Tips Zum Selbstmord

This is a genuine "lost album" (unlike the Coltrane "ehhh kinda not really" lost album) recorded by Sun Ra and members of the Arkestra in 1973 for Impulse!. Seems the relationship between Ra and Impulse! soured quickly and a couple albums that were scheduled got shelved - Cymbals/Symbols and another one due for a reissue later this year called Crystal Spears. This one is an oddity in a discography of oddities - the Arkestra here is only an 8 piece and they perform mostly in smaller configurations like quartets throughout the album. Stalwart Marshall Allen is completely absent, and John Gilmore only plays on one piece. Strange. The first disc is the actual Cymbal/Symbols album remastered, and the second disc is from an unnamed tape recorded at the same sessions. Given we're looking at a smaller lineup without many mainstays, Cymbals/Symbols is a little flat. It opens with an awkward, stuttering "The World of the Invisible" and then torpedoes into the 1...

I really liked FARWARMTH's Immeasurable Heaven earlier this year on ACR. HRNS ("harness") is a duo with FARWARMTH and Rui P. Andrade. There's three tracks here totaling about 20 minutes, and then three remixes respectively of those tracks equaling about the same length. From the originals, most successful to me is the title track, a rainy sounding piece with a female vocal sample that sounds real ethereal. I liked Wim Dehaen's remix of "Royal Blue" which stretches a droning piece into something flatter, longer, slightly harsher. But overall nothing here excited me too much.

I still remember where I was the first time I hear 100% Galcher - on a packed, sweaty, humid bus in Lachine on the way home from work. Standing. Stuck in traffic. I heard about it from a one-liner in a Pitchfork article or review about something else and was intrigued. Like many others, I was blown away and played it endlessly. I thought it was interesting how just as Galcher blew up, he almost immediately shelved the project and focused on Road Hog or Studio OST releases, which were interesting and occasionally brilliant but weren't...Galcher. His first full-length finally came last year and it was okay. So here he is following up that immortal mixtape with this, and lightning didn't strike twice for me. The problem, I think, is that Galcher Lustwerk came out of the womb fully formed. 100% Galcher was such a disruption, unlike anything else and a revelation. Not something that was built up to after years of honing his craft. 200% Galcher, for starters, is noticeably cleaner -...

Described by Mb himself as "kind of rock sort of thing" which it kinda is - four untitled tracks, relatively brief by Sf standards (the longest clocking in at 8 minutes). #1 and #3 appear to feature some form of percussion buried beyond the usual cascade of psychedelic guitar woozle. I always liked Sf in the Rock Mode vein, hopefully we get more like this.

Almost everything Josh Tillman says or does annoys me, and after being beaten over the head with it so many times I finally gave in and listened to Pure Comedy last year, and it wasn't that bad. There were some good tunes, good lyrics, good ideas on it even though overall it's Not Really My Thing. I can't take Tillman's irony-bathed in honesty-bathed in irony shtick and even the "Funny Lyrics" that most Serious Rock Journalists jack themselves off into a frenzy over (omg he made a Taylor Swift joke!!!) make me want to roll my eyes into the back of my head. But the man can sing, and play guitar, and turn a phrase and write a good song or two so here we are with God's Favorite Customer - I don't know if it's the New FJM Album or just an in-between. Compared to the sprawling Pure Comedy it feels very lite indeed - under 40 minutes and the longest song clocking in at a tidy 5:22. But honestly this did less for me than Pure Comedy. If it's not lite...

Blanck Mass' Worldeater from last year didn't move the needle much for me. Gave this new 7" a spin. It's Blanck Mass at by far his most metal yet (well he sez punk rock but...). These two tracks are noisy, dirty, mostly black metal inspired thrashes: "couple of anti-macho pop songs about a pair of walking hardons I surreptitiously observed at a truck stop". I never listened to buddy's old project Fuck Buttons much but maybe that was more inline with this. Interesting as a taster, wonder if it's an omen of things to come - BM from BM (not to be confused with BM).

Never copped Jesse Kanda's first for this project, Heart, released last year. Was that on Hyperdub too? That's the main reason I copped this one, plus I heard some buzz, plus that album art has been in my nightmares 5ever. This is an EP, a pretty Warped collection of weird, squiggy beats. It starts pretty abstract with the "Bloodlet" opener but then settles into a nice alien funk. I didn't love it but it was still cool. Kinda reminded me maybe of...Gonjasufi? Less hip hop and more...Hyperdub/Warp? Flying Lotus? Ya know.

Again - no real recollection of how this one ended up in my wishlist. I keep tabs on some witchhouse stuff and I guess I heard of Isserley somewhere...then again maybe it's the rad album title and kool art that pulled me in. Isserley is the "self proclaimed saddest girl in Australia" and these are kind of witchy beats, although more distorted and noise-y than is typical...of which I approve...but overall the album (it's more like an EP) didn't do much for me. Apparently a lot of these trax are culled from previous Isserley projects and given makeovers. Good to know! But not my bag.

This album is dope. I can't even really figure out why I wishlisted it on Bandcamp. Maybe it was one of those that got recommended to me so much I finally said fuck it, I'll listen. Glad I did! Really knocked me for a loop. Moderator is a young Greek producer who apparently has a couple of albums already under his belt, but I don't know if they can stand up to Sinner's Syndrome. Here he cobbles together wholly new songs, most around the 3 minute mark, from old movie soundtracks, Spaghetti Westerns, spy movies, giallo, the like, augmented with some seriously thick, banging BEATZ...Dan the Automator is a good comparison, indeed some of these sound like they could be Gorillaz instrumentals, or maybe Danger Mouse...definitely a Tarantino vibe to the types of sounds selected here...and while I wouldn't say this sounds like any one thing Mike Patton has done, it sounds like something that would be right at home on his Ipecac label or opening for Fantomas or something. In...

Exmilitary and The Money Store are two A1 albums. Then No Love Deep Web came which was a little more hit and miss, and Government Plates followed which was okay but still more miss than hit. The first disc of The Powers That B, Niggas on the Moon, dropped and it was mostly blah. About that point I checked out for good. It's roughly the same time they went silent and worked on the second disc of TPTB, Jenny Death, for about a year. One day I saw they released a cut from that disc, "Inanimate Sensation", and it rocked my face off. I was back. DxG was back. Jenny Death was released and by far the best thing they'd done since the Exmilitary/Money Store days. Since then they've only gotten more erratic - a couple of instrumental EPs, a one-off with Les Claypool, a 20+ minute "megamix". The next album they released in and amongst those, Bottomless Pit, was fine, not terribly adventurous but not bad. Year of the Snitch falls into that category too and kind of ...

Gripped this album at random, thought it would be a little bit weirder, post-black metal, atmospheric/ambient thing...it's a one-man project but still hyper-produced, too many keys, too many synths, vocals are good but not enough riffage. Not for me.

Last latest missive from the Heath Moerland's Crazy Doberman project, seemingly just a duo configuration here with Heath and John Olson. Heath starts on percussion and moves to electronics (and maybe guitar?) and Olzone is on sax. Two 25 minute pieces, thoroughly basement in sound, clattery and cement-floor scraping and dank. I prefer the other two but this one's OK too.

Second particle, same group, feels the aforementioned heavy horns mix (do I detect guitar too at some point??) but some really zonked tribal hand percussion style on A. B is completely unlike any of the previous four sides, really airy/spacy with thudding clatter drums and empty-horn breath blowing before shaking out into something almost Sunburned-ian getting these guys on a whole different pitch. The Sunday morning hangover to the preceding roar. Real kool.

Part one of two tapes from a Nov 2017 sesh featuring Heath Moerland (Sick Llama), Becky Mahay (Mirror II Rorrim), John Olson (Wolf Eyes) and Shelby Murphy (???). Lots of horns on here, certainly Olson but who else??? Great drowned female vox on the A and ghostly intonation on B. The whole thing moves like a river of haze & yr being led by ghost pipers. Nice.

Lena Raine released the mindblowing Celeste soundtrack this year, still one of my favorites. Checked this out on the strength of that alone and ESCISM ("escapism", I gather) is meant to be played alongside the reading experience of ESC, the game. Maybe for that reason it just doesn't work as well or sound as interesting to me as Celeste. For the most part it's very ambient, electronic-based melodies and boasts little of the color that made Celeste so original and interesting.

Michael Morley's Righteous Yeah project stampedes on with two more long tracks of crackle and hiss soaked ambience. These two tracks share titles (but no discernible sonic similarly) with a couple punk tunes - "Gimme Gimme Gimme" (Black Flag) and "Carbona Not Glue" (Ramones). Are those the source tracks for these monstrously distorted slow drones? No idea. "Carbona Not Glue" is the more interesting of the two, sounds almost like pan flutes with the customary crackle and an intermittent background whirr.

Felicia Atkinson released a pretty highly acclaimed album last year called Hand in Hand that I didn't really care for, but I checked out her new EP Coyotes...and didn't really care for it either. Atkinson was inspired by a trip she took to New Mexico and her electronic bloops and blorps do an impressive job of recreating an imagined-desert landscape populated by the titular animal, dustswept and wind-torn, but it's like an art exhibit more than an enjoyable piece of music. Admirable but not terribly enjoyable. Pass (again).

This newly-unearthed set of recordings is from 1963. Unlike many posthumous sets that promote new recordings (but really contain a bunch of alternate versions of old cuts) this one actually delivers. Aside from "Vilia" which made some compilation appearances all these tracks have never been heard before, two of them not even given titles just referred to by their master numbers. These recordings were made at a pivotal moment in Coltrane's career with his "classic quarter" including McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones - not long after "My Favorite Things" took off and not long before this same quartet recorded the world-beating A Love Supreme. The two untitled tracks here are really interesting. "Untitled Original 11383" is really distended, with loose-limbed drumming from Jones and a Middle Eastern soprano flair. "Untitled Original 11386" is more expansive, with a repeating theme and some seriously funky drumming. In the no...

Never been much of a J. Cole fan, he always struck me as kinda...lame. But I've been enjoying "KOD" (the track) and "Motiv8" for a while now so I decided to give the album a spin, and it's not bad. It's overly portentous (those voiceovers about how the greatest drug of all.......is love = gag) and Cole is trying too hard to be Kendrick, but it's a pretty solid album - some other good cuts in addition to those mentioned ("ATM", "Brackets", "Friends") and overall just a nice, pleasant listen. That's how I'd characterize it - pleasant. If a little goofy.

Another welcome entry in the Neil Young Archive series - back when the Roxy in LA first opened in 1973 they asked Neil Young and his band the Santa Monica Flyers to perform. They were fresh of rehearsing and recording for Tonight's the Night and that material makes up the bulk of this album - excluding, understandably as it was included on TTN more as tribute to the recently-deceased Danny Whitten, "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" and "Borrowed Tune", one of my favorites but a piano ballad that would've been out of step with the rest of the material here. "Lookout Joe" is also absent (it was performed by the Stray Gators on TTN) but "Walk On" from On the Beach closes the set. Interspersed throughout the set are the banter ("raps") that have become signature to the live entries in the Archive series. The sound quality here is pristine, and Young & Co. are in a jovial mood from the get-go - something of a countenance to ...

I'm glad Kamasi Washington is out here doing his thing and making jazz cool again and in the hip hop world and making these massive huge albums, but I'm just not wild for him. I liked his last album The Epic more because it was a little more out there, a little more psychedelic. While both are masterfully composed and performed, Heaven and Earth is a little more soul jazz, which is less interesting to me. And it's a 3-disc album, like The Epic, so at a certain point I end up tuning out. Not my bag but like I said I respect the man.

Playboi Carti has never really been on my radar too much, but then Pfork gave this one a rave review, and I figured I was sleeping...but man, this album didn't do anything for me. Barely any song made any kind of impact. The production is interesting at times but Carti himself gets lost in both that and the whole mass of features all over the album. Nothing gelled for me, so I guess for me I wasn't missing much after all. Oh well.

Thou have taken a lot of departures from being the doom metal band they're Supposed to Be, and Inconsolable may be the wildest departure yet. It's an all-acoustic EP, the 2nd of three leading up to their new full-length Magus later this year, and supposedly inspired by Nirvana's MTV Unplugged album. Vocalist Bryan Funck is absent - rather, he's written the lyrics and given them over to a cast of women to sing in his stead. The Nirvana album was evoked only intermittently with me - the first track, "The Unspeakable Oath", sounded more like Mogwai and I was preparing myself for a really interesting album. The rest of the album scores only so-so for me. Like "The Unspeakable Oath", "Come Home, You Are Missed" has a downtempo Thou feel (remarkable given there's no metal to be found here) and sonically could slot alongside Nirvana, Alice in Chains, or similar downtrodden alt/metal fare. "The Hammer" is a longer, more prog-ish piec...

I'm flabbergasted at how much better this album is than Ye. I don't understand. It's so good it's actually making me question if Ye is better than I thought it was, which I don't want to do. What's the reason? Did Kanye and Cudi just push each other? Every song on here is a gem (OK "Fire" is maybe a little weak) - "Feel the Love" with a snarling Pusha verse and an insane machine gun scat chorus. "4th Dimension" with its unreal production and amazing warping of a Louis Prima Christmas song. "Freee", the much-better, insanely catchy sequel to "Ghost Town" from Ye. "Reborn" an absolute corker of a single with Kanye and Cudi getting real about their mental health struggles. "Kids See Ghosts" with a great Yasiin Bey feature although probably my 2nd least fave track. And "Cudi Montage" built around a spiraling scratchy Kurt Cobain demo sample. And just like that it's over and you want...

Getting tough to keep up with Mr. Morley and he's released about 5 or 6 more since this one...this one's similar to Goodbye, a mournful classical loop that distorts with thick crackle. The first one sounds like guitar, the second one sounds like piano, both last over 20 minutes.

Per KD "speakers and low volume please". Unfortunately I listened on earbuds, but in a quiet room in the dead of night (morning?). There's two tracks here, "A" at 25 minutes and "B" at 15. "A" is very interesting - incredibly low frequency oscillations that are so quiet you have to strain to hear and almost threaten to explode into violence at any second. It's a very engaging piece. "B" is similar but louder, more in your face, the same kind of electronic oscillations but without the challenge posed by "A" just doesn't do it for me in the same way.

Grabbed this off Bandcamp both because it had good reviews and because Hypnotic Dirge has done some good, but I wasn't terribly enthused - it's a well made but relatively uninteresting depressive USBM album. Not much to recommend.

I enjoyed Jenny Hval's 2016 album Blood Bitch. This is her first release since, a 20-plus minute EP where she collaborates with several jazz musicians and the album has a loose, organically flowing feel. On "Spells" and the titular 10-minute track her compositions unfurl slowly and patiently. "Composition" is the key word as Hval is a composer in the true sense of the word. I didn't find this EP as interesting as Blood Bitch but she is obviously a talent and I'll stay tuned for what's next.

I wasn't a fan of The Body's I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer from earlier this year, mostly because the guest screams of Michael Berdan who is the vocalist of...Uniform. So here's The Body and Berdan's Uniform in full-on collab mode although the album is a scant 27 minutes. But I actually like this a bit better. Berdan's vocals only have one setting, and it's Marv From Home Alone 2 Being Shocked All The Way Up To 11, so it grates after a while. But his vocals are pitched down in the mix here, and he sounds like an insane person screaming in the next room being picked up on the tape, and that's not bad at all. I've never heard Uniform outside of their collabs with The Body and they're a more industrial unit, so that's the flavor of this album - it sounds a lot more like Whitehouse, Ramleh or even Ministry than the pop/doom metal brand of The Body. It was OK enough but nothing that excited me terribly. Big fan of that "Cr...

Driving to work this AM and saw on Spotify this thing finally came out and ended up spinning it there and back. I've never been a big Travis Scott fan but this album has been in the works for so long and boasts such a ridiculous array of collaborators that I figured I'd have to at least check in on it. It's a monster, really. 17 tracks, I don't know the total length but gotta be in the 70 minute zone, and packed to the gills. Drake, Frank Ocean, Swae Lee, Kid Cudi, James Blake, a Stevie Wonder harmonica feature, Pharrell, The Weeknd x 2, 21 Savage, Quavo & Takeoff, let alone the production credits, which for me is the best part. For me, there are some good tracks here - the album starts very strong with "Stargazing", a total headtrip, Frank Ocean on "Carousel" and "Sicko Mode" with Drake. All 3 are legitimate bangers with some really adventurous, head-turning production. "R.I.P. Screw" is messy and disjointed but in a wonderf...

Collaborative improv LP between 4 giants, definitely feels like Amado is the centrepiece here on tenor, McPhee on pocket trumpet and soprano, Kessler on double bass and Corsano on the kit. Not an exceptionally new configuration just four skilled musicians playing in harmony. Pleasant.

Something of a mini...project...thing from Cat System Corp. It's about 10 minutes long and just features his typical nostalgic vaporwave/mallsoft tunes over some spoken instructions about crypto currency. You can skip this one.

DNMF = Dead Neanderthals + Machinefabriek, I'm only familiar with the latter and apparently the former is a "droning free jazz" ensemble so I gave it a shot and this is a pretty cool record, a single 39-minute track that's a gloomy, darkly ambient, thudding, post-rock/doom metal ish churn. All right.

Not familiar with Wim Dehaen, he's a chemistry researcher and artist based in Prague. The 12 Elegies here were created by "spectral treatment" of Boulez recordings. The result is a bunch of brief (~1 min each) pieces of icy cold ambience. Usti OST, which is a piece created for a Lukas Janicik film of the same name, is a smartly composed track cut from the same cloth. It's a quick listen and not terribly memorable.

2011 live recording with Brotzmann on reeds and Lonberg-Holm, a longtime collaborator, on electronics and cello. There's four tracks here, it starts of with surprising restraint, and while Brotzmann blows heavy on a few cuts (esp. blasts on "The Figure Eight") it's still not a tremendously heavy affair. Lonberg-Holm does well to keep up and occasionally sounds like he's mauling his strings to do so. Not a favorite for me.

A final 3-track EP from this now-dead black metal supergroup. These tracks were recorded back in 2012 for III: Beneath the Trident's Tomb featuring Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth among others. I've never been a massive Twilight fan and these 3 tracks are pretty undistinguished and just OK - plodding, depressive, riff-heavy but nothing remarkable.

Here's another long solo piece from Michael Morley, this one titled "Goodbye Forever", and it features no real guitar that I can hear - or maybe I can, I keep listening to it before I fall asleep and it just takes me to dreamland. It's great - a looped stringed instrumental classical piece (it's probably something famous and I just can't recognize it) that devolves into a blur of slowed down sound, drone and reverb. The technique seems similar to Game Changer, just with different source material. If you like The Disintegration Loops this one should be on your list. Morley is hitting all the right notes in 2018.