A fine match for yesterday’s material by Eluvium is this month’s “MP3 Rotor” entry at kracfive.com, a syrupy run of undulating ambience by Kettel, one of kracfive collective’s mainstays. Well, it begins in the dreamy thick of aquatic haze, but prior to the two-minute point it dives deeper down, with cinematic breadth, to achieve what James Cameron’s Aliens of the Deep might have sounded like had it been rated R. And then the piece, titled “Pellegrin,” heads high; this may be an imposed narrative on the listener’s part, but there it seems to make a transition from water breaking, as if over the hull of a ship, to birdsong, to heavenly voices. Again, this is all imagined referentiality, but it says something about “Pellegrin” that it can suggest so much, in about six minutes.
Three Eluvium MP3s
Over in the MP3 section at pitchforkmedia.com, there’s a transcendent piece by Eluvium (aka Matthew Cooper), “New Animals from the Air (edit),” which pitches soft balls of melodic loops, one atop another, until they build to higher and higher peaks, reminiscent of 4AD Records stalwarts the Cocteau Twins, though never getting as close to song form as that group was wont to do. More info at website of the Brooklyn-based label that released the full-length version, temporaryresidence.com, and at Eluvium/Cooper’s site, eluvium.net, which houses two additional MP3s: the lush, if peculiarly detuned, “Under the Water It Glowed” and the deceptively rudimentary piano piece “Genius and the Thieves,” which sounds like Rufus Wainwright playing a Harold Budd cover.
Superb Spanish Folktronic MP3 EP
The latest from the Portuguese netlabel test tube is a truly superb mix of acoustic and electric elements, with all the elegance of classic minimalism and all the presence of an early-1970s singer-songwriter album. It’s sure to appeal to fans of Greg Davis’ Arbor (Carpark, 2002), and other so-called folktronic music. Credited to Aitanna77 (aka Spanish musician Mikel Martinez), the Spring Is Coming Soon EP’s four tracks mix gently plucked acoustic guitar and a smattering of digital effects. What makes the work special is that the blend of analog and digital isn’t predicated on conflict, but on how the elements work together. This isn’t the countrified hip-hop of the Dust Brothers’ collaborations with Beck, or the electronified blues of Moby’s Play, in which contrasting sounds rub against each other to stoke the frisson of pop fusion. On the title cut, soft hums serve as ghost images to the melody, and then bits of reverb exaggerate the finger picking. On “Licking Ice Cream Cones,” which has John Fahey’s way with a lilting melody, guitar parts accumulate thanks to multitracking, veering slightly apart from one another and lending the cut the hypnotic quality of overlapping patterns. Other instrumentation on the brief set includes electric guitar, xylophone and that touchstone of dub, the melodica. Be sure to check it out, at monocromatica.com/netlabel.
March One-Minute Vacation MP3s
The past month has been a particularly fine one for entries in Aaron Ximm‘s One-Minute Vacation series, which collects 60-second field recordings from volunteer contributors around the world. March 7’s, courtesy of Anders Ostberg, opens with a high whistle, courtesy of a steam engine demonstration at a museum in Eskilstuna, Sweden. March 14: an Alameda, Calif., joint with some two dozen classic pinball machines, and a classic-pop background soundtrack to boot, recorded by John Tenney. For March 21’s entry, Ben Owen taped the mechanical sound of rain beating down on his New York apartment. And March 28: the sounds of Australian ski slopes, heard from above in a chair lift, complete with the rustle of wind and the call of distant voices, recorded by Ben Dixon. Check ’em out at quietamerican.org/vacation.html.
Fred Frith MP3
The multi-night, 11th annual Other Minds music festival that occurred a few months back in San Francisco is slowly taking on a second life, as a series of downloadable audio files on the servers at the Internet Archive, aka archive.org. Among the more recently uploaded entries is a half-hour series of improvisations by legendary guitarist Fred Frith (of Henry Cow, and now teaching music at nearby Mills College), in collaboration with instrument maker Sudhu Tewari. Frith mixes soft-hewn fragments of melody that ring like bell tones with more acoustically acerbic material drawn from mishandling of the instrument, and also launches into some solos forged from a mix of feedback and held notes. There’s limited info on Tewari at the Other Minds site, and this is one performance where visual accompaniment would have been particularly appreciated, but as the piece develops, it takes on a rhythmic intensity, a metric consistency — yes, a discernible downbeat — that is often consciously lacking in Frith’s music. In other words, it rocks. Intermixed are moments of intense quietude. The concert was recorded on February 25, and now it’s up online for the ages. The file is only downloadable via FTP, but the site provides clear instructions; just search for “Frith Tewari.”