The Ninja Tune label has finally updated its free Downloads page (here), with a pair of cuts by two of its newest acts: Blockhead and Skalpel. Blockhead is a New York-based solo musician, and “Bullfight in Ireland,” off his Music by Cavelight album, is a downtempo bit of blunted studio fog; its Spanish elements are lonesome guitar and horn parts, and its Irish material is restricted to an unintelligible vocal by an apparently sloshed gentleman, whose chant recalls the waistrel who sang on Gavin Bryars’ “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet” — just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day. Skalpel is Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo, a pair of musicians from Wroclaw, Poland, and their “Ninjazz,” the Sculpture single’s closing track, is a languorous bit of fusion, with its emphasis on a lilting keyboard phrases and a rolling trap set. Peculiarly, both the Blockhead and Skalpel tracks are exactly the same length: 4:47. (More on the Ninja Tune label at ninjatune.net. Skalpel’s homepage is skalpel.chlip.com. Blockhead’s is at ninjatune.net/blockhead.)
Month: March 2004
Throbbing Gristle MP3
Later this month, on the 29th, the Novamute label will release Mutant TG, an album of remixes of music from the inimitable psychedelic industrial act Throbbing Gristle, who started recording in the mid-1970s. Contributors to the collection include Carl Craig, Two Long Swordsmen and TG members Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, among others. In advance of the album’s release comes a mashup of elements from the record, strung together by DJ Si Begg; the mix channel surfs from new-wave dance music, through industrial rhythm sections, to recondite noise. (More on Mutant TG here; the Si Begg MP3 file is located here. More on the upcoming Throbbing Gristle reunion here.)
Fragile MP3 EP
The latest free EP from 12k.com’s Term sublabel is a three-track live set by Alessandro Canova, who records as Mugen. The music was recorded like at Fabrica, the Benetton Research and Development Communication Centre, outside Treviso, Italy, on October, 25, 2002. With their lingering pulses of ethereal hum, these are among the loveliest releases yet from Term, which specializes in fragile sound works. The tracks are labeled Parts 1, 4 and 5. Two are about three and a half minutes long (Parts 1 and 5), and the third (Part 4) is a little over a minute and a half. Part 1 has a distant, white-noise groove like the locomotion of a nanotech train engine. Part 4 has, for its rhythm, an initial string of Geiger counter-like static, which gives way to extended long, round tones. Part 5 is distinguished by its opening, a light rupture of irritated beats, a cross between the locked groove at the end of a vinyl LP and the internal workings of a computer; eventually this beat-like material is joined by elegiac synth tones. Term says of Mugen’s music, “In 1999 Canova started experimenting with sine waves and white noise as his only sound sources, developing a special interest in a micro sounds aesthetic. Influenced by his studies on Asian arts he aims to create a meditative dimension: a contemplation of sound that lucidly expresses a refinement of the frequencies.” The Term label’s homepage is 12k.com/term, and the Mugen 25 October Live @ Fabrica EP is located here. (More on Mugen at pachinkostudio.com. More on Fabrica at fabrica.it.)
Quote of the Week: Vestigial Beats
This is New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh‘s pitch-perfect description of how abstract electronic music tracks differ from their dance-music counterparts:
they are the electronic equivalent of flightless birds, with vestigial beats that serve only to evoke the music’s phylogeny.
From Sanneh’s March 8, 2004, overview of recent mix CDs (nytimes.com).
Saul Stokes OGGs
Saul Stokes recently posted three downtempo tracks at the kahvi.org netlabel, all for free download. Combined, they comprise an EP, titled This Road Is Glowing. “Spirals from Zurich,” with its slow build and its riff slightly behind the beat, resembles, of all things, Radiohead at its most glimmering. “Thick Streets” slows things down further, with a gurgling underbelly and the long, simple tones of an anime soundtrack. The EP’s title cut is its most metronomic. Like “Thick Streets,” it changes as it proceeds, its character darkening, giving way to something more through-composed, more heady and steeped in narrative. Rich, grey clusters swoop overhead — are they inbound motifs, or the thematic equivalent of grace notes. A piece modulates up, or down — is this the beginning of a steady slope, or will it modulate back where it started, returning the piece to song form? The three tracks are varied and long enough, between six and just over nine minutes, that each listening reveals something new. (The label is at kahvi.org, and the EP is located here.) One note: these are all in the Ogg Vorbis (or .ogg) format, which means, among other things, they don’t play on standard iPods. (More info on the format at vorbis.com.)