#chime school

Aeon Station — Observatory (Sub Pop)

[Ed. Note: We didn’t entirely sleep on this one, see our November Dust.]  

The whole point of this feature, of course, is that every year no matter how you try some things slip through the cracks. But at least personally, there’s never been a record that’s felt as destined for my entry in a round up like this and yet at the same time that feels premature to include even here the way Aeon Station’s Observatory does. It’s not just that this record possibly signals the end of the wait (stretching close to 20 years now!) for the Wrens to return after 2003’s The Meadowlands, itself a fraught and delayed installment. Or that more sharply, something like five or six songs here (reports have differed) were basically finished and part of that follow up before Kevin Whelan — moved to action by a pandemic, by the death of his father, by his experience raising his neurodivergent son, by the feeling that "It’s a betrayal that I let a decade of my life go by and did nothing" — took them and wrote some more songs and played them with fellow Wrens Greg Whelan and Jerry MacDonald and told Sub Pop they had something to release. This has led to the kind of conflicting narratives and bad feeling you might expect from Whelan and fellow Wrens front man Charles Bissell, and it’s not just that there isn’t a Wrens record. It’s not just that Bissell hasn’t put out the album that will come from his own Meadowlands follow-up tracks. He hasn’t even released an apparently forthcoming statement (estimating on twitter it’s anywhere from 6.5k to 8k words long) about this album coming out and the narrative around that. Observatory sounded great on first listen, but to me it didn’t sound particularly like the Wrens (despite Whelan long being half of the band’s voice, literally and figuratively) and it took actually going over the band’s work back to back with Aeon Station’s before things started to fall into place. But it was impossible to do so without also looking further into exactly the kind of thing that can make one’s head and heart hurt about the situation. All else being equal you’d imagine most Wrens/Aeon Station listeners, even more than wanting to hear what’s next from Whelan and Bissell, would rather 30-year-plus relationships not get strained and possibly torched in order to bring us anything (or, pointedly, in order for either or both or all band members to be able to express themselves). I slept on Observatory partly because it came out late in the year and I didn’t have the time to give it before I was drawing up lists of albums, yes, but also because I knew to give any genuine response was going to take the kind of time and effort that I just wasn’t looking forward to. So now I know I love it, and also that it’s maybe the record from 2021 that causes me the most conflicting emotions, that makes me the saddest but also maybe the happiest. If you thought Whelan was trying to do that deliberately, it would be its own weird genius that he’s done so ‘about’ an album so bittersweet and so about the things we do and do not get, that we do and do not go after, in life. But I don’t think that sometimes painful resonance is a marketing ploy, or personal dig, or aesthetic gambit: I think it, too, is just life, in all its infinite disappointments and glories. One thing seems clear: This is not what any of us had planned. 

Ian Mathers

 Amyl & the Sniffers — Comfort to Me (ATO)

Comfort To Me by Amyl and the Sniffers

It wasn’t that I was unaware of Amyl and the Sniffers. I had, after all, much enjoyed Amy Taylor in the Sleaford Mods’ “Nudge It,” where her torrid rant lights up the final minute and, to my mind, completely eclipses Billy Nomates’ guest shot. Moreover I knew people who swore by the 2019 self-titled, though life is short and busy and full of records and I’d never gotten around to it. But on the very last Bandcamp Friday of 2021 (and maybe ever), it was time to commit. I plunked down a tenner on Comfort to Me, and it almost immediately became one of my favorites. Something about the architectural spareness of the Sniffers bass-and-drums framework, its crazed explosions of guitars and, especially, its heady, foul-mouthed front-woman. She drops the f-word while asking for angelic guidance in the very first track, my kind of punk diva, for sure. “Hertz” is best of the bunch, an unhinged paean to weekend getaways (“Take me to the beach! Take me to the country!”) that brooks no lessening in tension even when describing the good life. “Maggot” blisters surfaces with its jagged guitar riff, while still putting in a bid for love, but Taylor isn’t compromising. The Ramones-times-ten fury of “Don’t Need a Cunt Like You to Love Me” snarls and stomps at warp speed. “I’m still a good girl, don’t you fucking tell me,” sneers Taylor in the next to last “Laughing,” but it’s totally on her own terms.

Jennifer Kelly

 Jeremiah M. Carter and Chelsea Bridge — The Way It Pours Into Itself (Whited Sepulchre)

The Way It Pours Into Itself by Chelsea Bridge and Jeremiah M. Carter

What with the sheer volume of limited run releases that consistently pop up within the fecund American musical sub-underground, it’s bound to happen that one or two (or many more) gems get overlooked when the year-end lists are crafted. This enigmatic CD, of which only 100 were produced, exemplifies this phenomenon. Both Carter and Mallory Linehan (a.k.a., Chelsea Bridge) have been slowly and unassumingly building their nascent discographies, which have been printed for the most part on the underappreciated cassette medium. Coming together under the Whited Sepulchre banner, a subsidiary of the Tome to the Weather Machine blog, they have created a unique work of art that for the most part managed to escape notice. To craft the three pieces of electronically manipulated acoustic drift presented here, Carter and Linehan worked apart from each other, trading sounds electronically. The Chicago-based Linehan sent violin and voice passages to Carter in Brooklyn, who then added his own sonic elements. A considerable amount of processing completed the vision. The resultant soundscapes are vast territories through which to amble. One might catch a scrambled violin melody accompanied by ghostly guitar fog banks, or an apparition of percussion beamed in from another realm altogether. A chorus of disembodied voices could be conjuring up tangled balls of scraped strings. Was that a phantom dog that just emanated the ghastliest of barks? By weaving together the best parts of their individual oeuvres, Carter and Linehan have turned the uncanny on its head, bewitching us in the process.

Bryon Hayes

Chamber 4 — Dawn To Dusk (JACC Records)

Dawn to Dusk by Chamber 4

One of my pleasures this past year has been getting better acquainted with the work of the Portuguese trumpeter, Luís Vicente. He’s both versatile and productive, so while I made it a point to attest to the merits of his spirited work in his own trio, a duo with Vasco Trilla, and a formidable quartet with John Dikeman, Hamid Drake, and William Parker, this Dawn to Dusk got past me until recently, even though it was released last summer. Chamber 4 is, as the name suggests, a quartet that improvises like a chamber ensemble. Vicente is joined by acoustic guitar-playing compatriot Marcelo dos Reis and Parisians Théo and Valentin Ceccaldi on violin and cello respectively. Dawn To Dusk, which was recorded in concert during the autumn of 2020, is their third album. While the instrumentalists do fall into roles — dos Reis generates momentum, Vicente earthy commentary, and the Ceccaldis’ fractal expansion and thorny counterpoint — their collective dynamics result in music that evolves excitingly and unpredictably.  

Bill Meyer 

  Chime School — Chime School (Slumberland)

Part of the fertile Bay Area indie scene, Andy Pastalaniec steps away from Seablite’s drum stool and grabs his 12-string guitar for ten tracks celebrating girls, cars, motorbikes and truancy on his aptly titled debut Chime School. Think Roger McGuinn via the paisley underground, indie labels Sarah, Fortuna Pop!, and, natch, Slumberland and you’re right there. Pastalaniec’s songs breeze along on ringing guitars, flourishes of organ and tight rhythms. An invigorating antidote to the miseries of 2021 and the rime of winter, Chime School doesn’t reinvent any wheels but the buoyant jangle of “Dead Saturdays” “Anywhere But Here” and “Calling In Sick” never gets old. A really good way to spend a happy half hour watching the rain and dreaming of escape.  

Andrew Forell

 consorts — distinctions (Spoonhunt)

distinctions by consorts

Over the course of 2021, bassist Dominic Lash released a slew of recordings on his Spoonhunt label from sessions by various iterations of his quartet to duos with violinist Angharad Davies to solo guitar releases to releases with collaborators like John Russell and John Butcher to realizations of Christian Wolff compositions by a jazz piano trio. One that I’ve kept going back to is distinctions, a piece by Lash for the ensemble consorts, recorded at Café Oto at his 40th birthday concert. Lash explains that “Consorts is a flexible ensemble formed in 2013 to explore the possibilities of combining sustained-tone music, improvisation (both guided and free), and the relationship between acoustic and amplified sound.” The 20-member iteration of the group here is comprised of many of Lash’s frequent collaborators, with 7 wind players, 7 string players, 3 musicians playing synthesizers and electronics, piano, harmonium and Seth Cooke credited with steel sink and metal detector. Over the course of the 46-minute piece, the musicians navigate their way through, plying extended drones, areas of spare activity and fractured lines tossed across the ensemble, all shot through with the scumbled grit of frayed overtones and burred electronic shadings. There is a patience and focus as the piece opens with the spare, timbrally rich multiplicity of instruments quietly intoning held tones, plucked notes, and textural creaks and crackles in overlapping skeins. Gradually, density mounts as layers accrue against each other, opening up to an extended section of collective, pointillistic improvisation where instruments bob in and out of the mix. The final section crescendos, caterwauling with skirling intensity shot through with insistent overblown reeds, hammered piano notes and the tectonic rumble of bass and electronics, winding down to a taut conclusion in the last moments. Listening to how the group pulls together throughout with gripping dynamism while still allowing for ensemble transparency is a tribute to their collective listening.

Michael Rosenstein    

 Louis Laurain — Pulses, Pipes, Patterns (INSUB Records/Carton Records)

Pulses, Pipes, Patterns by LOUIS LAURAIN

A string of releases in 2000/2001 seemed game-changers for solo trumpet. Within a few years, Greg Kelley, Axel Dörner and Franz Hautzinger put out solo releases, and Bill Dixon put out his monumental solo boxed set Odyssey. On each of their releases, the musicians delved into personal sonic experiments, deconstructing the elemental timbres of the brass instrument and reimagining the trumpet as a resonant sound generator. Of course, all of this has been absorbed and extended by musicians like Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Birgit Ulher and others. But this release shows that there is still plenty of room for discovery. Twenty years on, French trumpet player Louis Laurain released this solo which captures the exploratory energy of those earlier releases. Utilizing trumpets, home-made amplification systems, resonating objects and field recordings, Laurain carves out five pieces which present his instrument as, in his words, “a resonating space.” Each zero in on a particular timbral area, building up layers of frictive hisses and burred breath, feedback projected through the instrument, looping percussive pops and clicks and objects placed against the bell which produce sympathetic resonances. Lorain modulates and controls this modular approach to sonic investigation through the subtle manipulation of the trumpet’s valves, tuning slides, spit valves and mutes, sometimes taking the instrument apart to project the sound across the stereo plane. While the technical mastery and resourceful invention of all this is engaging, it is Lorain’s keen structural sense that weaves all of this together into a release that I’ve continued to return to.

Michael Rosenstein

 Low Life — From Squats to Lots: The Agony and XTC of Low Life (Goner)

In the spirit of this feature, here is music born from being overlooked. So much so that on multiple songs on the third LP by Australian punks Low Life the narrator is asked, “How are you still alive?” The answer that frontman Mitch Tolman gives to this query is two-fold: by doing what needs to be done in order to survive, and by writing about it. To these ends, he’s gotten sober and relocated to Melbourne from Sydney, where the band formed in 2010 while living together in an Inner West squat house. In fact, I’m guilty of paying too little attention to Low Life myself, having failed to give their second album, Downer Edn, a chance after being underwhelmed by its teaser tracks. But if its songs are half the “growers” this set are, I only blame myself, which is what the characters in the band’s universe do best. Or worse, as Tolman speaks-sings about over the distinctly My Bloody Valentine-esque swells of “Epitaphs,” they make the mistake of believing that they can have it all. This isn’t shoegaze, though, the band insists in the liner notes; nor is it hardcore exactly (“this is not austere, disciplined music”), despite shades of both styles seeping through the echoey, haunted smog of these twelve tracks. Whatever you want to call it or not call it, From Squats to Lots is a damn near perfect album — and it’s only too fitting with the music’s resilient spirit how few in 2021 seemed to take notice, myself almost included.

Chris Liberato

 Akira Rabelais — 図書館 / À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Argeïphontes)

図書館 by Akira Rabelais

À la recherche du temps perdu by Akira Rabelais

Following 2019’s self-described magnum opus CXVI, Texan-born composer, Morton Subotnick student and Argeïphontes Lyre software creator Vincent Akira Rabelais Carté retreated from grander, more formal album statements for more than two years, opting instead to do soundtrack work and small-run cassettes. That changed in October with the simultaneous releases of 図書館 (“Library,” inspired by Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore) and À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (“In search of lost time,” not surprisingly drawn directly from Marcel Proust). Though distinct in their source material and mission, those coming to Rabelais for the first time will note the unifying themes in sonic topography across the six-plus hours of music herein; The Caretaker, Stars of the Lid and William Basinski are easy reference points, though plenty of ambient and “slow music”-minded composers are likely to spring to mind beyond that. 図書館 is the more ambiguous of the two, four roughly 20-minute pieces stringing out endless piano decay that fosters an uneasy atmosphere. It’s the massive À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (fitting for an album drawing inspiration from Proust) to which I keep returning, however: 13 tracks interpolating 51 works of Belle Époque composers capped off by “Il avait eu envie de réentendre certains quatuors de Beethoven” (“He wanted to hear some Beethoven quartets again”), an hour-long quilt of beat-up Beethoven 78s from down the long hall of a gilded Viennese palace. Each album requires sustained attention and total commitment, but if you have it, you’ll be rewarded with two of 2021’s most arresting records.

Patrick Masterson

Trhä — endlhëtonëg (Self-released)

endlhëtonëg by Trhä

The project identified only by the mysterious moniker Trhä makes songs that combine the sonic aesthetics of raw black metal, a fascination with the atavisms of dungeon synth and the occasional atmospheric gestures of bands like Tardigrada or Lamp of Murmuur. That cluster of references suggests a rather singular synthesis, and Trhä’s music is as occulted as the language (untranslatable, so far as Google can tell) the project uses on its scant internet presence. The first track on this LP is titled “ihaja endlhëjëdahhe nu jahadlhjavna gjëri ha”—you figure it out. The seemingly intentional linguistic obscurity is complemented by the project’s deployment of the anti-promotional strategy of numerous Satanic black metal bands: no names, no pictures, no firm locale, no contextual info beyond what you can dope out from the music itself. All of that can feel a bit like schtick, and given the increase in hipness that dungeon synth is currently experiencing, the intrigue threatens to signal a sort of self-important preciousness. But the music is terrific: less produced than captured, by turns moody and overheated, prone to long periods of chilly, expressionistic keyboard-based tonalities and sudden explosions of shrill and clattering blackened cacophony. The record is bonkers and haunting by equal measures. The last song and title track is an epic of creation-destruction, well worth the significant investment of time and attention required. Trhä released a lot of music in 2021 (including a good split with the mopey, nutty Celestial Sword), but endlhëtonëg is the strongest and strangest record of the bunch. Which is saying something.