We’re almost convinced that rave is ready to hit its second wave real soon. Our evidence: Klaxons, the Brit-based psychedelic-punk-dance combo that covers old rave classics, producers Simian Mobile Disco, and Hypercolor-lovin’ art trio Paper Rad (who designed this month’s crazy cover). Also featured: Marcus Intalex, Macromantics, Busdriver, Green Velvet/Cajmere, Bonobo, Promoe, and Tommy Guerrero.
Candie Hank Groucho Running
Candie Hank is fucking crazy. From the frantic antics of album-opener “Invitation to Dance” to the elephant-on-a-tight rope sonic comedy of almost-closer “Contortion Two,” the latest from Patric Catani is a schizophrenic, wonderfully disheveled mess. Filled with plinky-plonk synth runs, outer-space circus themes, and flaming cartoon chases, Catani opts for a more slapstick approach to the techno-punk of his other gig, EC8OR. But this fun is just as smart as it is silly.
Arbouretum Rites of Uncovering
Signposts and Instruments opens Arbouretum’s Rites of Uncovering with a low rumble-the smooth, deep growl of a bass and fingers gently fretting a guitar. It’s a subtle start, but the song’s lurch comes off decidedly physical. Immediately, we realize that Baltimore’s Arbouretum creates songs to be felt. Then singer Dave Heumann’s round, whole-milk voice cuts through the weighty semi-silence, doing a perfect backstroke through the song’s guts. Borrowing from Will Oldham, Codeine, and Black Sabbath along the way, Heumann and his bandmates have created what can only be called the best doom-folk record of all time.
Wet Confetti Laughing, Gasping
Six years ago the words “Gang of Four” meant shit-nothin’ to anyone but hack music crits like us and the dorks behind the counter at your neighborhood record store. But in the post-Rapture world, the name gets dropped in press releases for fucking pop records. In the case of Wet Confetti, however, a Go4 mention makes sense-Dave Allen produced the band’s rollicking Laughing, Gasping, a totally fine, entirely okay, thoroughly passable slab of brooding p-punk that owes as much to the Gang as it does to modern acts like Pretty Girls Make Graves. Not bad but nothing special.
Various Artists Plant Music
When the bassline comes in on Mainline’s “Black Honey (Who Made Who Remix),” the lead track from Plant Music’s latest label-pimping comp, there’s enough muck and grime coating the notes to knock you on your ass. Then, just when it’s time to dust off and pick yourself up, Champagne’s fist-balling, run-in-place anthem “Mazatlan” powers through the chaos. Basically, the meaty basslines and wacko synth shootouts don’t relent on this one, leaving listeners in a pathetic heap and speakers buzzing for most of the affair.
Conjoin A Few Empty Chairs
Can jazz become too cool? Conjoint flirts with pussyfooting innocuousness, but ultimately stays on the right side of understatedly chill. On 2000’s Earprints, Conjoint dropped muted, electro-organic jazz that smudged noir soundtrack tropes into a vibrantly somber tone splash. A Few Empty Chairs-featuring Karl Berger, Jamie Hodge, David Moufang, and Gunther Ruit Kraus-doesn’t deviate much from that template. Berger’s vertebrae-tingling vibes and Kraus’ crystalline, pointillist guitar daub the foreground with gorgeous turquoise and magenta tones while Hodge and Moufang provide a foundation of subliminal funk. Imagine In A Silent Way performed by Nordic introverts. Cool, indeed.
Various Artists Jay Haze: Mindin Business Part 1-The Minimal Grind
The minimal-techno backlash is well underway, but Jay Haze’s 47-track Mindin Business Part 1 irrefutably proves that the genre has plenty of juice left. Disc One abounds with the kind of clever, cerebral techno that appeals to the style’s most discerning fans. Haze’s own unconventionally playful productions dominate, and standouts from Fuckpony, Dan Curtin, and Michael Ho weirdly tint the disc with psychedelic hues. Disc Two is a more song-oriented excursion, featuring many of the same characters from the first disc, plus show-stealers Samim & Michal. The adventurous party music holds sway, and nuttiness is just as prevalent.
Jan Jelinek Tierbeobachtungen
Jelinek’s Kosmischer Pitch was perhaps the ultimate homage to’70s Krautrock’s most expansive psychonauts (e.g., Harmonia, Sand, Ash Ra Tempel). On Tierbeobachtungen, Jelinek refines the techniques he deployed there to similarly time-traveling ends. All six pieces follow a similar M.O.: Jelinek painstakingly assembles infinitesimal scraps of sound (analog-synth irregularities, wisps of guitar feedback, warped bells) until they coalesce into epic, ever-intensifying psychedelic collages. In the process, phantom tones haunt his tracks’ peripheries, adding to the prevailing mood of momentous, ominous tension. What Jelinek accomplishes here is the sonic equivalent of constructing the Sistine Chapel from junkyard detritus.”
MV & EE With the Bummer Road Green Blues
Green Blues by MV (Matt Valentine) and EE (Erika Elder) is one of those albums you play before you go to sleep to downshift from the day’s hustle and drift off into gently surreal dreams. The duo and their Bummer Road conspirators evoke an ectoplasmic outline of rural blues rather than a literal excavation of it, as the disc’s seven long songs blissfully meander over spooky grounds. MV & EE fuse Grateful Dead’s laidback country blues revivalism with Royal Trux’s portentous acid folk in a reverent attempt to refit these venerable American genres to their own mystical specs.
T.Raumschmiere Random Noize Sessions Vol. 1
As a recording artist, T.Raumschmiere (Berlin’s Marco Haas) wears many hats-not just that trucker job he dons in his promo shots. Since 2000, he’s produced consistently interesting minimal techno, schaffel, gnarz, hip-hop, and ambient efforts. Here he digs 11 tracks-recorded from 1999-2005-out of his archives and they serve as an antidote to T.Raumschmiere’s misguided 2005 foray into electro-rock bluster, Blitzkrieg Pop. Random Noize is for heads who prefer Haas’ more cerebral excursions into Porter Ricks-like heroin house, Raster-Noton-esque micro-funk, and glitchy, ominous sci-fi soundtrack atmospheres. Some of his most intriguing work yet.
