Neil Milton - Elements

[modern classical, ambient]

Recommended if you like: aching beautiful modern composition; elegant piano work; An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death by Eluvium

Neil Milton - elements (2mf012dd) by beneathusthewaves

Download "Air (or, The Dragonfly)”

Neil Milton is relaunching his label, Too Many Fireworks, with a personal EP dubbed Elements - devoting a track to each of the four elements and its finale to “Aether”- and talk about making a comeback: fans of Eluvium and early A Silver Mt Zion material should take note, because this is minimalist modern classical at its finest.

A brisk eighteen minutes divided into five tracks is ideal: enough time for thematic development and listener engagement without becoming rote like so much “ambient” music can. I'm not entirely sure if music this lovely can really command attention; I'd say it politely requests it and you'd have to be inhuman to say “no”. In any case, it never becomes background music, as each of the tracks does bring an idea to the table, like the fluttery “Air” or the appropriately weighty, tectonic “Earth”. Hands down the best part of the release is its subtle adherence to theme: “Air” doesn't begin with sampled wooshing and “Water” is entirely devoid of prefab waterfall recordings. Instead, a track like “Fire” excites with its vibrant strings and “Aether” is minimal, spacey and gorgeous. You're forgiven for your preconceptions, though, because such a broad and general subject matter could be handled entirely tactlessly. Thankfully (mercifully) Milton handled the concept wisely and colours his compositions with the concept instead of forcing them to fit it.

The whole thing streams for free right there, a few inches up, so you have no excuse to not already be listening to it. For your listening convenience, you can also download an MP3 of the first track. And if you're the type to do so, please support both Neil and his revived label. At the very least check out the stream: this is truly sincere and majestic music.

Buy the EP

Too Many Fireworks
Neil Milton

chin up

Former Ghosts - Welcome to Old Love
[electronic, synthpop, post-punk]
Recommended if you like: sad 80's bands (New Order, The Smiths), sad 00's bands that sound like sad 80's bands (Cold Cave)



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I dare you to find an artist who is simultaneously as prolific while remaining as [relatively] unknown as Freddy Ruppert. This Song is a Mess But So Am I put out a ton of great, great music before he retired that moniker and started work on Former Ghosts, where he's finally beginning to get some of the attention he deserves.

TSIAMBSAI (oh, wow) was rightfully put to bed after it accomplished what it needed to, and its short but brilliant existence alluded to an incredibly heartfelt, sincere and disarmingly honest songwriter who, for a moment, seemed to have finished with music altogether. Luckily, he came back with Former Ghosts, which tackles much of the same musical territory but with perhaps a bit more reservedness, which is not meant to be a qualitative judgment in any sense. This Song was a deeply personal, cathartic outburst in the truest sense of the word: it was an outburst, it was violent, it was messy and noisy and tragic and equal parts full of energy and defeat.

Former Ghosts, by contrast, is more contemplative and refined, while retaining the personal intensity that Ruppert has become known for. And if the man has any other calling card, it's for working working working nonstop on whatever musical project he's invested in; I'd reckon Former Ghosts has more b-sides than album tracks. Welcome the Old Love culls together some outtakes from his forthcoming LP, New Love, again recorded with Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and Zola Jesus, aka Nika Roza Danilova (who has since become a bit of a household name since the first Former Ghosts album dropped, I hear). Accompanying the b-sides are remixes and covers curated by Ruppert, highlighted by (personally speaking) "Chin Up" as remixed by Friendzone. Also worth noting is the unreleased "Old Love Introduction" featuring Sam Mickens and a blink-182 cover. Oh yeah.

'I don't wanna leave the swamp tonight'

Sun Hotel - Coast
[Post-gospel/swamp (indie-)rock]
Recommended if you like: the idea of country-doom era Earth having a teenage son with Fleet Foxes (oh yeah, we doin' this)



Download.

Sleeper hit of the year? I'm going there. Completely out of left-field, Coast arrived in my inbox recently and completely floored me, it came and perfectly filled a little void in my musical life where there was a quiet (hidden) craving for something uplifting and fantastically full of life. (Not to knock any of the brooding downers I've received lately - my heart is still with you cats (or not with you, if that's the more appropriate, brooding downing answer).

Seriously, though, click that big, blue link above and listen to "Palms". Go on, I'll wait. I'll even give you enough time to listen to it twice, because you will listen to it twice. You're welcome for that new mixtape staple. An absolutely perfect blend of melody, harmony, and dynamics; the sweetest, swampiest, most concise faux-post-rock you've ever heard. And that's it, you're hooked.

Sun Hotel have a wonderful energy about them, a youthful sort of abandon, but instead of throwing it all to the wind and hoping something comes out of it, there's an undeniable focus and maturity to the songwriting. There's adolescent desperation and earnestness coupled with sublimely refined vocal harmonies. I don't mean to tout my own analogies here, but really: give Earth a pulse and give Fleet Foxes some grit and you've got a vague idea of what's going on. Calculated clean guitar play can and will, at any minute, shift into tweedy Americana dirges and so to does the warm crooning twist into shouts and chants. This is probably completely brilliant live, so see to it that you catch them if they're in your town. Punk rock energy without punk rock bullheadedness.

Coast is really just an entirely charming record. Down-to-earth lyrically, undeniably infectious musically, and, above all, cohesive despite all its disparate elements. An incredible spark captured on tape - a bright, bright flash of brilliance and life you should already be listening to if you've read this whole entry/have faith in me. Have faith in me.

voiceless & floating

Mickey Mickey Rourke - Inner Gazing
[Ambient, drone, noise]
Recommended if you like: Birchville Cat Motel (but you wish Campbell Kneale didn't want to kill you with music), chill-as-hell dreamgaze or something like that I don't know


Download.

Massive collaborative introspective blissed-out drone excursions, boring straight into yr daydreamin' skull. Incredibly warm, full-bodied, slow-breathing tunes that will either pass right through you or entrance you, but eventually will add up to a meaningful experience. Not to say Inner Gazing isn't immediately gratifying - it absolutely is - but it's something you'll want to [digitally] spin a few times to let it sink in and really discover what the collaborators bring to the table.

If you're going to be uncooperative and demand immediate satisfaction, then just listen to "Stay With Me" (feat. Universe) because this is probably one of my favourite jams of the year. Maybe not the best representation of the album as a whole because it's decidedly darker in tone than a lot of what else is going on here, but it's insanely menacing, sort of in a Grouper or Giles Corey kind of way; a subtler menace. The Foxes in Fiction joint is pretty sweet, too - called "Koopa" - so a song featuring an artist you probably already know as being super cool and with a title referencing Nintendo should get you to at least check this out. I know you kids like Nintendo.

Additionally, there's a fairly expansive collection of Mickey Mickey Rourke tunes online, either for free download/stream or a dirt-cheap download, so if you're digging all this spaced-out drifting (and I can't see how you're not), then definitely check it out.

The Fading Voice Of The Old Era Speaks To Us, But Where Are The Ears Left To Hear It?

...And The Earth Swarmed With Them - The Fading Voice Of The Old Era Speaks To Us, But Where Are The Ears Left To Hear It?
[Post-rock/experimental/shoegaze]



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Core members Mitchell Johns and Kat Stanbridge may not exactly be household names quite yet, but the fact that they've roped in Ted Parsons (Swans, Jesu, Godflesh) to play drums and Justin Broadrick to mix the thing certainly says something.

Admittedly, ...And The Earth Swarmed With Them sounds nothing like the help they've roped in (okay, aside from the Jesu-y intro) but instead go for the murkier, darker end of post-rock: no triumphant, cathartic crescendos, but instead brooding, slow-burning cascades, like the moody-as-hell opener "Everyone Will Fade" or the apocalyptic "The Slow Decay Had Already Begun". And not to underrate the rest of the EP - it's incredibly atmospheric and solid throughout - but it's the closing "Slow Decay..." that really elevates the album. It feels like the whole record was building to this moment, slowly introducing the tones and colours and voices for the first 15 minutes and then dragging it all together for the last 6. The incredibly smooth bass/violin interplay in the intro is cool enough, but the frankly earth-shattering full-band eruption - complete with wailing, chill-inducing female guest vocals - is astounding.

Really, the band is setting itself up for success: a free EP, with an all-star supporting cast and stellar artwork, all backed up with a unique sound and hints at even greater creativity. And don't doubt them because of the tags here: it's post-rock, but it's not formulaic; it's heavy shoegaze, but it's not Jesu-worship; and yeah, it's experimental, but it's far from pointless self-indulgence. Truly music from - or maybe causing - the end of the world.

I'm livin' in the doldrums, yeah

Goddamn, when did people start caring so much about Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti? Recently? Around then?

Seriously, though, all of a sudden this man's everywhere, and it's blowing my mind. "Round and Round" is tearing things up, and rightfully so. It's got the chorus of the summer, of course, but retains a bit of the trademark strangeness and is sort of wildly progressive for a pop song. I mean, seriously, how many ideas are crammed into these 5 minutes? The entirely misleading introduction? Or the misleading first minute with the red-herring chorus? The weird segue telephone call? The strangely sincere-sounding quiet section? Have you heard the real chorus? Yeah, he deserves this sudden attention, no doubt.



(ok, reader, stop here and skip the next four paragraphs unless you either a) like Ariel Pink a lot, or b) like reading a lot of my writing. You've been warned.)

Now, I promise not to turn this into one a "I was there first!" sort of hipster pissing contest (I was tossing around some portmanteau of "hipster" and "pissing" but it would have been more of a visual pun), so I say this as a fact and not as a boast or "holier than thou" proclamation, but I have been listening to Ariel Pink for years. It's been a slow, steady evolution to where he is now - the ultimate refinement of psychedelic weirdness with 70's radio staples and off-beat humour - but I'm partial, either because of nostalgia or legitimate preference, to his earlier albums. BUT OH LAWD, when isn't that the case with anyone and their favourite bands? Yeah, yeah, I know.

The Doldrums is one of those albums for me, one of the records that can instantly take me back to a very specific time. Namely, at the end of high school where I was cautiously allowing some vague semblance of "pop music" into my library, no longer preoccupied with being as extreme/abstract/br00tal/outsider as possible (though whether I accomplished any of those is debatable). In any case, I checked out Ariel Pink on a whim, picking up The Doldrums and being, er, very confused. Not by the lo-fi aspect, I had expected and accepted that, but just the music. It was thrilling, really: when was the last time you were legitimately interested enough in an album to listen to it repeatedly to try to understand it? I don't need/want to get into a "back in my day when we bought our records" thing, but y'know.

Point is, it was album I worked at liking. Which I don't mean to be as image-conscious as it sounds. I mean, I liked the album, sure. I liked the aesthetics. I liked the sound. I liked the ideas. I just couldn't really reconcile it all. I couldn't understand Ariel Pink. I couldn't understand this weirdo no-fi beatbox-pop. And there weren't any resources to help, either. Now it's pretty clear who he is. And hell, he has a band. He has the actual Haunted Graffiti. All I knew when I had The Doldrums in my walkman was: 1) Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti is really just Ariel Pink, jamming/beatboxing into a tape-recorder, and 2) Animal Collective liked him enough to put out his albums.

TOTALLY SIDETRACKED FOR A MINUTE: Have you read the new Chuck Klosterman book? It's pretty cool. There's a whole chapter on irony and Weezer, focusing on how Weezer confuses people by being entirely unironic and earnest about their lyrics, and etc jaded society etc. Point being, I love this idea with relation to Ariel Pink, because I think I fell into the same trap. Not knowing a single thing about this man, I really couldn't tell how seriously I should take it. I think I want him to be completely serious. I want to believe he beatboxed all the drums because he had to. I want to believe he is entirely serious when he tells us that "good kids make bad grown-ups" in his pouty, childish whines of "growin' up means getting a job/oh, I don't wanna grow uuuup!". I want to never know why he refers to both "Kate" and "Cathy" on "For Kate I Wait". I love this complete mix-up of irony or earnestness and mystery and I am completely overanalyzing an album Ariel Pink shat out years ago.

(SPEAKING OF IRONY AND ARIEL PINK: the 16-minute track "Pedestrian Pop Hits" makes me giggle.)

So here it is, folks, one of my all-time favourites, in it's murky no-fi glory. One of very few albums I both like every song on and know every song on, intimately so. Just download it already.



ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI - THE DOLDRUMS

I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day

"Excuse" is an ugly word; it has connotations of lie, like a reason that is a lie, at least partially. But "I've been busy" isn't a lie, per se, it's just such a bad reason that it feels excuse-esque. So there's my reason (however poor) for not keeping up with this, though I'm sure it must feel like an excuse to one Devin Hildebrand who emailed me a few weeks back about his sound-collage project Dth. Excuse me.

A lot of this new EP seems to stem from forlorn distress, from the slightly heartbreaking title I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day to the individual songs ("I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom) is a knee-jerk " :'( "), but musically it isn't quite so hyper-depressive, nor is it as explicitly annoying/boring as sound collage can be. After the clusterfuck and appropriately titled opener "[!]" the album unscrambles and is surprisingly delicate and deeply personal, culling samples not just from random found-sounds but "From our VHS labelled "X-mas '95 / Jodi". It's all set to understated ambient instrumentation, some synth drones and acoustic guitar mostly, it seems, but nothing to overpower the star(s) of the show here (though that being said, cut-up sample set to a live drum beat at the end of the title track is a definite highlight). The whole album is beautifully balanced, between collage and composition, between the vaguely hopeful and the utter despair, between cacophony and ambiance but, somehow, it always ends up an entirely compelling and a quietly disturbing experience.

The highlight here is probably the closer, "Humans are like Ripples", which is probably the simplest in terms of structure and use of samples, but is strangely hypnotic as a whole crowd of people is asked "how was your day?". It sort of epitomizes the forces at work on the album, as the answers range from humorous to somewhat worrisome (sometimes simultaneously) and the music fluctuates accordingly, apparently with some science behind it:
Notes on a set scale (0-20, including halves of numbers) droned accordingly to numbers spoken in spontaneous dialogue prompted by "how are you feeling today, 1-10?"

Basically, I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day is a wildly curious set of songs, which is meant entirely as a compliment. It's the sort of quiet headphone listening for one of those days. When you're not quite sure you want a pick-me-up or if you'd rather throw on Unknown Pleasures as a hold-me-down, then go ahead and try Dth. It'll kind of do both to you, and you'll like it, promise.



Click here to download/stream the whole thing.