Morrow vs. Hajduch Archives - Page 3 of 5

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Zorch’s Demo EP

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Zorch: Demo (3/8/11)

Zorch: “Zut Alore!”

[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Zorch_Zut_Alore.mp3|titles=Zorch: “Zut Alore!”]

Morrow: Zorch is a frantic instrumental-rock duo that used its debut EP to present swirling keyboard arpeggios, baritone synth grooves, and hyperactive beats that ever-so-slightly recall Zach Hill (after he comes down from speed). Originally recorded and released on a small scale in 2009, Demo is seeing a re-release and new press push, thanks to a series of SXSW dates and some love from NPR.

Hajduch: “Zut Alore!” the opening track, actually fails the “instrumental” test with its four-bar chant that closes the track out. There’s a nice riff backed with some big drums and a “bass line,” as it were, provided by a Fender Rhodes. It’s simultaneously hooky and spastic; they find a way to nail that delicate balance that Lightning Bolt has made its wheelhouse.

Morrow vs. Hajduch: The Fun Years’ God Was Like, No

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

The Fun Years: God Was Like, No (Barge, 11/16/10)

The Fun Years: “Breech on the Bowstring”

[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/The_Fun_Years_Breech_on_the_Bowstring.mp3|titles=The Fun Years: “Breech on the Bowstring”]

Hajduch: The Fun Years is among a noticeable cadre of artists pushing icy, shoegaze-tinged ambient music these days, but the duo lacks the name recognition of Tim Hecker or even Ben Frost. Hopefully, its 2010 release, God Was Like, No, changes that.

The group is comprised of Ben Recht on baritone guitar and Isaac Sparks on turntable, but this album suggests that there are a lot of delay and fuzz pedals in that signal chain. Fittingly, the album opens with swirling guitar notes that gradually build into a sustained howl before suddenly exiting stage left, leaving a repeated crackle and simple guitar phrase in their wake.

Though it’s more than 40 minutes long and holds eight tracks, God Was Like, No ignores its purported divisions to form a cohesive suite, with each track blending into the next. All maintain a similar minor-key melody while shifting timbres in and out; bit-crunched, buzzy guitar, bowed cymbal, and repeated snippets of manipulated vocals all appear and disappear. The overall effect is of one long track; it’s very satisfying.

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Kronos Quartet, Kimmo Pohjonen & Samuli Kosminen’s Uniko

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Kronos Quartet, Kimmo Pohjonen & Samuli Kosminen: Uniko (Ondine, 2/1/11)

Morrow: In 2004, the unparalleled Kronos Quartet premiered a new commission of material written by Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen and sampler / electronic percussionist Samuli Kosminen. Though it only was performed on a handful of occasions, it proved so resonant that the six performers finally recorded the seven-movement suite, which was released last month by independent classical label Ondine.

Kronos has always attained high marks for its diversity of projects. Uniko, first and foremost, remains a contemporary chamber piece, but it’s most set apart by the electrified and effected sounds of Pohjonen’s accordion and the soft laptop beats of Kosminen.

Pohjonen also adds wordless vocals that at times resemble throat singing. It’s another interesting element, but the movements’ structures are the real key to Uniko‘s success — whether building into a stirring Balkan folk melody in “I. Utu” or stacking pizzicato and staccato passages over buzzing percussive samples in “III. Sarma.”

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Grand Pianoramax’s Smooth Danger

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Grand Pianoramax: Smooth Danger (ObliqSound, 5/3/11)

Grand Pianoramax: “Roulette” (radio edit)

[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Grand_Pianoramax_Roulette_radio_edit.mp3|titles=Grand Pianoramax: “Roulette” (radio edit)]

Morrow: Conceived as something of a live piano-and-drums experiment, Grand Pianoramax is the principal project of pianist Leo Tardin. Once “a New Yorker from Switzerland” and now “a Berliner from America,” Tardin uses a small arsenal of instruments — grand piano, Fender Rhodes, K-Station, harmonium, Phillichorda — to achieve a diversity of sounds for his duo’s spacey, funky, classically infused music.

Smooth Danger is the duo’s third and newest album; released overseas last fall, it sees a US release in a few months. Though it doesn’t depart much from its predecessors, it cuts back a bit on guest vocalists, allowing the duo’s music to better stand on its own. And it deserves to, thanks to its combination of killer melodies, synthesized grooves, and classical piano that overlay tight, rapid rock and boom-bap beats from new drummer Dominik Burkhalter. (The former drummers, by the way, were no slouches: Deantoni Parks [The Mars Volta, Meshell Ndegeocello] and Adam Deitch [Talib Kweli, John Scofield].)

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Cex’s Evargreaz EP

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Cex: Evargreaz casette EP (Automation, 12/7/10)

Cex: “Ily”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Cex_Ily.mp3|titles=Cex: “Ily”]

Morrow: Rjyan Claybrook Kidwell has already spent more than a dozen years recording as Cex, his prolific electronic/IDM project. Begun in his teenage years, the music has been intellectual yet inconsistent, jumping from guitar-topped glitch beats to nasally, half-sung vocals and raps.

Regardless of the vocals, which some view as a distraction, Kidwell has always made great music. Whether it’s the purely electronic beginnings of 2000 album Role Model or the acoustically infused 2003 album Being Ridden, Cex has channeled the best of pioneering labels like Warp and Planet Mu.

Evargreaz is a four-track EP that was released in December. (We’d note that it’s in advance of another full-length album, but he’s already since released another EP [Megamuse] that’s a preview of said full-length on Tigerbeat6 [Tiny Creature].) It backs away from some of the dance elements of Bataille Royale, his 2009 album, instead offering more ambient IDM with overlapping time signatures and a solid blend of timbres.

Morrow vs. Hajduch: The Mag Seven’s Black Feathers

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

The Mag Seven: Black Feathers (End Sounds, 11/16/10)

The Mag Seven: “By the Time I Get Out of Phoenix”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/The_Mag_Seven_By_the_Time_I_Get_Out_of_Phoenix.mp3|titles=The Mag Seven: “By the Time I Get Out of Phoenix”]

Morrow: Over the course of a dozen years and a half-dozen releases, The Mag Seven has traversed surf rock, Italian western, punk, rockabilly, guitar-centered jazz, and more. Originally configured with True Widow and Slowride guitarist Dan Phillips, the group shifted its sound in the mid-2000s with the addition of guitarist Brandon Landelius, and the decision was fruitful.

Black Feathers is the group’s new seven-track vinyl/digital EP — its fourth album with Landelius and sixth overall. It’s charged with the same surf-rock energy of albums past but scales back the jazz leanings and Angelo Badalamenti-style moodiness of its last release, Cotton Needle Sessions. Though short, it’s a well-balanced release, alternating between the down-tempo swagger of “Jive Turkey,” the reverberated rock of “My War,” and the western dub of “By the Time I Get out of Phoenix.”

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Faun Fables’ Light of a Vaster Dark

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Faun Fables: Light of a Vaster Dark (Drag City, 11/16/10)

Faun Fables: “Light of a Vaster Dark”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Faun_Fables_Light_of_a_Vaster_Dark.mp3|titles=Faun Fables: “Light of a Vaster Dark”]

Morrow: Borne of principal songwriter Dawn McCarthy, Faun Fables is a powerful, somber, and multifaceted brand of neofolk songs and theatrical performance. The group’s works also are developed by co-conspirator Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and their breadth of instrumentation comes courtesy of assorted guests.

Light of a Vaster Dark is Faun Fables’ first album in four-and-a-half years, and it again is led by the dynamic vocal interplay of McCarthy, Frykdahl, and others — blending elements of the 1950s/’60s American folk revival, medieval and Celtic music, and the catchall “psychedelic folk.”

Though McCarthy’s clear intonation and wavering vibratos are the real star, Frykdahl’s backing vocals add a necessary baritone presence, and the album’s range of sounds is just as vital. Guitars, violin, flute, bass clarinet, autoharp, Theremin, and homemade instruments all offer different sonic flavors behind a vocal presence that can sound a little homogenous from time to time.

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Rival Sons

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Gorillaz’ The Fall

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Gorillaz: The Fall (EMI, 12/25/10)

Gorillaz: “Phoner to Arizona”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Gorillaz_Phoner_to_Arizona.mp3|titles=Gorillaz: “Phoner to Arizona”]

Morrow: Over Christmas, Damon Albarn of Gorillaz (as well as Blur and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, et al) released a free album of material called The Fall for paying Gorillaz fan-club members. Recorded on the road during the American portion of the group’s recent Plastic Beach tour, the material (which can be streamed for free by non-paying mailing-list members) is most noteworthy for being entirely recorded and produced on an iPad.

The music isn’t the high-water mark that was Plastic Beach, which benefited from virtuosic performances by The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music and others and which featured high-profile guests such as Lou Reed, Mos Def, De La Soul, and many others. But the songs are fun, dance-y little electronic numbers (with Albarn singing over some of them), and there isn’t much in the production that would tip it as being recorded on an iPad. There are “legit” electronic instruments in the mix — Moogs, Korgs, etc. — as well as accents from traditional instruments, including a beautiful ukulele loop on “Revolving Doors.”

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Soom T & Disrupt’s Ode 2 a Carrot

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Soom T & Disrupt: Ode 2 a Carrot (Jahtari, 1/24/11)

Soom T & Disrupt: “Weed Hawks”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Soom_T_Disrupt_Weed_Hawks.mp3|titles=Soom T & Disrupt: “Weed Hawks”]

Hajduch: Happy new year, everybody.

Morrow: Go, competitive sports teams!

Hajduch: Glaswegian MC Soom T has worked with an impressive list of collaborators in her career, including The Orb and DJ Maxximus. Her distinctive voice has lent personality to lots of great cuts over the years, several of which were produced by Disrupt, who pioneered the “digital laptop reggae” sound of his label, Jahtari.

Now Jahtari expands the collaboration with a 2xLP/CD called Ode 2 a Carrot. The styles on display are not particularly divergent from what you’d expect: Soom T sings about weed, cops, weed, peace, legalizing weed, and weed over Disrupt’s deft blend of dub reggae, hip hop, and dubstep. A few of the beats are recycled from previous Disrupt releases, with Soom T’s flow fitting in nicely. Disrupt’s compositions are narcotic, head-notting affairs on their own, so it’s cool to hear them stripped of their dubbed-out sci-fi samples and replaced with double-time, high-energy vocals.

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Oh! Pears’ Fill Your Lungs EP

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Oh! Pears: Fill Your Lungs EP (3/13/10)

Oh! Pears: “Fill Your Lungs”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Oh_Pears_Fill_Your_Lungs.mp3|titles=Oh! Pears: “Fill Your Lungs”]

Morrow: Guitarist Corey Duncan left indie rockers Pattern Is Movement in 2007, opting to focus on a solo chamber-pop project. That project turned into Oh! Pears, a 13-piece ensemble that plays Duncan’s classically and pop-inspired pieces.

Released independently earlier this year, Fill Your Lungs is Oh! Pears’ promising debut EP. It begins with rounds of looping acoustic-guitar riffs and pizzicato, staccato, and legato strings, with Duncan’s deep voices joining to guide the music. The rest of the five-song release is accented with other sounds, but this marriage of guitars, cellos, and violas best defines the EP.

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Integrity’s The Blackest Curse

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Integrity: The Blackest Curse (Deathwish Inc., 6/8/10)

Integrity: “Simulacra”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/simulacra.mp3|titles=Integrity: “Simulacra”]

Morrow: Our pick this week is already pretty old, but it’s so packed with hellacious riffs, thunderous beats, and browbeating screams that it warranted revisiting. I’m speaking, naturally, of The Blackest Curse by Integrity, one of the year’s most wailing and harrowing metal-core albums.