It is an honor to have JG Thirlwell as the special guest for this episode. Thirlwell has been an active producer, engineer, composer, conductor, singer, scoring films and TV shows for over three decades and shows no signs of slowing down. His two latest releases, Music of the Venture Bros, Vol. 2 and the soundtrack from Imponderable are out now. Other new music is featured from Silver Apples, Biosphere, Andrew Liles, and Tim Hecker.
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New music is due from Oval, Benoit Pioulard, and Wolfgang Voigt, while old music is due from Charles Hayward, Tim Buckley, and Gusgus.
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After a number of years listening to Celer's slow, expansive take on ambient and drone sounds, I would have never expected Will Long to suddenly start making house music. But he has, in a series of three double 12” singles (and compiled into a double CD compilation), and it only takes a few minutes to realize that it is actually a very good combination. Even with the addition of drum machines, Long’s knack for creating warm, inviting spaces of electronic music is still vividly on display, and with some assistance from ambient legend Terre Thaemlitz (under the DJ Sprinkle guise), it may be heralding an entirely new direction in his work.
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In the over three decades since he first began the project, Paul Lemos has guided Controlled Bleeding all over the sonic map, from the early power electronics days into 1980s industrial, and eventually jazz and prog tinged rock improvisations. It makes sense then that, for the first full length release of mostly new work since 2002 (releases since then have been either reissues or contained earlier work), he and his assembled crew of Chvad SB, Mike Bazini, and Anthony Meola have put together two albums of work that draws from all of these eras, and effortlessly manages to shift between periods of the band’s lengthy history at every turn.
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In 1984, long before anyone's grandparents were only a few keystrokes away from obtaining every morsel of information, this non-descript album cover appeared in the shops. Nowhere on the record were there band member photos or names and roles, producer credits, or lyrics. It was a gamble to purchase a costly import record if you were located here in North America, especially without hearing it first, but most of those in-the-know would gladly take that risk. In this case, it certainly paid off.
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First issued in 1971 and out of print for over three and a half decades, Black Mass is the sole release from Canadian synth innovator Mort Garson under the Lucifer name. A fully electronic-based record, much of the album has a distinctly vintage sound to it, largely due to the electronic instrumentation that was still in its infancy. However, some moments shine through as truly innovative for the time, and with the resurgence of interest in modular synthesizers, it is the perfect time for it to be resurrected.
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As far as I can tell, this is the first major Silver Apples album to appear in almost 20 years, though Simeon Coxe has kept busy with singles, remixes, collaborations, and his other band (Amphibian Lark) in the meantime. Interestingly, the Silver Apples aesthetic of 2016 is almost identical to that of 1968: the production is a bit different and Coxe has adapted to playing without a drummer, but Clinging to a Dream sounds every bit as bizarre and unique as the band's self-titled debut. If there is a significant difference, it is merely that Coxe has gone from sounding like an iconoclast ingeniously ahead of his time to sounding like an ingeniously retro-futurist iconoclast. Admittedly, Coxe’s imagination, inventiveness, and instrumental prowess continue to exceed his songwriting and vocal talents, but Dream's weaknesses are generally rendered irrelevant by the singularity of his vision.
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Location is integral to Manrico Montero’s Sisal, as it is with virtually all of the albums released on Unfathomless. Without it, there is still music, but the context and inspiration driving it is at least partially effaced. Sisal is both the common name for Agave sisalana, a species of agave cultivated for the fibers it yields, and the name of a small port town located in the Yucatán Peninsula, where said fibers play a significant role in the economy. But the album focuses on another species native to the region. With just one exception, each of its tracks are named for the mangrove trees that grow in a nearby area called La Bocana (“The Mouth”), where seawater meets the freshwater of a cenote. Montero’s recordings capture plenty of maritime activity around these trees, including the rocking of ship hulls, strong coastal winds, and a multitude of insect and animal life. They also expose sounds that are not ready-at-hand, that are a part of the place without appearing as such.
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Ren Schofield’s reliably bludgeoning Container project is back with a yet another EP of caustic, pummeling beats and squelching, swooping electronics. He has moved to a new label (Powell’s Diagonal imprint) since his last outing, but otherwise not a whole lot has changed: Vegetation is yet another feast of concise and bulldozing rhythmic salvos. That is no surprise, of course, as Container has always been the absolute embodiment of the "all killer, no filler" philosophy: Schofield gets in, he kicks ass, and he is gone long before he overstays his welcome. That said, Container does seem to get incrementally better and better with each release and that trend continues, as Vegetation tempers Container's percussive assault with a bit more dynamic variation and sputtering, squiggling electronic chaos than usual.
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Angharad Davies and Tisha Mukarji’s contribution to Another Timbre’s “Violin+1” series takes the already blurry distinction between composed and improvised music and blurs it beyond meaning. As odd a title as Ffansïon | Fancies is, it encapsulates the process of investigation and refinement evident everywhere in Davies and Mukarji’s sympathetic playing. “Fancy” here connotes the formation of images, synthetic activity, and the work of the imagination—a de- and re-construction of both the piano and the violin that produces a pseudo-Cubist view of both instruments. Exploded and rearranged, they slip in and out of familiar configurations, darting constantly between energy and form.
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