I fell sideways laughing

ONEIDA - HAPPY NEW YEAR

2006-10-05T16:46:00.000-04:00

The layered motorik drive of “Up With People” was a bit of a red herring. This seems like Oneida’s most overtly 60s psych-influenced album. With call-and-echo chants and vintage guitar treatments and solos and synths, they're clearly aiming for as trancelike a mood as heavy guitar rock can achieve. There’s no doubt that the guitars sound great as always. The vocals seem even more amateurish and weak than before. Sometimes this works for me, with a sense of murmurs wafting in through a hallucinatory haze (usually if I’m in, uh, a bit of a haze myself); other times, probably more often, I feel like it detracts from the atmosphere. The songwriting seems more basic than on The Wedding, which doesn't seem like an improvement if they're going to stick to short rock songs. Too often, the main vocal melody lines can just sound tossed off. Highlights (aside from “Up With People”: the electronic noise breakdown in “Pointing Fingers”, the intricate mandolin-or-equivalent in “Busy Bee”, the delicate and eerie “Reckoning” (where they have the sense to run the vocals through heavy FX) which ends before it answers its questions, the bass and sonics on “You Can Never Tell”. Low points: any track with a drum machine (just 2, thankfully). A keeper?: don’t know. I miss the twisted screaming hard rock of “Did I Die.”

2006-10-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

Buck Dharma's voice sometimes makes me think of a snake somehow: the leathery tone; the undulating vibrato; the dirty, creepy quality; the way it slithers at a low level before jumping out. Secret Treaties is such good organ-drenched boogie sleaze. I like how the "Career of Evil" riff is pretty much just one big chromatic turnaround.

The box is open

2006-09-16T11:37:00.000-04:00

I started a Pandora station here. I've generally been very pleased with what it throws out. I wish there was more classical music but you can't ask too much. The selection in other genres is generally impressive. I commented on ILM that it might be the only radio station that plays both AC/DC and Milton Babbitt. I still need to do a little fine-tuning sometimes (probably due to me having over-finicky tastes in old rock music) when it plays a wretched 90s Scorpions album track or something but I'm pretty happy with it now. I've been introduced to lots of great stuff, especially psych and kraut that I was otherwise too lazy to check out. I'd never heard of Clark-Hutchinson before but they're spectacular! Everything I look for in guitar solos.

I've started setting up a pop/rock station as well.

2006-09-16T11:34:00.000-04:00

Awesome Coltrane video.

RYOJI IKEDA - DATAPLEX

2006-07-24T21:59:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting to write about this because there's a lot to digest here and because I consider Ikeda the most important living artist. Also, every time I put on the album, I end up drifting, just wanting to listen to the album without having to focus on anything else.

Over a number of releases, Ryoji Ikeda has created works that investigate the fine sonic properties of pure electronic sound, always in a highly listenable and pleasing (to my ears, at least; "pleasing"!="pleasant") form.
Disc 1 of Matrix, for example, is an album-long drone piece based on combinations of sine tones that produce different pitches and patterns depending on where one stands in the room. Disc 2 is a perfectly flowing disc of rhythmic 'dance' music made up of sounds such as these, as well as clicks, hums and static.

This album begins with a solitary high tone. I waited attentively, expecting something to follow. After some silence we get the sound repeated with a pattern of pulses in an extremely high frequency range (one that I sometimes feel massages my skull in a bizarre but comforting way). (The register actually reminds me of the "teen buzz.") The relative quiet is shattered by shocks of static. Eventually drilling beats in a low register are added. The third track ("data.duplex") adds a massive low drone to the mix, with an almost claustrophobic tense quality. This tension is built relentlessly for some time, with rhythms slowly developing using these basic elements, crumbling then rebuilding. It is not until track 9 ("data.microhelix") that the 'dance' really begins but the wait is repaid. We get the most intricate beats Ikeda has constructed, stereo-panned clicks and sine tones, jarring yet flowing and rhythmically compelling, progressively more complex, some kind of surreal drum-and-bass. For me, this is the most appealing and successful part of the album. The album ends with a track that is designed to cause some CD players, including mine, to skip. Sometimes it becomes an infinite piece, sometimes it plays all the way through, sometimes certain passages turn into bizarre loops. The track manages to be musically interesting in every case and is a fitting close. The only other album of which I'm aware that does this is Theo Bleckmann's Origami, which also used the technique effectively, in the context of a song about memory, but in a totally different musical style.

Dataplex is another intriguing and successful recording of Ikeda's that shows evolution in his work. While it may not, in the end, be the masterpiece that Matrix was (it will take time to assess this), it is still an interesting and enjoyable release.

" To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder. " - Keith Moon

2006-07-17T22:19:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the Rockist Scientist for this wonderful link.

Like a dweeb,

2006-07-14T23:48:00.000-04:00

I only checked out Broken Social Scene when they named a song after a time signature. If Feist sings lead on everything, I'll need to check out more.

There better be a whole album of this stuff

2006-07-04T20:57:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the link, Mike.

Too bad they didn't try the intro

2006-06-28T19:25:00.000-04:00

This is hilarious: Sloan playing Rush's "Spirit of Radio".

Flip-flopping

2006-06-24T21:43:00.000-04:00

Huh, I've started to find myself going back to "Pink Steam" off Rather Ripped. It's a good epic in the style of some of the long tracks on Goo. Could even be compared to some Mogwai maybe. And the first few tracks are pretty good after all. . . That Branca-influenced break in "Turquoise Boy" is kind of cool . . . It begins again . . .

(And Sister's a little uneven in parts although "Schizophrenia" is still the best thing they've done. Ultimately it's probably true that the band's always been consistently inconsistent and people get more attached to one era or the other for reasons that have more to do with them than with the qualities of the music.)

ANTHONY BRAXTON/FRED FRITH - DUO

2006-06-22T21:52:00.000-04:00

I've been living with this disc for the past month, feeling its warmth, sharing its terrors, learning its secrets, looking forward to unlocking even more. It's a testament to what can result when two veteran master improvisers meet. Where some 'out' artists might think to begin with an aggressive 'statement' of loud or abrasive noise or perhaps an intimidating drone, this begins with an exchange of whispers between the two instruments. Frith plays some low tones and some soft high harmonics that complement Braxton's flutters and genuinely lyrical jazz-rooted lines that emerge before the one-minute mark is through. It takes nearly ten minutes for the pair to build into loud busy noise -- a statement in and of itself.

Once the noise emerges, however, it isn't relieved easily. The second track features heavily delay-treated helicopter-like sounds and other industrial-strength sonics from Frith while Braxton squeals frantically. In the third track, they fully develop and explore the possibilities of what they've introduced so far, with Frith adding some rock references. He does this in an innovative way. When he plays a heavy psychedelic noise-rock solo, he keeps his overall volume turned down so that he is in the background, subverting the genre's expectations. His volume only comes back up as he trails into feedback. The second time this happens, Braxton takes advantage of the space to bring the intensity level back down again, playing softer and slower. The last two tracks continue to work with the ideas that have been introduced.

Frith's range is dazzling as always. It's hard to guess what tuning he might be using. (Could be standard with some very bizarre fretting for all I know.) His playing encompasses Derek Bailey-style muted string and fret buzzes to chords of harmonics to rock-derived wailing to an array of electronic and prepared effects, all deployed with utmost control and never used in a gratuitous or flashy manner. It is simultaneously inspiring and disheartening listening for an electric guitar improviser.

Ultimately what makes the disc so satisfying is the way the musicians listen to, connect with, and complement one another while using surprising sounds and phrases.

Radio Harmolodic

2006-06-22T19:27:00.000-04:00

If it sounds too good to be true, well, it might not be after all: a radio station devoted exclusively to free funk

Almost as great: a radio station devoted to Gypsy swing.

Sonic Youth burnout

2006-06-22T11:52:00.000-04:00

After a week or two of listening to the online stream and a lukewarm to favourable initial review, I've just had no motivation to stream Rather Ripped all the way through - first, I'd get tired somewhere in the second half of the album; now, I listen to "Reena," which I still like, and then I'm done. I saw it on sale in the nearest store, scanned it just to double-check, and still couldn't get motivated to buy a hard copy. I tried scanning a copy of Sister to compare, wondering if maybe the band hadn't changed and it was just my ears. But, no, Sister still sounds like memorable tunes, funny words, extended dramatic song structures, and energetic beats under layers of washed-out distorted harmonics, thick dissonances, and freakout noise, with some intense Branca-esque passages. The new album, on the other hand, mostly sounds like limply sung skipping-rhyme tunes anyone could write, usually doubled note-for-note with a single-note guitar line, with jangly guitar 'interplay' that never really generates all that much intensity and that lacks much of the harmonic innovation of the earlier material. They may or may not be still using alternate tunings but it sure sounds like most of this could be easily arranged in standard tuning (not the case with "Schizophrenia"). Not that rock bands necessarily need to be hugely innovative harmonically all the time but the songs just don't feel that interesting to me, melodically, lyrically, or in terms of the performances, given the alternatives. By downplaying the sounds that made them unique, Sonic Youth have put themselves into a 'straight' indie rock realm where they seem comparatively weak. Bands I would have considered vastly inferior five years ago - Sleater-Kinney, Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo, and, frankly, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy too - all seem to have tighter songs, stronger singers, and sometimes even more exciting guitar parts. I said on ILM that Oneida's "Up With People" and Mogwai's "Glasgow Mega-Snake" (both of whom could be considered post-SY bands) are far more interesting than anything on Rather Ripped. And they are. The Oneida track does the most interesting things with guitars that I've heard from any rock band this year. And I won't even be cold enough to compare Sonic Youth with guitarists in other areas who are doing truly innovative things with the instrument these days -- Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Oren Ambarchi, Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, Sten Hosfalt, Keith Rowe, Fiuczynski -- but I'll just say that there was a time when Sonic Youth could be mentioned in this company.

Stylus compares the new album to Badfinger, Thin Lizzy, and Big Star, suggesting that it should be received as a classic rock album, but even these comparisons point up the album's shortcomings. Thin Lizzy wrote strong, multi-part Celtic-tinged melodies that built and released tension with genuinely soulful singing and inventive, memorable proficient dual guitar lines. There's no riff or chorus half as infectious or affecting as "Whiskey In the Jar" on this album. Big Star's "Thirteen" tells a heartrending story with three clear images, also with a series of hooks that structure anticipations, leading you to the next hook, and help bring out the sequence of lyrical images. This sort of songcraft has never been Sonic Youth's primary stock-in-trade (with "Wish Fulfillment" providing one obvious exception) -- you see, at one time, they didn't need it so much when they built tension and release by amplifying and heightening dissonance and layering noise with some frantic Keith Moon-ish drum stampedes -- but its absence seems more important now that they've made a relatively straight rock album.

Listening to classic rock radio at the gym,

2006-06-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

changing from the local station to the Toronto one, I was treated to two different versions of "Summertime Blues," The Who's and Blue Cheer's. Maybe if I stuck around to work my abs some more, I would have heard some more of the many versions. I can only hope. I like how the Blue Cheer depraves the original into a chaotic noise orgy. (Yes, I did just use "deprave" as a verb.) Too bad they leave out the congressman's quote, although replacing it with a one-line drum solo is pretty funny.

I love the feedback in Nazareth's cover of Joni Mitchell's "This Flight Tonight." As the track opens with the "Barracuda"-ish riff, the feedback begins to rise, letting you know the track is taking off. After the first chorus, the feedback is controlled enough that they actually play a melody with it. I suppose it's based on just playing the notes with enough distortion that they feed but it's controlled really well. There was something ingenious about deciding to play the tune with crunching power chords and rasping Robert Plant-y vocals. I like Joni a tonne but it came out so much more urgent and lusty and yearning that way.

GIG: GARY BURTON QUARTET REVISITED @ ASBURY HALL, THE CHURCH, BUFFALO, 17 JUNE 2006

2006-06-21T09:38:00.000-04:00

Ani, I hate to say this because I'm really thankful that you've fixed up this old church so that interesting shows can take place in this dead-end town. You've even given Hallwalls a home so we regularly get NY free jazz and improv gigs that don't even come to Toronto! Thank you. But, um, look, the really big hall in the church (The Church, as you've come to call it), . . . it would probably be great for a pipe organ. But, you see, the music of a virtuoso jazz group has a lot of fine detail that gets lost in hangar-level reverb. There must be something you could do with the walls and ceiling. I'd even be willing to help out with some of the work, I swear, if it would mean I could clearly hear everything Pat Metheny plays after I pay $37.50 to see him.

That said, thanks again for making it possible for this show to happen. Despite the sound, it was obvious that these guys just listen and connect with each other like they're telepathic. I don't think I've ever seen anyone really work the vibes into a convincing lead instrument like Burton. He's a really charming frontman as well. They played great stuff by Chick Corea, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, and their own pieces. I was straining to hear all of it but when Metheny took one of his devastating guitar-synth solos, I literally had my jaw drop and my breathing speed up. Such energy and such command of the whole instrument, with a timbre like distorted horns, and a bit of noise thrown in for good measure. And then they'd seamlessly click into a ballad. A great band.

But, please, do think about it.

Once again,

2006-06-16T19:46:00.000-04:00

Barry gets to see all the good shows. The rest of us can comfort ourselves with this.

YO LA TENGO - "BEANBAG CHAIR"

2006-06-16T19:36:00.000-04:00

Download here.

It's a breezy shuffle with lightly thumped piano, nice-touch horns, and vocals that massage like bossa nova. (Hilarious upcoming album title: I Am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.) The melody is flawlessly crafted. There's a surprising (possibly less surprising to people who have listened to more of this band than I have, not a difficult task) touch when a dissonant flush of distortion breaks up the track around 1:39, with drums less comfortable than before. To be catty, it seems to achieve what The Strokes' Is This It (and, frankly, Lou Reed's solo career) should have.

LA MONTE YOUNG - THE WELL-TUNED PIANO

2006-06-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

Sometimes anything else feels like a compromise.

Various musings

2006-06-14T20:39:00.000-04:00

I saw "Hey There Delillah" today and hated it. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking before.

--

I was willing to believe that "Dry Your Eyes" might have just been a flukey bad one but The Streets continue to make me feel like someone is playing a practical joke on me. The singsongy chorus of their current single is:

When you're a famous boy
It gets really easy to get girls
It's all so easy you get a bit spoilt
So when you try to pull a girl
Who is also famous too
It feels just like when you wasn't famous

What's supposed to be good about this stuff? Is it supposed to be ironically droll and witty? Admittedly I haven't tried very hard. Probably it'll be something that I'll get a couple years from now. Quoting lyrics is probably not playing fair since I barely know the words to lots of tunes I love, and loads have shit lyrics anyway, but they seem front-and-centre with this stuff + I don't find the tune or accompaniment all that engaging in and of themselves otherwise.

--

Attending a couple nights of the June In Buffalo festival last week, I was forced again to question how much I really like (modern) classical music as a genre, a question I wrestle with a great deal (and which, some might argue, is possibly something I should have worked out some time before beginning a Ph.D in the field). The stuff I like I really like: Augusta Read Thomas' "Bubble: Rainbow - (spirit level)" set up some delightful tension between uncomfortably meditative drones and bursts of atonal activity; Stefano Scodanibbio's solo guitar piece "Dos Abismos" had some dazzling rippling right hand harmonics with left hand pizzicato that almost seem to take guitar playing apart and reassemble it; David Felder's "Chashmal" was a beautiful meditation (hey, his description not my repetitiveness) using electronically treated surround-sound breath/vocal sounds and video images, etc. But too much of the time otherwise I just find it hard to truly connect with or even understand the music. Either it's making references to things/texts with which I'm unfamiliar or things start great and then go on for an extra half hour without my understanding why or I simply don't follow the shape of what's happening. And when I don't click with the music, it can just feel so sterile with its asses-in-seats concert formalities (has no one really noticed that Schoenberg goes better with a Pinot Noir or quality nut brown?) and anal-retentive timbres and usual lack of anything resembling even a momentary groove. I never feel this way at even local concerts of free improvisation or IDM/ambient electronic music or contemporary jazz. (I might hear stuff I consider a little weak or even bits I don't really understand but never entire pieces I just don't really get in this way). Maybe it's just that "modern classical" encompasses a wide range of hugely different and conflicting 'genres', only some of which I really understand? It might just be a generational thing: I don't experience this much when I'm watching pieces by other students or young composers.

--

I was listening to Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" repeatedly last night. . . Man, there's so much to that piece that one could spend ages unpacking. . . the twisted operatic-cabaret angle in all its glorious swoony Expressionist melodrama . . . the way there are these little hooks that repeat themselves, play themselves out, and then disappear . . . the way all the different lines flow and respond to each other like good improvisers who really listen . . .

GYORGY LIGETI (RIP) - "LONTANO"

2006-06-13T01:24:00.000-04:00

Flocks of black- and golden-coloured birds struggling for territory: rising, soaring, pecking, hovering, twittering, crying. No one wins.

Early Pink Floyd videos

2006-06-12T18:00:00.000-04:00

I'm still a relative newcomer and am perhaps overly impressed:

"See Emily Play" (Can you imagine these hijinks in the Dark Side era?)

"Jugband Blues" (Druggy horns bring the freakout.)

"Scarecrow" (". . . have taken their improbable psychedelic colours into the open air." English folk nursery rhyme with meandering organ. Roger Waters rolls around in the grass.)

"Flaming" ("Watching buttercups cup the light/Sleeping on a dandelion." An early and particularly stoned work by the Beta Band.)

"Paintbox" (Great ruffles on the drummer's shirt. And he actually sounds awake!)

"Careful With That Axe Eugene" (Didn't know they got this explosive. Roger Waters = Nicholas Isherwood.)

Note to spambots

2006-06-12T12:59:00.000-04:00

It's not as convincing if you leave slight variations on the same comment after every single post.

The music dance and sing/They make the children really ring

2006-06-11T14:15:00.000-04:00

Uber-campy teenaged musical theatre arrangement of Yes' "Roundabout".

Really . . . wow. Just . . . wow. The head nods must be the peak. It does bring home how close the original is to Lloyd Webber-land in the first place (and Yes is one of my all-time favourite bands). Looks like the kidz (har) are having fun with the klassix (assuming it wasn't forced on them by an over-zealous choreographer). A good time, seriously.

Lovely review

2006-06-05T09:12:00.000-04:00

jed's June 1 post.

My favourite songs that I saw on MTVU today in no particular order

2006-06-04T22:54:00.000-04:00

Lil' Jon - "Snap Yo Fingers" (frothing mania; shrill nagging keybs)
Lupe Fiasco - "Kick Push" (lush orchestral production; commanding soft-spoken flow)
Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy" (obviously great and I've been loving the album; "I can still remember when I lost my mind/There was something so pleasant about that day")
Plain White T's - "Hey There Delilla" (sad guitar pop; sometimes I like that kind of thing)
Islands - "Rough Gem" (slightly goofy wistful indie synthpop; sometimes I like that kind of thing; + they're from Montreal)
Da Back Wudz - "I Don't Like the Look of It" (Awesome! Hip-hop Wonka factory!)
Nightmare of You - "The Days Go By Oh So Slow" (as if these guys aren't British)
Angels & Airwaves - "The Adventure" (If I liked The Cure and New Order better, I'd probably deride this as an imitation. I don't; I think it's an improvement. 80s U2 guitars; now production.)

So now you know.

ONEIDA - "UP WITH PEOPLE"

2006-06-04T22:37:00.000-04:00

Download here.

I think this may be the best track they've ever done, and that's saying a hell of a lot coming from me. They've combined the quasi-minimalist epics from disc 1 of Each One Teach One (where crunching start-stop heavy rock riffs were repeated to the point of trance) with the psychedelic drone-rock songs in much of the rest of their recent output in one track. And they somehow managed to make it all groove and dance. The heavily treated guitars play layered pulses which are sometimes strongly reminiscent of the repeated electronic pulses in techno such as Luke Vibert's work. They tease, breaking for the nagging vocal verses, then keep coming back, adding new layers. Simon Reynolds was fond of reminding us that the way techno works is in some ways similar to the way minimalism works. Having already found out the meeting point between the drone-rock jam route and the minimalist composition route, Oneida discovered this other crossroad, travelled, and came back richer.

SONIC YOUTH - RATHER RIPPED

2006-05-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

(streamed here)

Consonant vs dissonant jangle and weave propelled by postpunk anti-groove; some noise. Basic tunes subservient to breath and rasp. Psychedelic, at least with Windows Media Player automatic mind-melt videos; other forms of mind-melt may work too. Obvious - from the same recipe as the last two albums, just diced into shorter chunks (seasoned with some hooks and changes even more finely aged) but who else will make it? Save for dumbass bar-band rocker "Sleepin' Around" and some singsong fatigue (tracks 9-11 -> "What would happen if they spent as much time on the vocal lines as on the guitars?": listeners worldwide), tight. "Do You Believe In Rapture?" = "Heroin" in harmonics, with drums in time. Other searches: "Rats," "Jams Run Free".

2006-05-25T11:23:00.000-04:00

"Oh, what a bitter thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes." - William Shakespeare

GIG: FRED FRITH @ THE STONE, NEW YORK CITY, 21 MAY 2006, FIRST SET

2006-05-24T17:26:00.000-04:00

Electric guitar improvisation has been a staple of Frith's repertoire throughout his lengthy and prolific career. He's done a great deal to expand the range of the electric guitar, using many preparations and processing to derive new sounds from the instrument. His compositions for electric guitar quartet have been some of the most impressive and satisfying music I've heard.

For this gig, Frith sat alone at the front of the room, deriving an orchestral range of timbres from an electric guitar, an array of FX (Loop Station, Line6 delay unit, tremolo, volume wah if I noticed and remember correctly) and a table full of tools (chopsticks, drumsticks, violin bow, foam, various metal, wood, and plastic implements).

This gig was of interest to me in no small part because I have sometimes worked and performed with a comparable setup (if not in terms of the specific FX and preparations used). Much of the time I found myself trying to figure out exactly what Frith was doing technically to produce his sounds and was often impressed and humbled that I was unable to do so. At times, this curiosity seemed to get in the way of immersing myself in the sonic bath and I had to close my eyes and just listen. Another humbling aspect of the performance was the realization that certain techniques I'd imagined to be at least somewhat original to me (e.g. weaving a number of long thin tools through the strings at different points and then bowing or tapping one to set up a string of chain reactions) are basic tools of Frith's vocabulary, not to mention just the sheer facility and fluidity with which he combined all these sounds into a seamless hour-long piece on the spot.

Rhythm was central to the organization of the piece. Shared or related beats or pulses served to connect sections that were based on very different sonic material. Frith often developed rhythms by electronically looping and then adding to or building on simple motives, sometimes melodic, sometimes developed from more percussive extended techniques on the guitar. In this regard, parts of the piece actually reminded me a little of some of the material on Philip Jeck's 7. On that disc, Jeck had built pieces from looping heavily treated snippets of sound from old vinyl records, developing strong (if sometimes simple) rhythmic pulses from the pops and stops inherent to the process (e.g. from skips or scratches on the records or just from the process of stopping and changing the records itself). In Frith's performance, the rhythmic pulse would often become an underlying bed for other material, which ranged from intense noise-based improvisation to delicate microtonal melodies played in harmonics.

The dense and intricate layering Frith was able to achieve with this setup was truly dazzling. He displayed a fine control over dynamics and strong sense of drama and narrative, taking his time to build up to moments of ecstatic overload.

I'll admit there were points where I felt slightly fatigued. I'd like to attribute this to exhaustion from the intensity of the piece but it might also just be a sign that parts of the piece were less totally engrossing for me. Still, every section was at the least interesting and almost always enjoyable and well-integrated into an ultimately satisfying performance.

Shakti video

2006-05-17T19:10:00.000-04:00

This is too good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFOwGfpoZhA&search=john%20mclaughlin

Anyone have any info about this gig?

The man had balls

2006-05-17T18:31:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg_9vSWKx3I&search=genesis%20%22supper%27s%20ready%22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEq8S-WjSdE&search=genesis%20%22musical%20box%22

BILL LASWELL/OTOMO YOSHIHIDE/YOSHIDA TATSUYA - EPISOME EP

2006-05-16T23:50:00.000-04:00

This opens with a 4/4 beat and distorted power chords that bleed feedback. For the remainder of "Fudge," we get something like a sustained exploration of climactic moments from archetypal rock songs, drowned in more noise than you remember, wailing pitch bends and frantic drums, with the bass shaping the piece with ear-catching riffs and busy walking lines, the cleanest sound of the group for the entire CD. The intense, stampeding feel is fairly consistent, through the fractured rhythmic shards of "Layout", the long howls of feedback over herky-jerk in "Substantiality", and the hard and fast but relatively straight rock beat trailing shadows of guitar noise in "Spin", with the pace only slowing for the last track "Hedge", where the noise cries out in loneliness, heavily treated with echo and given space to die out.

Laswell's bass tone is always processed with spacey effects on this disc but seems particularly heavily treated on the last two tracks where his sound almost reminds me of an analogue synth line and seems to keep pulling the group's sound out into cosmic blackness or perhaps the inner world of an 80s video game (just as good, right?)

Yoshihide, probably known best for his subtle and precise work with minimal electronic sounds, such as his sine tone sculptures, comes across as the least technically/traditionally virtuosic member of the trio in his role as guitarist. I worried initially that this might be a drawback, perhaps even a fatal one for this disc. That worry, however, only revealed my own prog-damaged dorkosity since ultimately his crude but ferocious noise comes across as the most expressive line in the pieces, suggesting that it might not be so crude after all.

Tatsuya might actually be holding back a little bit compared to what he does with Ruins (I probably don't know enough Ruins to really judge this) but he provides shape, energy, and intensity to each track, with a full, hard-hitting sound.