[2012 in Review: Needles Numark, host of the Upstate Soundscape]

Needles is the host The Upstate Soundscape radio show. Here are 10 releases that he dug from 2012.

 

 

Sax Tape, S/T 

 

This insane 60-minute romp came from Guelph’s Bry Webb. An unbelievable collage of looped beats, sonic twirls, and honking saxes. Funky, twisted, and psychedelic, this one hit all the right notes for me.

 

 

 

Alfred Brown, Music for Moving in Slow Motion (Asthmatic Kitty)

 

Probably one of the most graceful records of 2012. It could easily serve as the score for one of Terrence Malick’s majestic films.

 

 

 

Cinnamon Aluminum, We Ate the Wrong Crab Spirit (Level 4 Activated)

 

This Buffalo trio (now a four piece) perfectly straddles the line between experimental and pop. The songs on this album are as catchy as they are whacked out.

 

 

Venn Rain, Bioharmonics (House of Alchemy)

 

It’s hard to put my finger on what exactly I like about this cassette, but I just found it totally compelling. Four very simple recordings, all of which are mesmerizing.

 

 

M. Mucci, Days Blur Together

 

60 minutes of true drone bliss from Guelph-based M. Mucci. One of the most patient and refined pieces I have ever heard. Very few pieces present listeners with this type of challenge and subsequent reward for committing to it. Basinski-esque.

 

 

Phillips-Borden, System Vandross

 

A really discombobulating listen. Following the intersection of Borden’s crazed cello and Phillips’s turntable manipulation is like trying to walk on shifting ground in the dark.

 

 

Tony Conrad and HangedUp, Transit of Venus (Constellation)

 

Such a simple formula. Big sloppy drums combined with thick vibrating drones. The result is what I always imagined the Theater of Eternal Music would have sounded like. Great for both sitting in a chair and zoning out to or flailing around the room and breaking shit.

 

 

Damian Valles, Non-Parallel (in Four Movements) (Experimedia)

 

I am a sucker for any sample-based drone. Valles’s re-use of classical avant-garde sounds from the Nonesuch label is a fantastic example of the possible directions sample-based sounds might go in the future (even if they don’t sound at like sample-based works).

 

 

Thoughts on Air, Random Tandem (Old Frontiers)

 

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Scott Johnson (ToA) one night in Hamilton this past summer. We traded some tapes, and this was one he gave me. The art work immediately blew me away but it wasn’t until driving home the next day hung over with the window’s down and music blasting that I actually heard this amazing double cassette. The graceful tones poured out my windows down the QEW. Then I got stuck in traffic on top of the Rainbow bridge in 90 degree heat with no air conditioning. A faint mist from the falls blew over me ever so often. I just sat there listening in a sweat induced trance. This tape will always run through my mind whenever I cross that bridge.

 

 

Loud and Sad, Fales Intimacy (cae-sur-a)

 

At times, there is so little going on in this cassette, which is what I love about it. You can really only absorb this by listening with all your might.

 

[Archive 10.03.12]

fem

1) Valgeir Sigurosson, “Between Monuments,” Architecture of Loss (Bedroom Community)

2) Can, “Dead Pigeon Suite,” The Lost Tapes Box Set (Mute)

3) Yo La Tengo, “Stupid Things (Original Instrumental),” Stupid Things EP (Matador)

4) Fennesz, “Fa 2012,” Fa 2012 12″ (Editions Mego)

5) Ay Fast, “Jazz Dads”

6) Dan Deacon, “Crash Jam,” America (Domino)

7) Teengirl Fantasy ft. Laurel Halo, “Mist of Time” Tracer (True Panther)

8) Sax Tape, “Side Two (excerpt)” Sax Tape 

9) Trio X, “Political Stripper” Magic

10) Gebhard Ullman, “Planetary Hopping on a Thursday Afternoon,” (

11) John Coltrane, “Sun Ship,” Sun Ship (Impulse)

12) Josef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch, “Etimasia,” (Sacred Bones)

13) Jealousy Mountain Duo, “Don’t Ask Me About Dresden,” No. 2 (Blunoise Records)

14) The Moon, “Electric Moon,”

15) MNT DST, “My Apocalypse”

16) VWLS, “Cough Spirit,” Broadcast in the Moss (Bad Drone Media)

[Review: Sax Tape, ‘S/T’]

Sax Tape kicks off with a challenge (via a garbled sample of WFMU’s Tom Scharpling): “Hey, look, we can admit the saxophone stinks as an instrument, right? It’s kinda like, you take it—like, ‘fine, I’ll take it’. When has a saxophone been good?”

Presumably, that is the question this LP from Guelph’s Bry Webb, who also fronts indie band The Constantines, attempts to answer.  In fact, the answer turns out to be a ponderous one, taking the listener through a series of saxophonic/rhythmic variations: the breathy burn of digi-lounge, the nasal strains of free jazz, the dizzying swells of carny trip-hop. There are also a few samples, stitching the whole thing together, including a few of Scharpling and also from fellow Canadian act Feuermusik. In sum, the listener gets a fair selection of the sax’s non-pop possibilities—or rather its range, which roams freely from pained seduction in the low end to riotous ecstasy in the high end.

The transitions are not about-faces (usually); instead, over the course of the recording’s 60 or so minutes, the variations bleed into and out of one another (the reader should be advised that there are no song-like delineations on either of the two 30-minute tracks). A change in beat often signals the introduction of a new musical contour, of which there are many; nonetheless, a paranoid, minor mood persists throughout. On the first track, neither percussion nor breath dominates and the two remain fairly subdued enough (notwithstanding the occasional fit) to label the thing atmospheric.

The drum machine tends to make the music a tad samey, and when it drops out (or gets less machine-like), at about the halfway mark on side two, a great, enticing funk vamp starts up—a sort of Miles Davis, Jack Johnson-era thing. This turns out to be merely a teaser, and we are slid comfortably back into the breathy/digi stuff from the first side.  By the last few minutes of the second side, we get some “hey-ho” drumming and nifty sax/electro-bleep freak-out, which then settles into a fizzle instead of erupting into a full-blown jam.

Note: Webb is donating all of the money generated from the download of this album to Ecojustice, Canada’s leading charity using the law to protect and restore the environment. So buy it.

________________________________________________________

Review by Shane Meyer

[Archive 08.22.12]

1) Blues Control, “Gypsum,” Valley Tangent (Drag City)

2) VWLS, “High Aye,” Reckless in Bed (Bad Drone Media)

3) Patrick Cain ft. Gabe Guiterrez and Jim Abramson, “R.A.A.R. Performance 2012 Live @ Squeaky Wheel”

4) Sax Tape, “Side 2,” Sax Tape   

5) Oneohtrix Point Never, “Sleep Dealer,” Replica (Software/Mexican Summer)

6) Peaking Lights, “Moonrise,” Lucifer (Weird World Record Co)

7) Animal Collective, “Monkey Riches,” Centipede Hz (Domino)

8) Aaron Dilloway/ Jason Lescalleet, “Burning Nest (excerpt),” Grapes and Snakes (Pan)

9) Odonis Odonis, “Seedgazer,” Hollandaze (Fat Cat)

10) National Park Service and Squanto, “Please Sit”

11) Max Neuhaus, “Radio Net (excerpt)”/ Brandon LaBelle in conversation with Max Neuhaus, Berlin 2008 (excerpt)

[Preview: Last show ‘Till 9.12.12]

Yup, taking a 2-week break before summer ends. But fear not, tonight’s show will be jam-packed with good stuff to hold you over. Here’s some sounds we’ll check out:

We’ll preview a couple of shows coming up including the Blues Control show at Soundlab in Buffalo on 8.30, the Jason Lescalleet shows in Rochester and Albany (8.30/8.31), and the Odonis Odonis show at Mohawk Place in Buffalo on 9.5.

Also on tap: new Animal Collective, Peaking Lights, and part two of the Sax Tape that we started last week.

And finally, if we have time, we’ll also check a very special recording from 1977. Those who were interested in yesterday’s post on the Music 114: Everyday Sounds and Experimental Music course being offered by the UB music department this fall will want to tune in and check this out. You’ll find a little hint of what’s in store below.

Show starts at 9pm on 91.3 FM WBNY. Stream at WBNY.org. Also, another programming note…when the show returns on 9.12.12, we will be on at a new time from 8pm-10pm, still Wed. nights.

[Archive 08.15.12]

1) Rambutan and Parashi, “Halogen 5,” Lesser Halogens (Sicsic Tapes)

2) Fossils from the Sun, “Blood 01,” Blood 08 (cae-sur-a)

3) Pauline Oliveros, “Part 2,” Primordial/Lift (Taiga)

4) Grasshopper, “I Sang a Sad Song Today,” Miles in the Sky (House of Alchemy)

5) Conrad Schnitzler, “Wild Space 2”

6) Sax Tape, “Part 1,” Sax Tape

7) FORMA, “Live on WBAR # 3”

8) Pulse Emitter, Meditative Music 3 (Expansive Music)

9) Phillips-Borden, “Fall of Icarus,” System Vandross 

10) C. Spencer Yeh and DJ Sniff, “04/02/12”

11) Matmos, “Very Large Green Triangles (edit),” The Ganzfield EP (Thrill Jockey)

12) Anna Friz and Eric Leonardson, “Waltz of the Parking Meters,” Excerpt from the suite of pieces “Dancing Walls Stir the Prairie”, Created at the free103point9.org Wave Farm, 2007.