The Utterly Digital Joy of Hideyuki Kuromiya’s “Sinedance”

A generative act of play

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Listening to the blippy, partially random, utterly digital joy of Hideyuki Kuromiya’s “Sinedance”is a kind of puzzle. Trying to make sense of its internal play is a bit like watching the lights flicker on and off in a distant office building after night falls, and wondering what the patterns might mean: is it a shift in staff schedules, the arrival of a clean-up crew, an active emergency, the filter of a thick mist passing in the middle-ground? After a deliriously chaotic opening, the piece falls into place as a sequence of ever so slightly shifting tweaks on a melodic pattern, the pixelated melody varying as if the results are being plucked from a nanoscale bingo cage.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/kuromiya-hideyuki](https://soundcloud.com/kuromiya-hideyuki/sinedance-hb349-20160216). Kuromiya’s album *Tokyo Noisescape* came out last September. It’s at
[manyfeetunder.bandcamp.com](https://manyfeetunder.bandcamp.com/album/hideyuki-kuromiya-tokyo-noisescape)

A Drone Primer

The Bell Mechanical’s “Dystorphia”

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The dense, fluid, constantly shifting tone of the Bell Mechanical’s “Dystorphia”is sort of a drone primer. It has the expected white noise frission of something that is defined as a drone, yet were you to drop the (proverbial) needle at any random points the wide variety of sounds comprising the track would become immediately evident. It feels singular, but on repeat listens reveals multiple layers of activity: clouds and pulses and momentary signals. And it presents itself as static, and yet it has, in fact, an internal combustion that is quite active, even rapid. The track highlights numerous ways in which seeming stasis is anything but still.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/the_bell_mechanical/dystorphia). More from the Bell Mechanical, based in Salem, Massachusetts, at [thebellmechanical.bandcamp.com](https://thebellmechanical.bandcamp.com/) and [twitter.com/the_mjl](https://twitter.com/the_mjl).

Nils Frahm Out of the Solo Spotlight

An excellent track from his new trio, Nonkeen

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Some things are best slightly out of context. I often prefer Cory Doctorow’s young adult novels, as if the (relative) absence of sex and the more compact scope serve to clip his more effusive tendencies. I generally prefer, with a few exceptions, Grant Morrison’s work-for-hire comics, sensing that the internal corporate-publishing politics of continuity management rein in an imagination that can veer toward the profligate. I think Lily Tomlin’s best performance in years was her role on *Damages*, a legal thriller where all her expert comic timing was forced into a claustrophobic, often bitter dramatic role.

And I think Nils Frahm responds particularly well to the challenge of working with others. He’s best known as an improvising, neo-classical, ambient-piano solo artist, but between last year’s *Loon*, a spectacularly refined EP of glitchy atmospherics he made with Ólafur Arnalds for the Erased Tapes label, and a new recording as part of the trio Nonkeen, he’s showing that he’s far more than a soloist. Nonkeen teems him with two longtime friends, Frederic Gmeiner and Sebastian Singwald, with support from percussionist Andrea Belfi. The album is titled *The Gamble*, and after an opening track of synthesized orchestral grandeur it lingers in a kind of offworld exotica, a mix of light electronic textures and high-tone lounge-ready jazz touches.

One highlight is the track “Saddest Continent on Earth,” which mixes taut, melancholic electric guitar with a droning haze of a sonic foundation, Frahm’s electric piano little more than a series of elegiac chords. The guitar is so compressed that it sounds at times like it’s cutting in and out, flickering like a neon sign. The guitar and the keyboard merge perfectly, meeting halfway with a sad, sharp, sour tone. Throughout is the thick whir of a field recording, grounding their ethereal practice in the everyday.

More from Nonkeen at [nonkeen.com](http://www.nonkeen.com/). The album was released by R&S Records ([randsrecords.com](http://www.randsrecords.com/artists/nonkeen)).

(Side note: I think this is the first time I’ve ever used a Spotify embed in post on Disquiet.com. If the embed doesn’t work for you, the track is also on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMwvpmn0V8w).)

Abstract Beats from a Master

Fives more tastes of Arckatron's forthcoming Subtle Busyness

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20160213-arcka

The fine, Los Angeles”“based abstract beatmaker (until very recently of Philadelphia) Arckatron (aka Shawn Kelly) uploaded two tracks from his forthcoming, 21-song album, *Subtle Busyness*, at the start of the year: the blissfully steady-going “Lunar” and the wonderfully meter-defying “Aerofloat,” which warped this way and that as its rhythm ebbed and flowed. Those first popped up on the SoundCloud account of the label releasing *Subtle Busyness*, Twin Springs Tapes. (I wrote about them [at the time.](https://disquiet.com/2016/01/05/subtle-busyness-arcka-twin-springs/))

Now four more tracks, along with “Lunar” again, have been uploaded to the Twin Springs Bandcamp page: the surreal opening cut (“Cosmicrust”), a piano-against-percussion piece titled “Power (Handz Up…),” a funky video-game gambit titled “Toow,” and a track titled “VariaTRON” that plays pinball in your head with intense stereoscopic, microscopic beats.

And there’s a lovely video for “Lunar,” sort of an animated lava lamp with a subtle hint at Arckatron’s logo, on YouTube:

The album is up for pre-order for a mere $6, including the cassette (and including shipping in the U.S.) at [twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com](https://twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com/album/subtle-busyness). The official release date is February 23. The cassette edition is limited to 100.

More from Arcka at [arckatron.us](http://arckatron.us/). More from the Twin Springs label at [twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com](https://twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com/) and [facebook.com/twinspringstapes](https://www.facebook.com/twinspringstapes). And here’s an interview I did with Arcka/Kelly back in 2009: [“Young Communicator.”](https://disquiet.com/2009/05/17/yarcka-young-architect-shawn-kelly/)

The Franz Liszt of Drone Guitar

"Queen of Swords," straight outta Gateshead

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Though it’s a noisy, brash, swollen, meditative guitar solo, “Queen of Swords” brings to mind Franz Liszt. Not for its romanticism, though its vision of someone alone in a deeply sonorous room long past midnight has more than its share. No, because much as Liszt transcribed all of Beethoven’s symphonies for solo piano, “Queen of Swords” sounds like one of Glenn Branca’s massive, tentacled guitar orchestras siphoned down to one single instrument — well, one single instrument and a fair amount of guitar pedals and an amp that is being pushed to its limit.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/radiofreeul-quoma](https://soundcloud.com/radiofreeul-quoma/queen-of-swords). Radio Free Ul-quoma is Andrew Gladstone-Heighton of Gateshead, England.