Regler [8mm]

thewindow   5/9/2014   A Library

Regel #1 (White Side) is an sidelong anarcho-spiritual cacophony. It is the noise punk analogue to what Sunn0)) is to doom metal: all of the noise, dissonance and tempo of their respective genres distilled into a radical, transcendental sonic world of infinite intricacies.

Regel # 2 (Black Side) is the complete antithesis of Regel #1. It is so close to silence, that it is arguably a 4???33 remix. The are brief glimmers of drums, guitar and breathing that escape and are subsequently ensnared into the nothingness with surgical precision. The tension evoked by the silence makes side 2 a great deep listening experience on nice sound equipment. However, if I was listening to it in my car I would probably mistake it for dead air.

Foiled – “In Denial” – [Hash Crimes Dispensary]

thewindow   5/2/2014   A Library, Cassette

Woods – With Light And With Love [Woodsist Records]

thewindow   4/29/2014   A Library

This album reminds me of getting stoned in high school: a cafe-free voyage into the unseen realms of consciousness-in actuality, getting pizza and sitting in a parking lot for two hours. This is an album of psych-pop with glowing freakinoutman sheen on the production/recording. There are feel-good melodic hooks everywhere. The lyrics are that vague, indie, hella-deep-bro shit that talks about love and light but doesn’t really say anything. A fat organ is usually present.
Overall it’s pretty and fun but don’t think too much about it. I would sandwich these cuts between more challenging material. I do appreciate cheap happiness.

Foiled – In Denial [Hash Crimes]

thewindow   4/25/2014   A Library

East Bay Noise Grind for losing your fucking mind. This tape is probably what it feels like being in solitary confinement for a year. These sounds are what???s going through an ant???s head as it is being fryed by a magnifying glass. Foiled are a Power-Violence frenzy helplessly entangled in Harsh Noise. Like a good horror movie, the pure Nihlist hearing damage mangles and muffles the deranged rawk entropy leaving more to simmer in the imagination. My only complaint is the plethora of unnecessary 1-off samples. I can???t tell when one song begins and another song ends, but somehow I doubt that the members of Foiled give a shit. Play whole sides when you want people to don their skin suits.

Ensemble Pearl [Drag City]

thewindow   4/25/2014   A Library

Sensual Drone-Pop Jams for the damned; Ensemble Pearl comprises Stephen O??? Malley (Sunn0))), Michio Kurihara, Atsuo (Boris), Eyvind Kang, Timba Harris (Secret Chiefs 3), and Bill Herzog. The music was written for a theatrical production by Gisele Vienne titled ???This is How You Disappear,??? about three characters seeking spiritual transcendence in a forest that mutates along with them. The theme of the play is the juxtaposition of beauty sought through order and perfection with beauty sought through chaos and destruction. Ensemble Pearl perfectly evoke this contrast with noise, drones, extended technique and a surprising amount of melodic hooks. Tracks 1-3 are shorter.

sPace moNKey [Hubro Records]

thewindow   4/25/2014   A Library

Norwiegian cosmic semi-electronic acid noise jazz featuring the pianist from Jaga Jazzist. It is largely a melancholy album for what it is. If you???ve reconciled with the fact that no one will truly understand you; if you are content to chill forever in your radical space hammock as you watch the tribulations of the world and your own sense of self drift away into an infinite haze: you need this album. Track 1 for the Jazz collective. Track 3 for a noise show.

Egg, Eggs – Taste of Sundress [Feeding Tube Records]

thewindow   4/8/2014   A Library

Black Side (White Label)

Very disjointed Western Mass Noise jams of a seemingly improvised nature. A hodge-podge assortment of electronic and acoustic instruments playing a series of musical vignettes aggressively swarming around each other like a hive of pissed-off bees. There are male and female vocals ??thatrun the gamut from sexy to deranged to drunk to possessed to childish to nauseous to artsyfarsty without singing a single conventional melody. It can be pretty self indulgent but is worthwhile for the DJ that likes to mess with peoples??? heads.

White Side (Black Label)

This is probably not true, but I???d like to believe that this side was written as a drone opera documenting an Appalachian coal miner slowly dying of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. Hillbilly mountain drawl philosophy and emotionally stunted fiddle disintegrate into percussive noise/drone miasma with occasional relapses into consciousness. For the DJ that would like something with more of a narrative arc than the Black Side.

CHT- Common Human Traits [Burnt Ramen]

thewindow   4/8/2014   A Library

CHT are an East Bay group the takes the chugging riffs, crunchy guitar tone, deranged screeching and amphetamine syncopated drumming of Crust Punk; these sounds are then molded into the grooves of early nineties Bay Area Funk Metal. When it works it feels fresh, radical and exciting in a way that makes me want to drink old school 4 LOKOs, tag shit and urinate in public places. If Lucifer was a secret character on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, then this would totally be the background music. When it doesn’t work it sounds like shitty Nu-metal. The first and last songs are contrived weirdness and a waste of time.

Koo Koo Kanga Roo – Whoopty Whoop [Asian Man/Fun Fun]

thewindow   3/30/2014   A Library

Go to omfgdogs.com. Whether or not you find that site amusing or obnoxious should determine whether or not you’ll like this album. This is children’s music for adults that watch Yo! Gabba! Gabba! or Adventure Time in various states of inebriation. This is Tim Hiedecker directing Sesame Street*. Whoopty whoop is the stupid-catchy major key pop hooks from the last 5 years of top 40 music conjoining with the ??stupid-catchy major key indie punk hooks that I stereotypically associate with Asian Man infantilized into some paradigm between the music from Adventure Time and Wesley Willis-esque post-ironic-pop-dada. “All I Eat is Pizza” revamps the stark junkie storytelling of The Velvet Underground for the Nick Jr. demographic. “Pogo” is for people that secretly enjoyed ??that Icona Pop song from last year (“I don’t care…I love it”) but would rather play a song about riding a pogo stick off a diving board. “Shake it Well” sounds kinda like Das Racist and is about orange juice. In general, every song plays out approximately like one could infer from the song titles, so have fun. I suggest playing this song between harsh noise or grindcore cuts for maximum discomfort.

*while still keeping it kid friendly

2:3 – Oswald Wiener Zum 65. Geburtstag [coll] – [Suppose]

thewindow   3/30/2014   A Library, CD

This collection is a tribute to Oswald Wiener, a post WW2 Austrian Writer/Musician who was one of the pioneers of concrete poetry aka poetry where words and dialects are used to evoke sounds and shapes more so than meaning (think a verbal analogue of musique concrete*). Most of these cuts are concrete poems in Austrian German with varying degrees of acoustic instrumental accompaniment or glitchy electronic manipulation. If you listen to these tracks more as acapella noise music then the result is some solid deep-listening/meditation music. Taken on their own, I would consider most of these cuts to be too abstract to fully engage the average schmuck during their evening commute. I would recommend instead mixing them with something hella atmospheric like Lustmord or Julianna Barwick.

Some exceptions would include the Mouse on Mars cut, which bridges the gap between Musique Concrete and spastic IDM a la Venetian Snares. Another exception would be the Nihlist Spasm Band jam which sounds like some 20th century avant-improv dude like Derek Bailey half-heartedly trying to make something Anarcho-Punks would like. The Wolfgang Muller selections sound like fucked up children’s music** with super off-kilter rhythmic phrasing.

Track six is the only concrete poem in English and is the audio equivalent of watching PBS shows that you don’t understand because they look cool.

*Wiener and associates however were unaware of what Parisian comrades like Pierre Henri were doing at the time

**fucked up in sound, not content.

Novy Svet – “Doce” [Kill Shaman]

thewindow   3/26/2014   12-inch, A Library, Format

Do you think that sometimes sitting around being sad can sometimes be a lot of fun? The songs on this retrospective from Viennese band Novy Svet are vaguely Industrial/Folk jams that are gloomy sounding but also a good time. While I would initially recommend this album to the livelier fans of Angels of Light or Current 93???s ???Black Ships Ate the Sky??? album, the album is actually a far more eclectic pastiche where instruments genres and influences are pulled from all corners of the galaxy. My vibe is that of Brian Wilson scoring a Major Hollywood film where most people die and a few people go crazy. Even the industrial and drone elements are integrated into suave acoustic jams with a nonchalant????grace that you wouldn???t question if it used the employees-only bathroom. ???Punished with Longing??? if you like salvation army bands, ???Esperando De Luna??? for fans of Serge Gainsbourg, ???Titan??? for happy-go-lucky descent into madness and ???Fin Finito Infinio??? for sci-fi alien abduction jams.