music

Title: The Withdrawing Room
Artist: Mary Lattimore
Label: Desire Path

This also appeared at the Liminal.

There’s a lot to be said for living with a record for a period of months before trying to write something coherent about it. You build a series of reference points and a haze of ideas, some of which get picked up from various sources, others of which you either invent yourself, or grow out of a vague mulch of experience and data gathering. The Withdrawing Room, the debut album from Mary Lattimore, a Philadelphia based harpist, has been a signature example of this. And the name I keep coming back to is Emily Dickinson. There’s something in the title that is very Dickinsonian, for sure (that sense of self-imposed isolation and pent up desire), and this is carried over into the music, which, on the surface, is similarly austere and controlled, but out of which streams great gouts of passion and a kind of billowing, engulfing numinosity. Lattimore’s method is to use long form compositions and to follow simple melodic progressions until they fracture and spread. In places, such as on the opening track (‘You’ll Be Fiiinnne’, at 24 minutes), Jeff Ziegler, her long-time collaborator, adds to this spreading effect via the subtle warping intrusions of his korg mono/poly synth. The effect is like throwing open the windows of solitude and letting the outside world in, with the synth bubbling and whistling like so many wheeling birds. Other touch points I’ve heard mentioned are more by association than anything else, ie woman + harp, well it must be like Joanna Newsom or even Alice Coltrane. Neither comparison is particularly useful or accurate, though if you were to plump for one, then perhaps the latter Ashram recordings of Alice Coltrane might function as a useful signifier in terms of Lattimore’s New Age leanings. Bucketful of reference points aside, the truth of it is that The Withdrawing Room is an original and quietly beautiful album that continues to reveal itself over many listens and is another triumph for the excellent Desire Path label.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 12:53 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

TICKETS

John Chantler

John Chantler from Gianmarco Del Re on Vimeo.

Posted by poacher in music at 13:35 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Runningonair & Mountain*7 are pleased to present ….

Seismology

The Time: 7:00pm - 27th April 2013

The Venue

The Railway
3 St. Paul's Hill,
Winchester.
S022 5AE

Tickets available from Facebook.com/WinchesterTheologies

Details of the last show from back in September, and see below for footage.

Posted by poacher in music at 11:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Title: The End
Artist: Black Boned Angel
Label: Handmade Birds

This first appeared at the Liminal.

Campbell Kneale has been exploring the potential of the drone for more than 15 years now (in terms of releases, at least – before that, in the wilds of New Zealand and the wilds of interiority, who knows?). In high flung terms, his explorations call for a re-scaling of the word epic, a re-calibration of what’s possible in terms of sheer endurance, not to mention our very understanding of the phenomenological potential of the extended note and its psychedelic implications; more crassly put, his work is monstrous and alluring and repulsive in equal measure – and no more so than with his doom project, Black Boned Angel.

Kneale started Black Boned Angel 10 years ago as a duo along with James Kirk (more recently the band has incorporated Jules Desmond and Anthony Milton), the act creating blackened doom music, a kind of purist metal drone built around those early Earth recordings and the more unadorned Sunn O))) releases. There has always been something of a grand gothic edge to them, too – in the stage imagery, the backgrounded ranks of choral voices, and the themes of their records: Supereclipse, The Witch Must Be Killed, Verdun. Now the band have decided to call it a day, and The End is to be their last album, their epitaph. And it’s as if this has freed them up, somehow, given them an impetus to throw everything skyward, because that aforementioned grandeur is very much apparent, making The End an emotional masterpiece as well as one concerned with exploring the crushing sonic possibilities of all out heaviness.

The End is in three-parts, which add up to over an hour of music. It’s gruelling, yes, but that’s part of the point. A good chunk of Kneale’s aesthetic has always been invested in making you experience his time, so the listening experience is something akin to surrender. ‘Part 1’ is a magmatic, elephantine thing, guitar noise ripped to bursting point hoisted on blackened shrieks and Nadja-style programmed drums. This gives way, in ‘Part 2’, to something more unsettling, with swirling metallic drones and churning disembodied voices, like a choir buried hundreds of miles deep in the ground. The grinding riff, when it comes, is almost a relief. And it’s here that the emotional heft becomes really apparent, with the guitars buoyed by a vast organ patter that eventually decays into a simple fugue state lit by a simple piano figure. The closest comparison I can think of in recent times, in tone if not always in content, is another swansong – that of Corrupted, whose Garten der Unbewusstheit from 2011 had a similar soaring trajectory.

‘Part 3’ is built around another sludgy chord pattern that’s more lava flow than riff, above which flits a choral line treated until it becomes an almost theremin-like warble. Similar to ‘Part 2’ the track devolves into rubble and decay, as if the sonic fabric were unable to bear up under the strain. Which kind of adds up in terms of an elegy for Black Boned Angel; and there’s an admirable restraint in realising an idea has been pushed as far as it can go. The End stands (and crumbles) as a definitive final statement.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 21:53 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Title: Liquid Light Forms
Artist: Koen Holtkamp
Label: Barge

This first appeared at The Liminal.

Koen Holtkamp’s Liquid Light Forms has been around in digital format for a few months now, but the delayed vinyl release (out on Barge in early March) has meant a slow accumulation of experience – the record has kind of percolated into me over an extended period. My initial impression was that it was merely another appropriation of the firmly 70s-rooted kosmische sound, with all the attendant baggage that brings, but repeated listens have revealed it to be a subtle and thematically interesting recording. I guess part of it comes down to trust in the end: Holtkamp, as part of the duo Mountains, has always had an ear for the skilful blending (of albeit mainly acoustic) sounds, and it’s this that comes through on Liquid Light Forms. He might have changed the means (he’s using modular synths and sequencers, instead of say an egg whisk) but the sophisticated layering is there, as is the emotional engagement. Named after the Hudson River, and two of its tributaries, the 3 long tracks glisten and shimmer, readily evoking the play of light on water. There isn’t a traditional bassline undertow as such; instead the various modulated melodies intertwine and roll across one another creating an illusion of riverine gravity. The closing track, ‘Hudson Static (Live at Shea Stadium)’ is the most ebullient here, and almost crosses into punch-the-air Emeralds territory. The lingering sonic memory of the previous tracks and Holtkamp’s poise thankfully keeps this in check. Worth the wait, this one.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 11:44 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Two mixes which will wholly improve your life. Get to it.



A guitar soli mix for Root Strata by Danny Paul Grody. If you can listen to Glenn Jones's 'A Snapshot of Mom, Scotland, 1957' without tearing up, you're a better man than I.



And this 'Winter Mix' by James Ginzburg for The Outer Church. Basic Channel, Susumu Yokota, Paul Jebanasam, Roly Porter? Precisely.

Posted by poacher in music downloads at 12:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Wasn't even aware of the existence of this until today. It's Dave Pajo, it's an extended improvisation around the old Pete Seeger track. It's good.

Posted by poacher in music at 23:04 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)