Top 10 of 2010 #10-6

Finally after a series of epic delays, here is part 1 of Hollow Press' Best Albums of 2010. Part 2 to follow (hopefully) shortly

10. The North Sea - Bloodlines (Type)

The North Sea has long been Brad Rose's best project in my opinion. For the past few years Rose has moved past the neo-folkisms of his earlier work and began to explore much darker, much noisier corners. Bloodlines is his best work yet: a giant, menacing, pitch black masterwork, all crumbling cities and factories gone manic, decaying and blazing out of control. Brutally dark, the album is really two long tracks broken up into three movements each. Each track is a seething, ferocious mess of noise and decay, static, smoke, wheezing last breaths. Drumming by the ever-brilliant Mike Weis of Zelienople helps propel these full side pieces into terrifying new places, his drums wooshing like demonic gasps and clattering like mutilated church bells. Listen to this album, just not before you go to bed lest the blackest of nightmares haunt your sleep.

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9. ALTAR EAGLE - Mechanical Gardens (Type)

Brad Rose shows up again this time with his wife Eden Rose. The two haved created the years finest pop album, a shimmering, exuberant electro-pop wonder run through a sonic meat grinder. Slabs of static and white noise just barely contain exuberant, out-there pop music with honest to goodness hooks and everything. Totally unexpected and completely wonderful.

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8. En - The Absent Coast (Root Strata)

En is the new duo of Maxwell Croy and James Devane and The Absent Coast is their first album, an extremely lovely and melancholy drone record. Dense and immensely lush, the duo uses, among an army of other instruments, a bowed koto to produce shimmering soundscapes. The Absent Coast swells almost to the point of overflowing, a vast, drifting sea of sound.

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7. Erik K Skodvin - Flare (Miasmah)

Erik K. Skodvin the man behind Svarte Greiner and is one half of the mysterious duo Deaf Center but here for the first time he releases a record under his own name. The change makes a lot of sense since this is quite a new direction for Skodvin. Whereas Penpals Forever (and Ever), the fantastic vinyl release on Digitalis earlier this year under the Svarte Greiner moniker was unrelentingly dark, an absolute must for the dark minimalism fan, Flare is wistful, melancholic, perhaps even more classical-tinged. Guitars quietly smolder, metalic scrapes echo from some distant place, static crackles from forgotten phonographs, creaking pianos whisper in dusty attics, strange vocals call out from the mist, violins and cellos wail and moan evoking some barren wasteland. Although much of the darkness and menace is retained from Skodvin's Svarte Greiner recordings, this is perhaps his most developed, nuanced, and rewarding release yet.

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6. Xela - The Sublime (Digitalis Limited)

The final installment in the Digitalis Limited cassette trilogy, The Sublime is possible the darkest, most arcane, and most accomplished piece John Twells has graced us with yet. Ghostly choirs call from deep beneath a sea of crumbling, quietly pulsing noise that somehow both glows and engulf the listener in haunted darkness across two expansive tracks. The Sublime is the soundtrack to excavating ancient crypts and cathedrals long buried and unseen for a thousand years. An enveloping, graceful, and gorgeously hauting pair of synthesizer masterpieces from one of the genre's finest, this is long sold out on tape but will be getting the vinyl treatment courtesy of Dekoder as with the previous two installments, The Illuminated and The Divine.

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Buy (vinyl not yet for sale, check back soon)

Best of 2010, non-albums, reissues &c.

OK, I've finally found a moment to sit down and start to put this together. Yes 2011 is already almost 1/12 over but 2010 still deserves some recognition as a year with some amazing music. I'm going to attempt to post my list here as three seperate posts to make it more digestible. First up will be honorable mention-y kinda stuff: reissues, non-albums, small format things and the like. Then I'll due a Top 10 (10-6 and 5-1 or something like that). So here goes. I'll be posting this incomplete and updating it over the next couple days as well.

Non-Albums and Reissues


Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Paul Clipson - Within Mirrors DVD
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Paul Clipson have been putting out collaborative releases for some time now but until this gorgeously packaged DVD release they were all but impossible to come by. The mighty Root Strata label run by Ledesma put out each of these DVD-rs in an edition of 100 copies and needless to say they sold out within a day or two every time. Now for the first time all those previous audio/video collaborations from two of San Francisco's finest have been collected with a bunch of new collaborations, remastered, put on a real DVD, and stuck in a awesome sleeve-envelope thing. Clipson's vibrant, avant-garde super-8 collages are gorgeously abstract yet deeply embedded in the modern world, one of radio towers and train depots, chain link fences and electrical wires. Ledesma's music is often wonderfully spare, masterfully restrained and impressively immersive for its minimalism. At other times its all guazy, nearer to shoegaze than pure ambiance. It's always gorgeous, almost hypnotic in any case. Check out a couple short samples below to get a feel for this amazing package.


CONSTELLATIONS (2006) excerpt from Paul Clipson on Vimeo.


TWO SUNS (2005) excerpt from Paul Clipson on Vimeo.

Buy


Ajilvsga - Origins of the Chaul 4xCS

Brad Rose is a mighty prolific dude. One of his best projects, in my mind, is Ajilvsga, his duo with Nathan Young. The two create intensely noisy oscillator and guitar murk, pitch black cacophonies. Origins of the Chaul collect 4 cassettes worth of previously unreleased material and puts them in a large vinyl case. Only 32 copies were made (originally it was 22 but 10 extra copies were released shortly after the initial run sold out). The 9 songs collected here, none of which fall below a 12-minute run time, could be the soundtrack to some epic surrealist Western, a vicious, sprawling take on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian perhaps. Savage and abbrasive, this is possibly my favorite release yet from Ajilvsga.

Preview (download part 1)
Origins of the Chaul is long sold out but you can buy some other great stuff from Ajilvsga here


Thomas Koner - Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost Reissues
German minimalist sound-sculptor Thomas Köner originally released his Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost triptych as three seperate albums between 1990 and 1993 but always intended them to form a trilogy of sorts. Thanks to three seperate LPs and a 3xCD boxset released by Type this year, they can now be heard as they were meant to. Remastered to perfection, these three albums exemplify the notion that minimalism is anything but boring. Each offers a unqiue and immensely deep listening experience. Perhaps best summed up as a brilliant exploration of dark ambiance, I find this music hard to write about so I'll let it speak for itself. Streaming of all three albums below.


Thomas Köner - Teimo by _type

Thomas Köner - Permafrost by _type

Buy

Jasper TX - A Voice from Dead Radio 2xCD
Jasper TX is Swedish ambient maestro Dag Rosenqvist and A Voice from Dead Radio is a collection of three previous small-format and long out-of-print releases by Rosenqvist. But this is no simple reissue. A second disc is also included, this one featuring remixes and covers of each of the tracks compiled on disc one plus something new stitched together by Seaworthy. The quality of these reexaminations of Rosenqvist's work is pretty staggering. Zelienople's 17-minute cover of Harrisburg pt. 2 is dark and brooding, the menacing buzz of processed guitars lurking over skittering live percussion. Peter Broderick turns A Beacon to Lead Us There into a kind of folk song recorded to deteriorating tape, his soft vocals and acoustic guitar playing over a distant sea of static and far-off sound. Xela turns A into something almost dance-y, a near throw back to his early days of IDM. A scuzzy, propulsive drum machine thumps beneath shimmering high-end waves of white noise. There are ten covers/remixes in all featuring other artists such as Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, Pillowdriver, and Simon Scott each remaking their chosen song in really exciting ways. A Voice from Dead Radio is long out of print, only 300 copies being made.
Disc 1: the original pieces
Disc 2: The remixes and covers

Catherine Christer Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord
From Boomkat: Although her music is largely unknown - even among the experimental music community - those who've been exposed to Hennix's work tend to rank her among the elite of American minimalist composers of the twentieth century.  The Electric Harpsichord (recorded in 1976) is talked about with the highest reverence by the avant-garde's cognoscenti, with Glenn Branca describing it as "a pure perfect piece of music" and "a work of transcendent power"...or all its droning stability on a 'macro' level, The Electric Harpsichord's continually recombining layers ensure it remains ceaselessly shifting in 'micro' terms.  Significantly, none of this gets out of hand and you can still make out the individual pitches ebbing and flowing within the sound mass.  Paying close attention reveals some incredible oceanic movements within the sound waves, and repeat listens reap considerable rewards.  This recording lasts twenty-five minutes, though in the strictest terms it should be considered as only a fragment of what the composition represents; in conceptual terms The Electric Harpsichord would be an endless, perpetual entity. "
Sadly this is long out of stock but this incredible piece of music can be downloaded below.
Download 
 
Small Format
coming soon

Favorite New Artist
Motion Sickness of Time Travel 

To call Rachel Evan's Motion Sickness of Time Travel solo project new isn't exactly fair. The Georgia-based musician has been putting out music for a few years now. But 2010 was the first year the project came to my attention and I know the same is true for many others. Previously Evan's mostly released her music on cassettes in editions of occasionally under 10 copies. In 2010, Evans sent off a demo to Brad Rose of Digitalis records, one he would later call something along the lines of "one of the best demos I've ever recieved." One listen and it's not surprising why. Called Seeping Through the Veil of Unconscious, Rose put the demo out on Digitalis Limited, still on a cassette and still in a criminally small run of 75 copies or so. But the album quickly garnered more critical acclaim and internet buzz than previous MSoTT releases. The recognition is long overdue. Imagine if Grouper traded in her murky guitars and hazy keyboard for a small army of synthesizers and a spare drum machine or two and you might start to get a feel for MSoTT and especially STtVoU. As this was my first introduction to Evans' music and as 2010 really seemed to be the first year Evan's put out a number of more widely available and acclaimed releases, I think New Artist is a fair title and Favorite New Artist completely deserved. Haunting, gorgeous, totally unique, MSoTT should be on everyone's radar. It's especially cool to see that STtVoU and another album of all new material will be getting the vinyl treatment on Digitalis later this year.
Buy vinyl! 
Download Seeping Through the Veil of Unconscious
Motion Sickness of Time Travel blog/website 

best of 2010

 

So I just returned from two weeks abroad and will shortly be off for two more weeks galavanting somewhere or other. Hence the lack of recent updates. But that is about to change. Starting soon (today perhaps. But soon in any case.) I will be posting my Best of 2010 list. First it'll be Honorable Mentions and things that aren't albums (3" cd-rs, music dvds, and cassette boxsets for example) and then I'll be posting my favorite albums (either top 20, 15, or 10, haven't yet decided). Anyway I'll be including links to most of them - the top 10 for sure at least, and I'll point you in the right direction to buy them because each and every one of them will be worth far more than they cost, guarenteed.

Cool! Lots of good stuff to share soon on top of that including an amazing recording of Gavin Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic." Check back soon.

2010 Mix Tapes 3 and 4 ("Strings and Things"/"Nightmare Tracks")

So here are the final two 2010 mix tapes I'll be making. I'll almost certainly keep doing mixes but in the future they won't be confined to a single year. These are mixes 3 and 4 of this series: "Strings and Things" and "Nightmare Tracks," respectively.

"Strings and Things" is a collection of songs where most of the dominant instruments are those often associated with classical music (violins, cellos and so forth) with a good bit of piano thrown in for good measure. That isn't to say these are the only instruments by any means nor are most of these songs classical in any sense of the word. The instruments themselves are the only real unifier. As before I shot for some kind of cohesion nonetheless and hopefully you'll find it somewhat successful. Hildur Gudnadóttir's "You" begins with what sounds like a jangling zither and slowly builds layer upon layer of processed cello on top until the zither fades away and a stunningly beautiful sea of glowing noise pulses for ten glorious minutes, the soundtrack to the sun rising up through the ocean, pure bliss. Zoë Keating uses a looped cello as well but to a very different purpose. Her's is a driving piece, a rich, rapidly bowed cello sets the foundation for lush, weaving arrangements. Clogs and Fursaxa layer strings over acoustic guitar, the former with ghostly wordless vocals and marimba. Aaron Martin's track begins with a plucked banjo and layers of humming high end strings slowly building over top until the banjor disappears altogether and the mournful hum of cello takes its place. Meanwhile Library Tapes and Goldmund both offer solo piano pieces, ambient noise blooming beneath. Daniel Bjarnanson's piece comes from my current top choice for album the year. It's a ferocious, heart pounding piece for full orchestra, piano racing wildly, strings sweeping into epic crescendos, bass drums booming, the brass section bleating out. &c. A whole lot of good stuff here, in short.

1. Library Tapes - Like Grass Straws Against a Blue Sky
2. Daniel Bjarnason - Procession III: Red-Handed
3. Amiina - Sicsak
4. Fursaxa - Poplar Moon
5. Ólafur Arnalds - Loftið verður skyndilega kalt
6. Zoë Keating - Escape Artist
7. Clogs - To Hugo
8. Aaron Martin - Burl
9. Max Richter - Infra 4
10. Brian McBride - Supposed Essay On The Piano (B Major Piano Adagietto)
11. Goldmund - Bergen
12. Hildur Gudnadóttir - You
13. Erik K Skodvin - Etching an Entrance
14. Nils Frahm - Let My Key Be C (Thriller Edit)

Total time: 1:06:43

 
SoundCloud preview (see note at bottom of post)
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The second and final mix in this series is entitled Nightmare Tracks which should be more or less self explanatory. The idea here was to create a mix filled with dread and menace, something incredibly dark, eerie, frightening. Music for nightmares, essentially. To that end I've selected only a small number of tracks (9 in the play list although it's actually 11, three of them are combined into one) but have simultaneously made this my longest mix yet. Magic! Or I just picked some really long tracks. The bulk of this mix is the B sides of Svarte Greiner's "Penpals Forever (and Ever)" and The North Sea's "Bloodlines." Both are comprised of three separate pieces that run together on the vinyl but for various reasons the former is condensed into just one track here and the latter is three distinct files.  Svarte Greiner is Erik Skodvin from Norway. The man knows how to create an atmosphere of pure menace with the most bare bones arrangements. This is an ancient, mysterious sounding album, full of creaking timbers and spluttering candles, shuffling corpses and long walks through pitch black crypts full of lingering ghosts. Chains clanks and rattle, voices call out illegible and buried beneath mournful, ragged drones and window panes clattering in the wind. Unbelievably spooky and incredibly dense.

The North Sea takes a more abrasive tact. Bloodlines is all crumbling cities and factories gone manic, decaying and blazing out of control. Brutally dark, this trio of tracks is a seething, ferocious mess of noise and decay, static, smoke, wheezing last breaths. Drumming by the ever-brilliant Mike Weis of Zelienople helps propel this full side piece in three movements into terrifying new places, his drums wooshing like demonic gasps and clattering like mutilated church bells.
Christopher McFall's "4" is the soundtrack to being lost beyond all hope in some fog filled cave network deep in the mountains. And perhaps you're not as alone as you thought. A low rumbling like distant thunder pervades throughout as failing radio static crackles slowly into oblivion until at last a creaking piano ushers the piece into silence. Thomas Koner's "Permafrost" is a magnificent piece of frost covered ultraminimalism. It takes a true master to make something so restrained so darned effective but Koner is a genius of atmosphere and the track feels immensely rich and fantastically eerie. Xela's track is off his new tape "The Sublime," the finest of the three in his now concluded cassette trilogy. "Eve's Riposte" sounds arcane, almost ritualistic in its darkness and droning menace, a gorgeously undulating sea of swirling dark noise and organ murk. World's End Girlfriend ends with what could be a more fucked up B-side from Venetian Snares' "Doll Doll Doll," a savage, unrelenting torture chamber of electro-skree and horror film samples. I couldn't think of a more terrifying or fitting way to end the nightmare.

1. Christopher McFall - 4
2. Thomas Koner - Permafrost
3. Black Swan - Part VIII
4. Xela - Eve's Riposte
5. Svarte Greiner - Side B
6-8. The North Sea - Counting Down the Days/Save Yourself/Revelations
9. World's End Girlfriend - The Offering Inferno

Total time: 1:51:56

 
(Trying out SoundCloud to see how I like it. Unfortunately my as-of-yet free account won't let me share the entirety of these mixes. Needless to say that's what the download link is for! Listen away to previews featuring a handful of tracks from each mix (6-14 of Mix 3, 1-5 of Mix 4)).
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NOTE: for organizational purposes, make sure you have your media player set to organize these mixes by album or they'll be totally out of order! Something of a technophobe, I'm not sure how to make it otherwise.

Jon Dale & Moth

Up today are two releases by Jon Dale, the man formerly behind Rhizome records. Earlier in his career Dale released records under the Moth moniker before releasing a tiny handful of albums under his own name. Dale has been largely quiet for the past couple years at least as far as I can tell.

In any event, first up is Moth - 1997-2003. As the title suggest, this is a collection of eight Moth tracks recorded over a six year period. Dale primarily uses organ, guitar, and amplified metal to create an incredibly haunting, rich dronescape. Tracks vary wildly. Untitled 8 is nearly 11 minutes of gorgeous glowing guitar drone, the soundtrack to the sun rising blood red over the desert. Untitled 5 is composed almost entirely of dense organ, shifting ever so subtly across its 16 minute run time into a swelling, hypnotic sea of noise. Untitled 1 is a spooky journey into an ancient, fog filled forest. Guitars chime heavily like distant funeral bells beneath a thick covering of slow, rumbling haze. Untitled 7 almost sounds like a jazz standard slowed way down. It's the most percussive track on the album with  real drums instead of the strange shards of metal which seem to be the primary percussive of choice elsewhere. The drums rumble and shuffle with a thickly reverby, high end, undulating dial tone swirling over top. All in all "1997-2003" is an intensely beautiful collection of songs and is pretty much essential for fans of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Jasper TX, even Stars of the Lid.

Track list
1. Untitled 1 (8:01)
2. Untitled 2 (3:59)
3. Untitled 3 (4:47)
4. Untitled 4 (1:53)
5. Untitled 5 (16:00)
6. Untitled 6 (3:30)
7. Untitled 7 (5:01)
8. Untitled 8 (10:48)
Download

Next is "Son D'or" a release by Dale under his own name from 2005 comprised of a single 20-minute long track. This sounds a good deal like the Moth release above but in a lot of ways this is more developed, a more mature piece of drone work. As in all good drone music, the subtleties are what make this worthwhile. While this could work as background music of a sort, it really demands careful listening with headphones. A cursory listen will let you know that a humming organ drone sustains throughout the single track, shifting at times here and there but largely remaining a constant presence of trance inducing noise. Beneath the surface hypnotic guitars swirl and glow while ominous metallic scrapes and clanks claw through. It soon becomes apparent how densely layered the sonics are here and the more you listen, the more deeply mysterious a piece of music this comes to be. Both sonically assaulting and mesmerizing, this is on my list of essential drone.

Track list
1. Son D'or (19:57)
Download

Slowing down

Anyone who comes to this blog will probably notice the frequency of new posts has fallen off quite a bit. Unfortunately this will continue for the foreseeable future. Never fear though! In the next couple months expect to see all sorts of cool stuff. I'll be posting albums and rare recordings by the like of Starving Weirdos, Birchville Cat Motel/Our Love Will Destroy the World, My Cat is an Alien, Jon Dale, Jasper TX,  Seaworthy, The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, Motion Sickness of Time Travel, and more! Plus my Top albums of 2010 will be posted for your listening pleasure sometime in January. Hooray!

Thuston Moore: Two Trios

Taking a break from the end of the year mixes to post something special. Here we have two trios featuring the man, the legend, Thurston Moore!

First is a live set recorded on 11/11/2010 at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The trio is Moore and Bill Nace playing guitar and Chris Corsano on drums in a single, continuous, improvised set just shy of 50 minutes in length. It starts quietly, electronic creaks and beeps bubble and skitter over softly scattering snares and cymbals. Slowly but surely the set becomes more manic, more unhinged. Processed, pedal heavy high end guitar noises becomes more insistent: a distant, mangled siren call, the cheeping of robotic sparrows, an undulating metallic hum and the methodical, plodding drumming of Corsano all become almost hypnotic. The set trades off, some moments of spooky calm, others of skronking, noisy mayhem. About halfway through a wall of static shoots through the sound and ushers in the second act. It starts off full of low end menace and mutilated radio static, delves into near drone-like territory, slowly builds into something massive and vicious, a snarling tangle of roaring static, pulsating feedback, desperate air-raid siren calls, lumbering, thudding drums buried beneath. Finally things shift again and it sounds like a field recording from a inside some insane garage with never before seen power tools whirring away, chewing up metal until in the final minutes the machines start to collapse, belts fly off wheels, gear and cogs slip and grind until, at the very moment of total collapse, everything is reigned in and in a bubbling, pinging woosh, it ends. Easily one of the best live performances I've seen this year! Thanks to Goro for recording.
Live @ Chapel of the Holy Innocents Download
(note: Bill Nace is erroneously listed as Ben Nace in the tag. Didn't realize this until after it was uploaded. Change at your discretion).

Next is "Courtney Love Killed da Cobain" again featuring Moore and Bill Nace on guitar this time with Paul Flaherty on alto and tenor sax. Similarly awesome, perhaps a little more out of control than the above set. Somehow Corsano's methodical drumming had a propulsive effect and drove the piece above forward. Here there are no boundaries. It certainly doesn't suffer for it but it's a very different listening experience. Three tracks in increasing length (3:38, 24:23, and 40:45)  making it a good 15-20 minutes longer. It's brilliant but an exhausting listening experience. Flaherty's sax pierces and jabs, skreeing over searing high end guitar feedback and chugging, pummeling low end reverb. The soundtrack to society collapsing, perhaps? Completely brilliant!
Courtney Love Killed da Cobain download

2010 Mix Tape #2: The """"Pop"""" Mix

As promised, here's the second in my series of 2010 mix tapes. As with my previous mix, all tracks here are from albums released this year. My previous mix was all over the place stylistically, meant more as a snapshot of some of my favorite groups this year. This mix and the couple I'm working on that will follow should hopefully be a little more stylistically consistent. This time around: pop music! Well, sort of anyway. I'm not going to lie, I can get behind at least a portion of today's indie pop/rock scene. But this blog isn't geared towards that and so I've somewhat eschewed more traditional indie pop/rock for stuff that isn't entirely dissimilar but that still errs a bit on the weird side of things for the most part. Which isn't to say there's nothing recognizably indie pop in the mix. Helicopter by Deerhunter is a pristine piece of music that somehow manages to be cleancut yet still suffused with gurgling, shimmering noise. The Books offer up a riotous bit of electric cello, warm, wordless vocals, and bizarre samples. ALTAR EAGLE (yup, their name is in all caps) put electropop through a meat grinder and get beautifully mangled and distorted songs as a result; clean, discernible pop is there just below the surface of scuzzy static and noise. Marnie Stern sets herself apart with her ridiculously blazing, ultra technical guitar work backed up by the pulverizing drumming of Zach Hill. Julian Lynch's track sounds like a pop song slowed down and recorded through a tin can telephone with one end at the bottom of the ocean; fans of Ilyas Ahmed's more recent work will be instantly familiar and happy with the result. Eluvium's piece is built on distant, metronome percussion, a glowing bed of ambient noise, and plaintive piano and organ over top of Matthew Cooper's quiet baritone. And so on. Enjoy!

Hollow Press 2010 Mix #2: The """"Pop"""" Mix
1.The Books - Thirty Incoming
2. Liars - No Barrier Fun
3. Julian Lynch - Just Enough
4. Menomena - Black Queen Acid
5. Foxes in Fiction - 15 Ativan (Song for Erika
6. Kenseth Thibideau - Black Hole
7. Deerhunter - Helicopter
8. Owen Pallett - Keep the Dog Quiet
9. Marnie Stern - For Ash
10. Nice Face - Beater
11. Big Troubles - Astrology Screen Saver
12. Avey Tare - Cemeteries
13. Eluvium - Making Up Minds
14. ALTAR EAGLE - Pour Your Dark Heart Out
15. Tobacco - VHS Knife
16. Mountain Man - Buffalo

Total time: 1:02:08

Download

Tune in in the hopefully not-too-distant future for 2010 Mix #3: Strings and Things (All Classical, All the Time)

2010 Mix Tape

I enjoyed making the mix several posts below (and mixes in general) so much that I decided I'd try my hand at a few more for the blog. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting mixes of songs from 2010. This has been such a fantastic year musically so consider these mixes samplers of a sort if you haven't been keeping up. This first one is a pretty diverse set on songs that I tried to stitch together with some semblance of cohesion. Either way, there should be something for everyone here. Asfandyar Khan, Eluvium, and Grasslung offer up slow, shimmering drones, the kind of music for drifting off to sleep during a rainstorm. The tracks by Danny Paul Grody and Black Eagle Child are plaintive, plucked guitar, beautifully simple. Daniel Bjarnason's piece is a monstrous, heart racing bit of modern classical with off kilter pizzicato and jarring swarms of strings both bowed at ever increasing speed and battered with the bows themselves. Rene Hell and Emeralds take exuberant synth journeys. Meanwhile Barn Owl and Ajilvsa delve deep into the America west with their dark guitar dronescapes and growling oscillator murk respectively. And there's plenty more as well. Later mixes might be a bit more focused but I thought this scattershot look at some of the best this year had to offer was a good place to start.

  

Hollow Press 2010 Mix #1

1. Asfandyar Khan - Hello, Morocco

2. En - Pratyaya

3. The Alps - Telepath

4. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Where You End and I Begin

5. The Books - A  Wonderful Phrase by Gandhi

6. Rene Hell - C.G. Mask

7. Emeralds - Candy Shoppe

8. Jasper TX - Our Way Through the Field (Remix by Aaron Martin)

9. Daniel Bjarnason - Bow to String 1

10. Danny Paul Grody - Fountain

11. Eluvium - Nightmare 5

12. Barn Owl - Awakening

13. Ajilvsga - The Animal's War Party

14. Common Eider, King Eider - They Want to Dig for Gold but all They Will Find is Blood (Cell

      Phone mix)

15. Grasslung - When We Were Young

16. Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Telepathy

17. Black Eagle Child - Iron Mountain

Total time: 1:32:48

Download

NOTE: I was having some trouble getting the files to organize themselves. It should be alright but be aware that they may be out of order when you rip them to whatever media player you use

A Night of Experimental Music, live @ Bard Hall 10/30/2010

What we have here today is an extremely rare live recording, one you certainly will not find anywhere else. Three sets, two very brief and one rather long, recorded live at a pre-Halloween show in Bard Hall at Bard College in front of a crowd of about twenty.

The first set is a solo piece by Colin White using amplified metal, tape, and feedback. Warm, humming feedback washes over piercing squeaks and rough, buzzing reverberation as white noise wavers and builds over rhythmic metallic clanking and lowing reverb. A perfect pre-Halloween set, this sounds like some surrealist horror soundtrack.

Next is Michael Foster on saxophone and occasionally gasping, wordless vocals, and Leila Bordreuil on cello. The two instruments dance in and out of one another, sometime complementing each other in an offkilter kind of harmony, other times dueling and spinning off in contrary directions. There are moments of furious build and manic intensity and others of slow, minimal meandering. Fans of the previous post on this blog will find more to love here as this delves into the realm of frenetic free jazz and even swings, in a delightfully surprsisng take, into traditional jazz for a moment. A very cool and altogether too short piece.

The concert ends with a trio of amazing musicians: The great Greg kelley on trumpet, Vic Rawlings on prepared cello and electronics, and Ryan Jewell on percussion and various strange noise producing implements. Clocking in at over half an hour, this was an incredible set. Imagine a field recording from inside some alien, wheezing, decaying factory and you'll start to get a feel for what this piece sounds like. Kelley uses a damper and a small, thin sheet of metal to emit from his trumpet a rattling hum or plays with the mouthpiece removed to create a breathy, moaning gasp. Jewell uses an oyster fork and a piece of Plexiglas placed flush upon the cloth covered and contact miced surface of a snare drum to create a sharp, piercing squeak, places a long metal tine vertically against the same drum and rubs it rhythmically to create a wavering reverberation, and swings a heavily rosined bow through the air in a dense whoosh. The prepared cello of Rawlings buzzes strangely in the background and his electronics build a underlying haze of crumbling static and machinelike rumblings. Other sounds abound: Strange gasps like steam valves venting air, distant hums like generators quietly chugging away, gravely rattles like cogs spinning, hollow clanks like pipes faintly rattling. One feels as though one has found one's way into the belly of some strange machine. It's an incredibly minimal piece but it's eerie and bizarre and really wonderful, especially considering the acoustic nature of most of the sounds which somehow sound so unnatural (in the best possible way).

Download

Many thanks to Goro for taping this show!