Couldn’t have been a more varied show tonight, from the purest driven folk to black metal Americana drone to noise/techno/jungle to post-jazz glitch drone to indie math rock to post-rock! I guess. You know, whatever.
LISTEN AGAIN via the link at the bottom, or stream on demand from FBi!
Starting with the folk stylings of Sharron Kraus, with another of Second Language‘s beautifully-packaged “library series” CDs, complete with a bonus disc courtesy of my newly-minted subscription to the label! Kraus has roots in English and Appalachian folk songs, but the singing on this album is wordless, and indeed the song structures are repetitive and evolving rather than involving verses and choruses. It initially comes across as quite minimally constructed, but becomes quietly involving.
Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds is in the country and playing at the Basement this Thursday and Friday. Oh… and I’m supporting him on Thursday if you wanna come along, m’kay? We heard a couple of his more electronic pieces, which I tend to find more compelling than the straight piano & strings classical stuff. I love the heavy beats of “til enda” backing up the strings, and the more minimal beats of “Endalaus II” with piano.
And now we get to our special on the pretty incredible music of Jenks Miller aka Horseback. There’s actually a lot I missed here, including his “solo” works, a new album of which is winging its way to me right now. But as Horseback (group and solo), he manages to cover a lot of ground, including the black metal-style screams that make up most of his vocals, and awesome riffage drawing from metal and punk, but along with that there’s epic and beautiful drones and other sonic experimentation from the noise world, and a surprising influence from Americana – folk, blues and rock. It somehow all works and has resulted in some of the best experimental sounds in “metal” from the last half-decade (if you can get past those bloodcurdling vocals). Plus on this latest 3CD rarities compilation, there’s a whole collection of tracks made from drum loops, organs and, well, less confronting vocals – a whole other direction.
Making totally different music also drawing from noise is the mysterious duo Violetshaped. Their techno stylings owe a debt to industrial and extreme noise as well as to the usual electronic sources, and for their two remix EPs they’ve chosen some particularly great remixers, including the great post-dubstep noisester Roly Porter on the previous, and none other than Keith Fullerton Whitman on the latest, with a side-long epic of generative beats & textures. I didn’t have time to play that, but another of my favourite artists ever also appears: Justin K Broadrick, here in his JK Flesh guise, with a heavy, slowed-down junglist rework which really hits the spot.
And next, a sequence of artists related to Shoeb Ahmad‘s hellosQuare label. Melbourne new/post(?)-jazz group Motion have a couple of excellent albums out, but I only just acquired the remix disc, and it is fiiiiine. Especially this almost-black-metal remix by Shoeb Ahmad himself. Also present is the mix from Perth’s Kynan Tan, and therein lies the connection, as Tan and Motion’s Andrew Brooks make up new act Té, a very dark noise/drone act using the tortured sax of Brooks along with lots of electronics.
We also heard another track from the brilliant Golden Blonde debut album, plus something from their previous incarnation as Kasha, released on hellosQuare. It’s perhaps straighter math rock of a sort, but you can definitely hear the origins of their sound in there.
Finally, some very lovely postrock out of Brisbane from Ghost Notes. Instrumental music, but with piano, trumpet and other instruments pushing it in jazz and folk directions. Highly recommended.
Sharron Kraus – Cadair Idris [Second Language]
Sharron Kraus – Bittersweet [Second Language]
Sharron Kraus – Candlemas Moon [Second Language]
Ólafur Arnalds – til enda [Erased Tape Records]
Ólafur Arnalds – Endalaus II [Unseen Music]
Horseback – Do You Have a True Feeling? (Plagued Version) [Relapse]
Horseback – Invokation [Relapse]
Horseback – The Golden Horn [Relapse]
Horseback – Ahriman [Relapse]
Horseback – Recite [Relapse]
Horseback – Clattering Info Aggregators [Relapse]
Violetshaped – The Lord Won’t Forget (Roly Porter remix) [Violet Poison]
Violetshaped – cX310 (JK Flesh Reshape) [Violet Poison]
Motion – Pendulum (Slow Rails Mix, reworked by Shoeb Ahmad) [Listen/Hear Collective]
Té – Coda [hellosQuare Recordings]
Motion – Here.Now (reworked by Kynan Tan) [Listen/Hear Collective]
Motion – first short [Listen/Hear Collective]
Kynan Tan – skeletal (mass) / skeletal (altitude) (excerpt) [Listen/Hear Collective]
Té – Slither [hellosQuare Recordings]
Golden Blonde – Teeth In Open [Tenzenmen]
Kasha – Dot [hellosQuare]
Ghost Notes – Melt, Bloom [Incremental Records]
Listen again — ~106MB
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