New Kayo Dot Album, Gamma Knife, Streaming on Bandcamp

Recommendation: The Necks - Hanging Gardens (1999), Drive By (2003), Townsville (2007)

A Bi-Polar Review

Review: Xhohx - Karyotypexplosion (2007)

The soundtrack to your seizure

News from Toby Driver (Nov. 17th) - New Kayo Dot album and more...

 Here's the latest email newsletter from Toby Driver:

" Hi folks, behold the latest issue of my newsletter!

Here's what's covered in this one:

- New Kayo Dot album details!
- Kayo Dot spring USA tour
- maudlin of the Well: Bath / Leaving Your Body Map vinyl box set
- Spoken word split 7" for Aniseed Records
- Tartar Lamb 2 shipments!

Review: October Equus - Saturnal (2011, AltrOck)

Some people are mercurial, others are saturnal.
Which one are you?

Shining to release live CD+DVD - Live Blackjazz

Out on 11.11.11

Recommendation/Review: Aksak Maboul - Un peu de l'âme des bandits (1980)

Live a little, go crazy...

Review: Factor Burzaco - II (2011, AltrOck)

Factor Burzaco, brainchild of Argentinean musician and composer Abel Gilbert, released its second album in 2011, simply entitled II, through the marvelous Italian label, AltrOck.

Recommendation: Badawi - The Heretic Of Ether

Badawi is the project of Raz Mesinai, an Israeli musician and composer who also works in other constellations. You can get a much better and profound background on him here and here.

Recommendation: Combat Astronomy - Barricades

James Huggett is keeping himself busy and us happy.

Review: Otolithen - S.O.D. (1997, Cuneiform)

First of all, allow me to introduce the band.

New Combat Astronomy Album - Flak Planet

Udi Koomran posted this bit of news on Progressive Ears and I'm happy to spread the word here as well about a new album available from Martin Archer's Combat Astronomy unit of brutal rock.

Recommendation: Satanique Samba Trio

Here's the bio I wrote for this group at Prog Archives:

Recommendation: Clara Engel (Canada)

There is music that you put on to simply enjoy the groove, the rhythm, the melody. There's music you put on to have something in the background. There's music you listen to in order to relax and chill-out. There is music you put on to be exhilarated by the emotions it creates in you.

There is also a sort of music that conjures up images of strange places, melodies that bring to life sceneries you've not encountered previously.

Such type of music, I hear in the songs by Canadian artist Clara Engel.

A New 'Æthenor' Release – En Form for Blå (VHF)

A fellow on Progressive Ears just posted about the new album by Æthenor, which I was totally unaware of its existence. It's out again on VHF.
You can read more about it and listen to the pieces here.

"Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, Mothlite, Guapo), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), Steve Noble (N.E.W., Company, etc). 

En Form For Blå documents the continued evolution of this unlikely collective, a collision of players from various avant, improv, metal, and "other" threads who together make a unique and arresting sound. 

Documenting three gigs in Oslo recorded in 2010, the music is deep and weird, with liquid sounds juddering around the occasionally identifiable percussion or Rhodes motif. Moving from an occasional/studio group to a frequently working live act, Æthenor has somehow kept their sound intact, taking the musique concrète-style transitions and "what's that sound" ethos of their three previous efforts directly to the stage. 

Noble, having spent a couple of decades playing drums with Derek Bailey and other well-known UK improvisers, moves the music along subtly, keeping much of the focus on the burbling sound mass. O'Malley's guitar, an instrument of extreme viscera in Sunn0))), is used with restraint, providing occasional low menace but mostly mixing it up with O'Sullivan's thematic lines and Rygg's sound treatments. 

The overall effect is atmospheric rather than sedate - something like a modern, small group version of Miles Davis' classic "He Loved Him Madly" or Nurse with Wound's "Spiral Insana." Other than Supersilent, it's hard to think of anyone really working this sonic vocabulary - this is a bold engagement from players who are well-known for completely different reasons from the strangeness heard here. Deluxe double LP is on white vinyl with printed inner sleeves. CD is in a card folio. Designed by Stephen O'Malley."

Live Webcast: The Celestial Septet (The Nels Cline Singers and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet)

From New World Records newsletter:

Free live webcast with The Celestial Septet

On February 22, Ars Nova Workshop is presenting a concert by the Celestial Septet in Philadelphia, which will be available to non-Philadelphia audiences for free via live webcast. After only four concerts in 2008, this epic ensemble combining the Nels Cline Singers and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet returns for only five US appearances, beginning with this night in Philadelphia. Given the rarity of this celestial union, we've teamed up with a local webcast production crew in order to share the Celestial Septet experience with international audiences.

Ars Nova Workshop is thrilled to present the Celestial Septet, a massive ensemble featuring the Nels Cline Singers and the Rova Saxophone Quartet. After four concerts in 2008 and releasing The Celestial Septet (New World Records 80708-2) in 2010, the ensemble re-emerges for only five performances.

For those outside the Philadelphia area, we are offering a live webcast of this rare concert. Sign up here:  http://arsnova.webillishus.com/

The story of the Celestial Septet is that of two bands becoming one. On their own, the Nels Cline Singers and the Rova Saxophone Quartet have established themselves as the most forward-looking groups not only in their respective formats -- a trio of guitar, bass, and drums, and a quartet of saxophones ranging from baritone to sopranino -- but also in the area of music that has variously and inadequately been called "free," "avant-garde," "creative," and "improvised." The Septet is a vehicle for time and space travel through dense, narrow thickets and airy, wide expanses of boundary-blurred extrapolations of jazz, rock, late-20th-century European modernism and American minimalism, and 21st-century postmodern fusions. The trip is challenging, but the open-minded listener/traveler cannot help but come through the experience with new perspectives on sound and music. Perhaps most significantly, separately and conjoined, these units defy categorization by taking composition as seriously as they take improvisation, and by taking neither so seriously as to let one get in the way of the other. 

Of related interest:
80708 ROVA Saxophone Quartet & Nels Cline Singers - The Celestial Septet
80708b An Interview with Larry Ochs (Free Download)
80574 Jon Raskin Quartet - The Bass & The Bird Pond
80553 Quintet for A Day - What We Live

Sign Up for the Webcast

Review: Tribal Logic - Freaky Karma (2008, R.A.I.G)

After the likes of Sendelica, Gdeva and Motherfathers here is another release of a like-minded band, though much more versatile and varied in style.

Tribal Logic, a four-piece band from Chelyabinsk, delivers a fascinating instrumental journey into their musical mind; it goes through different styles and sections, various sounds and moods, shows good musicianship, a cohesive form and an ability to perform well whatever it is that they choose to play.

Band in the Spotlight: Phlox (Estonia; fusion/avant)

Estonian band playing fusion but isn't afraid of going beyond and experimenting.
After the Jump read about the band and listen to their music

Review & Spotlight: Komintern - Le Bal du Rat Mort (1971)

This French band was founded by Francis Lemonnier (sax and vocals) and Serge Catalano (drums and percussions) in May 1970 after they left Red Noise due to musical and political disagreements. The name chosen gives you a clear indication as to their political views. The band released one album called "Le Bal Du Rat Mort" in 1971 and one single "Fou, roi, pantin" and were active until 1975. The musicians that joined them were Michel Musac (guitar), Olivier Zdrzalik (bass, vocals, organ and piano) and Pascal Chassin (guitar). At first they were less focused on composing only music but more on mixing it along with satiric theater - a sort of "cabaret satirique", in order to express their extreme left views. They used their music to enhance their message, and they did it in a manner that mixed several styles of music that would fit their show and the message to be passed on to the crowd/listeners. They were related to extreme left movements such as the "Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire" and they toured in the summer of 1970 in, among other places, universities and factories that were in strike.

Review: Random Touch - A True Conductor Wears a Man (2007)

Here's a review I wrote some years ago about the first Random Touch album I heard, A True Conductor Wears A Man.


Moving between the Random and the Planned 

The name of this group might give a hint at what is going on here. But then again, I don't think anything is random here, maybe not well planned ahead, but if this is random, then the outcome is one hell of an organized mess for such a thing, though improvisation seems to have been part of the process.