Chef Menteur‘s “Shotgun”: Slodgy, droney head music heard through water-logged ears. At chefmenteur.org.
Nothing Pedestrian
“An Early Walk to the Busstation” by triPhaze: Pardon the pun, but there’s nothing pedestrian about this hallucinogenic concoction of wavering tones (MP3).
Cyclopean Metrical Consistency
Jetone is a Montreal-based musician whose parents know him as Tim Hecker. Ultramarin (Force Inc.) is 12 tracks of cyclopean metrical consistency, dependable as a Timex but considerably more intense. Slight variations in tone are the result of either painstaking effort on Hecker’s part, or your brain’s attempt to make peace with the existential dread. Either way, this is a bracing listening experience, Information Age music that seems to still be caught up in the anxieties of the Industrial Revolution. The track “Octan” layers arrhythmic static atop the perambulating beats, which leaves the listener wondering which is more threatening: routine or divergence from the routine. “Phoedra II” opens with what sounds like an exasperatingly minute guitar riff — exasperating precisely because the tension, small as it is, never releases. Like much Force Inc. music, a lot of Jetone’s work is techno heard from a distance, retaining all of the throb and none of the sheen. But other tracks, like “Only Then,” with its suffocating ambience, refute such careless categorization. Highly recommended.
R&B’s Electronica Soul
Dallas Austin produced the hit single on r&b singer Blu Cantrell’s debut album, So Blu, which may sound like an odd bit of trivia on an electronic-music site. But the CD single (which is actually under Cantrell’s name) is worth checking out because it includes the instrumental (i.e., vocal-free) version of the song “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!),” which is a masterfully swinging assemblage of samples, plunked piano keys and obscure noises. It wouldn’t sound out of place on a Ninja Tune compilation.
Ambient Compilation
A half dozen foreboding ambient recordings best heard far in advance of bedtime comprise the compilation Where Stalks the Sandman (Noh Poetry). This is sound etiolating as it unfolds. “Pythagorean Sea II,” by the esteemed Kim Cascone, is a composite of threadbare palimpsests, myriad layers that somehow never threaten to intrude into the foreground. Monocaine’s “Ars Moriendi,” which is gaunt and spirit-shaking, makes Cascone’s contribution sound extravagant by comparison. Steven Wilson’s “A Grapefruit in the World of Park” is built from a slim sample from guitarist Robert Fripp, and it has the lilting quality of Fripp’s collaborations with Brian Eno, though it augments that melodiousness with dramatic gaps of silence. Also included are tracks by Karen Anderson, Don Falcone and Praxis, the latter a distended remix by Peter Weatherbee.