Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun. Conspiring with him how to load and bless us with more records than we could ever have time to write about at length. Come join us by the cyder-press for October’s Liminal Minimals… Reviews by Rich Hughes (RH), Scott McMillan (SM) and Matt Poacher (MP).

Cory Allen – Still (Quiet Design)

On Still, minimalist Texan artist Cory Allen continues the excellent form he showed on last year’s wondrous Pearls album. Once again, on opening track “Shutter Echo”, beautiful shapes (in the form of slow, woozily-processed keyboard notes) emerge into focus from amongst audio fog, with before slipping once more into the darkness. Allen has a real talent of making sound that you can almost see and feel as well as hear, and as the album progresses, that fog becomes more intense, with the levels of static and granulation becoming so coarse that they seem almost tangible, as if you could reach your hand out and scoop a handful of grains of sound from the air. The tiny flecks of guitar in the background of “Goodbye Ghost” are powerless to stop this, like flinging teaspoons of water at a forest fire. Life returns to the forest on closing track “Ascension”, with its recordings of exotic birds high up in the canopy, before an uneasy stillness returns at the album’s end. After repeated plays of Still, I remain a huge fan of Cory Allen’s work. (SM)

Roberto Cacciapaglia – The Ann Steel Album (Half Machine)

Half Machine, a label which has laid dormant for two years, has come back to life with a reissue of this rather peculiar album from the 70’s. Roberto Cacciapaglia is an Italian electronic composer who’s turned his hand to most genres, but The Anne Steel Album, from 1979, is his only attempt at joining them all together. Featuring the vocal talents of an American model who’d moved to Italy to further her career, this is the sound of Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’ reshaped in a futurist sparseness that sounds remarkable human. Trying to articulate the sound of this album made me think of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz – the sounds are all electronic and “mechanical”, striving to make a connection with those choppy and occasionally warped female vocals, yet the heart is there, under everything, a warmth that can be easily lost and forgotten. The album opener ‘My Time’ is a lost pop gem; the spectral vocals floating over the fractured synth and metallic rhythm that most retro-obsessed acts of today would kill for. ‘Measureable Joys’ is ripe for a remix that would send the club scene into raptures. The peculiar stylings of ‘Southafternoon’ that come across almost like a stream of consciousness as the synth’s percolate over a warped guitar line and, once again, the vocals, which are angelic like, speak of computers, rainbows and lost weekends. It all adds up to a nice companion work to the other retro-futurist who’s getting a new lease of life, Harald Grosskopf, whose similarly synth-obsessed organic sounds of the Synthesist have resonated more now than they did when they were first released. Yes, this obsession with the past will have to end sometime, but whilst they’re still turning out lost classics such as these, it’s hard to argue. (RH)

Container – LP (Spectrum Spools)

Another month, another release from the eclectic but damn near essential Spectrum Spools label. This time though it’s not another synth act obsessed with the 80’s, we’re getting some techno. Container is the name under which the east coast electronic experimenter Ren Schofield operates and LP explores the nature of underground beats and repetition. Each track is driven by a never ending parade of infectious rhythms, beats and high hat crashes that would, in a dimly lit warehouse in NYC, would send an assembled throng into a shaking mass of shapes. It’s this dimness and shadowy vibe that makes LP stand out from the clinical and ice-cool posturing that can be alienating with beat based electronic music. ‘Dissolve’ is the centre-piece, a mass of static throbs in and out of the driving beats, the rhythm a shifting point of focus that’s completely different from the simple and drum driven sparseness that starts it. The track has the feeling of being just under control, as if Schofield is barely keeping it altogether, the different parts fighting with each other to find some kind of balance. I may know little about “dance” music, but I know this: LP is one of my favourite, and also one of the most thrilling, releases of the year. (RH)

The Field – Looping State of Mind (Kompakt)

The Field, aka Axel Willner, continues his exploration of the nature of repetition and 80’s power ballards with his latest long player. After the relative disappointment of the previous record Yesterday And Today, it’s reassuring to hear Willner back to the sprawling simplicity of his debut. Of course, how you feel about this simplistic approach will dictate how you feel about Looping State of Mind. It opens with the ambling clipped beats of ‘Is This Power’, which unfurls its beauty in a methodical and clinical manner – the breakdown in the middle, complete with bass solo and reverberating synth chords, it sets what little pace there is. ‘Burned Out’ is the shortest track on offer here. It’s tight, terse and more complicated that the others; there’s a mesh of short, sharp noises that fold together before a leisurely beat comes to the fore. Slurred vocals stumble over the top, breaking the mood a little, but still allowing you to dream your life away. Standout track though is ‘It’s Up There’ which bristles with an urgency that’s not heard elsewhere on the album. The beats slowly build and build before crashing in a wave of breaking synth’s, the high-hat raising the tempo to fever pitch. Bass lines entwine around this driving rhythm, coming to life before disappearing again, almost afraid of being completely destroyed by this rare showing of aggression. Eventually it wins this battle and takes control, breaking the track down into a raucous show of bass strength. Ultimately Looping doesn’t excite to these levels again, but it doesn’t matter. This is a comfortable music that only occasionally needs to show its teeth – what would be the point otherwise? (RH)

Golden Retriever – Light Cones (Root Strata)

For their second release on Root Strata, the bass clarinet/modular synth duo of Jonathan Sielaff and Matt Carlson have ventured further out from their blissout, kosmische roots into something altogether more other and unique. Part of the duo’s magic is the way in which they somehow mix structured composition and improv with such beguling ease, and also in the way they manage to create such a depth of field with what is a fairly simple palette of sounds. Light Cones consists of two exploratory side-long pieces, a move that has allowed the duo space in which to move and project. As such, there is a good deal of room on Light Cones, into which Sielaff’s clarinet spreads and mushrooms, at times broad and wheezy almost organlike (I’ll shoehorn the obligatory Dolphy reference in here: it’s like the gaps between Dolphy’s runs, magnified and inflated), at other times like a chewier version of Robert Fripp’s guitar work on No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Around this Carlson daubs vibrating synth modules which leave vaporous contrails as they spiral into the edges of the field of sound. The real wonder of Golden Retriever’s sound though, is that from relatively simple means, the whole is so improbably vast and intricate. These are creations, conceptually and sonically, to wander around in. (MP)

Julia Holter – Tragedy (Leaving)

Part of the reason for my tardiness in writing about this record has been because of its imposing scope – such is the breadth of references and the emotional impact that it’s difficult to know where to begin with it. All this and I’ve not even really decided if it amounts to more than an exceptionally polished and self-reflecting bagatelle, a work for the ages. I’d not come across Holter before, but she’s been very active in the Los Angeles experimental scene for a number of years, with probably her most high profile role as part of the return of the reclusive folk initiate Linda Perhacs. And if you were to draw an imaginary pantheon based on the sonic content of Tragedy (based on Euripedes’s Hippolytus), then Perhacs would certainly be a prominent figure, but she would only function as one of many influences, so dense are the allusions on display. You could invoke Angelo Badalementi and Julee Cruise (‘Goddess Eyes’ in particular reeks of Twin Peaks), Liz Harris, the Eno of Before and After Science, Laurie Anderson, Gang Gang Dance, even some of Bartok’s quieter moments… None of which would necessarily get you any closer to the heart of Tragedy which retains a curious sense of, in a very deliberate sense, remaining hermetically sealed away. All of which is to say that I’m no closer to cracking what it is about Tragedy that is so affecting and alluring, safe to say that I keep coming back to it. (MP)

Enrico Rava Quintet – Tribe (ECM)

There are six musicians listed on the back of this new “quintet” CD featuring the Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, which is by no means unusual: there were six members in his “Electric Five”, as the unassuming Rava didn’t count himself. And there is something suitably unassuming about some of his compositions on Tribe. “Garbage Can Blues” has achingly sparse and luminous piano (played by the excellent Giovanni Guidi), like contemplating the reflections of distant lights on a lake’s surface late at night. Keen to give credit where it is due, the dense and knotty “Cornettology” doffs a cap in the directions of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Charlie Parker with its title, but the trombone solo of Gianluca Petrella also brings to mind the work of Roswell Rudd or Grachan Moncur III. Despite the desire to spread the acclaim around, top billing deservedly goes to Rava, with his minimalist, spacey trumpet lines having obvious echoes of Miles Davis, and a composition as strong as the title track sounding like the quintet at its pre-electric funkiest. (SM)

The Remote Viewers – Nerve Cure (Remote Viewers)

I don’t think there is a quicker way for any record to grab my attention than for it to start with the unmistakeable sound of John Edwards grinding his bow on his double bass. And then follows that with the sound of him playing harp. Edwards is a relatively recent member of The Remote Viewers, who for most of their ten album career have been a trio featuring saxophonists Adrian Northover and Louise and David Petts; after the departure of Louise they have expanded to include not just Edwards but the experimental musician Adam Bohman (credited with “bowed objects”), saxophonists Caroline Kraabel and Sue Lynch, and the pianist/percussionist Rosa Lynch-Northover. Despite now numbering seven, there is still plenty of space on Nerve Cure. Notably, after the first couple of tracks, there is little in the way of percussion, so the interest lies in the juxtaposition of sounds, whether in the conversing saxophones in “Hive Mind”, or the confluence of creaks, chimes and quivering drones which makes “Long Weekend” sounds like an extract from a horror movie score. This is sparse, subtle, and always surprising. (SM)

Colin Stetson – Those Who Didn’t Run (Constellation)

Stetson is fast becoming one of the poster boys for the new generation of avant-jazz artists. Increasingly prolific, the saxophonist releases a new EP on Constellation as a means to distill his current penchant for playing live – during this year’s SXSW festival he clocked up over 30 shows. Being asked to capture this form, he retreated to his basement studio with Mark Lawson (who worked on Arcade Fire’s Polaris Prize winning album The Suburbs). the result is two 10-minutes pieces that allow you to marvel at Stetson’s amazing saxophone playing. There’s not one overdub or loop used in each entire, single take, piece. You can just sit back and revel in the wonder of his playing. Side A, ‘Those Who Didn’t Run’, is held together by a throbbing rhythm filled with honks and squeaks. Each note adds together creating a growing wave of music that eventually crashes in a cacophony of noise. The second side, ‘The End of Your Suffering’, feels a little lighter, a polyphony of notes that tip-toe, impish-like, over the occasional vocal grumblings, as if something dark is being defeated in an extravagant play, before it finally finishes and that dark voice cries out into the emptiness. The tag of “genius” gets banded around too much for any real power these days, but there’s something about Stetson’s approach, and mind-blowing playing ability, that elevates him above us mere mortals. (RH)

Mike Weis – Loop Current/Raft (Barge)

Mike Weis came to my attention via his percussion on the Taradiddle album with Scott Tuma. While that album showcased some of Tuma’s heartbreakingly beautiful, raw and fractured guitar lines, other parts of the record headed out across some densely thicketed and more foreboding soundscapes. On his first solo record (he also plays drums for Type’s Zelienople) Weis has expanded on some of those ideas, making what is (for a percussionist) a surprisingly textural as opposed to rhythmic album. The “Loop Current” of the album’s title is the current which flows north past Cuba and into the Gulf Of Mexico, before joining the Gulf Stream. Some have speculated that this flow of warm water is key to much of the world’s weather patterns, and that disruption to it (for example due to an oil-related environmental disaster) could have disastrous consequence, and this is the theme that Weis picks up on. So it begins with a soft watery pulse, with cymbals shimmering like the sea’s surface, before becoming increasingly turbulent, with looped drumming taking on the feel of heavy industry. By the time you flip over to the B-side and the three-part “Raft” suite, you find yourself adrift amongst ruined metal structures which are scoured by wind, and gradually crumbling into the ocean. Loop Current may take you into some pretty uncomfortable waters, but you may find yourself lingering there for longer than you’d expect. (SM)

Yves De Mey – Counting Triggers (Sandwell District)

With releases by the likes of Regis, Function, and Rose and Bob Ostertag, Sandwell District has established itself as an experimental underground techno label of the highest order, but I still wasn’t quite expecting them to go quite this far. Yves De Mey’s last album Lichtung was for the Line label, which I think of as being the studious 12k label’s even more cerebral elder sibling, which tells you where he is coming from. True to these roots, his new double 12″ Counting Triggers on Sandwell District is more for the head than it is for the feet, with De Mey marshalling an impressive and unconventional range of sound sources, from electronic static and crackle to tiny shards of metallic-sounding percussion and strings, and arranging them fastidiously into minimal patterns. De Mey never lets these come close to conventionality, the leaf-kicking crunch of “Resonating Red” decomposing into a fertile sonic mulch. Highly recommended for fans of recent Monolake or the Raster-Noton 12″ series, this is a techno record that doesn’t want to take you higher, it wants to bring you high art. (SM)

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