Kranky Archives

Guest Spots: Implodes’ sonic-phenomena counterparts

Implodes: Black Earth (Kranky, 4/20/11)

Implodes: “Marker”

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According to Chicago-based drone-rock band Implodes, its new album, Black Earth, is inspired by a “haunted and magical place,” where “there’s an old barn there with many rooms and a silo that’s ﬁlled with dead insects.” With a wealth of slow-moving melodies and dark guitar murmuring tangled in a web of reverb, it’s an aptly creepy description. The Psycho-esque cover art does an equally effective job of communicating the record’s paradoxical beauty and gloom.

All four members of the band answered this question for ALARM: what natural sonic phenomenon best describes your role in Implodes?

Implodes’ Sonic-Phenomena Counterparts
by Implodes

Emily Elhaj:

Naturally, I would hope my sound could be likened to an avalanche. The indistinct rumble of packed snow sliding down a mountain’s façade seems to complement the booming nature and tone of my playing. The sounds are heavy yet mobile.

Justin Rathell:

The world around me has a remarkable way of translating very easily into percussive rhythms, tapping on my ears, begging me to follow along. Playing in Implodes often reminds me of just a couple of choice moments, much darker moments in my times experimenting with hallucinogens. Times where I was stricken with such overwhelming paranoia that I found myself focusing on the quietest, most isolated sounds. Sounds that began to grow louder and louder, drowning out other foreground noise that, in reality, was much more prominent. Sometimes, I was hearing the pulse in my neck or the beat of my own heart. It sounded like drums to me. It was somehow comforting. Everything else, even my other senses would dull. Except I think I could see my pulse; it would move the air.

Guest Spots: Disappears explains its key components

Disappears: Guider (Kranky, 1/17/11)

Disappears: “Halo”

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Chicago-based rock band Disappears feels pigeonholed. After having just released its second album, Guider, in January, the same words seem to keep popping up like shampoo instructions in various descriptions of its music: echo, fuzz, psych, kraut. The terms aren’t off base, but the band would like to think that it has a few different tricks up its sleeve. Here to address this limited vocabulary, vocalist Brian Case (formerly of The Ponys and 90 Day Men) breaks down the most recycled lingo while explaining the band’s key elements.

The Basic Elements of Disappears’ Music
by Disappears

Roland Space Echo

Used by everyone from King Tubby to KISS, the Roland Space Echo (specifically the RE-201) is a not-so-secret weapon for us. Every vocal track this band has ever recorded has been run through one of these — as well as every instruments on our recordings at one point or another. The RE-201 is a simple system in which a small loop of tape records an incoming signal and immediately plays the recorded sound back over a couple playback heads before being erased over by new incoming audio. Being an analog-tape effect, the results are usually unpredictable. It’s the cool sounds you hear on dub records and the crazy sci-fi sounds in Twilight Zone episodes. We try and tastefully split the difference, although I really want our next record to be super dubbed out, so we’ll see.

Tim Hecker: Reluctant Neo Eno

Montreal-based ambient electronic artist Tim Hecker recorded his most recent album, Ravedeath, 1972, in one day with a single church organ in Iceland. Then came the real work: meticulous editing, rearranging, and layering.

Concert Photos: Disappears @ Empty Bottle (Chicago, IL)

Chicago-based rock band Disappears played a hometown show at the Empty Bottle recently, performing material from its most recent release, Guider, out now on Kranky. Awash in heavy waves of reverb and distorted guitars, Disappears kept things characteristically minimal — no pomp, no circumstance, just pure, unadulterated fuzz-rock mania. Photographer Drew Reynolds captured these images, which, like the music, are simultaneously rich and stark.

Guest Spots: Tim Hecker on the loudest instruments in history

Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972 (Kranky, 2/14/11)

Tim Hecker: “Hatred of Music I”

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Experimental electronic musician Tim Hecker recorded his forthcoming album, Ravedeath, 1972, over the course of one day, using a pipe organ in a church in Reykjavik, Iceland. As with the majority of Hecker’s work, the record was shaped by computer-based post-production tweaking and editing (with engineering help from Icelandic jack-of-all-trades Ben Frost). His ambient soundscapes comprise ever-changing layers of noise and melody, building toward monolithic sonic density and hemmed in by meticulous attention to detail.

In addition to making music, Hecker also studied the cultural history of urban noise in North America at McGill University in Montreal (where he now teaches a course called “Sound Culture”), making him the perfect candidate to expound on important moments in thunderous aural innovation.