The 16 tracks that comprise The Coat Hanger Clinic, its title and content reportedly informed by a binge of Korean horror flicks, range from vocoded computer vocals to elegiac piano to 8-bit giddiness to abstract electronica to saccharine pop. Recorded by Cursed Chimera (aka Benatos Thompson, and formerly L.A.M.P.), it’s a purposeful mixed bag, but [...]
The excellent Complementary Distribution netlabel isn’t as prolific as it has been in the past, but a recent EP makes up for lost time with five tracks by four different artists, among them nAsty, Banyek, and NiT Grit, all working broadly speaking in a dubstep vein. The highlight of the record, titled Dubstep Is Fun! [...]
When they remake the film Deliverance — and they will, because everything gets remade, whether directly or indirectly — Scott Tuma (long ago guitarist with Souled American) will be hired to do the score. There will be no dueling banjos this time around. There will only be the creaky, meandering, semi-melodic noodling of old coots [...]
The cunning, big-eared, abstractionist hip-hop producer Madlib has as much Robert Rauschenberg in him as he does Afrika Bambaataa. His works are often sewn from pre-existing material, but he’s less a DJ than he is a die-hard object-oriented composer, forming from pre-existing parts these wide, broad pieces of music that are entirely his own, yet [...]
The free downloads at Robert Fripp’s website don’t stay free or downloadable for all that long. The section of rotating MP3s is called “Hot Tickles,” as it’s intended to tickle one’s fancy to purchase full-length archival recordings. Case in point, the recent 1.5-minute soundcheck from King Crimson dating from October 25, 1994. Some of these [...]
Birmingham, UK-based Mark Harris’s “Duo (The Intension Becomes Masked)” is a bit of ambient procedural music. The procedure in question is quite simple:
The composition is based in a series of eight pitch shifted loop’s of each tone (14 loops). which are then time stretched four times which give us fifty six loops in the piece [...]
Michael Bullock does terrible, wonderful things with his contrabass. He rattles its thick, braid-like strings until they come to resemble a cyclone fence doing battle with a ferocious wind. He bows it with a quiet intensity that brings out every fiber of its physical being. He attacks it with alternative materials, leaving the bow aside [...]