Terrageist

Fielded - Another Time

A new track by [Lindsay] Fielded found its way into my mailbox the other day and hot damn does it not tickle the little soft spot I have for slightly left-field female vocalists with minor reverb fetishes (Zola Jesus, Terror Bird, Pocahaunted, No Art, et al.) Really, the female voice, in the right context, can have this sort of spectral quality that you can't get from that other sex. You know, that sort of menacing gentleness that would otherwise be just plain ol' menacing? Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that Zola Jesus name drop is a good start: Fielded has the same sort of incredibly strong voice, only instead of love-lorn goth balladry its a bit less bleak, albeit with the same super warm, full synth lines. Ya dig? "Another Time" also locks into a faux-tribal tom groove and builds and builds on that with palm-muted guitar chugging (but not that nu-death sort of heavy chug chug chug) and more spot-on keyboard augmentations. Lush, full, strangely catchy, check it out.

The new Fielded album, Terrageist, is out on Catholic Tapes, so give them a shout if you want it - cassette limited to 100.

Fielded on MySpace

You looked like a religious man

Yeah, "electronic side-project from a metal musician" is a tough sell - with no thanks to Dauði Baldrs or whatever the fuck it is that Mortiis does - but thankfully, what Inachus sets out to accomplish isn't just a sloppy attempt at "dark atmosphere" but instead is a group of songs and sketches of ideas from Oceanus's bassist, Rob Honey.

Really, there's nothing "metal" about Inachus, despite the fact that, apparently, some of these ideas could potentially be worked into Oceanus material. Rather, it's all in the downtempo/ambient vein, and respectfully ambient at that, with the 7 tracks clocking in at a breezy 22 minutes instead of relying on their sheer undeniable girth to become "atmospheric" because, really, what doesn't create an atmosphere when you're subjected to it for 12 minutes at a time? But I digress. Ahem.

The EP is incredibly coherent despite the album info making it sound like a bit of an odds & ends affair, with dreamy reversed synth work fluttering about and tying together tracks along with the smart use of samples giving the work a distinct feel. The album works best when this all comes together, like in the gorgeous opener "I Stared Into the Sun" or when "Memento Mori" finally brings all its elements together. The rest of the pieces are shorter and, appropriately, contain smaller ideas, but all work together fantastically. Hell, I think "flow" is the word of the day here, because this is really smooth as hell and I feel like I should stop there before it sounds like I'm talking about more about a crisp Stella on draught, but it really is sublime how the last three songs work together, and not unlike that Belgian slice of golden heaven, you barely realize each one passing until it's too late and you're half in the bag the album's over. The pulsing, distant piano of "As The River Grew" sneaks up and blossoms right before your eyes in "Three" before folding back and snaking away in [the oh so aptly named] "A Logical Conclusion".

Download the entire EP.

And, as always, if you dig it, buy yourself a copy. Limited CDr with bonus tracks. You know you love that kinda stuff.

www.myspace.com/inachusuk

Seeding the clouds

Right off the bat, Whitesand/Badlands are a band that I'm going to get along with [ideologically]. Their debut double-LP is limited to 250 copies at a cool $20 (post paid), which immediately sends a couple of messages: first and foremost, they care about music as an art, and two, obviously put out a product they have to be proud of, because pressing vinyl - especially independently - does not come cheap or easy. You can also download this at high quality in a pay-what-you-can set-up where that 'what-you-can' becomes discounted from the price of the vinyl, should you choose to buy the physical record after loving it digitally. Which you will.

Like I said, putting out vinyl independently shows both dedication and pride in a piece of music, and Seeding the Clouds is such a fantastic piece that certainly deserves proper release like that. It brilliantly straddles genres or outright draws-and-quarters them as it sees fit, taking an overarching, dense shoegaze aesthetic and drenching it in beautiful natural reverb, ably throwing in vaguely post-rock complexities and elsewhere taking a kitchen-sink approach, like the heavy, doomy break towards the end of "Whale Song".

What really makes this album special is its albumness, it's natural flow and unified feel as an album, which is becoming an increasingly rare art form. Moreover, its an incredibly nuanced set of songs; you remember how your first spin of Loveless went, don't you? It's very much like that: at first, it's a one-dimensional blur of a daydream but one that begins to open up if its given proper attention, when the ghostly male/female vocals begin to coalesce and the riffs really begin to emerge through the vast space of this record and begin to sort of make a bit of sense (but not too much, not enough sense to lose it's spectral appeal).

So if you're going to come looking for choruses and climaxes and things all-together obvious then yeah, look somewhere else. You're not one of the 250 people this album was made for. But if you're the sort of person who is going to put into an album as much thought as the artists did, then you'll be plenty satisfied when the end of "Witch Hunting" pokes its head through the smoke or when "Brandspeakeasy" lures you in with its almost-nonsensically murky opening and then pulls your farther than you thought it ever could.



Whitesand/Badlands - Brandspeakeasy

Download/buy the album here.

Minor vacationing

Hey folks, you know how summer is, don'tcha? I've been busy, and for the next week I am actually out of town, so if I promised to post your stuff, I apologize sincerely and will be putting it up ASAP. Really.

Lots of super neat updates comin' at ya. Check back on Thursday, and then maybe Tuesday. Then things should get back to my loosely established "normal".

Songs to sleep next to

I've written about Devin Hildebrand (Dth) before, being quite found of his unique collage work, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had more new material so soon. Songs To Sleep Next To moves away from the focus on found sounds and, through that shift, really exemplifies some fantastic songwriting, something all too rare under the umbrella of "ambient".

Opener "Pruny Hands Felt Health" might be my favourite Dth track yet, absolutely lush, organic, intimate but sounding huge beyond its scope. It is a song to sleep next to, not a song to sleep on or with or under; it's music to take you to sleep, not put you there. The whole album is downright lucid, entirely dreamlike and weightless but it never lets go entirely, never succumbs to useless "ambiance" or droning wanderlust or forgettable meandering and is always aware, always in control. The smart collage work isn't entirely lost either, with half-imagined nature sounds uniting the first two tracks and vocal samples popping up later in the album's somewhat more abrasive middle section (featuring a collaboration with noise/drone maestro Chris Rehm, who, likewise, is doing tons of cool things in the genre on the more caustic side of things (Salivary Stones is an absolute must-hear.)

If you're feeling lazy and need some loose comparisons slapped together to condense my opinion into a sound bite, then boo on your lazy readership, but I will reluctantly tell you that if you like Atlas Sound at its absolute most somnambulant or the Sparklehorse/Fennesz collaboration, then you'll find tons to like here. And if that doesn't help you at all, then just listen to it anyway: it's short, it's free, and worth your bandwidth.


Stream/download the whole thing here.

When we finally fall asleep

Digital media is awful and that is a fact. You can get your "FLAC" or your ".WAV" or whatever bitrate or rip you want but it's so far removed from experiencing an album that it makes me cringe. Yeah, yeah, Ye Observant Reader, I do post MP3s (or M4As if I'm being a bitch), and they certainly have their advantages, namely their convenience. But it's a reproduction, at the end of the day, a snapshot of a sculpture; an introduction, a starting point, not an entire experience in and of itself. This might be coming off as horrendously pretentious, and maybe it is, but there simply some albums that are incomplete statements without a physical package.

We All Inherit the Moon understands this. Hell, lead member Adam - and honcho behind Future Recordings - seems to swear by this. Every single item he puts out - every CD, LP, tape, book - is so lovingly assembled and fairly priced that it's a shame he doesn't run music as a whole. We All Inherit The Moon releases get the slightest bit of extra love, too, and the new lathe cut 8" is fantastic in presentation and execution. Crystal-clear square vinyl (careful with those corners, though) and a succinct 4/5 minutes of music per side, with possibly my favourite WAITM material yet. Languid, almost shoegazey atmosphere with post-rock spirit that really breaks through in the absolutely gorgeous final stretch of the song when the strings come in full bore (well, as "full bore" as this sort of thing gets). Seriously beautiful music, occupying a lovely little niche between ambient and post-rock, being a million times more dynamic than the former without breaking out in full-on crescendo like the latter. Really, the band's only getting better and better as time goes on. Stellar stellar stellar, in every sense of the word.



We All Inherit the Moon - When We Finally Fall Asleep

Your favourite artist is going to die this year.

Sorry, it's true, but musicians are apparently on God's hit list this year (Jay Reatard, Mark Linkous, Dio, Peter Steele, Devon Clifford (You Say Party! We Say Die!), Malcolm McLaren, etc.). Tuli Kupferberg, leader of the beat-poetry nutters The Fugs apparently passed away today. He was 88, so at least it wasn't exactly untimely or completely left-field, but it's still a huge loss. I'll admit I didn't explore The Fugs all that much until recently, but even in such a short time it's easy to appreciate the man's talents.

The Fugs - Boobs a Lot

And apparently the man upstairs has moved on to comic book visionaries, too. Harvey Pekar also kicked the bucket at 70. If you haven't read any of his stuff, please, do yourself a favour, get down to your local library/book store/friend-with-good-taste's-house and check it out. Equal parts sad, funny, and always brutally honest. Imagine if Bukowski did sequential art instead of poetry and you've got an idea. If nothing else, American Splendor is a fantastic meta-biopic that's absolutely worth your time.