Reviews – Page 3 – The Resident Sound

REVIEW: Montel Palmer – Catastropheland (2022)

Catastropheland, despite what its name suggests, instigates a state of dubbed out bliss. From the Cologne, Germany based trio Montel Palmer, Catastropheland is a lo-fi futuristic album full of post-apocalyptic minimal rhythms and tripped out, oil-slick synth ambience.

The album’s low fidelity recording wraps its contents in noisy warmth. Electronics percolate around bumping minimal synth bass lines while the occasional spoken vocal draws out in waves of delay. There’s a delightful degree of absurdity to it all, while still retaining an emotionally accessible tone.

Faintly reminding me of UK Hip-Hop group Strange U, Montel Palmer’s futuristic sound is simultaneously dystopian and relaxing. It’s not entirely uncommon to see people bemoaning our lack of ‘futurism’ as a sign of a dismal societal/global outlook, but perhaps what’s more telling is what we see in what little futurism we do have. It could be argued that ‘futurism’, as an artistic element or mode, could never accurately predict anything to come from the chaotic world we live in. But I believe an audience focusing on what futurism says about the future completely misses the point.

The future really is now.

For fans of: Bill Laswell, Meat Beat Manifesto, Ouxh,

Like Montel Palmer? Give these a listen: skintape, Strange U, Cindy

REVIEW: Malakas – Flamme Flottante (2018)

Flame Flottante is the 2018 EP release by French instrumental duo Malakas. Based in Coulommiers, France, band members K.Yordanoff and M.Le Saux have created a charming work of Post-Exotica.

Opening track Fatigues sinks the listener into a melancholic sea. Somber surf guitar, awash in reverb and wobbling tremolo, plods along while lapping brushed drums smears across the song’s musical structure. A harpsichord-sounding keyword elicits the sensation of light beams through stained glass, breaking outwards in floral kaleidoscopic fragmentation.

Similarly, the titular second track Flamme Flottante (Floating Flame) drifts along in an eerie space-age fashion before breaking into a Bossa-Nova tinged and organ driven dash to the finish. There’s a quality reminiscent of 1970s Italian film composers Giuliano Sorgini and Armando Trovajoli that is prevalent at first. That is until the album’s break in to a more distinctly indie rock territory on its second half.

B-side tracks HOO HAA and the closing Palapappa exhibit a more energetic, somewhat silly and less despondent indie rock approach. On both HOO HAA and Palapappa, Malakas pits guitar and synth to battle it out over an occasionally Math Rock influenced Indie sound. Though still far from the ‘boss fight’ aggression of Nintendocore / Surf champs The Advantage, the final two songs on this four song EP work back into a more Rock oriented sound.

The Surf music genre is undoubtedly an influence on most artists exploring Post-Exotica themes, and it shows here. Surf has seemingly always had one foot in the cinematic and one foot in pure playfulness. I like that about Flamme Flottante. Even if the latter half doesn’t engage me in as intense of a way as the album’s more cinematic first half, that the album can balance these two at times contrasting depictions creates for a well-rounded EP.

Flamme Flottante is Post-Exotica bliss, exploring both the tropical sounds of the age of Hi-Fi’s past and more contemporary instrumental playfulness.

For fans of: The Advantage, Hospitality, Armando Trovajoli

Like Malakas? Give these a listen: Giuliano Sorgini, Why?, Battles

REVIEW: Rahiem Supreme – The Treacherous Charm (2020)

At times jazzy and smooth, at other times speaker-smashing sneaker-squeakin’ Electro, Rahiem Supreme’s 2020 release The Treacherous Charm has a little something for everybody. Part of the Washington DC-based rapper’s prolific pandemic streak of releases, The Treacherous Charm is sometimes humorous, always passionate.

Tracks on The Treacherous Charm are short, sweet, and end abruptly (upon first hearing them, somewhat jarringly). There’s a spontaneity to all of it which makes it feel fresh, a little raw. If you’re daunted by a 17-track album (c’mon now, it’s still only 30-something minutes), some standout tracks I recommend starting with include Shroomstories Freestyle (produced by Twelveam), Mewvsmewtwo (produced by Hvyarms), and the choppy glitch jam Futuristichybridpimp5000 (produced by Al Divino).

There’s a (forgive me) James Joyce quality to Rahiem Supreme’s dense lyrical imagery. Perhaps this is what had me immediately sending links to my Kool Keith loving friends. But Rahiem Supreme- the Grandmaster Splash- is in a surreal rap world of his own.

Pulling a quote from the introduction to The Man Wears Moschino: An Interview with Rahiem Supreme by Pete Tosiello:

”If there’s an element of escapism to Supreme’s verses—the funhouse mirror version of frequent collaborator Ankhlejohn’s dour, crime-infested underworld—they’re grounded by his autobiographical material which captures a rough-and-tumble mid-Atlantic childhood without self-pity or clean resolution.”
– Pete Tosiello, The Man Wears Moschino: An Interview with Rahiem Supreme

If anything written here piqued your interest, you’re in for a good time.

You can read Pete Tosiello’s interview with Rahiem Supreme over at Passion of The Weiss.

For fans of: Kool Keith, Lootpack, WunTwo

Like Rahiem Supreme? Give these a listen: Lunar C, Dr Zygote, Nostalgianoid

REVIEW: The Tleilaxu Music Machine – Audrey’s Trance / I Saw Her Die EP (2011)

Remixed film tracks in the days of Witch House, these wonkified reworks of Angelo Badalamenti and Ennio Morricone are representative of a time, a brief moment, standing on the edge of Twin Peaks’ new-found cultural ubiquity, when the previously cult show of the early 90s was only starting to be reworked into contemporary culture. While Twin Peaks’ influence on the Doom Jazz genre cannot go understated, it’s here, at the beginning of television streaming in the early teens, that we begin to see Twin Peaks looked to en mass.

Opening track Audrey’s Trance is a warped and wistful refashioning of Badalamenti’s Audrey’s Dance from one of many iconic R&R diner scenes. The EP as a whole serves as a reminder of the early 2010s’ click-clacky percussion and penchant for side-chaining. The fledgling embrace of a purely-digital tonality may now feel primitive (or video game-esque), but delights in the eerie and off-kilter soothing quality similar to that of Twin Peaks.

I Saw Her Die, a reworking of Ennio Morricone’s theme from the Giallo film Chi L’ha Vista Morire? (1972), ramps up in intensity. Its chopped and warped choir samples fitting for the gnostic aesthetics of a genre like Witch House- the track’s energetic uptick decidedly something out of the world of video games.

At 7 minutes 49 seconds in duration, the EP’s closing track Your Melancholick Touch is a decent Dark Ambient work to close out the album. A dark drag of digital noise stretched out in all its low bit-rate glory. The song’s singular refrain repeats until entropy and eventual unceremonious cut-off. This almost depiction of ‘non-time’ remains fettered to the medium’s boundaries- with Ambient recordings of any kind we may imagine we ‘get lost’, but we’re always brought back. There is a definitive, inevitable end to this which attempts to capture the infinite. Your Melancholick Touch, like most worthwhile Dark Ambient, attempts to depict angst-undefinable.

Witch House was in a lot of ways a digital fashion trend, a commercial quicksilver in our narcissistic consumer culture. But looking back, there can still be pleasant or even worthwhile gems. I would say The Tleilaxu Music Machine (now releasing work under Pink Abduction Ray) has produced one of these gems. But what emotional urgency captured here remains relevant today? By going backward, do we find ourselves? Or do we simply find something to be mined? Perhaps that can only be self-interrogated by the individual listener.

For fans of: Pink Abduction Ray, Sidewalks and Skeletons, Blank Banshee

Like The Tleilaxu Music Machine? Give these a listen: Meat Beat Manifesto, Mikado Koko, Berberian Sound Studio (Broadcast)

REVIEW: Mazut – Sarajevo (2021)

Released in 2021 on the Polish label Positive Regression, Warsaw-based duo Mazut’s Sarajevo is a driving industrialized Techno EP free of the Industrial genre’s tackier connotations.

Reminiscent of the early works of Front 242, Sarajevo’s Industrial framework is a maximalist fantasy built from a plethora of minimalist motifs. The 4 song EP has a clicky analog tonality- plenty of warmth, with cold electronic drafts. Go-Go percussion is pressed into the ‘4 on the floor’ mold of Techno creating driving rigidity with dance persuasion.

Mazut articulate the intrinsic beauty of mechanical function. Countless motifs interlock and counteract in dense, lengthy tracks. In this way, Sarajevo comes across as a spiritual companion to Post-Modern artist Chris Burden’s sculpture Metropolis II, in which hundreds of 1:64-scale toy cars fly around an abstract model city in traffic purgatory.

Art, as artifice, will always have shortcomings if it attempts to react and express in a literal manner (this could be said for derivative works too). It’s important to let our environment speak through us, dictated not by our literal perception of our environment but by the environment’s emotional presence within ourselves. What makes a record like Mazut’s Sarajevo or Ouxh’s Machines in Care worthwhile is their ability to channel the expression of this presence through the appropriate thematic textures and musicality. This is only one tool in the kit of craft, but what does it say about the work itself?

The cohabitation of machine and human is perhaps the definitive trait of our current age. Humanity’s identity crisis between animal and mechanical has been pondered endlessly in sci-fi and horror works, and this doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. In the case of Sarajevo, somewhere between technological and organic, Mazut presents the human identity as it sounds.

Should you choose to watch the Metropolis II documentary, consider re-watching it with the original audio muted while playing this album. It’s incredibly fitting!

For fans of: Front 242, KLF, Filmmaker

Like Mazut? Give these a listen: Ouxh, Schwefelgelb, VOM

REVIEW: Slow Blink – Warmth (2020)

Warmth is a 2020 single release by artist Amanda Haswell under the alias Slow Blink. Based in Chattanooga, TN, Haswell’s slow hypnotic tape loops pull and morph themselves into a haze of melancholia. Warmth is, appropriately, a very warm track full of speaker buzz and fuzz. As with Haswell’s other releases comes the strong, controlling yet calming sensation of guided tranquility. At times introspective of the artist and the listener, and at times an external force- something as ancient as mother earth itself.

I can’t recommend it enough.

For fans of: Chelsea Wolfe, Grouper, Susumu Yokota

Like Slow Blink? Give these a listen: Brian J Davis, Robert Chamberlain, Music For Sleep,

REVIEW: Good Grief – Git Gooder (2018)

It’s sloppy, muddy, and all there. The potency of the Good Grief’s songwriting and dedicated performance is a cut above the rest. Git Gooder is the sole album by Asheville, NC Punk band Good Grief. Released in 2018, the songs featured on the album are short, sweet, and to the point. Git Gooder’s sweeter moments, such as Prom Song’s saccharine sincerity, are balanced so well and so seamlessly by the anger and discontent shown on tracks like Valentines 2018 and Brewery.

That said, second to closing track Brewery is the best evocation of the sullen rage one feels growing up in a beer tourism town.

It’s hard to describe what makes Good Grief a cut above the rest, but I like to think it can be triangulated between the spirit of Crucifix, Husker Du, and early Weezer. Yeah, that’s right, I brought Weezer into this.

Buy this record.

For fans of: Husker Du, The Dicks, The Spits

Like Good Grief? Give these a listen: Nature Boys, The DiMarcos, The Budget

REVIEW: Eleven Pond – Watching Trees / Portugal (2012)

The Angular Records’ 2012 re-release of Eleven Pond – Watching Trees / Portugal single comes across somewhat ‘standard issue’ from the surplus of the recent past. Originally released in 1986, this moody synth-pop single was mostly distributed in Europe (according to Angular) and has yet to be caught by Discogs at the time of this articles release.

A-side track Watching Trees is milked for everything its worth over 3 versions on the re-release, though the Bedroom 4track Mix bookend version is “completely identical” to the opening Bedroom Demo version according to Bandcamp user Chrisdee. Percolating synth lines blip and bubble across an undercurrent of ghostly synth wails. Steady drum machine rhythms thump back and forth while vocalist James Tabbi pines for the incidental attention of being seen in a tree.

I fail to catch anything noteworthy or particularly distinct from b-side track Portugal. It all comes across a bit quaint, dated, or simply lacking. But b-sides never really were the star, were they?

Watching Trees lives on via digital giants of music discovery; an algorithmically transmissible Spotify track and on Bandcamp with inconsequential bonus versions of its a-side. It’s not a record that will change anybody’s life, but is worth interrupting one’s doom scrolling to check it out.

For fans of: New Order, Flock of Seagulls, Visage

Like Eleven Pond? Give these a listen: The KVB, Mount Sims, Dream Affair

REVIEW: Nmesh, t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – ロストエデンへのパス (The Path To Lost Eden) (2015)

ロストエデンへのパス (The Path To Lost Eden) is the 2015 album by Vaporwave and Electronic psychedelic artists t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 and Nmesh, respectively.

With a 2 hour runtime, this behemoth of a split album forces even the most reluctant listener into its steady molasses groove. Massive layers of synth pads blanket the album in a lush fog, a defining feature I would eventually come to view as an intense dedication to New Age flaccidity.

Interrupting ロストエデンへのパス’s slow serenity are moments of jarring tackiness. E.g. the Nmesh produced 心はシダであります, in which punchy synth flutes dominate all sonic space. Other notably grating moments include a scattershot of speech samples; a litany of gritty male monologues throughout the album and the standout soft-pornographic dialogue of 体熱.

Copy from the album’s Bandcamp page sells Nmesh’s use of speech sampling as the following: “Fans of Nmesh will recognize his narrative-like composition techniques, with use of quotes to maintain a sense of cohesion between the different tracks and new age vibes…”, which posits that the most finely crafted art in relation to this album is the art of good copy.

By track 9 I had wished the album had ended by track 2. Nmesh never quite breaks away from or expands upon this sound, which by the time the album nears the 1 hour mark I can only pejoratively call it a ‘formula’. Chord progressions feel like an afterthought with each snippet of speech acting like a marker of time- more so a palette obstruction than a much needed palette cleanser.

I couldn’t have been more bored by the time the Telepath b-side takes hold. Not the ideal mentality to be in for the slow textural works of Vaporwave, particularly for a near 7 minute long soundscape.

Tacky synth flutes carry over to the album’s b-side, much to my disdain. But while remaining sonically complimentary to the Nmesh a-side, Telepath creates a degree of vigor which had previously been lacking.

The third Telepath song 東京の夜 blends percussive folly and synthetic instrumentation into a lush and rewarding track not topped anywhere else on the album. The use of processed vocal samples are intriguing here, especially after so many milquetoast speech samples across the a-side.

I wish Telepath’s contribution could have been more of a saving grace to ロストエデンへのパス, yet still has the shortcomings of a repetitive hour long work by itself. Perhaps if released on its own my view of the Telepath b-side would be more complimentary, but what doesn’t fix an hour of slow synth pads is more of the same.

In total, ロストエデンへのパス (The Path To Lost Eden) acts as a work of New Age Exotica by two white men- Nmesh, or Alex Koenig from Kentucky, and Telepath, or Luke Laurila from Ohio- and which at times uncomfortably strays into Orientalism.

While individual tracks have at times been intriguing to me, the album itself fails to expand upon ideas and emotions within the aesthetics both artists have stringently adhered to. There’s plenty of other meditative works out there to be explored, don’t worry about getting through this one.

For fans of: Macintosh Plus, Mandragora, Cobalt Road

Like Nmesh, t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者? Give these a listen: 식료품groceries, Heaven Drugs, Tim Hecker

REVIEW: VTSS – Identity Process (2019)

If relentless pounding Techno is your jam, you better get out the toast for this record. Not to be confused with the goofball festival that is cyber goth, Identity Process sounds Industrial in quite a literal way.

Bring The Noize opens the album with its rough and relentless mechanical tonality and textures. It’s beautifully hypnotic in a way that’s similar to a high functioning fully-automated assembly line. The whole album is like this, though finds its softer side (albeit still pounding) by closing track Devil-may-care.

Warsaw-born, London-based DJ and producer Martyna Maja started putting out music under the moniker VTSS since 2018, releasing their debut EP Self Will on the German label Intrepid Skin that same year. Identity Process is an exciting listen both as a stand alone record and as a release only 1 year into Maja’s trajectory as a producer. I look forward to hearing the many avenues which VTSS may go down in the coming years, and their interpretations and distinctions as an artist in an Electronic medium.

VTSS’s forthcoming 12” EP Projections is slated for an early 2022 release and is now open for pre-orders on Bandcamp. You can go stream 1 track from the album, Trust Me, right here.

For fans of: Regis, Front 242, Schwefelgelb

Like VTSS? Give these a listen: Ouxh, Tommy Holohan, Choking Chain