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Date Palms

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Probably my favorite music video ever.

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12 track album

I remember I ordered an iBook in 2005 just to play with Garageband. I loved it.

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A nice little doc on shoe gaze.

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Forma — S/T

Forma is Mark Dwinell, Sophie Lam, and George Bennett from Brooklyn, NY. Their arsenal: analog synthesizers, programming, and drum machine.

The self-titled c38, their debut recording from Centre, re-imagines 1980s electronic dance sensibility with kraut-like groove and improvisation. The cassette overall is formatted with hypnotic, repetitive patterns which are broken up by short drone interludes. Longer tracks jump right into faux tom-tom drum beats layered with short cycling melodic phrases. Tightly wound rhythmic parameters makes Forma’s textural explorations and improvisation a subtler feature of their music than most of their synthesizer counterparts. While they cite minimal synth as a point of reference, the catchy grooves feel more accessible like a subdued New Order or sedated Human League. Although the song structures tend to be simple, Forma’s pieces never feel stale — they have an organic touch to their sound, they quickly build something familiar and tend to its constant development.

Forma — Forma will be reissued on vinyl May 15 by Spectrum Spools, subsidiary of Editions Mego curated by John Elliott (Emeralds, Outer Space, Mist, et. al).

http://formasounds.com/

http://editionsmego.com/spectrum-spools/

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Mark McGuire — Living With Yourself

The breakthrough success of Emeralds' Does it Look Like I'm Here? has lead to reissues of their catalog as well as attention to constituent members' solo releases. Mark McGuire, one third of Emeralds and a slugger in his own right, has relentlessly self-released CD-Rs and cassette tapes of multitracked kosmische guitar drone. His ostensibly auto-biographical Living With Yourself was released by Austrian imprint Editions Mego in 2010.

While sentimentality has become a criticism in the late aughts, McGuire isn't afraid to make a wholesome record about family and home. Along with song titles and photo album cover art, McGuire's guitars perfectly describe growing up and the nostalgia that accompanies contemplating the past. It wouldn't be difficult to imagine that Mark is expressing gratitude to his family for a good life.

Styled akin to Manuel Gottsching, tracks such as “Moving Apart” unravel a tapestry of texture, odd and bright guitar tones, phasing rhythms, and repetitious melodies. Standout track “Bran Storm (for Erin)” portrays a pop sensibility with a conventional ebb and flow arc, its rhythmic underpinnings serving as a substrate for meandering, echoed lines that lead into his energetic solos. The opening and closing tracks function as bookends. Both collage audio from childhood home recordings — dialogue between a young Mark, his brother Matt, and their father. The closer and only track to cross the ten-minute mark, “Brothers (for Matt)” mirrors “The Vast Structure of Recollection.” It opens with the same blurry clustered theme from the latter part of “Vast Structure [...]” which trickles beneath Mark's father inquiring into his love life. The whirring finds its way back to acoustic strumming, which is immediately interrupted by unadorned distorted power chords, a stark contrast from what falls between the first and last tracks. The rhythm guitar loops and the solos quickly build over them, the album's conclusion dissolves into a mellifluous mixture of acoustic guitar joy, processed loops, and unintelligible tender utterances.

http://mcguiremusic.blogspot.com/

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Dylan Ettinger — Botany Boy

Into the second decade of this century we've seen the proliferation of one-man acts. You're either Prince or a bit player. And controlling all of the parts also means releasing your music yourself — there seems to be more tape labels started by armchair composers (or improvisers as on-the-fly composers) than I can count. At the vanguard of synth revivalism has been Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds — catching the attention of internet tastemakers. Dylan Ettinger made a splash in 2010 with the reissue of New Age Outlaws by Not Not Fun Records. Originally a cassette release, it was subtitled Director's Cut for its vinyl pressing with added track and reordering.

Mr. Ettinger runs his own imprint, El Tule, representing fellow midwestern sound artists, and like midwestern aforementioned Emeralds, Dylan sticks to limited edition tapes. In the new year, Dylan Ettinger brings us Botany Boy on the finely curated and branded NNA Tapes label based out of Burlington, Vermont. The aesthetic of Botany Boy sounds familiar — a nostalgia that cannot quite be placed. A sound more finely tuned and focused than New Age Outlaws, Botany Boy's sound shares elements with 8-bit action side-scrollers and Dario Argento thriller soundtracks.

As alluded in the beginning, Botany Boy sets Ettinger as a composer that is clearly working through several layered lines, each staying within a certain register and exploiting the versatility of tone and timbre of the synthesizer. While tape releases tend to favor the long form — usually a track per side, Ettinger provides four neatly transitioned tracks on a C24 (24 minutes of tape). Each track follows the formula of a rhythmic and repetitive bass line that serves as the foundation for dawdling flourished phrases that become interwoven at a song's height before relaxing their tension and unraveling. Perhaps a stretch for purists Ettinger's newest work feels like a reimagining of Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air with a taste for the dance floor. Riley and his contemporaries too were working with improvisation and loops.

While Dylan Ettinger and other one-man acts are being quickly termed drone or hypnagogic, Botany Boy deals more with silence and deliberately poised rhythm than previous releases. While tape lends itself well to prolificity, I could easily see Etinnger revisitng Botany Boy for a director's cut as well.

http://www.nnatapes.com/

NNA021: Dylan Ettinger "Botany Bay" [sample] by nnatapes

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Baby Boy

Baby Boy is a post-punk four-piece band from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They share members with sludge metal group Thou. The Bayou brethren share an affinity for heavy riffs and slow n' steady drumming, but Baby Boy sheds the bluesy doom and plays closer to the punk end of the spectrum. They take aesthetic cues from Fugazi, mixing spoken and shouted vocals over grooved chunky riffs. Both guitarists and occasionally the bassist, share screaming duties; thus, guitars are usually at the forefront of the mix.

Their tour CD, a DIY artifact with hand-printed cover and xeroxed insert, features seven tracks at a little over 20 minutes total. The anthemic chord progression on track one, “Handwriting,” immediately paints the picture of balanced high energy and precise control that the band exercises over their repertoire. Their indiscernible lyrics work like seasoning over their guitar-work, adding texture and at times melody. Like most bands that count on playing loudly, Baby Boy's live performance outshines their recordings. 

http://babyboy.bandcamp.com/