Shining: Live Blackjazz album and DVD (Indie Recordings / Prosthetic Records)

Shining: "Fisheye"

With its 2010 album, Blackjazz, Norway’s Shining completed a transition from jazz experimentalism to classically informed prog-fusion to sinister electro-industrial metal. The transformation seems extreme, but when heard linearly, it feels surprisingly natural. Much of that transformational fluidity, in fact, is owed to the band’s hyperkinetic live show, where old and new tunes alike are delivered with equal parts precision and punishment.

A combined DVD and live album, Live Blackjazz documents Shining’s cathartic stage show in stunning quality while bordering on sensory overload. Live recordings generally aren’t recommended for first introductions — but, as you might have guessed, Shining isn’t your average band.

- Scott Morrow

Liberteer: Better to Die on Your Feet than Live on Your Knees (Relapse)

Liberteer: "Build No System"

As the new solo moniker of Santa Cruz grind veteran and multi-instrumentalist Matt Widener, Liberteer has delivered a maiden opus that might truly justify using the words “grindcore” and “opera” in the same breath. It’s an epic and unorthodox debut — one that plays essentially as one continuous song while marrying D-beat crust to horns, flutes, banjos, and marching snares.

As expected, the album contains plenty of bellowing, ultra-low B-tuned guitar and blast-beat bury. But from the very first banjo plucks and bugle-horn strains on the introductory track, it’s obvious that Widener’s over-the-top militarism is meant as a parody of patriotic fervor.

- Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

Jono El Grande: The Choko King (Rune Grammofon)

In late 2010, the eccentric Norwegian guitarist and avant-garde composer known as Jono El Grande (born Jon Andreas Håtun) released Phantom Stimulance, a collection of previously unreleased tunes from his archives and songs that he transformed beyond recognition, demanding to be heard.

This year, Jono reached even further into his stash to bring us The Choko King, another compilation of unheard music dating back to 1995 — four years before his debut as Jono El Grande. Though the album lacks a certain cohesiveness present in his other releases, the songs serve as rough sketches illustrating his strangely brilliant mind.

For the uninitiated, Jono’s avant-garde compositions may seem either absurd and inaccessible or merely a cacophony of random sounds. Tracks like “Türbø Meuz,” however, exemplify the amount of time and labor that goes into every quirky detail: in his “insanely nerdy details” about the album, Jono explains the song’s 12-year evolution from a 20-minute orchestral piece to the two-minute art-rock composition on The Choko King.

Though some of the early pieces are interesting to hear as bizarre ideas unfolding, “Türbø Meuz” and the other later ideas showcase the more fully realized, Frank Zappa-esque era of Mr. El Grande. Certain tracks may rub you the wrong way, but given that the majority are under one or two minutes, it doesn't take long for the album to cross back into mad genius.

- Meaghann Korbel

Honorable Mentions

Buxton: Nothing Here Seems Strange (New West)

Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Columbia)

Gotye: Making Mirrors (Universal)

Hospitality: s/t (Merge)

Imperial Teen: Feel the Sound (Merge)

Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Interscope)

Novalima: Karimba (ESL)

Zeena Parkins: Double Dupe Down (Tzadik)

Gregory Rogove: Piana, performed by John Medeski (Knitting Factory)

John Zorn: Mount Analogue (Tzadik)

Chris Connelly: "Wait for Amateur"

Chris Connelly, formerly a member of industrial bands Ministry and Revolting Cocks, is set to release his 15th solo album in November. Entitled Artificial Madness, the record is guitar-driven rock that wears its contrasting pop and post-punk influences proudly. A month before its scheduled release, Connelly took some time to run through each song, explaining lyrical content and narrative themes.

Track-by-Track Breakdown of Artificial Madness
by Chris Connelly

Here is a breakdown to the lyrics on Artificial Madness. I’ve never really done this before. It’s always been my intention to leave a lot of things ambivalent, giving the listener a few red herrings here and there. Perhaps I’ll leave some stuff buried in there…

1. "Artificial Madness"
The protagonist is not really a person — more of a collective consciousness built from panic and paranoia. The city and landscape are fabricated, and all the aggressors or distractions are metaphors. Here we have the crux of the album: the “artificial madness” brought on by the deity that is technology. It can be used to enslave parts of our minds, conscious or subconscious, and it can also serve as a control tactic and a mind-numbing drug. Why do we feel the need to talk and keep in touch with each other so much? Because we are panicking and fearing some sort of apocalypse? I recently read that the Taliban turned off all cell-phone communication at 8 PM in an urban area that they had control over. Control and fascism — always at work.

2. "Wait for Amateur"
The emperor’s new clothes. A satirical song about modern pop culture using modern theater (namely Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot). Can you tell if the play is being superbly or horribly acted? Are the actors playing us? Taking us for a ride? Is the director making fools of the actors? (Make a mark in the ground with a primitive tool.)

3. "Classically Wounded"
A high-speed chase on a wet night, and a violinist is ultimately impaled on his/her own violin bow. A cautionary tale.

4. "Cold Blood in Present Company"
War being waged via technology, misinformation, independent contractors (mercenaries), and the torture of innocents to glean information that will result in the deaths of thousands. Like I said earlier, fascism is very good at adapting to the times.

5. "Compatibility"
The song on the album I did not write. This song was the A-side of a single by the Edinburgh band Visitors. It was actually taken from a John Peel session. When I discovered Visitors in 1980, it was a very important revelation. They were my seniors by a few years, and I attended many of their gigs, eventually becoming friends and allies with them. My band, Fini Tribe, would often play gigs locally with them. It was they who taught us how to play gigs, it was guitarist Colin Craigie who taught me guitar, and it was through them that Fini Tribe learned about change, about moving forward always, never playing the same thing twice, and not being afraid to challenge your audience at every juncture. I am lucky enough to still be in touch with them, and will forever value their teachings.

6. "The Modern Swine"
An absurdist wordplay. Phrases cut up and thrown awkwardly together. A game of Scrabble with Eno.

7. "Imperfect Star"
No matter how bright the sun, it cannot expose everything.

8. "The Paraffin Hearts"
Strategic bombing of multiple inhabited targets at night. The bombs all have combustible “paraffin hearts.” Entire villages wiped out before they wake.

9. "The Subjects"
This person is able to open fire on a crowd and merely observe with casual interest the reaction and the consequences of his actions. Not people, just "subjects."

10. "The Goner"
The same asshole that stars in “The Subjects,” only this time it’s one on one. He’s a serial killer — an impotent one at that.

11. "A Career in Falsehood"
People lie. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the harder it becomes to lie, with more and more ways to prove people wrong, the better we are at doing it. People's minds can crawl around any lie and turn it quickly into a truth to suit them. I used to give most people the benefit of the doubt and be stupidly happy with that; now, I think that most people are lying to my face.

Rabbits: "Duck The Pigs"

Portland, Oregon-based sludge-rock trio Rabbits isn't big on accessibility. Its music — heavily distorted, brutally noisy — is polarizing, as the extensive catalog of reviews on the band's website reveals. Its name — generally stylized in all caps — is topped off with an inverted R on the cover of its newest record, Lower Forms. There's not much of a back story or many illuminating interviews, so a lot of people don't seem to "get" Rabbits. If you're in the camp that believes you don't really need to know the drummer's dog's name to enjoy its music, read on, and see what Rabbits and rats have in common.

Why Rat?
by Rabbits

Rabbits sings songs about science. Science, like philosophy (the two are difficult to disentangle and once were one in the same), is about explaining what goes on in the world. How do we explain Rabbits?  Tricky. We can tell you this: you would not even be reading about Rabbits right now were it not for cooperation that goes on in the Portland punk and metal scene. All for one and one for all. Why do you think Portland has such a long tradition of sick, heavy, scuzzy, musical weirdos? Cooperation. And science has a lot to say about cooperation.

Once upon a time, a man named Axelrod hosted a contest in a computer. You could send in a strategy to play a game called The Prisoners' Dilemma.  The game is this: Two prisoners arrested for the same crime must each decide whether or not to rat the other out…without knowing what the other will do.  The smartest thing to do is rat if you don't want to get totally fucked, so both should rat.  But it certainly would be a whole lot cooler if both kept their stupid mouths shut instead of both being good-for-nothing rats.

In the contest, each strategy played every other strategy over and over. The twist on the game was that a player could remember what others had done when they played together before and use that knowledge to (perhaps) make better decisions.  The computer kept score for the whole contest, and a strategy called "Tit-for-Tat," sent in by one Anatol Rapoport, won.  Tit-for-Tat is simple.  Start out by keeping your mouth shut.  Be nice.  Then do whatever the other did last time: If the other kept mum, then you keep mum; but if the other ratted, then you rat to put that dirty little rat in his place.  Punish!  Oh, decided to shut its mouth again?  Shut yours as well — we must forgive.  (But don't necessarily forget, remember?)

Tit-for-Tat doesn't always do the best with everyone.  A full-time rat will always beat nice Tit-for-Tat, and Tit-for-Tat is pretty simple, so it can screw up or be taken advantage of.  But overall, it works pretty well.  How well?  Good enough to win the contest, friend.  And guess what?  Years later, Axelrod had another contest (in another computer), and even though he told everyone that Tit-for-Tat won the first one…Tit-for-Tat won again!  How about that?

Computers.  Anyway, one P. Kropotkin, a Russian prince no less, noted that real rats take care of their young and sick, and are also smart enough not to fight while stealing shit.  One Sergio Pellis found that real rats mostly play fair, and when a rat doesn't play fair, that rat gets punished (as appropriate) by the other rats, but is (usually) eventually forgiven (as appropriate). Rats-for-rats' sake, so to speak.  One Jaak Panksepp thinks fair play may please rats, i.e. it seems to get them high.  In a fiction by one Victor Pelevin, a rat called One-Eye (so-called because he sees through his third eye) tells Hermit and Six-Toes that the other rats know of a pipe that leads deeper and deeper down into the earth and eventually to another universe.  That, of course, is make-believe.  When one John Calhoun created a universe for mice (who are a bit like rats) with unlimited food and water but limited space, the mice ate and fucked until they all became completely antisocial and eventually died.  Rats also carry diseases that kill people.

It ain't easy being a rat.  Still, when rat, you may on occasion wish to ask yourself, "Wherefore art thou, rat?"  Rat to help or rat to hurt?  Then again, sometimes a rat is just a rat.  And rabbits just rabbits.

Bloodiest: "Pastures"

In structure and sound, Chicago post-metal septet Bloodiest is a vast and diverse experience. All members keep a busy schedule with their other projects (past and current bands include Yakuza, Atombombpocketknife, 90 Day Men, and Follows), but they also bring something quite particular to the massive sound that is Bloodiest.  Their newest album, Descent, is a barrage of grinding bass textures, heavy percussion, sonorous piano chords, and hazy yet potent vocals. It's a bleak atmosphere, but with further inspection, it also offers a deep sense of vulnerability.

Not unlike the sprawling landscapes of their favorite films and the thunderous sounds of the oft-compared Swans, these arrangements are meant to be dramatic and wide in scope. When listening to the six movements on Descent, one may be reminded of a scene in Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Valhalla Rising. These are dire, heavy orchestrations for those who expect nothing less from their music.

During this discussion, guitarist Tony Lazzara shares some of the band’s non-musical influences and what it's like to work in a larger lineup.

How would you describe the sound and direction of Bloodiest?

At the core, we are a rock band, plain and simple. We are interested in creating an environment that is dynamic and dark, but beautiful and repulsive at times.

Discuss the dynamic of writing or performing in a larger ensemble. Is this new for most of you?

A few of us have worked in larger groups, but for the most part, Bloodiest operates as a small cast and crew making a film during the writing process. For example, when you work on a collaborative project, often times everyone shares tasks. At one point, you could be the director and the next minute you could be the camera man. By this I mean we all contribute to every aspect of the writing process in some way.

The key for us is that the people in the band have diverse skill sets. Once the overall theme is established, you have to decide who will best develop the details to reinforce the concepts. One of our strengths is that we have all been close friends for many years. This allows us insight into each other's strong suits and weaknesses. The important element is getting everyone to maintain the aesthetic decided upon. If you are working on a horror film, you can't have someone writing in a slapstick comedy routine.

You cite Swans and Neurosis and musical influences.  Are there non-musical influences that shape the band's song structures and sound?

We are all big fans of Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Dario Argento, to name a few. Long shots and sweeping landscapes in film are always inspiring for our musical ideas. I think that film has a way of making the viewer patient by building up small elements that lead you through the storyline. We really try to be mindful of our pacing and points of impact. The way a Dan Flavin light sculpture changes the room it's in by mostly using shadows and colored light to disorientate and lead the eye is something we try to achieve with sound.

I'm not saying that we are there yet, but it's a reference point. Creating an expansive sonic landscape is what we really want to do, and I like my landscapes to be unsettling.

What does the band prefer more, working in a studio/practice space or live?

This project is a live act, but we all have a lot of experience recording as well. As an engineer myself, being in the studio and on the stage is where I feel most comfortable. Our joke at the practice space is [that] it's not a band, it's a drinking game, which is also a good time. So they all are essential to the whole process.

What directions were not pursued with Descent that we might hear/see in the future?

For the next record, I really want to explore some more percussive instruments in the songs. Being a drummer by trade, I write my guitar lines with the drums in mind, so hopefully while we write, we can develop some more orchestrated drumming sections.

Horseback: "The Golden Horn"

Jenks Miller is the sole constant in avant-metal outfit Horseback. Miller’s output — occasionally under his own name, often as Horseback, and recently with the Americana group Mount Moriah — has been a steady trickle over the past three years, with each release offering a new glimpse of the artist’s capabilities. To consider Miller’s art only in terms of his 2010 breakout, The Invisible Mountain, is like considering an iceberg only in terms of its tip.

Such an assumption is also likely to leave you confused upon hearing The Gorgon Tongue, which compiles Impale Golden Horn (Miller’s 2007 debut as Horseback) and last year’s ultra-limited Forbidden Planet cassette. Each is radically different from the other and also from the lumbering kraut-metal/Americana hybrid upon which Horseback built its reputation.

But that reputation came after more than two years of output, slowly revealing the character of the project and the Chapel Hill musician behind it all. Horseback began as a method for Miller to focus his concentration, to help manage his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Impale Golden Horn — which Miller spent three years recording and reworking before its 2008 release — introduces Horseback as a patient, meticulous sculptor of sound. “Laughing Celestial Architect,” at 17 seconds past the 15-minute mark, is Impale’s second-longest track (behind the 17-minute opener, “Finale”). It’s a slow, smoldering rise, not unlike waking up as sunlight slowly fills the room. This mixture of ascendant dynamics, meditative repetition, and calming timbres is indicative of the collection. It's a bluff belying all of Miller’s work to follow. It makes the improvisatory follow-up seem almost ironically relaxed.

The collection of spare, solo, electric-guitar meanderings, billed as Approaching The Invisible Mountain and released under Miller’s given name, sounds as though it’s working through Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack, Earth’s lethargic Americana, and Loren Connors’ entrancing resonance.

Though Approaching indicates the melodic direction of The Invisible Mountain, its immediate followers found Miller exploring harsh electronics (Zen Automatica, Vol. 1: V) and monochromatic black metal with a heavy melodic undertow (the MILH IHVH 7”).  That exploratory instinct is pervasive in everything that Miller does. In interviews, he’s quick to offer in-depth analyses of his own work, with references to the sonic and philosophical explorers, like Keiji Haino and Aleister Crowley, that have informed his work.

He contributed an acoustic-guitar piece to the Jack Rose tribute compilation, Honest Strings. And in Mount Moriah — an ensemble informed by classic pop, Southern hymnal music, and country — Miller’s steady, resonant guitar leads offer a voice of reassurance behind the vocals of Heather McEntire (also of Bellafea).

And then there’s The Invisible Mountain, the sprawling, dramatic LP that grew a steady following over three separate releases (CD via Utech in 2009, vinyl via Aurora Borealis in 2010, and finally, wide release via Relapse later in 2010). It was a synthesis of Miller’s preceding catalog: the patient expansiveness of Impale, the spidery Italian-western riffs, and caustic vocal timbres. If anything, its vision was too singular for an artist so prone to explore so many directions.

Since The Invisible Mountain’s release, Miller has unleashed a flood of new material, mostly in limited quantities and all apart from his Invisible Mountain aesthetic. American Gothic finds Miller collaborating on vibrant, electronic drones with Nicholas Szczepanik; a split with Voltigeurs betrayed Miller’s prog fancies on keyboards (beneath a dense layer of blackened skuzz, naturally); and his latest, a seven-inch split with Locrian, finds Miller exploring his darkest monochrome, creating with sound the feeling of dirt piling on one’s chest.

Forbidden Planet is a standout of the recent batch of releases, though, and earns its titular reference to the 1956 sci-fi classic. A stark, desolate landscape scorched by inhuman shrieks and metallic, insectoid chatter, the cassette plays like the soundtrack to a doomed mission’s final moments — like Italo-horror staple Goblin gone to hell. It’s a jarring, uneasy listen, but it’s captivating in the same way that a garrote-taut horror movie is.

It’s a perfect foil to Impale Golden Horn, which presents a suddenly ominous tranquility before Forbidden Planet wages its terror. Miller’s knack for a slowly developing melody is consistent through both, though it’s employed to radically different ends.

Hearing the two together, as The Gorgon Tongue, is unnatural, but it works. The blissfulness of Impale counters the anxiety of Forbidden Planet the way that Forbidden Planet’s harsh sonic decay counters Impale’s respiring warmth. The Gorgon Tongue is, without a doubt, a Jekyll-and-Hyde combination, but Miller is clearly, audibly, the soul of both. It’s as much a unified statement of Miller’s artistic capabilities as The Invisible Mountain.

Man Man: Life Fantastic (Anti-)

Man Man: "Knuckle Down"

When we last left Man Man, the quirky and peerless pop five-piece was drawing high marks for Rabbit Habits, an album that better refined its oddball melodies and gruff balladry while retaining the range of sounds and styles that listeners love.

With stronger musical chops and a greater feel for melody and structure, the album helped to expand the band's critical reach.  Now Man Man has hit new heights with Life Fantastic, its fourth album and second for Anti-.

This new batch is the band's first recording to feature a professional producer, and it shows.  Though the compositions themselves are Man Man's best to date — punctuated by twisting melodies and off-the-wall lyrics — Life Fantastic gets a boost from string arrangements by Bright Eyes multi-instrumentalist Nate Walcott.  His resonant accompaniments and pizzicato plucks give the album a new element and infuse it with even more life.

On top of the accordion and tropical-horn additions to the lounge-tinted "Haute Tropique," there's also a heavy dose of squiggly synthesizers this time around to pair with the band's zany mixture of marimba, whammy guitar, piano, horns, and woodwinds.

Rabbit Habits was a huge step forward from its predecessor.  But Life Fantastic achieves equal progress, and it easily takes the mantle as Man Man's best album.

Spindrift: Classic Soundtracks Vol. 1 (Xemu)

Spindrift: "When I Was Free"

Mixing influences from Italian-western composers like Ennio Morricone with elements of psychedelic rock, Spindrift has pioneered its own brand of western music. Its style is manifested through a diversity of sounds, including guitar, organ, pedal steel, flute, autoharp, sitar, tabla, and bass, but its musical résumé is more than merely instruments.

The band's latest, Classic Soundtracks Vol. 1, is an album of unreleased movie themes and new material that captures its eclectic nature and cinematic tendencies.  From the trippy tones of "Theme from Confusion Range" to the otherworldly aura of "Space Vixens Theme," each track visits a new land or tells a new tale.  The twangy, reverberated, psych-effected guitars are a staple in nearly every sonic journey, but with the assorted accents — glockenspiel, Theremin, quasi-Cambodian backing vocals, and even howling wolves — you never feel like you've quite been there before.

- Text by Jenn Beening. Read the Spindrift Q&A here.

Liturgy: Aesthethica (Thrill Jockey)

Liturgy: "Returner"

Since its debut full-length in 2009, Brooklyn-based quartet Liturgy has helped to steer black metal into a bold new direction.

On Aesthethica, the group's sophomore effort, Liturgy comes armed once more with Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s mostly indecipherable howl and quasi-anthemic guitar lines blasted with co-pilot Bernard Gann, both positioned over Greg Fox’s machine-gun drumming and Tyler Dusenbury’s frenetic bass lines.

Odd-pattern tremolo picking gives “Tragic Laurel” a progressive feel that leaves the door open for the sucker punch of its main section, and “True Will” stacks layers of screams over a seesaw chord progression, interrupted only by a skipping-CD breakdown.  Between brief moments of ambience and hypnotic chanting, the music hits with full force, as with the out-of-left-field sludge of “Veins Of God” or the persistent “Returner.”

Aesthethica, however, also can be taxing due to its unconventionality, notably on tracks such as on the seven-minute, one-riff “Generation,” a song that plays with rhythmic dynamics.  But with its special emphasis on unorthodox instrument application (the static opening on “High Gold” or the waterfall effect of so many guitars on “Glory Bronze”), it gradually becomes apparent that Liturgy, despite its upside-down-cross artwork and full-metal sound, really stands closer to Sonic Youth or The Boredoms than to Black Breath.

- Text by Andrew Reilly. Read the full review here.

Other Lives: Tamer Animals (TBD)

Other Lives: "For 12"

After releasing one album under the name Kunek in 2006, Oklahoma quintet Other Lives changed names and presented a striking "debut" that landed somewhere between indie folk and chamber pop.  It was both melancholy and melodic, sparse and dense — and it was a portent of greatness to come.

Tamer Animals, the group's sequel on TBD Records, is a profound advancement.  Whereas the group's previous album placed a greater emphasis on singer-songwriter song structures, this collection intersperses more moments of instrumental prowess between the verses and choruses, giving the vocals more room to breathe and resulting in elongated intros, outros, and bridges.

The album is replete with vocal harmonies (some evoking classics like The Beatles' "Because"), and it's just as packed with instrumental timbres — quickly twitching and slowly sliding string clusters, tinkling piano flourishes, acoustic guitar strums, western guitar licks, vibraphone accents, neoclassical woodwind repetitions, and many others.  Though the band is roughly placed in the "indie rock" category, Other Lives proves to be much more, and Tamer Animals demonstrates a mastery of melody, harmony, and balance.

Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres (Constellation)

Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter One excerpt

Chicago native and New York / Montreal resident Matana Roberts has spent much of her career exploring the outer limits of free jazz, offering her alto-sax talents in collaboration with legends such as Fred Anderson and contemporary greats such as Jeff Parker, Vijay Iyer, and Nicole Mitchell.  She also has worked with experimental rock darlings such as Godspeed! You Black Emperor and TV on the Radio, providing an extra layer of musical dexterity.

As for her own projects, Roberts carries a belief that her music should comment on the world's many inequalities, and her latest is no exception.  Coin Coin, her newest effort as a bandleader, is an ongoing narrative that's based on the history of a dynamic black woman who went from being a slave to an established businesswoman, giving refuge to people of color such as Roberts' great grandfather.  For the project, Roberts uses the trajectory of its namesake — Marie Thérèse Coincoin — as a starting point for a live music piece that's fused with performance art.

The first chapter, which has been performed around the USA for a few years, now sees release as a live disc.  With the help of an expanded ensemble, the music is all over the map, from somber to noisy to radiant and from ragtime to bebop to modern.  But no matter where it goes, it's tied together by the narrative, a moving fictionalization that reminds us how despicable humankind can be — and that great strength can manifest in the face of oppression.

Zombi: Escape Velocity (Relapse)

Zombi: "Shrunken Heads"

Channeling the horror-infused synth vibes of Goblin and John Carpenter, space-rock duo Zombi has made a commendable career of 1970s nostalgia — but with a bit more punch and dance-ability.

Escape Velocity, the band's fourth full-length album, pulls back a bit from the epic melodies and distorted low end of Spirit Animal, its 2009 release that preceded a split LP with Maserati.  With fewer dramatics and atmospherics, this album gets straight to work building grooves.

Just like its predecessors, Escape Velocity is five tracks of long-form synth-rock jams, but it's significantly shorter overall.  At 33 minutes, it's roughly 2/3 the length of an average Zombi full-length, but ironically, this may be a benefit; the songs feel more concise and don't ramble quite as long.

Honorable Mentions

Africa Hitech: 93 Million Miles (Warp)

Bill Gould & Jared Blum: The Talking Book (Koolarrow)

Le Butcherettes: Sin Sin Sin (Rodriguez Lopez Productions)

Chrissy Murderbot: Women’s Studies (Planet Mu)

Empty Space Orchestra: s/t (self-released)

Helado Negro: Canta Lechuza (Asthmatic Kitty)

Horseback: The Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn + Forbidden Planet (Relapse)

Jesu: Ascension (Caldo Verde)

Mexicans with Guns: Ceremony (Innovative Leisure / Friends of Friends)

Rene Hell: The Terminal Symphony (Type)

Mountains: Air Museum (Thrill Jockey)

Okkervil River: I Am Very Far (Jagjaguwar)

Oxbow: King of the Jews (Hydra Head)

The Sea and Cake: The Moonlight Butterfly (Thrill Jockey)

Ben Sollee: Inclusions (Thirty Tigers)

Horseback: "The Golden Horn"

Dark psychedelic-drone band Horseback's new album is a combination of its 2007 ambient odyssey, Impale Golden Horn, and the new, previously cassette-only Forbidden Planet LP from 2010. Together, the records showcase the band's sonic duality.

The first half, as this week's MP3 Premiere shows, is restrained, almost delicate. "The Golden Horn," a sedate rumination on a simple piano melody, sounds ancient and weary — like an alien communication breaking through the desolate static fuzz of outer space. The second half takes a more aggressive tack with muddled death-metal vocals and hypnotic, finger-tapped guitar riffs. The lack of drums is disquieting; it's as if the band is content to live perilously on the edge, with the ever-present threat of a sonic free-fall nipping at its heels.

The Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn + Forbidden Planet is out May 5 on Relapse.

Son Lux: We Are Rising (Anticon)

Son Lux: "Rising"

Composer / pianist / electronic artist Ryan Lott writes music for a post-production company, for dance productions and the arts, and, when he finds the time, as Son Lux, where he joins the worlds of classical orchestration and hip-hop pastiche.

For his second full-length album, We Are Rising, that spare time was in especially short supply, as the eclectic musician took a challenge from NPR (inspired by The Wire) to write and record the entire thing over the course of the shortest month of the year.

Given the album's level of craftsmanship and production, listeners would never guess the impulsive dare that set it in motion.  Its nine songs are even more meticulously arranged than the Son Lux debut album, At War With Walls and Mazes, and they achieve a remarkable range of sounds, from traditional (woodwinds, brass, strings) to modern (synthesizers, guitar effects, collected sounds).

The combination of styles makes Lott something of a Sufjan Stevens for the beat crowd (Anticon releases his albums, after all).  We Are Rising finds him moving further in Stevens' direction — fewer beats and more neoclassical orchestrations behind the indie balladry.  But these songs still bear a distinct Son Lux stamp, and they're a down payment on an ever-promising future.

Graviton: Massless (Translation Loss)

Graviton: "Mu Lepton"

Featuring guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Sacha Dunable of progressive-metal outfit Intronaut, psych/space/post-metal trio Graviton makes its recorded debut with a husky 10-track full-length.

Moments of elongated singing and slow, deep riffs draw comparisons to Isis and its ilk, but the band as a whole sounds very different. With intermittent piano melodies, synthesizers, 12-string acoustic guitar, and programmed beats — not to mention sonic accessories such as lap-steel guitar, field recordings, and "Celloblaster" — Massless is a new brand of spacey post-metal.

Throughout the album's 45 minutes, Graviton strikes a healthy balance between melody and dissonance, accessibility and complexity, and past and future.  Three-part vocal harmonies coast over plummeting canyons of riffage, only to segue to extended acoustic interludes or spoken-word samples about particle physics.  Post-metal lovers may have a new favorite band, and everyone else has something exciting to discover.

NOW Ensemble: Awake (New Amsterdam)

NOW Ensemble: "Burst"

In 2008, New Amsterdam Records opened shop to release and promote music by boundary-breaking classical musicians. The NOW Ensemble, a melodically inclined chamber quintet, launched the label with its previous album, and Awake ever so slightly expands the group's timbres for another dynamic collection of melodic and rhythmic interplay.

Featuring compositions by NOW guitarist Mark Dancigers, New Amsterdam co-founder / NOW composer Judd Greenstein, and New Amsterdam label-mate Missy Mazzoli, the album finds the ensemble's arsenal of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, upright bass, and piano dancing together in an arresting display of harmony and counterpoint.

Throughout Awake, simple and complex repetitions are deftly woven together, forming patterns that engage listeners while urging their ears to dig deeper, layer by layer.  Even a distant touch of dark, distorted guitar and ominous accents complement "Velvet Hammer" and "Magic with Everyday Objects," and perhaps future albums by NOW Ensemble will share traits with more of the New Amsterdam roster.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed / Despise You: And On and On… (Relapse)

Agoraphobic Nosebleed: "As Bad As It Is"

Despise You: "Bereft"

Short, fast, and to the point. That's the MO of Despise You, a no-nonsense hardcore outfit from California whose first material in 10 years comprises half of this split release with grindcore masters Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

With 18 tracks that average just a minute each, Despise You packs as much into its half as possible, offering terse exclamations over basic riffs, distorted low end, and push beats.  ANb introduces itself with a sludgy down-tempo track — a style that swerves from Agorapocalypse, its last album of assailing tempos, squealing guitar leads, and lightning-quick fret work. Its second track, however, returns those familiar sounds, and the following two "songs" challenge Despise You for the album's shortest durations (25 and 27 seconds).

Bill Frisell: Sign of Life (Music for 858 Quartet) (Savoy Jazz)

Bill Frisell: "It's a Long Story (1)"

Over the span of his 30-year career, guitarist Bill Frisell has shifted further away from jazz and experimental styles and further toward country, western, and folk instrumentals.  Sign of Life, his latest with the string-based 858 Quartet, is another in the instrumental folk vein, albeit one whose group was borne of improvisation.

The 858 Quartet is Frisell plus three esteemed string players — violist Eyvind Kang (Secret Chiefs 3, Sunn O))), John Zorn), violinist Jenny Scheinman (Vinicius Cantuaria, Marc Ribot), and cellist Hank Roberts (Tim Berne).  In 2005, they created an improvised take on works by German artist Gerhard Richter, but they've since grown into a regular unit, and Sign of Life marks a decided shift to composition.

Written during a composing retreat, the album has soloing and apparent moments of improv, but it's markedly closer in style and spirit to Frisell's Disfarmer project or Beautiful Dreamers trio (which also features Kang).  The Richter 858 album, which is much more dissonant and whose beauty is more subjective, might be best considered a musical caterpillar — eventually morphing into something more striking and graceful.

Honorable Mentions

Blue Sky Black Death: Noir (Fake Four)

Boxcutter: The Dissolve (Planet Mu)

Daedelus: Bespoke (Ninja Tune)

Deafheaven: Roads to Judah (Deathwish)

Steve Earle: I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (New West)

Explosions in the Sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Temporary Residence)

Jefferson Friedman (w/ Chiara String Quartet & Matmos): Quartets (New Amsterdam)

Jookabox: The Eyes of the Fly (Joyful Noise)

Kambar Kalendarov & Kutman Sultanbekov: Jaw (Cantaloupe)

Klang: Other Doors (Music of Benny Goodman) (Allos Documents)

Daniele Luppi: Malos Hábitos soundtrack (Ipecac)

Nine 11 Thesaurus: Ground Zero Generals (The Social Registry)

Primordial: Redemption at the Puritan's Hand (Metal Blade)

Small Brown Bike: Fell & Found (No Idea Records)

Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores, 1996-2009 (Constellation)

Tombs: "Gossamer"

“It’s about control and discipline,” Tombs frontman/guitarist Mike Hill says. The Brooklyn metal three-piece and I are sitting at a picnic table outside Waterloo Records during the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas. Hill’s words particularly stand out against the carefree atmosphere of the five-day, live-music festival. Outside a business conference and trade show at the Austin Convention Center, SXSW can easily resemble an independent-music Mardi Gras, with many concertgoers drinking waterfalls of Texas’ Lonestar Beer, seeing as many shows as physics allows, and generally partying their hearts out around the clock.

Tombs is on its first tour since the release of its debut full-length, Winter Hours. The album is a haunting hybrid of metal and hardcore, covered with thick coatings of noise and pristine melody. At Waterloo, the band completed its third set in roughly 24 hours after an overnight drive from Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite the demanding schedule, its members show no sign of fatigue; their commitment to discipline and control has paid off.

“To do what we’re doing at the level we want to be doing it at, you have to have a certain amount of dedication and a certain amount of professionalism and discipline,” Hill says. “There is a very narrow margin of personal conduct that is acceptable.”

He goes on, “I’m talking about being able to go as hard as you can, to know that you’ve really brought something to the table. There is no connotation of financial success or anything other than a level of personal achievement.” Hill is pleasant and conversational, but there is a serious undertone to everything he says, like a revered sensei in a ninja film waxing philosophy to his disciples. “In this substrata of marginal music, it’s easy to get covered over by other people unless you have your act together.”

When it comes to the dos and don'ts of playing in an independent band, Hill certainly knows what he is talking about. Starting in Boston in the early 1990s, he has been a staple in the underground hardcore community, playing in a number of bands and fronting hardcore powerhouse Anodyne for the better part of a decade (1997–2005) before starting the esoteric Versomna. An accomplished producer as well as a musician, Hill has recorded albums by heavy bands such as Isis, Lickgoldensky, and Piebald, and he owns his own label, Black Box Recordings.

Hill started Tombs in 2007. Bassist Carson Daniel James joined a few months later, after original bassist Dominic Seita amicably parted to develop NYC doom quartet A Storm of Light. The trio released a self-titled EP on Black Box / Level Plane before signing to Relapse Records, and drummer Andrew Hernandez joined just after the sessions for Winter Hours were complete, learning the band’s entire set in just nine days prior to a European tour.

Like Hill, James and Hernandez are both rooted in the DIY punk community. Hernandez relays humorous tales of his formative years as a 14-year-old concert promoter from a small town in Massachusetts. He would find bands’ phone numbers on seven-inch records and randomly call them to ask them to play a show or for a place to crash after taking a one-way bus trip to concerts in their cities.
 

“I’m talking about being able to go as hard as you can, to know that you’ve really brought something to the table. There is no connotation of financial success or anything other than a level of personal achievement.”

“I figured that I’d either find a place to stay or I’d sleep on some steps,” Hernandez recalls. “I was at the show; that was all that mattered.” Two of his most successful calls, as it turns out, were to future band-mate Hill during his Anodyne years and to his future label manager, Relapse's Gordon Conrad.

Hill’s sentiment towards control is echoed by his band-mates. “We like a certain amount of self-sacrifice,” Hernandez says. Although they are far from monks, the members of Tombs take pride in staunch dedication to their craft and their willingness to push themselves to the limit with their music. They maintain a rigorous practice schedule, whether writing new material or preparing for a tour.

“It’s learning how to react without thinking,” James explains. “It’s doing what seems obvious, rather than fumbling.” Hill agrees. “In a live setting, anything can happen,” he says. “It’s like when you’re on a special recon mission for military operations: you rely on your training to get you through everything. We rely on practice to get us through the rough spots. Personally, I am using more effects and technology with this band than I have in the past. With that component, a lot of things can go wrong.”

Winter Hours was recorded by Ian Whalen and John Chambers at Etching Tin Studios in Richmond, Virginia. With the financial support afforded by the new label, Hill was able to step away from the control room for the first time in order to concentrate on his songs. “I still wanted to have production influence,” he says, “but as far as engineering goes, it was more important for me to focus on execution of parts and performances.”

Most of Tombs’ songs are developed out of Hill’s ideas, with the other members writing their parts during rehearsals. James observes that, because of the limitations of practicing as a three-piece, the other members often learn about the atmospheric effects that Hill has planned for each track only once the recording process has begun. For his part, Hill says that every sound on the record is deliberate. Nothing is left to chance.

“I spend a lot of my time planning it all out so that when we get to the studio, it’s strictly execution,” he says. “I know a lot of it sounds experimental, but there is really none of that stuff going on.” The overall effect, best articulated on opening number “Gossamer” and “The Divide,” is much like a heavier take on the “Wall of Sound” developed by Phil Spector, a producer whose studio work Hill especially admires.

Lyrically, much of Winter Hours was inspired by a series of nightmares Hill had about the Apocalypse, which, in hindsight, he relates to his dissatisfaction with the Bush administration (though his penchant for reading about conspiracy theories couldn’t have helped much).

“It was kind of subconscious,” he says. “It was bubbling to the surface for a year. Now that I have a little distance, I feel like a lot of it was the Republican presence and George W. Bush. I feel optimistic now that he is out of the office. There was a certain powerlessness and vulnerability that came from that time. Filtering other emotions through that resulted in the bulk of the lyrics on that record. They’re personal ruminations filtered through political observations.”

Though the presidential office has since changed hands, Tombs doesn’t see the mood of its music changing. “There’s always a dark cloud,” James notes. Hill explains, “The music itself is just intensity. There are bands like Michael Gira from Swans who play acoustic music, but it is still the most intense music there is.”

With Winter Hours still fresh on the shelves, Tombs is already working new material, and it has become evident that though the atmosphere may stay the same, the music will differ from anything that the band has done before. “The changing of our drummer will, without a question, propel our music in a new direction, whether we consciously go there or not, which is good,” James says. “It’s a constant flux, without having to be pigeonholed into one thing.”

Tombs is open to new sounds in its music, so long as the inspiration comes from within the band, rather than following trends. “If [a change in sound] is true and you alienate someone, at least you’re keeping yourself happy,” Hill says. Yet in the members’ quest for their own satisfaction, they’ve neglected to realize that they are making music that outsiders can enjoy as well.

The members of Tombs are genuinely surprised at the positive reception that they’ve received from fans, explaining that they have no expectations of others. “It’s one of the main things I apply to most of the aspects of my life,” Hill says. “If you don’t expect anything, that gives you a certain level of freedom.”

Tombs holds itself to different standards altogether. “There is a division, really,” Hill adds. “I demand an incredible amount from myself, but it is all personal achievement. Do I expect anyone to acknowledge what I do? I would say no. When I go out of this world, I want to know that I did my best. I want to go out knowing that I did what I could, regardless if anyone cares. If people want to acknowledge it, that’s great. But I don’t expect that from anybody.”

Still, people are increasingly paying attention, and in its short time as a band, Tombs has found fans in underground metal and punk circles as well as new listeners in some unlikely places. James recalls a recent show in San Antonio opening for British electronic producer Tricky where a new fan approached the group and mused, “You are up there just doing your thing. It doesn’t seem like you’re writing for anyone but yourselves.”

James pauses before remarking, “I guess what it comes down to is that we’re still three guys in a practice space who are friends and live in the same area, playing music that we want to play without thinking outwardly about what other people want to hear.”

Rabbits

Rabbits: "Duck, The Pigs"

This week's MP3 premiere features Portland sludge-rock trio Rabbits, which will release a new full-length, Lower Forms, on February 15. The band, featuring former members of punk/hardcore bands VSS, Angel Hair, and Pleasure Forever, released an EP titled Hide in early 2010 on Eolian before jumping to Relapse later that year.

If "Duck, The Pigs" is any indication, Lower Forms will be packed with Rabbits' heavily distorted doom-punk guitar riffs, thunderous drums, and guttural vocal mayhem.