Cranium Fortress (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Cranium Fortress is the moniker of a Washington, D.C.”“based musician who creates rhythmically enticing instrumental music that skirts the border between abstract electronics and pop-minded songcraft. The track “Organ Furnace” off Cranium’s recent self-titled collection, self-released last month at bandcamp.com, typifies the approach. There’s an undeniable sense of forward motion, if not of outright melodic activity. The overall effect is more than sufficient to solidify the track’s general-listener approachability. But the subtlety is rewarding as well, the way the initial organ sound slowly accrues in layers before coalescing into a steady backing element — and how the percussion arrives, coming in as if from behind, soft but steady in a manner that brings to mind the band Low.

Get the full album for free download at craniumfortress.bandcamp.com. More tracks at soundcloud.com/craniumfortress.

Information-Age Industrial Music (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The ambient subgenres of pre-existing genres is where the music often makes its most valuable contributions. In the hands of folks like the Boxhead Ensemble and the solo work of Boxhead member Scott Tuma, we get country music without the songs, in which rural sentiments are summoned up as mood, not stories. In the hands of people like Ben Neill and Grassy Knoll, we can get tastes of jazz without the riffs, in which improvisation is about tone and texture. In the hands of Eivind Aarset, we get fusion without the noodling, all about the jazz inherent in electricity.

And in the hands of folks like Sighup, aka Steve Hamann, we get industrial music without the production-line rigor, left instead with the sort of power-plant ambience that’s heard in “City Import,” the opening cut on his recent three-song collection City Passage (MP3). It’s not pure haze, not the imagined ambience that is entirely made up of ethereal layers — and, more to the point, entirely made up; the absence of vestiges of the physical is one of the most unnecessary norms in ambient music, one that Hamann is more than happy to disregard. “City Import” has weight and movement, like that of wires scraping against each other in a thin breeze. It’s the power plant after hours, when the crew has gone home. There’s no Disney/Pixar fantasia about the machinery coming alive, just the everyday noises of machines after dark. And just because the track doesn’t meander into anthropomorphism doesn’t mean it’s un-affectionate. This is Information Age industrial music, in which the sheer physicality of machines is enough to distinguish them from the near-friction-less gadgetry that has become the everyday norm, and to make them objects of fascination.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/fbl016Sighup-CityPassage/01CityImport1.mp3|titles=”City Import”|artists=Sighup]

Get the full collection of three tracks for free download at archive.org. More details at the releasing netlabel, feedbacklooplabel.blogspot.com.

More on Sighup/Hamann, who is based in Toronto, at soundcloud.com/sighup, twitter.com/steve_hamann, and sighup.ca. In the past, I’ve referred to this kind of non-metronomic industrial music as “industrial industrial” music.

When Seams Are Showing (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The appearance of a seam in sample-based music is not, unto itself, a sure sign of sloppiness. It can be employed as a texture, as a beat, even as a full-blown compositional element — in other words, the signifier of an error can be used, quite the contrary, as a considered, purposeful musical tool. This ability to turn mistake into music is one of many reasons that hip-hop is often likened to jazz, even if the latter is inherently improvised and the former (the backing track, if not the vocals) is inherently frozen.

The “sample seam” is generally heard as one of two things, as either a sudden gap or as a harsh truncation. It’s either a momentary pause between two common elements, as when a looped tone is intended to sound continuously but leaves a small break, or a quick cut, as when a sound is brought to an artificial close for metric and, in capable hands, rhythmic effect. (Metric would be to match the beat. Rhythmic would be to do so with artful implication.)

The “sample seam” is born of studio production, but it is not without parallel in so-called “traditional” instruments: think of the flutist taking a quick breath of air, or the guitartist’s finger resonating on the surface of a string, or the woodwind’s keys heard fluttering. Of course, those examples still depend on the presence of amplification for the effect to be heard, but that requirement just firms up the parallel between those sounds and that of the “sample seam.”

This all came to mind during several listens to Learning to Draw, a new collection by a beatcrafty musician who goes by the name Hypoetical. The standout track is its second entry, titled “Meditation,” in which a guitar loop serves as the constant element for a feat of downtempo loveliness (MP3). Also appearing are drums, bass, and a tremulous xylophone, each of those distinct parts heard as a self-conscious loop whose artificiality is essential to its delectability.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/DWK096/Hypoetical_-_02_-_Meditation.mp3|titles=”Meditation”|artists=Hypoetical]

Get the full album, seven tracks total, for free download at dustedwax.org. More on Hypoetical at hypoetical.net. He was previously featured here for pairing turntablism and koto.

A Marriage of Voice and Processing (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s not a battle, per se. The two forces at work on the album Hex tend to feel like they’re seeking balance, even if it’s more often the case that one or the other takes clear prominence. These forces are the voice of Prophecy Sun and the electronic processing of Kristen Roos. Together the duo record as Spell, which isn’t an inappropriate name for an act that offers a fair amount of enchantment. Hex‘s first and third tracks, in particular, serve up a mysterious, haunting effect. And those, perhaps not surprisingly, are the ones where the vocals don’t so much take a back seat to the equipment as give themselves over to it, in “Forest” allowing for vowels to emerge slowly from a harsh thicket of white noise (MP3), and in “Fading Away” achieving a patina of madrigal-like antiquity (MP3).

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/pan058/pan058-spell-1-forest.mp3|titles=”Forest”|artists=Spell] [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/pan058/pan058-spell-3-fading_away.mp3|titles=”Fading Away”|artists=Spell]

Both forces can be heard searching for a sense of solidarity, finding their most productive common ground when synthesis and voice merge into an attenuated aura. It isn’t just that the voice can overpower the vocals. There are moments, such as at the tail end of “Fading Away,” when it seems like someone turned on a video game, that it becomes clear the electronics are just as capable of imposing themselves on the process. The other two tracks on the recording, “Just a Matter of Time” and “Break the Speed of Light,” are ones where Prophecy Sun’s vocals don’t just take center stage, but the work of Roos coalesces into something more song-like.

What’s especially promising for Spell — this is their first collection of songs — is that the album was recorded live. The liner note explains: “All of the tracks were recorded in one take. There is no post-production, aside from equalization and mastering.” Additional time working together, along with some studio-based fine-tuning, could yield something remarkable.

Album originally posted for free download at notype.com. More on Roos at kristenroos.com and Prophecy Sun at prophecysun.tumblr.com.

Music Before Music (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Forgive a momentary foray into geographic generalizations. There is plenty of ambient music made in large coastal cities, and much as well in what is called, in the United States, the Midwest. Mark Rushton lives in Iowa City, Iowa, which falls in the latter, and his ambience has, arguably, a unique cast. It is neither urban nor rural, neither digital nor folkie. It is not an expression of dense grids of technologically mediated culture, nor of an agrarian environment — and neither is it an expression of aspiration to either of those states. It is its own sound, and audiences keeping abreast of it — he publishes through various services, primarily soundcloud.com — welcome the steady arrival of sonic postcards from a special zone. A recent such release (if that word, “release,” has much meaning any longer) is “Pre-Show Music.” It takes field recordings from Rushton’s daily life and ushers them into a new sonic space, given a mix of lushness and aridity that is his signature.

The track comes, on its soundcloud.com page, with a small amount of background information:

Sound collage based on audience recording prior to a school band concert, processed washing machine sounds, Ableton Live-created rolling fog, and numerous other loops

The voices heard early on are drawn from that pre-concert chatter. They’re heard buried deep in a dirge-like haze, perhaps the “fog” of Rushton’s description. There’s a beauty to the irony of Rushton’s undertaking, turning the moments before music into a music unto itself. Part of the mark of his success is how despite the fact that the sounds that subsume the voices feel composed — certainly no one would mistake them for having been part of the world at that moment — they still carry with them an intent that is more dramatic or mood-oriented than melodic. The end result is like a soundtrack for a small film with no narrative intent — all setting, all place.

Track origially posted at soundcloud.com. More on Rushton at markrushton.com, twitter.com/markrushtoncom, and markrushtoncom.tumblr.com.