Porcelain Opera RENE HELL

Rene Hell is the newest project from the uber talented and many faceted Jeff Witscher. he's released albums on Not Not Fun, Chronditic Sound, Agents of Chaos, Arbor, and this one on Type (among many others). his many psuedonyms include: Secret Abuse, Impregnable & Marble Sky among others, but Rene Hell is the most fully realized to my ears.

taking cues mostly from 70's kosmische musik he creates beautifully dense soundscapes of bleak and garbled electronics with washes of other-worldy synth trips. most would equate this with other modern day artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, Raglani, etc. while i would not argue with this at all i really find this LP bridges gaps between 70's kosmische, modern drone music, electronic psychedelia and even disjointed electronia at times. The B side starts off with spliced vocal samples that wouldn't be out of place on an Aphex Twin record and a steady pulse built from distorted synth stabs, but slowly fades into watery gurgles and slow moving synth tones. it's this very element of randomness that makes the LP so compelling. the constant movement through alternate universes of sound builds a dramatic tension and release that pulls you in. but it's NOT completely random and therein lies the beauty. his sense of momentum and order is what keeps the LP from being a kitschy homage to kosmische and proudly plants a foot in modern composition alongside the likes of Keith Fullerton Whitman, Geoff Mullen, Greg Davis and many others.

"Porcelain Opera" also has the distinction of being released by Type Records who have put out some of the best LP's of 2010 including Jon Mueller, Geoff Mullen, Arp, Heavy Winged, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Thomas Korner, Yellow Swans and more. those are some heavy hitters to keep company with and this record totally lives up to it.

and on a final note I'm uber-excited to have the opportunity to see Rene Hell live tonight here in Austin. It's a rare treat for some of these more experimental acts to make it all the way down here to Texas.

I highly recommend searching for the vinyl record (which is accompanied with a companion CD) however it's sold out at the label, you might be able to find it somewhere on the interwebs.

listen here.

I - FOOD PYRAMID

a year ago I made my first attempt at blogging and failed miserably. after spending the last couple hours looking at all my talented friends and their various blogs (which will be linked in later posts) i've decided i need to make another go at it.

first up: Food Pyramid. a new band from the Minneapolis area released their first cassette release entitled "I" last year on the excellent new label Moon Glyph. these guys make no claim toward commercial success in the least and put together a mind blowing meld of Emeralds style synth/space jams, krautrock jams worthy of Neu and other forefathers and even add some perfectly cheesy yet tasteful saxophone. each of the seven tracks take a single idea and flesh it out through subtle yet insistent shifts that create a wonderfully cohesive sound.

"The Sundance Kid" kicks off the tape with an 18 minute krautrock trance inducing mood stabilizer. the B side shows more variety but exemplifies how all their facets work together. From the funky synth backbeat and squawking sax of "Southside Blacktop Beat" to the tone zone synths of "Lesbian Seagull" to the shorter expansion on their krautrock "Das Tier? Die Autobahn? Die Brunnen?" and then finishes up on a perfect note with "Speedboat Exit Miami Sunset" which brings together the lite funky beats with gooey shifting synths and some smooth yet tasteful saxophone on top.

i've been totally enthralled by this tape over the last few months. this is the first in a trilogy of tapes they are releasing on Moon Glyph. their second tape "II" was just released. i just ordered a copy of it for myself and I propose you do the same. each tape is in an edition of 150 copies and will be gone shortly.

listen to Food Pyramid "I" here, then go to Moon Glyph and buy physical copies of both "I" and "II" on cassette to support!

dear jacques

[image: astrology weekly, no apologies]

if you live anywhere near america's most chiseled metropolis, chances are good you've heard about the asian carp heading up ole miss.  what they want is their share of lake michigan- leviathans on the brink of the multi-million dollar water sport hinterland.  a fully accredited limnologist specializing in aquatic carrying capacity, i propose sending the inimitable padre of the aqualung, jacques-yves cousteau into the river.  to the fishes- distribute some knit caps commemorating his eponymous centennial and throw in some vouchers for the new orleans aquarium, too.  if i had had the opportunity to wipe beignet dust from his chin, i'd read him his astrological chart and suggest jumping the bill.

let me take you dancing BRYAN ADAMS

original  

12" mix

an opportunity free of nostalgia unless you're a vancouver cognoscenti or happened to hang out quite a bit on georgia street at night in the late 70's.  what may sound like a slight variation in tape speed is in fact a slight variation in tape speed, or ~48 cents.  with the assistance of the song's co-writer jim vallance's website and an exhausted pitch bender, i was able to pitch down the 12" remix (done by john luongo) into an approximate original.  luongo said he needed the tune a bit faster, so he sped the track up by almost a half-step, which in the just-intoned scales of western music is either 112 or 71 cents.  in the case of let me take you, it sounds like, mainly at the chorus (featuring three women back-up singers), that luongo has, to great ends, supplanted the 18 year old adams with the younger, leaner freshman adams that like a 17 year locust emerges and disseminates aural jury duty and serotonin upon the unwitting.  this is good, though because not only did luongo add some sensational hand-claps for the old neurotransmitters, he improved the high frequency dB output by increasing his tape speed to ~15.5 ips.  a quick A:B'ing of these two will confer high bias protection against this season's m2aug1strain.



supplemental materials:

interested in fitting into the above-pictured jeans?  it's the bryan adams diet, or how bryan adams wages beneficence on vacillating hydrocloric events:

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to be certain, tripe.  if we assume like cures like, tripe.  there is no reason to be dyspeptic in this day and age.  tripe accommodates nearly every ayurvedic disposition, that is assuming pitta is the new vata.

pop d'epoque MICHEL COLOMBIER

a far cry from the deneuvue in repulsion (insert italian loanword) and a far cry from the man called fusion-sama in japan.  whatever the case, add a little serge gainsbourg -the jacques cousteau of smoking gauloises and puffy eye balls- and como sa va: que tes reves soient doux- manon 70 (no relation to boccaccio 70, though).  what little i can say for sure about michel colmbier's instrumentals in this film is that they are a lot like what i have, for many years, imagined it would be like to scuba dive with wealthy hermaphrodites in red knit caps.  regardless of my biotic escapades covered by a sentient per diem, this movie plays like one long scopitone video where rare animals of the sea are transfixed by that organ tone.  i want to go to there.  did the engineer leave the master tape in the back window of his citroen as he fled the algerian desert while serge gently blew smoke on the machines playheads?  how does that tone happen!?