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Sianspheric

And, funny enough, both times I happened to be listening to Sianspheric's latest, The Sound of the Colour of the Sun.

Coincidence? Not intentionally, at least. But regardless, there couldn't have been any more appropriate music to have on hand. This Canadian quartet mines a sonic space somewhere near the clubhouse where My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, Spiritualized, and Mogwai hang out. Most songs begin with a soft guitar, the tap of drum stick on a cymbal, and the steady pulse of a warm and deep, deep bass. Fits of distortion work their way in and out, and then suddenly the band will tune into the same static frequency and lyrics will blur out even more as the sonic floodgates are thrown wide open and the full aural assault of the band is unleashed.

Forget trying to set a volume level on your stereo or portable, because the band will tease you into upping the dial with these beautiful little quiet roads before they send you crashing head first into an intersection of unrepentant distortion. Which is not to say that it's all up and down quiet to earsplitting loud here. Like the sigh of a lover and she rolls over to cuddle, tracks like "Radiodiffusion" and "Slightly Less Sunshine" have a soft, quiet delicacy to them, with the latter trailing off with several minutes of feedback that is at once both dissonant and hushed. And it's all very, very beautiful, because are opposites do attract. Listening to The Sound of the Colour of the Sun you can tell that Sianspheric, who've been releasing similar material since 1995, must play massively loud live--and I'm quite attracted to that. My only request would be at an outdoor venue where the most gorgeous sunrise you'll ever see was mere moments away.

-Craig Young
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Solefald

Both brothers are hopelessly united in confusion and pain as well as in their strange attempts to heal the illnesses of mankind. Not many black metal discs--not to mention Cain's porn flicks--have this much plot and desire to rejuvenate mankind. Okay, now you know these two black metal geniuses have imagination. Now picture the stories told in varying tormented and clean vocals loaded with symphonic elements that would make Therion proud, alternated with non-traditional black metal that will send purists crawling for the door. However, it also contains musical elements from pop, rock, metal, techno, industrial and gothic...all within a highly catchy and memorable melodic metal.

Solefald have a keen musical sense that keeps the excesses in check. Perhaps not as disciplined as Emperor musically, Solefald are very unique especially within the tightly stereotyped world of metal. Solefald have rocked my world with their tuneful rants and peaked my curiosity with Pills now I think I'll go back and investigate their back black-catalog. Fans of black metal or symphonic metal or just anyone who wants to hear a band with melody, creativity and craziness must check out Pills Against the Ageless Ills.

-Sabrina Haines
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But that's the whole conundrum with IDM: it's dance music that isn't terribly danceable, but, for lack of a better definition, it is where this sort of electronic squiggle and fart and bleep falls. "Xepo" chirps and lurches and thrashes about with much abandon, calling on your ability to feign an epileptic seizure in order to approximate "dancing to the rhythm." When it is done well, IDM is marvelous, stunning little structures built from elements which you never expected to find enjoying one another's companion.

And that's where Solenoid's Services Rendered falls: on the side of the fence where your brain wonders how such things are accomplished. He pulls, he twists, he compacts, he turns; Chandler does all these things to electronic sounds and manages to craft tiny self-contained universes that don't qualify as "songs," but which certainly provide fodder for moods. And isn't that what music is all about anyway: creating and altering moods? Solenoid's album is aptly titled.

-Mark Teppo
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Stewart Walker

Reclamation isn't as unified in sound as Stabiles, which is makes sense with the variety of places where these tracks have been released. Some of the tracks are more house than others; several are more minimal (and that's not as much as an oxymoron as it sounds). But they've all got the Walker vibe, a sensitive hand guiding the beats and delicate melodies. These are not beats that will ever overwhelm a room; these are subtle, pervasive rhythms that percolate through the layers of your skin, tugging you to follow them.

"Meer-Mir" sways around you, the double beat almost beneath the audible level, but still quite there, still pushing at you. "Amateur Surrealism" (from the Stoic EP on Matrix) brings the beats to foreground, switching the emphasis to house. "White Noise on the Horizon" (from the Jet Fuel and Longing EP on Belief Systems) adds a dub echo. And so it goes, weaving a path back and forth between those four cardinal points mentioned above. But Walker's deft hand is always at the controls, making sure the motion is smooth and the transitions seamless.

Reclamation is more than just a history lesson, there is a vibrant cohesiveness to the collection. Walker clearly loves all four elements--the minimal, the techno, the dub, and the house--and this disc shows it is possible to bring them all to a harmonic convergence.

-Mark Teppo
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Superchunk

Superchunk is now in its eleventh year of songwriting and performing. If they showed any sign of going the way of Archers and Pavement, it would be a disappointing loss. Though a long time has passed since No Pocky for Kitty (1991), a post-punk tour de force that heralded better things to come. The release of Here's to Shutting Up, their eighth studio full-length, proves that they're still at the top of their game. This album is by far the band's most sophisticated, with an energy and innovation reminiscent of 1997's Indoor Living. Indoor Living was a milestone for the Chapel Hill four-piece because it marked a more mature direction; Here's to Shutting Up could almost be seen as a culmination of this departure: expertly crafted songs with a pop appeal and a lingering punk spirit.

"Late-Century Dream," the first single, opens the album with a wistful keyboard riff and Mac's boyish voice mentioning, as if it were an audience aside, spaceships and clover leaves and the hollow maxim "shop 'til you drop." Then they drop the delicacy and rip into the hyperactive fuzz of "Rainy Streets," only to return to a subdued rockabilly number, "Phone Sex." A more classic bass-fuelled Superchunk appears on "Out on the Wing," which still manages to retain the clever instrumentation that highlights Here's to Shutting Up.

The album is somewhat deceiving. While the visual layout would indicate that, yes, this is another in the Superchunk lineage, the music exposes a bit of world-weariness that has always remained latent in the band's work but came across as jovial cynicism. Maturation has stripped Superchunk of the trait that endeared them to the indie and college crowds, leaving us with more sighs and uncertainty than we are used to. Their music has become more cohesive while their philosophy seems to have grown more questioning. Here's to Shutting Up shows that the change should be welcomed and not seen as a distressing development.

-Eric J. Iannelli
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Techno Animal

"Robosapien" is classic Techno Animal: a spitting, surging, over-powered monster of a track, filled with such bombast and power that to play it on any system that can't generate more than a hundred watts of sound would be like trying to appraise the power of a tornado by sticking your finger through a crack in the storm cellar door. As with all their projects, Martin and Broadrick are out to demonstrate that martial superiority of their sound--bunker bombs that cut through stereo components and speaker towers with relentless aplomb. Other bands simply overdrive their sound by flipping the master volume knob all the way to the right, Techno Animal lays the needles flat at any volume level, filling every harmonic and tonal range with their pulse. Their sound fills space.

Take the other instrumentals--"Hypertension," "Freefall," Monoscopic," and "Sub Species"--these tracks come straight from the Symbiotics sessions (a remix project with Porter Ricks from 1999 [Click here for the review]) and are sub-aquatic dub that will rattle your individual molecules. The rest of The Brotherhood of the Bomb, however, is truly heavy hip-hop.

It's not like Broadrick and Martin haven't done lyrics (just trip back to Ice's Bad Blood from 1999), but lyrical content hasn't been part of the Techno Animal equation before. But it's not a big stretch to go from the warped, mutant beats of the Techno Animal sound to hip-hop. In fact, there is a certain sense to the pairing: hip-hop posturing has become anemic and limp with its recent reliance on "bling-bling" rhythms. "DC-10" is the "blam! blam!" soundcheck for hip-hop that wants to walk its walk: heavy beats, turntable scratches done with a straight razor, and an overpowering sonic howl that eats the MC alive. The Brotherhood of the Bomb: say no more, say no more.

-Mark Teppo
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Thalia Zedek

Goggin has now engineered and co-produced Thalia Zedek's solo album, Been Here and Gone. The flaws of this release do not necessarily appear to be a result of his involvement; but rather Zedek's songwriting and the path it follows, one already paved by Leonard Cohen and well-traveled by later musicians like Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. The parallels are in fact so close that each of the eleven tracks balances on the fine line between slavish imitation and unintentional parody.

The Matador Records spokespersons and even Zedek (Live Skull, Uzi, Come) herself have admitted that originality is not the impetus behind Been Here and Gone. So what is it, then? Herzschmerz, a mellower direction, a one-off side project: these would seem to explain the album, though they certainly do not justify it. Been Here and Gone has its moments, to be sure, but these alone don't make it a celebratory event. As for the claim by Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy that Zedek's is the "most powerful voice in rock," it is highly debatable. Figuratively or literally, her voice is a minor one, and droning (when not off-key) at that.

What I find infinitely frustrating about Been Here and Gone is that the vocals and half-baked poetic sentiment fail to match the caliber the music itself. The sheer puerility of Zedek's lyrics often undermines the gravitas and complex emotional twists of the music, which, taken by itself, is excellent. The album blends despairing, countrified melodies, rich in instrumentation, with the stark, melancholic, I'm-sorry-but-I-told-you-this-would-happen style pioneered by Cohen. She acknowledges her debt to him with a cover of "Dance Me to the End of Love," a rather unremarkable rendition, and wanton chord mimicry of "Everybody Knows" with her own "Excommunication (Everybody Knows)." Cohen, however, was a first-rate poet as well as a songwriter; whereas it is clear that Zedek is not. Two more covers, "1926" (G. Gogel) and "Manha de Carnaval" (Luiz Bonfa), fill out an album that borrows as much as Mark Kozelek but does not offer the same personal reinterpretation.

Intention does not equal action. I would like to speak seventeen languages; but declaring my desire is not the same as doing it. Zedek may have aspired toward something truly great with Been Here and Gone. Yet it merely stumbles in the right direction. T.S. Eliot once remarked, "Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal." In the realm of music, Thalia Zedek, it seems, has not yet discovered this. This album shows that she still falls into the former category.

-Eric J. Iannelli
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Therapy?

I thought my worst fears confirmed when I put on Shameless and the first track, "Gimme Back My Brain," came tumbling out sounding like the band had indeed decided to wear their influences on their collective sleeve. Things definitely started off a little too garage rock/gutter punk for my tastes, but, as the album played through, the dark and brilliant Therapy? of old began to shine. There are a few throwaways here that just didn't keep my interest (the aforementioned "Gimme Back My Brain," "Wicked Man," and "Body Bag Girl"), but the rest more than make up for things. They heavy opening riffs on "Dance" ("Fuck you man if you don't feel alright / Fuck you man if you don't feel okay / 'Cos I'm wired to the moon / Stapled to the sky / Happy as I am and I don't know why"); the guitar revs and simply tasty surf licks on "Joey" ("It was winter, it was cold / I was lost in a world of my own / I was bent double at the end of the road / Pissing my suicide note in the snow"); and "Stalk and Slash," which, of all the tracks on Shameless, is most reminiscent the Therapy? I love dearly.

Shameless is the third proper album since the departure of drummer Fyfe Ewing. And while his wire-tight manic rim shots are missed, Andy, bassist Michael McKeegan, drummer Graham Hopkins, and guitarist Martin McCarrick have more than proved they can hold their own. No, it's not the Therapy? of Troublegum, but it's still a damn tight band that continually produces some damn fine tunes. These four have come into their own sound, and it demands your attention--deservedly so.

My only question to the band is: you flew all the way to Seattle to record, now when are you going to play a proper gig here?

-Craig Young
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And it will be your loss because I've got that record right here. I'm supposed to be talking about it. I'm supposed to be telling you about the quantum drift which shivers behind the beats of Proem's "Blue Northern," or the delicate arrangement of rhythm that parades beneath the central melody of Ml's "Tiny Ninjas." I should be nattering on about the growing claustrophobia which wells up in Neutral's "Line" (do I have to pick a favorite?). Or how Codec manages to merge crunchy beats, a lost echo of wind, and a melody squeezed out of one of Jan Hammer's old synths. Syndrone starts with a recording of child at play and turns it into a skipping, chattering IDM track that manages to never quite lose its connection with the playful voices of the children. Somatic Responses deliver "Cry for the Strangers," a track not out of place on their recent Accidental Happiness EP. I can't neglect to mention Andrew Duke's "Mversion"--a steam-driven locomotive of a track that powers on relentless, or Lusine Icl's "Spacecake," which brings a little downtempo melody to the mix.

But doing all that will detract from listening to it. Which you should. You have to be ready to believe that barriers can be broken, that limitations can be overcome, and that "never" is a word that should only be used in conjunction with the words "me," "enjoy," and "country music." Then you will be ready for Component Records' Integral Components. You will be ready to believe that the must-have compilation of IDM and technoid rhythms has finally been released.

-Mark Teppo
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Vue

Frontman Rex Shelverton has no trouble letting forth his unrestrained emotions, but once he thrusts them into the air, they eventually plummet to the floor. He strives for the primal electricity of a Jim Morrison or an Iggy Pop, but falls several light-years short; delivering a semi-angst ridden buzz that is neither unique nor memorable. On "Falling Through A Window," a plodding rhythm shrouded in devious overtones from guitar and organ provides a stark, acid-burnt setting, in which Shelverton, like a jilted, schoolboy Morrison, indulges his hipster fantasies. Despite the song's languid attempt at moody, psychedelic blues, Shelverton pours himself, albeit gracelessly, into a desperate story of fleeting love, nearly striking a tender spot with his bleating line, "but if you're falling through a window pane, well I'm falling right after you."

Vue seem to be a band that one would be quite satisfied with as an opening act, but I don't see them slaying crowds as headliners anytime soon. But who knows, if they ever fight their way out of a limiting locked box of '60s and '70s psychedelic pop and punk, expand on their sometimes decent hooks, put a leash on Shelverton and add some more dimension to a bland rhythm section, they might just find their home.

-Dan Cullity
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