Liminal Minimals – April 2012

0 Comments 30 April 2012

As we emerge from the storm cloud of April, we give you some short reviews of albums that have passed through the Liminal space in the last few weeks. Reviews by Andrew Bowman [AB], Joseph Burnett [JB], Rich Hughes [RH], Scott McMillan [SM] and Matt Poacher [MP].

Good Night & Good Morning – Narrowing Type (Own Records)

Narrowing Type is the first full release in the five year history of Good Night & Good Morning, and taking their time has resulted in a beautiful exploration of sounds and noises in a dark sonic landscape. This is a slow and minimalist approach. Delicate waves of sound are carefully produced and repeated, conjuring landscapes that become tangible in your mind before disappearing just as you fully grasp them. Sometimes, such as on the epic ‘Philideplhia’ where the strength of the guitars rupture this delicate landscape, the music brings to mind the sonic explorations of Justin Brodertick’s Jesu project – a tightly coiled aggression is languidly allowed to unfurl. Elsewhere this perfect and tightly controlled music could find comparisons with the warmth of the American Analog Set and the sprawling slow-core of Low or Stars of the Lid. As the album title suggests, this is for late nights or early mornings when the mind is lost somewhere between the sleeping and waking worlds and you’re unsure of what is real and what is a dream. (RH)

Hiss Golden Messenger – Poor Moon (Tompkins Square)

I saw Hiss Golden Messenger, aka North Carolina-based MC Taylor, at last year’s Tusk Festival in his purest environment. Just his thick drawl and an acoustic guitar, the songs were rich with vivid tales of hard-times and controlled optimism. After the show, the queue of people who wanted to speak to him and buy his record was the longest I saw all weekend. He’d managed to tap into something in each of us there – realise the pains, but also bolster the hopes and dreams. Poor Moon was self-released, funded by pre-orders but now gets a full release via Tompkins Square, which seems like an appropriate home for this dust bowl sounding songs driven by Taylor’s honest guitar sound. These twelve tales of lost souls, lost nights and aching mornings might sometimes get a studio sheen, but there’s frequently a moral ambiguity to the songs – Taylor himself finding the difference between right and wrong a difficult proposition. Stand but track ‘Jesus Shot Me In The Head’ bristles with a religious anger that switches between hope and hate and ultimately acts as a a question for the entire album – is he seeking forgiveness or helping us to attain it? (RH)

Kelvox 1 – Grazed Red (Aagoo Records)

The debut physical release from Cambridge’s Kelvox 1 sees them explore a post-Krautrock and minimalist environment. Side A, ‘Hanged Man’, is an icy blend of pin-sharp electronics and drone-like vocals that slowly unravel becoming the sound of slow mechanical cogs wheeling away and cutting through a desolate landscape in which they make a carve a cruel shape. The flip side, ‘Stephen – Grazed Red’, is an even sinister beast. This is could almost be an alternative soundtrack to Don’t Look Now – there’s an air of being psychologically pursued as the music shifts between crackling static, clattering percussion, hushed vocals and crystal clear guitars. The sparsity of the arrangement only augments the individual sounds and helps raise the feeling of oppression and terror. Fear not though, a wave of optimism and hope washes over as it reaches its conclusion – a choppy swell of noise and a haunting guitar riff guides you to safety, a shining beacon of light in an otherwise dark vista. It might not the easiest of listens, but as dusk approaches, it’s a perfect soundtrack. (RH)

Richard Knox & Frederic D.Oberland – The Rustle of the Stars (Gizeh)

The rustle of the stars is, according to the liner notes of this album, a phenomenon that occurs near the arctic circle when human breath mingles with ice micro-crystals in the air to create near-inaudible noises. Starting from this standpoint, Leeds-based musician Richard Knox and French artist Frederic D. Oberland have created a mesmerising concept album reflecting on mankind’s often troubled and ambiguous relationship with the frozen wastelands of the Arctic. Where other artists might have gone for music based on the grandeur and epic scale of human attempts to conquer the forbidding extremes of the planet, such as Scott’s doomed expedition to the pole, Oberland and Knox focus on the aforementioned rustle, delivering an album of delicate, slowly evolving ambience which nonetheless conveys the sheer immensity and terror that the Arctic represents. Each track is quiet but intimidating, with muted, elegant drones on violin, guitar and organ that progress slowly, gradually immersing the listener in a cinematic atmosphere of bleak beauty. The Rustle of the Stars shares a lot of its sparse minimalism and restrained beauty with Thomas Koener’s seminal Permafrost album, but with its deceptively wide palette (including a fantastic use of choir) and expansiveness, it also creates a vivid mind’s eye view of this overwhelmingly alien landscape that sits doggedly at the top of our planet. (JB)

RoMeRo

Paco Sala – Ro-Me-Ro (Digitalis)

I’ve come across London’s Anthony Harrison is several guises before – most notably his pretty ambient drone project Konntinent, and the uglier flip side of Arev Konn’s noise – so it is no surprise to see him trying his hand at something new. Paco Sala specialise in the kind of blurry synth-driven female-voiced rnb jams that are so achingly, and seemingly effortlessly, now. Vocalist Leyli has the dreamy, indistinct style of a Julee Cruise, or the more current reference point, Julia Holter, while the musical stylings place this towards the output of the oh so hip 100% Silk label. It would be easy to categorise this as some sort of bandwagon jumping on Harrison’s part were there not for the clear sense that this is actually building on the foundations of his previous work. Listening back to Konntinent’s Down With Candy, for example, you can hear the synthetic textures, fluid rhythms, deft melodic touches and production techniques which Ro-Me-Ro takes to the next level. This may be the most 2012 record of 2012, but there are years worth of experimentation and development behind it. (SM)

Pallbearer – Sorrow and Extinction (Profound Lore)

2012 is shaping into something of a big year for metal, and Profound Lore look to be one of the main driving forces behind this. I get a certain amount of comfort in knowing this particular brand of epic doom metal is still being made (I want to say forged). This isn’t the magmatic sludge that has characterised much doom in recent years, or the more artful explorations of low frequencies, instead this reaches back to the mid ‘80s when the likes of Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus (and to a lesser extent) Trouble were creating massive granite epics, epics that were oddly saturated with light. It’s hard to place exactly what the technique is, but it’s in the lighter, fibrous nature of the guitars and the huge space that seems to surround the cymbals. One other key difference with this kind of doom is in the vocals, and Brett Campell’s soaring voice acts as a kind of levitating device, dragging everything skyward. Which isn’t to say that this isn’t heavy – in places the walls of guitars fill the sonic field, and create a claustrophobic, crushing effect, notably on the vast ‘Devoid of Redemption’. Generally speaking, though, and heaviness accepted as a given, there is a deftness and grace about Sorrow and Extinction: the pacing is excellent and the release of the crescendos are perfectly placed. Excellent. (MP)

Susanna

Susanna – Wild Dog (Rune Grammofon)

The success of her cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” was possibly the worst thing that could have happened to Susanna Wallumrød, in an artistic sense. It led her into a creative cul-de-sac of eyebrow-raising cover versions, spare and slow versions of songs which were originally anything but – Thin Lizzy, Rush and so on – when she had shown signs of developing a strong voice of her own. My expectations were therefore rather low when I saw that the first track on her latest album Wild Dog was “Imagine”, and I was much heartened to find that isn’t a(nother) version of the Lennon abomination, but the first of ten original Wallumrød compositions. However, that track title was an indication of what was to come in another sense, as the album is littered with these references – another track is called “Rolling On Rolling Stone”, she speaks of a “wild horse”, she “gets the blues” here, she wants to “take you to the river” there. Aside from the clichéd nature of some of this, it makes it hard to connect with her, as if she still isn’t quite delivering these songs of heartbreak and divorce with her own voice. Perhaps an extended period of separation from her record collection would do her some good. (SM)

Ni Foli

Ali Farka Toure – Ni Foli (Social Music)

Been kicking around for a while this one – by which I mean it was released on LP as part of the social Music series a few months back (alongside records by Sir Richard Bishop, Grouper and Ilyas Ahmed, and more), but in fact it was originally released in 1984 on cassette. If your only knowledge of the late Ali Farka Toure is his more recent, and more pastoral, World Circuit releases, either solo or alongside his countryman Toumani Diabate, the rawness of this performance will be shocking. Farka Toure sounds like he is playing strings of barbed wire, his jagged guitar lines pierce so deep. Percussion accompaniment is suitably rudimentary, indeed ‘Farri’ contains what sounds like someone kicking in a wardrobe, and call-and-response vocal parts drift into unintelligible off-mic mumbles. This is all for the good. The blistering Ni Foli is a timely reminder of how much Farka Toure is missed and, for me at least, the most thrilling 2012 (or 1984) guitar release, I’ve heard. Truly sensational. (SM)

Traxman – Da Mind Of Traxman (Planet Mu)

Following the debut of the very youthful DJ Nate, the second footwork artist album release from international emissaries Planet Mu comes from a true dues-paying scene elder. Traxman’s relative age and journey to the current sound via earlier incarnations of ghetto house/juke mean his palette is a little more varied than that of other producers. Where footwork in general bears so much structural similarity to the music of the UK hardcore continuum, the parallels are even more pronounced here – we get plenty of well-worn funk, jazz, soul and ‘global’ samples that will be familiar to some from earlier use in hip-hop and jungle. And like the latter, this music shares not only the double time dynamic – if you’re not a footworker, you have no choice but to nod to the underpinning half-speed – but a sample-heavy base that owes as much to the former as its apparent lineal antecedent, house. What gives the old tropes the avant edge and shock of the new is the fracturing; where ‘breaks’ in rap and jungle/D&B were gradually broken down from being straight 1 or 2-bar loops to tightly chopped edits, in Traxman’s hands they’re sliced into micro portions before being subjected to stuttering false releases and fired off in a kind of controlled splatter. Paradoxically, the mellowest moments here are where the tension of this style comes into play most strikingly: the blissful kalimba melody and fluid acid lines of ‘Footworkin’ On Air’ are at the service of and can’t be completely divorced from the hyper-fidgety drums, but you can’t help trying to focus on one just to get a handle. As cheap looking as it is, the split head symmetry of the cover art illustrates the divide perfectly and perhaps Da Two Minds Of Traxman might have been a better title. Even on the more driving bangers, the atmosphere is uneasy – where jungle’s rhythms stomped rolled, footwork’s are imbued with a nervous energy that never quite abates, and Traxman’s are crafted with such stunning precision that the stricture and lack of release can become overwhelming, in the best sense possible of course. Sure, there’s some filler and fair few cloying moments, but this is the best album representation of the form yet. (AB)

Trouble Books – Concatenating Fields (MIE)

According to Trouble Books’ website, Concatenating Fields was inspired in part by the duo’s interest in the visual art of minimal artists such as Sol LeWitt and Dan Flavin (the latter being namechecked on opener ‘Monument for D.Flavin’), something that influenced their decision to pair down the sound to just the two of them, with no added parts from friends, as on earlier albums. However, do not expect Concatenating Fields to sound like the work of minimal composers such as LaMonte Young or Tony Conrad, for it remains anchored in Trouble Books’ distinct take on pop. Their music sits in a finely-balanced zone between dream pop (most tracks are evocative of Slowdive and Mazzy Star, mainly through Linda Lejsovka’s graceful voice) and Eno & Cluster-esque synth music. The minimalism, such as it is, comes from the duo’s measured use of repetition, with synth lines and vocal passages looped over one another, subtly building each track into a moody haze of fuzzy near-bliss. Luckily, there’s little risk of any of this becoming mere prettiness, as ragged guitar solos weave and pulsate in and out of the synth clouds, disturbing the balance and anchoring Concatenating Fields in Trouble Books’ pop-rock foundations. As such, this is not an album that sits coherently within the spectrum of minimalist music (never Trouble Books’ intention, of course), but rather one that ably weaves the genre’s ideas and structures into a pop format. (JB)

Eden

Various Artists – What Remains Of Eden, Anatolian & Levantine Music 1928-1952 (Mississippi)

The third Ian Nagoski compilation for Mississippi Records may have a narrower brief than the previous two (neither String Of Pearls and Brass Pins & Match Heads limited themselves by imposing any specific geographical or musical boundaries, however vague), but it is no less thought-provoking. There are, of course, history lessons, in this instance tracing the roots of the modern Middle East via the curation of songs from Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, and exploring subject matter such as the slaughter of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman forces. The next thing that the results of Nagoski’s cratedigging always do is to remind me just how little I actually know about music. What is that lyre-like thing that the virtuouso Rizeli Sadik is scratching merry hell out of? (answer: a kemence, a little vertical three stringed instrument). How do the extraordinary tones and microtones of the Assyrian Shemon Aslan’s singing fit with other, Western, temperaments? (answer: er, I’ll get back to you on that). But most importantly, perhaps, it leaves me wondering why we continue to build out into musical space from the same old platforms, rather than start from different positions, different instruments, different scales, and different forms. (SM)