Cave In: White Silence (Hydra Head)

Cave In: "Sing My Loves"

When Cave In returned from hiatus with its Planets of Old EP in 2009, it marked a true full-circle moment — from metalcore mastery to pop-rock faltering back to thrashing, effects-driven hardcore.  It was an exclamation that the quartet had plenty of heavy riffs left in the tank, but better than that, it seemed to be the band's best coalescence of its members' influences.

Now Cave In is back with White Silence, its first full-length since Perfect Pitch Black, the 2005 transition back to heaviness that featured trance-inducing grooves as well as acoustic balladry care of guitarist/singer Stephen Brodsky.

White Silence is nearly as much a melting pot as Planets of Old.  Though tracks such as "Serpeants" lean on bassist Caleb Scofield's searing screams and Old Man Gloom-esque riffs, and the final three tracks are built around Brodsky's singer/songwriter abilities, the members always complement each other in a way that keeps the band treading new ground.

The guitar effects of Brodsky and Adam McGrath are especially crucial, as a celestial or shrieking texture often pairs with the pure riffing.  They make as much of an impact on the tracks that Brodsky leads, making his first ("Heartbreaks, Earthquakes") sound like if John Lennon fronted a psych-sludge band.  This fusion may be best exemplified on the album's opus, the eight-minute "Sing My Loves," where all elements come together for a killer jam.

It's been a strange trip for Cave In, but White Silence finds the Boston band in a sort of "second prime."  Hopefully, it won't be another six years between long players.

Amon Tobin: ISAM (Ninja Tune)

Amon Tobin: "Lost and Found"

During his 15-year career, DJ and electronic artist Amon Tobin has transitioned from expert sampler and breakbeat artist to field-recording guru and sound designer.  ISAM, his first full-length album in four years, completes this move to synthesized and manipulated original samples, turning otherwise atonal sounds into instruments.

Tobin's last few albums have been as heavy on ambience and abstraction as on piecemeal beats, and ISAM is no different.  Melodies are interwoven into unsettling mixtures of timbre, which often come together to sound like one gigantic, mechanized alien insect wielding a lightsaber.  There are cuts of recognizable instruments, such as guitar or bells, but they're often just a layer in a greater sea of sound.

Interestingly, ISAM marks the first time that Tobin has recorded his own vocals for an album, and at times they're manipulated to sound like a woman or a young boy.  As one might imagine, they're rarely used in a traditional manner — except for the weird falsetto harmonies of "Kitty Cat," which might just foreshadow an Amon Tobin "pop" album.

Tobin's live plans for ISAM are just as unconventional as his style, as he's planning to tour with a "multidimensional / shape-shifting 3-D art installation" to complement his music.  The album also is being released as a limited-edition art book that includes images of the collaborative installation between Tobin and visual artist Tessa Farmer, whose miniature insect-versus-humanoid creations adorn the album.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Boris: Attention Please + Heavy Rocks (2011) (Sargent House)

Boris: "Hope" (Attention Please)

Boris: "Riot Sugar" (Heavy Rocks)

The prolific output and stylistic convergence of Boris has been difficult enough to track over the past 15 years, so fittingly, the Japanese post-metal trio has made things more confusing and released two brand-new albums at once — one of which shares the same name (and same art with a different color scheme) as a previous album but that has entirely new music.

Attention Please is the first of the two releases, and it highlights Boris' softer side, showcasing guitarist Wata's delicate vocals against an alt-rock, art-rock, and dance-infused backdrop.  Ambient, echoing soundscapes transition to moments of soft electronic/acoustic rumination ("You"), psychedelic solos ("Tokyo Wonder Land"), and classical guitar ("Aileron," which gets a long drone-sludge reprise on Heavy Rocks).  It's up and down but shows a potentially exciting new direction for the band.

The new Heavy Rocks, however, makes this worth the price of admission.  Sharing a name with the band's 2002 album, it highlights Boris' recent strength: mixing sludgy, down-tuned riffage with psych effects, punk beats, and soft vocal harmonies.  But it also combines plenty of the other elements that Boris has incorporated over the years, and these two albums are much more than a soft/heavy dichotomy.

(For the record, Boris actually has a third new album — titled, naturally, New Album.  It shares most of its songs with Attention Please and the 2011 version of Heavy Rocks but only has been released in Japan.)

Venetian Snares: Cubist Reggae EP (Planet Mu)

Venetian Snares: "The Identification Circles Levitate"

Tireless breakcore artist Venetian Snares (a.k.a. Aaron Funk) is a master at keeping listeners guessing, and his latest EP explores more new territory: reggae.

This, however, is reggae as only Funk could produce, as referenced by the album's title.  Guitar samples are chopped, warped, and mangled into oddly metered IDM.  Certain moments, unless you're listening closely for the samples, can sound devoid of Jamaican influence all together, resembling something more like the darker orchestral moments of My Downfall (Original Soundtrack).

Though the EP is brief — and contains a rather misleading first track with creepy spoken-word vocals — it's another notable release by one of electronic music's most adventurous explorers.

Honorable Mentions

Alpinist: Lichtlaern / Minus.Mensch (Southern Lord)

David Bazan: Strange Negotiations (Barsuk)

Dels: Gob (Big Dada)

Face Candy: Waste-Age Teenland (Rhymesayers)

Friendly Fires: Pala (XL)

Inevitable End: The Oculus (Relapse)

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine (Domino)

Efrim Manuel Menuck: High Gospel (Constellation)

Nicole Mitchell: Awakening (Delmark)

Thurston Moore: Demolished Thoughts (Matador)

Vieux Farka Touré: The Secret (Six Degrees)

Cut to ten months later and Bazan has just wrapped a full band tour in support of his now released LP.

This string of shows marks the first time since the disbanding of Bazan's former moniker Pedro the Lion and his short lived electronic project Headphones, that the performer has recruited a full cast of characters to play out his songs on stage with him.

The tour saw it's last performances in Portland and Bazan's hometown Seattle. Accompanying and opening for Bazan were fellow Washingtonians and Barsuk label mates Say Hi, and frontman Eric Elbogen warned the crowd at Portland's Mississippi Studios that David Bazan and his band of bearded men might be too much to handle. Sure enough, Elbogen himself along with Andy Fitts, Blake Wescott, and Casey Foubert (all bearded) joined Bazan (also bearded) on stage as he dove right into “Hard to Be,” the opener of Curse Your Branches.

Curse Your Branches is a very confrontational album, even for Bazan, a songwriter whose made a career of saying the hard stuff on record. Although this time, the confrontations are not as imaginative as they were before.

There is no fictional story teller or metaphorical evils. This is a side of Bazan that just barely surfaced in 2007's Fewer Moving Parts EP, when Bazan voiced real concerns held about the state of the media and the direction of the country.

This time, however, his voice is not one of a slighted nation, but of a devastated man. This is the album that will see Bazan turning away from the Christian roots he was raised on and fed with, turn away from the evangelical calls he's lived with and believed in before. And things get personal for Bazan throughout Curse Your Branches.

At the show in Portland, Bazan plays into his set three or four songs deep, then takes a moment to ask for questions. Almost immediately the topic of his faith is brought up. “Are you still a Christian?” someone asks. “No,” says Bazan. “Why not?” comes the question. “Because it turned out not to be true.”

The presumed faithful questioner says they will pray for Bazan. To which he responds with a note of “that sounds a bit condescending to me.” He then sums up his thoughts as, “Christians and atheists, we all have similar thoughts on many things, do unto others and so on. We're not that different.”

This simple and honest answer appears to settle the debate on it's own, as following questions regard his family, his son Nils David Bazan was born just months ago, and his music as in “If I grabbed an acoustic guitar, would you play 'Slow and Steady?'”

Throughout the set, in which Bazan is on bass guitar, the songs old and new come out with a force and scope that Bazan has not shown live for half a decade.

And while a definite cold has been stalking the singer for a month or so, his delivery loses none of the personable in this amped up expedition. Bazan still sounds as heartfelt and humble as ever, he's the same man in front of 300 as he is in front of 30.

–Charlie Swanson

"Just go on in," they offer. We accept. Approaching the porch, I see a sign on the door with two words: "David Bazan." Bazan, the former frontman of Pedro the Lion, has arrived here as part of an intimate nationwide tour.

As we sit on the couch, it occurs to me that there is no PA system. There is no bar, no doorman — we are at someone's home.

"I didn't want to use a PA," Bazan says of this tour. "There's something really rare about no electronics being included in the experience."

Immediately, the intimacy of sitting in a living room listening to music surrounds the whole crowd; for as packed as forty people can get in a room, it's very quiet. All eyes are on performers Peter Broderick and his sister, opening the show with beautifully harmonized songs featuring guitars, violin, and a mandolin.

The crowd applauds and the performers turn things over to Bazan, who has been hanging out in the kitchen watching with the rest of us.

Throughout the spring, Bazan will be appearing at homes from Washington to Brooklyn, usually playing to between 30 and 50 people. The deceptively simple plan arose after Bazan was asked by new label Barsuk not to tour for a while.

"I didn't want to use a PA," Bazan says of this nationwide house tour. "There's something really rare about no electronics being included in the experience."

"The label wanted me to lay low until the new album came out," he says. "But that left me with months without any way to make a living. I was batting around ideas with Bob (Bazan's manager). I thought, 'There's gotta be some way I can go out. I wouldn't even care if it was just all house shows.' We both kind of paused and said, 'Aah.' It's been unbelievable."

Averaging about 100 shows a year for the past ten years, Bazan is a consummate road musician. He has achieved success through rigorous work ethic and increasingly focused and heartbreaking songs.

Always intimate and engaging, Bazan really comes through in such an up-close and personal setting. This house show finds Bazan's humble and ingratiating attitudes in tune with his brilliantly delivered music.

As Bazan sets up his spot in the corner of the house, we move over to better center the man in our sights. The crowd sits on the hardwood floors at his feet, looking up from couches and chairs, completely in the moment.

In his trademark black tee and bearded frame, Bazan opens with "Priests and Paramedics," a classic track from 2002 full-length album Control. "Paramedics brave and strong…" he starts, and the crowd is hooked.

Throughout the set, Bazan treats the audience to old favorites between brand new, unreleased tracks from his upcoming album, Curse Your Branches. During the performance, he asks the audience if they have questions or comments about the show. Before long, it's a room of forty friends, all at ease and comfort, heralded by Bazan's performance.

His songs sound amazing coming out, helped in part by the room's perfect acoustics, in part by Bazan's emotional swells and resonating voice. The man can belt them out.

The real reward of the night, besides hearing what will be Bazan's new album before it comes out, scheduled for late summer, is simply being in the room and experiencing the songwriter's power so intimately. After more than a dozen performances attended, I still marvel at Bazan's heart, his openness, and most of all, his honesty.

- Charlie Swanson