Tag Archives: review

13Apr / 2009

Odawas – The Blue Depths

The new Odawas album has been getting some plays here lately. I noticed a little buzz surrounding it when it appeared on the radar (mostly thanks to Twitter and some limited blog coverage), but I haven’t heard much more about it. Which surprises me, because I was expecting it to be a lot more controversial than it has been.

So let me just get things out there in the open: I don’t get it.

I don’t get why I find this album enjoyable, why I don’t find it cloying, why it didn’t get tossed out my front door so it could find a new home under the tyres of rush hour traffic.

On paper, the album is not supposed to work. Not only that, it shouldn’t even get a look-in. The songs are open-ended, languid affairs, drenched in dense layers of morose synths. The mix has so much reverb it doesn’t even wade in the stuff, it swims. The percussion frequently reminds me of downtempo AOR staples from the 80s. It’s got plasticky synth-pianos. And to cap it off many of the tracks exhibit FRETLESS BASS. Did I mention synth panpipes?

Yes, I have to fess up: I’m enjoying the record. So the question is: why does it work? The answer, clearly, is that I frankly don’t have the thinnest wisp of a clue.

I never heard the earlier Odawas full-length, so I don’t know how this rates with their earlier work or how it compares in terms of sound. The music on this album is basically super-atmospheric, melodic singer-songwriter music, emerging from a sombre, reflective universe – I haven’t ruled out the possibility that the album was written in a lonely bar on a distant planet where few humans ever venture.

Despite the fact that most of the defining sounds on the album come from synthesized sources, it gives off strongly folk vibes. The harmonica flourishes probably do something to aid this impression, and the fact that the vocals sound uncannily like a young Neil Young at his most yearning doesn’t hurt either. Guitar strums sit nestled amongst the synths from time to time, but overall this album offers tones and sounds that normally don’t get a look-in on singer-songwriter material unless they’re in the hands of someone like Daniel Lanois.

To conclude, this is a grey-weather album. It’s not a daytrip sunshine car album, and it’s not a downtempo party album. It sounds best suited for wet days when you would prefer to curl up in a blanket with a mug of cocoa. Try it out – you might love it, or you may hate it.

(The album has also been given rotation for my daughter Nadia’s bedtime music. She seems to like it for chilling or sleeping to, which gives it bonus points)

You can get your first taste by listening to an mp3 below:

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16Nov / 2008

Ghoul – A Mouthful of Gold EP

To be honest, I’m sitting here wondering how the heck I’m going to describe the music of Sydney’s Ghoul - no matter how hard I try, it seems that there’s no neat one-size-fits-all category or description that is going to give you a realistic sense of this group’s diverse and unique sound: it’s a myriad of styles and moods, and really it has to be heard to be understood.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard for you to hear it: the band made a shrewd move and released their new EP A Mouthful of Gold as an entirely free download for all, which I applaud them for doing – it’s a step which I think more and more emerging bands will realise is a hugely worthwhile investment to reach a larger audience, and I think it will reap extremely good dividends for the earlycomers that do it – things will probably change once every Tom, Dick and Harry jumps on the bandwagon and floods the marketplace with free music.

So, the music: the EP is 9 tracks, clocking in at 19 minutes. It lacks a song that is singularly destined for radio. It shifts and warps stylistically from track to track and yet, unlike a lot of EPs, it’s a complete work in and of itself – it has a definite progression which carries the listener from the first through to the final track, sometimes even blurring the line between songs, making it a seamless play. It’s remarkably cohesive – and this is even more impressive when one considers the territory covered.

The album begins with a simple triangle wave synth motif, the sound of which is expanded upon in its ghostly simplicity through the second track. It’s restrained, a bit ethereal and expands gradually – yet by the time we’ve reached track 3, we’ve somehow found ourselves in a 5/4 groove listening to a four-piece saunter away before building into a fenetic rocker. Did I mention only a few minutes have passed at this point?

So the EP goes – it mutates and changes as it plays, yet it always sounds natural and never like it’s covering all this territory for the sake of it.

Of particular note are the band’s more melodic tunes – tracks like the opening two numbers, along with Corn Cob Dub / Jakob and Swimming Pool contain gorgeous melodies and wonderful textures. Other tunes have a proto-goth aspect to them a la Bauhaus, such as **** Math and Fertile Girls (which is one of the creepiest song titles I’ve heard in a while).

The lead vocals – a soul-esque croon – in particular lend a unique character to the group, and I’m sure this will be one aspect of the band’s sound that will be brought up in every review they get, for better or for worse. Personally, I think they add a left-field yet brilliant element, though it did take me a few moments to get my head around.

In summary, this is a dark, sometimes eerie listen. Needless to say the band are doing something that is not being done by many others – you’re unlikely to find this becoming a “next big thing” movement and it’s probable that you won’t hear an army of clone bands playing the same thing next year. All the more power to Ghoul, I say – the album is a remarkable piece of work and I for one have enjoyed listening to it immensely.

I highly encourage you download this EP at the link below, and then support the band by attending one of their shows listed on their Myspace.

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28Oct / 2008

I Am Robot And Proud – Uphill City

Another release amongst a pile of recent discoveries that I’m finally finding time to write about…

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I Am Robot And Proud is the name of Shaw Han-Liem’s solo electronic project that has apparently been releasing music since 2001. I haven’t heard anything from his past material, but I recently obtained a copy of his new album Uphill City which is an uptempo set of jubilant, poppy electronic nuggets – bright, colourful, slightly-cartoonish but flowing with real human sentiments and emotions throughout – the cover above represents it well, actually.

The more I listen to this album the more I enjoy it – each listen reveals plenty of detail lurking beneath its primary-colour laden glossy surface. Han-Liem’s material is excellently crafted, the arrangements are intricate while instantly accessible. Even though you’ll find IDM-esque stutters and glitches reminiscent of Dntel’s past work and mixes that sometimes swarm like plankton, it’s always grounded by well-defined song structures and deft control of dynamics.

Throughout the entire album there are pockets of acoustic elements: fragments of (what appear to be) found sounds appear scattered liberally across the mix, strummed guitars pick up the chord progressions, or some melodic percussion will lead the way with a riff. The acoustic component comes to the forefront on the surprise track “Island Life” – a short waltz featuring gorgeously arranged wind instruments and a rolling guitar part, almost entirely made up of live instrumentation. A highlight for sure.

If anything, Uphill City wins by way of the ease with which it carries its wide-eyed and exuberant musical personality. The arrangements and writing are always intelligent, as mentioned above, but more than anything its success lies in making a connection with the listener where it counts.

Uphill City is out now through Darla and is available on eMusic.

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05Jun / 2008

Apparatly there are Alliens here

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After my insane non-stop listening spree of early Krautrock (I still hate that term) that began a couple of months back, I guess it was to be expected that I’d eventually end up getting amongst the current German electronica scene. Currently I’m working my way through a few of the artists on the BPitch Control record label, which has some great talent including the label’s founder and owner Ellen Allien, whose latest record I wanted to cover here.

However, as I began to write this it began to be apparent that it would be remiss for me to not talk about the albums that got me into discovering Allien’s latest, so I’m going to give a quick run-down of how I got into her stuff, starting with Apparat:

(so you’re too lazy to actually read the whole thing? here’s the summary: I love the following three albums. you might not have heard them. you should hear them. you’ll probably love them too, but maybe you’ll find the last one a bit hard to get into at first. go buy them)

Apparat – Walls (2007)

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I discovered Walls randomly via a mention from a friend after he saw it on a year-end list (“this sounds interesting, might be good”). It’s basically an (excellent) electronically constructed pop record largely based around laptronica with some nuances of live instrumentation, the odd vocal-led song and some really, really great sounds. Despite the fact that Apparat is relatively obscure at this point (in Australia anyway), the tunes are well developed and I’m pretty sure this album will continue growing an audience for some time to come.

Chances are you’ll enjoy this album if you’re reading this, and you’ll probably find it the easiest of the three to get amongst.

All of the remixes I’ve heard from this album are also impeccable – if you happen to see any of the 12 inches around, pick them up. Many of them can also be found on Apparat’s Things To Be Frickled remix compilation released just recently.

Apparat & Ellen Allien – Orchestra of Bubble (2006)

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After playing Walls a lot out I began to notice mention of collaboration Apparat did with Ellen Allien, which I decided to give a try. If Walls was an immediately enjoyable listen, this record really pulled me in.

This album certainly has much stronger ties to dancefloor culture, but it does a wonderful job of exploring all manner of sonics and ambience while laying down some absolutely infectious grooves. Vocals are limited to a couple of tracks, but all the same it’s got a strikingly accessible aesthetic while still being a very technically accomplished work. The album sticks to concise track lengths for the most part, but despite this a few of the album’s cuts strike me as being strong contenders for consideration in a DJ set.

Speaking of DJ sets, the 2xLP package has different edits of some of the tunes which I’m assuming were provided to make the album more friendly for DJing. It’s a different perspective on the album, and worth getting, despite omitting a couple of tunes heard on the CD/download version.

Ellen Allien – SooL (2008)

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After digesting and thoroughly enjoying these two albums, I was pretty keen when Ellen Allien announced her new album Sool.

Talk about totally turning my expectations on their head: here I was pumping myself up for a grandiose record full of textures and melodies coupled with sublime beats, and I’m greeted by a hushed introduction of muted synth bleeps and what sounds like an ambient noise in an airport terminal for robots. The next track continued to confuse me with slowly evolving, sparse rhythms and a distant synth ambience, with Allien’s single-word vocal whispered over the top.

So, “minimal” music eh? It seems to be getting a lot of action lately and it seems that Allien has jumped in headfirst. I’ve enjoyed a lot of music of this variety… but Allien certainly takes the genre to sparser, more difficult worlds than I’ve experienced before.

Not exactly grabbed by the sounds I heard, I initially wrote this album off as a demonstration in minimal at its most self-indulgent, but persisted all the same (for some reason)

Well, it turns out this record isn’t just self-indulgent beats and noodlings: it has a soul and after many further listens I’m beginning to realise I like it very much, thankyou. Beneath its seemingly cold and detached exterior is a quietly restrained, beautiful and very engrossing record. Frequently you can hear the silence between Allien’s microscopic beats, with the web-like arrangements building and shifting throughout the duration of a track. Allien’s snippeted vocals give it a unique character and a bit of human-ness (despite how robotic they’ve been mutated to sound). Each sound is meticulously crafted and I can imagine the degree to which all of the details are exposed would have made the album all the more nerve-wracking to put together.

It’s not an easy first ride, but keep trying with this one: it ends up being a great journey.

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25Apr / 2008

Fujiya & Miyagi – Transparent Things

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I’ve been listening to a lot of German music from the early to mid 70s lately – I’m trying not to get into the habit of calling it Krautrock (the word “Kraut” being of derogatory origin and “rock” being not nearly descriptive enough), but that’s what most people know it as. But anyway, Neu!, Faust, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream (there’s plenty more, but I haven’t quite got there yet): it’s all good and you should totally get some ASAP.

But this post isn’t about those bands – instead it’s about a group that evidently been influenced quite significantly by that music scene, along with a lot of more recent jam/pop music such as Stereolab and LCD Soundsystem – groovy, but melodic. Danceable, but equally rewarding as a headphone album.

The band is Fujiya & Miyagi from the UK (no, not Japanese – despite their name!)and the album I’ve jumped onto the train with is called Transparent Things – it was released in 2006, but from what I can tell the album hasn’t really gone massive. That’s a shame, as the album is easily as good as its contemporaries, having a streamlined, catchy, occasionally funk-influenced sound with plenty of hooks while exploring some great sonic territory. It has an electro bent with enough organic matter to give it a wonderfully down-to-earth feel.

If you’ve listened to Neu! then you know all about the Motorik beat – that insistent, driving rhythm that propelled so much of that band’s music, and its characteristics were found in a lot of other German music of the time. Curiously, Transparent Things contains a lot of Motorik, and instead of sounding like it’s aping Neu!’s sound, it simply makes it more endearing for me.

To not draw things out too much, this is an excellent album and in my opinion it’s worthy of a larger audience than it seems to have received. Check it out.

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24Apr / 2008

35007 – Liquid

35007 - Liquid cover

Everyone knows that the Internet is a wonderful network for finding music you’d never hear about anywhere else. 35007 definitely fall into the category of music I think I’d never have discovered if it wasn’t for pure right-time-right-place chance in the form of a mention on a music forum I frequent.

Hailing from the Netherlands, 35007 are a reclusive collective of musicians whose music has been described loosely as “stoner rock”, “space rock” and “instrumental progressive doom metal” by various parties. The band creates what I would describe as being a form of ambient music that is based on an unlikely genre choice – jam-oriented metal that recalls parts Sabbath and Floyd at their most freeform.

Liquid begins with a barely-audible synthesizer part that stays true to the album’s name. Gradually a repeated guitar motif is introduced, upon which we’re introduced to a steady build to 35007′s call sign: a slow, determinedly loping, doom-y metal roar, punctuated by moments of respite in the form of laid-back periods of jamming.

You might think that Liquid‘s four tracks are variations of a similar theme, and in some senses that’s true, but amongst its 38 minutes of crescendo and decrescendo there lies a great deal of subtlety, like a pedal steel guitar part weaving its way through the textures or a tremolo guitar creating a lush sonic space unpinned by a hypnotic pattern laid by the drum and bass.

I’m sure this album has sound-tracked many a bong hit (I haven’t tried it), but for those laying off the dope it still serves as a great listen. It’s understated, and it’s not trying to do anything markedly new or groundbreaking, but it’s certainly enjoyable stuff. Check it out.

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