More albums, more catching up with things, more staying ahead of things, more cherry picking through the mountain of albums, more picking of the cherries, picking off the cherries, the never ending pile of demanding cherries that find their way here on a daily basis. You surely know the policy by now? We do, on the whole, only feature the albums and things we feel positive about. We really don’t have time to clutter up these already overloaded pages with negative coverage of things that do nothing for us, there isn’t the time or space, there isn’t any need, although some times there probably is. Here’s another five or so and we clear the decks at the end of the year….
Empty Threats – Happy Birthday (Anti Dismal) – It says here “Kaurna-based sextet The Empty Threats fuse Australian post-punk and noise rock into a metallic rainbow of snarling bass, frenzied guitar work, restless percussion, and electric clarinet. Unleashing unadulterated party rock; unmasked, wild, dirty and free; their shows are an anti-religious spectacle that unifies the audience and band through the power of mindful rock n roll”, we are told they’re a riot of colour live, the Queen of Australia insists we have to see them and on the evidence of this album, the Queen is almost certainly right. it really is that frenzy of electric clarinet and the slice of wild jazz-noise within the structure of what are mostly indie flavoured noise rock songs.
Songs, that is important, The Empty Threats (they don’t seem to know if they have a ‘the’ at the start of their name or not?), Empty Threads have songs, some of them in a rush to take us with them, some of them quietly reflective and full of hope – Skye’s Theme is a thing of smouldering beauty as it slowly builds and threatens to explode in such a restrained way. Sometimes delightful, Bus Stop is just a pleasure, the just sitting there waiting in the rain, Bus Stop is something rather unexpected after the frenzied noise rock of the album opener and that Phone Call, something that kicks off things and demands instant attention in such a stylish way. The Empty Threats are an extremely likeable band, sometimes a riot of colourfully urgent noise, sometimes a more crafted retrained indie/alt.rock thing, always flowing as one whole though, it all makes sense as one whole thing, one body of work, a proper album. Their considered light and shade adds to it all, the Queen of Australia was right, a back to check out she said… Bandcamp
Meanwhile…
Horse Lords & Arnold Dreyblatt – FRKWYS Vol. 18: Extended Field – It seems like an age since we last ecountered the the experiments of Baltimore’s Horse Lords, This honks in such a stylish manner, it sounds like, no really can’t be disrespectfully throwaway and talk of avant Geese and the harmonic thrill of it all, there is a thrill to the combination and the interaction of Horse Lords and Arnold Dreyblatt though, their probably does require a more considered high-end response but this is a thrill and they did sound like geese for the almost twelve minute build of the title track as they got ready to fly while the almost nine rewarding minutes of Suspension is just that…
– “Extended Field unites Horse Lords and Arnold Dreyblatt for the eighteenth volume of FRKWYS, an intergenerational collaboration of adventurous musicians drawn to the sonically radiant world of just intonation – an ancient tuning system in which scale intervals are derived from whole-number ratios. Dreyblatt first immersed himself in this approach in New York during the 1970s, while Horse Lords began exploring and applying its possibilities nearly four decades later. Together, they create a vibrant harmonic environment, fuelled by a shared devotion to rhythm, achieving a marriage of discreet but related aesthetics for the ages” –
Sometimes tense, but never overbearingly so, if it is tense then an enjoyable tense, a pin point enjoyment, a higher state. Sometimes flowing, never wild though, never ever anywhere anything near out of control. Instrumental experimentation that takes you with it and that bit there, that slight change three minutes into the eleven that are the (once again) slow build ofImpulse Array, that building that that the two parties are so good at. Advance, the opening piece here does entice, these are rewarding rhythms, different ones and once again this is so good to just go with…. Highly recommended, do forgive the honking geese laziness but sometime you just have to go with it all. This is one to go with to both deeply analyse and on other day just deeply enjoy (like a good flock on geese).
Flesh Narc – Yonkers (Decoherence Records) – Now we did say back in the Autumn when we previewed a couple of tracks from this freaked out extreme rock band from Denton, Texas, that we’d be back with more. Flesh Narc released a new album titled Yokers back in September on Decoherence Records, a NYC based label specialising in disoriented no-wave/noise rock and well, we never got back to it, until now that is…
They do sound rather hatstand, rather deranged, relentlessly so – over to the label; “Since their last release with Decoherence, Flesh Narc have evolved into a powerhouse band with the addition of two drummers, increasing the density of their wall of sound with double the strength and rhythmic intricacy. Acidic guitars burn through a slew of psychedelic textures, twisted up around unfiltered lyrical surrealness in these nine new songs. The music was primed over the course of a month-long, coast-to-coast US tour, performed in warehouses and weird houses, laundromats and junkyards, ploughing through snowstorms and dodging forest fires, making it home alive to record it all live in the studio capturing the band’s peak performance…”
And well it was back in September and we are fast heading towards the end of December now and they really are relentless, perpetual, overloaded, full bodied, they are kind of operating one level, is it a case of heard one song, as good as it is, ans you’ve heard them all? It is a busy song, they’ve got several kitchen sinks in there, they might have the secret scrutiniser in there as well, did they find it in Joe’s Garage? It is relentless and no one is home at the weekend, not even The Locust. Yonkers is rather good, too good to not go back to before the year ends… Bandcamp
The Necks – Disquiet (Nothern Spy Records) – And there was another album from The Necks this year, was it their Twentieth or did we miss one after Travel? This one came out back in October…
“The Necks are one of the great cult bands of Australia. Not entirely avant-garde, nor minimalist, nor ambient, nor jazz…”
A quiet album from the legendary Australian trio, well the first twenty minutes of the the first fifty-seven minute long piece is quiet: “On Disquiet, The Necks stretch their immersive, shape-shifting sound across three discs and more than three hours of labyrinthine, patient intensity. This is their twentieth studio recording and it marks the 39th year of the band’s existence. Meticulously recorded and sculpted, the four extended pieces on Disquiet see Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, and Lloyd Swanton pushing at the outer edges of their collective intuition, building and unravelling hypnotic structures with microscopic focus. Present is the usual arsenal of piano, double bass, and drums, and all the in-between of sounds undefined and sources obscured…” and rather a lot of rather organic keyboards that find them almost threatening to merge everything rather beautifully into Riders on The Storm like Doors moments. These are long considered and yes, beautifully sculpted pieces – crafted, engaging and never ever, even though there are hours of just slightly shifting slow moving rhythm, not a minute of anything near boredom, not a minute that doesn’t need to be there as they carefully move it, as they cleverly, precisely adjust it, as they paint it so beautifully… Absorbing.
“The music of The Necks has always carried a profound sense of shared responsibility – between the players, of course, in their utter commitment to the improvisational – but also between the work and its audience. With music so open, there are profound opportunities to choose: what to focus on, whether to focus at all, etc. Disquiet takes this further: there is no particular listening order prescribed. There is no “Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3.” The music itself seems to stretch time, and this presentation challenges ideas of sequencing. The Necks, one may argue, are a mode of discovery as much as they are a band…”
Previously…
And on with the catch up thing….
Orcutt Shelley Miller – Orcutt Shelley Miller (Silver Current) – Orcutt Shelley Miller are an avant-rock trio comprised of three highly celebrated figures of experimental music: Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire). Their debut self-titled album was released back on September 5th on Silver Current Records.
We maybe might have expected something a little less conventional? It does flow rather well, very easy on the ear, easy to just go with, dare we say it sounds a little like a slightly mellowed Neil Young enjoying a rather focused rather reigned in jam? it does build up, it does kind of where it needs to, there’s some glorious bass lines anchoring it all in a stylish way, allowing the guitar and drums to colour things, were we maybe kind of expecting a little more though or is the reward in the economy of it all, the seeming ease of the flow? Bandcamp
THE ORGAN 