A little more something to tide you over. Stream it right here. We’ve still got a few more days until we can announce whether or not we have an announcement, so please hang in there.
Against all better intuition, musical marriages just seem to work. Wildbirds & Peacedrums. Arcade Fire. Sonic Youth. And — with only a touch of irony — Ike and Tina Turner.
Today we introduce Xavier and Rachel Watkins, which leaves them in a hard-hitting weight class. The idea is to leave them there, and let them punch their way out, in only the best of ways.
Fuzzy Lights came together in 2004 and released A Distant Voice in 2006, to audience and critical acclaim. Planet Sound offered it as “pure unadulterated sonic indulgence. A truly mystical record that defies expectation. Stunning.” Mark Barton named it a “beautifully demurring psych folk gem seemingly reared and cultured in the spirit of the Appalachians.” And — in an assessment close to our hearts — Paul Simpson wrote, “The band does a good job balancing introspective beauty with freakout noise.”
Next, the inevitable arc of tour, tour, EP, then R&R (performing with the likes of 65daysofstatic and Vetiver), and finally, the August 2010 release of their sophomore LP, Twin Feathers. The landscapes are complex, somewhat tragic, with touches of our antebellum south: hardware includes violin, glockenspiel and musical saw, in addition to the more conventional fare of guitar, bass, drums, vox. Tracks begin starkly, slowly, a big-sky hush with bar room guitar and campfire violin; a range lament that builds gradually, tensely, and sometimes erupting into delicious chaos. Both of the Watkins sing, and neither are big-voice virtuosos, which would be incompatible with the frontier quality of the music, anyway. (The “Appalachian” description will ring true for all but the most literal listeners: Fuzzy Lights is based in Cambridge.) Xavier’s voice recalls that of Leonard Cohen somewhat, in phrasing and quality, if not necessarily in pitch. Rachel boasts a frail falsetto that unpacks moments of striking beauty, like the gypsy parade Fallen Trees, throughout which she duels vocally with the melodramatic animal call of her own violin. This must be mesmerizing to watch in concert: a one-woman psych experiment, under the guise of a piercing rock song.
Another standout track is “Shipwrecks,” which begins the way a shipwreck begins: slow, at port, perhaps a tearful goodbye. These are three minutes of minimal rockabilly guitar, desolate violin, and Xavier’s accessible, telling, nearly-spoken narrative: “Your voices/won’t break through.” Rachel takes the helm (sorry, couldn’t resist) for a second verse, after which the soft composition detonates into an aptly-named collision of distorted wild-eyed guitar, thundering percussion, and hard string dissonance. It ends far too soon, and gives way to the half-time “Slowing Time.” More thematic intent? Probably. In quite the same way, “Rituals” is haunting and steady, and eases seamlessly into the former track, lending both of these separate works a lengthy, exquisite synergy.
“Through Water” also comes to life after an extended, jam-band intro; low-key in both senses. The string work is both wild-west and tie-dye, the guitar, tortured, clamorous. Xavier repeats, and repeats “Water for the ashes/and ashes for the sun.” For those listeners who believe that the splash and excess of post-rock is fun in a counterintuitive, vampire flick-sort of way, know that that glove does not fit this hand, regardless of what other commenters have written. Twin Feathers is a nostalgic, restrained, even teasing work, but is difficult labor. Yet like all similar pieces, the effort is ultimately rewarding, refreshing.
Reservations? Few. Listeners discovering Fuzzy Lights by way of 65daysofstatic will be let down the same way A Silver Mt. Zion fans might be with The Mile End Ladies String Auxiliary. Do not expect war drums, battle cries. This is not another Explosions In The Sky knock-off. There are no debts to GY!BE or Mogwai. One notable issue is the album opener “Obscura,” a throwaway track, with its lonely violin, space-invader musical saw and minimalist wiles. Another Twin Feathers review has remarked that the band confines itself when writing around vocals. This may be true (not to mention evident), but it is unavoidable. A simple axiom of music is that vocals add structure, where instrumentals allow the composition some breathing room. And here, with Fuzzy Lights, we have ample servings of both. 4/5
We’re on assignment, working on an album review for a day or two. Until then, gnaw on this free download of “Fallen Trees,” by Fuzzy Lights, from their recent Twin Feathers LP.
Or just keep staring at that picture, whichever.
Who the h, e, double hockey stick are these guys?
From first moment of the first track (in all candor our first track was the Ratatatesque “Patriot 3,” but work with us here), this is different terrain. White sand guitar hoodoo forms dunes over groovy dance static. Still life with big wall and strings. Heartrending vocals. Earsplitting samples. Mindblowing collisions. Opera. Industrial. Post-rock. Indie. And thumping, snarling, demolishing synth. To answer your question, this is Loser Superhero, soon to be your favorite appetizer. At least we can only assume that you’ve been looking for something to eat other than the near-90 minute epic Quiet Lamb.
(By the way, the name of the trio is no rock-star exercise in low-budget dualism. It’s the human condition distilled to two words. Loser. Superhero. Who among us isn’t both? But admittedly the EP name, which reads Reality and Desire, translates as a bit silly.) “Intro” is promising, the violin aches, the processing is warm and nourishing, the sampling directs the listener’s attention where it should. Nice guitar: you’ve heard axeslingers use a next-city-over delay pedal before, many times, but you’ve never actually heard it from the next city over. “La pelica de nuestras vidas” starts with piano and cello, troubling, maybe Hungarian in origin. The beep-boop ladyverse crosses the decades from Soft Cell to IAMX within moments (Chris Corner, already writing a follow-up to Kingdom of Welcome Addiction, would be proud to call this track his own). But the EP truly comes to life with “Le retour des sirenes,” a transistor-radio chic intro, a jazz-kinda-meets-IT high-register drone. A few bars in and it layers expertly, with Explosions In The Sky six-string and electron-stream big drum. Then, the sirens of the title and then, well, holy crap…
This isn’t Robert De Niro as Frankenstein: brooding, unwilling and clumsy. This is Boris Karloff with a criminal brain. We may as well mention this now: the EP is available on a name-your-price basis: minimum $5usd. May we suggest precisely that amount? Per song? End of lecture.
Another standout track is the title cut, what with its spaceman intro (tinkery guitar, buzzy control panel, lonely astronaut siren call), its GY!BE zombie-flick pacing, and, po-ro meets NIN closing credits. It’s a synthesizer orgy: gorgeous, haunting, unrelenting. The China-girl coda was composed with Chinese electronics, and it begs only one question: did we say “gorgeous” yet? “Misericordia” is coiled up in vocal tremolo and processed … something. Organ? Bagpipes? Harpsichord? It’s far too short. The album is too short. Their catalog is too short. If you need us, we’ll be in the study, remembering how to tune a guitar and buying an on-screen synthesizer.
Stream it at the link below. And then name your price. 4/5
In their own words:
CAMARADERIE is the first experimental collaborative project for The Land Of. Bringing together poetry and sound and design, song sewn to poem and both re-imagined and etched into the Object, recording artist My Fun, designer Kimberly Ellen Hall, and poet John Ira Ebersole explore the possibilities of expressive fellowship in their project Camaraderie. At once completely independent and at the same time interdependent, their work, fused together in this single utterance, reveals the tense joy that always hovers between the collective and the individual.
John’s writing can also be found in Western Humanities Review, Bateau, Octopus, and Pennsylvania Naturalist. My Fun has releases on The Land Of, Test Tube, and Ristretto. And Kimberly has also designed for The Village Voice, The Denver Art Museum, Hussein Chalayan, and Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. Her identity work for The Land Of will be featured in an Index Book this October.
Listen to two samples of the work here. This is “Murals:”
This is “Easy Rest:”
Buy a copy of the collaboration here.
Certainly by now the post-rock aficionado has heard — or heard large passages from — The Quiet Lamb. And distilling those 80 earth-shifting minutes into a single word leaves us only a few possibilities, one of which is “honest.” The Quiet Lamb is simply the most honest piece of music you will hear in 2010.
From This Vantage — The Ascent of Everest’s sophomore effort (sort of) — shares a great deal with The Quiet Lamb: the reflecting pools and the tsunamis. The noise and the harmony. The eerie and the facile. But more than all, it shares the same honesty. There are no guises here, no easy answers, or exits.
Christened in 2005, The Ascent of Everest released How Lonely Sits the City the following year. Notwithstanding the split LP with We All Inherit the Moon (note the free download at the link), their calendar was otherwise full with touring and promotion. Who has ever heard of such a thing?
And those readers familiar with some of the other artists featured here will find the terrain quite familiar as well: viola, violin, cello, clarinet, tuba. Track lengths routinely exceed six minutes, and carry around names like “Safely Caged in Bone” (aren’t we all?). Songs are largely instrumental, and vocals — when they do speak up — are alternately delicate and soaring. Singable. Accessible. The tempos are adagio, the compositions, controlled. Also conspicuous is the Six Flags Over Prague magicland feel of the most bookish Efterklang cuts: the listener almost expects the SantaLand outfits and pixiedust showers of the now-famous Parades tour. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The work opens with “Trapped Behind Silence,” three minutes of hushed, downtempo, psychedelia-lite. It’s a throwaway cut, and too bad: much more kinetic and representative is the percussion-and-strings “Return To Us,” the following track, and real album premiere. The baroque crooning here nearly lands in the middle east for a quick layover, and the brooding, dissonant march in the final act is all but military-grade. For a moment you’ll swear that Black Sabbath has a side project with The Danish National Chamber Orchestra.
Next is “Dark, Dark My Light” (these song names!) featuring intimidating cellos and delirious violins, with a dreamlike falsetto finish. (The concerned listener should rest assured that, yes, the compositions seem to strengthen as they progress toward the coda: you’re not just imaging it.) The first act concludes with “Safely Caged in Bone,” the wispy, possibly accidental nod to Efterklang. Again, Ascent of Everest reads as altogether genuine, sending their ox to the field they want to, whether the earth there has already been plowed or not.
Their momentum recovers with the motif-driven “Sword and Shield,” textured remarkably, and not a color out of place. “Every Fear” smacks of art-house, of music for museums. Here are the finest vocal harmonies on the album: haunting falsetto, good choices in relative volumes. The album concludes with the title cut, a compelling duel between modern classical and synthesizer.
Everest is an interesting name choice, taken from a peak that boasts the highest elevation, but not the most difficult technical ascent, and not the longest stretch from base camp to summit. So we are left with terms like touching, but not moving. Intimidating, but not terrifying. Brooding, not heartbreaking. Dissonant, not crafted. We are left with terms like very nearly and all but. This is not to say that From This Vantage falls flat. Indeed, like Everest, it may rather fall a little sharp. 3/5
The Monroe Transfer was our first post, their LP Trials gave us our first review, and their riotous tour diary rounded out the trifecta. After that we had to move things along. Gramophone was a brand new creation, and it was getting sort of monochrome.
It’s still an incredible album. And our plea that “a U.S. release would be nice” was a bit misleading, frankly. As frontman Nick Gill wrote by email, “Strangely enough, shipping to the US works out relatively cheap, so we could happily ship for the price on the site.” A deal is struck, a transaction is realized, et voilà, here are the results.
The Bandcamp page describes the physical release as “a limited edition CD in a fabric case, with hand screenprinted and letterpressed artwork. ” It’s beautiful. Here is the packaging, front and back:
The only thing even resembling a complaint is that you hate to remove the stitching. Which you must, if you’re keen on listening to the music you’ve just bought.
And please, no irate emails about the terrible photography. One word: iPhone.
Here is the case, with and without the CD. It’s an open-faced job with a gasketed center hub. Not one of those cheap, chilly polystyrene creations:
The liner notes are pretty, and pretty brief, with a nice piece of felt artwork on the back side. But you’ll have to buy the CD for a glimpse of that. We’ve said too much already. Buy it at the link below. And no, you’re not “paying for their rock n roll lifestyles.” You’re keeping them in business.
Granted, Damien Rice is a bit better at naming his releases, but what? You’ve never heard of Pink Floyd?
…And The Earth Swarmed With Them is Mitchell Johns (not the baseball player) and Kat Stanbridge (not the one in that “empty nest syndrome” picture, or then again, maybe she is). Read the parts list here. Familiar, yes? A conventional rhythm section with violin? So you’ve heard it before, and indeed, after a minute or so of misplaced notes, “Everyone Will Fade” builds to a well worn post-rock instrumental template. But “As We Drove…” is thick and textured, an impressive geographical mix.
Stanbridge’s vocals do not show up until the return trip, “Always Looking Backwards (For Those Without Eyes),” a brief touch of The Cowboy Junkies, which is well-tailored for a generation used to getting their rancher fix from The Rural Alberta Advantage. The EP closes with “The Slow Decay Had Already Begun.” Slow? Absolutely. Decay? Never. At least not the kind you’re thinking.
Great work, especially considering that a full quart is recyclable. Do go listen.
Public service announcement of the day: if your experimental music swagger pushes you past the netlabel scene, it shouldn’t. “No cost” is not synonymous with “disposable.” There are scores of excellent industrial, experimental and post-rock works available free of charge, or on a name-your-price basis. The Monroe Transfer. Carlos Suarez. Bosques de mi Mente.
(Or for that matter, The Silent Ballet.)
House favorites include Modisti and Clinical Archives. (Note that these are meta sites, not individual netlabels, so the two will cross paths every now and again.) Also promising are {deepwhitesound} and simply tag-surfing around Bandcamp, but, as always, your best bet is to just check back with Measured in Gramophone every couple of days.
End of lecture.
Netlabel veterans may recognize the AKA Bosques de mi Mente, and his recent release Nueve días de invierno. The news today is a poetry and music mini-festival in Madrid. Read on:
Hello,
The 9th of October we are holding a mini-festival of poetry and music, with film proyections. Saray Pavón is in charge of the poetry and words, I will add the music (mostly from my last album, “Nine Days of Winter”), and my good friend Dario is joining us adding film proyections. Luckily maybe Marta Gonzalez and Sergio Trujillo will join playing violin too. The event will take place in the literary coffee “Entrelíneas”, at 20:00 in the afternoon. We hope seeing you there!
Read more about the festival and the artist at the links below.
Some complex and blistering new material from “Steven S,” of Lepizig, Germany. The project name is In A Mindset. You’ll want to be in his. There are healthy servings of industrial, trip-hop, ambient, electronica. Great images, too. This is “V & 8directives:”
This one (“Pantheist”) is a free download:
One more? Sure. This is “Devastation P2,” from his earlier netlabel EP. Also a free download:
Measured in Gramophone 