Above, Convenience Store! - Tūndâr / Arvedálki Beaivvada (Foundcloud #7: A Set Review)

This month's Foundcloud thing is - unlike the previous instalments - going to be a look at one specific set. I think it's good to keep my possibly non-existent readers on their possibly non-existent feet.

What attracted me to write about this set was that I'd been particularly taken by some of Above, Convenience Store!'s earlier work that they had released on their page; in particular, the track 'Up to Jack's for No Good' -- a brilliantly atmospheric Twin Peaks-sampling piece that incorporates the uniquely eerie tone of that aforementioned show into an appropriately smoky almost trip-hop context.

This sense of the eerie and the pastoral is something that runs through much of the Norwegian duo's work: their hazy, dream-like sounds often sound lo-fi, but they never sound restricted to within the confines of a bedroom studio. Like fellow lo-fi experimentalists Grouper and Fieldhead - Above, Convenience Store!'s droning lo-fi compositions often sound as if heard somewhere in the vast expanse of the outdoors, from a distant clearing beyond oppressively tall hills and trees.




This set - Tūndâr / Arvedálki Beaivvada - is no exception. Tūndâr begins with murky reverberating guitar chords that gradually come to be accompanied by further meticulously-placed layers of distorted guitar and synth drones. All of this melds together to fuse into one huge, spacious sound that sonically recreates the feeling of harsh winds forcing themselves through the trees and chilling the skin.

Second track Arvedálki Beaivvada pretty much starts straight away with the dense wind-like drones, underneath which are snatches of melodies hidden and buried beneath the chaos. Breaking this is a guitar passage that, as well as being evocatively haunting, also serves effectively to calm the storm: giving structure to the thick layers of noise as they shape themselves to fit the guitarwork in a way that sounds appropriately organic and natural. All of this - in a way somewhat reminiscent of the work of Flying Saucer Attack or of Mirrorring's excellent Foreign Body - establishes a very effective dichotomy between subdued calm and stormy chaos.

While writing this, I also found that the duo operate a Bandcamp page -- http://aboveconveniencestore.bandcamp.com/ -- where you can stream and download two of their EPs - the brilliant Gasfarming EP, which contains the aforementioned 'Up to Jack's for No Good'; and the Planetary Exiles EP, which I have yet to listen to.

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While I'm here, I'd also like to take the opportunity to share the fourth instalment in Body in the Thames' series of mixes showcasing the music of the Drowned in Sound community, on which is contained a track of mine, 'The Almost Harp', as well as eleven other tracks by the freakishly talented members of the DiS forums.



Tracklist:
1. Ghosting Season - Time Without Question (alternate version) (DiS user worrier1)
2. Evangelink88 - Shok Shok (DiS user evangelink)

3. J Howes - TD-W700 (DiS user Howes)

4. Moth Effect - Toggy Dubness (DiS user bongodeldrongo)

5. Aquatic Slime - Howling (DiS user wasted_opportunity)

6. Cementimental - . Strangely Enough, There Was Also Electricity in Ataru's House (DiS user cementimental)

7. Internet Forever - White Light Collision Course (DiS users alcxxk, laura_wolf, & hrtbps)

8. Neon Highwire - Just Suppose (DiS user maosm)

9. oh-dude - 120 to 30, delayed and filtered (DiS user chris-budget)

10. Go Faster - When the last note sounds (DiS user dead_fred)

11. Falling Stacks - View of a lake (DiS users moribund & JimmyHuntspill)

12. Mute Branches - The Almost Harp (DiS user mute-branches)

Foundcloud #6

After not releasing a Foundcloud in March (though maybe the Pan.American post kind of counts), here's another couple of tracks from the 'Like' folder...


PLVS VLTRA - 'Rocks in Sun I'



This track is from PLVS VLTRA, the electronic solo project of Toko Yasuda -- probably better known for her work with the likes of St. Vincent, Blonde Redhead, and the Van Pelt.

'Rocks in Sun I' obviously differs from the work of those aforementioned projects: while the influence of electronic music is evident in the work of St. Vincent and Blonde Redhead, here the focus is entirely onto electronics -- as the sound-bending capabilities of the sampler are utilised to great effect.

The track admittedly doesn't go through any great changes in its 4 minutes, but where it stays - as its echoing 4/4 beat and vintage-sounding synth bass pulse through a hypnotic, sonically dense swirling collage of processed piano and vocal samples (which, I should add, at a number of points, I also found reminiscent of the dreamier and more electronically-influenced instrumental parts of St. Vincent's incredible 2009 album Actor) - is undoubtedly a nice place to be.

I should also, while I'm recommending this, urge you to listen to another track on her page - 'Sitcat (yo-yo blue)' - because it's just SO MUCH FUN.


Pinkunoizu - 'Tin Can Valley'



Speaking of fun, one of my favourite aspects of Copenhagen-based experimental rock band Pinkunoizu was how much fun their releases to date (the EP Peep and 2012 debut album Free Time!) have been to listen to, laden as they are with genre-smashing eclecticism, playful experimentation and an energy that they've shown a talent for successfully translating onto record.

This new single 'Tin Can Valley' (from an upcoming EP Second Amendment, out next month on Full Time Hobby) is no exception to that rule. On the track we can hear a band who just sound like they're enjoying every aspect of what they're doing, while unleashing the kind of exciting, noisy, sprawling music that wouldn't sound too out of place coming from Sonic Youth circa-Daydream Nation.


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While I'm here, I'm also going to mention a Soundcloud playlist originating from the Drowned in Sound forums:
https://soundcloud.com/body-in-the-thames/sets/1-minute-dis-challenge.

As well as including my track 'Lake', it also features 14 other great tracks that show how much interesting stuff can go on in a single minute.

Happy listening!
(not to be a regular sign-off, it just seems weirdly appropriate right here)

Not Foundcloud, But Something I Found On Soundcloud

I've been relatively more busy than usual recently, though I do plan to get another Foundcloud out by the end of the month (or if not then, then very likely early next month -- unless BioShock Infinite ends up taking over my life, which is VERY possible).

Anyway, here's something that came across in the Soundcloud feed that I was rather excited about...

The first taste of the upcoming new album from Pan American (Cloud Room, Glass Room: to be released on Kranky next month).

In all honesty, 'Project for an Apartment Building' is no great leap for Pan American... within the first minute, we hear the crackling static, the dub bassline, the clattering rhythms, the looping synthesizer sequence: these have been hallmarks of Mark Nelson's distinctive sound since early releases like 360 Business / 360 Bypass 13 years ago. And as more sounds are introduced -- further rhythmic elements, ambient washes, the buzzing and whirring of a dreamily processed guitar -- it's clarification that this is Pan American, doing what he does best and, I should definitely add, doing it as brilliantly as ever: crafting a soundscape full of atmosphere, beautiful textural touches and character.

Certainly an album I'm looking forward to, then (especially given the reported presence of former Labradford member Bobby Donne), but this will be more than enough for now to get my fix of Mark Nelson's brand of understated yet dense ambience.

Foundcloud #5

Two more tracks for February! One of which is accompanied by a rather lengthy slab of text.
So something for everyone.

Elephant - 'Skyscraper'

I had a real soft spot for Elephant’s Assembly EP when it was released in 2011 (helping to soundtrack, as it did, lengthy stretches of time in a university library), and I’m glad to hear a new song from the London-based boy-girl duo – presumably a first taste of their upcoming debut album.

I’m even more glad, it should be said, that this is the most fleshed out realisation of their dreamy, almost David Lynch-esque, approach to a fifties-style pop sound – as the band crafts an elegantly melancholic wall of sound (consisting of organ washes, retro-cinematic vibraphones (always a personal favourite), string and choral samples, and passages of processed guitar, amongst others) around Amelia Rivas’ suitably dreamlike vocals; all of which combine to create a brilliant three-and-a-half minutes of dreamy pop that – like the work of Tennis, and like Beach House’s more recent releases – favours brightness and clarity over murkiness and ambiguity.

Download it from their Bandcamp page here, too.

Scarfolk Council - 'A Day at the Seaside'

There’s a different sort of nostalgia at work in this second selection.

I discovered the Scarfolk blog (http://scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk/) earlier today, and I think it’s fair to say that anyone who looks at it will have an idea of what that “different sort of nostalgia” I mentioned is.

The blog’s aesthetic – visibly influenced by public information films of the Cold War 1970s as well as, it should be noted, the visual style of Ghost Box Records, Broadcast, and the BBC comedy series Look Around You (which, of course, are themselves visibly influenced by public information films and posters of the 1970s) – can clearly be linked with ‘hauntology’: the aesthetic style / music genre that offers a skewed interpretation of the 1970s, often focusing on a somewhat childlike perspective on the anxieties of that time in which the eerie warnings of public information films mingle with the warped fantasies of 1970s horror films like The Wicker Man and of children’s television programmes like Children of the Stones.

This track – from the blog’s Soundcloud account – has its own mythology that ties in with that of the blog’s titular surreal perpetual-1970s town (the track description reads “Scarfolk Council is proud to announce its musical debut! Here's "A Day at the Seaside" from the "Scarfolk Music & Audio Library Vol. 1" released in 1973(v.2.0).”). Musically though, I didn’t feel it evokes the past in the same way as is generally associated with ‘hauntology’ artists like Belbury Poly and the Focus Group: despite the presence of hazy analog synth drones, the track doesn’t evoke the 1970s through a pastiche of library music or of cult science-fiction or horror films. Instead, the track evokes the implicit nostalgia of its own title (‘A Day at the Seaside’) through creating the sense of a distant memory through field recordings of seaside sounds melting and fading into the downtempo ambient drones in a way that presents us with a view of the past that’s more introspective and personal than hauntology’s post-modern warping of cultural artefacts. Highly recommended!

New MBV

It finally happened.

Even at the height of expectation, I wasn’t really expecting it.

But yeah, as everyone and their oft gazed at shoes knows, My Bloody Valentine have released their third album!

This isn’t going to be a track-by-track review / run-down, as I imagine there are tonnes of those and, I think it’s fair to say, I’m one of those people who are prone to criminally overusing terms like “blissed-out”, “hazy”, and “killer swirly, bro” when describing shoegazey stuff.

Instead it’s just going to be a bunch of very subjective words related to m b v.

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The Release

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Jon Bon Jovi said something about the effect of the Internet on music and its listenership and how its “killing music” (a lot of people have said this, I know, but I wanted to subtly shed a light on the irony of Jon Bon Jovi accusing anyone or anything of doing harm to music (and, yeah, I know it’s a cheap shot)); and he said all that stuff about how the romance of listening to a record and pouring over it in your bedroom was lost in the digital age of instant gratification: teenagers can now just jump thoughtlessly from song to song, before taking a break with some demented Cold War-era Soviet pornography and a marathon session of the most critically acclaimed HBO drama series of the moment.

I think, however, we could see a new sort of romanticism in music listening brought about by the Internet and its promises of “what you want, when you want”. By which I mean – and I assure you at this point that I’m not trying to sell you a new phone contract or anything – connectivity. I saw it when Radiohead released King of Limbs from out of nowhere, too, this sense of the release being an event because it was immediately accessible to all the fans, who could share their thoughts, their feelings, their jokes with one another over forums and social networks.

It was even more noticeable with m b v, though, due to the excitable fans causing an almost-immediate server breakdown (instant gratification, my balls!). Sure, it wasn’t great to find that my excited, hopeful clicking on that fateful link was met with a ‘Server is busy’, and later, a message throwing into question my credentials – but the Internet response was quite inspiring. Comments expressing individual confusion at the server being down quickly gave way to individuals speaking for the whole community – verbose expostulations of “NOOOOOO” and YouTube clips expressing those sentiments. The widespread hysterics, and mass excitement at the fact that someone had a screencap of the page pre-crashing, made the whole thing like experiencing Beatlemania from the comfort of your own home.

Most enjoyable was how the community wasn’t the stereotypical view of Internet hordes as a mass of entitled whining “trolls”, but of people whose genuine excitement and anticipation for 47 minutes of new music was clear through just the simplistic vector graphics of words on computer screens. Who can say the romance of listening to music has been killed by the Internet, when it can be used as a means for complete strangers to bond with one another over speculation and over jokingly making false claims about having heard the album (one of mine was that “the drop on ‘Fill That Cat’s Urethra With Formaldehyde, You Sainted Buffoon’ is up there with Skrilly”).

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Downloading and Listening

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After giving up on the wait for the server to come back (sometime round quarter to one, I think), I went to bed. This was, I should add, partly because I was running dry on smart-arse witticisms. Next morning, I went about my usual waking routine of making indistinguishable noises and then reading to accustom my half-asleep mind to language and then... suddenly... “NEW MBV ALBUM”, which led me to run downstairs to get my laptop and DOWNLOAD THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

I was met with a transaction error at first, which I initially thought may have been some sort of Kevin Shields elaborate conspiracy. But eventually, I DOWNLOADED THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

It then strikes me that this is going to be the first time I’ve listened to a My Bloody Valentine album without it being accompanied by a rich mythology – the stunned initial reviews, the impassioned retrospectives elevating it to relic status.

As I hit ‘play’ though, the first few tracks of m b v provide me with some familiar sounds: the tremolo, the distortion, the vocals and their soft counterpoint to the instrumental noise. It starts off very much resembling Loveless – opener ‘she found now’ is very much in the vein of ‘Sometimes’, for example – albeit with a production style a bit more clear and ‘earthbound’ – most noticeable in how the tone is somewhat more reminiscent of “crunchy” Dinosaur Jr.-style noise-pop on tracks like ‘only tomorrow’ and ‘who sees you’ than of the spacey, smooth alien textures of Loveless. The overall effect led me to expect an album somewhere curiously between the more transcendent sonic explorations of Loveless and Isn’t Anything’s adventurous yet undoubtedly ‘rock’ sound.

Which is kind of true. The album definitely changes toward the end, as tracks continue the ‘strangeness’ of Loveless with tracks that exert more overt electronic influences (the excellent ‘if i am’ and ‘in another way’ both bear noticeable similarities with Kevin’s remix work for the likes of Primal Scream and Yo La Tengo); and the ‘groundedness’ of Isn’t Anything shows itself in a number of ways – the rockier elements present in ‘nothing is’ and ‘new you’ (possibly one of the happiest-sounding songs in their back catalogue, by the way, rivalling even some of the early twee stuff), as well as the humour and somewhat Stereolab-esque playfulness present in some of these tracks (is ‘nothing is’ a tongue-in-cheek response to Isn’t Anything? And the ramshackle little coda at the end of ‘if i am’, and the unexpected crazy solo kicking off ‘in another way’).

If I’m honest, it still feels weird to be listening to this and to have it there in my iTunes. It’s been great to listen today (almost exclusively, in fact) to what My Bloody Valentine have been up to since Loveless, and it’s served to make me look forward even more to seeing them in Manchester in March. Here’s hoping that – as Kevin has implied – this is only the beginning, and we’ll be hearing what Kevin’s had in mind for after this follow-up to Loveless... because I personally really want to hear a bit more stuff in the vein of his ambient stuff for the Lost in Translation OST.

Snow / Nostalgia for fellow children of the 1990s

The best way for a child of the 1990s to celebrate the modestly berserk levels of snow, which made the lake near my town look significantly more like a Grouper album cover...

Foundcloud #4

Another month, another Foundcloud. Accompanied this time by a link to my new Mute Branches EP -- Conditions in Limbo. I take a lot of inspiration from the music I cover on this blog so, if you enjoy that, please don't hesitate to stream or download free on the Bandcamp page.


El Fog - 'Time, Memory'

I only recently heard about El Fog, the vibraphone / electro-acoustic music project of Berlin-based artist Masayoshi Fujita. It’s fair to say that the concept of music containing vibraphones, elements of glitch and of general electro-acoustic tinkering (not to mention a release with Flau Records) was enough to send me rushing to his Soundcloud page like a cheetah on cocaine.

The track is a minimalist yet emotive vibraphone solo played over a similarly sparse field recording. Gradually, Fujita introduces gradually elements of electronic distortion that eventually come to take over the track. Like many of the tracks I speak highly of on this blog, it’s an excellent fusion of human instrumentalism and machine music that seems to say that, if – as so many annoying purists are wont to proclaim – electronics and computers are destroying music, then at least it’s a destruction that sounds good.

Honey Son - 'Soundprov #2'

This next track is a great live improvisation by Honey Son, the recording project of Texas-based Mars Wright.

Despite being a simple "one-man and a looper" set-up, Wright nevertheless keeps the track sounding fresh and interesting throughout. Beginning with interlocking guitar loops and the subsequent introduction of an additional phrase of e-bow guitar, the track continues to develop nicely - at one point resembling somewhat the jazz-inflected post-rock of a band like Tortoise, before increased improvisation with sampling and effects - as well as the introduction of soulful, somewhat Jeff Buckley-esque vocals - gives Wright the chance to take the track down a multitude of increasingly interesting musical avenues.

In a way, this solo, loop-based composition can be seen to - like the El Fog track - showcase just how much electronics have to offer to the realms of live instrumentation and performance.


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Additional notice deserves to be given to the unexpected Four Tet release - 0181 - consisting of unreleased music from between 1997 and 2001.



Click here to read the review I wrote of it for BeardRock.com.