Surgery 71

Dirty Beaches - Horror (Fixture Records)
Sawako - Bitter Sweet (12k)
Ethan Rose - Oaks (Holocene Music)
Elegi - Varde (Miasmah)
KTL - IV (Editions Mego)
Human Greed - Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star (Lumberton Trading Company)
Sideshow - Admit One (Wordandsound)
Pulshar - Brotherhood (Phonobox)
Imps - Remixed (Mule Electronic)
Northern Valentine - The Distance Brings Us Closer (Silber Records)
Manual - Confluence (Darla)

Track Listing

Dirty Beaches - No Letters Home [0:00]
Sawako - Looped Labyrinth, Decayed Voice [1:35]
Ethan Rose - Rising Waters [10:56]
Elegi - Svanesang [14:57]
KTL - Wicked Way [21:05]
Human Greed - Midnight At The Blighted Star [25:11]
Sideshow - French Model in Dub [28:56]
Pulshar - Nospheratu [31:57]
Jan Jelinek - Jonty's Way (Remix) [38:20]
Northern Valentine - Dies Solis [45:30]
Manual - Sanctuary [51:42]

Listen to Surgery 71 click here

Surgery 70

For the first time in Surgery history I've decided to do a show featuring the music of one artist. Christian Fennesz' newest album Black Sea was recently released by Touch records, and a piece from it opens an hour of sounds that cut across his career.

The track times are not listed this time out... merely their order.

Grey Scale from Black Sea (Touch)
Surf from Field Recordings 1995:2002 (Touch)
Track One (excerpt) from Mika Vainio/Fennesz /Vainio (Audiosphere)
Plays Charles Matthews from Amoroso (Touch)
Sala Santa Cecilia (excerpt) from Fennesz + Sakamoto Sala Santa Cecilia (Touch)
Last Exit (Fennesz Mix) from Junior Boys Last Exit (Domino)
A Year In A Minute from Endless Summer (Mego)
Château Rouge from Venice (Touch)
Framing 4 from Polwechsel/Fennesz Wrapped Islands (Erstwhile)
Trace from Fennesz + Sakamoto Cendre (Touch)
Uds from Hotel Paral.Lel (Touch)
012 +- 3.28 from Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51'08" (Touch)
Of The Listener (excerpt) from Keith Rowe/Christian Fennesz Live At The LU (Erstwhile)
Hunting High And Low from Recovery (Fractured)

Listen to Surgery 70 click here

Surgery 69

Various - I Love Dubstep (Rinse)
Castanets - City Of Refuge (Asthamtic Kitty)
micronormous - TBA (Warm Circuit)
Art of Oryx - First Book Of Sound (Berlin-Moves)
Murcof - The Versailles Sessions (Leaf)
Azeda Booth - In Flesh Tones (Absolutely Kosher)
Fursaxa - Kobold Moon (Sylph)
John Geggie, Marilyn Crispell, Nick Fraser - Geggie Project (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Max Richter - 24 Postcards In Full Colour (FatCat)
Aidan Baker + Tim Hecker - Fantasma-Parastasie (Alien8)
Robbie Avenaim - Rhythmic Movement Disorder (Room40)
Fred Frith, Danielle Palardy Roger - Pas De Deux (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Martijn Comes - Lostitude (Panospria)
MoHa! - One-Way Ticket To Candyland (Rune Grammofon)
Ezekiel Honig - Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band (Anticipate)

Track Listing

Pinch - Punisher [0:00]
Castanets - High Plain 2 [1:56]
micronormous - Rainland [4:32]
Art of Oryx - The Village And The Sea [6:54]
Murcof - Lully's "Turquerie" As Interpreted By An Advanced Script [10:56]
Azeda Booth - Brown Sun [17:25]
Fursaxa - Nakondisi [23:01]
Shackleton - Blood On Hands [25:00]
Geggie/Crispell/Fraser - Across The Sky [28:26]
Max Richter - A Sudden Manhattan Of The Mind [34:54]
Aidan Baker + Tim Hecker - Fantasma-Parastasie [37:34]
Robbie Avenaim - Bodyrocking [42:10]
Frith/Roger - Arpeggio’s Dreamscape [46:09]
Martijn Comes - Trees and Light [50:01]
MoHa! - # Outro [edit] [52:06]
Ezekiel Honig - Epilogue [56:33]

Listen to Surgery 69 click here

Surgery 68

Helios - Caesura (Type)
Tussle - Cream Cuts (Smalltown Supersound)
Peter Rehberg - Work For GV 2004-2008 (Editions Mego)
Samarkande - 3 Synapses (Samarkande)
Klangwart - Stadtlandfluss (Staubgold)
Peter Grummich - Dinner Music For Clubbers-Peter Grummich Plays Staubgold (Staubgold)
Tujiko Noriko / Lawrence English / John Chantler - U (Room40)
CoH + Cosey Fanni Tutti - COH Plays Cosey (Raster-Noton)
Les Poules - Phénix (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Pedal - S/T (Staubgold)
Elite Barbarian - It's Only When You Get To The End That It All Makes Sense (Front & Follow)
Johann Johannsson - Fordlandia (4AD)

Track Listing
Helios - The Red Truth [0:00]
Tussle - Third Party [4:43]
Peter Rehberg - Pia [8:11]
Samarkande - Synapse No 3 [10:26]
Klangwart - IO [19:42]
Sun - Make It (Mapstation Remix) [27:39]
Tujiko Noriko / Lawrence English / John Chantler - The Sky And Us, 2 Girls [30:15]
CoH + Cosey Fanni Tutti - Lying [35:12]
Les Poules - D'os Et De Cendre [40:37]
Pedal - Security [42:45]
Elite Barbarian - Going Down [48:19]
Johann Johannsson - The Rocket Builder [53:38]

Listen to Surgery 68 click here

Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday

As it turns out their e.p. for Important Records, Take Refuge in Clean Living, was not Grails’ shoring up of direction, but seemingly a cap on their folk-leanings. Doomsdayer’s Holiday kicks off definitively and scarily with apocalypse horses a-galloping and the screams of the innocent. After that the dark groove of “Reincarnation Blues” reminds us the Portland, OR group once knocked a Sabbath cover out of the park (on Temporary Residence’s odd tribute album). Even the quieter moments like “The Natural Man” hide echoes and whispers in the flute trills and dappled trees. It might be upsetting if it wasn’t so damn much fun. “Predestination Blues” gives us a prog-gyspy theme for the ages (you might need to score a cloak to truly rock out to it). “X-Contaminations” would have us believe even the digital recordings have been warped by some ancient evil. Grails continue to impress with their ever-unfolding identity and bad-ass chops.

Temporary Residence

Christina Carter - Original Darkness

On Christina Carter’s last solo release for Kranky, Electrice, she wrote and recorded the four long pieces in a single key and tuning to explore possibilities within a confined space. On Original Darkness she is free to once again fly free, though apparently with a heavy heart. Carter, who is also half of Texas’ Charalambides permanent core, had commonly used her lilting siren call wordlessly and double-tracked to float above the singeing interplay of acoustic guitars and pedal steel. Here, tracks like “Capable of Murder” have the same weight of sound, but the music is much more concise and Carter’s lyrics are equally direct, though incantatory. “In Prisoned Body” adds a slightly off-kilter Touré electric pattern to the more standard acoustic one. Slight rifts like this, and on the title track’s just off-melody xylophone, create a hallucinatory dreaminess which keys into the album’s heartsickness. Ms. Carter kicks at this darkness, does not go gently into it.

Kranky

Galerie Stratique – Faux World

There are many ways to incorporate exotic instruments into experimental music, but I’ve not heard any that are as immediately striking and beautiful as Galerie Stratique’s Faux World. Québec’s Charles-Émile Beullac used three days worth of jam time on a closet load of oddball instruments to build up a huge reference library of sounds he could convert to loops and samples at his leisure. Unlike other purveyors of altered world acoustics (Ben Vida’s Bird Show and Per Henrik Svalastog for example) Beullac seldom leans on the trance elements inherent in the sounds, preferring to let strange and discrete sound events link up in wonderful and unexpected ways. Exceptions, such as “Hors Champs,” still strike a balance between the original organic sound and its transformation into an evolving electronic entity. Little touches of electroacoustic surrealism pepper the margins as well. The end result of all these strategies is an album that lives neither in the wild nor on the desktop but in a sparsely populated middle kingdom.

Galerie Stratique

Agathe Max – This Silver String

Throwing off the mantle of traditional classical music this French violinist has stepped laterally into the worlds of improvisation and solo sound experiments, still using her violin as a main weapon. This first widespread release encapsulates an approach that pits spatial resonance / loop treatments from live performance alongside a love of post-classical overdubbing a la Steve Reich. She blends these with traces of mournful melody absorbed from Eastern European folk modes, as on “Frederic.” Also on “Ashes of Broken Furniture” a slow building theme evolves into a slow gypsy swing before layers of loop turn it into something more dense and fearsome. Both the title track and “Raw Bow” prove that Max is unafraid to dig into the dirt of the sound spectrum, pushing things into the red and the nearly brown, tone-wise. The combination of these elements makes for a music that engages heart, head and guts at once.

Xeric / Table of the Elements

Jóhann Jóhannsson – Fordlandia

Iceland is alive with the sound string composers of late: Hildur Guðnadóttir, Ólafur Arnalds, and Amiina have all released lovely albums celebrating the pomp and melancholic circumstance of the North. Note for note though, Jóhann Jóhannsson manages to hover a few centimeters above them all. Fordlandia, his second release for 4AD, takes its title from a large tract of land in Brazil purchased by Henry Ford during the 1920s to harvest cheaper rubber. It was an experiment that was fraught with troubles. Jóhannsson turns his mastery of slow thematic evolution to the task of creating a musical backdrop that moves from bombast to subtle deflation. “The Rocket Builder” is another piece built on an insistent clockwork piano figure and a push of strings set against an electronic doppelganger of percussion. When these elements quietly trade spaces at the halfway mark the mood eerily turns from hopefully to worry-filled. Jóhannsson’s choice to examine themes of big dreams / bad outcomes feeds into our North American desire for the rags-to-riches-to-rags story retold. To have it presented without Oscar-fuelled mugging is a welcome relief.

4AD

Samarkande – 3 Synapses

The Quebecois duo that make up Samarkande, Eric Fillion and Sylvain Lamirande, have a complementary background that moves from classical studies (piano and saxophone) through electroacoustics with diversions into the worlds of jazz and new wave. They’ve taken all that previous experience and sunk it into the … The first and longest movement is the most propulsive, with a sci-fi flavour reminiscent at times of the “On the Run” section of Dark Side of the Moon. Snippets of found dialogue and the occasional sprinkling of acoustic percussion enliven this mostly synthetic excursion. The second synapse is more enervated, buzzing and clicking like a locust in a bottle. Eventually thumb piano and soprano sax are loosed in their own miniature invasion. The last and shortest piece also moves slowest, like a cloud full of metal sheets that creak across each other, occasionally showering sparks and lightning. It’s an engaging listen by artists who learned to treat sound from all angles.

Samarkande

Anla Courtis / Seiichi Yamamoto / Yoshimi – Live at Kanadian

In terms of classifying this group of improvisers the term “shaggy dog” is the first that leaps to mind. Slapping together two Boredoms members and an ex-Reynols survivor is a sure way to destabilize any musical economy. Opening with a shattered window of guitar exploration by Courtis and Yamamoto, the second track steps away from the wreckage and lets Yoshimi concentrate on vocal looping and a toy factory of percussive hints. The last and longest takes all the elements, the explosive guitars, wavering keylines and testifying vocals and lets them ebb and fly. There is a patience that translates to a kind of winding-up of energy between outbursts, but even that is not exactly subtle. At the height of efficacy the trio is not unlike the jack-in-the-box you can feel coiled and waiting, but still knocked back by the sudden pop-out.

Public Eyesore

Elite Barbarian – It’s Only When You Get to the End That it All Makes Sense

As a member of Rothko Benjamin Page has refined musical understatement in the service of uncluttered emotion. Going solo as Elite Barbarian he imports some of his band’s minimalist tendencies, but shows off a more off-the-cuff approach to his statements. There is a quite a bit of nose-following, locked beats and phased loops providing a safety net for Page to experiment with textures and stereo effects. The result is a hybrid that resembles early ambient works by Aphex Twin crossed with a micro House that has burnt down to echoes of its halcyon beats. That hint of ruin pervades the album (and it’s title) as on the opener “Going Down” that transposes a rough dub recoding style to Tesla coil snap-beat and time shifting budget keyboards. Other tracks either are stuck in the amber of their tones or play on some half-remembered progression of how rhythms used to work. It’s a post-collapse dance party for the surviving few.

Front and Follow

Hilde Marie Kjersem – A Killer for That Ache

Given the usual austerity and/or brinksmanly character of this Norwegian label’s roster it comes as a little surprise to hear this fairly “normal” song cycle. Of course the normal here is in the realm of such squares as Björk, Kate Bush and My Brightest Diamond. Kjersem’s voice has a smoky mystery that is easily thrown into carnivalesque contortions when the need arises. She is flanked by a quartet of multi-instrumentalists from Norway’s melting pot where jazz, electronics and chamber rock ooze together. Each track has florid patchwork of woodwinds, acoustic strings, squiggling tones and things too exotic to place straight off. This overflow of sounds tends to drown the underlying themes of media critique, making Kjersem’s vocal just another instrument initially. But an album this detail-heavy definitely requires deeper consideration, if only to appreciate the musicianship.

Rune Grammofon

Growing - All the Way

Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo of Growing seem like the types of guys who’d use vice grips to pull out a nail. On their first full length for The Social Registry they’ve continued on a trajectory that has been carrying them away from the overstuffed field of drone/psychedelic behemoths. Where they’re headed is unsure, but it appears to be concerned with turning guitars into tools for electronic dance music. Using a slightly lighter and more refined palate of manipulations from their mini-album Lateral, the duo have scrubbed the surface grime from their rapid tremolo oscillations leaving six mid-length tracks of shimmering tonal refraction. The opening two pieces showcase patchwork polishes that resemble vintage analogue burbling, but on “Rave Pie Only” they harness the pulse into a plosive 4/4 squelch that early housetronauts would feel justified broadcasting into outer space. Next up “Innit” corrals an over-firing Kraftwerkian synapse and lets it sizzle over a stuttering undersong. If this is an album to spawn a new subgenre in the lexicon I suggest the term “doom disco”.

The Social Registry

Harold Budd & Clive Wright – A Song for Lost Blossoms

Harold Budd’s reputation as progenitor of ambient electronic music, his career having started in the late 70s and early 80s, is undisputable. Alongside the other colossuses (Eno, Glass, etc) he strode across becalmed liquid pools of tone. That slow burning torch has been carried into the present by the Stars of the Lids and the Eluviums of the world. Meanwhile Budd himself has been relatively quiet (pun intended), his reputed retirement album Avalon Sutra having been released in 2004. Breaking cover here with guitarist Clive Wright he unspools a keyboard haze that seems unaltered since his Moon and the Melodies days. The 30+ minute opener is a bright and brittle monument to mournful beauty entitled “Pensive Aphrodite.” Over its course Budd and Wright slowly call and respond and theme and vary until every last smoky shaft of light is prismatic. Sharp points of piano punctuate the epic echo/delay orchestrations of Wright’s strings. Unnecessarily, given the fulsomeness of this track, the duo fill another forty-two minutes with more of the same.

Darla

Ezekiel Honig – Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band

Ezekiel Honig has spent a couple of years behind the scenes of his Anticipate label, building a base of fresh talent in the minimalist electronic field. On his own first offering he has etched the closest thing one could imagine to a Richard Chartier dance album. There is the buzz of distant voices, the dry echo of little collisions in empty space and a warm musical tone that seems almost overheard rather than made. Beats act as reminders of more solid states, hard angles that occasionally add order to the drift. The pulses and noises do repeat, but often in less than metered progressions, lending another layer of organic identity to the sound. Clutches of piano notes run over themselves in “Displacement,” creating a little cauldron of half-melody. Mark Templeton’s guitar haunts spaces that are wider and more open like “Porchside Economics part” and “Past Tense Kitchen Movement.” But for the most Surfaces has a slight claustrophobic undertone of “what’s he building in there,” but in an urban setting.

Anticipate

Windy & Carl – Songs for the Broken Hearted

Writing hurtin’ songs is a staple of most musical genres, but few artists come closer than this Michigan husband and wife to imagining the sound of broken hearts from within a busted ventricle. For the better part of two decades Windy Weber and Carl Hultgren have dreamed their way through musical landscapes both barren and lush. Listening to their infinite guitar sound is still like watching water slowly streaming of rocks: shape, colour and movement meld into a unified pulse. On the more skeletal tracks, like “Forever” and “Champion,” Weber’s vocal steps further forward than ever before, allowing a naked vulnerability that serves the album’s theme. “When We Were” ramps up the distortion to Flying Saucer Attack levels then “Snow Covers Everything” showers little icy angels earthward. Though wonderfully resistant to deviation, they continue to discover little cathedrals and caverns in the rabbit hole they inhabit.

Kranky

The Alps - III

Eschewing the “freak out” might seem handcuffing to the average psychedelic musician, but this San Francisco trio finds cosmic debris in the details of sound. Despite the title this is the debut from Tarentel’s Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Alexis Georgopoulos (who also records as ARP) and Scott Hewicker of Troll. The dreaded soundtrack tag that dogs instrumental music is fairly applicable here, and may be due to Georgopoulos and Hewicker’s backgrounds in visual art. Light, it’s refractions and the visual confusion caused, runs through all the pieces here. The opener, “A Manhã Na Praia,” shoots prismatic sunlight through the many-angled repetitions of acoustic and electric guitar and twinkling xylophone. “Trem Fantasma,” titled after a 70s Brazilian film or the Os Mutantes track it inspired, starts with a spooling reverb that recalls film clicking into projector gate then unspools into a darkened funk rhythm that slowly crawls through spectral keening and meandering piano and guitar. If the pictures in your head feature salt wrecked seaports, moss-choked cottages or crumbing reliquaries then The Alps can provide your theme songs.

Type

With All Due Respect – Blueprint for Destiny

This Montreal duo lurk behind their twilight imagery and surprisingly broad style on this second expanded release. Perhaps due to geographic proximity I’m reminded of Ghislain Poirier, whose spare, early 12k releases gave way to unorthodox hip-hop production a few years later. WADR compress the timeframe and squish smoky machinery-hop (“Plateau” with guest vocals by Myriam Bois) next to dub-y micro-house (“CCTV”) next to jittery, transistor-infected reggae (“Montreal Protocol”). The works are granted a turquoise hard gleam by producer Yahik Daunais, who gives the decay as much detail as the notes. It’s an ambitious and intriguing portrait of an after-hours landscape where steam and neon bleed all markers of identity together. For all its genre-hopping, it mistreats none of them and masters several.

With All Due Respect

Build Buildings – Ceiling Lights From Street

Columbus, OH native Ben Tweel is a bright light in the information highway where every year more and more fellow electronic travellers throw up websites and post downloadable tracks, then idle in the traffic jam. Tweel may be on the verge of finding a less encumbered lane. Ceiling Lights From Street evokes nostalgia for labels like Mille Plateaux and Force Inc., whose artists flirted with the very outer periphery of dance rhythms, where beats slipped and cracked. Like them, Tweel spools melody through the stuttering so that the brain’s leaps for continuity easily turn into slow head bobbing. Tracks like “Let’s Go” let their little sizzles and back skips slide smoothly over the dampened music box keyboards and warm, droning swells. The sharper pieces, like “Letter Codes,” often borrow the ghost of a hip-hop backbeat to crystallize the rhythm. “Skatal,” on the other hand, is the music of standing still and letting the room revolve around you. Build Buildings may not be reinventing the wheel exactly but he certainly knows how to ride it.

Build Buildings

Taub – Bedtime Stories

Perhaps the busiest bugbear in electronic music is expectation. If artists can escape its predictable clutches then they have a head start on all the other goblins too. Nonine label head Me Raabenstein is a chance-taker with sound deployment. Unafraid to hold a silence for a few beats beyond comfort or splotch an austere ambient microgroove with sudden dayglo colours. As the duo Taub the Berliner brings on board Edinburgh ambient artist Harold Nono in the role of accomplice and foil. Both treat the world of electronics as anything but a closed system, either temporally or instrumentally. Tracks like “Chamber Pot” hold the synthetic sounds under the dominant piano lines, gradually building both up onto an equal platform of pulse, echo and modification. “Wild Blue Yonder” plays with space and volume within a minimal framework of sound, surprising the ears with sudden nearby piano strikes while an emotive theme wipes across the farther fields. It’s a recording that seldom plays it safe, and it’s these risks that help avoid any lazy categorizing.

Nonine

Surgery 67

Windy & Carl - Songs For The Broken Hearted (Kranky)
Various - Ambient Not Not Ambient (Audio Dregs)
Harold Budd And Clive Wright - A Song for Lost Blossoms (Darla)
Alejandro Franov - Aixa (Plop)
Benoit Pioulard - Temper (Kranky)
Miwon - A To B (City Centre Offices)
Anat-Ben-David - Virtual Leisure (Chicks on Speed)
Arctic Hospital - Neon Veils (Plop/Lantern)
Arovane - Lilies (City Centre Offices)
It's A Musical - The Music Makes Me Sick (Morr)
Anla Courtis/Seiichi Yamamoto/Yoshimi - Live At Kanadian (Public Eyesore)

Track Listing

Windy & Carl - Btwn You + Me [0:00]
Grouper - Quiet Eyes [6:20]
Harold Budd And Clive Wright - Of Many Mirrors [12:35]
Alejandro Franov - TRANQUI [16:53]
Benoit Pioulard - Cycle Disparaissant [22:51]
Miwon - They Leave in Autumn [24:33]
Anat-Ben-David - Beg London [31:25]
Arctic Hospital - At Random [34:39]
Arovane - Tokyo Ghost Stories [40:26]
It's A Musical - Take Off Your T-Shirt [45:24]
Anla Courtis/Seiichi Yamamoto/Yoshimi - Part 3 [49:02]

Listen to Surgery 67 click here

Surgery 66

Andy Stott - Unknown Exception (Modern Love)
Byetone - Death Of A Typographer (Raster-Noton)
B. Fleischmann - Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung! (Morr Music)
Ragliani - Of Sirens Born (Kranky)
The Alps - III (Type)
Holy Sons - Decline Of The West (Partisan)
Alva Noto - Unitxt (Raster-Noton)
Ryoji Ikeda - Test Pattern (Raster-Noton)
Agathe Max - This Silver String (Xeric)
Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday (Temporary Residence)
Various - Kalk Seeds (Karaoke Kalk)
Heidi Marie Kjersem - A Killer For That Ache (Rune Grammofon)

Track Listing

Andy Stott - Massacre [0:00]
Byetone - Straight [6:59]
B. Fleischmann - 24.12. [11:10]
Ragliani - Jubilee [14:51]
The Alps - Hallucinations [21:31]
Holy Sons - Kindred Spirit [28:54]
Alva Noto - U_04 [30:46]
Ryoji Ikeda - Test Pattern #0111 [35:58]
Agathe Max - Black Needle [40:59]
Grails - The Natural Man [47:50]
Wechsel Garland - Tiny Stars [52:24]
Heidi Marie Kjersem - London Bridge [54:52]


Listen to Surgery 66 click here

Bird Show – S/T

Birds gotta fly. But sometimes they gotta sing too. Ben Vida’s talent for intertwining rhythms and bright flights of tone made the previous two Bird Show releases kaleidoscopic, blooming thickets of sound. His affinity for exotic instruments remains, but Vida has also brought his voice and the voices of his guests into the undergrowth this time out. Having joined forces with him for a project called Singer, brother Adam Vida and Lichens’ Robert A.A. Lowe have brought their mad choir from that off-centre experiment into this more celebratory and ceremonial one. Many of the pieces, often named for the instruments played, tend towards uncharacteristic minimalism, but the voices exhale a buzz that energizes the open air. Longtime collaborator Greg Davis and fellow Chicagoan, percussionist Michael Zerang are on hand to keep the pulse alive as well. If the previous two albums were walks through the rainforest, this is where we finally find natives dancing in a clearing.

(Kranky)

Surgery 65

Growing - All The Way (The Social Registry)
Build Buildings - Ceiling Lights From Street (Self-Released)
Bartek Kujawski - Murlull Movies (Warsztat8r)
Galerie [Stratique] - Faux World (Statik)
Goldmund - The Malady Of Elegance (Type)
Populous With Short Stories - Drawn In Basic (Morr)
Maluco - Right Time (Karaoke Kalk)
pole - pole 3 (~scape)
Model 500 - Starlight (Echospace)
With All Due Respect - Blueprint for Destiny (Self-Released)
Cory Allen - The Fourth Way (Quiet Design)

Track Listing

Growing - Lens Around [0:00]
Build Buildings - Elevators, Escalators [5:31]
Bartek Kujawski - Expectations Lead To Disappointment [9:26]
Galerie [Stratique] - Hors Champs [19:07]
Goldmund - Apalachee [23:08]
Populous with Short Stories - Breathes The Best [28:01]
Maluco - Evandro [30:22]
pole - Spaß Rewind [35:24]
Model 500 - Starlight (Intrusion dub) [41:52]
With All Due Respect - CCTV [49:36]
Cory Allen - All Suns [53:42]


Listen to Surgery 65 click here

Surgery 64

Another case of dipping back into the library... new stuff next time out.

F.S. Blumm - Mondkuchen (Morr)
Scanner - Wave of Light by Wave of Light (Sulphur)
Spring Heel Jack - Songs & Themes (Thirsty Ear)
Marc Ribot - Saints (Atlantic)
Them - Themselves (Anticon)
Do Make Say Think - S/T (Constellation)
Martin Siewert - No Need to Be Lonesome (Mosz)
Matmos - The Civil War (Matador)
Folie - Eyepennies (Mitek)
Icarus - Six Soviet Misfits (Temporary Residence)
Cul de Sac - Immortality Lessons (Strange Attractors)
Dawn McCarthy & Bonny Billy - Wai Notes (Drag City)

Track Listing

F.S. Blumm - Restbad [0:00]
Scanner - Cosy Veneer [4:36]
Spring Heel Jack - Silvertone [11:06]
Marc Ribot - Somewhere [16:53]
Them - Death of a Thespian [19:29]
Do Make Say Think - If I Only... [24:21]
Martin Siewert - Attraktor [31:49]
Matmos - For the Trees [38:21]
Folie - Bundle [41:48]
Icarus - Despair [45:46]
Cul de Sac - Liturgy [53:40]
Dawn McCarthy & Bonny Billy - God's Small Song [56:34]
Cul de Sac - Liturgy (slight reverse) [59:19]


Listen to Surgery 64 click here

Surgery 63

Quartetski Does Prokofiev - Visions Fugitives Op. 22 (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Tape - Milieu Plus (Hapnä)
Town And Country - Up Above (Thrill Jockey)
Neil Young - Dead Man Sountrack (Vapor Records)
Willits + Sakamoto - Ocean Fire (12k)
Ólafur Arnalds - Eulogy for Evolution (Erased Tapes)
Pram - The Moving Frontier (Domino)
Monolake - Hongkong Remastered (ML)
Bird Show - S/T (Kranky)
Jane - Berserker (Paw Tracks)
Terminal 4 - When I'm Falling (Truckstop)

Track Listing

Quartetski Does Prokofiev - Lento Irrealmente [0:00]
Tape - Root Tattoo [2:48]
Town & Country - Almost At White Glass And Sun [6:17]
Neil Young - Guitar Solo 5 (excerpt)[10:06]
Willits + Sakamoto - Sentience [14:39]
Ólafur Arnalds - 1440 [22:51]
Pram - Sundew [29:31]
Monolake - Mass Transit Railway [32:29]
Bird Show - Green Vines [39:28]
Jane - Agg Report (edit) [45:24]
Terminal 4 - This Must Be The End [54:31]

Listen to Surgery 63 click here

Surgery 62

Alexander Tucker - Custom Made (ATP/R)
Tape - Luminarium (Häpna)
Giuseppe Ielasi - August (12k)
Elephant9 - Dodovoodoo (Rune Grammofon)
Strategy - Music for Lamping (Audio Dregs)
Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Type)
Various - Remixes & Parts To Be Frickeled (Shitkatapult)
Various - Audiomatique 2.0 (Audiomatique)
Vibert-Simmonds - Rodulate (Rephlex)
Various - Dubstep Allstars Vol. 6 (Mixed by Appleblim) (Tempa)
Various - Ambient Not Not Ambient (Audio Dregs)
Cloudland Canyon - Lie In Light (Kranky)
Alexander Tucker - Portal (ATP/R)

Track Listing

Alexander Tucker - Rodeo In The Sky [0:00]
Tape - Moth Wings [4:24]
Giuseppe Ielasi - 02 [8:47]
Elephant9 - Hymne [16:32]
Strategy - All Day... [21:59]
Grouper - We've All Gone to Sleep [27:37]
Lusine - Drift (Apparat Remix) [30:49]
Trentemøller - Miss You [34:09]
Vibert-Simmonds - Go To Sleep [Everything Is Alright] [37:23]
Mungos Hi-Fi - Babylon [40:58]
White Rainbow - See and The Field Feels [45:26]
Cloudland Canyon - Krautwerk [48:33]
Alexander Tucker - Energy For Dead Plants [55:19]

Listen to Surgery 62 click here

Thisquietarmy - Unconquered

Montreal’s Eric Quach is turning his pseudonym and label into a very reliable outlet for genre-transgressive music. The label’s recent releases have included two excellent handmade EPs by Apillow (Below the Sea’s Patrick Lacharité) and the Sales Department (formerly Beef Terminal, MD Matheson). Quach’s music, released here by a Polish label, crosses boundaries where ambient guitar spills over into the world of doom/drone. Helping with the heavier lifting is guest Aidan Baker of Nadja, who adds portent to the opening track. The first four tracks work as an uninterrupted suite that undulates from the ominously shimmering hum of “Battlefield Arkestrah” through to “Warchitects,” where the drums are finally unleashed. The album’s second half lets a little more light in. “Death of Sailor” improvises watery travel around a slightly crippled guitar loop, while “The Great Escapist” features guest vocals by Meryem Yildiz, edging a too little closely to romantic metal territory, but without the synth or string section to truly wreck everything. Standout track “Mercenary Flags” imagines what Eluvium might sound like if more Jesu influence crept in. Definitely for fans of heavier ambience, Quach expertly avoids making an album from a single grey mood.

(Foreshadow)

Alexander Tucker - Custom Made

Experiencing Custom Made, this little gem of a four song ep, as a burnt CD on a laptop likely isn’t the prescribed listening situation. Released in April by ATP in a, yes, “custom made” double 7” format it showcases a somewhat pared-down version of “Veins to the Sky” which later shows up on Tucker’s third full length release, Portal, as well as a new version of “Phantom Rings” from his debut. A cover of Fursaxa’s “Rodeo in the Sky” draws upon the trademark otherness of his sound that is both seemingly of ancient origin yet chronologically unbound. His self-described blues closer, “Florence Blue,” is a cochleate whirl of strings over a thumbed pulse that is equal parts Junior Kimbrough and Arthur Russell. Tucker’s sound maintains a strange familiarity despite it’s slippery signifiers, perhaps due to a tapping of something elemental outside of traditions. Could explain how he somehow fits on bills and in groups with Fuck Buttons, Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley and Owen Pallett without seeming out of place.

(ATP/R)

Alexander Tucker – Portal

Wherever the titular doorway leads it’s clear that Alexander Tucker has access to something larger and stranger than a guitar with looper effects. On 2006’s Furrowed Brow he pushed at the boundaries of acoustic folk and blues, importing contemporary drone and doom experiments. But here he re-focuses that slightly disparate energy back into a harder shell of song. Openers “Poltergeists Grazing” and “Veins to the Sky” illustrate Tucker’s signature method of building elaborate structures out of layered loops, making for an ornate recasting of the one-chord blues tradition. They also showcase his increased vocal presence, albeit rendered ghostly by double tracking. The album eventually crosses streams, with “Energy for Dead Plants” turbine engine of bowed strings and eddying tones, backed by “Another World” and its oppositely stark acoustic guitar and vocal. Whether Tucker is a pan-dimensional being sent here from an alternate England where The Incredible String Band featured Tony Conrad on violin, or if he merely has visions of such a place, his continuous beaming from there is a welcome sound.

(ATP/R)

Surgery 61

Erik Enockson - Farväl Falkenberg (Kning Disk)
Animal Collective - Water Curses (Domino)
Ueno - Sui-Gin (Room40)
Trapist - Highway My Friend (hatOLOGY)
Peter Broderick - Float (Type)
Stars Of The Lid - Carte-De-Visite (Tour CD)
Leighton Craig - 11 Easy Pieces (Room40)
Sebastien Roux - Revers Ouest (Room40)
Preslav Literary School - Pretext/Context (GFDM)
Nicola Ratti - From The Desert Came Saltwater (Anticipate)
Lost In Hildurness - Mount A (12 Tonar)
Yoshi Wada - The Appointed Cloud (EM)

Track Listing

Erik Enockson - The Breaking Of Waves [00:00]
Animal Collective - Seal Eyeing [04:40]
Ueno - 08 [08:11]
Trapist - Mine Was The Shoulder You Cried On That Day [12:05]
Peter Broderick - An Ending [16:18]
Stars Of The Lid - Hunting For Pops [20:36]
Leighton Craig - The Last Easy Piece [25:50]
Sebastien Roux - part 1 [28:51]
Preslav Literary School - Track 03 [37:39]
Nicola Ratti - Voluta Musica [44:36]
Lost In Hildurness - Reflection [50:37]
Yoshi Wada - The Appointed Cloud {(very brief)excerpt}[57:59]

Listen to Surgery 61 click here

Surgery 60

This is a slightly different show. I've been waiting for a few new releases to do my usual "all new" format of shows, but I grew impatient and so thought I'd dip back into the collection to do this show while I waited. Essentially I was trying to hit a balance of tracks that feature digital/analog, lyrical song/instrumental, electric/acoustic blend. Basically the places where the tipping point where more traditional and experimental music meets. I'm not sure this worked... I have to listen back to it a few more times myself... but it was late and I wanted to finish and so.... In my haste to finish I neglected to mark the track starts... but it should be a little easier than usual to spot them. Enjoy.

Nagisa Ni Te - The Same As a Flower (Secretly Canadian)
Loscil - First Narrows (Kranky)
LaZarus - Songs For An Unborn Sun (Temporary Residence)
So - S/T (Thrill Jockey)
Molasses - Trouble At Jinx Hotel (Alien8)
Philip Jeck & Janek Schaefer - Songs For Europe (Asphodel)
Palace Brothers - Days In The Wake (Drag City)
Various - Hmm (Sprawl)
Joan Of Arc - Presents Guitar Duets (Record Label)
Komet - Gold (Raster-Noton)
Flying Saucer Attack - New Lands (Drag City)

Track Listing

Nagisa Ni Te - River
Loscil - Sickbay
LaZarus - Born A Friendship
So - Untitled B
Molasses - Trouble In Mind
Philip Jeck & Janek Schaefer - Lullaby Duel
Palace Brothers - No More Workhorse Blues
David Toop - Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
Joan of Arc - Tim Rutili & Sam Zurick
Komet - Wheel
Flying Saucer Attack - Forever

Listen to Surgery 60 click here

Surgery 59

John Dahlbäck - Winners & Fools (Pickadoll)
Apparat - Things To Be Frickeled (Shitkatapult)
Vladislav Delay - Anima (Huume)
Pluxus - Solid State (Kompakt)
Electric President - Sleep Well (Morr)
Annea Lockwood - A Sound Map of the Danube (Lovely Music)
Jean Martin & Colin Fisher - Little Man On The Boat (Barnyard Records)
Jean Martin & Evan Shaw - Piano Music (Barnyard Records)
Jean Derome Et Les Dangereux Zhoms - To Continue (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Scorch Trio - Brolt (Rune Grammofon)

Track Listing

John Dahlbäck - Houses Of The Archipelago [0:00]
Apparat - Steinholz (Monolake Remix) [5:42]
Vladislav Delay - Anima (version) [10:22]
Pluxus - Forth [20:18]
Electric President - Bright Mouths [24:49]
Andrea Lockwood - Passau to Jochenstein Dam (excerpts) [29:46][35:10][43:12][53:27]
Jean Martin & Colin Fisher - A Long Way From Beacon Hill [30:41]
Jean Martin & Evan Shaw - Me Softly With His Kill [36:32]
Jean Derome Et Les Dangereux Zhoms - Cogné Un Genou [45:02]
Scorch Trio - Basjen [55:32]

Listen to Surgery 59 click here

Surgery 58

Jasmina Maschina - The Demolition Series (Staubgold)
Thisquietarmy - Unconquered (Foreshadow)
Skyphone - Avellaneda (Rune Grammofon)
Butcher The Bar - Sleep At Your Own Speed (Morr)
Various - Ambient 4: Isolationism (Virgin)
Christopher Bissonnette - In Between Words (Kranky)
Samuel Sighicelli - Marée Noire (D'Autres Cordes)
Martin Baumgartner - Shoot's Huft (For4Ears)
Grosse Abfahrt - Everything That Disappears (Emanem)
Martin Archer - In Stereo Gravity (Discus)

Track Listings

Jasmina Machina - Holy Holy Holy Word [0:00]
Thisquietarmy - Death Of A Sailor [4:03]
Skyphone - All Is Wood [9:15]
Butcher the Bar - The Boy You Miss The Most [14:06]
Sufi - Desert flower [17:32]
Christopher Bissonnette - Jour Et Nuit [23:49]
Samuel Sighicelli - Les Alluvions [30:09]
Martin Baumgartner - 0.1.0 [33:50]
Grosse Abfahrt - The Lack Americans Connected What Disappears [40:12]
Jim O'Rourke - Flat Without A Back [49:44]
Martin Archer - I'm Like Hello [53:59]


Listen to Surgery 58 click here

Surgery 57

Silje Nes - Ames Room (FatCat)
Colorlist - Lists (Stilll)
Various - Living Bridge (Rare Book Room)
Anandan / Gzowski - Shruti Project (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Anna Järvinen - Jag fick feeling (Häpna)
OST - The Beautiful Dead End/Point mort (Mutasis)
Heaven And - Sweeter as the Years Roll By (Staubgold)
Pita - Get Out (Editions Mego)
Kahn, Korber, Möslang, Müller, Weber, Yamauchi - Signal To Noise Vol. 4 (For4Ears)
Kahn, Moslang, Muller, Aube - Signal To Noise Vol. 5 (For4Ears)
Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego - The Sinking of the Titanic (Touch)

Track Listing

Silje Nes - Magnetic Moments Of Spinning Objects [0:00]
Colorlist - These Complimentary [3:04]
LUS - Contendo [8:54]
Anandan / Gzowski - Nothing is Familiar [13:03]
Anna Järvinen - Koltrast [17:21]
Dan Weisenberger & Lee Hutzulak - Caul [20:54]
Heaven And - Durango [23:28]
Pita - 5 [29:51]
Kahn, Korber, Möslang, Müller, Weber, Yamauchi - Untitled (excerpt) [34:11]
Kahn, Moslang, Muller, Aube - Untitled (excerpt) [42:15]
Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego - The Sinking of the Titanic (excerpt) [49:01]

Listen to Surgery 57 click here

Ulaan Khol - I

Increasingly, our guitar heroes seem to be genetically recombining to meld the traditions of folk mystic (Fahey, Basho) and electric pyrotechnician (Hendrix) into one frame. Steven R. Smith developed mutations of both strains over ten years spent in both Mirza and Thuja, but it was perhaps his more recent Hala Strana project that led to this recording. Billed by Soft Abuse as the first installment in their “Ceremony” series, Smith adapts his interest in Eastern European musical structure to an overdriven and fractured electric recording of striated guitar layers with occasional minimal percussion. The result does conjure mist-shrouded metaphysical graffiti in search of some lost truth. The nine untitled tracks are curiously compact given their outward reach, but cumulatively they read like prophecies interpreted from several interlinking points of view. They are also like powerful little engines that rage against an encroaching darkness that is dissolving the clean lines of defense.

Soft Abuse

Christina Kubisch – Five Electrical Walks

The idea of the “Sound Walk” in fine art is usually a marriage between the artist’s presentation of site specific concepts and the pre-recording of natural / urban sounds provided to listeners for experiencing. Christina Kubisch adapts this idea to previously invisible worlds. By developing headphones that act as receivers of electromagnetic impulses Kubisch allows listeners to hear the network of transmissions that surrounds them and seek out individual experiences of their own. For the purpose of this recording she gathered sounds from many cities (Birmingham, Chicago, Taipei, Paris etc.) and many sources (NYC’s Times Square, various train stations and airports, retail security doors) and with careful sequencing has created a kind of music that is alien despite continually being present in our lives. “Homage With Minimal Distortion” reveals Times Square to be a wonderland of ambient loops that almost naturally resembles the work of artists like Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda. “E-Legend II” illustrates the landscape of Birmingham where the near-silent decay of collapsed industry abuts the cellular voice-haunted squawk of new technologies. In some ways this work updates the new age music fads like Solitudes; recordings of nature to be played in your living room. But this is the new new age after all, and not as relaxed as before.

Important

Balmorhea – Rivers Arms

The much overused word that plagues music like that of instrumental duo Rob Lowe and Michael Muller is “cinematic.” It’s a kind of shorthand to describe themes that are emotionally evocative but difficult for some to fully absorb while unmarried to either vocals or images. Any trouble with absorption should only come from the richness of sources or the diversity of modes Balmorhea embrace within the walls of this album. Opener “San Solomon” cross wires a field recording-enhanced banjo/piano pattern, reminiscent of The Books or Ramses III, with a grounding pull of cello courtesy of collaborator Erin Lance. The piano parts belie a strong classical hand that is equally adept at Chopin’s quiet darkness and Stravinsky’s skipping clusters. The acoustic guitar’s counterpoint leans more towards a folk ease and understatement that helps build the album’s quiet confidence. With touches of violin, accordion and bass along with the cello Rivers Arms becomes a place full of colourful stories, with or with out the pictures to prove it.

Western Vinyl

Lars Stigler - Samarium-Cobalt Compound Impulse-Release Magnets And Linear Resistance

This Viennese guitarist has been working quietly, in all senses of the word, for just over a decade now. Samarium is his fourth solo release in that time and showcases a patience and clarity of technique. As the lengthy title hints, a tonally complex yet scrupulously observed phenomenon continually unfolds until it inhabits a wide vista of sound. In the musical world this is revealed through initially delicate and deliberately plucked notes against a rising hum of chorus. Stigler stretches the first two long pieces into divided movements, suggesting natural process, before releasing a more synthesized arrangement for radio static saturated guitar and piano harmonics. Stigler’s compositions have a little in common with Oren Ambarchi’s more restrained moments or Giuseppe Ielasi at his least abstract. But truthfully his music is on it’s own track… one that is less interested by the density of structures and with a simplicity that is more about clarity than minimalism for it’s own sake. These are themes for traveling deep into the heart of things or observing the sweep of great distances.

Karate Joe

Silje Nes – Ames Room

This Norwegian singer/songwriter is sure to draw comparisons to fellow Sub-Arctic siren Björk’s for her blend of wobbly electronics and acoustic inflected pop experiments. Nes is much more of ship in a bottle to Björk’s galleon, though. Not exactly fragile, the pieces of Ames Room are still miniature, but once assembled they become something unexpected and charming. Perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be to Finnish avant-folk artist Islaja, whose work seems likewise more “built” than “played.” It’s a slippery affair to pin down, with a title track that burbles and chirps like jay in a natural spring followed by the drum machine and guitar drone of “Giant Disguise,” a track that wouldn’t be out of place on an early Cat Power album. This in turn is followed by “Dizzy Street,” which imagines a Belle & Sebastian / Fiery Furnaces détente. Nes’ approach is a hybrid of her classical piano background in collision with freewheeling home recording, making for a surefooted traipse through whimsical and tricky terrain.

FatCat

Surgery 56

Bochum Welt - R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) (Rephlex)
Lars Stigler - Samarium-Cobalt Compound Impulse-Release Magnets And Linear Resistance Inputs (Karate Joe)
Bobby And Blumm - Everybody Loves (Morr)
Various - Monika Bärchen Songs For Bruno, Knut & Tom (Monika)
Ulaan Khol - I (Soft Abuse)
Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (Kranky)
Borko - Celebrating Life (Morr)
Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing (ATP/R)
Principles Of Geometry - Lazare (Tigersushi)
Thee Silver Mt. Zion - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons (Constellation)
Sun City Girls - You're Never Alone With A Cigarette (Abduction)

Track Listing

Bochum Welt - DR2D [0:00]
Lars Stigler - As Cells Approach Exhaustion... [5:16]
Bobby And Blumm - The Letter [10:37]
Michaela Melian - Locke Pistole Kreuz (Edit) [13:27]
Ulaan Khol - Untitled 04 [17:10]
Atlas Sound - Ready, Set, Glow [20:02]
Borko - Hondo & Borko [22:56]
Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love for Planet Earth [29:38]
Principles Of Geometry - Akeshore [38:17]
Thee Silver Mt. Zion - Blindblindblind [43:36]
Sun City Girls - Sev Acher [56:49]

Listen to Surgery 56 click here