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It's almost winter as I write this and I am pretty sure everything is about to fall apart. Perispirit is the duo of Ricardo Donoso and Luke Moldof and they have been haunting the Northeast for a couple of years now. After a slew of releases on Hospital & Ricardo's own Semata Productions, Spiritual Church Movement has Perispirit taking an unexpected turn as they unleash their most cohesive and accomplished work to date.
Spiritual Church Movement is the sound of two worlds colliding and forming something entirely new in the aftermath. In this case, digital and analog systems are turned against each other. Moldof's analog source material was blitzed and manipulated while Donoso worked his sorcery via digital matrix, showing that both approaches can win the prize. Squalid sonic debris spilled out and melted together with beats that are barely there and melodic shrapnel to create this weirdly compelling, utterly disjointed composition. This is dense music with layer-upon-layer of treatments and tones that could only be combined by two people who are as confident as they are diabolical.
If you thought Moldof and Donoso were concerned about expectations, Spiritual Church Movement is proof that that is the last thing on their minds. Synthesizers are mauled by digital processes, battered down to bare bones. The duo turns these passages of melody into disease-stricken robots, lurching into the black of night. Paired with fractured, plodding rhythms, at times this sounds like Autechre attempting to make a noise record. It is well and truly fucked.
The expertise with which everything is constructed, though, is what makes these pieces excel. Everything is where it should be and the combination is almost religious in its attention to detail. But before the duo gets too close to the sun, everything is burned to the ground and the process starts over. It's almost arrogant how often they fuck with your perception of what this record is, but that punk rock attitude is what helps take this to a different level. Just when you think you have it figured it out, Spiritual Church Movement is off to another disfigured frontier.
Over the course of these two sprawling sides, the cult of Perispirit is born. Ricardo Donoso and Luke Moldof are convinced that anything is possible and nothing is out of bounds. Spiritual Church Movement is their manifesto and at the end of it all, they are the fucking kings.
Mastered by James Plotkin and cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at D+M Berlin.
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Nova Scotian Arms has concocted a sprawling, sophisticated catalog of winding compositions and dizzying drones. Grant Evans, who is also 1/2 of Quiet Evenings and co-curator of the Hooker Vision label, is the brains behind the entire operation. Throughout numerous releases he has shown a consistent ability to keep listeners guessing as he explores endless sonic territories. With Cult Spectrum, Evans is drowning himself in a hazy aural sea.
Like much of his work, there is a very distinct mood on Cult Spectrum. This is funereal music that is stretched to its breaking point. Distant galaxies are buried underground in a delicate mix of sounds that are as cosmic as they are organic. This duality is at play straight-off with the masterful opener, "Gathering/Composition." Soaring in crystal skies on beds of hiss, each strained note from Evans' Rhodes piano that emerged from the murk is an anchor keeping the song and the mood gravity-stricken. It works to perfection, drawing in the listener immediately.
Tape loops and radio interference deliciously muddy the waters of Cult Spectrum. The 16+ minute burner, "Emulsion," combines all those and more into a cacophonous stew. Acoustic guitars circle around and die in the swirling synthetic drain. Each wave emerges in stages as Evans shows considerable compositional skill in the way the piece is put together. With "Overcast Strumming (1st Delay)" comes a melancholic, skyward glance. Electronic corridors take shape and find a simple beauty through tonal dichotomies. Blurred drones are puncuated by bursts of fuzz, working in tandem to find that sonic bliss.
If Cult Spectrum is Nova Scotian Arms' biggest stage and loudest statement then the message is coming through loud & clear. Grant Evans is a force to be reckoned with. This is the sound of dissonance sculpted and shaped into something far greater and leaves its mark long after the final, ghostly seconds of "Hearse Overdub (Decomposition)" fade away. Evans is digging a tunnel, heading straight for the sun
Mastered by Lawrence English and cut at D+M, pressed in Germany. Artwork by Grant Evans. Initial copies on caramel-colored vinyl.
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Over the past year-and-a-half, the duo of Dexter Brightman and Jair Espinoza have explored abstract electronics in increasingly new and interesting ways. Over the course of numerous tapes on labels such as Avant Archive, Neon Blossom, and others, the duo has combined the ideas of repetition and sound art and continually mutated them into something that is becoming increasingly difficult to pin down. With the recent “Tek No Muzik” 12” on Crazy Iris, mechanized acid was introduced in the mix. It is not techno music in any sense of the term, but is subversive electronic music aimed at overloading your aural receptors.
On this self-titled debut full-length, KPLR has been stripped down in more ways than one. Due to geographic barriers, Brightman is now on his own and if this record is an indication, he's operating at the peak of his powers. For this album, Brightman took inspiration from his daily environment. At his job he is subjected to continuous machine noises that, after hours of constant repetition, begin to morph into machine music. Repeated phrases, beats, and even harmonies start to find their way through the mire. This KPLR record takes those ideas and elevates them to something incredible.
These zonked-out digital acid malfunctions fit together like a puzzle. Each piece of debris manifests itself as part of a larger whole. It is music that is simultaneously cold and abrasive yet draws you, almost mechanically, so that you can't pull yourself away. With influences as far reaching as Merzbow and Ceephax, Brightman is searching for the one frequency to set everything else aflame.
KPLR is inquisitive and intuitive as it bounces rhythmically through the grid. It is hard to call this dance music as it's too discombobulated and fried. It is beautifully flawed and built on a web of endless, screeching circuits. Dexter Brightman is on his way to becoming part of the machine.
Mastered by Brad Rose and cut to vinyl at D+M Berlin. Original cover artwork by A. Bill Miller.
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digiv034: jürgen müller "science of the sea" LP $15 / $18 / $26
Jürgen Müller, b. 1948 in Hamburg, Germany.
Jürgen Müller was a self-taught amateur musician who, while studying oceanic science at the University of Kiel, purchased some electronic instruments and set up a mobile studio on his house boat, docked along the town of Heikendorf, on the North Sea. He held a life-long fascination with the ocean, the expansive and endless inner-space of the deep, where he felt many ecological miracles had yet to be discovered, and which kindled a love for the unknown. This love of all things nautical started early in his youth and eventually led him to study the oceanic sciences.
For one week in 1979 Jürgen took up with a film crew on a mission to document some sea-water toxicity testing that was being performed by a couple of notable biologists, only a few kilometers off the shore. This was to air as a special later to be viewed in universities. Jürgen went to take notes for a course, but soon found himself instead moved by the surroundings more in an artistically inspired sense than a scientific one. He found the mystery and romance of the great seas to be quite moving, and then decided rather abruptly that he would make music to capture this feeling.
Utilizing only a handful of barely-remembered childhood piano lessons, Jürgen set about creating his marine-influenced vignettes with some electronic instruments he had gathered through friends, as well as borrowing some new equipment from a local school’s music department. As a general music lover, earlier in the '70s he had taken note of several avant garde electronic composers who he felt simultaneously captured a purity of sound and sense of wonder that was lacking in other music. He dreamt of fusing this ideal with the synthetic recreations of nature. In a sense, one could say he stumbled onto an early “new age” aesthetic through pure ignorance and coincidence. Mixing relaxing ambient tones and spooky otherworldly sounds, he came up with a unique approach. After filling several reels of home recordings he held ambitions of becoming a film composer. He decided to start his own publishing company, Neue Wissenschaft, and hoped to compose albums in order to sell as production music to various film companies for use in documentaries and television programs. As he was simultaneously hard at work on his studies to finish school, he had to work on his music in short intervals, and often had to put it aside altogether. As a result, it took several years for him to actually realize his sole full-length recording, Science of the Sea, the sessions for which began in late 1981, before finishing a year later. Less than 100 copies were pressed, and few of them were even sent out to potential clients. Most copies were eventually given to friends and family.
Jürgen’s musical gamble never quite paid off as he had hoped, and without any outside interest or connections in the music world, he soon abandoned any dreams of a musical existence and instead chose to further his oceanographic career.
Remastered from the original tapes by Brad Rose with help from Norman Chambers. Cut to vinyl at D+M Berlin and pressed in Germany.
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Seattle's Emuul has been around the block a few times over the last few years, releasing an excellent string of tapes on Digitalis, Monorail Trespassing, Stunned and others. Emuul (Kyle Iman) has always shown a masterful level of restraint and subtlety, letting the listener fill in the blanks rather than laying it all out for you. Iman uses each song as a dot on a map that will ultimately lead you to the treasure. The Drawing of the Line is his most fully-realized work. He has crafted a set of deceptively complex songs that flirt with unexpected, slightly-buried pop influences to create an expertly-composed meditation on an unknown future.
Each track tells a small part of a larger story and Iman uses similar elements with each to tie everything together. On the opener, “Expectations,” Emuul is at its restrained and sanguine best. Using a series of repetitive, evocative notes over a bed of rising-and-falling oscillations, there is much promise ahead. The piece embraces the feeling of not knowing what is next but feeling in awe of the wonder it promises. “Love Theme” is even more tender and blossoms into near-catharsis, longing for that time when everything you hope for is finally in your hands.
Those feelings are tossed to the side inside the worried and frenetic walls of “The First Look.” As the synthesizer and guitar interplay moves faster and as Iman's wordless vocals descend upon the mix, it is as though the future is not everything it hinted it was. He brings it all home when he closes out the A-Side with the six-minute masterpiece, “Big Clouds.” This song is fucking raw. As with most of The Drawing of the Line, it was recorded to tape and sounds dense to the point of breaking. High-pitched synthesizer tones scream out as Iman comes to grips that even if things don't turn out as we planned, it will still be okay. The side-long “Plus One” is that acceptance realized. It is the ultimate pay-off for all that came before.
The Drawing of the Line is an devastating album that is the perfect introduction to Emuul's world of sound. Even if the future feels strange and confused right now, Iman is determined to find something beautiful in that uncertainty. That belief and apprehension is this sound.
Mastered by Brad Rose and cut at D+M, pressed in Germany.
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Chubby Wolf was the moniker used by the late Dani Baquet-Long of Celer for her subdued world of sound. With the help of Dani's husband and Celer's other half, Will Long, the final Chubby Wolf recordings are finally seeing the light of day and the world is a better place because of it. Turkey Decoy represents some of her most accessible work.
As the album opens with “Cantankerous Baby,” you immediately drift away on cybernetic clouds. Soothing as it may seem, this song is transportive. It's like endlessly floating though an unknown haze built around processed vocals and sample-ridden electric guitar. As you continue dreaming through the morose romanticism of pieces like “Short Dick” and “Prescient Inspiration,” there's an understated carnality that weaves its way into this music. “If There's An Elephant in the Room” pulls back the curtain and reveals a breathless aftermath punctuated by distant piano chords and sprawling drones. Each swell of Baquet-Long's voice makes you want to avert your eyes, unsure if this is something you're supposed to see.
Turkey Decoy evolves delicately. Each layer is an article of clothing, slowly removed until there's nothing left to hide. This is Dani Baquet-Long at her most visceral. Every quirk and imperfection is on display as if there wasn't any other way to exist. It's intense.
Closing out the album, “Scalloped Toes” and “Intrusively Coexisting” wrap things up with an elegant sweetness as everything comes full circle. The former is swimming in warm, relaxing tones that bleed into the barking and howling of Dani's beloved wolves that begin the last song on the album. “Intrusively Coexisting” is vaguely gloomy and leaves lingering questions about all that came before. It's the right way to end such a raw album because the only thing left to do is go back to the beginning and try to figure it out all over again.
Art by Dani Baquet-Long. Cut & mastered at D+M Berlin. Initial copies on clear vinyl.
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