Skip to main content

The Caretaker - Everywhere At the End of Time - Stage 4 (History Always Favours the Winners, 2018)

The Caretaker first came to my attention with An Empty Bliss Beyond this World in 2011, which was a revelation. In the years since he's started his Everywhere At the End of Time project, mining the same fertile ground - a study of Alzheimers and tracks of older, ballroom, swing type instrumentals smeared, fuzzed and crinkled up like half-remembered reveries from a life you didn't live. The Everywhere At the End of Time project explores that idea in greater concept. And admittedly it had gotten a little stale by now. Thankfully the 4th entry in the series shakes things up. Four side-long tracks as opposed to the other's 3-4 minute songs. and the tracks are certainly more abstract, more ambient - although still with the crackle and nostalgia that make the project so identifiable. Was it new or different enough to really stand out for me? No, but I'm glad this concept is moving in different directions. Curious to see what follows.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MKWAJU Ensemble - KI-Motion (We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want, r. 2018)

DOPE re-ish of Midori Takada's 1981 debut album as MKWAJU Ensemble - you may recall last year WRWTFWW released Takada's Through the Looking Glass LP, but this one's even better - a wild mix of Japanese ambient and African rhythms played on marimba, vibraphone, synthesizer and percussion. RIYL Terry Riley or Tubular Bells, or even more new age-y weirdness like Vangelis, but these rhythms are so wild I wouldn't bat a lash at all if you told me the Animal Collective bros stayed up nights listening to these. Check out "Angwora Steps", totally out of pocket. "Hot Air" is a spacious breather, the other tracks pile up the rhythms in slowly-shifting crescendos...crazy stuff.
Post a Comment
Read more

Abstracter - Cinerous Incarnate (I, Voidhanger, 2018)

I was not aware of these guys, who formed in 2010 as a noise duo, and slowly evolved and added more members and turned into a kind of death/blackened doom metal project. They've got ties to other noise acts I don't know (Sutekh Hexen) and other industrial acts I don't know (Only Now). Quite a stew and the band pulls of something that sounds truly different. It's got a tentacle in each of the aforementioned genres but blends them really well. It's quite hard to pin them down in fact. Big, heavy riffs with a production level along the lines of a sludge/black metal record but sharp instrumentation and just a dirty atmosphere...ambient noise passages separate a couple tracks as a nice diversion...very cool
Post a Comment
Read more

Grouper - Grid of Points (Kranky, 2018)

I've never really liked Grouper much, lots of other wogs go ga-ga over anything she puts out but it all leaves me cold. I wrote her off for a while, heard some hype for this new one, and I'm back to writing her off again. It's the same ghostly vocal samples/quasi religious/hymnal vibes..haunting and ethereal and...nothing that gets me all wound up. Pass.
Post a Comment
Read more