Tips Zum Selbstmord

Cool reissue of a Portuguese rarity that fetches hefty Discogs sums nowadays. A 1983 LP and man look at what a badass our man Sanches is on the cover. Cold is ice. But the tunes warm my heart. The keyboards on here are absolutely out of this world, fittingly as he showed up on AA's Space Echo comp last year. This is Funaná music, recorded in Cabo Verde (the SPACEiousness of which has been well documented) and this fuses loopy, alien keyboard lines with a pulsing African rhythm and unrestrained call-and-response howls. Really cool.

Catchy, ain't it? This is mostly death metal, not poorly played death metal mind you, and slightly black around the edges (I saw a Blut Aus Nord comparison, I'd go for that) but again just not really my thing. Heavy and crunchy riffs but otherwise too structured and too...I don't want to say bland but just not different enough.

Just too trad for me. Sounds a bit like a slower, better-produced, even...viking ish?? Emperor maybe, definitely with a heavy blackened doom influence but this doesn't do it for me. It's a pass.

Jute Gyte is one of my new faves since that gibberish album he put out last year that I liked a lot (not in time to get it on the year end list unfortunately) and his track here is psychotic in all the right places. Both artists' tracks are 20 minutes long and both start with the same chord progression before spouting off in different directions. Jute Gyte's is overloaded with drum machine (that's a drum machine right?) fury, nasty vox and totally bizarre keyboard riffs. The Spectral Lore track takes a looong time and a lot of riffing to get going before combusting into a doomy, luddite piece, very spaced out and dissonant. But I gotta give the heavyweight belt to my man Jute, those keyboards are so insanely bizarre and dare I say catchy (not to mention the riffs) that I'm spellbound.

Couple of good moves - first, putting "Bodak Yellow" and "Bartier Cardi" even if we've all heard them a million times by now. Reinserted in the context of an album, it just drives home what gems both those tracks are. The other - keeping it mercifully short. Few things are a bigger drag than a bloated first LP after a string of short, sweet, successful mixtapes. Don't know why rappers suddenly think we want to hear a 23-track, 80-minute affair. This is 13 tracks (2 of which as I've said are already burned in your brain) and 48 minutes. I wouldn't go as far as to call it a classic per se but it's a very good album and a great debut. The only real missteps here are "Be Careful" and "Ring" (feat. Kehlani). It's Cardi taking overtly obvious stabs at pop success, and it just feels unnecessary. You don't need to be Beyonce, just do what got you here. "I Do" (feat. SZA) and "Thru Your Phone" are on the po...

We already talked about Leviathan, so what's Crawl like? Also a one-man metal project, considerably less known, had a full-length out last year. Text on the Crawl side of this release says something like "genres r bad". Brave. The sound? Doom, maybe even a little blackened doom, certainly filthy. Sounds a bit like Corrupted, or maybe because it's so drum-driven we'll go with Orthodox. Something that could show up on the Southern Lord roster. Nothing earth-shakingly original but nice. The Leviathan track is nice too, it moves through a couple of shall we say movements including a dark ambient style "interlude". I listened to it twice in a row, it's not a masterpiece either but good enough. Also interesting is that both tracks on this split are exactly 12 minutes each, what's the deal?

Since Scar Sighted in 2015, Jef Whitehead aka Wrest aka Leviathan has been mostly reissuing old albums and demos. 2018 shows the first stirrings of new Leviathan music with splits with Crawl and Nachtmystium on the docket. But first, some more reissuing. This set is compiled from Leviathan's sides of splits with Xasthur (from 2004) and Sapthuran (from 2006). The first five tracks are from the Sapthuran split, and what kind of doubles-down on the cash grab of this release is that these 5 tracks were already released separately in 2006 - as a record called The Blind Wound on Southern Lord. The newer tracks are sequenced first on the album which is interesting. They certainly sound like the more fully-formed version of Leviathan - blackened, thrashy, serrated as hell. Whereas the older tracks indeed still sound like he's finding his footing - they're slower, a little more doom-y, and with dustier production. They actually sound a bit like Xasthur himself. From the 2006 tracks...

Really good depressive black metal from this crazy Belgian/France duo. Three long songs. Bunch of guests. The vocals are an absolute standout, sheer lunacy from both male and fem vox. The instrumentation, well, every time I thought it was sounding generic it would take a left turn and change up into something weirder or different. It's almost like I was challenging it to impress me as I listen and it kept meeting the challenge. Finally I just stopped fighting it and thought you know, this is b'dass.

I love the Bootleg Series. The first four at least are stunningly invaluable. The fifth one was a bit of a divergence, more along "The Complete..." album series as it took a look at mostly the making of the Miles Smiles record. This one is of course also invaluable in its own right, documenting the final tour with a reluctant John Coltrane in tow, himself set to explode into his own new creative realms. These 5 concerts from 1960 indeed showcase the band as a whole stretching into something bigger - the Miles standards here like "On Green Dolphin Street", "Oleo" and "Bye Bye Blackbird" along with tunes from the newly minted Kind of Blue like "So What" (a monster here) "All Blues". There's a few tracks where you can hear Coltrane getting the Bronx cheer for some of his more...adventurous solos. For me this isn't as classic as the first four in the series, it's an interesting document of a turning point in the caree...

Beguiling! What to make of this set of manipulated field electronics? It's a tough one. Some tracks here sound barely manipulated or modified at all, but then there's the glitch-heavy "In the Park" which sounds like a Yasunao Tone experiment or the ultra soft, meditative 13-minute "In the City, Fire Sirens" or the windy "The Farthest Land #2". Not something I'm in a rush to get back to, didn't do much for me.

Pretty uninteresting duo set of improvisations for turntables, percussion, guitars, electronics. At times blindingly harsh and others almost jazzy in feel. I didn't care for it.

Two monsters of the avant-garde. Founder of the Wandelweiser collective Beuger and co-conspirator Wolff. You knew it was going to be long and slow but wow. There's two pieces here, 10-minute one and a 60-minute one, and I'm not really sure what justifies the two since they're virtually identical. The set up is something like this: Wolff contributes "piano, objects, charango, flute" while Beuger reads out truncated lines, sentences, stanzas at seemingly random. Beuger also plays Christian Wolff's Stones recording from 1995. Confused? I was too until I read this . Essentially Wolff's version of his composition Stones runs throughout the background as a kind of barely-there hum, like a radiator in a room. And to make the whole thing even more absurdly self-referential, Beuger himself plays on that version of Stones. So long stretches of silence are broken up by either Beuger's recitations (Cageian in tone, I find), Wolff's improvisations on the afore...

Two London giants teaming up here for the first time - Burial and The Bug under a new project called Flame 1 and hopefully it's the beginning of a beautiful marriage because these two tracks BUMP. "Fog", I hate to be so blithely obvious, but really combines the Best of Both Worlds with Burial's crackle and paranoia meeting The Bug's thick industrial bass throb (oh hell it's Burial's too). Just so DANK. And "Shrine" is a bit of a slower, creepy-crawler, kind of a crumbling building ruined city post-apocalyptic vibe. Both just utter crushers but you knew you'd get nothing less from these two masters. Essential.

I haven't seen Paradox, Daryl Hannah's Western featuring Neil Young and Promise of the Real, and I don't intend to, but I thought the soundtrack might make for an okay listen. It's a total odds-n-sods collection. At 21 tracks it seems long at first glance but there's not much meat here. Six of the tracks are instrumental improvisations done in the style of Young's Dead Man soundtrack work, which is to say improvising based on remembered scenes of the film. These range from very short (13 seconds) to a few minutes. There's a spoken word intro, presumably pulled from the film, a Willie Nelson cover sung by his son (and also member of Promise of the Real) Lukas, and two of the album's live centerpieces and strongest tracks - a new version of Young's "Pocahontas", and a 10-minute jam spun off of the "Cowgirl in the Sand" riff. As far as originals go there's a couple of versions of "Diggin' in the Dirt" which is nice...

Thought this was an intriguing meeting of the minds. YoshimiO of the Boredoms, OOIOO, etc. Susie Ibarra, percussionist of great Downtown NYC imrpov scene fame. And Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe of Lichens and increasingly making a name for himself under, well, his own name. This is a live improvisational set chopped up into 4 sidelong pieces. As you might expect from having two percussionists it's fairly drum-heavy. Lowe contributes some garbled vocals that don't sound at all unlike what you might hear from Eye of the Boredoms lending the set a temporarily nostalgic vibe. The proceedings throughout are very spacious, relatively slow-moving. Lots of ideas are entertaining (there's a whole host of instruments - acoustic and electronic - in play throughout that I won't even try to place) and nobody seems to want to step on anyone's toes. Maybe a little too respectful although lots of active listening going on and corresponding engagement. At times the group lock into a groo...

Also in Recollection GRM news, here are two pieces from Christian Zanesi, who is also helping oversee the Recollection GRM series. "Grand Bruit" is from 1991 and it's a chilly slowburner, a real sci-fi electroacoustic bent with some seriously creeped Indrid Cold machina vocals cropping up throughout. Slow and doomy and heavy. "Stop! L'Horizon" from 1983 is equally frosty but more of a stuttery, locust swarm type of electronic blitz. Boomkat's review compared this to the Alien movie series and both pieces give me that same vibe, spot on.

Francois Bayle, director of the GRM, composed the two pieces found here in 1978-1979 as part of his "Erosphere" cycle. In the liner notes Bayle references making the banal sound strange. "Tremblement de Terre Tres Doux" on the A side does that - there's a clattering, rolling sound that sounds alternately like a bottle rolling around on the floor or yr brain rattling around inside an orbiting spaceship. With multiple movements, Bayle also notes that the piece could be interpreted as a "representation of the dramatic unfolding of a day". I don't know about that but the way it careens from digital bloop overload to mind-altering kosmiche makes it feel right at home in this year of our lord 2018. "Toupie Dans le Ciel" is the other piece, much more digitally-steeped, a twinkling, dizzying, oscillating hypnotizer. Definitely not as interesting as the first but still pretty cool.

I haven't kept up with Sumac, the new gig of ex-Isis frontman Aaron Turner, but a collab with Keiji Haino? I'm down. These 5 tracks were recorded live in studio, improvisations as Haino typically stipulates of his collaborations, and we may have an early frontrunner for album title of the year. One of Haino's best. Turner steps aside to let Haino handle all vocals, which is kind of too bad because it would have been nice to see those two powerhouses play off each other. Sonically the most obvious comparison, Haino playing with a guitarist, drummer and bassist, is obviously his own Fushitsusha. The music, crumbling, crashing and chaotically heavy, is equally reminiscent of Japan avant rock titans Ruins or even Mick Barr's Orthrelm project (or maybe his Krallice band is a closer comparison). So it's not totally uncharted waters and not the most blinding original record in the Haino canon but if you like Haino with pure rock fury backing him, give a listen.

Couldn't remember for the life of me what this was in my Bandcamp list or where I had found it...hit play and thought hmmmmm sounds like a Hype Williams thing. And yessir - a solo release from 1/2 of that duo (I shouldn't say that, as Hype Williams continues on without them) Inga Copeland, apparently not her first release as Lolina. Hype Williams, Dean Blunt and Copeland have always kind of baffled me, I've been peripherally interested them but I can't say I've loved any of their releases either individually or as a duo, mostly just curios. But I have to say this one really gripped me, I don't know how often I'll be revisiting it...it's certainly a challenging listen. As awful as the term "avant pop" is this is a really pure example of avant garde pop music. Song forms are completely destructed and rebuilt in disorienting and fascinating ways with Copeland's vocals are the forefront of all. Exciting, I'm on board.

Had to jump the listening queue for an event like this. The first Sleep album since 2003...first new material since 1999 (excluding 2014 single "The Clarity" which does not appear here). Where can you really go from Dopesmoker, not only the best stoner metal album ever but one of the best songs/albums...ever. A landmark in every way. At the time of recording Dopesmoker the band had a couple of other 15-20 minute pieces they were working on. I don't know if any of that material made it here, although we do now have an official studio version of "Sonic Titan", which appeared on the 2003 version of Dopesmoker. The Sciences features a brief, angular titular intro and thus follows five tracks. Three 10-15 minute pieces sandwiched by two shorter tracks, "Marijuanaut's Theme" and the instrumental "The Botanist". Those three longer tracks are the real meat and the ultimate picture of Sleep's strength, alternatively heavy as hell and groovily...

Lil Yachty's story is interesting, going from young hip hop upstart to guilty pleasure to also-ran at almost breakneck speed. Despite lots of love-it-or-leave-it acclaim for his mixtapes, by the time his first real LP "Teenage Emotions" rolled around last year, everybody was already jumping off the (lil) boat. Yachty seemed creatively spent too, as the tracks on "Teenage Emotions" simply didn't live up to what he'd previously released. So less than a year later Yachty has hit back with his 2nd LP "Lil Boat 2", a sequel of sorts to his monster of a mixtape with the same name. The Pitchfork review covers my thoughts well - there seems to be an effort to repackage Yachty as a Serious Rapper, and no doubt he's carrying a chip on his shoulder after "TE" was mostly ignored last year (I liked it well enough myself but agree he's done much better). In complete contrast to the first "Lil Boat", the sequel is a mostly joyless...

While we're on the early ambient/psychedelia/kraut reissue tip. You may recall JD Emmanuel coming to the forefront recently with a reissue of his amazing "Rain Forest Music". Randall McClellan is a cohort of Emmanuel and made these and other recordings between '77 and '83, giving multi-hour meditative performances of these 20-40 minute pieces. These came out on cassette in 1983 along with Vol 1 I suppose. Two 20 minute pieces here of long, dreamy, synth-driven ambient drones. Much like Riley again or maybe Popol Vuh or, more contemporaneously, William Basinski. Pretty cool stuff, more blanks being filled in. Not the revelation "Rain Forest Music" was for me but, yknow, nice.

Another bamboozler from Fantome Phonographique. Originally released in 1958. PURPORTEDLY an album designed to be played in mental institutions (and elsewhere I guess) to help people get to sleep. Even issued under a fake "institution" name to lend some kind of scientific credibility to the whole thing. In reality just ("just") 2 side-long pieces of woozy synthy music a la Conrad or Riley, maybe a little more wiggy than you'd expect given the title but clearly a precursor to...a lot of shit where this never even gets a pioneering mention. Interesting. Creel Pone bootlegged it in 2012 but I missed it! Kind of a missing link here, hmmm...

I knew Maya Deren for her experimental filmwork. I did not know she traveled to Haiti in the 50's and put out this dope set of field recordings. Alan Lomax's Haiti box is my go to for sounds from the collection (and also the same era) and this is in-step. Chanting, percussion, and a thick heady atmosphere. Just 35 mins (originally a 10", reished here as a 12") but very cool.

If you're a victim of Skullflower ennui (fair), here's one to check out. OK don't expect a grand departure but different enough to keep my ears tweaked. The side-long A slab "We Move On Points of Shattered Mirrors" (nice) is a real winner, more...dreamy?? than you'd expect from this current incarnation of SF. The whole LP (two more songs on the flip) is kind of like a change-up. Off-kilter and tilted from the full-bore aggression of, say, last week. Not bad.

In 2001, 17 years ago, Andrew W.K. released the absolute masterpiece known as I Get Wet. Two years later he released the lukewarmish The Wolf. Then things got real weird. Close Calls with Brick Walls followed three years later but only in Japan, as AWK was temporarily barred from releasing music in North America under his own name due to a recently-resolved but still hazy legal dispute involving Steev Mike and a dispute over the ownership of AWK's name, likeness, image, etc (don't go down that rabbit hole, I urge you). In the interim AWK released a J-pop cover album, a solo piano improvisation album, and an album of Gundam themes, along with some odds and ends here and there, but You're Not Alone is his first return to the party anthems of his first two albums. Sorta. How does it stack up to I Get Wet? Well it's almost twice as long, with about the same number of songs (there 3 spoken word motivational speeches dotted throughout the album), some tracks pushing into the...

Jaunty Ethopian jazz album from the legend Hailu Mergia, playing accordion, melodica and keyboards here, with Mike Majkowski on bass and Tony Buck on drums. It's jaunty (aren't all accordion albums kind of jaunty?) and Buck absolutely wails those skins. Overall it's all right. Funky and will be sampled on a hip hop disc in .002 seconds.

Where does ACR find these beauties? And this guy in particular? This is, ah, Afonso Arrepia Ferreira, apparently some 19 years old?? Also plays in a duo called HRNS which also just released something on ACR. This tape is a real gem. Ferreira plays piano, keyboards and I think misc electronics and interweaves these with guest players on cello, bass, flute and some samples. It completely belies the composer's age because this is a work of real maturity. Think of a woozy, beautiful, mesh of irr.app.(ext.), Nurse With Wound, Machinefabriek and maybe a little Pan Sonic but all those fall short...just grip it and see for yourself.

It's the Sunburned release you didn't know you didn't need. A single 32 min track called "Cold & Dry" stitching together the group at their most thud rock-ist in 2017 broken up with some spoken word samples. Not too many glimpses of psychedelia to be found, just lo-fi grungy improv rock. Eh.

Mark McGuire's mostly-instrumental pop song sideproject, some of these sound like they slot in next to all that vaporwave stuff and they have a heavy 80's synth pop vibe that is inescapable. These tunes are well composed and nice but I'm not sure I'd go back to them any time soon.

One 34-minute track called "Winter and Winter and Winter", a softly scraping ambient piece, pure hauntology and nice sleep music. Ghostly.