Bush Tetras: Happy (ROIR, 11/13/12)
“Heart Attack”
Nearly 15 years after it was recorded, Bush Tetras’ 1998 album Happy is finally getting a release. The band, an under-famous staple of the New York post-punk scene, formed in 1979, breaking up and reuniting several times, most recently getting together in 2007. The record, produced by Don Fleming (Sonic Youth, The Screaming Trees), fell into release-and-copyright hell when original distributor Mercury was sold.
A Place to Bury Strangers: Worship (Dead Oceans, 6/26/12)
“You are the One”
A Place to Bury Strangers: “You are the One”
Now on its third full-length album, A Place to Bury Strangers — previously called “the loudest band in New York” — remains fastened to its style, offering a modern take on European noise rock, post-punk, and shoegaze of the 1980s.
With Worship, the band’s core attributes still define it, emphasized by buzz-saw guitars, blistering feedback, Oliver Ackermann’s airy vocals, and a special dichotomy between noise and melody. But these 11 tracks, following the slightly poppier (but equally loud) Onwards to the Wall EP of February, might best capture the inherent tension in that balance.
In just one more trip around the sun, another swarm of immensely talented but under-recognized musicians has harnessed its collective talents and discharged its creations into the void. This list is but one fraction of those dedicated individuals who caught our ears with some serious jams.
Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.
Liturgy: Aesthethica (Thrill Jockey, 5/10/11)
Liturgy: “Returner”
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/03-Returner.mp3|titles=Liturgy, “Returner”]For a moment, Brooklyn-based quartet Liturgy seemed poised to steer black metal into a bold new direction. Renihilation, the group’s debut full-length from 2009, showed that even while employing the classic tenets of black metal, it was possible to push the genre forward and put it in a more efficient package. Yet whereas that album made a statement, the band’s follow-up, Aesthethica, turns many of those tactics into a mere reminder.
Liturgy comes armed once more with Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s mostly indecipherable howl and quasi-anthemic guitar lines blasted with co-pilot Bernard Gann, both positioned over Greg Fox’s machine-gun drumming and Tyler Dusenbury’s frenetic bass lines. But rather than let its pieces work alongside each other, Liturgy places its components atop each other, turning its formidable wall of sound into an unfiltered onslaught.
By most standards, Liturgy still has a fairly forward-thinking vision of what black metal can be, reaching out of the genre playbook at will. Odd-pattern tremolo picking gives “Tragic Laurel” a progressive feel that leaves the door open for the sucker punch of its main section, and “True Will” stacks layers of screams over a seesaw chord progression, interrupted only by a skipping-CD breakdown.
Though her music might not immediately suggest it, adventuresome pop singer Liz Janes has a particular fondness for noise and drone music.
Janes entrenched herself in the vibrant Olympia music scene before joining Sufjan Stevens and Asthmatic Kitty for albums like Done Gone Fire (2002) and Poison & Snakes (2004). Those albums put a unique spin on classic Americana and blues, but her upcoming album, Say Goodbye (Asthmatic Kitty, 12/7/10), is a pop/soul record built on Janes’ inescapably experimental roots.
Here, in a personal recount of her musical history, her songwriting theory rings especially true: “You can choose any two points to be A and B, and there is always a way to connect the two.”
Liz Janes: “I Don’t Believe” (Say Goodbye, Asthmatic Kitty, 12/7/10)
Liz Janes: “I Don’t Believe” (Say Goodbye, Asthmatic Kitty, 12/7/10)
Drones Are Forever
by Liz Janes
I was a hippy living in a trailer in the coniferous rain forest of Olympia, Washington. Eventually, my endless meandering through the woods brought me into the little downtown. It was there that I stumbled upon the gentle and brilliant rock-poet solo performances of Mirah, Phil Elvrum, and Karl Blau; the kinder-pop of Jenny Jenkins and Super Duo; the pop punk of The Need; the hot, spastic, urgent noise of The Nervous System; and the shrieking, sexy soul of Old Time Relijun.
This sparked for me a new interest in culture. This K Records / Olympia scene was really vibrant and producing truly original and interesting art. So as I was drawn further into culture, and out of the woods, it just got better and better.
On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.
Free Moral Agents: Control This (Chocolate Industries, 10/12/2010)
Free Moral Agents: “North Is Red”
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/01-North-Is-Red.mp3|titles=Free Moral Agents: “North Is Red”]Mars Volta fans know Isaiah “Ikey” Owens as a master keyboardist, also lending his talents to the related experimental dub/reggae side project De Facto. But Owens’ own one-time side project, Free Moral Agents, has transformed into a full-time band with a second studio release, Control This. Though his musical associations are enough to give him reputable standing as a versatile and adaptable session player, Free Moral Agents is far from sounding like a complex math-rock outfit.
The band’s music is, however, complex in its own way. Control This is an omnivorous kind of record — as diverse as it is visionary — and is comfortable in taking on different musical personas at once. Over a combination of ambient pop and trip hop, crunchy guitar riffs and avant-garde fusion motifs construct a critical foreground, and the esoteric vocals of Mendee Ichikawa make for a strong and fitting melodic element.
Operating his printing and design practice under the name Crosshair, Dan MacAdam has taken a unique approach to poster art while working with the screen-printing medium for more than 15 years.
His recent work fully integrates the text — which is generally minimal — into the visual context of the image instead of displaying the text and image as two separate entities. Thus the image as a whole appears natural and undisturbed as it provides information to the viewer. In essence, instead of reading, the audience is viewing and absorbing the design.
Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.
Circle of Animals: Destroy the Light (Relapse, 10/12/2010)
Click here to download Circle of Animals’ “Poison the Lamb”
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Circle_of_Animals_Poison_the_Lamb.mp3|titles=Circle of Animals: “Poison the Lamb”]
Producer/multi-instrumentalist Sanford Parker (Minsk, Buried at Sea) and saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) have long and assorted ties in and around Chicago, where the two reside and contribute to the city’s vibrant underground.
Parker, in addition to his main gig in Minsk, has produced the likes of Pelican, Rwake, Unearthly Trance, Jai Alai Savant, Lair of the Minotaur, and Nachtmystium, and Lamont, outside of Yakuza, recently finished recording a solo album and regularly plays with other experimental metal and noise outfits (Decayist, Sick Gazelle) as well as improvised-jazz players (Jeff Parker, Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis).
Each man’s résumé is a mile long, and now the two have come together to pay tribute to Chicago’s late-’80s and early-’90s Wax Trax! industrial scene with their new project, Circle of Animals. A diverse and widely recognizable cast of drummers rounds out the lineup on this release, with names like Dave Witte (Discordance Axis, Municipal Waste), John Herndon (Tortoise), John Merryman (Cephalic Carnage), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) lending their talents.
Crossing the lines of minimalist performer and powerhouse artist, Scout Niblett is one of the strongest voices to emerge in recent years. Acting as an introspective one-woman force of nature, she eschews superfluous support and production without sacrificing an already demanding sound.
Strip down, way down, the layers of the moody energy of Brooklyn post-rock metal trio Dysrhythmia’s fifth album, Psychic Maps, and you can hear an indication of the agility responsible for the band’s deep intensity.
So tight that merely listening to it raises shoulders to ears, Portland trio 31 Knots mixes the dissonance of Sonic Youth, the time signatures and stop-start changes of Fugazi, and the deconstructed funk of Talking Heads to create a nervous, hysterical din that reads like Michel Foucault having a nervous breakdown.