Tickling My Fancy: Angels Die Hard, Steiner
Angels Die Hard ‘Angels Die Hard’ (Jezus Factory Records) – Available Now via Bandcamp.
Intoxicated on the Silk Road by a heady mix of pop sike, prog and krautrock, the inaugural Angels Die Hard soundtrack crisscrosses an imaginary map: from North Africa to the South Seas.
A collective who’s blurry ranks number band members from Antwerp’s underground alternative scene (Bad Influence, Black Denver, Gore Slut, Ow, Wilderwolves and already featured previously on the Monolith, the Strumpets), with a moniker nicked from some exploitative bikers on acid movie, the group set a psychedelic pace with the Les Baxter ritualistic oasis opener, ‘Blue Mambo’. Imagine a lounging Happy Mondays, holidaying on Monsterism Island, and you’d be half way towards conjuring up the sound this rabble of dreamy travellers make, as they venture languidly through theremin haunted woods (‘A Walk In The Black Forrest’), Augustus Pablo meets Cluster mountain ranges (‘Fruhstuckstelle’), and lamentable Hawaiian beaches (‘The Lonely Angel’).
We’ve been here before of course: the Moroccan hash trail, Byzantium wonder. After all this is a terrain both inhabited and visited by many travellers, but the Angels at least compose something worthwhile; their brand of drawn-out diaphanous drones and magical undercurrents can soar above much of the ‘topographic ocean’ debris.
Steiner ‘at or from a distance’ (Glass Reservoir) – 17th February 2014
With the baptism of //Fiocz ‘s field recorded electronic fog and nuanced static rippling Social Cognition last year, the Glass Reservoir label – erudite providers of minimalistic fizz, crackle and pop electronic – continues to release earnest and humble recordings from a cable of outsider composers.
So far confined to a limited run of experiments in the past, but making his debut for the label here, the next scheduled artistic ambient suite is from the mysterious Steiner, whose tentative ‘nocturnal’ city walks and impressions of Japan collection, at or from a distance, is a indolent, if meditatively calming and touching affair.
Sounding out a dreamy peregrination, inspired by both his interest in photography and extemporised recording, Steiner integrates murmurs of Eno-esque with Boards Of Canada like lingers of human interaction; crafted from his tool box of laptop, ‘eBox’ and guitar.
Sequenced or rather blurrily defined, each drifting soundscape bleeds into the next. Each one of the seven palatial sketches exudes a lovely melodic quality (a kind of mellower, more lush, Ambient Works II), and exudes a certain sensitivity.
Textures and layers are lightly connected and woven to create a suitable delicate balance with the experimental white noise symphonic hubris of that initial Glass Reservoir opener. Showing a range, albeit it nuanced one, in the scope of electronic minimalism that few labels can match.
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