Terrible Frequencies

A feature I wrote for NYLON Singapore about the island’s...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 14:14:00 +0800

A feature I wrote for NYLON Singapore about the island’s electronic music scene and its genesis.

Took many weekends to research, source, interview and draft, but I’m pretty happy with the story. And it’s way more fun than a regular profile or record review.

thewiremagazine: Arve HenriksenSolidification(Rune...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:25:13 +0800

thewiremagazine:

Arve Henriksen
Solidification
(Rune Grammofon)

7LP + 2DVD box set on Rune Grammofon, from Supersilent member Arve Henriksen. Cover design by Kim Hiorthøy.

My wallet’s gonna hurt

I contributed a couple of entries to ZIGGY magazine for one of...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:31:00 +0800

I contributed a couple of entries to ZIGGY magazine for one of those ‘Best of 2012’ lists. Not all my picks were printed, though (only one in the top 10!) And I still don’t get the whole deal about Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips. Oh, and Japandroids. What’s up with that band, seriously?

Here’s my full list:

Food - Mercurial Balm

Food brings plenty to the table on its second outing on ECM Records. Layers upon layers of nocturnal saxophone licks, industrial ambience, and electronic gurgles, courtesy of opportune sideman Christian Fennesz, fill the contemplative Mercurial Balm. It’s an album’s worth of improvised tracks, wrought to a irresistible whole by the British–Norwegian jazz duo.

Julia Holter - Ekstasis

Beautifully crafted dream pop: pastel shades, hushed vocals and twee toy box sounds fulfil all the demands of the genre with finesse. But what sets Holter apart—the real ecstasy of the album—is the murky ambient brook that runs throughout; she is as indebted to Mazzy Star’s pop as she is to Windy & Carl’s foggy atmospheres.

Emptyset - Medium

Nothing musical here compared to the rest of the list, but Medium is 21 minutes of sheer, head-pounding bass bliss. This five-tracker was recorded live in a ramshackle, neo-Gothic mansion in the English hinterland, with the Bristol twosome paying almost supernatural attention to capturing—and then rendering—the inherent acoustics and reverberations (and spirits?) of the storied building.

The Observatory - CATACOMBS

Ten years on and Singapore’s premier avant rock outfit have lost none of its taste for the dark and bleak. CATACOMBS is primed as a study into modern day madness, calling forth clanging Tibetan bells, brutish machine-gun textures and Leslie Low’s brooding, messianic tenor. Not an album to listen to right before bed, lest the wretched headworms bite.

James Iha - Look to the Sky

It’s shamelessly outdated, has appalling lyrics, and won’t get you in good books with the hipsters… but, really, this is all nostalgia talking. If you’re (still) a Pumpkins fan and can’t stand the saturnine dross that ol’ baldie is putting out these days, set your ray to the other half of the Siamese Dream instead. At least Iha won’t tell you to f*ck off.

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas

Forget Frank Ocean—there’s only one fella when it comes to confessional songwriting: Leonard Cohen. What Ocean has in style and R&B magnetism, the real Ladies’ Man makes up for with spades of wit and charm and poise. Just read this first wry line on Old Ideas, and you’ll catch my drift: ”I’d like to speak with Leonard / He’s a sportsman and a shepherd / He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit.”

Pharaoh Overlord - Lunar Jetman

Yes, as its name would suggest, this is an album full of sticky psychedelic goo for the expert space cadet. On it, the Finnish trio throw down devilish grooves and kosmische sludge that coalesce, riff by soaring riff, into something far more trancelike and nebular than your average toke can claim to induce. Unless, of course, you’re already too stoned to care.

Josephine Foster - Blood Rushing

If Kath Bloom hadn’t abandoned her guitar in the 1970s and had instead embarked on a gallant road trip through American canyons and dusty Spanish hills, well, at least there’s Josephine Foster who did. But it’s really her voice leading Blood Rushing’s charge: an awkward, trembling soprano that manages to single-handedly stir up a sandstorm of faded folk and gypsified opera.

Actress - R.I.P.

Whatever Darren Cunningham is mourning here, it sure as hell isn’t a post-Splaszh slump. After 2010’s brilliant LP comes hurtling from the ether this morbidly titled one, on which the British electronic enigma doesn’t so much as build but imply beats, their amorphous 4/4 blanketed by a curious wall of texture and noise. It’s beyond-the-dancefloor techno that, despite its name, has plenty of life in its crackles and crags.

The Bad Plus - Made Possible

Each year, there’s a release that doesn’t startle, pique or challenge—it’s just plain, unpretentious good listening. That, to me, is The Bad Plus’ 10th album. Although not an insurmountable survey of its long and winding career, Made Possible represents the three-piece at its inventive best. Notes are flurried out with cool confidence, but like that other 2013 favourite, for each ascent comes this under-appreciated ‘Allelujah: restraint!

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Andy Stott - Luxury Problems

Dubby, petrified ghosts of a techno DJ… and an opera singer.

Helm - Impossible Symmetry

Ostensibly drone, but with enough radiophonic sounds to please the hauntology fetishists.

Old Apparatus - Alfur

Anonymous London trio whose nightmares are scored in industrial, hip-hop and dub-step.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

Riding out the last days of post-rock on a Wooden Shjip to Glenn Branca’s guitar closet.

Dirty Three - Toward the Low Sun

Pseudo-psych freakouts soundtracked by that tormented, lamenting, almost oppressive fiddle.

discographies: Excerpt from work in progress.

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:25:11 +0800

discographies:

Excerpt from work in progress.

grupaok: C. Spencer Yeh, “Japanese Noise: A Reminder,” 2012...

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 07:53:57 +0800

grupaok:

C. Spencer Yeh, “Japanese Noise: A Reminder,” 2012 [via rhizome.org]

Helm Impossible Symmetry So I lasted about two songs into the...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:02:00 +0800

Helm Impossible Symmetry

So I lasted about two songs into the new Purity Ring album before finding it too whimsical, breathy, dreamy and, for lack of a better word, ‘girly’—that’s different from ‘feminine’; think Amy Millan versus Feist—for my taste. I loaded up Helm’s new album instead, which got a pretty favourable review on FACT magazine. Much, much better.

Impossible Symmetry offers, interestingly enough for what is ostensibly drone, a varied but focused five tracks. Abrasive textures, power electronics and an industrial fetish might make Luke Younger more a son of the noise canon, yet there are shadows of necromantic radiophonic sounds in there, like if Belbury Poly’s mythical township had suddenly and violently been overrun by zombies. And if you listen carefully, a haunted musical box (a Ghost Box?) clinks in the deep bowels of one track.

The strongest track, “Liskojen yö”, is also the strangest. It’s the only one with a semblance of a rhythmic pulse, except it’s asphyxiated in murk, the gurgle Pan Sonic and Autechre’s hate-child might make as it drowns. Between each bassy hit are desecrated church bells, urban clangs and a wretched wobble that add dark ambience, but there is real urgency as well: What starts off as a soft, eerie whine at the track’s spine gradually ascends to a tormented high-pitched wail, as though the black blood from Younger’s machines are slowly drained away.

I’ll take grim over girly any day.

From Kitchen. Label and their ever-exquisite album...

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:59:45 +0800

From Kitchen. Label and their ever-exquisite album art.

thewiremagazine:

Evade
Destroy & Dream
(Kitchen. Label)

CD in folded paper packaging and cardboard inner, produced in an edition of 1000.

Favourite Albums of 2012 (So Far…) Well, here they are, in no...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:58:00 +0800

Julia Holter - Ekstasis

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas

Emptyset - Medium

Ilyas Ahmed - By the Light

The Observatory - Catacombs

AMT & TMPUFO - Son of a Bitches Brew

John Zorn - Nosferatu

Atom TM - Winterreise

Pharaoh Overlord - Lunar Jetman

Dirty Three - Toward the Low Sun

Favourite Albums of 2012 (So Far…)

Well, here they are, in no particular order. There are a couple I missed out—Tumblr has a 10-photo limit—and too many I haven’t even heard.

As far as hyped-up albums go, it’s been fairly disappointing. Best Coast did nothing but get on my nerves (I blame that Wavves dude); Beach House played Beach House; Japandroids sacrificed attitude for lo-fi-faux-fun; Grimes made me go meh; Peaking Lights’ Lucifer didn’t match up to 936 (I blame their kid). And God only knows why The Beach Boys are still making music.

Julia Holter’s my favourite so far, and for some reason I can’t take John Zorn’s Nosferatu off my playlist.It’s as dark as anything Bohren has done, but on a much more engaging level. Dirty Three came from nowhere to cut its album that, in its pseudo-psych freakouts and lingering violins, offers an interesting update to Godspeed’s post-rock model. Emptyset just clears my mind.

Except for James Iha’s sophomore solo and the second Willits + Sakamoto collaboration, I can’t think of any other album I’m looking forward to. But considering how the other hype beasts fared, maybe I shouldn’t be.

The List

Julia Holter Ekstasis
Leonard Cohen Old Ideas
Emptyset Medium
Ilyas Ahmed By the Light
The Observatory Catacombs
Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO Son of a Bitches Brew
John Zorn Nosferatu
Atom TM Winterreise
Pharaoh Overlord Lunar Jetman
Dirty Three Toward the Low Sun

Only the collective WTF from a few friends stopped me from...

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 11:47:20 +0800

Only the collective WTF from a few friends stopped me from buying this $30 paperweight.

thewiremagazine:

Various Artists
Schrödinger’s Cassette
(CS2 Recordings)

Cassette tape encased in industrial grade concrete, crafted in an edition of 100.

“You hold in your hand a concrete brick, inside of which there is music. The only way to hear the music contained within is to crack it, but to do so puts the music itself at risk. By your own actions you can either free the music or render it forever unlistenable. Or, you can leave it in its present state where it only has the potential to become music. The musicability of the concrete is entirely in your hands.”

It’s a little weird seeing a story I wrote on the cover of...

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0800

It’s a little weird seeing a story I wrote on the cover of a fashion magazine (no prizes for guessing which). Anyway, had fun talking to the people who brought Singapore out of the ‘music-as-moral-panic’ ages; there’s a level of honesty and humility and hunger there that some younger musicians just don’t have or want.

Admittedly, you’d need more than a couple of pages in a magazine to do them justice—not that I set out to write a definitive guide, given my relative youth—but hey, it’s better than nothing, eh?

I would love to read a primer on xinyao music, though. It’s probably the closest thing we have to a “Singaporean sound”, which a certain blog tried (but failed, IMO) to define. Hurrah to the straw men!

"I think a lot of bands just wanna sound like a C86 band."

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:57:00 +0800

“I think a lot of bands just wanna sound like a C86 band.”

- Jim Reid

It’s hard to tell if Phil Elvrum, in his Mount Eerie guise, is...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:27:00 +0800

It’s hard to tell if Phil Elvrum, in his Mount Eerie guise, is sketching his inner universe or the vast one outside of it. The songs on Clear Moon bear faint traces of folk and black metal, with the latter sowing a messianic quality in Elvrum’s otherwise lilting voice. By the record’s end, you’ll find it ventures to the yawning, cavernous end of hope, a point at which emotion gives way to dispassion, and human warmth to cosmic chill.

Am still undecided if I prefer this or his previous release, the grim, Burzum-esque Wind’s Poem.

This is “House Shape”, the lead single off Clear Moon. The album is one-half of a double LP; the second part will be released by year’s end.

One of the better releases I’ve heard in recent weeks,...

Mon, 28 May 2012 01:57:23 +0800

One of the better releases I’ve heard in recent weeks, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO’s improv tribute to Miles Davis’ seminal fusion album will melt your face—and mind—right off. It’s a heady, electrifying brew that verges on cacophony, but the collective still grooves as well as it rawks the fuck out. Not sure if Miles will appreciate the curdling take on his classic, but I’m willing to bet he’d get his horn out as soon as that first, ecstatic guitar note blisters and ascends.

This is “Tabata Mitsuru”, off Son of a Bitches Brew.

One of the bands I caught in Tokyo was Yo Homme, an all-girl...

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:41:00 +0800

One of the bands I caught in Tokyo was Yo Homme, an all-girl power trio with devilishly groovy riffs and the laziest Japanese drawl I heard during my holiday. The grrls toe the line between stoner rock and nineties grunge of an American persuasion, but Nii’s blitzed/blissed guitar scorches in a way that’s unmistakably like Japanese psych.

Listen here (いいこだよ) for a studio recording of the song, whose name translates to “I’m a Good Girl”.

In a small live house in Tokyo, a band called Club No 6 played...

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:42:40 +0800

In a small live house in Tokyo, a band called Club No 6 played to 10 people, but as though there were 1,000.

Grouper. 4 cassette players, 1 guitar, voice. No computers...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:32:27 +0800

Grouper. 4 cassette players, 1 guitar, voice. No computers necessary (Taken with instagram)

Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto in the bartender/DJ’s selection...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 02:39:42 +0800

Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto in the bartender/DJ’s selection while The Atomic Cafe runs in the background. Tokyo is awesome?

An interview I did with The Observatory for NYLON...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:06:35 +0800

An interview I did with The Observatory for NYLON Singapore’s April issue. My good friend Justin Ong’s record reviews are in the sidebar.

It’s only been four months into 2012 but Julia...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0800

It’s only been four months into 2012 but Julia Holter’s Ekstasis is primed to be on many critics’ top 10—no, five—of the year. The album is beautifully crafted dream pop: pastel shades, hushed vocals and twee toy box sounds, which have essentially been the demands of the genre in recent years. But what sets Holter apart, the real ecstasy of the album, is the murky ambient brook runs throughout Ekstasis; she is indebted as much to Mazzy Star’s pop as she is to Windy & Carl’s foggy atmospheres.

This is the newly released video for Julia Holter’s “Moni Mon Amie”.

PS: Forget the egg-headed reviews of the album that reference Heidegger. This is pop, not philosophy.

MONSTER CAT releases the video for “Underwater”...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:52:33 +0800

MONSTER CAT releases the video for “Underwater” today. The song is a disturbing Clementine to a lost sweetheart, and I can’t tell if Hentai Cat is repentant or relieved when he whispers: “Oh my dear, you’re dying.”

This is from the band’s EP, Mannequins.

From a recent interview I did with the band:

“Hentai Cat and Black Cat don’t so much as sing but breathe the words, their voices entwining like beleaguered lovers.”