Mutate – No One In The Mirror (2012)

Black Square

• Post-rock 
• Avant-rock 
• Experimental rock 
• Drone 
• Post-industrial 
• Ambient 
• Abstract 
• Micronoise 
• Avant-garde 
• Experimentalism 
• Ambient drone
• Microtonal

First of all, I would like to thank the players of Montréal Canadiens for their brave fight against Philadelphia Flyers. By following the series from the second game on one could see how the players from Philly had truly frightened looks due to Habs' energetic avalanche over them. Such a pity in twofold, firstly, if to express in terms of the logic of another language the success of Flyers in the beginning of the game 6 was just based on bounces through the arses of Habs' players and secondly, how many wasted moments on very unfortunate stick handling in front of Flyers' goalie Hart. However, the overall picture was very good even without Brendan Gallagher, true fighter who had made a spectacular performance in the game 5. It was just a bit more than sport and hockey. Good recovery, Brendan, the rest bunch of players and Claude Julien. Habs' fan since the end of the 80s.
Before starting listening to Mutate's 5-notch issue I was listening to another Montréal pride GYBE's 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! (2012) which tuned me in due galvanized noisy guitar walls and stepwise dynamic gears hovering up to sublime orchestrated music. However, Mutate's issue is a bit different based either on the abstract hisses of post-industrial and otherwise on sustained guitar chords, similarly to GY!BE's album embellished with concrete sounds and accidental stream of (sub)consciousness/hypnosis. This profound comes out of the discography of Black Square.

Radio for the Daydreamers – Denouement (2012)

Black Square

Bandcamp

• Indie pop/rock 
• Art pop/rock 
• Folk indie 
• Alternative pop/rock 
• Crossover 
• Indie folk 
• Jazz 
• Space pop

Comment: I have been watching like many of you the World Championship of Football In Russia. While being a big sport fan since my very childhood I shall have to admit my relation and attitude toward the sport has been changed over the years. Let`s take a good extraction about it in comparison to the art (music, literature, visual art, motion picture). My relation to the art is based on partaking in art by enjoying it, by actualising it, by creating a value/virtue. Indeed, the art refracts your life because it is frequently bigger than the life and always it is more ennobling and powerful. My relation to the sport is simply affective, it is not based on creating a real value and virtue. It is just an obsession or a psychosomatic trace in my brain. Furthermore, given that by following medical terms I would like to add that football seems to be a highly autistic act. An event of the sport used to have a bare, confined value at a time while you are watching it. It does have no value later. I guess there is no value altogether on its own if someone would be watching the competition between Columbia-England, on July 03, 2018 some years later, for instance. It will change into a mere historical fact but it is not an event anymore. Because of that all kinds of the art used to be more superior on their own. There are many other aspects else to be added to this list (for instance, regarding monetary, financial aspects the gap between them could be even more catastrophic). I am here to always listen to the albums of the The Smiths, Cagey House, My Bloody Valentine, The Fucked Up Beat, Tim Hecker, The Fall, Miles Davis, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins, CAN, Faust, GYBE!, Kraftwerk or read the poems by Edgar Allan Poe, William Somerset Maugham, or H. P. Lovecraft or whoever else (but I do not really care of sport events being happened 5, 10, 20 years ago). It certainly broadens your mental and psychic world instead of playing on your mean instincts. Given that the music is a part of the art, it may be the most layered art with regard to discrete experience by a person because one could always discover new aspects distinctly and in accordance with the previous immense vestige. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US-based Radio for the Daydreamers is over there to cope with this immense vestige. Denoument as a word and as the title of the album refers to a problematic process. The result would come out as a coherent and convincing one, though, yet you could pin down the problematic aspect within it. It is a premise of how to integrate indie and jazz into a vivid, self-perpetuating whole while doing away with any exaggerations and overstatements. The issue is a part of the discography of Black Square. In a word, the value of this issue is certainly more worth than the victory of the Stanley Cup in the combo`s home city. Ars longa, ludus brevis.

Bool – I Eat Phantom (2013)

Black Square

/Witch-step, Breaks, Space rock, Electro-rock, Leftfield, Crossover, Spoken word, Abstract, Electronic, Dark wave, Alternative, Witch-hop/

Comment: this handful of pieces is a poignant hybrid of music and spoken word. More profoundly, it is a mixture of spoken word and different sonic pads ranging from witch house influenced occult sonic appearances to mid-tempo broken beats to murky thumps to airy guitar chords and spaced-out guitar riffs. Of course, it does not mean that these elements are juxtaposed next to each other every time.  Frequently elaborate guitar sounds are mixed up with programmed rhythms and vice versa (for instance, Ancient City Emerge). However, the backbone of the issue is appearance of the Tokyo-based artist`s poems chanted in Japanese which used to overcome and to be gravitated by the aforementioned elements. In fact, an abstract language is exerted additionally. It might be the effect of the output would be bigger if only having some understanding about Japanese. The issue is a part of the discography of Black Square, the Russian-based imprint. Fairly nice one indeed. 

Speculativism - Glitchy Bricolage (2010)

Black Square

Black Square

Lastfm

• Avant-garde
• Experimentalism
• Avant-prog
• Acousmatics
• Breakcore
• Freeformfreakout
• Sampledelic
• Sound collage
• Radiophonic
• Crossover
• Singer-songwriter
• Art pop
• Psych-rock
• Anti-rock
• Weird pop

Sanmi - Piano Explosion (2012)

Black Square

Lastfm

8.9

/Piano music, Modern classical, Experimentalism, Conceptual, Instrumental music/

Comment: Sanmi is the nom de plume of Kyo Yanagi from Nippon who used to operate on the piano throughout the course of 5 tracks. Indeed, it can be considered piano music, though, played on in a very experimental way. It involves austere and poignant arrangements where fluttering chords and hammering phrases are conjured up to create a lot of moods and lot of changes. Everything will change at the time of this trip.     

ZMG - The Sect (2011)

Black Square

8.5

/Dark ambient, Illbient, Sound-art, Minimal, Dysopbient, Microtonal, Neoclassical/

Comment: The dark is rising and atmosphere is filled in with black-and-grey dust before the impending apocalypse through the continuing and approaching collapse of a dying star. In principle, in its restrained yet grave havoc it would be a decent candidate as film score for a horror movie.

Cagey House Major Monk (Black Square)

Avant-garde music veteran Dave Keifer aka Cagey House is back with an having-no-idea-which-album-it-could-be-in-queue release. Because of the high quality of his albums and the uncompromising intention for perfection, Cagey House`s follow-ups are very anticipated. Keifer started off producing music on the FruityLoops-based manipulations but later has found its fondness in sampling processing. In fact, he has issued 2 albums in the near future - Major Monk, and The Stupid Grin (under Sayonara).

In fact, the first three tracks - the seven ones in total - on Major Monk were completed in the beginning of 2009 already. The American musician had used lots of vocal samples to bring forth a suggestive narrative (he has even designed a dialogue relied upon a couple). The first-off Preliminary Major Champion Monk embarks on entering into an appalling radiophonic territory. On the other hand, regarding Keifer `s doings in last years the opening does not make an extraordinary feeling, though. (For instance, check it out for his masterpiece set Lark). As a king of the sampledelic(plunderphonics/cut and paste/sound collage music, he is still used to dive into the abyss of linear composing schemes where one sample is deliberately followed by another, having dosed an witty collation of chords to get deeply into a listener's inner world. On the other side, however, every key/key change on it regarding somehow emotions is charged up in different shape and amount thereby I can imagine it might even be a kind of frightening music for some listeners. By speaking in a more concrete way the soundscape is wrapped in by a poignant environment, dusty antiquity, much of it played out on Keifer`s big hype upon theremin (at least keen to its samples, indeed). The third and fourth track do deviate from the main concept of an unexpected but welcome direction so far. It comes out as if the like of Laetitia Sadier (McCarthy; Stereolab; Monade) is attended therein for to feature with Moog-relied backdrops thereby conveying a mild psychedelic-drenched dimensionality over to the soundscape. The next number Basement returns to the initial situation via "trampling and scraping things" (by Keifer`s own words). All you can be witnessing subsequently here is a mixed-up array of clicks and bleeps, otherwordly effusing sonic patterns of programmed toys, sole trombone blasts, and psychedelic shades as well. To get finished it off, you shall have to look at the excellent coverprint of Major Monk, purposefully amplifying the sonorous impression of it - and vice versa. In fact, it is just the pleasure to perceive it as a whole.

Listen to it here

9.5

[Artists] Fescal

1798
Bypass
Black Square
Fescal/Bandcamp
Lastfm

Cagey House Major Monk (Black Square)

Netimuusika veteranist avangardist Dave Keifer aka Cagey House on tagasi järjekorras ma-ei-tea-mitmenda väljalaskega. (Järjekorranumbreid ma ei mäleta, kuid albumite headust küll). Õieti reliisis ta lähiajal 2 taiest - käesolevale lisaks ka "The Stupid Grin"-i (Sayonara).

Kolm esimest "Major Monk"-i rada (kokku seitse) valmisid juba 2009. aasta alul. Ameeriklane kasutas vokaalsämpleid, et tekitada mingilgi määral narratiivseid assotsiatsioone (ta on koguni konstrueerinud dialoogi mehe ja naise vahel). Sissejuhatav Champion Major Monk algab kui sisenemine õõvatekitavasse raadiokuuldemängu. Teisalt, Keifer`i viimaseid aastaid arvestades ei ole see erakordne (nt "Lark"). Sämplikunnina kasutab ta jätkuvalt lineaarseid komponeerimisskeeme, kus sämpel järgneb sämplile, nr. 2 kannatlikult nr.1-le. Doseerib mõõdukalt, s.t vaimukalt, leides sisendi kuulaja emotsioonidega suhestumiseks. Iseasi on muidugi see, et iga helialge on emotiivselt erinevalt laetud, mistõttu kuulaja võib isegi ehmatuse osaliseks saada. Lisaks võttestikule on ka helid üsna sarnased - kriipiv happelisus, tolmune arhailisus, ning seda suuresti armastusele theremini helide vastu. Kolmas ja neljas rada muudavad senist kontseptsiooni ootamatus, kuid tervitatavas suunas. Sulnid sündisaundid - nagu Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab, Monade) mängiks Moog`i taustaks - annavad Cagey House`i muusikale uue - malbe psühhedeelia - mõõtme. The Basement Number - kus Keifer enda sõnul "hõõrus, trampis ja kraapis asju" - taastub esialgne olukord. Lõputud klikid-klakid, mulinad-lalinad, üleskeeratavate asjade-lelude helid, tromboonitörtsutamised ning taaskord sisse juhatatud psühhedeelne helikude sulgevad teose. Ning taaskord tuleb Dave`i kiita suurepärase coverprint`i eest. Visuaalne mulje tugevdab kuuldut - ning vastupidi. Lihtsalt nauding on tajuda seesugust tervikut.

Kuula albumit siit

9.5