Damion Romero - Missing Link [hanson]

Yesterday I pulled the Music from the Once Festival box-set off the shelf intending to attempt to submerge myself in all five discs in one day, as it happened that project failed when I got stuck playing a Donald Scavarda track from the 1962 festival over and over (fans of Axel Dorner’s trumpetings should check out Matrix for Clarinet, prescient stuff). But the point of bringing that up is that it made me notice that the festival venue was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where now resides Hanson Records. I haven’t got a clue just how ‘backwater’ a place Ann Arbor is but it strikes me as an unlikely locale to be weighing into the history of experimental noise music twice in under half a century. Apologies for the pointless digression.

Having written up Romero’s I Know! I Know! a few days ago, I thought I should try to tackle something a bit more typical of his output. I have now listened to Missing Link in several different scenarios and have been pretty alarmed by how different it sounds in each. Romero has rightly gained a solid reputation for his ability to sculpt bass and this tape is all about the low end, so although one of my listens – on a portable boombox – left it feeling rather rather empty, it did reveal the grating metal scrapes that pepper one side and are all but concealed on a decent pair of monitors by the lurching swoops of bass. Romero’s music sets the crockery on my draining board rattling and even vibrates the lampshades, leaving me to wonder what his studio must look like with every object ratchet strapped to the desktop. Even his coffee mug must be metallic so he can sit it on a magnet while he lets rip.

That wasn’t really a review was it? Um.. Two tsunamis of bass collecting all the debris in their path and never losing momentum, but probably not his best.

Hanson

Emaciator - Appease [hanson]

There’s no information on the emaciated-children-adorned inlay to tell us when this was recorded but judging by the trajectory that Jon Borges’ Emaciator project has been on (as discussed in my previous Emaciator post) I would say the music on here is a fair bit older than other recent releases: this might be the harshest episode yet in my personal encounters with the project. The whole of the first side is pinned solidly to the ground with a ton of low frequency quake, seeming to set off a tumbling cascade of rubble in the right speaker, while electro-shock therapy is intermittently administered to a robot in the left channel. I’m not sure if it’s my aging dusty hifi kit making it sound like this, but with the exception of the smothering mattress of bass, there’s some pretty hard panning of the other sounds: shrieks to the left, crumblings to the right; which I’m really liking. Great to hear this excellent rough-edged side of Borges’ drone work, amid his increasingly ‘pleasant’ ouput. The other side is a considerably less engrossing mid-range grind, a continual pulsating whirl of helicopter blades chopping through sheets of sandpaper which persists in wall-like fashion throughout. Unrelentless but fairly uninteresting, which is a shame as for me it kind of lets the tape down a bit.

Available from Hanson

Emeralds & Dilloway - Under Pressure [hanson]

I’m guessing these guys will need no introductions for anyone reading. I’ve been following Emeralds since their Solar Bridge album from last year (also on Hanson and now available on vinyl as well). Having also snatched their follow up What Happened [nofun] and the vinyl repress of Allegory of Allergies [weird forest] which was originally a double tape of live recordings, I felt I had pretty much saturated my need for their particular brand of analogue synth meets guitar bliss, it has begun to feel all a bit too easy, easy for them and easy on me. Seeing them pair up (or rather quartet up) with ex-Wolf Eyes’ Aaron Dilloway seemed promising though, something to bring them down off their cloud into the mire for a while. Possibly.

Side A opens with kraut-influenced synth figures that are by now fairly signature Emeralds material and drifts along in exactly the typically lush vein you would expect from them, Dilloway’s input is barely noticable except for a little occasional click in my right ear suggesting he might be running some tape loops around. The next track has far less sheen, beginning with a bestial vocal loop from Dilloway which returns throughout the piece. This and his other more confrontational input seems to hold the Emeralds lads in check somewhat interrupting their usual flow, which is nice to hear as a change though I’m not actually sure it makes for better music. I don’t know if the copy I’ve got is defective but the third track on side A seems to start then cut out…fast forward, turn over…

The flips starts out with swoops of delayed electronische ton, gradually becoming peppered with further tonal gurglings and clusters of guitar, and this really is feeling like a straight Emeralds record again, not that there’s a problem with that I like their music, but can’t help feeling it’s just a bit safe now, when space opens up I am sat willing Dilloway to interject, but it doesn’t come and the piece builds, really rather nicely. Maybe all Dilloway is doing here (and in the first track) is working with tape manipulation of Emeralds’ sounds, adding to the thickness of the sound.

Thoroughly recommended to Emeralds lovers, but if you’re hoping for a departure from their well-trodden path, stay away.

available as a tape or CDr from hanson

P.S. This post got me to thinking. Is there’s really anything wrong with musicians doing what they do best? Should we constantly be expecting people to reinvent themselves, to take bold new steps? And at what point does doing what you do best become simply dull and formulaic?