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

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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)

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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)

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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


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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)

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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

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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

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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