their ideas, they're a very beautifully nuanced and classic British pop band. From XTC and The Jam to The Stranglers and Orange Juice (and more than a little bit of Yes), the UK's tuneful musical DNA is always with these guys. Underneath all of Plumb's constant shapeshifting, there is a songcraft that rewards one's trust. 

And if it's a bit ironic that it's the double album that is the more immediately accessible of their past two, that's just part of the beauty of Field Music—a band that plays from pop's great songbook as it eagerly rips it up.

ROLL THE DICE - In Dust

from Soundscapes <info@soundscapesmusic.com>
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Also, while I think to mention it, if you're up for listening to a new synth + piano release that I just really got into and think you might also like, this Swedish duo Roll The Dice has a new album called In Dust on the Leaf label that takes that whole kosmische/Cluster/early Kraftwerk/electronic krautrock/John Carpenter set of influences that has been the zeitgeist for a little while now and does something really refined with it (think Vladislav Delay, Moritz von Oswald or that Mokira record I was raving about a couple years back)—the production's really rich and flattering on this, the sequencing is solid, and to me it sounds bummed but blissed out at the same time.
 
Check it out if you've got a free hour (or less, of course, if it doesn't end up being your bag!) at some point:
http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2011/09/05/free-association-stream-roll-the-dices-in-dust-album-and-read-their-track-by-track-commentary/

PRURIENT - Bermuda Drain

If you’ve read any article on Bermuda Drain, Prurient's new album, you’ll probably have read that Dominick Fernow’s approach for this record has been severely influenced by his time spent working with Cold Cave, especially on their latest release Cherish the Light Years. Let's just address that now—while yes, they do share similar qualities initially, the end products could not be more different from each other.

If you’re at all familiar with Prurient’s previous efforts, this one might throw you for a curve. While most of his records are very in tune with groups like Whitehouse or The Sodality, Bermuda Drain strays from Fernow’s power electronics roots and takes on a dark wave approach. If you’ve ever fancied yourself a fan of early Ministry or Black Celebration-era Depeche Mode, this album should strike a chord with you. There’s nothing pop about this. Musically, this album just piles the melancholy on more and more, until closing track "Sugar Cane Chapel." Fenrow has maintained the ferocity in his vocal approach for most of this record, but takes breaks from screaming and shouting to deliver spoken passages, sometimes barely above a whisper.

Industrial leanings remain, with a harsh wall sometimes washing over the melody. The songs themselves have been restricted to no longer than three or four minutes each, and the feeling of endlessness found on records like Pleasure Ground is gone. Everything just feels more focused. His lyrics, while still touching on sexuality and other taboo subjects, feel more thought out and poetic, and we might have his Mother to thank for that (no, really—she’s credited in the liner notes!).

Dominick Fernow is a king of multitasking. Besides performing as Prurient and with Cold Cave, he's a member of many other groups (Ash Pool, Vegas Marytrs, Vatican Shadow...), and also runs his own label and record store (Hospital Productions). You would think that by this point exhaustion would diminish the quality of his work, but thankfully it’s only getting better.

PANDA BEAR - Tomboy

Over what has felt like a year (and actually nearly has been...), we've been receiving warnings, hints, teasers, and full-on singles off Tomboy. It's the kind of online hysteria and anticipation that's normally reserved for a Radiohead album (at least before that particular band caught on to the idea of sending out their press releases and albums within the same week). But instead, the record in question is the latest solo release from Noah Lennox, an artist who—despite membership in the increasingly beloved Animal Collective—bears a considerably smaller public profile.

The palpable excitement here acknowledges just how high the bar was set by his last effort, 2007's surprising Person Pitch. That record was a total shot in the dark. A heady intellectual collage of looping sounds and twelve-minute meandering epics, it still managed to deliver an immediate rush courtesy of a child's toy box worth of sugary harmonies and giddy charm. It’s a rare thing when an album is so obtuse and yet so quickly captivating as Person Pitch was. It really did change things, especially when you consider what happened after Animal Collective released Merriweather Post Pavillion in 2009.

Usually when artists reach this point, they do one of two things: stay firm and embrace this plateau, or retreat. Retreat is a strong word, but based on Tomboy, Lennox has little interest in staking a further claim to the high ground claimed by Person Pitch. Sure, the charming harmonies still swirl lugubriously in pools of syrupy reverb. Loosely related lyrics are still repeated in ever-turning trance-like incantations. Found sounds and beats still play under woolly blankets of synths and treated guitars. But the mood is decidedly darker this time around. There’s no ecstatic changing of the guard mid-song as on Person Pitch’s early highlight, "Take Pills"; no epic rhythm jam like "Bros" that ends in a sequence so golden and honeyed, you can practically feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

Instead, Lennox’s statements are shorter and more controlled. He may allow for moments that get lost in their own joy (the ascending "Afterburner" is a stunner), but overall—and for all of its excesses in terms of effects—the record feels concerned with not letting go too much. This approach does, however, morph into other types of pleasure. The title track is a heavy piece of work—commanding and concise, it grows in stature with each play. The beats in "Slow Motion" trip and bump beguilingly into a hiccuping vocal pattern that plays addictive tricks on the mind. And the wistful yearning of "Last Night at the Jetty" says a lot about the state of longing with its melodies (a good thing, considering you’re lucky if you can make out five of the words that he’s singing throughout).

Lennox has often stated in interviews that he’s most happy when his music is made quickly and intuitively—the more belaboured the effort, the worse the end result. Without Person Pitch preceding it, Tomboy is frankly not the sort of album that would be getting the attention it is. But even if it wilts a little in the glare of expectation, it remains an awfully beautiful and charming listen. And an honest one, at that.

JULIANNA BARWICK - The Magic Place

As far as album titles go, this is about as perfect and to the point as it gets. Following her debut Sanguine from a couple of years ago and last year’s Florine EP, Brooklyn’s Julianna Barwick has produced the most beguiling album of the year so far with The Magic Place.

With little more than her voice and a cathedral full of reverb, Barwick carefully builds up layer upon layer of mostly wordless vocals that reach high enough levels of intensity to rival the heights reached by that magnificent Pastor T.L. Barrett reissue from last year. Barwick’s transcendence, however, is much closer to European choral music traditions (think Le Mystere de Voix Bulgares without the brain-mulching dissonance) than it is to soul-cleansing American black gospel. She is the anti- (counter-? contra-?) Enya, vocal ambient music that can be as unnerving as it is overwhelming in its beauty. She is much closer aesthetically to Kevin Shields, who achieved a similar effect on My Bloody Valentine’s more repetitive pieces, such as "To Here Knows When" or on the feedback-driven "Glider". And way back in the '60s, David Crosby nailed down a blueprint for Barwick’s sound on "I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here" from his debut If Only I Could Remember My Name, perhaps his most moving piece, a spectral a capella fragment which, until now, has remained unrivalled.

Much of the magic of this album comes from the singer’s knowledge of when to let the reverberations ring out. She never gets Wagnerian with it, allowing the power of her music to come from timbre more than tumult. Compositionally speaking, her works are built around stacked melodies (her live performances are, no doubt, based on loops) rather than shifting harmonies. Most striking is "Keep Up the Good Work", both gorgeous and terrifying as it features her characteristic upper range with a highly vertigo-inducing vocal swoop. Its power is ineffable, something that does not feel created but, like a force of nature, like something that always was.

With only the barest occasional accompaniment on piano and other effects for colouration, Barwick continues to forge her original path, establishing herself as (literally) one of the most original voices on the scene right now.  

DEERHOOF - Deerhoof vs. Evil

Sometimes, it's just not honest to play the role of the sober, objective reviewer. For as much as drooling fandom can be a disservice to a reader looking for a fair indicator of something new to listen to, feigning a neutral position often gets in the way of displaying the true emotion certain music can spark within us. So it is with the following disclaimer that I review the new album by this San Francisco quartet: I LOVE Deerhoof. I'm talking like 'how peanut butter loves chocolate' love: entirely and fully immersed in my candy-coated dedication.

Why the love? Read the title, man: they fight EVIL. They're a noble band.

The "evil" that Deerhoof are fighting this time around is the same villain they've successfully pit themselves against their whole career: predictability. No matter how each has differed in approach, every Deerhoof album (and indeed each individual tune) strives to be one step ahead of its listener. While a little more reliant on electronic beats and blurbs than before, Deerhoof vs. Evil hods true to that aim. 

As always, what makes this relentless bobbing and weaving so compelling (rather than just exhausting) comes down to two things. Firstly, this quirky group always manages to be extremely catchy, albeit in unorthodox ways. Satomi's childlike chirp of a voice isn't for everybody, but its simplicity and direct approach to melody acts as a life raft amongst the ever-shifting backdrop of their music. No matter the maelstrom, she's there keeping things steady. (And if any singer is likely to have you walking down the street humming lines like "People need a gorilla" to yourself, it's her). 

Secondly, it really helps Deerhoof's cause that like other iconoclastic art-rockers such as Frank Zappa, they can really play their instruments. This isn't just bratty punk destruction of songcraft—it's a gleeful picking at conventional structures by a group of musicians who have the chops to do it. So just when you feel the band may be a little too willful in their self-sabotage of form, moments like the gorgeously fluttering Spanish guitar of "No One Asked To Dance" or the rollercoaster shifts of "Behold a Marvel in the Darkness" carry a confidence that reminds you that their is indeed a firm, experienced hand on the wheel.

If Deerhoof vs. Evil is a creative shade below past high-water marks like 2007's Friend Opportunity or the wild 20-song ride of 2005's The Runners Four, it is also one of the more direct and pleasing albums that they've made. That's a relative statement—their meat-and-potatoes is most other bands' haute fusion cuisine—but with über-pop candy like "Super Rescue Heads!" and the tight groove of "Secret Mobilization" leading the charge, now just might be the time for a few curious onlookers to join Deerhoof's gallant fight.

MOGWAI - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Remember the days when Mogwai was supposed to save music?

In case that sounds like the setup for a snide, derisive takedown of the now somewhat veteran Scots, it's not. Back in the late '90s, Stephen Malkmus' famous prediction that Mogwai were the "best band of the 21st Century" felt in no way an exaggeration. Everything about the mostly instrumental group's sound was primed to launch indie rock into some new plane of existence—taking the haunted minimalism and starkness of what was becoming post-rock and marrying it to both a simple melodiousness and—in particular—moments of destructive heaviosity. With ear-crushing live shows of legendary import, Mogwai's music changed how half of indie rock was being played, to the point where every second new band bore very distinct traces of their sound (if not a wholesale lifting of it).

After Mogwai finished pushing themselves to the absolute limits their style dictated (climaxing in the 20-minute brutality of "My Father, My King", a hallowed set-closer that bore witness to a forceful peak worthy of its title), the group began to explore songs that were shorter and that revolved more completely around melody. The first result of this shift, 2003's Happy Songs For Happy People, has endured to be (in my opinion, at least) one of the finest in the band's catalogue. Tracks like the vocoder-fueled ballad "Hunted By A Freak" revealed how Mogwai had evolved to write highly immediate, yet oddly expressed pop songs, while the massive middle of "Ratts Of The Capital" reminded us that their raw power was still present when they chose to exploit it.

But following this small victory, the band displayed a kind of cruise control. Neither Mr. Beast (2006) nor The Hawk Is Howling (2008) are especially bad albums, but they both found Mogwai a little aimless—more efficient than inspired, more competent than memorable. Now after moving to a new North American label (to Sub Pop from Matador), the brilliantly-titled Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will certainly sounds like a defining statement, if a little tongue-in-cheek.

Just as the title implies both an iron endurance and a winking surrender to the inevitable, Mogwai's latest gains great strength by playing entirely within their known sonic boundaries, rather than trying to break through them. "Rano Pano"'s endlessly restated riff is a stirling example of how well they can be heavy and robotic, yet still convey crackling feeling. And whether quick and to the point ("San Pedro"), languid and drifting ("Letters To The Metro"), or playing their unique strain of cyborg motorik pop ("Mexican Grand Prix"), there's just something about the record that feels far more at ease than on their past two studio albums.

Of course, maybe it's just me as a listener, too. While the band's output has not slowed down any (last year also saw a very good live album and film released by the group), the belief that they are the future of music has clearly waned. As much as getting over that can be a pain, by seeing themselves through to the other side, a new kind of appreciation has set in. New label. New record. In 2011, Mogwai are now just another band. They may no longer change the world, but they and their music are all the better for it. 

CLOUDLAND CANYON - Fin Eaves

One of the most fun things about the last half-decade or so of music has been listening to a brand new generation of players modernize the so-called shoegazer movement of the 1990s. Back in the day (you know, fifteen years ago or whatever), bands like Ride, Lush, Slowdive and the canonical My Bloody Valentine used effects and processing to make their guitars sound like anything but guitars. But they still came at their music from the mentality of a rock band—no matter how mutated, the basic language was still voice, guitars, bass, drums.

Now an even greater fluency with the computer and its possibilities has allowed solo artists and duos to create something akin to this music but in a slightly tweaked fashion. Here, the primary engine driving the music is the model perfected by another brand of '90s acts such as Underworld and Chemical Brothers—the IDM DJ duo. I don't mean this to be a particularly novel observation, but hearing the combination of swerving MBV-style chords and loop-based grooves of Fin Eaves track "Pinklike / Version" is one of those moments when you can really see the fruits of evolution. Like an equation in calculus, Cloudland Canyon are a problem wherein finding any 'x' variable in their chain of influence is just a matter of puzzling over it for a little while—obscured and refracted, sure, but it’s all there.

This duo pulls from more than the aforementioned template (there’s a heavy '60s psych undertone, for example), but it's most thrilling taken as a update of those early shoegazer albums—the ones made before bands like Ride or Lush allowed their rock instincts to push the gauzy FX aside and reveal themselves as the more conventional rock/pop bands they always kind of were. This record drifts everywhere and nowhere all at once—shards of pop songs and hooks float around in an amorphous jumble, and it's ultimately up to your ears to assemble it in a form that makes the most sense. In keeping with their model of 'engine', Cloudland Canyon really don't write songs as much as mobius strip suites that relive their brief lives over and over until they fade out. Which, more than anything, is actually somewhat conventional music in today's world...and it pleases me to no end that we've evolved to the point where this style of expression is as normal as picking up a guitar, setting up a drum kit and counting to four. 

ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI - Before Today

Ah, the cassette warped from the sun. A perfect relic of 1980s summers, when absent-minded teenagers would leave prized tapes on the dashboard of their cars only to come back and find that David Lee Roth was a more than a little crazy from the heat—he was half-liquid thanks to it. Welcome to Before Today, an album that plays just like one such distorted cassette, even down to the hissy, mid-range fidelity that screams TDK Dolby NR.

OK, so you weren't around in the '80s? That's cool, Ariel Pink can let you in on it, but take note: this is more than some trip down a geometric memory lane. Pink's a cunning and admirably unhinged songwriter. Whether his references points are Seventeen Seconds-era Cure ("Fright Night (Nevermore)"), weirdo soundtrack outtakes from an episode of Miami Vice ("Beverly Kills"), or a pop tune complete with moaning porno sounds snatched from the cutting room of Guns N' Roses' "Rocket Queen" ("Butt-House Blondies"), there's always some sweet hook cutting through the retro fetish. Lucky for him, because even the most eager hipster has to admit that this is often one hell of a cheesy sounding record. But in the end, even this feature kind of works in his favour. It's almost like Pink's daring you to love this record in spite of yourself. And since he's smart enough to never pilfer from one particular style for too long, that's exactly what you'll do. Superbly demented stuff. 

ACTRESS - Splazsh / RENE HELL - Porcelain Opera

While it may not appear to be the case at first glance, there are enough affinities between these discs to warrant a joint writeup, and not just because they share a release week (although that certainly helps). 

While these two young men's soundworlds are both singular enough to be miles apart (and draw from their own mongrel mixes of entirely different subgenres), Actress (a.k.a. Darren Cunningham) and Rene Hell (a.k.a. Jeff Witscher) are both releasing their highest-profile full-lengths to date (for the highly respected Honest Jon's and Type labels, respectively) after years of underground acclaim in each of their domains (post-dubstep, abstract tech-house-inspired, what-u-call-it? U.K. bass music for Cunningham; ambient drone, harsh noise, power electronics, U.S. post-hardcore and, as Rene Hell, analog-synth industrial/prog/kosmische for Witscher).

While Hell's been much more pseudonym-happy than Actress (having also gone by the names Impregnable, Marble Sky, Secret Abuse and Abelar Scout, among others), both these artists have plenty of experience going it alone, not only through making their music solo, but also by releasing much of it on smaller labels that they each run (Werk Discs vs. Agents Of Chaos/Callow God), proof that Cunningham and Witscher both know how to skillfully produce tracks on/of their own, as well as how to lend their releases and identities the sort of mystique that's increasingly crucial to getting heard amidst the din of the independent music marketplace.

Each a unique, hermetic and disorienting sound experience unto itself, Splazsh and Porcelain Opera both bear the mark of years of hard work paying off, yet are immersive enough listens to render all this backstory moot, making for two of this writer's favourite electronic releases of the year thus far.

THE ALPS - Le Voyage

For most, a perfect summer album means bringing the party—dance jams to get you hot and sweaty. I don’t know about you, but I’m already hot and sweaty. I’m looking for something like the cool breeze that hits you just as you’re reclining in the garden with a little sundowner. Le Voyage hits the spot perfectly, with gauzy soft-psych streaming over everything and letting the mind relax and bliss out completely.

Steering clear of the claustrophobic reverb flood of Animal Collective and the like, Alps paint their psychic landscapes the old-fashioned way: shimmering twelve-strings, cymbals so airy they must be transparent, and the old stand-by tambura—'70s secret code that things are about to get trippy. When things do get electronic, things don’t stray far from that vintage palette—gurgling analog synths, tape echo, and distinctly French-sounding found-sound collage, with plenty of room left for your own imagination as you let your head float up into the ether.

VA - Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1972-83

Aside from a bunch of outrageously-named collections from a few years ago (Kraut! Demons! Kraut!, for example, or Obscured by Krauts, to name but two), there has been a surprisingly small industry dedicated to this highly-fetishized era of German progressive rock and electronic music. Leave it to Soul Jazz, then, to not only do it with authority, but to have the nerve to stretch the timeline into the early '80s, when the genre had been largely abandoned by its diehard fans. Heck, even today, the umbrella term “Krautrock” (conspicuously unmentioned in both the title and subtitle of this set) and its main proponents are largely unknown to most Germans.

Key events of the last couple of years have precipitated this release, namely the recent tours of Cluster and Faust; the remastering of Kraftwerk’s definitive catalogue and release of an unauthorized but leagues-deep DVD, Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution (check our shelves!), which documented both the band and the development of the scene as a whole; and Black Dog Publishing's Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and Its Legacy book from last winter (we’ve got that one, too!).

Soul Jazz serves up a double-disc survey that kindly summarizes the key players (minus the preciously protective Kraftwerk) that would satisfy neu-comers and vets alike. Sequencer-meisters Cluster and solo members Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, along with Kluster's enigmatic Conrad Schnitzler (who shows up on the cold wave “Auf Dem Schwarzen Canal”) are here; so is the more hippy flute-crazy wing (Kollectiv, Ibliss). Of course, there’s also Can (post-Mooney/Sukuki), Faust, Harmonia, Neu!, Ash Ra Tempel, and Amon Düül II. And then there are late entries La Düsseldorf and E.M.A.K., who both underline how key the Teutonic influence really was on rock's New Wave.

A highly immersive experience, replete with fine liners and wonderfully garish packaging, Deutsche Elektronische Musik is wholly mind-expanding, and a mere scratching of the surface of an oft-referred-to but underheard world of music.

KRAUTROCK: Cosmic Rock And Its Legacy

The first few copies of this one flew out the door in no time. From the visual kosmische of the cover to the layout and typewriter font inside, this near 200-page tome looks like it could be a reprint straight out of the seventies. With an introduction by David Stubbs and contributions from The Wire’s David Keenan and Ken Hollings as well as Galactic Zoo Dossier's Steve Krakow, these articles are clearly geared towards the hardcore record geek. The first fifty pages of critical/historical essays are followed by band profiles from the common canon (Can, Kraftwerk, Cluster, et al) to the more obscure (I’ve never heard of Achim Reichel or Floh de Cologne, although collectors might sneer at my ignorance), and chapters on the key labels and producers are rounded out with a nifty timeline that contextualizes key Krautrock records and musical developments from 1967-1975 alongside contemporaneous German films and historical events.  

BROADCAST & THE FOCUS GROUP - Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age

Broadcast keep getting stranger and stranger, ditching all remnants of their '60s British pop leanings and embracing the naïve and chaotic while retaining their soundtrack inclinations, although they tend more toward the avant end of sound library recordings these days (along with harsh electronics, as evidenced during their recent performance here in Toronto). The amorphous processing on display at the show was just a hint of what Trish Keenan and James Cargill have been up to since 2005’s Tender Buttons, although we won’t fully know until they drop their next proper album next year. In the meantime, we have this nearly 50-minute “mini”-album to contend with, the first musical collaboration between Broadcast and The Focus Group (Julian House, co-owner of the Ghost Box label who has also designed most of the sleeve art for Broadcast). Witch Cults flows like a disturbingly surreal dream, with Trish’s increasingly lullabye/nightmare vocals spread out over a handful of the 23 tracks here. The asymmetrical loops and nonsensical treatment of harmony and melody further add to the notion that Broadcast’s creative vision is far from spent. 

MUSKOX - 5 Pieces

Mike Smith's Muskox finally make the leap to full-length (and -sized, as all-out triangle-tesselated packaging deservedly flaunts the fact) status with 5 Pieces, their first for Alex Durlak's Standard Form imprint (also home to Canaille and Feuermusik, among many other interrelated acts) after three consistently impressive 3" CD-Rs self-released over as many years. The ensemble's since likewise grown, now counting cellist Erika Nielsen among its ranks.

Disciplined but lyrical and delicately driving, Smith and company continue to temper tricky rhythms and time changes with lithe melodic lines that brainily intertwine, often returning to state the head motif after an adventurous, involved digression. A truly progressive crossbreed, Muskox straddle genres with the grace of a much less brawny beast.

(Muskox perform at the Music Gallery Thu. Oct 29 with Canaille and Damian Valles. Tickets are $10 at the door, and the show starts at 8:30pm.)

VA - Dirty French Psychedelics

This is not the 'official' psychedelic sound, but rather a sound that has been overlooked by revivals from the '60s to the '80s, ignored for lacking easy categorization. In 1970s France, moody orchestrations by Jean-Claude Vannier for the epochal Melody Nelson session with Serge Gainsbourg (as well as the less-acknowledged but artistically equal Brigitte Fontaine Est...) combined with the clash of exotic folk and cosmic jazz on the Saravah label to create an atmospheric and far-reaching sound that embraced open-mindedness, come-down grooviness, and the pristine (but definitely not smooth) production techniques of the time. It is a sound that's a purple haze without being “Purple Haze”, if you get my drift. Paris' Dirty Sound System have defined an amorphous genre, a rare thing in the compilations market, and have done it with a flow that betrays some serious mixtape obsession. A creepy and ominous mood is created by soundtrack greats François de Roubaix and Karl Heinz Schäfer, plus freaky pioneers Brigitte Fontaine and Dashiell Hedayat, along with many more.