needle in the head

Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle is the debut full lenght album by Athens psychedelic rock outfit Olivia Tremor Control and is one of the few really remarkable records made by the Elephant 6 collective. Dusk at Cubist Castle is an extremelly anbitious work, but also a very pleasant and rewarding album, apparently the soundtrack to a film, never shot, about a pair of girls, Olivia and Jacqueline, reminiscent of Jacques Rivette's stunning surrealism, a mind bending expirience. An abstract dream play that exists in an abstract place or time that anybody can go to. The record is largely influenced by late sixties acid rock bands, namely the Beatles, the Kinks, Syd Barrett and a further big number of folk and rock outfits, but it also owes a lot to the krautrock movement, Steve Reich's tape manipulations and Brian Wilson's baroque pop arrangements. Those influences are married with a huge amount of experimentation and studio trickery. Forward and backward tape loops, guitar drones and field recordings dominate mostly the middle segment of the album, theGreen Typewriters suite. Singing saws and brass instruments also emerge here and there. Found percussion and musique concrète, elements, that the band would further perfect and make a much more intriguing use of on their masterpiece, Black Foliage, are pretty much constantly present on this merry go round of sunshine psychedelia and gorgeous abstractness. Groovy bass lines and mantra like vocal lines and heavenly multi part vocal harmonies à la the Beach Boys, all make for a remarkably catchy collection of songs. While Dusk at Cubist Castle is obviously very carefully composed and arranged, with lots of attention for the details, it is by no means devoid of a down to earth, carefree, rather naive attitude, clearly stated by the lo-fi production and the record's colorful and playful character. Now, the songs themselves would quite often break down and take a completely unexpected turn, it's a very adventurous album, for sure, that's willing to take the listener on the ultimate trip in psychedelic rock, evoking otherworldly, sometimes nightmarish visions and gorgeous landscapes. A tour de force of sunshine psychedelia and dreamlike sequences, and one of later day acid rock's best moments. 

Those tracks are actually built upon sometimes unconventional time signatures and rapid changes in dynamics and rhythm. Who Could Win a Rabbit, for instance, variates between 4/4, 5/4 and 3/4 time signatures. Outstanding compositions are the side long Visiting Friends with its droning acoustic guitars and undistinguishable vocals, that is followed by the short excercise in Beach Bys-que vocal harmonies that is College and the stunning child-like outburst of raw human energy and emotion, We Tigers. The songs here, that could easily correspond on a somewhat deeper emotional level with the listener, are Winters Love and Kids on Holiday, without a doubt some of the most beautiful excerpts from Animal Collective's discography. Unfortunatelly, one could feel rather overwhelmed after listening to this record, mostly because of the last three tracks, that obviously lack the fierceness and the genuine character of the other compositions. Damn, Whaddit I Done sounds completely uninspired and out of place, to be honest. The thing is, that Sung Tongs could easily have been a more or less perfect fourty something minutes long record and they wouldn't have had to split it on two LP's, too. The really great thing though about Sung Tongs is, that the album demonstrates, the collective can also be quite exciting, also when not messing with avant-garde, and have the ability to write and perform absolutelly amazing folky/psychedelic tunes. Truth be told, the album deserves all the praise it has received, and while not necessarily exceptional in terms of both structure and substance, it is one of the most stunning and extraordinary pieces of popular music at the time of its release. 

Terje Rypdal has a stunningly gorgeous, quite passionate style of playing the guitar, with its most noteworthy aspects being probably the beautiful, otherworldly pitch harmonics and the guitarist’s remarkable use of feedback. And what completes the picture, are the floating synthesizer tones and the electric pianos. The electric guitar tells haunting, beautiful stories, or weeps gently in Terje’s hands. The Norwegian’s music on After the Rain is remarkably calm and peaceful, even though those tracks are by no means devoid of a wide dynamic range. Another thing, that should be taken notice of, is the absence of percussion of any kind. Overall, the record is rather on the ambient side of things, slow paced and quiet for the most part of its length, but also quite ethereal and extraordinarily atmospheric, somewhat mesmerizing for a jazz album. Rypdal’s sound paintings are quite breathtaking and refreshing, somewhat untraditional and innovative even for an ECM style album from the mid-seventies. Although much jazzier and adventurous in character, After the Rain is, indeed, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ambient works and, to some extent, of the otherworldly, cosmic soundscapes of the Berlin school progressive electronic music. Thick arpeggios and dissonant chords, played on an acoustic guitar, also appear in compositions, such as Now and Then. The title track, on the other hand, is not just the album’s centerpiece, but also the record’s most impressive performance, that best summarizes the record’s somewhat transcendental qualities. After the Rain isn’t really a spacious album though, but rather an ethereal one, a meditation on human emotion and passion, beauty and love. The record has its moments of grief and sorrow, too, of heavenly bliss and ecstatic transcendence. The record takes the best out of Brian Eno’s gorgeous soundscapes that are “not meant to be listened to”, Miles Davis’ and Sonny Sharrock’s jazz fusion and even the French impressionism from almost a decade ago. Terje Rypdal, a true master of expression, here doubtlessly proves himself as one of the most cunning, captivating guitar players of his time, not only in this particular genre. The Norwegian’s explorations into the potential of the instrument, that is the electric guitar, are always interesting to follow and After the Rainis quite possibly the sole highlight of his career. 

Lindstrøm’s latest full length album and his second release within the same year, coming after the surprisingly adventurous, somewhat experimental work, that was Six Cups of Rebel, a rather untraditional take on disco music, is a return to the Norwegian producer’s basic stylistics. Good news, since Lindstrøm’s previous offering wasn’t exactly a top notch quality album. Smalhands offers a little more than thirty minutes of rather straight forward space disco, built around floor on the floor drum patterns, funky bass lines and glossy synth arpeggios. In the higher frequency range there’s a big amount of sampled percussion fills and various high-pitched sounds, coming from all kinds of different sources, too. The record is characterized by a remarkably wide dynamic range and various tempos, while being rather monotonous, as far as the rhythms are concerned. One of the album’s outstanding moments is the third track, Ęg-gęd-ōsis, where a carefully composed progression revolves around a catchy and playful bass line, and ever reemerging percussion overdubs. The track is followed by Smalhands’ sole highlight, Vōs-sākō-rv, another track built around irresistible synth melodies and fast paced drum patterns. Good thing about the album is, that other than glitzy, sugary synths and synthetic bass tones, there’s also various untraditional percussion, which is given quite enough space to breathe and develop in rather unpredictable directions. Lindstrøm’s take on disco music is certainly an open-hearted, down to earth and quite honest one, devoid of any pretension. The compositions, found on his newest release are all pretty accessible and highly enjoyable. Lindstrøm, a prominent figure in the disco revival, that has been going on for several years now, is not necessarily along the lines of the more intriguing and challenging musicians in the contemporary dance music scene, but nevertheless proves himself once again as a truly gifted producer, whose music, although not mind bending, is exceptionally enjoyable, for sure. 

Anthologie des 3 perchoirs, the debut full lenght album by canadian post-punk/noise rock outfit Duchess Says, is a record filled with extremelly simple and heavily distorted punkish guitar riffs and synth lines. The production/engineering on the album make for a very raw, noisy sound. Actually, the music, found on the record, has a very slacker attitude. Most of the songs are fast paced and based on fuzzy bass lines and floor on the floor rhythm patterns, but there are also a few tracks on the record, that are devoid of Annie-Claude's screaming vocals, with an ambient character to them. Comme on peut s'en douter with dance-punk music, the song structures are, most of the time, rather repetitive, electronica-inspired, but also pretty agressive, mostly due to the spontaneous character of Duchess Says' music. Rapid and unexpected shifts in dynamics are a common element in those songs. The tracks, most of the time, flow into each other and when they don't, there are hardly any pauses in between. Basically, the band doesn't give the listener a chance to rest for a while, not until the album is finally over. Surprisingly enough though, the last segment of the album doesn't feature Annie's vocals and replaces the fast tempos with more laid back atmosphere, for a change. Other outstanding moments in the record are Ccut Up, Rabies and Black Flag. The later is, in fact, so cheesy, that is is actually good. Also, cowbells and tremolo driven synths bring some color on those other two songs. Same thing goes for the massivelly reverberated A Century Old, that also featuress handclaps. House inspired floor on the floor beats, fuzzy guitars, distorted synths and lots of angst and agression make for an overall pretty decent and enjoyable record. I would happily recommend the album to any fan of noisy danceable punk rock music, but hey, don't expect anything revolutionary or very innovative. I'd also like to recommend a great canadian ''indie'' film, The Tracey Fragments, that introduced me to this artist a while ago. 

 Alas, the record as a whole does hardly offer any variety at all, not only do all the compositions sound pretty much the same, but also the lame mixing and engineering make the album an exhausting and tiring listen. Which definitely shouldn't be the case with a record, that goes for that whole chill out, laid back atmosphere it seems to be going for. Another major problem, unfortunatelly, is the poor songwriting. The songs are actually catchy and somewhat memoriable at times, but overall poorly put together. Much of the time it feels like the individual parts and segments just don't work together at all. At some points one gets the feeling of impatience and artificiality, whereas other tracks, like Scheherazade and Surfer's Hymn seem empty and drag for way too long. The only song on the album that feels quite natural and complete is Last Night at the Jetty. Overall, Panda Bear's latest record demonstrates Noah's lack of inspiration and motivation, and is also rather uninteresting and exhausting. Unfortunatelly, Tomboy goes down as another step in Animal Collective's descent into mediocrity. 

 Here are the insane steel drums and afrobeat-influenced rhythm patterns and the low pitched vocals. Unfortunatelly though, the Knife's 2003 release is an odd and unconsistent mixture of stunning, haunting tracks, like the title cut, Pass This On and You Take My Breath Away, and then other, rather disappointing songs, that don't really unreel in any specific direction. Girls' Night Out, Got 2 Let U and Behind the Bushes don't do much for the album. With such short tracks, like The Cop, She's Having a Baby and Hangin' Out, the duo seem to be trying to give the record a certain shape, an attempt, that works only to a little extent, since, especially on first listen, these songs seem a bit out of place. Later though, with repeated listens, accepting the record's heterogeneous character, one's able to enjoy the album for what it is. Also, you can always count on the Dreijer siblings for stunning lyrics. 

Avey Tare plays every possible instrument here, except for the drums. Panda Bear himself is responsible for the literally insane, somewhat free jazz inspired percussion, that does quite a bit more than just being a solid base for the compositions, Panda's drum playing is actually what mostly makes this album an outburst of child-like emotion and gives it a fairly decent feel of freedom. Spirit... is, as a matter of fact, quite free, although it rarely escapes conventional song structures. An obvious exception here is the closing track, a well over twelve minutes long opus, that goes through multiple changes in tempo and dynamics and culminates in screams and dissonant harmonies. Alvin Row is an absolute highlight of the album, though it looses a big part of its significance once taken away from the whole context of that record. Other outstanding songs include the beautiful Chocolate Girl and La Rapet, the calm Penny Dreadfuls and the spacey untitled track. Listenig to Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished could be quite harmful at times, mostly because of the loops of feedback and white noise, and the extremely poor production, but there lies a fair amount of beauty beneath the surface for sure. It took me quite a while until I was finaly able to get into it, but I find it really hard not to fall in love with the record once you really give it a chance. Spirit... is one of those rare gems that occur only once in an artist's output, it is quite beautiful and a unique piece of modern music.