Julia Holter - Ekstasis

Down

Genre: Experimental, Electronic, Psychedelic

Label: RVNG Intl

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Like a lot of home-recorded music in the indie sphere in the last few years, Ekstasis makes heavy use of atmosphere. There's plenty of reverb and vocal tracks are braided together into drones; it's the kind of swirly production that's good for hiding mistakes. But nothing Holter does feels random. This album is above all careful, and its deliberate construction allows it to work on a different plane from most music that scans as "ethereal." Ekstasis is not the sort of oceanic wash you lose yourself in; instead, Holter's music has a way of snapping tiny moments and small sonic gestures into focus.Ekstasis is above all smart, and it makes no apologies for it.

Holter's work exists at the intersection between pop and "serious" music. The mayor of that particular corner is Laurie Anderson, and there are obvious parallels between the two. You can hear Anderson in Holter's flat, chant-like inflection, which allows her music and lyrics to do the emotional work. You can also hear it in her love of simplicity and approach to mixing traditional instrumentation and electronics. Another touchstone is the dark magic of Klaus Nomi. It's not just that the tracks like "Fur Felix" bear a similarity to Nomi tracks like "Keys of Life", there's also an undercurrent of ritualism and theatricality in Holter's music. Ekstasisis certainly mysterious, but not because meaning is hard to pin down; it's more that there are so many possible meanings, so many places to focus your attention.

Listening to Ekstasis, I keep thinking about how it differs from music that feels superficially similar. The music of Julianna Barwick, for example, has liturgical overtones, bringing to mind stone and glass and voices rising in cathedrals. Barwick wants to tap into something beyond words. But Holter's music sounds like it was assembled in a dusty library a floor or two below the sanctuary. It's a few shades darker, but it's also based on ideas first and intuition second. Despite using vocoders, drum machines, and electronics, it feels "old" in part because Holter so deliberately connects her music to the distant past. On her debut album, she did so by basing her songs on a play from ancient Greece by Euripides; here, she pulls words and scenarios from literature and mixes them with her own idiosyncratic approach to words. The songs include quotes from the likes of Virginia Woolf and Frank O'Hara. A line from O'Hara's poem "Having a Coke With You"-- "I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world"-- animates "Moni Mon Ami", nestled amid the twinkling synths, strings, and keyboards that sound like harpsichord are original lines like "Hours become years when you're gone!"

Where Holter's Tragedy felt more like a tapestry, with vocal tracks mixed in with instrumental bits and interludes, Ekstasis leans toward proper songs, and it palette is more uniform. "In the Same Room", despite its chintzy drum machine and mechanized hand-claps, is actually a drama unfolding in close quarters. "In this very room, we spent the day and looked over antiquities. Don't you remember?" to which the other character replies, "Do I know you? I can't recall this face but I want to." You see it play out on paper on the lyric sheet and it feels like a linear exchange, but Holter twists the voices together and the narrative folds in on itself. It's there as pure, gorgeous sound if you want it-- you don't need to know what the songs are about to immerse yourself in this record-- but the deeper you go, the more the songs open up.

"I can see you but my eyes are not allowed to cry..." is a lyric from "Goddess Eyes", a new version of a song that appeared on Tragedy. It's a line from the Euripides play that inspired her first album, and it's delivered in processed voice reminiscent of a vocoder. So we have a 2,000-year old phrase run through a device that makes a human sound like a 1970s version of the robots of the future. And at the center of all this time travel stands Julia Holter, pulling in references and sounds from everywhere and shaping them into a music that's both haunting and life-affirming, something to make you dream and think.

The Flower Corsano Duo - The Chocolate Cities

Not The Original Cover Art

Genre: Experimental, Psychedelic, Live
Label: Self Released

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Limited tour-only self-released CD-R from the duo of Chris Corsano on drums and melodica and Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra) on Japan banjo. This one beats both of their ‘official’ LPs in terms of dynamism and psychedelic excess, with the opening track the greatest recorded document of the group’s ferocious live form. Drawn from live recordings in Switzerland and Cambridge, the method of attack varies across the five tracks, running from slow single note chorales with Corsano stampeding underneath through glorious fire music-inspired ascensions that just keep on peaking. It’s hard to create any kind of dynamic when you’re working with an instrument that has a constant drone sound but here Flower and Corsano explode the limitations by playing with a single voice, to the point where any notion of interaction is exploded in favour of a profound simultaneity. Easily the best thing these two have recorded together, every time we spin this in the shop someone has to have it.

Infinite Body - CMBCMEINAPTD LP

Not the original cover art

Genre: Drone, Psychedelic, Experimental
Label: Teardrop Records

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Kyle Parker has jacked in his excellently named 'Gator Surprise' noise project to make way for Infinite Body which explores a far more subdued avenue. 'CMBCMEINAPTD' goes deep into heady drone territory with some thick fuzzy textures. I'm reminded a little of Growing's 'Colour Wheel' album. Phil is reminded of early Belong stuff. After hearing their 'October Language' LP earier I can second that notion....He uses some quite different and colourfull sounds over the duration of the album. It's consistently hypnotic throughout with some nice use of repetition and subtle shifts in mood.

Wet Hair - Dream

Genre: Experimental, Psychedelic, Noise, Drone
Label: Not Not Fun

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When Iowa City freak-out free-rockers Raccoo-oo-oon called it quits last year it left a bummer scar in the Midwest underground scene. But time is a great healer, and so are new bands. So out of the ashes of the Rac pack comes Wet Hair, a synth-punk-trance duo composed of keyboardist/vocalizer Shawn Reed and keyboardist/drummer Ryan Garbes, and Dream is the band's debut vinyl full-length after a series of increasingly shredding limited-edition cassettes on their own Night People label. Piling together an unlikely trash heap of Suicide-style drum machine beat-bops, zone-droned krautrock keys, and fucked up outsider crooning, the LP's four tracks careen across a spectrum of moods and mangled melodies. Wet Hair's cult electric annihilation has never gleamed with such razor-edged weirdness; this is their dream made real.

Mountainhood - Wings From A Storm Lp

Genre: Acid Folk, Psychedelic, Lo-Fi
Label: Time Lag

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The counterpart to "thunderpaint the stone horse electric" is equally lovely, lo-fi, and lysergic, but here the somewhat euphoric zone has become ultra lovesick moody. dominated by just piano & vocals, with bits of guitar, tapes, chiming tones and dusty wooden night sounds stirring. definitely glassy-eyed voyeurism... pressed on 180gm bright red vinyl, with printed, hand stamped, and hand numbered labels. packaged in a foldout whale grey art paper cover with full sized full color high quality paste-on art front & back, screen printed interior, and hand stamping, plus two big art sticker inserts & 3rd xerox track list insert.

Wet Hair - Glass Fountain

Genre: Psychedelic, Noise, Drone, Experimental
Label: Not Not Fun

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The Reed/Garbes duo mainly sticks to their guns, mining the same post-Suicide art-trance vein they perfected on Dream, but with Glass Fountain there’s an added emphasis on the disembodied, oscillator pop mode that Wet Hair often toy with. Fountain’s five tracks include some of the band’s simplest but catchiest songs (“Crucifix In The Waves,” “When The Right Time Comes,” etc), mesmerizing organ melodies over plink-plonky vintage drum machines with weirdo soulful singing and outer space electronics, like an outsider-punk Silver Apples or something. Hard to say exactly what universe Wet Hair are operating in and that’s probably part of why we love it so much. A killer record that gets better each spin.

Burial Hex / Zola Jesus - Split

Genre: Experimental, Drone, Psychedelic
Label: Aurora Borealis

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Zurial Jex and Bola Hesus have done a split LP what's limited to the 500 copies.. I loved the Buriaa Hes album (also on Aurora Borealis) and thought the Zoll Jesux effort on Troubleman was mighty fine so this one seemed an exciting propostition from the off. The side with Burial Hex (to use their non-stupid name) let me down a little bit on first listen, I wasn't sure that it compared well with the material I'd previously heard but now that it's on again and I'm giving it my full attention it's actually a highly satisfying thing. The first tune is a funereal electronic dirge that brings early Coil to mind (but pushed far more over the top than that comparison suggests by the crazy screaming man who clearly doesn't want to clean the oven) while the second is all over the place during the course of its fifteen minutes, taking in ambient noise, little piano sonatas, electroacoustic whirrs and whistles, exotic percussion and heavy riffing along the way. Zola Jesus (to use her non-stupid name) contibutes one big fuck-off track that isn't dissimilar to that long Burial Hex track in its variety - elements are constantly dropping in and out, ideas toyed with then discarded and textures never quite left long enough for you to get too comfortable.. Obviously her witchy voice is the most remarkable thing and there's a moment about halfway though where scratchy static vies for attention with a near operatic croon that got my hairs standing right on end. Just one special moment in a superb overall listen and having digested it a little bit more I can wholeheartedly recommend this experimental little industrial tyke. (Norman Records)

Meth Teeth - Everything Went Wrong Lp

Genre: Lo-Fi, Noise, Psychedelic
Label: Woodsist

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Meth Teeth reside in Portland OR. and in some ways embody the rainy day big country vibe of the city with its youth culture dreamers, old druggies, and rustic history. There is something that is really hard to pin down about Meth Teeth, the songs rely on simple ramshackle rhythms, upbeat shinny guitar interplay, and big fat chord churners, and a lot of tambourine banging away on the snare drum. Ultra catchy summertime rockers keep you sad and lonely, and upbeat and hopeful all at once

Chris Corsano - Another Dull Dawn LP

Genre: Experimental, Free Jazz, Psychedelic, Noise
Label: Ultra Eczema

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Corsano, the last drummer on earth, always remained calm and polite and made this full on incredible LP of absolute madness played on different drum sets, toy percussion, baritone sax mouthpiece on a 2 foot metal pipe, violin strings, banjo and violin bridges, contact mics, effect pedals, claw bell, metal strips from windshield wipers, toy comb, clarinet, toy gamelan, guitar cable, gongs, metals, triangle, nylon guitar strings, amps, melodica, pot lids etc. In every collab he played in (with Bill Nace, Thurston Moore, Spencer Yeh, John Olson, Eric Thielemans, Bjork, Byron Colley, Blood Stereo, Paul Flaherty, Greg Kelley, Idea Fire Company, etc.) he always changes things and never sounds the same.

Darwinsbitch - Ore

Genre: Drone, Psychedelic
Label: Digitalis Industries

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Ore, Marielle Jakobsons' first darwinsbitch full-length, presents a remarkably assured exercise in electro-acoustic dronescaping. Using sine oscillators, violin, piano, bells, and other acoustic sounds, Jakobsons, who also plays in the duo Myrmyr (with Agnes Szelag) and Date Palms (with Gregg Kowalsky), stitches seven settings into an uninterrupted, forty-six-minute mass of malignant miasma. The opening piece “Iron Lake” emerges from glutinous fog, the track's stillness reinforced by a phalanx of humming electrical drones and the saw of a violin. It's the latter's presence that gives darwinsbitch's music a character that separates it from that of other sound sculptors. Deploying it judiciously, Jakobsons uses its moaning cry to humanize her desolate and gloom-ridden landscapes. In similar manner, a harmonium occupies the forefront of “Silver Sphere,” gently illuminating its mournful ambiance with crystalline tones before the album plunges into a darker, subterranean zone of nightmarish rumbling (“Flames in Blackened Sky”). Descending deeper, sine tones rub dissonantly against one another in “Raven's Dissipation” while the high-pitched whistle of the violin haunts the background. The exhausted sounds of industrial machinery, bells, and a broken piano dominate the thirteen-minute closer “Shadow Leaves” with the violin theme heard in “Iron Lake” re-appearing to bring the album full circle. Jakobsons shapes the blurry tendrils of the eleven-minute requiem “Iron Lake” and the album's other six pieces with an impressive degree of patience, control, skill, and delicacy. Though understated by design, Ore nevertheless impresses as a tour de force.

Ducktails - Landscapes LP

Genre: Psychedelic, Drone, Experimental, Tropical Pop
Label: Olde English Spelling Bee

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"Major new LP from Ducktails and easily one of Matt Mondanile’s most beautiful, out of time creations. A perfect visioning of Hypnagogic Pop’s retro-futurist appeal, with instrumentals that are as naïve and as wide-eyed teenage perfect as anything on the Department Store Santas LP and an approach to the jam that is primitive in its execution but maximalist in its ambition and its time-phasing potential. Although the arrangements are fairly simple, they have all of the utopian neverland appeal of the lesser known ends of the Beach Boys catalogue. Landscapes includes some re-mastered tracks that originally appeared on the Parasails cassette. Genius liner notes by Skaters road-mangler Charles Berlitz which are worth quoting in full: “Dear Matt, It's confetti for memories! your buddy Charles and the Sunday afternoon gripfest staring, check this out: "Little Man Tate" and "Little Big Man", super funny, as well as a dusty tough to read flick called, you know i got carrots for brains, "Pipeline"! So, you know every trilogy needs the curveball, and well, "Pipeline" has got to be uncle charlie. I found these videos in the basement of chateau terrace antwerp, but it's super gritty kitty down there and i just grabbed three quickies. So I just put on your jams, and i am gunna watch Pipeline's surf visions and scope your memories and sunbake. but man, Pipeline's front flap video tape protection is busted, so i am gunna trade it with "You Got Mail's" front flap, at this point i have to duck into my roomates zone and grip his RCA to Mini jack, but he has a sign posted that reads "STAY OUT OF MY ROOM". super funny, but later I am gunna take the sign, cross out "ROOM" and insert "DREAMS", put the sign on my wall, let somebody specials red orange lipstick make out with it, so that the guy knows he's a cutie and chazzi's touched by freak. But so check it, i had to grip this RCA to Mini jack so that i can grip your memories and watch Pipeline. Hey man, for real though, member when we were on the beach in barcelona, before our car got towed, and we were cruising to beverly hills cop soundtrack, The Master and Carmen San Diego were in the back, we got to the beach jumped in the water drank beer ate coconuts and got massages while staring at boob people. at that moment, like when we snuck into the berlin film festival and danced Ocean's 11, wow, my roomate just came home, he's wearing a long party wig and telling chazzi that he shagged all night long in a squat called "Duel 3", no joke; but yeah, I cannot, for the parrot in me, forget those times, to each his own future, So wait, back to Pipeline,, no wait, i got to tell you about this party last full moon, my roomate throws one every month when the moon's light eclipses that of the rational minds hesitations, and well i had to dj, i wanted to, but i brought the parrot along, you met him right? he is always there when chazzy does the radio show or when monopoly needs vocals on a bamboo track, but neither of us invite this guy to the parties where those other dreams come true. its not cool, so i brought him along, you know his name right? Belafonte, so belafonte and i start dj-ing, you know that song from Police Academy called "I got to be somebody" by Jack Mack and a Hearttack? stars and ecstasy, for real, and jel doctor was getting me buckets of beer, cuz it was so hot and the air is full of short stuff, so i flip the records and repeatedly fend off requests for beat it and dirty diana, and all of a sudden Belafonte has drank all my beer and is smoking cigarettes, there are no tickets for free coldies, and i get pretty pissed, i kinda let Belafonte have it, you know, telling him that I cant take him anywhere, gnorm the gnome style, and he's like "alright, you go get some more beers", wow, your mirror jam just cruised in - memories... so, yeah, Belafonte is like "go, get some more beers and let me talk some of these girls into dancing with us and you will be calling me Most Valuable Vertabrae, birdtalk magazine style, so i get a bunch of coldies cuz tod god just came through with some bready poo, i come back to the dance floor, and well, i guess Belafonte burnt his head on his own cigarette, and this girl named Manon, but he understood as Emanuelle, like schnikies!! well his head is burnt and this black paint starts rubbing off his head, and i notice that there is paint on my neck, my face, and on her face, and her neck, and so on and so forth CSI style, and everybody kind of understands, the girls have taken this black paint and are marking it on their bodies like war paint initiation style, and they are petting Belafonte like he's the unattainable, i had no idea that this parrot was a model for Birdtalk Magazine back in its hey day, group therapy is affective... later i asked Manon for some affection, and she said "no, your feet are too dirty", on account of me wearing flippers to a dance party, and was like cool, its not even july 4th yet, but then, as i walked away she was like "Three O Clock, meet me at the Zoo!" no joke, Belafonte and me were like ah kuku ah kaka bamboo-for-two style... Stories are forever and i got to get back to PIPELINE, which is hitting the screen right now, and its definitely not about surfing and reminds charles of when Ebay and you stayed at the new york dante's microchip apartment and it was so hot and you guys passed out next to each other in your undies exclusively like siamese pipeline limbo style, if i had hoagie it would have been chazzi to chucky in like 4 doners and sixty seckies... Thanks for the memories Matt, i miss you man, i think Belafonte and I will get deported soon and i will meet you in Cali. Love, Charles Berlitz.”

High Wolf - High Wolf Cdr

Genre: Psychedelic, Drone, Experimental
Label: Winged Sun Records

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Primer trabajo editado por este combo francés, en el cual aparecen sus temas más antiguos. Una buena muestra de como se ha originado el sonido que desarrollan en otras grabaciones que han realizado para el sello Not Not Fun y también para Winged Sun (ambas en cassete). Una mezcla de drones psicodélicos y percusiones tribales que se muestran totalmente hipnóticos desde el primer momento, evolucionando en los tímpanos de manera totalmente insólita.

Implodes - Implodes CS

This is no the original cover art

Genre: Ambient, Drone, Noise, Psychedelic
Label: Plus Tapes

Implodes is a Chicago quartet that prefers to keep the melodies and lyrics hidden in fuzzy distortion, reverb, echo & effects. Mostly the sounds are distant and dissonant, but slyly hidden below the surface are rays of melodic sunshine that peak through the clouds from time to time. Think Jesus & Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, Suicide and Flying Saucer Attack, but, you know, more… schizo. 100 copies, hand numbered.

Zola Jesus - The Spoils LP

Genre: Psychedelic, Noise, Experimental
Label: Sacred Bones

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Hailing from the unsuspecting locale of Madison, WI, Zola Jesus—the alter ego of Nika Roza Danilova—occupy a sphere of sparse industrial rhythms, no-fi drones, and ethereal femme vocals. Those who have seen her handful of live shows, heard her WFMU set, or caught any of the acclaimed, sought after, and now mostly out of print releases on Die Stasi or Troubleman Unlimited already know. For those uninitiated The Spoils may be the most fully realized representation of her sound. Zola Jesus have two previous releases on Sared Bones, the Souer Sewer single and a limited CD of a live performance from WNYU. The CD contains the entire “Soeur Sewer” 7" as well as the three songs from the Die Stasi single.

Alasehir - Torment Of The Metals Lp

Genre: Psychedelic, Drone, Experimental Rock
Label: Important Records

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Alasehir's 4th release, following a CD apiece for the Important, aRCHIVE and Siltbreeze labels, Torment of The Metals "continues their sonic exploration of dense, languorous, free expansion. Billowing and exploding like a cluster of hashish stars, they produce a cosmic energy akin to a quasar in the heavens far left of Coltrane's OM and just right of the galaxy known as Dead C's Harsh '70s Reality

One of four Bardo Pond-related LPs to be released this week, Alasehir's Torment Of The Metals is the product of Michael and John Gibbons from the aforementioned stoner rock icons. This LP is at the more brain-frazzled end of the psych/sludge scale, featuring huge, furious guitar riffs, passages of extreme fuzz and some killer free-rock drumming from Jason Kourkounis. The band get through three tracks in forty minutes, which isn't as sluggish as it sounds - sure, they grind to a thoroughly tuned-out pace for much of 'Wheel Of Anguish', but this LP is heavy and intense in all the right ways. And just check out the righteous sleeve...

Limited edition of 500 copies pressed on virgin vinyl. Guitar out-crunch hailing from the Bardo Axis. Alasehir is grounded stoner heavy-zen and the second in our four part Bardo Pond related vinyl set.

Alexander Turnquist - As the Twilight Crane Dreams in Color

Genre: Folk, Americana, Psychedelic
Label: VHF

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Second full length from NY based guitarist Turnquist, who defies expectations with a set of hypnotic epics that owe more to classic minimalism than current notions of solo guitar. Forgoing most of the extended techniques of his debut, Turnquist concentrates on laying down a thick blanket of 12 string that sets up persistent loop-like patterns in the music. Simple and lovely strings, piano, and percussion accompaniment provide the melody, carrying most of the movement in the pieces. The palette of sounds and styles here is used with extraordinary control and restraint - the orchestrations are as reductionist as possible, with no cringe-inducing "string drama" or unnecessary virtuosity. The almost monomaniacal tremolo thrum of the guitar dominates the album, but there is a lengthy ambient breakdown that occurs midway through the 18 minute "The REM Cycle - Dream Phase" that is a thing of elliptical and drifting beauty. "As The Twilight Crane" is a bold statement even in the context of the frequent micro-parsing of styles in the sub-underground - there's really not much else out there like it.

Blues Control - Local Flavor

Genre: Experimental, Psychedelic, Noise, Drone
Label: Stiltbreeze

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A few years back, former Quiet Sun / Roxy Music / 801 behind-thescenesmastermind Gill Manzanera—no relation to guitarist Phil Manzanera(whose real name is Philip Targett-Adams)—offered up a beguilingreminiscence of those heady days to the Swiss fanzine Sombre Reptiles:“What we were trying to do, you see, was harness the future into thepresent. However, we were severely at odds with technology, a ring modulator on a Fender Rhodes and a bit of funny business through an analogsynth being about as far as one could go then. The work with Quiet Sunwas the foundation, then later Phil and Eno built upon that within Roxyand if only Ferry had acquiesced to Brian having a go at ‘Bogus Man,’I think the results would have been stunning (as well as longer-lasting).But alas, so then for 801, the decision was to incorporate the progressiveand avant garde through a chamber of fusion (so to speak), the results ofwhich are undeniable. Mind you, this was all during the burgeoning punkera, so it took a bit of time for some to settle in with what was happening.But isn’t that the future, really; someone has to be the first out the door toknow if the rest of us will need a jumper or not. It was all quite brilliantin that way, absolutely so, I should think.”Hmm, well, that all sounds… quite English. Oddly enough, that sliverof quinine-sotted nostalgia could be used as a swab of historical DNApap to describe the fantastic newest shimmer from Blues Control. Whilepast releases have been beauteous extrapolations into the miasmic coreof psychedelia and billowing fog of ambient space, Local Flavor is theone where all the chickens have come home to roost.The opening track “Good Morning” is practically a sideways step intoboogie rock (horn accompaniment provided by none other than JesseTrbovich and Kurt Vile); with the proper seismic shift, it could almostbe heard as an alternate reality take on “Re-make/Re-model.” It’s easilythe band’s longest stomp in the forest of rock since their debut cassette,and, man, them boots leave a bruise! The remaining three tracks morph and ebb harmoniously—in trueBlues Control fashion—the timbre occasionally elegiac, yet more oftenriffing on a plane that has yet to be transcribed. Local Flavor is 801 plusan extra one (8101, if you will), providing an unimaginable future thatwill take your breath away. So make sure you’ve paid your oxygen bill,because there are no free rides in the 82nd Century. Features guest musicians JesseTrbovich and Kurt Vile.

Dolphins Into The Future - ...On Sea-Faring Isolation

Genre: Experimental, Psychedelic, Drone
Label: Not Not Fun


A casual interweb cruiser could be forgiven for confusing Dolphins Into The Future the “band” (aka the one-man tape-loop blue-age ambient project executed by Belgian Cetacean Nation ambassador Lieven Martens) with Dolphins Into The Future the book (written by dimensional traveler Joan Ocean concerning her 20-year-long real life spirit quest to commune with a school of 200 wild Hawaiian Spinner dolphins). And, to be fair, they’re a LOT alike. Both deal heavily in trippy, drifting logics, vibrational holograms, and an overdose of psychedelic pastel artwork. But Ms. Ocean’s books are out of print so instead we have ...On Sea-Faring Isolation, Mr. Dolphin Martens’ vinyl debut under the DITF banner, after a 2-year string of increasingly blissed tapes and CDRs. Composed of three interwoven pieces per side, Isolation is one of those baffling magic eye LPs that seems to dissolve yr memory of it during the very act of listening. Turquoise webs of billowing synth smoke curl and dissipate into grey horizons of open sea field recordings. The wooden mast of a ship creaks quietly while astral bells toll away in morning fog. You are alone. This record could make a sailor homesick, and Joan Ocean weep. Beautifully composed and sequenced, with just the right amount of wobbly porpoise sonar prisms bubbling up from the deep, this LP exceeded all our expectations (and they were high). A fantastic voyage into the pan-dolphinic dawn. Black vinyl LPs in matte jackets with aquatic-loner artwork by Martens himself, plus a photocopied album review/interpretation by DJ Bongo Man.

Silvester Anfang - II

Genre: Drone, Psychedelic

Label: Aurora Borealis

Belgian princes of darkness Silvester Anfang have undergone some serious changes since their last full-length, embracing new members (from bands like Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Ignatz and Burial Hex) and a new sound. They've even rebranded themselves as a sequel to their former selves - Silvester Anfang II, more preoccupied with classic psych rock than ever before, balancing deep drone and Germanic motorik principles with ceremonial, robe-adorned freak folk wig-outs. With tracks like 'Na Regen Komt Sondvlred', 'The Devil Always Shits In The Same Graves Pt1' and the electrified Eastern tones of 'Ossesaaddans' the group seem to have grown into a far more substantial presence, weaving a multilayered sound that manages to succeed during quieter campfire moments (such as the haunting '60s-style oddity 'Boom Van De Eerste Menstruatie') as well as on louder interjections like 'Burkelbos', which is like a krautrock-tinted take on the Acid Mothers template, full of freeform electronic thrash and groove-heavy jamming.

Kiila - Tuota Tuota

Genre: Folk, Psychedelic, Experimental
Label: Fonal

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Tuota tuota is the third full-length album by Kiila. Its songs were born of peaceful, focused work and intense rehearsals with friends, interspersed with sleep and mealtimes. The album features an eight-strong core line-up but, as always, the composition of the group varies effortlessly according to need. At this table, there is room for everyone.

As musical form, songs have always been important to Kiila, and consequently Tuota tuota develops around its songs. On the other hand, the album consists of many details: the sound is full, the web of instruments more varied and carefully orchestrated than before. It is unnecessary to separate the electronic from the non-electronic components. Different traditions of folk and pop music intermingle with electronic music and improvisation, tones and sound itself. This way, the album also poses questions about songs and songwriting.

The motifs in the songs are not easy to render in English, but one can at least attempt to translate some of them: master of the house, elk antlers, tree bark, sound of rapids, fog, letters, calves, fingers. The list, however, doesn’t make the songs easier to understand in a foreign language. The words sound archaic, anachronistic or timeless, the language of the myth. But can they be something else, too? And how transparent do we want the myth to be? At the risk of sounding dull, I suggest that the songs do speak to their age, our age, the nature of knowledge and work, the fluctuations of inspiration and threat. Unfortunately, it is mostly only the Finnish-speaking listeners who will be able to assess the validity of this idea.

The name of the album, Tuota tuota, translates roughly as “well, well” and signifies a thinking pause, a moment of contemplation. The language alone is likely to give pause to an English-speaking listener, but I hope the idea will convey itself in more ways than just that. And a pause for thinking is, of course, never a waste of time.