Council Meeting Memo #096 — Five for Friday
Ben Frost: Steelwound — 20th anniversary edition (Room40, Album)
There are quivering, wavering tones that are almost medieval in affect; there are gentle, glassy waves lapping on the shore at your feet; the opening bleeds into its successor, persists, is subsumed in a humming murmuring that may be felt in the listener’s jaw, like a yearning; You, Me and the End of Everything asserts itself with distorted, slowly struck guitar notes that become louder and increasingly emphatic, enjoined by a woman’s voice and thickened by bass; the weather is grey, one is able to see one’s breath in the cold air; you may be standing on battlements, Brutalist or otherwise; footsteps, ambience, perhaps of vehicular traffic or subway trains; more roiling, more thrumming, more sounding(s); the disposition is of turmoil, regret; the six undivided pieces cohere into a dark and magisterial whole. CB 🇵🇸
Wolfgang Voigt: Rückverzauberung Im Tunnel (Astral Industries, Album)
A continuation of his long-running Rückverzauberung project. All round techno ledge and Kompakt records boss man Wolfgang Voigt further refines his definition of music on everyone’s favourite ambient label. If previous excursions triggered feelings of upwardly motion, then this time he’s taken all and sundry and flung it off a cliff. A 50-minute free-fall that descends into delay / inversion / fracture. It’s not how you land that matters. It’s how you fall. SA 🇵🇸
Shinichi Atobe: Discipline (DDS, Album)
Good story behind this….his debut was released back in 2001 on the legendary Chain Reaction label. Then he promptly vamoosed for a nearly 13 years before Manchester’s Demdike Stare tracked him down and convinced him to release more stuffs. To my shame, I hadn’t bothered to consume any of his recent efforts. My loss really because this latest release is hitting the spot. Dreamlike, shimmering, sexy… all the best attributes that should fill the axis of dub techno and deep house. SA 🇵🇸
Rod Modell: Northern Michigan Snowstorms (13, Album)
The esteemed Detroit producer better known for expansive dub techno delivers a sublime piece of icy ambience. Layered under the soft wash of noise are orchestral codas that evoke lament and loss. I’ve not much more to add except that I’ve had this on for quite a while now. And the more I listen, the less I have to say. SA 🇵🇸
Arvin Dola: O Ghost (Dragon’s Eye Recordings / Espacio Vacío, Album)
I’m not allowed to read anything for a week. Don’t ask. It’s quite the trial. This is the first day of the regime. The consequence: no research and therefore no context for me or for you, dear reader. The artist is unfamiliar to me, perhaps to you too.
I can’t help but read the titles though, some of which prompt thoughts of faith, religion, doubt. The first of the eight tracks, Geology of Absence, is heavy, august even, with strings and processing. The Drift is a little lighter in tone, but not in affect. Partway through there are bursts of crackling suggestive of fireworks, perhaps gunfire.
The sound is orchestral, whether synthetic or real is unimportant. The mood is sombre throughout, bordering at times on elegiac. Other sounds comprise the aforementioned treatments, electronics, overdriven distortion; also sylvan nature, large, reverberating spaces, birdsong, gated choruses. It’s rather beautiful. I think of John Foxx’s ‘Cathedral Oceans’, Evgueni Galperine’s ‘Theory of Becoming’. CB 🇵🇸
