Gillian Stone Reviews A Trio Of Recent Releases.
Ruxpin & Stafrænn Hákon ‘Meet Me In Forever’
(Sound In Silence) Available Now
Ruxpin and Stafrænn Hákon’s Meet Me In Forever (Sound In Silence) is imbued with chillness but also encourages bodily movement. This is the first collaborative effort from the Icelandic artists, who have been separately releasing music for over twenty years. Previously creating in somewhat disparate sonic worlds, Ruxpin’s melodic IDM and Stafrænn Hákon’s atmospheric post-rock collide in Meet Me In Forever.
With elements of melancholic nostalgia and an ambient retro-vibe overall, the album is reminiscent of turn of the millennia Boards of Canada with more sophisticated, modern production. This genre blending is clear off the top of the record in the first track “Flawless Delivery” with it’s clear yet warbling post-rock guitar tones, percussive breath sounds, and swirling synths. There are electroacoustic elements throughout the record, such as in the meditative third track, “Odesa”, and in the field recordings that accompany “Offshore” and “Reunited (If It’s What You Want)”. The latter, penultimate track, is perhaps the strongest on the record. Sparse vocals by Olena Simon soar over a Múm-esque soundscape, ending with a field recording of barking dogs and human laughter.
Overall, Meet Me In Forever retains a special quality of being a record you could both sleep to and dance to simultaneously.
Anemic Cinema ‘Iconoclasts’
(Ramble Records) Available Now
Iconoclasts, released via the independent Melbourne-based label Ramble Records, is “Avant-jazz-metal collective” Anemic Cinema’s newest offering. Undoubtedly a jazz record at its core, the album from the Belgium-based group is also so much more. Opening with the considerable energy of “Oneirophrenia” (meaning: state caused by sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, or drugs that is hallucinatory and dream-like), the song introduces a heaviness along with alluding to influences from Zappa and Ornette Coleman. “Iconoclasts, Pt 1”, “Iconoclasts, Pt 2”, and “Iconoclasts, Pt 3”, three movements with a nod to prog in their naming convention, then take the listener on a vast and stunning timbral journey.
The intro of “Pt 1” hails to classical Modernism, while composer Artan Buleshkaj enhances the space with beautiful, reverb-y suss chords on baritone guitar. Things get far more metal in “Pt 2”, with the juxtaposition of horns and distorted guitar enhancing the angular aesthetic of the movement. It ends with Steven Delannoye’s solo bass-clarinet, which then evolves into a tritone driven bass clarinet riff that grounds “Iconoclasts, Pt 3”. For “Business in the Front, Party in the Back”, Delannoye’s tenor sax and Rob Banken’s alto sax trade solos over Buleshkaj’s fuzzed-out guitar. Halfway through, the track completely changes speed into more traditional jazz guitar, with the hollow body sound of Jim Hall, before the fuzzed-out guitar comes back in for a modified head that takes out the tune.
The album then moves into a fucked up little interlude, “In Sillico”, with wild, sliding guitar and fantastic drum work by Matthias de Waele. “Tessellate” trades a headbanger feel with total chaos, while “108” takes out the record with the softened timbres of acoustic steel sting guitar and soloing clarinet.
Iconoclasts is a singular experimental triumph that takes the listener on an epically diverse sonic journey.
Philip Selway ‘Strange Dance’
(Bella Union) Available Now
At the heart of Philip Selway’s Strange Dance, his third solo album released via Bella Union, is the orchestral piano ballad. It’s how the album begins (“Little Things”) and ends (“There’ll Be Better Days”), and where it returns to throughout (“The Other Side”, “The Heart Of It All”). Yet in between, there is also so much else going on.
Lyrically, the album is profoundly sad, but ends with the trepidatious hope of “There’ll Be Better Days”. There are tidbits of Radiohead’s influence – the occasional Thom Yorke chord progression and Jonny Greenwood string arrangement – but otherwise it stands apart.
Between Marta Salogni’s production and Selway’s vocals, the lush sonic environment is reminiscent of Peter Gabriel in his prime. And Strange Dance does stray from the piano ballad: “Picking Up Pieces” with its driving, 90s feel and “Make It Go Away” with its acoustic guitar and percussion that could be from a 80s Paul Simon record.
Favorites on the album include “What Keeps You Awake At Night”, which includes beautiful Steve Reich-esque glockenspiel, the unorthodox percussion timbres and high, sustained strings of title track “Strange Dance”, and “Salt Air” with its droning synth, distorted vocals, and sparsely swooping orchestral parts.
Throughout the record are the incredible percussion parts of Valentina Magaletti, who played in lieu of Selway as the Radiohead drummer felt he was “not in the right mindset” to contribute drums.
Strange Dance is a thing of luxuriant, sorrowful beauty that further establishes Selway as composer in his own right.
Joining the team earlier this year, Gillian Stone is a multi-instrumentalist and interdisciplinary artist originally from the Pacific Northwest and based in Toronto, Canada. Through her eponymous vocally-driven post-rock/drone folk solo project, she has released two singles, “Bridges” and “Shelf”, and her debut EP, Spirit Photographs. Stone holds a BFA in Jazz Studies from Vancouver Island University and an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. Drawing from her eclectic taste, she has worked with Michael Peter Olsen (Zoon, The Hidden Cameras), Timothy Condon and Brad Davis (Fresh Snow, Picastro), The Fern Tips (Beams) Völur (Blood Ceremony), NEXUS (Steve Reich), and visual artist Althea Thauberger.
Our Daily Bread 501: Sweeney ‘Stay For Sorrow’
March 8, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/Graham Domain
Sweeney ‘Stay For the Sorrow’
(sound in silence)
This is the fourth solo album by Jason Sweeney (based in Southern Australia) and what a great record it is; a forlorn song cycle of break-up, sadness, mental illness, loneliness and the pursuit of love.
The influences are many – Mark Hollis, Talk Talk, Cousteau, Ian McCulloch, David Sylvian, Scott Matthew, Galaxy 500, David Ackles, Max Richter, Oren Lavie, John Grant, Perfume Genius, Scott Walker, to name a few, but Sweeney somehow manages to rise above them all and produce a great album that sounds like himself.
The first song ‘Lonely Faces’ reminds me of Cousteau in the vocal phrasing – a plaintiff, mysterious piano with a nice melody. On the chorus his vocals take on an Ian McCulloch vibe (circa Heaven Up Here – A Promise) as he cries …Be Alone. A great track. The next song, ‘The Break Up’ has echoes of early Talk Talk and Mark Hollis with its icy programmed synths and electronic drums. While ‘Home Song’ is a moody slow song with descending piano chords and string synths. Here, all hope seems lost as he mumble-sings ‘saved from this Hell outside’ before the song ends with the forlorn repeated plea to his lover to please come home…
‘Fallen Trees Where Houses Meet’ has a very David Sylvian like title but sounds vocally somewhere in-between Galaxy 500 and David Ackles. The music is a programmed keyboard pattern repeated with icy siren synths as Sweeney sings ‘You tell me there’s no moon tonight’ and other oblique lines creating a fairly atmospheric song that fades out too soon, before it has a chance to progress. ‘You Will Move On’ meanwhile, sounds like a semi-robotic hesitant alien computer trying to communicate. I would have liked to listen to this song again but the link blocked me – such is technology! It reminded me of the great, forgotten, Phillip Jap, atmospheric, a cry for help! ‘Years’ has echoes of the emotional Scott Matthew (the Australian, not the Scott Matthews from Wolverhampton) as Sweeney sings …the fear of life, the fear of death… dreams of life, dreams of death …years go by – the anxiety eventually giving way and opening up to summer birdsong at the end (the light at the end of the tunnel)!
The stand-out song, for me, is ‘Anxiety’ – a lilting piano song, almost upbeat, catchy like Covid, cheerful like Tommy Steel with bipolar, as he sings ‘I may die from anxiety, I can feel it killing me, gnawing inside painfully’. It is actually a beautiful song of sadness, mental illness and slow recovery.
‘Dear Friend’ finds a tired half-asleep drum machine talking to a drunken string machine as a Bryan Ferry song plays at the wrong speed on the jukebox. Reminiscent again of Talk Talk or perhaps even Icehouse. The only miscalculation on the album is the song ‘To Be Done’. Lyrically it’s like a song Stuart Staples might write but is ruined by a middle part that is a direct steal from David Sylvian’s ‘Maria’ – so obvious, he should have scrapped it! The final song ‘I Will Be Replaced’ finds the singer replaced in a relationship by another man, while he despairs to know why? A sad George Michael Careless Whisper saxophone plays to heighten the misery.
Overall, a very good, deep album of songs about sadness, loss and the continual search for love. It is an album where the sadness and struggle are somehow inspiring and uplifting. Highly recommended.
Our Daily Bread 333: Western Edges ‘Prowess’
June 14, 2019
ALBUM REVIEW
Words: Andrew C. Kidd
Western Edges ‘Prowess’
(Sound In Silence) 10 April 2019
After listening to the eight tracks of Prowess, I am left thinking about Andrew Marvell’s famous poem, ‘The Garden’; in particular, the lines:
“Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness”
After being overcome by the ampleness of all the fruits and flowers of his metaphorical garden, Marvell eventually found solace in nature (or, rather, through the Greek derivation, meta ta physika: after the things of nature). Marvell was a Yorkshireman and so is Richard Adams, the producer of the deeply meditative Prowess.
Warm pads and a gently repetitive motif introduce You Look So Beautiful From Up Here. It is a sound akin to the opener on Bibio’s ambient masterpiece, Phantom Brickworks (Warp, 2017). The hymnal piece that follows, Suddenly: A Dream, coruscates in the brightness of its light synthwork.
Adams was supposedly inspired by the Aire Valley when writing Prowess. From its tributaries in the Becks of Skipton and Bradford and the Rivers of Worth and Calder, the veiny arm of the River Aire stretches across Yorkshire. He captures the essence of this age-old waterway in his title track, Western Edges; it is a short sketch comprised of unhurried notes that glint like asymmetric, sun-touched ripples on a calm river.
Solid Gold Soul builds upon multiple layers; the sub-bass sings and the shuffle house rhythm is measured. Airy synths float atop it all. The oscillating, singsong sub-bass, augmented by the step-like synth melody, is also worth mentioning on You’re Going To Miss My Love. The track that follows, All Downhill From Here, features heavily processed plucks and piano effects that filter outwards in an expansive blend of polyrhythm and lyrical notes.
Very Good On The Rushes features a synth-heavy dream-sequence backed by more sub-bass. Absence is quietly ambient and minimally techno. The synths on this piece play out in a refreshingly major key and melt into one another. A slightly deeper synth layer heralds a house beat as deep as England and the 4-4 driven bass guitar riff that eventually replaces it is the anchor upon which a syncopated melody can fix; perhaps this an homage to the industrial sounds that would have emanated out of Saltaire in days past. One could even seek deeper meaning from its title, Absence: the idea of being away from something.
Adams has in effect created his own internal garden in Prowess. Using source material and influences that are close to home, he has brought us, the listener, closer to domestic peace. This is a work full of soothing melodies, wistful drones and contemplative rhythms. In our world of busy abundance, we should all consider retreating into gardens like this more often.
Album Review: Words: Andrew C. Kidd
Welcoming our newest guest writer to the Monolith Cocktail fold, Andrew C. Kidd pens a most philosophical purview of the recently-released About B. collection of reworked and previously unreleased “memory sketches”, by the German-based composer Tim Linghaus.
Tim Linghaus ‘About B. (Memory Sketches B-Sides Recordings)’
(Sound In Silence) 18th January 2019
“Memory, even if you repress it, will come back at you and it will shape your life”, postulated the lauded German writer and academic W. G. Sebald in what would be his last published interview1. After listening to About B. (Memory Sketches B-Sides Recordings), I am left ruminating on Sebald’s statement highlighting the inexorable influence of memory.
Memory has been the focus of other experimental musicians. One such project that comes to mind is Everywhere at the End of Time, the bold, six-album series written by The Caretaker, a pseudonym of James Leyland Kirby, that chronicles the gradual diminution and distortion of memory in the context of Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike Kirby, Tim Linghaus does not pursue a linear narrative in his wistfully elegant collection. Instead, his 17 compositions are sketches, or rather, brief snapshots in time that seek to capture the subtle moments that occur in a life.
Although About B. (Memory Sketches B-Sides Recordings) does not follow a linear course, to suggest that Linghaus considers memory to be non-linear would be incorrect. His interpretation of the linearity of memory, or to put it simply, the idea of memory as a continuum with our self-development in present day being highly influenced by memories of the past and future memories unconsciously being shaped by past events, occurs through a series of recurring motifs. These include the distinct but detached sounds of radio static, the familiar crackle of a vinyl record spinning atop a platter and the muffled warmth of the mechanical assembly of hammers hitting piano strings as keys are pressed. He also captures the often fleeting and frustratingly fragmented aspects to memory through the periodicity of his analogue synth arpeggios and the ephemeral nature of many of the pieces (some are as short as 30 seconds).
Devoid of intelligible words (the dreamy Where Is My Girl does feature a disguised vocal harmony), I do wonder whether Linghaus has opted for the piano as an instrument to represent his ‘voice’. The warm tonality of the piano, or perhaps even temperament (in the piano tuning sense), evokes many emotions. Snow at Franz-Mehring-Platz is melancholic. Anatomy Of Our Awkward Farewell Gestures springs into a slow waltz and contradicts the other pieces around it. The piano notes on Chased By Two Idiots are long and sustained; this track engenders a feeling of darkness which is further augmented by the deep bass-sequence and the glassy drone noises.
People listening to Tim Linghaus will of course draw comparisons to the German-born British composer Max Ritcher, particularly when presented with the complex rhythmic structure on Before Berlin (About B. End Title), the legato played on Jonathan Brandis and the plaintive strings that flood over I Was Atom And Waves (Reprise, Pt. II). The shifts of tone colour on Repetitive Daydream Sequence, Pt. VI (Humboldt University Chemistry Class 1975) are very reminiscent of the American producer Oneohtrix Point Never and his Russian Mind EP (No Fun Production, 2013). The oscillated rhythms of Looking For Dad In Radio Noise (Reprise, Pt. III) and Plaenterwald are akin to the now disbanded group, Emeralds; in particular, their Does It Look Like I’m Here? LP (Editions Mego, 2010).
Of the 17 tracks on About B. (Memory Sketches B-Sides Recordings), 4 are reworked versions of compositions from a previous album. Only Linghaus will know whether he calls the memories that featured on his debut album differently. Alternatively, these recollected memories may indeed be the same, but perhaps on further introspection he felt it necessary to make alterations to the original interpretations to better record their deeper meaning. Nevertheless, memory is a thoroughly complex faculty and an extremely difficult subject to explore and document. I applaud Tim Linghaus in his attempt to preserve his memories in the form of music.
1Jaggi M. The Last Word. The Guardian [newspaper on the Internet] 2001 Dec 12 [cited 2019 February 5].
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