Category: reports/essays

What a difference a year makes. As anyone who’s checked in on Disquiet.com occasionally during 2004 knows, my listening this year has been focused largely on music released free and legally via the web, whether by netlabels or by individual artists, as highlighted in the daily Downstream entries. Last year at this time, I listed 15 favorite full-length recordings, so deep did the shelves seem with strong CDs. This year, the shelves are more packed than ever, but frankly, there were no individual releases that stuck the way last year’s Disquiet chart toppers did (those by Kid Koala and Boxhead Ensemble).

In 2004, new records by many old favorites, like Squarepusher (Ultravisitor), Beastie Boys (To the 5 Boroughs), John Adams (On the Transmigration of Souls) and DJ Krush (Jaku), albeit very fine in their own right, didn’t demand concerted, continued, curious listening. Admittedly, no single netlabel release seemed to hold its own against these, though two on the Stasisfield label, John Kannenberg‘s Four Painters and Raemus‘ Stream Studies, certainly came close; the gap is narrowing quickly. Still, there was a bounty of good work. What the following 10 albums (well, 11 actually) have in common is not only that they made for regular repeated listening, but they were also the albums that came to mind often when other records were playing. Consider these listed in alphabetical order:

William Basinski
The Disintegration Loops
(2062)
There’s a whole lot of loss sewn into this lengthy, dark ambient series by Basinski, who was impelled to produce it after viewing the World Trade Center collapse from nearby Brooklyn. Four heavy sets.

Bjork
Medulla
(Elektra)
Her conceits often threaten to overwhelm her music, as initially seems to occur here, on an album constructed almost entirely from the human voice, most notably her own, which is one of the most powerful and distinct in contemporary music. Then you realize that the sense of being overwhelmed has less to do with the impact of the plan, the big idea that fuels the album, than it does with the intensity of its musical production, the sheer emotional force of her relentless effort.

Greg Davis
Curling Pond Woods
(Carpark)
and Somnia
(Kranky)
With his debut full-length, Arbor, also on Carpark (2002), Greg Davis helped define the contours of a folk realm for electronic music, drawing in traditions of the ’60s folk resurgence, a predilection that benefited from his academic training in composition. With Curling Pond Woods, Davis defied expectations in many ways, primarily because the ’60s folk-pop elements became more defined, not less. With covers of the Incredible String Band and the Beach Boys, and echoes of much psychedelia, he joined the tradition rather than merely sampling it. Somnia, on Kranky, takes a more drone-oriented approach, but it’s no less compelling for its relative formlessness.

Fennesz
Venice
(Touch)
Christian Fennesz can build small cities from things as slight as glitches, hum and over-amplified guitar, and this album collects a dozen examples of his soundcraft: the orchestral depth of “The Point of It All”; the vibrant chaos of “The Stone of Impermanence,” with a melody buried deep in its core; the buzzing liveliness of “Circassian.” One highlight is “Transit,” a vocal track featuring singer David Sylvian (following up Fennesz’s work on Sylvian’s Blemish from last year); it’s like a Wim Wenders film condensed to under five minutes.

Iron & Wine
Our Endless Numbered Days
(Sub Pop)
The slocore band Iron & Wine is ambient by association, like Low before it, and Galaxie 500 before Low. When you perform your songs at this pace, and with this trenchantly naked a production style, you draw attention to moments (bits of instrumental fragility, aching little tears in vocal lines) that are generally lost in the all-too-familiar churn of verse-chorus-verse.

Jóhann Jóhannsson
Virthulegu Forsetar
(Touch)
Easily one of the most compelling composers working today, ushering a dense hush from dozens of instrumental players working in unison. A must for those who appreciate the gravitas of Arvo Part and Gavin Bryars.

Medeski Martin & Wood
End of the World Party: Just in Case (Dig)
(Blue Note)
There’s something beyond enlightened about the way the jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood explore together, and in their diverse independent projects, the depth of the groove — something downright righteous. This set is, as they say, knee deep in the pocket, and its electronic stamp of approval comes courtesy of its intense production, thanks to John King, better known as half of the Dust Brothers (masterminds behind the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, Beck’s Odelay).

Savath & Savalas
Apropa’t
(Warp)
Of all the pop estuaries that feed into and out of electronic music, from noise to classical minimalism to Muzak, few have the fortitude of tropicalia. Though the singer (Eva Puyeulo Muns) and songs on this album are Catalonian, the feel is often pure Ipanema. Muns’ partner in Savath & Savalas is Scott Herren, best known for his downtempo hip-hop, recorded under the Prefuse 73 pseudonym. There’s a sweep and breadth to their collaboration that much electronica lacks, and an intimacy and attention to intricate production details that virtually all pop-vocal recordings ignore. Just listen to “Ultimo Tren,” how an extended field recording works into a drum pattern, and you’ll be hooked.

Secret Frequency Crew
Forest of the Echo Downs
(Schematic)
Like high-end footwear, music that appears cutting edge one night often seems anachronistic the next day. The sort of album that the Secret Frequency Crew produced this year fits in nicely with the sort of downtempo, hip-hop-extracted electronica that Funki Porcini, RJD2, Tommy Guerrero and others have foisted… well, for years. Still, it’s rife with enough rhythmic and melodic inventions to keep the Patent Office staff up late.

Craig Taborn
Junk Magic
(Thirsty Ear)
A fine melding of contemporary jazz and digital performance/production, bringing the kind of rhythmically challenging melodies we expect from Ornette Coleman together with the noir-influenced electronics of Cinematic Orchestra. In a year when records by Tim Berne (Souls Saved Hear), John Zorn (many in the “50th Birthday Celebration” series), Arto Lindsay (Salt) and Marc Ribot (a central guest on the MMW album also mentioned in this list) recalled why the Knitting Factory club in lower Manhattan was such a central location for new music in the late 1980s, this record made you feel like you were still there.

THE YEAR IN REVIEW, BRIEFLY: Worth listening to alongside MMW’s End of the World Party and Taborn’s Junk Magic is guitarist Bill Frisell‘s Unspeakable, easily his best electric solo album, which is too interesting to explore in depth in this space. Suffice to say, though, that producer Hal Willner‘s contribution of turntable and sampling deserves some more attention. Also, Mylab by Mylab, aka Tucker Martine, Wayne Horvitz and a bunch of formidable guests (Frisell, Skerik, Danny Barnes and others). Oh, and The Turntable Sessions: Volume 1 from the Amulet label, run by MMW’s drummer, Billy Martin. Oh, and Chief Excel (of Blackalicious) grafting together Fela Kuti tracks on Underground Spiritual Game. Yeah, it’s a deep well. One major disappointment in this realm: hip-hop DJ El-P‘s High Water, among the Thirsty Ear label’s latest efforts to remix outward-bound instrumentalists (in this case: Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, William Parker, Matthew Shipp and others); El-P is, simply, far too reticent to participate actively in the proceedings. On the flipside, to hear one of jazz-tronica’s canonical works done straight, listen to Miles Davis‘ “In a Silent Way” revisited on Don Byron‘s Ivey-Divey.

The stunning and ongoing wave of (often artist-driven) improvements in digital media and technology hasn’t only given birth to new music; it’s helped keep progenitors going, both by drawing bringing a new audience to the work of the early mavericks, and preserving their groundbreaking work on CD. It was a year rich with new or old music from such elemental figures as, among others: Alvin Curran (Canti Illuminati, Maritime Rights, Our Ur, ABO, Lost Marbles, etc.) James Tenney (Postal Pieces), Harry Partch (lots of stuff) and Tod Dockstader (with David Lee Meyers on Pond, a new work built almost entirely from frogsong). Almost a retro act at this stage, one highlight was Loop Orchestra‘s Not Overtly Orchestral (Quecksilber), which needs to be heard to be believed. The Loop Orchestra creates lush aviaries of texture with nothing but reel-to-reel tape loops. Imagine if Tape Music Center cofounder Pauline Oliveros were to coax a DJ team, say the X-Ecutioners or the Skratch Piklz, out of their comfort zone and into the Twilight Zone.

If selecting albums of the year is silly, then doing a parallel list of singles is downright ludicrous, (1) in part because of the sheer number of songs released each year, (2) in part because the “single” barely exists at a time when (2.1) major record labels have all but forsaken ’em and (2.2) iTunes, Bleep.com and similar online digital-music retailers have turned all songs into singles, and (3) in part because the list of favorites just keeps changing, but come New Year’s Eve, here are the pop-oriented hits in heavy rotation: Beastie Boys‘s “Ch-Ch-Check It Out” (hip-hop production as classic rock), Crystal Method‘s “Weapons of Mass Distortion” (with Wes Borland on guitar — what Limp Bizkit may have sounded like, had Fred Durst left the band once upon a time instead of Borland), Eminem‘s “Just Lose It” (relative to the somewhat disappointing new album, Encore, this is more like nostalgia for his preview full-lengths), Fabolous‘ “Breathe” (crystalline in its momentum and production), Iron & Wine‘s “Passing Afternoon” (from the full length, see above), Skalpel‘s “1958” (Ninja Tune’s Polish extraction), Squarepusher‘s “Venus” (some rhythms never die), Josh Todd‘s “Blast” (pure pop metal, but as addictive as it is urgent), Usher ft Lil Jon and Ludacris‘ “Yeah!” (see “Breathe”), Snoop Dogg ft Pharrell‘s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (the antidote to “Yeah!” — laid back as all get out).

And, as always, much of the year’s best sounds and soundscapes were buried behind and beneath the scenes of major motion pictures. Of particular note were the scores to: Ocean’s 12 (David Holmes), The Bourne Supremacy (John Powell — the orchestra is entirely analog, but it has the same delicacy, and the same rhythmic juts, as his techno-laced theme for the remade Italian Job), Zatoichi (Keiichi Suzuki), Hero (Tan Dun), Wicker Park (Cliff Martinez — the movie was beautifully shot and pretty crappy otherwise, but it’s worth noting that Jóhann Jóhannsson had a track in the film, yet it’s on neither the pop-song CD or the score CD), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Jon Brion) and The Motorcycle Diaries (Gustavo Santaolalla).

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — They came for the music, but they stayed for the Y2K jokes. The Laptop Battle in San Francisco on Sunday, April 18, promised an evening of competitive electronica. But while the individual performances were occasionally inspired, and the concert’s format intriguing in theory, the night was plagued by technical difficulties.

The Laptop Battle crew has been touring the country, promoting events at which electronic musicians vie for the approval of judges and audience alike. To keep the playing field relatively level, the rules are simple: only laptops are allowed. That means, according to the laptopbattle.org website, no “external controllers,” like keyboards and mixers. And you have only three minutes in which to prove yourself.

By the time they got to San Francisco, the battle’s organizers had sponsored events in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver. Next up was a gig in Los Angeles at the Knitting Factory, later in the week. The setting in San Francisco was more 8 Mile than American Idol, a long, dank basement named Club Six just south of Market Street. Though it was a Sunday night, the floor was fairly packed by the time the show began. Of course, having 16 acts on the bill provides a lot of opportunity for friends and family of performers to fill the house.

First up came CIA (which stands for “Copyright Infringement Agency”), who played a Hare Krishna-ish chant over a drum pattern. He was pitted against Rydub, who followed with an extended bit of dubby club music, into which he secreted breaks of ska. Some in the audience expressed surprise when the judges awarded Rydub the first win of the night, but CIA’s good-humored track didn’t really do much in its third minute that it hadn’t already done in its second minute — or, for that matter, its first. Had Rydub benefited from a proper sound system (more on that later), the superiority of his performance would have been more self-evident.

DJ Aneurysm appealed to noise fans with a loud opening burst of static and a random assortment of samples, while his unfortunate opponent, named Terrac, had to start his piece several times, so faulty was the sound. Stream723, done up like a Matrix supporting character, danced in place while his laptop emitted poppy music that could have been a Berlin B-side (Berlin the new-wave band, not the techno Mecca). When the tune seemed to stop suddenly, someone quipped that Stream723 had broken a string. Such jokes kept the crowd busy, and in good spirits, during the many long stretches between performances. Y2K references proved particularly popular. A bumper sticker at the front of the stage that read “Vinyl Is Heavy” became less viable as a piece of propaganda as the night went on.

The periodic breaks due to technical troubles also provided opportunity for Sunday-night quarterbacking. One sticking point was that the wide variety of genres being presented — from abstract microsonics to deep techno — made judging almost impossible. A number of people, both at the event and online, have suggested that the series would be improved if the competitors all had to construct their songs, or sets, from a shared set of samples. It’s a cool idea, along the lines of the “Iron Chef of Music” contest run by the kracfive.com website, but it ignores the fact that the Laptop Battle is about performance, not composition.

Winning against Stream 723 was Phiber Optics, who followed the Beastie Boys’ lead by opening with a heaving Led Zeppelin drum sample. His set was plagued with problems, and he was forced to start over, which diminished the initial impact of that Zeppelin quote.

Two hours after the concert began, only eight acts had performed. Allowing the allotted three minutes per performer, this means less than a quarter of that time involved actual competition. The rest was tech support. Another eight musicians were on deck, though much of the audience had already gone home. (I soon followed.)

A post the next day on a blog linked to from the laptopbattle.org website owned up to the event’s failings: “Sunday nights show at Club Six was a humbling experience,” wrote Kris Moon, one of the battle’s co-producers. “Throwing a laptop battle takes alot of organization and synchronization among a large # of people. … We fucked up by not having the mixer there on time and i apologize to the contestants in those first 3 rounds, and anyone else who wasn’t patient enough to enjoy the smokey hallway or just have another beer.” Copyediting aside, Moon’s post explained that the gig’s appointed mixer didn’t arrive until 11pm. It also complained about the grungy neighborhood and noted that it was a Sunday night. But, as Moon wrote, “those are just excuses.”

Liz Dizon, identified as the night’s local promoter, wrote from the unknown8bit.org site, “[W]e’re all new to this touring laptop battle bidness,” noting the absence of backup plans and equipment. Ironically, for an event about cutting-edge music-making, the sound issues had nothing to do with buggy software or overextended computer chips.

No matter who is to blame, one thing is clear: the musicians weren’t. Perhaps the worst thing about the night was that this wasn’t always made clear to the audience. As a result, it took a while for folks to stop blaming the individual musicians for the problems, and to start recognizing that the fault lay entirely with the concert organizers.

A fellow named T. Machine reportedly won the San Francisco contest, which gets him a spot at the inaugural national laptop battle at Decibel Festival, a planned four-day event in Seattle in late September of this year. As for whether or not that’s a prize — well, you’d have to ask the San Francisco battle participants what they think.

Many observers of electronic music have come to categorize their albums by record company, but the small Progressive Form label doesn’t lend itself to categorization. The company, based in Tokyo, Japan, has overtly artful and hyper-attentive sound constructions to its credit, as well as stylish urban nightlife soundtracks with steady tempos and commercial potential, and it has produced a growing collection of DVDs that de-emphasize narrative in favor of exploring the intersection of sight and sound.

Like some stark, minimalist play on a Pink Floyd alarm clock, Yoshihiro Hanno’s 9 Modules opens with a wake-up call, the sort of stuck ring that cancels out even the most blissful dreams. The highly recommended album’s ten tracks are indeed modular, each one implementing minor adjustments on a singular sound. On “[s.e.q.]” it’s a glitchy beat loop that is augmented as the track’s six minutes unfold — a snippet repeated here, a tone added momentarily there. “[6]” applies a similar technique to a long tone, which is stretched to varying lengths, sometimes truncated, and repeatedly inflicted with segments of jerky percussion. Beyond the beauty of the album’s scratchy rhythmic textures and its more rounded tonal elements is how the bare pieces achieve a song-like structure. The mind hears “verse chorus verse,” even if the ear hears static and hum.

Aoki Takamasa’s Silicom was the first full-length album from Tokyo’s Progressive Form label: 11 tracks of beeps stumbling their way home after a long night of … well, whatever it is that beeps do after hours. The next day’s headaches are already evident in hushed background noise and, on the album’s first track (“std”), a chugging groove. Takamasa here sounds like Oval (whose work he has remixed) being performed on more populist instrumentation. The tell-tale glitch elements are evident — the bifurcated percussion, the schismatic melodic tangents, the bristling energy — but they’re heard as if played by hand, rather than the result of computer algorithms. The bass on “jung 25” has the plodding bulge of a Hollywood score’s attempt at ersatz instrumental pop music, and the soft opening chords of “nuron” and “exp. 2” have the lilt of actual keyboards hit by actual fingers. One track, “ham,” recorded with Terazono Kohei, surprises with an unaffected minimal-house beat.

When a computer voice attributed to the Earth speaks at the start of the second track on Takamasa’s Silicom 2, the listener’s expectations could not be more greatly lowered. The subsequent song’s fuzz and muted melody illustrate the voice’s dire message — that the planet is dying — but it’s a funeral one would not be criticized for bypassing. More moody and cinematic than Takamasa’s first Silicom set, this album should be credited for seeking a more individual voice, one somewhat less concerned with glitch’s manner of structuring sound, but the result is a peculiar hodge-podge: on “mry,” a squelching array of fractured snips atop some rote minimalism; on “pimo,” tentative note sequences against a grating industrial drone. There’s much to recommend individual elements of Silicom 2, but it’s unfortunate that Takamasa here didn’t have some of his labelmate Yoshihiro Hanno’s interest in exploring one thing in depth before moving on to, or layering, the next. (The Progressive Form label’s first two DVD releases were collaborations, under the name Silicom, between Takamasa and video artist Masakazu Takagi.)

Voices and other real-world sounds haunt Takamasa’s Indigo Rose, a rangy collection of static-laced hazes and futzed-with beats that shows much improvement since his Silicom 2. Skirting the avant-garde with its pop sensibility, the album manages to keep the pop world at arm’s length with its serrated sonics and arrhythmic tendencies. Human words, spoken and sung, rise occasionally, though they don’t always offer comfort from the digital proceedings. On “Dear People,” English is computerized into something baritone and emotionally neutral (think Laurie Anderson as a telemarketer). The track “Hope” is a masterful attempt at phonography; it’s bell tones initially complement a field recording of footsteps, which become a steady, mechanized beat, and as the piece comes into focus, children’s voices echo like those of ghosts. On “Pipe Tale – Indigo Rose,” Noriko Tujiko (on lone from the Mego label) arrives, a nasal angel in the ether.

The label’s sole various-artists compilation, Forma 1.02, released in August 2002, is due for a follow-up, one that represents some of its more recent signees, such as Nao Tokui and Ryoichi Kurokawa. [Note: Since this label profile was written, Progressive Form has released Form 2.03, whose ten tracks include work by Katsutoshi Yoshihara, Serguei Iwanikov and others.] However, the 1.02 set still has much to offer, both as an introduction to the Progressive Form roster, and to new acts yet to be heard widely. Label regulars present on the collection include Yoshihiro Hanno (“[s.e.q.]” from 9 Modules) and Aoki Takamasa (“Dear People” from Indigo Rose). Some of the songs are more club-friendly than adventurous, though 30506’s “VVV” strikes an interesting balance: it moves from an extended trance-like opening to lounge dance music, but as the piece comes to a close it disintegrates audibly in a manner that complements Hanno’s experimentation.

Progressive Form’s third and most recent DVD release is Ryoichi Kurokawa’s Copynature, which complements his CD release of that name. The visuals are expert displays of digital editing: cobblestone streets are riddled with earthquake-like fissures, abstract geometric shapes morph as if through some incredibly hi-resolution visualization plug-in. The label’s dozen-plus (as of this writing) 12″s are mostly drawn from its full-length CDs.

This article appeared, in slightly different form, in the autumn 2003 issue of e|i magazine.

The Marseille, France-based Bip-Hop label may have lent a name to a generation of computer-enthusiast musicians (bip) with a taste for the rhythms of post-rap pop music (hop). Or it may have borrowed a bit of vogue wordplay already in common use. In either case, the company’s extensive various-artists Bip-Hop Generation compilation series has done much to catalog and evangelize the movement, and its individual full-length releases have been consistently cogent and thoughtfully presented, thanks to the oversight of Philippe Petit, the label’s founder, and a musician in his own right. The label has provided a home to Wang Inc., Andrew Duke, Angel, Twine, Scanner and others.

Bip-Hop Generation: Volume 6, released in late 2002, collects tracks by a global assortment of musicians, not one of whom had ever recorded a full-length album for the label. So this is anything but a Bip-Hop sampler. What it is is a bip-hop sampler, from the attenuated fractures of Alejandra & Aeron (U.S. and Spain, respectively), to the mix of cut-up vocals and stately soundtracks of Scanner (England), to the cavernous dub of Bittonic (Germany), to the evocative rhythmic variations of Ilso Väisänen (Finland), to the chaotic mélanges of the trio Battery Operated (Canada), to the only slightly adulterated industrial noise of Angel (a Finish/German duo, one half of which is Väisänen).

Where the Bip-Hop label’s Generation series aims to “document” the scene, its more recent Reciprocess + / vs series lends some participatory analysis. The series’ first edition pairs Komet (aka Frank Bretschneider) and Bovine Life (aka Chris Dooks) on a 17-track set that presents music by each of the musicians, plus collaborations and tag-team remixes. The CD booklet includes essays by and about the participants, although its topsy-turvy design may require a dose of Dramamine (if the text aims to illuminate, the text treatment unproductively obfuscates). Bretschneider is heard in a series of three exemplary bits of trebly percussive whimsy and one deeper, darker track whose beat keeps getting upset. Dooks’ work is less rhythmically succinct, more wide-ranging, as heard on his seven tracks here, from the droning “Platuex” to the backward-masked “Behind.” On the basis of the six remaining remixes and collaborative tracks, the listener will be amazed that Bretschneider and Dooks never met; they traded MP3 files long-distance. (Reciprocess doesn’t just examine collaboration; it is a collaboration, between Bip-Hop and the Fällt labels, which co-released the set. The second album in the series teamed Stephan Matthieu with Douglas Benford.)

Angel’s nr.1 – nr. 10 is the work of a formal duo — not two musicians (a la the Reciprocess collection) experimenting with parallel processes, but two musicians dedicated to making their partnership go the distance. The two are Ilso Väisänen (half of a familiar duo, Pan Sonic) and Dirk Dresselhaus (who records solo as Schneiderâ„¢). If their record, which ranges from the near-silent ambience of its opening track to the full-on full-body noise of its sixth, has a single hallmark, it is a rich acoustic-ness — for example, how that sixth track, and the voluble eighth as well, feel very much of the physical world, not a genie summoned in Intel boxes. That physicality is also evident on the album’s closing track, where sounds fluctuate like loose electricity and plucked strings.

Andrew Duke is a DJ in both the contemporary and traditional meanings of the word. He makes music and spins for live audiences, but he also hosts an electronica radio show from Halifax, Canada. Sprung is his first non-self-released album, and it has the signal broadmindedness of someone who listens widely. Few would immediately associate the record’s dank, clubby opening track (“Hell Yeah”), which echoes both late new-wave goth and early hip-hop’s rudimentary syncopations, with the song that follows, an exercise in minimalist counterpoint titled “Phamakoi,” or either of those with the terror-laden dub that, with the occasional touch of glitch, commands most of the remainder of the collection.

Has any genre shown less reticence than electronica to embrace its adolescent past? Hip-hop records are more likely to praise the “old school” than to sample it, and the good cheer and fledgling awkwardness of early rock’n’roll has only recently become fashionable among guitar bands. But for many electronic musicians, the question is: Why use an Apple G4 when a Casio will do? Wang Inc.’s Risotto in 4/4 is utterly enamored with the bleepy early days of electronic music: the mechanically funky beat of Trio (hear the synthesized melodica and oompah of “Clear a Space for the King”), goofy Vocoder vocals (“Voice to Your Sponsor,” “Say, Do, Kiss”), and coldly synthesized strings (a la Angelo Badalamenti, on “Sprinking Time”). Few heeded Phil Spector’s “Back to Mono” call, but Wang (aka Bartolomeo Sailer) happily makes due with the 8-bit, even when 64-bit is readily available.

Other essential albums from Bip-Hop include its two Tonne sets — Soundtoys 2 x 12, which includes fully functional audio-games, plus music by Scanner, Hakan Lidbo and Si-cut.db, and Sound Polaroids, an installation collaboration with Scanner that draws on sourced audio from various cities, including London, Milan, Manhattan, Tokyo and Montreal — and Twine’s songful yet glitchy Recorder.

This article appeared, in slightly different form, in the 2003 issue of e|i magazine.