#it's an anime queer rock musical about the freedom of art with political drama set in medieval Japan

[tako-fktsu]

Happy (late) 1st anniversary to my favourite anime movie <3

[joemuggs]

Kranky by Name...

Listening to the new Windy & Carl album I was reminded of the enduring greatness of the Kranky label, and that led me to dig up this piece I wrote, originally for the eMusic site, in 2011. There’s a ton of good music here.

Kranky's great skill is escapology; it is practically defined by its ability to evade definition. If there is received wisdom about the Chicagoan label, it's as a home for abstracted guitars, moody soundscapes and occasionally spiky electronic beats: all very serious, very studious, very intense. And maybe when Bruce Adams and Joel Leoschke founded it in 1993 it could be pegged as a relatively straightforward experimental-leaning indie label – but with each release it slips under, around, and away from standard categories. “Post-rock” doesn't capture the sheer variety of its guitar-based output, “ambient” is far too vague a term for its more textural releases, and “electronica” can't even come close to describing its more far-out sonic experiments. And despite its own claim to have “a very specific aesthetic” there is variety – such variety – in its catalogue. For every jittery and discordant Nudge record, there's Tim Hecker one that washes over you with waves of bliss; for every Charalambides creeping around disturbing corners of rare mindstates, there's an Out Hud that leaps out at you with vim, vivacity and a spring in its step. What unites them is a sense of switched-on intellects, outsider intelligences seeing what can be done with sound without getting sucked into academic self-regard – but the sounds themselves ebb and flow into new shapes with almost every release. 18 years into its existence, Kranky dares you to try and pin it down.

ESCAPING INDIE ROCK: Labradford 'A Stable Reference' 1995

A Stable Reference by Labradford

Kranky Records began in 1993 with Labradford's 'Prazision' album – a great and unique album, but still recognisably rooted in the same indie-rock soil as the likes of Spacemen 3 and Galaxie 500. The perhaps ironically-titled 'A Stable Reference', however, represented a complete untethering from these reference points, an abstraction and release from rock tropes that – paradoxically – helped make much clearer what “a Kranky record” was. Infused with the most sinister atmospheres of Ennio Morricone and Popol Vuh soundtracks, it is by turns claustrophobic and sweeping in its scope, but always brooding, revealing its dark ideas at its own pace. The term “post-rock” seems almost laughably prosaic next to these strange maps of unknown emotions, but it does describe the way this record marked a real escape from standard structures for the guitar-centred band. Its influence on the releases that would follow is clear: not in its sound, but in the careful balance between freedom and focus that it set up.

(See also: Windy & Carl 'Depths', Spiny Anteaters 'Current', Dadamah 'This is Not a Dream')

THE MULTI-FACETED: AMP 'Stenorette' 1998

Stenorette by Amp

Some of Kranky's acts are as indefinable as the label itself, as perfectly illustrated by the loose-knit AMP. Based around the core of British duo Richard Walker and Karine Chaff, the band evolved rapidly through experimental rock styles until this album, made in collaboration with Robert Hampson of Loop/Main and beat programmer Olivier Gauthier, which takes a completely magpie approach to genre. From the Sonic Youth guitar clang of 'You are Here' to crystalline piano pieces like 'Songe' and 'Just-Ice', meandering analogue synth trickles to dubbed-out breakbeats, completely abstract drones to practically jaunty songs, 'Stenorette' pulls together dozens of disparate elements – yet they never feel chosen arbitrarily just for the sake of diversity, but rather are selected entirely according to the musical logic of the album. That it avoids sounding like some kooky postmodern collage is impressive; that it shows a coherent and compelling personality of its own is little short of a miracle.

(See also: Keith Fullerton Whitman 'Playthroughs', Deerhunter 'Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.')

THE ELEMENTAL SYMPHONY: Godspeed You Black Emperor! 'Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven!' 2000

Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

This is the big one. Originally releasing vinyl only on their Constellation label, the intense Canadian collective GYBE! found a simpatico home with Kranky to reach out to wider audiences, in particular with this glorious suite. Over four 20-minute tracks, they redraw the rule of structure for the rock band format, paced with impeccable patience as they build from delicately sketched frameworks, sometimes with spoken narration, to vast climactic plateaux of guitar distortion surrounded by the swooping orchestral lines of the Silver Mount Zion instrumentalists. Laden with meaning to be unpicked and decoded, the record expresses everything from political fortitude and cosmic awe to utter desolation, sweeping the listener along in a slowly-changing but unstoppable drama of absolutely staggering scale.

(See also: Stars Of The Lid 'The Tired Sound of Stars Of The Lid')

KRANKY GETS ITS GROOVE ON: Out Hud 'S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D.' 2002

Street Dad by Outhud

With all its strangeness and exploration of the darker crevices of the subconscious, it could be easy to categorise this as a label for wallflowers. But Kranky knows how to dance, never better shown than on the two albums by Out Hud. This, their debut, came out just as LCD Soundsystem were bursting onto the scene and !!! (who share three members with Out Hud) were finding their groove; disco-punk was the sound of the moment. But true to Kranky style, this album has a deeply psychedelic, improvisatory feel – like a more discofied Gang Gang Dance, perhaps – that makes it stand out a mile from its contemporaries. Despite the kookiness of track names like 'Hair Dude You're Stepping on my Mystique', the snaking grooves, acidic keyboard sounds and genuinely dubwise FX mark this out as a very serious piece of dancefloor art.

(See also: Fontanelle 'Style Drift', Jessamine 'Jessamine', Strategy 'Drumsolo's Delight')

FRACTURED PSYCHEDELICISMS: Charilambides 'Unknown Spin' 2003

Unknown Spin by Charalambides

Whether you call it “free folk”, “music of the new weird America” or just good old fashioned freakouts, there's no doubting that the music of Tom and Christina Carter comes from a very psychedelic place. Allied to the loose movement that includes Sunburned Hand Of The Man, MV&EE, No-Neck Blues Band etc, Charilambides make a more strung-out noise than most of their contemporaries, the sound of people unafraid to explore their inner landscape, however scary it might become. Sometimes loose and discordant to the point of complete meltdown, sometimes coagulating around recognisable guitar solos that unfold like they've escaped from a Jefferson Airplane jam, these four tracks – especially the half-hour title number – are spacey, spooky and very, very weird indeed.

(See also: Tom Carter 'Monument', Christina Carter 'Electrice')

INNER AMBIENCE: Pan American 'Quiet City' 2004

Quiet City by Pan•American

Some of Kranky's greatest releases are those that dissolve rhythm and float free into wide open imaginative spaces. Certain acts, like Ethernet, work entirely with electronics, but more often, as with Pan American, they will blur the label's rich traditions of processed guitar drone with musique concrète, ambient and even new age music to make elegantly layered sounds one can get completely lost in. But this is not music to switch off to and doesn't offer the anodyne comfort of “chillout”: as the title perhaps suggests, 'Quiet City' invites contemplation and exploration of its spaces, but like any city, while it is complex and beautiful, there is dirt and threat here too. Like sitting outside in chilly dawn air in the aftermath of a chaotic night or on the morning before a life-changing decision, it feels like it exists outside of the usual routine of things.  

(See also: Tim Hecker 'Ravedeath, 1972' / Ethernet '144 Pulsations of Light' / White Rainbow 'Prism of Eternal Now' / Windy & Carl 'Songs for the Brokenhearted' / Keith Fullerton Whitman 'Multiples', Aix Em Klemm 'Aix Em Klemm')

PARALLEL WORLD POP: Atlas Sound 'Logos' 2009

Logos by Atlas Sound

Just as we all sometimes need a danceable rhythm, once in a while even the most dedicated noisenik or experimentalist secretly likes to hear a sweet melody – and Kranky provides that too, whether it's the mutant disco-pop of Out Hud's second record or the sweet hymns of Low. Alright, we're not talking Katy Perry here, but records like 'Logos' still shamelessly deal in the pleasure principle and instantly-recognisable songs and are passionately loved for that. The presence of Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and Animal Collective's Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) shows the territory this record is operating in, with plenty of references to psychedelic pop and Krautrock of the past all put into a kaleidoscope and reflected into new technicolour patterns. There's nothing facile or zoned-out about it, though – this is the gimlet-eyed and singular vision of Deerhunter frontman and “true queer art punk” Bradford Cox, and it exposes new intensities and weirdnesses with every play.

(See also: Low 'Secret Name', To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie 'The Patron', Deerhunter 'Spring Hall Convert', Out Hud 'Let us Never Speak of it Again')