LCD Waterfall MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

For the second time this week, a long dependable but also relatively quiet netlabel has released something of note. A few days ago, it was Yoyo Pang!, which celebrated its one-year anniversary with yet another in its series of single-song issuances, a presentation of lightly digitized guitar by Ann Deveria (disquiet.com). Just yesterday it was Panospria, an acomplished netlabel that put out its first sets of freely downloadable music back in February 2004, but which this year has thus far posted only three (the second most recent of which, Psychwolf by Primes, was the subject of a disquiet.com entry back in July). The most recent is Marijn Comes‘s LCD Waterfall. One highlight is a track titled after the soundtrack composer Jack Nitzsche (MP3), where pizzicato strings blur into a rough cluster of white noise that bring to mind the anarchic guitar symphonies of Glenn Branca.

Rough sounds filtered into an uneasy yet still beautiful quietude are a common refrain on LCD Waterfall, but the album is anything but samey. On the title track, a thick column of droning turmoil makes significant modulations over the course of its eight minutes, taking on the feel of a Olivier Messiaen organ solo (MP3). And where “LCD Waterfall” moans, a track titled “The Rainbow Eater” (MP3) glistens with chiming rounds of notes, like some 21st-century carillon heard amid luxurious held tones against a pinprick beat (MP3). Get the full set (five tracks total) at notype.com (which is home to Panospria and several other netlabls) or archive.org (the massive digital-asset repository that is the cloud-base of countless netlabels). More on Comes, who is based in the Hague, Netherlands, at myspace.com/martijncomes.

Ann Deveria’s Guitronic Yoyo Pang! MP3 Single

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Great news. Not only is there a new release on the very occasional Yoyo Pang! netlabel, but it’s a delightful layering of acoustic guitar, understated percussion, and light digital effects that only make themselves fully apparent as the nearly seven-minute track draws to a close. Yes, that’s “track,” as in singular. Yoyo Pang! releases excellent music in small doses, one song per release, and often months go by between them. The latest, “Patio de Luz” (MP3) by Madrid, Spain-based Ann Deveria, is just the label’s sixth. Yoyo Pang!’s website doesn’t list release dates, but judging by the timestamps associated with the entries for its RSS feed, during the year since Yoyo Pang! was launched (a Luis Solís piece was the label’s debut, on October 7, 2006), as many as five months have passed between YYP singles. To its credit, precision has served its followers well, because every one of those six releases comes highly recommended. Additional good news, the song is available as an MP3 (release number five from YYP was only available in the less commonly supported OGG format). More on Deveria at her MySpace page, myspace.com/anndeveria.

And to note the netlabel’s one-year anniversary, here are links to entries on this site regarding three previous Yoyo Pang! singles: Bacanal Intruder (disquiet.com), Joseba Irazoki (disquiet.com), and Fubsan (disquiet.com).

Four-Track Shoegazer MP3 EP from Elisa Luu

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There is a balance of songness and sound, of an experimentalist’s emphasis on texture and a composer’s on tone, that makes Elisa Luu‘s Floating Sounds (Phantom Channel) one of the most immediately awarding and arresting netlabel releases of the year thus far.

The track sure to garner the lion’s share of initial listening is “Starry Night” (MP3), which mixes in fragments of Luu’s softly employed voice, tweaking it with bits of layering and stereo play, breaking it into syllables, but eventually allowing full phrases to be heard. In the world of netlabels and, more broadly, of electronic music, voices are in short supply, more often appearing as raw source material (think Scanner or Alessandro Bosetti, and countless other field-recording enthusiasts) than as center-stage participants alongside the instrumental elements, as they might in a traditional band setting. Luu finds a point of continuity between a pop song and the cut-up manner of much electronic music by emphasizing vowels over consonants, and never letting the seams of her sampling show.

There’s a shoegazer quality to the results, and the lush, dreamy quality of “Starry Night” should get new listeners to check out the three other, vocal-free tracks on Floating Sounds. All four tracks let small melodies proceed, often abetted by tiny multi-channel efforts in minimalist production touches. Generally speaking, these melodies don’t so much develop as they do repeat through a variety of different settings. There are glistening, cloud-like guitar patterns against pneumatic percussion on “Arteline”(MP3), and a more immediately recognizable six-string on “R3Son8” (MP3), heard amid a bed of synths. The title subject of “Slow Bass Flute” (MP3) is never self-evident in the track, which proceeds like a sweet little bauble. Likely it’s simply been transformed beyond recognition.

More on Luu (aka Rome, Italy-based Elisabetta Luciani) at her myspace.com/elisaluu page, and at the releasing netlabel, phantomchannel.co.uk.

Japanese Abstract Turntablism MP3 from DJ Sniff

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There is DJ’ing, and then there is turntablism. The former lends context to existing music by putting pre-recorded sounds into a sequence, sometimes locating parallels through the creative use of layering. The latter takes the medium itself as its subject, working with familiar tools but often driving into abstract territory that provides a unique vantage point.

Take, for example, the bracing work of DJ Sniff (born Takuro Mizuta Lippit and pictured above), a Tokyo-educated musician who is associated with the experimental music labs at STEIM in Amsterdam. He has posted numerous files of his work up at djsniff.com, including “drum studies1” (MP3), which is an exemplary window onto his musical tactics.

The track bears the hallmarks of a DJ in action — the backward motion, the surface texture, the way that familiar sounds are distorted by tactile techniques, and the use of variable speeds. The result, though, is a work that at first sounds chaotic, yet slowly reveals its own sense of responsibility to the listener, building up bountiful noises that verge on the orchestral, but always bringing it back to the basics, rarified bits that bring to mind funky gears. More details, video, and music at djsniff.com (from which the above images is borrowed).