This Lonely Crowd Entangled Chaos (Velvet Blue)

Hooray! Tweedledum, Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, Red Queen, and Jabberwock are proudly back. The expectations toward their sophomore release are really high because of their debut album An Endless Moment Eveyday All the Time (2010, Sinewave) being madly energic and artistic through shoegaze- and post-grunge guitars, reminiscent of vocally Billy Corgan`s manner from Smashing Pumpkins. A salient mix of dream pop and power pop.

A new release, new coverprint, new direction, new measures. First of all, Humpty Dumpty don`t search anymore for Corgan-esque abrasiveness in his vocal manner, feeling more soft, murmuring, and dreamy - and often doing it in the cooperation with Red Queen. In fact, the vocal part is diminished, too, and the sound is properly arranged - without the dominance of chaos-driveness, the collapses of mayhems, crazily intense key changes, and driving-in and driving-off effects. Instead of powerful guitars there are rather airy guitars to be represented in consisting of dreamy even lethargic soundscapes, which subtle movement is sometimes "disturbed" by massive brown noise-alike exorced keys of guitars throwing up elemental hooks of the AEMEATT. Yet once time, in comparison with the first album the song structures are more transparent and predictable, thereby being a bit less attractive, though. In conjuction with it the release seems to be too short (4 tracks) also for playing out their transboundary conception in the complete way. But by measured on the absolute scale, it is a solid work, though. And the quintet`s coverprints are still one of the best, too, conveying the spirit of golden age shoegaze music to this day. An eye is resting while watching it.

Listen to it here

8.8

Head In Body Not So Empty EP (KLaNGundKRaCH)

Head In Body, the Czech-based project`s new EP sounds most time like a tribute to Suicide, a legendary no wave band from the USA. More specifically, it sounds as the album of a kind of variations dedicated to Vega & Rev`s creepy (anti-)hit Frankie`s Teardrop. Sonically it does mean that certain elements are nicely represented here - psychotic, chopped, and through delay-channelized mutated vocal effects bring forth themselves as the dominating pannel of the sound. On the other side, the EP build up a bit difference, succeeding keep moving elsewhere. And the different elements do base upon the experiments of profoundly low bass drones and brown noise crackles to have brought on the other side, and driving in the wake of Pan Sonic. Anyway, in a good shape balanced ominous album.

Listen to it here

8.8

[Old but important] Negativity Life Is A Dead End (Negativity)

For a while, I have listened to some albums of Negativity leaded by Julien
Jandera from Drusenheim, France offering his poisonous ideas related to
his hating feels regarding life and human kind (actually the coverprint being designed with a hanged man could say it all). 9 tracks of the 12th album, considered as his most brutal ones, consist of angry and ruffle guitar riff waves while biting and grinding vocal lines are in the first place, though, which altogether will make up a lot of synergic trash and black metal monumentums. In fact, although it might sometimes be seemed a bit loose, it may be defined as black metal on the DIY-mode, but it does not sound in the boring way anyway. Moreover, Jandera is probably not a man used to find excuses for deviating from his main line, concerning on one synth interlude, and the finishing track is wrapped in by drone doom madness. Profoundly drone, burningly doom.

Listen to it here

SLUTEVER Sorry I`m Not Sorry (Bandcamp)

By speaking of contemporary girl power in music, you can not bypass The Slits, a British band which sounded as the female counterpart to the Public Image Limited (or was it the other way round, though), blending intensely punk, dub, and dance rhythms. In addition to it not much weeks have passed by since their frontwoman Ari Up (Arianne Foster) was passed away.

The legend is gone, but certain sonic patterns and traditions are left behind. One example of such artistical and rebellious bands is definitely Slutever, a duo from Philadelphia. Nicole Gagliardi, and Rachel Snyder has already won the attention of the press and had a couple of gigs with the Best Coast, and Cults. Behind the music the more surprising fact is that the rest of their life do consist of watching TV (because of reflecting the American Dream at the rate of 90%), and school attendance.

Why their 6 tracks album is used to be a significant one? In the first place, redoubtably rough sonic linearity (noisy guitars, garage sound (in fact, recorded in a bathroom and bedrooms), shrill vocals, whistling feedback, permanent energic overdrive; secondly, the lyrics reflecting the carelessness, selfishness, lack of love, but also searching for it and avoiding of it and the longing for dirty teenage sex. This kind of sound is used to be tagged as shitgaze/shi-fi, and the first part of the word is referred as well. My favorite track is So Prone, with dreamy background and cellophanic guitar sound. This is a kind of release which especially will decorate your first half of a day.

Listen to it here

8.8

Monokle & Galun In Frame (12rec)

Vladislav Kudryatsev & Aleksandr Kumach aka the Arkhangelsk-based combo Monokle`s third album Tesaurus (under Id.eology) was one of the best albums of 2009. Now Kumach has left the band and Kudryatsev is joined by a former beatboxnik and otherwise versatile artist Sergey Galunenko aka Galun and the result does seem even in better way to be sound. 12 tracks give testimony of prominent examples of songwriting, balancing between post-rock, poptronica, chillout, downtempo, indie rock. It is used to be continually dense, and warm, and mostly it is so intensely loaded with dreams that the soundscape does seem a bit lazy in the good manner sounding up very nostalgic and relaxing to my ears, conjuring up gratifying listening memories from the past by approximately 10-12 years ago. The tracks like Crossed Fingers, and Means are reminiscent of the manner by Brendan Perry, and the beatific times when I spent the most of my time in the bibliothek of the Tartu University for listening to Dead Can Dance among others. Regarding the next track (Justalite) I shall have to ask you do you remember Louis Armstrong`s great track We Have all the Time in the World for one of the James Bond-related soundtrack? (It was also covered by My Bloody Valentine). Regarding the motive of this track you can see really close similarity with it. Get At Will remembers one of the toughest work, being grew up from the Estonian underground scene Bizarre`s sophomore album Cafe de Flor (1996, Forwards), especially the track Airs Of Arabia with otherworldly chanting female voice and shoegazers` atmospheric guitar swayings. In a nutshell, one of the best works of the 2010.

Listen to it here

9.8

[Artists] 100percentelectric

100percentelectric/Jamendo
Reverbnation
Lastfm

Phillip Wilkerson Daybook EP (BFW Recordings)

As his first name used to be unusual the englishman Phillip Wilkerson is an important and special name among sonic experimentalists and soundscapers. He has released shitloads of albums during last five years, under such labels like Bypass, Resting Bell, Earth Mantra, Amorphos Music, Justnotnormal, and BFW Recordings as well.

4 tracks released in the start of 2010 are used to sound in a very broad way, involving in epic and warm-sounding choppiness, sometimes it can be distant and anonymous, and even "sexy" would be a correct adjective. Probably the tags as "dreamscape" or "subtle soundfields" are the most proper characteristics to describe the essence of the release. No doubt, the coverprint which illustrates a kind of colourful sphereness does convey the stand of the EP in an excellent way. Wilkerson`s quality is here to be proven again. A great masterpiece.

Listen to it here

9.5

Sky Event Sky Event (pan y rosas sitio)

2 musicians, Hathaway Hester (cello, little instruments), and Keith Helt (guitar, little instruments), are influenced equally by modern out and avant composition as well as contemporary Chicago creative music. As it is said, their soundscape is full of plinks, plucks and percussive slaps surrounded by abrasive chamber and electro-acoustic ambiences. At the half time it sounds really austere and rigorous, the first and third track do reflect more delightful approach. In fact, I can´t give it utterly positive agreement because sometimes it seems obvious that involving in the creative process do offer much more fun than the very output for listeners.

Listen to it here

7.5

[Concert] A Silver Mt Zion Live at La Sala Rossa on 2005-06-16 (Archive.org)

A Silver Mt. Zion (and its various titles), a band from Montrèal, is probably the best known act which is grown out or related somehow to Godspeed You! Black Emperor (formerly as Godspeed You Black Emperor!) and is the most involved band via its members (Efrim Menuck, Thierry Amar, Sophie Trudeau) as well. In fact, the aforementioned musicians have been influential collaborators not only on the post-rock scene but also related to alt-folk and indie circles in the North America during last 10 years at least. However, after GY!BE was going on hiatus, therefore the prime privilege was delegated over to ASMZ. If to compare differences between two bands, in the first place, it is the using of vocals, and the soundscape of ASMZ is inclined more to psych-oriented numbers, and indie music as well. For an argue, it seems a bit slower, having been involved in classical music-based arrangements (eminent cello and violin undercurrents), and via Menuck`s gratingly lamenting and sometimes euphorical vocal manner as well. All of those elements are to be heard in an excellent way on this live session also, recorded at La Sala Rossa in their hometown in 2005. Inbetween the songs you can be a witness for the interactivity between Menuck and audience and jocularities regarding "dudes", iPod and Coldplay, and birdfeeders as well. My cue toward indie music wasn`t arbitrary because of Menuck`s euphorical and lament manner (sometimes simultaneously) and the exploiting of chamber music devices and elements so you are getting to see more the link between ASMZ and Arcade Fire (moreover, they have more common through of recruiting the same musicians, and using the Constellation-related studio Hotel2Tango too).

Listen to it here

Blezna Árbole (Alg-a)

The soundtrack of my day comes from Asturia, Spain. Blezna is an experimental sound project, inspired by asturian forests and those trees. Behind it is Juanjo Palacios who took care of soundscapes recordings, virtual instruments, plugins, sample manipulations, composition, process, photography and graphic design. Indeed, it is not wrong to be named it as a kind of the-one-man-orchestra, because this does not consist only of vivid and intense snapshots among the trees, where you can predominantly hear the cracks of burning wood, and at a time the rustling of rain which will be overtaken by lighter and darker soundscapes which by this side will be developed into funeral neoclassical orchestrations and even martial-alike undertows. Such a kind of adduction of neutral-minded field recordings and epic classical music developments is not common at all. By its approach Palacios´ work does remind a bit of another spanish composer Bosques De Mi Mente. What else could I add that those brisk eight tracks constitute a sequent top-notch in the long array of the 2010 best releases.

Listen to it here

9.5