Andrew Douglas Rothbard - Exodusarabesque

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Genre: Psych Folk, Experimental
Label: Peaking Mandala

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Exodusarabesque is an exercise in bewilderment. Much like the album’s title, the music Andrew Douglas Rothbard creates is the result of a surgery of different parts. And, similar to attempts at pronouncing Exodusarabesque, describing this music is an exercise in futility. Believe me, this being my 7th attempt at tossing words at the album, I am well aware of the failings of English (at least my grasp of it) in properly describing this mythical beast that Rothbard has created. However, don’t let my discouragement in trying to write about Exodusarabesque translate to discouragement in listening to it because what Rothbard has created here may reveal itself as the very best this year has to offer. Why else would I try over and over again to convey its strengths? I ‘m not going to make any overly specific claims here, but there is absolutely no doubt that I’ll be revisiting this album on Forest Gospel come December. That should be enough right? Leave you with an enigmatic claim without any semblance of an explanation about what you’re getting into. If it isn’t, don’t blame me for the description that follows…Exodusarabesque isn’t kind to those who try to describe it. But, here goes nothing: Exodusarabesque is a supernatural concoction of chaos gone right. In the simplest and most boring of terms, Exodusarabesque is an electronic freak folk collage. The closest relative to the sound Rothbard has created that I can think of is what Kemialliset Ystavat. But where Kemialliset often wanders off aimlessly, leaving listeners stranded in the middle of the woods, Rothbard maintains just enough structure to string you along. And don’t get me wrong, it’s great to get lost in the woods every once in awhile, but at the same time, it is infinitely better to have guide. There is no arguing with the fact that Andrew Douglas Rothbard work is experimental, but as with the very best of experimental music, Rothbard has just enough of a pop presence to make Exodusarabesque supremely palatable. What else? Oh yeah, the electronics. So, in addition to this incredible forest of organic textures, Rothbard has added an electronic edge that I have never heard coupled with free/freak folk. Exodusarabesque adds a glitch/hip hop element to these recordings that sounds like Prefuse 73 remixing Campfire Songs with Here Comes The Indian. You know what? Forget freak folk. Welcome freak electronica. I’m going to go ahead and quit right here. There is probably about a million other off kilter comparisons and descriptions I could throw at Exodusarabesque, but eventually this true chameleon of a record shakes them all off and stands alone, grazing on it all but somehow not becoming what it eats. As one last effort to convey my impressions of this album I will just say this. Recently, I have been compiling and organizing an obligatory end of decade list. While doing so I was surprised to find that I didn’t feel very comfortable putting anything on that list that I had listened to so far in 2009. It isn’t that I didn’t want to; it’s just that nothing stood out as strongly as records from the past nine years had. After listening to Exodusarabesque, Andrew Douglas Rothbard’s musical behemoth, that has now changed.

Review taken from Forest Gospel

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.

A Broken Consort - Crow Autumn Part Two

Link removed by request of the artist

Genre: Ambient
Label: Sustain Release

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Crow Autumn 2 is the follow up to, um what was it called, oh yes, Crow Autumn 1, which in turn was a continuation down the roads travelled in Box Of Birch. This means (even) more dark, dense layers of bowing and scraping, with elegiac melodies scrambling to climb free of the undergrowth into a forest air sodden with music and emotion. From the start of first track "Mountain Ash" to the end of last track “Beneath” a piano tolls remorselessly, an accordion wheezes in the distance, and the violin mulls over these repetitive themes, these inescapable and haunting fragmented memories, at times almost completely scratched out by wailing drones and quivering tremolo. The piece ebbs and flows slowly, finally trickling its way to an eventual release into silence. The magnificently composed Crow Autumn 2 will play on in your head long after it has stopped though.

While the violin leads in A Broken Consort, it supports in Skelton’s Carousell work. That isn’t the only difference; this is far sparser, with the melodies given more space and time to flower (unlike in the oppressive darkness of Crow Autumn 2), and the tracks disentangle themselves much more readily into individual pieces. "Artery"opens with a church bell, but it feels less ominous than the tolling of Crow Autumn 2; almost like a fresh spring countryside morning. The prominent guitar playing is loose and improvisational, feeling its way delicately through this new, better-lit world, stumbling upon melodic paths as it goes. At times it is joined by a dreamy, hazy violin; at times it sings out across the plains almost unaccompanied. A girl giggles; and for the first time I feel I have intruded on a private picnic, or even a reminiscence on a private picnic. That this is a piece born of a burning love feels confirmed by the soft, beautiful piano-led piece which follows, “And The Orchard”, the piano lingering on into the next track to dance slowly with the violin. This was just setting me up for “Owl Lanterns”, where familiar sounding melodies are sweetly circled by sweet strings and deftly-picked guitar; the first time I heard this reduced me to tears. This is so different to Crow Autumn 2, and in its own softly-spoken way, even more powerful.

Review taken from Mapsadaisical

Tomasz Bednarczyk - Painting Sky Together

Genre: Ambient
Label: Room40

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Tomasz Bednarczyk moves out of the shadows a bit more with his second full-length effort. His previous work, Summer Feelings, lent itself to being listened to in a lax and hazy manner, in a state of daydream, where its tranquilizing, therapeutic quality could be most fully felt. This work, on the other hand, though still of an unassuming pace and soothing tone, draws the listener more towards the precise definition of the sounds and their elegant placement in the mix.

Even at its most minimal, the disc shows a certain invention and a knack for thoughtful, ear-catching arrangements. Bednarczyk traces a patient progression from electronic textures that are dry and crisp, that stand up proud and then ease into the nodding pull of the cool and considered piano chords, to the slow-reveal of subtle details behind a gossamer veil of ambience. Finally, in the albums strongest segment, which takes place near the end of the work, with “Agata’s Film” and “January”, Bednarczyk subtly frames and colors environmental recordings, while simultaneously maintaining a level of heightened stasis and exploring overtones through a repetitive piano motif, thus conveying a sense of the panoramic while remaining quite personal, even private, in tone. This sublime delicacy is sustained to the very end, establishing that, as a composer, Bedarczyk is only growing in integrity.

Chubby Wolf - L'histoire

Genre: Ambient. Drone
Label: Gears Of Sand

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With a name like Chubby Wolf, tossed out amongst the half-dozen or so other artists using the word “wolf” as part of their nomenclature, you might not be mistaken if you thought it yet another in a long list of noise-affiliated projects. But wait: L’Histoire arrives released on the intrepid Gears of Sand imprint, well-noted for its now dense catalog of experimental drone and distinctive atmospheric music, so any ideas of noise to the contrary can be formally laid to rest. Quite the opposite this music is, in fact the polar opposite. Across eleven meticulously sculpted, wind-chapped, albeit sometimes chilly, pieces, adorned with titles such as “Anti-body Library”, “Inverted Windows”, and “You, My Luminary”, Chubby Wolf demand you close the windows, turn the lights down to a faint dim, and let these potent miasmatic toneshifts waft between the four walls as they insinuate themselves in your subconscious. Like the work of Pauline Oliveros, L’Histoire is an exercise in deep listening, one that makes that demand implicit on its participant. Though all attendant sounds were created with a seeming paucity of means (toy piano, a heart monitor, and the obligatory electronic processing), the ends are justifiably vivid and contemplative, even downright lustrous. The poetic lilt the artist lends to a piece such as “Lay the Voice to Rest, Fear Mist” is pure sensation, literally and figuratively, supple, if shrill, wisps of sound tendering a bleak landscape. That the artist can render such poignancy out of the barest of electronic materiél speaks volumes about how the softest approaches can often yield the most concrete results. Oh, and Chubby Wolf is Dani Baquet-Long, half of drone avatars Celer, which goes some way to explain how these tattered sonic pages uncurl to reveal the argot residing deep within its mysterious L’Histoire.

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.

Part Timer - Taped Recordings

This is not the original cover art

Genre: Ambient. Electronic, IDM
Label: Self Released

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John McCaffrey's latest batch of material comes in a dainty three-inch serving, a self-released affair that follows on from his contributions to the Moteer and Flau catalogues. Across seven untitled tracks in eighteen minutes McCaffrey stitches together fragments of acoustic instrumentation and cordial, homespun electronics. The essence of the Part Timer sound is pretty much condensed within the second and third compositions on the disc: during the former, the gentlest of steel-strung guitar pluckings entangle themselves with xylophone melodies against a quiet backdrop of watery field recordings while the latter takes on a more processed feel, but using the same sort of source instrumentation. Here clockwork, metronomic percussion ticks away at the edges of the mix whilst loops of plucked string phrases circulate, evoking that familiar Part Timer sound whilst referencing peers like The Boats and Mùm. The midsection of the EP takes us into slightly more surreal, fragmentary areas, whirring along gently as miniaturised drones, dislocated violin straggles and airy incidental sounds come to the foreground. For the final track however, McCaffrey focuses on more immediately substantial fare, stamping out a resonant, authoratative bassline while Four Tet-like up-tuned strings form melodic clusters. Taped Recordings is one of those releases that plays to the three-inch format beautifully, filling up the disc with a clever balance of curious acoustic ephemera and emotive electronics to form a small, but perfectly formed whole.