Surgery 45

Wighnomy Bros./Robag Wruhme - Remikks Potpurri II (Freude Am Tanzen)
Various - Total 8 (Kompakt)
Bola - S/T (Skam)
D'Arcangelo - Eksel (Rephlex)
Max Rouen - The Magnetic Wave Of Sound (Karaoke Kalk)
Dopplereffekt - Calabi Yau Space (Rephlex)
Philipp Quehenberger - Phantom In Paradise (Mego)
The Tuss - Rushup Edge (Rephlex)
Fovea Hex - Allure (Die Stadt/Janet Records)
A_Dontigny - Geisteswissenschaften (No Type)
jodi cave - absent (term)
Tijuana Mon Amour Broadcasting Inc. - Cold Jubilee (Of The Snowqueen) (Büro)

Track Listing

The Future Sound Of London - Lifeforms (Wighnomy Brothers And Robag Whrumes Simetikon)
Jörg Burger - Polyform 1
Bola - Waknuts
D'Arcangelo - Saturn
Max Rouen - Leon's Genesis
Dopplereffekt - Mirror Symmetry
Philipp Quehenberger - Ozerea 1
Reinhard Voigt - Follow The DJ
The Tuss - Goodbye Rute
Fovea Hex - Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent
A_Dontigny - Begriffsschrift
jodi cave - absent/walking backwards
Tijuana Mon Amour Broadcasting Inc. - Cold Jubilee

Listen to Surgery 45 click here

Drawing Voices – S/T

Here’s another chance for the headbangers of the world to transform themselves into chin scratchers. Drawing Voices is in fact an interdisciplinary effort that closely examines the process sounds from illustration… i.e. brush or pen on paper. Craig Dogonski of Georgia State has been pursuing this idea since 1999, and is joined on this step by Isis guitarist Aaron Turner to further illuminate his findings. The results sound like they would be a better fit for labels like Erstwhile or Charhizma than HydraHead… an admittedly progressive Metal label, here further extending it’s Double H Noise Industries division. In certain passing intervals, as on “The Shrine of Wreckless Illumination,” the actual sound of etching and the actual sound of guitar are clear and present, but by and large the process is itself processed into electron orbits of noise. It is compelling work, on a par with the more passive aggressive moments of Daniel Menche or John Hudak; detailed, rewarding to multiple listens and with a vague but discernable operating principle. Will it cause the scratching of chins? Perhaps at least the scratching of metal heads.

(HydraHead)

Destructo Swarmbots – Clear Light

Not as obviously extreme as Sunn O))), Nadja or any of the suddenly legion drone metal acts on the scene, the Swarmbots are still more impolite than most acts the “brainy” side of the buzzing divide. Mike Mare, who also is part of NJ hip hop crew Dalëk’s touring band, seems to be more in line with 90s post-industrial ambient/isolationist acts such as Justin Broadrick’s Final or Mark Spybey’s Dead Voices on Air. Clear Light kicks off with a forty-minute monolith called “Banta” that supposes the sound of a guitar loop plummeting through space on the Voyager probe. A sense of movement through resonant, yet mostly empty distance definitely rules the atmosphere as the pieces slowly transforms from gray to slate to charcoal. The three shorter pieces are like shards that have split away from the larger opener: a fragment of feedback here, polished echo and sustain there. The very between-ness of Mare’s sound may draw in listeners from both the dark and lighter side of the drone force, though the opposite is equally possible.

(Public Guilt)

ErikM (Luc Ferrari) & Thomas Lehn – Les Protorythmiques

In effect this is a document of an unplanned event. Invited to the 2005 Musique Action Festival in France ErikM and Concréte pioneer Luc Ferrari were slated to present a set designed around an “open working process” that allowed greater improvisational possibilities for characteristically more inert Concréte composition. Ferrari’s poor health (he passed away that August) prevented him from attending the festival. In his absence ErikM employed the audio archive the two had built for the 2004 Angle release Les Archives Sauvees des Eaux, and invited analog synthesizer wizard Thomas Lehn to accompany him. The result is a single half hour piece that stays true to many of Ferrari’s processes of electro-acoustic work, turning real world sources, splintered conversations and abstract sound into impressionist narratives. The play is extremely active and rarely overemphasizes specific moments or elements. Provocative uses of sudden volume stabs derange the more naturalistic scenes, while Lehn’s pulsing tones are well integrated into ErikM’s methodology. Even without his immediate participation Ferrari’s presence is felt in the bones of this work.

(Room40)

Adam Frank/Sam Shalabi – Overpass! A Melodrama

To live in one city for any amount of time is to eventually become both it’s defender and/or critic depending on circumstance. Overpass! is Adam Frank’s multi-personality dichotomous love/hate letter for Vancouver. Rather than a song-cycle Frank, a teacher of American Lit at UBC, chooses a sort of radio play, or melodrama as he describes it, supported by music from Montreal’s Sam Shalabi. The narrative centers upon the experience of Vancouver through the eyes of newcomer Antonia, a kind of toughly modernist version of Alice through the looking glass. She interacts with Merv, assistant to the city engineer and voices of architects, publishers and even the sound engineer provide various facts, figures, feelings on the peccadilloes Vancouver’s haphazard modernization. These eventually focus in on the overpass in question. Shalabi’s music, played by a small rock ensemble, by necessity remains in the background; occasionally driving the energy of the story or alternately pooling to mirror the difficulty of progress. While specific to Vancouver, Overpass! can speak to anyone who suddenly tunes in to their urban surrounding and what makes it work, or fail to.

(Alien8 Recordings)

Organ Eye – S/T

As guiding hand behind Portugal’s Osso Exótico David Maranha has long bowed his way towards the heart of Eternal Music. Drawing inspiration from the 60s experiments that eventually birthed Velvet Underground, Maranha enlists longtime collaborator Patricia Machás as well as like-minded New Zealanders Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly to explore two long and detail-rich drone excursions. While earlier recordings, such as excellent 2000 release Circunscrita on Namskeio records, delved exclusively into the dense properties of acoustic instruments, Organ Eye opens the door to the electronics provided by the NZ invitees. The results are phenomenal. On “Tema #1” Maranha and Machás’ slowly breath through their Hammond airways adding little pockets of violin, drum and bowed piano as time passes. The electronics here are so gradual, transparent and integrated they never really reveal themselves until the piece concludes. “Tema #2” however picks up at that spot with the modem squelch of digital noise transmitting its signal into both past and future. Building these pieces through improvisation, the players are skilled listeners, preferring to cooperate on completely filling the cavity of listening gracefully rather than overwhelming with over-amplification and feedback.

(Staubgold)

Nicolas Bernier + Jacques Poulin-Denis – Étude no. 3 pour cordes et poulies

Created as a sonic accompaniment for the dance troupe O Vertigo, Etude no. 3 is a recording that steps lightly on its own two feet. Creators Bernier and Poulin-Denis are both multidisciplinary artists and crossed paths through their study of electro-acoustic composition at the University of Montreal. Poulin-Denis’ previous training as a dancer and actor doubtlessly led to this specific collaboration. The two have achieved something rare and wonderful: a music that has the precision, inner life and depth of field inherent in accomplished electro-acoustics, but with the ghostly breath of melody giving it lift and lightness. The electronic elements elicit comparisons to the detailed works of Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda, but they are only the gears and hinges of a much larger and delicate machine. Nothing is ever still… brushed drums shoot right-to-left like chain lightning; voices pop out like brief captured radio broadcasts; ticks and chimes well up like a wall of music boxes… yet nothing ever seems overwrought or crowded. Bernier’s website/label/micro-community Ekumen is one to keep an eye and/or ear on in nights to come.

(Ekumen)

The North Sea – Exquisite Idols

Tulsa, OK native Brad Rose is king of all things Foxy and/or Digital… running two labels (Digitalis and Foxglove) and a webzine (Foxy Digitalis) and whenever a slow warm night comes along, recording a foxy digital disc. That is if foxy means steeped in off-kilter folk, Eastern drone and haunted by flocks of birds carrying spoons in their beaks. Last year’s collaboration with UK trio Ramses III, another Type release, explored hypnotism via longer form explorations, whereas the pieces on Exquisite Idols are more acoustic, folkier and fit in your breast pocket. Rose still ekes grandeur out of the small noises of birdsong, wind chimes and trembling drone linked arm-in-arm, as on “Guiwenneth Of The Green Grass,” with an acoustic guitar that sounds in love with the world. “Take it from me Brother Moses” is the most traditional of pieces here, with a plunky banjo giving us the old timey treatment. Elsewhere on pieces like “Cover me with Knives” and “We Conquered the Golden Age,” the latter being the only extended meditation on the disc, Rose wanders onto more crooked paths and achieves a kind of transcendence many free/freak folk collectives strive to discover.

(Type)

Ramses III - Honey Rose

Last year was a (relatively) high-profile, high-yield year for UK trio Ramses III. After a reissue of their limited edition collaboration with The North Sea’s Brad Rose on Type Records they graced the The Music Fellowship with a new full length called Matanuska. This time it’s the rapidly shifting and always interesting Important Records turn to make room, this time for an e.p. of themes that act as soundtrack for Jon Spira’s short film Suityman. The six pieces are essentially the same languid piece of music, adapted and rearranged each time for new instruments and (slightly) different moods. Without directly referencing it, Honey Rose recalls the world weariness of Ry Cooder’s score for Paris, Texas, all windblown, flat and lonesome. Subtly shifting acoustic effects and trading guitar for banjo, lap for pedal steel, the pieces are almost salutary… little pockets of recognition across distances. With a slow gait, the rhythm approximates a waltz with too many knee bends per step, saved by a buoyancy that lingers in the heart of the piece.

(Important)

Alva Noto – Xerrox Vol. 1

If you recall your first year Classics and Philosophy, or at least barely like most of us, you’ll remember the Platonic ideal that reminds us our “real” objective world is filled with imperfect representations of perfect or “ideal” forms. So it follows that Carsten Nicolai draws our attention to the flaws and imperfections that diminish each copy of “unique” items… such as original recordings. The noises of digital errors, old fashioned modem transfers, fax tones are all drawn upward in the mixes of selected pieces, given equal attention. Of course, fans of Raster-Noton and other “clicks and cuts” proponents will likely be unsurprised by the white noise given its frequent appearances in other like-minded releases. The interference here is often much more extreme, often obliterating the original sources… and it is in these sources the next layer of concept is found. Nicolai pilfers sounds from such pillars of mundane repetition and reproduction as airport announcement tones, telephone waiting loops, 7-11 muzak. The irony is that the mutated forms of these everyday backgrounds become austere and even beautiful when demolished and reorganized in a digital copyist environment. The pieces are carefully interspersed with more pristine, unblemished takes on ambient sound to enhance the tension created by the noise. The artist and label both continue to push outward on the modern electronic frontier.

(Raster-Noton)

Small Sails – Similar Anniversaries

With too many choices daily for new bands to crush on, acts with solid live performance reps tend to earn an extra edge. Portland, Oregon trio Small Sails are musicians who also work as a filmmaking collective whose live show include on the fly video mixing with multiple projectors to enhance their playful electronics. But even without visual accompaniment their first full length delivers the light and wistful goods that gain them favourable comparisons to bands like The Books. The difference between the two groups is that the folktronic duo’s modus operates on tongue-in-cheek inventive and textured sketches, whereas Small Sails tracks are more traditionally rounded into songs… albeit songs with a little candy for their cheeks. The voice constantly returns as integral to the mix, either as enthusiastic “ta da das” or whispered secrets just under the surface, but it envelops each piece with cheerful humanity. The band have managed the neat trick of finding a sound that is intricate enough to always engage but so whimsically upbeat no one could feel challenged. So whether your first love is the post-rock crunch of Tortoise, the folk/jazz implosion of Four Tet or the quivering electro/rock of The Album Leaf, prepare to meet your new sweetheart.

(Other Electricities)

Various – On Isolation

In our file-sharing, instant messaging, cell phone-clutching modern world we are suffused with the illusion that the boundaries between humans are melting away and we are growing into tribally interconnected and enlightened societal supergroups. Or perhaps that’s just bullshit. Australia’s Room40 and the University of Tasmania collaborated in soliciting audio artwork that illustrates the flipside of this interplay: the silences and solitudes that individuals experience in the wake of globalism’s information bulldozer. Many of the artists on the compilation had already produced work immersed in the alienated end of digital minimalism: notably Richard Chartier (who also designed the sleeve) whose “A Field for Recordings 3” is a slowly creeping mass of sub-audio noise that eventually reveals itself, like the sudden surprise that your computer is a noisy dangerous animal. The other pieces waver between two basic approaches: David Toops’ “Chair Creaks, Though No One Sits There” and Scanner’s “Mountain Cabin” combine field recordings and music to evoke aural melancholy in a somewhat traditional trope; while Jeph Jerman’s “Albuquerque Hotel Room” and Greg Davis’ “Riwalla Farm (Excerpt)” reside in naturally occurring near-silences presumably far removed from technology’s empty chatter. Whether the compilation provokes though or merely more background noise perhaps has to do with each listener’s indoctrination into the machinery.

(Room40)

Lichens – Omns

Robert Lowe’s second Lichens disc for Kranky finds him pouring vocal descant over fragile guitar notes in the same small, enclosed space as 2005’s The Psychic Nature of Being… though it is a space someone has since let open to streams of dusty sunlight. The sheer simplicity of the music’s construction, keening loops of wordless vocal layered and embellished with iridescent fragments of folk/blues bars, belies their resultant complex emotional reach. The first two tracks, “Vevor of Agassou” and “Faeries” tremble like Medieval magic spells sung in foggy hollows. These spells are broken by “Bune,” a distorted electric wail that uncoils like Hendrix at his most introspective. The fragmentarily titled “M St R Ng W Tchcr Ft L V Ng N Sp R T” is appropriately broken into sections that move from gentle acoustic string bending to rising chord drones through flurries of birdcalls into a chant that drops from the nasal cavity and into the stomach. A welcome bonus is a thirty minute DVD that features an extended performance of this last mentioned piece at The Empty Bottle in Chicago. Lowe is deliberate and compelling figure on stage, placidly graduating from guitar to vocal loop and back until the once silent space is buzzing with his hymn.

(Kranky)

Valet – Blood is Clean

Honey Owens has explored freak folk, electronics and psychedelic improv as a collaborating member of Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nudge and World (respectively). Going solo in Valet she unleashes her subconscious, letting it steer her into some otherworldly spaces. The landscape is the audio analogue of some funky 70s Dr. Strange astral projection, with effervescent guitars, bubbling digitalis and voodoo hand drums. If you listen carefully you can almost hear the bead curtains rattling in the warm breeze. Blood is Clean is the light-streaked cousin to last years Evangeline by Carla Bozulich, though not without its own shadows and smeared lipstick. It often resembles a machine just barely under its operator’s control, as on opener “April 6” and closer “North.” The former starts as a simple chant and hand drum pattern complicated by electricity, while the latter is a dark koan that slowly stretches upward into a Zen drone. The title track is nearest to overt songwriting and features a tiny lysergic guitar solo that would freak out any Mother. Each of the eight tracks offers a slight twist in the high; a brief station stop to ponder the colours and tastes of the sounds.

(Kranky)

My Cat is an Alien – Leave me in the black No-Thing

Concurrently with a solo work by Roberto Opalio, Important also release another emanation from the “Alien Zone” in Italy that Roberto and his brother Maurizio prowl as My Cat is an Alien. Where Roberto’s disc is a hushed affair, MCIAA unleash the full force of their cosmic and astral noise. After a salutation equal parts chanting and white shriek they retreat to their percussion instruments with all the glee of a spastic (i.e. rhythmically challenged) kindergarten class recital. The disjunctive banging grows tedious, but is thankfully replaced by a frequency-shifting chant/drone generated by voice and “space toys” that finally lifts off the roof and peers into the cosmos. The second half of the thirty minute track plunges headlong into the void with shuddering abandon that most interstellar of overdrives would never attempt. The second, slightly shorter, part builds around clusters of electric guitar notes that are strummed, looped, and eventually obliterated by debris and space winds. The duo stick to their no overdub, no outtake formula of live in-studio improvisation, but with a methodology and tools that are recycled the experimentation begins to go to formula. There is a purity in their primitive-slash-futurist aesthetic that yields transcendent moments; moments that make it worth waiting out the tedium.

Important Records

Roberto Opalio – “Chants from Isolated Ghosts”

As the oft-quoted Spinal Tap saying outlines the “clever-stupid” dialectic, so it also goes in experimental music that a fine line exists between engaging and annoying. Italy’s brothers Opalio, better know as My Cat is an Alien, arguably have unlimited passports to criss-cross this line with their whimsical take on space(y) rock. On his first solo outing, originally self-released on their Opax CD-R label, brother Roberto carries on the family tradition of improvising spacious and droning themes made from cheap looped electronics, metallic objects and toy rayguns. Recorded in single takes, the pieces have a meandering quality that fortunately keeps to the “engaging” side of the border, for the most part. The spectral quality, evident in the album’s title, is sustained through sounds that suggest residual energy in empty rooms that collide against the objects… rattling their chains in other words. This spent and evaporating force echoes through the deliberately restrained pace and limited variety of sounds. The last track is a literal chant performed mournfully and accompanied only by an open window allowing the sound of rain, traffic and distant thunder to enter.

Important Records

Mika Vainio – Revitty

So you’re immersed in a five thousand gallon sensory deprivation tank with a hammerhead shark, Natalie Imbruglia and a handheld power sander, what do you do? If you’re Pan Sonic’s Mika Vainio you make an album whose title translates as Torn. Perhaps Miss Imbruglia’s involvement is more figurative than actual, but the albums focus does interpose actual shark attacks with more existential ennui. Three shorter pieces concerning “hampaat,” or teeth, introduce short bursts of electronic violence separated by lulls that become less frequent and silent as blood clouds the water. Each piece increases the menace with more graphic colour and sweeping passes of noise. The emotional elements of the album are given ample space on “yksinäisyys, suru, katkeruus,” or loneliness, sorrow, bitterness; a track that plunges us in a vast metallic enclosure with a mournfully grating cymbal as our only friend. “Raatelu,” or mauling, follows with a compression of themes that culminates in post-Neubaten grind of distorted guitar and bass pulses shot through with digital noise. At its core Revitty fulfills a horror-story narrative with twists and tensions that suggest fantasy before unleashing real gut-churning terror… and of course a last second shock as the album ends. Vainio will be indispensible should the Saw movie goons every remake Jaws.

Wavetrap

Eluvium – Copia

Matthew Cooper has released a series of excellent and well-received works as Eluvium over the last few years. Most recently the When I Live By the Garden e.p. served as both summary and introduction to his overall sound. Copia starts off promisingly with “Amreik,” a gentle reveille reminiscent of Johann Johannson’s Virdulu Forsetar, and “Indoor swimming at the space station,” a familiar building processional of piano and synthesizer. The next suite of tracks, however, veers into a kind of melancholy torpor that resembles over-wetted themes by Angelo Badalamenti. The synth strings are too synthetic and the tone suggests an absurdly abject Laura Palmer must hide behind a nearby shrub. The album recoups itself with the last four tracks, especially “Reciting the airships” and “Repose in blue,” that reintroduce dynamics and diversity drained out of the album’s middle section. Cooper’s strengths, his ability to overlay gentle and stately strings, piano figures and drones into elegiac themes, also contribute to some limitations that begin to peek through. The illusion of the pieces being overheard, fading in at approach… existing for the duration of our listening… fading out as we exit, loses charm as the strategy repeats itself. No one wants to only see small mammals pulled from top hats for an entire evening no matter how magical the first time.

Temporary Residence

Pixel – set your center between your parts in order to

Yet another fine release from this German label that continues to explore and build within their signature sound. Jon Egeskov takes an ultra-minimalist sound set of clicks, slurs and whispery tones into live in-studio improvisation. The extended duration of the five pieces allows a slow build that initially resembles the more clinical restraint of Ryojo Ikeda’s work before introducing overlapping and competing rhythms. By the last minutes of opener “drum” the patterns take on a strange digital drum circle vibe seldom encountered in this airless environment. The real-time manipulation of minimalist elements subtly subverts a genre that usually derives strength and discourse through its dogged repetitions and slight variations. Egeskov’s background in jazz imbues a peculiar looseness to the wholly artificial noises creating a head-nodding rhythm normally only derived from “real” drums and “real” basslines. More ephemeral sound clusters, or clouds, float in and out of range like horn players sidling up to the mic to take breathy solos, as in “lion.” Whether this signals a new wave of “Funky Drummer” breaks due around 2025 remains to be seen.

Raster-Noton

Mark Templeton – Standing on a Hummingbird

Those familiar with the granular acoustics of Tim Hecker, Fennesz and Mitchell Akiyama will find safe harbour in this new label’s introductory release. Albertan Mark Templeton’s palette starts with the guitar, banjo and accordion, all of which quickly discorporate and enter a new digital eminence of colours. Edits are extreme in their detail yet an unhurried calm governs each track. Pieces like “Pigeon Hurt” and the title track make halting progress as each chord and string is made to stutter and backtrack before pushing on. Still progress is always present in the ghostly pulse of song structure that sends signals from various depths. Templeton is equally attentive to the digital overflow of accidents from over amplification and dangling shards of trimmed noises. He skillfully folds these into the mix along with incidental room sounds to blur the inside computer/outside world distinctions. While comparisons to the above mentioned artists are easy to make, this work is seldom predictable. Templeton manages to create work that follows feverish dream logic, with colours that brighten and suddenly fade and details that transfigure without altering their basic character. A welcome addition to the canon.

Anticipate

Carlos Giffoni – Arrogance

Breaking its vinyl only streak, Brooklyn’s No Fun Productions commits to aluminum a five-part ode to analog noise. Giffoni, who has worked with Fe-Mail, Jim O’Rourke, Prurient and in the group Death Unit, spent downtime in 2006 improvising these pieces in his apartment on his analog synth. Those expecting warm clouds and clever squiggles will encounter instead walls of oscillating white noise and what sounds like a submarine crippled by depth charges nearing the ocean floor. And so much for track one. Arrogance crosses thresholds of saturation more than those of volume, inducing a slight auditory nausea long before tinnitus would take hold. The rumble never settles on one frequency or density, the result of which is like a hit and run reversing to take another crack. Giffoni wrings everything he can out of his keyboards, until he reaches the denouement, appropriately titled “A Proper End.”

No Fun Productions

Prurient – Pleasure Ground

Those of a certain age may recall their first exposure to extreme music came in the form of groups like Skinny Puppy. We were confident we’d unlocked doom in cassette form until oddly shorn and black turtlenecked characters thrust earlier works by Test Dept., Nurse With Wound and others into our hands. Prurient’s Dominick Fernow makes music that resembles an aluminum suitcase jammed with those same tapes that have spent the last twenty years in a deep lake before being pulled to the surface by magnets. The four tracks on Pleasure Ground were initially (and all too appropriately) released as a double cassette on Hospital Productions. With the exception of “outdoorsman/indestructible,” which features a sickly off-kilter but mostly subdued keyboard pattern, the album is a gray-zone distorted eruption of bile and dank atmosphere. Fernow growls and shouts from beneath a collapsing wall of keyboards that sound near extinction. Like those forebears mentioned above, the anger within the music seem less a call to action than a cry of frustration. What makes the tension real is how acceptable and ultimately calming it becomes.

Load

Xela – For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights

The four years since Type label boss John Twells’ initially released his debut full length have been intriguing for the electronic music world. A slow dissolving of checkmark genres have left behind an aesthetic that’s difficult to summarize. Having moved even further from the dance floor, new electronic works are often held together by the poetry of tone. Frosty Mornings sits comfortably alongside up-to-the-moment releases, contrasting with last year’s more individual, dense and frankly menacing The Dead Sea. It also hints at Twells’ points of entrance through the digital looking glass. “Japanese Whispers” has a slightly retro sound that runs a shiver between a snail’s pace trance and hip-hop backbeat. “The Long Walk Home at Midnight” also threads together Mille Plateaux/Raster-Noton clicks and pops with a cool after-afterhours jazziness. The reissue also compliments Type’s growing catalogue of releases that highlight individual visions over collective solidarity. Twells’ is a fine label boss to lead by setting the example of “no example necessary.”

Type

Surgery 44

Helios - Ayres (Type)
A Perfect Friend - A Perfect Friend (Stilll)
Hans Appelqvist - Sifantin Och Mörkret (Häpna)
Morgan Packard - Airships Fill The Sky (Anticipate)
Ultralyd - Conditions For A Piece Of Music (Rune Grammofon)
KTL - Ktl 2 (Editions Mego)
Night Of The Brain – Wear This World Out (Station 55)
The Grails – Burning Off the Impurities (Temporary Residence)
The World On Higher Downs - Land Patterns (Plop)
Fridge – Sun (Temporary Residence)
Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek - Cello Recycling/Cello Drowning (Type)

Track Listing

Helios - A Rising Wind
A Perfect Friend - Welcome Aboard
Hans Appelqvist - Full The Moon
Morgan Packard - Kelp Sway
Ultralyd - Pentassonance I
KTL - Game (edit)
Night of the Brain - Above And Beyond
The Grails - Dead Vine Blues
The World On Higher Downs - Her Static Will
Fridge - Our Place In This
Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek - Cello Recycling (edit)

Listen to Surgery 44 click here

Surgery 43

Porn Sword Tobacco - New Exclusive Olympic Heights (City Center Offices)
Zelienople - His/Hers (Type)
Nicolas Bernier + Jacques Poulin-Denis - Étude No.3 Pour Cordes Et Poulies (Ekumen)
Kahn/Mölang/Müller - Signal to Noise Vol. 3 (Erstwhile)
Destructo Swarmbots - Clear Light (Public Guilt)
Drawing Voices – S/T (HydraHead)
Erik M (Luc Ferrari) & Thomas Lehn - Les Protorythmiques (Room40)
Korber/Weber/Yamauchi - Signal to Noise Vol. 2 (Erstwhile)
Alog – Amateur (Rune Grammofon)

Track Listings

Porn Sword Tobacco - Do The Astrowaltz
Zelienople - Forced March
Nicolas Bernier + Jacques Poulin-Denis - Sol
Kahn/Mölang/Müller - Track 03
Destructo Swarmbots - Sipping On The Fog
Drawing Voices - Being Born Broken
Erik M (Luc Ferrari) & Thomas Lehn - Les Protorythmiques (excerpt)
Korber/Weber/Yamauchi - Track 02 (excerpt)
Alog - The Future Of Norwegian Wood

Listen to Surgery 43 click here

Surgery 42

Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Jinx (Staubgold)
Maserati - Inventions for a New Season (Temporary Residence)
Andrew Pekler - Cue (Kranky)
Panda Bear - Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
Machinefabriek - Weeler (Lanpse)
Strategy - Future Rock (Kranky)
Theodore And Hamblin - The Scientific Contrast (Moteer)
The North Sea - Exquisite Idols (Type)
Opsvik & Jennings - Commuter Anthems (Rune Grammofon)
Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan - Pullhair Rubeye (Paw Tracks)
L-R / RadioMentale - I Could Never Make That Music Again (Sub Rosa)
Guitar - Dealin With Signal And Noise (Onitor)
Marhaug/Asheim - Grand Mutation (Touch)
White/Lichens - White/Lichens (Holy Mountain)

Track Listing

Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Gammler, Zen & Hohe Berge
Maserati - Kalimera
Andrew Pekler - Roomsound
Panda Bear - Search For Delicious
Machinefabriek - Chinese Unpopular Song
Strategy - Stops Spinning
Theodore and Hamblin - Pelume
The North Sea - Eternal Birds
Opsvik & Jennings - Port Authority
Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan - Who Welsses In My Hoff
RadioMentale - 'Cool Noises'
Guitar - Song Without Signal
Marhaug/Asheim - Clavaeolina (excerpt)
White/Lichens - Cimejes, Or Cimeies, Or Kimares (excerpt)

Listen to Surgery 42 click here

Surgery 41

Artanker Convoy - Cozy Endings (Social Registry)
The Binary Marketing Show - Destruction of Your Own Creation (Independent)
Calexico - Black Heart [EP] (City Slang)
Alessandro Stefana - Poste E Telegrafi (Important)
Arve Henriksen - Strjon (Rune Grammofon)
Takeshi Nishimoto - Monologue (Büro)
Alan Sparhawk - Solo Guitar (Silber)
Thilges - La Double Absence (Staubgold)
Senking - List (Raster-Noton)
Naw - City Saturate (Noise Factory)
Organ Eye - S/T (Stabugold)

Track Listing

Artanker Convoy - Open Up
The Binary Marketing Show - Moreover (The Tip of His Finger)
Calexico - Attack El Robot Attack! (... And How He Lost RMX By Wechel Garland)
Alessandro Stefana - Whales Cemetery
Arve Henriksen - Ascent
Takeshi Nishimoto - New Morning
Alan Sparhawk - Sagrado Corazon De Jesu (First Attempt)
Thilges - Izdiucz
Senking - Pathogenic Agent
Naw - 5 AM East Bound
Organ Eye - TEMA #1 (excerpt)

Listen to Surgery 41 click here

Surgery 40

Aarktica - Bleeding Light (Darla)
Oval - Dok (Thrill Jockey)
Stars Of The Lid - Music For Nitrous Oxide (Sedimental)
Giuseppe Ielasi - Gesine (Häpna)
Loren MazzaCane Connors & Jim O'Rourke - In Bern (Hat Noir)
Stephen Vitiello - Bright And Dusty Things (New Albion)
Aix Em Klemm - S/T (Kranky)
Autistic Daughters - Jealousy and Diamond (Kranky)
Dorine Muraille - Mani (FatCat)
Sylvain Chauveau - Un Autre Décembre (FatCat/130701)
Codeine - Frigid Stars (Sub Pop)
The Besnard Lakes - Volume 1 (Independent)

Track Listing

Aarktica - Twilight insecta
Oval - Bloc
Stars Of The Lid - Goodnight
Giuseppe Ielasi - Gesine IV
Loren MazzaCane Connors & Jim O'Rourke - Now Who Are These Guys?
Stephen Vitiello - Odyssey Guitar Solo
Aix Em Klemm - The Luxury Of Dirt
Autistic Daughters - The Glasshouse And The Gift-Horse
Dorine Muraille - Dans Ton Doki
Sylvain Chauveau - La Lettre Qu'il N'Envoya Jamais
Codeine - Old Things
The Besnard Lakes - This Thing

Listen to Surgery 40 click here

Surgery 39

Small Sails - Similar Anniversaries (Other Electricities)
Do Make Say Think - You, You're A History In Rust (Constellation)
Lichens - Omns (Kranky)
Various - On Isolation (Room40)
alva noto - Xerrox Vol.1 (Raster-Noton)
Rameses III - Honey Rose (Important)
P.O.W.E.R. - Tomahawk Territory (Tour de Bras)
Freedman/Darling/Labrosse/Dionne - Dix Situations Précaires (Tour de Bras)
Melanie Auclair - Décor Sonore (Ambiances Magnetiques)
Koch-Schütz-Studer - Tales From 30 Unintentional Nights (Intakt)

Track listing

Small Sails - No Spirit Animal
Do Make Say Think - A Tender History In Rust
Lichens - Bune
Steinbruchel - Mono
alva noto - Haliod_Xerrox_Copy_6
Rameses III - Theme III
P.O.W.E.R. - Bordeaux
Freedman/Darling/Labrosse/Dionne - Avoir froid aux yeux
Melanie Auclair - Rizieres
Koch-Schütz-Studer - 9/23 (For Sonja)

Listen to Surgery 39 click here

Surgery 38

Christ. - Blue Shift Emissions. (Benbecula)
Pole - Steingarten (~Scape)
Damero - Happy In Grey (bPitch)
Neon Tetra - Home (Noise Factory)
Mark Templeton - Standing On A Hummingbird (Anticipate)
Valet - Blood Is Clean (Kranky)
Appliance - Imperial Metric (Mute)
Pixel - Set Your Center Between Your Parts In Order To (Raster-Noton)
Mika Vainio - Revitty (Wavetrap)
Laurie Anderson - Home Of The Brave (Warner)

Track Listing:

Christ. - Stained Century
Pole - Mädchen
Damero - Capricorn Saltlick Ft. Zander VT
Neon Tetra - Soya
Mark Templeton - Tentative Growth
Valet - Sade 4 Bri
Appliance - Where Has The Space Race Gone?
Pixel - Drum
Mika Vainio - Yksinäisyys, Suru, Katkeruus
Laurie Anderson - White Lily

Listen to Surgery 38 click here

Surgery 37

Low - Drums And Guns (Sub Pop)
Tortoise - A Lazarus Taxon (Thrill Jockey)
Beirut - Lon Gisland EP (Ba Da Bing)
The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (Outside)
Jackie-O-Motherfucker - Flags of the Sacred Harp (ATP)
Extra Golden - Ok-Oyot System (Thrill Jockey)
Damien Jurado - Now that I'm in Your Shadow (Secretly Canadian)
Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid Of You... (Matador)
White Magic - Dat Rosa Mel Apibus (Drag City)
Ateleia - Formal Sleep (Table of the Elements)
Stars Of The Lid - And Their Refinement Of The Decline (Kranky)

Track Listing

Low - Breaker
Tortoise - CTA
Beirut - Scenic World
The Besnard Lakes - Because Tonight
Jackie-O Motherfucker - Hey Mr Sky
Extra Golden - Osama Rach
Damien Jurado - Montesano
Yo La Tengo - Daphnia
White Magic - The Light
Ateleia - Formal Barrier
Stars of the Lid - Tippy's Demise

Listen to Surgery 37 click here

Surgery 36

Hot on the heels of yesterday's recap:

Lithops – Queries (Sonig)
Jeffrey Bützer - She Traded Her Leg (Lona)
Huntsville - For the Middle Class (Rune Grammofon)
Eluvium – Copia (Temporary Residence)
In the Country - Losing Stones, Collecting Bones (Rune Grammofon)
Roberto Opalio - Chants from Isolated Ghosts (Important)
My Cat is an Alien - Leave me in the black No-Thing (Important)
Greg Davis & Steven Hess - Decisions (Longbox)
Aethenor - Deep in Ocean Sunk, the Lamp of Light (VHF)
Denzel & Huhn - Paraport (City Centre Offices)
Donnacha Costello - 6X6 (Minimise)

Track Listing

Lithops - Moggast
Jeffrey Bützer - An Eskimo's Dream
Huntsville – Melon
Eluvium – Ostinato
In the Country - Medicine Waltz
Roberto Opalio - Track 04
My Cat is an Alien - Part Two
Greg Davis & Steven Hess - 060303
Aethenor - The Cloudy Vale of Night
Denzel & Huhn - Paraport
Donnacha Costello - Rsistence


Listen to Surgery 36 click here

Surgery 35

A little 2006 recap before we start a fresh batch of 2007. Here are tracks from some of Surgery's favourite releases of 2006:

Marsen Jules - Datura
...from Les Fleurs (City Center Offices)
Mapstation - Valencia Was Asleep
...from Distance Told Me Things to Be Said (~Scape)
Donato Wharton - Blue Skied Demon
...from Body Isolations (City Center Offices)
The Gentlemen Losers - Horses of Instruction
...from The Gentlemen Losers (Buro)
One Second Bridge - Take Me to the Moon
...from One Second Bridge (Buro)
Ezekiel Honig - Concrete and Plastic
...from Scattered Practices (Microcosm)
Loscil - Zephyr
...from Plume (Kranky)
Hanno Leichtmann - Wind
...from Nuit du Plomb (Karaoke Kalk)
Chihei Hatakeyama - Inside of the Pocket
...from Minima Moralia (Kranky)
Dictaphone - Ytinav
...from Vertigo (City Center Offices)
Benoit Pioulard - Patter
...from Precis (Kranky)
Tim Hecker - Chimeras
...from Harmony in Ultraviolet (Kranky)
Robert Henke - Layer 02
...from Jukebox Buddha (Various Artists) (Staubgold)
Boduf Songs - Two Across the Mouth
...from Lion Devours the Sun (Kranky)

Listen to Surgery 35 click here

Surgery 34

Kilo - Kilo (Onitor)
Bj Nilsen/Chris Watson - Storm (Touch)
Oren Ambarchi - Suspension (Touch)
Hecker - Recordings for Rephlex (Rephlex)
Rosy Parlane - Jessamine (Touch)
BAJA - Maps/Systemalheur (Stilll)
Janek Schaefer - In The Last Hour (Room40)
Charlemagne Palestine/Tony Conrad - An Aural Symbiotic Mystery (Sub Rosa)
KTL - KTL (Mego)
Xela - For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights (Type)

Track Listing

Kilo - I've Seen You At The Supermarket
Bj Nilsen/Chris Watson - SIGWX (excerpt)
Oren Ambarchi - This Evening So Soon
Hecker - Acid 245; Ph.Inv 9T2
Rosy Parlane - Part One (excerpt)
BAJA - Breakfast With Hostages
Janek Schaefer - Between The Two
Charlemagne Palestine/Tony Conrad - An Aural Symbiotic Mystery (excerpt)
KTL - Forest Floor 4
Xela - An Abandoned Robot

Listen to Surgery 34 click here

Surgery 33

To Rococo Rot - Taken from Vinyl (Staubgold)
Geir Jenssen - Cho Oyu 8201m: Field Recordings From Tibet (Ash International)
Christopher Willits - Surf Boundaries (Ghostly International)
Dollboy - Casual Nudism (Arable)
Solo Andata - Fyris Swan (Hefty)
[etre] - A Post-Fordist Parade in the Strike of Events (Baskaru)
Various - Thankful (Temporary Residence)
Jan Jelinek - Tierbeobachtungen (~Scape)
Conjoint - A Few Empty Chairs (Büro)
The London Sinfonietta - Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters (Warp)
Various - Project Bicycle (Ache)
Rauhan Orkessteri & Lauhkeat Lampaat - Sylissain Oot (Ache)
Scott Solter - Canonic (Hometapes)

Track Listing

To Rococo Rot - Days between stations
Geir Jenssen - Camp 1.5: Mountain Upon Mountain
Christopher Willits - Colors Shifting
Dollboy - Pauline's Shades
Solo Andata - Coastal Road Thoughts
[etre] - Dogs From My Childhood: Multiple White
Eluvium - Carousel
Jan Jelinek - Happening Tone
Conjoint - Conjoint With Clarity
London Sinfonietta - Aphex Twin Prepared Piano Piece 2
Tu M' - Ladri Di Biciclette
Rauhan Orkessteri & Lauhkeat Lampaat - Bile-Kalkkuna
Scott Solter - Witkin Dub

Listen to Surgery 33 click here

Steffen Basho-Junghans – Late Summer Morning

On 2004 album 7 Books, also on Strange Attractors, Basho-Junghans explored a more aggressive and diffident approach to his steel string acoustic guitar play. This album turns a gentler cheek back to a pastoral mode of 2003’s Rivers and Bridges. The long title track that opens the album wanders and tentatively contemplates trills and echoes before gradually giving over to an ecstasy of vibrating overtones that verges on airborne. Likewise, “Woodland Orchestra” collects a veritable hive of zings and stings. Often compared to John Fahey, this album eschews that master’s blues bending and terse changes for a more straightforward and expletive-free vocabulary. The brightest end of the rainbow and where it lands seems to most preoccupy the musical spectrum here. The ever-forward bouncing chords, played without pause, risks slight muscular strain on necks from head bobbing and ankles from toe tapping, but it’s a risk most will like take without qualm.

Strange Attractors

Janek Schaefer – In the Last Hour

Finding titles for its four tracks from a sentence in the novel The Bridge by Iain Banks, this hour long live performance by Schaefer is nothing short of stunning. Commissioned by and performed at U.K.’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November of 2005, the work was conceived for an eight speaker system in the majestic, domed Town Hall. Schaefer, who is primarily known for his forward-looking turntable work, here expands instrumentation to include chord organ, piano, clarinet, location recordings and the hall’s own native organ. Schaefer claims to have gather the source sounds over a period of three years in preparation for a piece to suit Banks’ line, “In the last hour, between the two, half submerged by each, the ruined city.” Opening with repeated slow organ swells and the sinister sounds of digging, the performance progress through a chart of sacred and profane devotions. The slow changes, from organ drone to hints of forest life to distant human noises all rising combing and receding are so gradually immersive that it borders on hypnotic. From within this altered listening state seemingly benign and moderate themes gain an unexpected emotional charge. Without a firm didactic hand Schaefer still guides the experience like a hushed sound tour of a slightly darkened and water-warped English hamlet. To hear it from recorded distance is breathtaking, to have been present for the performance was doubtlessly sublime.

Room40

Solo Andata – Fyris Swan

Long distance relationships seldom work. Seldom, but not never. Solo Andata is a collaboration between guitarist Kane Ilkin and laptop artist Paul Fiacco. The two met in Perth, Australia after Ilkin moved there and began perusing the “scene.” A common interest in the work of then-rising star Scott Herren (Savath & Savalas, Prefuse 73) led them to unsuccessfully attempt emulation of his hip-hop meets table top jazz style. Fiacco eventually moved to Stockholm, Sweden and it is ironically the separation that helped the duo come together musically. Fyris Swan sounds like a meandering Sunday afternoon telephone conversation that circles half thoughts and familiar vernacular that seem faintly arcane to eavesdroppers. Ilkin’s acoustic guitar is doubled and tripled in places to knit gentle plucks and scherzo that skip from ear to ear. Fiacco pulls together drones, room sounds, concertina breaths and static in kinetic but fairly spacious mixes. The slowed nature of the file sharing process allows a much more deliberate and contemplative placing of ideas and layers, though they avoid any sterility this might incur. If the best moments of The Books were decaffeinated you would have Solo Andata.

Hefty

(Etre) – A Post-Fordist Parade in the Strike of Events

The acceleration of panic rushing from room to room as you frantically search for the microwave that’s melting down, the television shooting sparks, the light bulb sizzling its incandescent death knell… that’s what opens Salvatore Borrelli’s new work as (Etre). A certain strain of Italian audio art seems to suffer/benefit from a Futurism hangover. It proposes a machine-generative music set in motion then left unguided by human hands. A language of modem chirps and distorted voices issued from wax cylinders mixed with errant snatches of radio broadcast and spent mainspring percussion. The pieces also relate to Borrelli’s performance background that often involves real time manipulations and amplification of seemingly silent rooms or common objects and elements such as fire, ice, glass, chemicals. “Real” instruments become the less-than-simple machines that unexpectedly drift into the noisy fray. Borrelli guides us into the gyre of this tornado and lets the wind do its work.

Baskaru

Shedding – What God Doesn’t Bless...

Having made little ripples with post-rock group Parlour (Temporary Residence), Connor Bell eventually stepped out of the shallow water and into the deep end of solo work as Shedding. What God Doesn’t Bless… is his second release and it’s a quiet, seeking and delicate work stretched over three long tracks more indebted to European lowercase jazz and electronics improv that algebraic rhythms. Bell cites Eric Dolphy as a major influence, especially the jazz clarinetist’s own abiding interest in the sound of birds and the natural world as they relate to composition. The sound of Shedding is, appropriately, an unlayering of musical strata down to the bedrock where it’s organizing principles sunder, leaving unbound sounds to trail off seeking new relationships. A more traditional framework of drums (by Joey Yates) and bass open and enclose track 2, “W,” before dropping away to leave behind an elemental drone adorned by cuckooing electronics. The album closes with a tortuous electronic threadwork that describes an arid. rolling landscape with lowing notes and the grain of air. Bell manages to effectively improvise with himself in a rich exploratory manner.

Hometapes

Scott Solter – Canonic

Strange beast this; half man/half band… new, but old… confusing, at first. The root notes come from a 2005 album called Stowaway by the band Pattern is Movement, a quartet from Philadelphia. Half of this six track e.p. reintroduces the band and the album, revealing them to be a slightly more angular and/or muscular version of dexterous rock groups like Pinback and Wooden Stars. The other half of the equation is Scott Solter, credited with “machines, grease, razor and tape.” Solter takes his toolbox to the band tracks and origamis them into a stranger folded creature. His iterations are not standard remixes, splitting whole chunks of original work off and re-ordering them, distorting them, adding noise and ghost rhythms. The closest analog would be the Faust Tapes, re-interpretations of the German bands first two albums, but this time by an outside source more eager to add a personal stamp. The new tracks are shorter, restlessly changing tempos and density, lapsing in and out of sharp focus. Solter seems as happy to obfuscate the source as throw it in sharp relief. The two halves of the whole e.p. are free standing, but wires and vines weave the structures together.

Hometapes

Donato Wharton – Body Isolations

Isolation in this case has less to do with loneliness than with closed-circuit attention to detail. Wharton’s second full length takes its title from a dancer’s exercises in communication through all parts of a whole, an idea suited to his melodically rich and systematically diverse compositions. Tracks like “Blue Skied Demon” invite investigation into the accrued corrosion of texture and reverberation of surfaces via guitar shapes. On the other hand “Transparencies” lays bare, simple guitar and piano notes next to each other and examines their subtle interplay. With “Puget Sound” and “The End of the American Century” both elements come together in simplicity of tone that wearily beckons before shaking of highway dust and telling spellbound tales. Wharton has that rare gift for enclosing melody within fragments of sound that collide and recombine within each sphere of song. Each listener enjoys unique experiences depending on their concentration. Like suddenly discovering a map’s atomic landscape through a microscope.

City Centre Offices

Dead Voices on Air – From Labrador to Madagascar

Mark Spybey is a veteran of the psychic wars that were the 80s and 90s industrial, post-industrial, darkwave, etc. electronic scenes. Having logged hours with latter day Zoviet France and Skinny Puppy offshoot Download, it has always been his solo DVOA project that has yielded the most interesting results. Spybey, like fellow travelers Mick Harris and Justin Broadrick, has usually managed to steer clear of most grand guignol (and cheddar-smelling) aspects of industrial music. From Labrador to Madagascar, the first DVOA since a 2001 live effort, stays the ambient course for the long-running project. Rudderless drones are spiked with bobbing metal percussion and uneasy atmospherics suggesting all manner of phobia. Title tracks “Labrador” feature a warm hand-thrumming drum circle vibe while “Madagascar” is a sky of gunmetal scraped by chrome seagulls. The latter tracks, “Papa Papa Nesh” and “Splay” lapse into a more stock version of menace and threat, turning the clock back a couple of decades. Despite that DVOA sits in an interesting pocket where its weather beaten features render it timeless. Spybey makes no attempts to retool his palette to suit any of the newly mushroomed subgenres of electronics, but new classes have admittedly strayed into the edges of his playground.

Invisible

Svalastog – Woodwork

Tromsø, Norway… population 50000… would seem to have some native energy that powers experimental musicians. Biosphere, Alog and Röyksopp have all exported their own versions of winter-warmed electronics and are now joined by Per Henrik Svalastog. On his second solo full length he explores the traditional sounds of his remote home, using Harpeleik (Norwegian zither), Bukkehorn (ram’s horn) and Kuhorn (cow’s horn) as source instruments. Opener “the wood metal friction” introduces these sounds with a fanfare that is soon recast into a marching lope of bass pulses and seesawing strings. While Svalastog never masks or pitch shifts the original tonality, he is fairly liberal is his cutting and ordering of blocks. The tracks have a mantra-like quality, with the zither strings clipped and interlocking into regular measures and the horns blunted into bass notes. The result is the kind of microHouse you might expect in the most modern of mead halls. Ultimately Woodwork is a remarkably pure and simple synthesis of temporally discrete elements. The hills may soon be alive with laptops recording the horns of Ricola barkers and Balalaikas ringing out.

Rune Grammofon

Xela - The Dead Sea

After a stretch of remarkable releases by a disparate group of artists, Type label boss John Twells turns out his own most recent recording as Xela, his third overall. Referencing Italian horror film soundtracks and with a distant kinship to current doom and noise-laden sound merchants, Twells’ work is suggestive rather than blatantly flashing sharp knives in dark corners. He manages this way to sustain a low ebb of dread. The ramshackle clatter of percussion has a Tom Waits-in-Venice undertow, the perfect accompaniment for bobbing helpless as your ship disintegrates. Sounds and instruments often pull apart from set keys and times suggesting a band drifting apart on floating debris. The album’s narrative tension breaks for brief moments of light and hope like the acoustic jaunt of “Wet Bones” or the faux-heroic accordion parade of “Savage Rituals.” These sounds of salvation are soon drowned out by clanking chains, lonely buoy bells and “Sinking Cadavers.” Twells attention to detail verges on electroacoustic constructivism without sacrificing the musical thread, like a film’s music and sound design sliding together seamlessly. Xela’s nautical horror show is best listened to while safely landlocked.

Type Recordings

Various-Jukebox Buddha

It begins with a device so unobtrusive, so uncomplicated, so simple that it should occupy only backgrounds and peripheral space. The Buddha Machine was a limited run 8-bit electronic doohickey programmed with 9 lo-fi sound loops… a little plastic anti-iPod if you will. A year later, following effusive praise by Brian Eno, a troop of artists have taken the little Buddha as an objet d’art and the basis for 15 remarkably diverse extrapolations. ON-U Sound kingpins Sherwood and Wimbish build a crawling granular chant underwritten with in-house bass rhythms. Monolake’s Robert Henke, who has made a whole Buddha-centric album, creates looming waves of sound that threaten sudden unresolved impacts. Fonal records’ sound and film artist Es enjoys the close kinship the loops have to his own particle washes of drone. ~Scape technicians Jelinek, Pekler and Leichtmann commercialize the little box with tongues firmly planted in cheek. Sunn O))) unearth a dark little corner where AA batteries corrode and acid sears fingertips. Aki Onda, Blixa Bargeld, Alog, Sun City Girls and more unite through the possibility that Everything is Zen.

Staubgold

Surgery 32

Andrey Kiritchenko - True Delusion (Nexsound)
Boduf Songs - Lion Devours the Sun (Kranky)
Various - Jukebox Buddha (Staubgold)
Vedette - S/T (Stilll)
Svarte Greiner - Knive (Type)
Tod Dockstader - Aerial #3 (Sub Rosa)
A Taste of Ra - II (Häpna)
Mossa - Some Eat it Raw (Circus Company)
Tristeza - En Nuestro Desafio (Better Looking)
Reanimator - Special Powers (Community Library)
Chris Hebert - Mezzotint (Kranky)
Pan.American - For Waiting, For Chasing (Mosz)
Rafael Toral - Space (Staubgold)

Track Listing

Andrey Kiritchenko - November comes and squirrels fall in love
Boduf Songs - Please Ache for Redemptive
Es - Tietä Valojen Taa
Vedette - Seafoam Haze & Bees
Svarte Greiner - The Boat Was My Friend
Tod Dockstader - Descent
A Taste of Ra - The Fox and the Frog
Mossa - The Meat in You
Tristeza - Pildora Amargada
Reanimator - No Dancing
Chris Herbert - Chlorophyll
Pan.American - Are You Ready?
Rafael Toral - Untitled #1 (excerpt)

Listen to Surgery 32 click here