Karlheinz Stockhausen – Kontra-Punkte; Refrain; Zeitmasze; Schlagtrio [Ensemble Recherche]

2009 • Wergo

I first listened to this album with low expectations. Serialism has never been a genre I have enjoyed very much and I've always come away disappointed from albums like this. However, Stockhausen is a very well-known and highly-lauded composer in the genre so I was willing to give it another shot. I firmly believe that there is good music to be found in any genre; it's just that sometimes it may take a bit of digging to get to. But serialism and indeterminacy often, to me, just sound too random to be enjoyable—like trying to read a page of "lorem ipsum" and figuring out what it means. Perhaps it's a lack of understanding, as I'm still pretty new to the style, but despite my efforts it's still a very difficult type of music to get into.

One thing I do enjoy about this collection is the interesting different ensembles used to perform the pieces. Most serialism and indeterminacy I've heard (that I can think of now) was performed with very small ensembles, often just one or two instruments (like Cage's prepared piano pieces), probably to prevent it sounding too dissonant and random. But here we get a mix: in "Kontra-Punkt", ten players of various instruments; in "Refrain", piano, vibraphone, other unusual percussion, and odd vocalizing; in "Zeitmaße" woodwinds; in "Schlagtrio" piano and timpani. To me the pieces sound a bit more chaotic this way as opposed to the simple piano pieces I'm used to, although fortunately the sound never quite reaches the "orchestra warming up"-level because the compositions are all quite sparse, usually with only two or three instruments playing at once.

The composition still baffles me, though. I'm not unused to atonal or dissonant music but with these pieces I cannot understand the motivation behind their composition and performance. As far as I can tell, the musicians do a great job with the performance, but their skills aren't enough to make an enjoyable record. In the first two and last tracks, mostly, there seems to be zero structure and flow to the composition and they wind up sounding very random, like children timidly banging on the instruments to see what happens. "Zeitmaße", thankfully, has a bit more structure to it and the instruments actually play together at the beginning, although it frequently falls apart into dissonance throughout. This particular composition feels a bit more traditional; this is probably due to the instrumentation, but I find it easier to enjoy than the other three, if only a little bit.

I probably shouldn't be reviewing this album at all since, like I said, I don't know much about this style of music and after writing this review I am nowhere closer to understanding it. Enjoying it? Probably not. It's very complicated music, music which demands attention, otherwise it comes off as simply noise (and I know where to go to get good noise). Or maybe it's just not for me at all. There's clearly something Stockhausen and his fans are getting that I'm not; maybe one day I'll find out what it is.

4

Genocide Organ – Remember

December 1997 • Tesco Organisation

I should admit right off the bat that in general, when it comes to noise, power electronics isn't my favorite. I usually find the sound too irritating to listen to, or too abrasive, and it's hard to respect and take seriously many of the groups with their often "controversial" thematics and imagery. Genocide Organ is one of those typical groups, but the one album by them I've heard—Remember—is actually quite good, and a heck of a lot more listenable than most other power electronics I've heard.

Perhaps one of the better things about the album is its deviation from what one might call the "typical" power electronics sound; Remember is often very noisy but isn't as grating or uncomfortable to listen to like most other tracks I've heard. Some of the tracks are more akin to your typical harsh Wolf Eyes sound. Where they aren't, it doesn't seem too terribly different from, say, Whitehouse, with heavy reverb, stretches of droning distortion, and shouted, incomprehensible vocals. Unlike Whitehouse or some other death industrial, though, this is a relatively "safe" album; it never really does anything to surprise or scare the listener (unless you find the vocals or samples scary, which I don't really).

The album provides a lot of the sampling that is common in the genre, too; mostly spoken word in German. I like samples when they're incorporated well into the rest of the sounds and here they're done very well, often sitting in the background and adding to the atmosphere rather than overpowering the noise. However, they are a touch overdone at points, especially when repeated constantly through an entire track.

I will have to ding the album a bit for being way too long at nearly an hour and a half (especially the 2007 re-release, which pushes it well over the two-hour mark), as there's only so much power electronics I can take at once; when re-listening for this review I was ready to be done only halfway through. Fortunately, the album is actually pretty diverse within the genre and the tracks don't sound too similar (again, incorporating some harsh noise, death industrial, and drone elements), so even when listened to as background music the album does a pretty good job of staying relatively interesting. However as I said before there isn't much surprising to be found here, so it can't often grab the listener's attention, and it's probably best listened to in chunks.

Regardless, since Genocide Organ is now considered to be one of the more important power electronics groups and Remember has got a pretty good thing going for it, the album should probably be given a spin by most noise listeners; but again I would advise sticking with the original track list as the reissue is a bit too much to handle and the bonus tracks aren't really anything special.

7

Biosphere / Deathprod – Nordheim Transformed

September 30, 1998 • Rune Grammofon

Arne Nordheim was a Norwegian composer of musique concrète and electroacoustic music, whose work was paid tribute to by ambient artists Biosphere and Deathprod. I hadn't heard of Nordheim before I first heard this album, but I was at least passingly familiar with both Biosphere and Deathprod and have enjoyed most of what I've heard from them. This album is an interesting listen, and not a disappointing one either.

For this review, I decided to take a listen to Arne Nordheim's compilation Electric, since I'd never heard his music before and wanted to know how Nordheim Transformed related to it. It's drone-laden, noisy (yet oddly minimalist) musique concrète, a genre I'm not really a huge fan of, but the album is actually quite interesting. The remixed versions sound almost nothing like the originals, however, and it's a bit hard to believe they have anything to do with Nordheim's work. I'm not saying this is a bad thing—both artists do an excellent job working the source in their own styles, and to my ears the result is a lot more pleasing.

Biosphere's contribution to the split sounds relatively similar to his other album I've heard, Dropsonde—extremely toned-down, reverb-drenched electronic music, probably more ambient than anything else, but with the occasional, very subtle, bass beat. Smatterings of what could be Nordheim's original sound effects punctuate the ambience here and there: glitches, bursts of noise, wooshes, voices, and the like. It's really nice stuff and produced quite well, probably better than what I've heard from Dropsonde, and it reminds me I probably ought to look into some of his other work.

Deathprod's tracks are not too different from his darker material (like what appears on Morals and Dogma) and after all the production they've gone through, they bear little resemblance to anything classical. He really makes the pieces his own, creating a very creepy and atmospheric mood that is really quite good; they are very drawn-own and droney, and very bleak like Morals and Dogma without being too overdone. There are quite a few neat sound effects used, which is typical for his style, but here they're of course gleaned from Nordheim's work yet integrated pretty seamlessly into the remixes. As I am a bit disappointed by Deathprod's relatively small (and somewhat inconsistent) discography, these tracks are a really nice addition to his stuff I already like.

Admittedly, the music isn't the most interesting, and it might even get a touch boring at times, but as I really like the mood and atmosphere created on this Nordheim Transformed, that doesn't bother me at all. It's a great listen and great mood music. And best of all, you don't even have to like musique concrète to like it.

7

Jan Johansson – Jazz på svenska

1964 • Megafon

Time to visit an old classic today. I use the word "classic" in a loose sense—from what I understand, if you're not actually from Sweden, odds are good you've never heard of Jan Johansson or his music, but in that country he was very popular. And for good reason, too; it's a bit of a shame that this album hasn't really caught on outside Sweden, because it's really quite good.

Jazz from outside of the United States is unfortunately something I'm not very familiar with yet; after all, the U.S. is where it started, why should jazz from halfway across the globe be any better? Well, there are quite a few reasons. In true Swedish style, the music is quite stripped-down and folky compared to most American jazz: you get a piano jauntily playing along accompanied by an upright bass, and that's about it. No drums, no saxophones, no brass, but honestly none of that would improve the record one bit. Its minimalist style is perfect for the tunes, creating a very personal, warm atmosphere, and adding anything else would ruin that.

Also showing its European heritage is a significant classical influence that is pretty unique. The keyboards play in a sort of Baroque-cum-impressionism style—at least, you probably wouldn't find it too weird to hear a few of these songs played with a harpsichord instead of piano. Aside from the occasional swing rhythms and walking bass, it's pretty hard to call it jazz at points.

The album's weak point, and probably the main thing keeping it from finding a bigger audience, is that what I've described above is pretty much all you get—in twelve songs (sixteen in the remastered reissue) there isn't much variety at all. Each song has the same instrumentation and similar style; the melodies are basically the only thing distinguishing each piece. If one really enjoys the style, then it will constistently satisfy; it's sink or swim. For me, it's definitely a swimmer, although admittedly it makes better background music for that reason and it can be difficult to sit down and listen to it straight through without getting distracted by other things.

Regardless, it's still a very beautiful album, a great piece to show off the diversity of jazz (and classical!) and another way to show that Sweden has some of the most consistently great music of any other country (as if you needed another reason).

7

Enslaved, Alcest, Junius, Struck by Lightning

October 1, 2011 • Outland Live, Columbus, Ohio

I hadn't been to a concert in a long, long time, so I was pretty excited for this show. A Saturday night, and only $17 to see four bands? Not a bad deal, I thought. This was my first visit to Outland Live and I have to say that I was pretty impressed. It's nicer than just about every venue I've been to (besides the House of Blues and the Wexner Center); it has some bizarre decor but the place seemed pretty clean and had a nice bar area set off from the stage area. I'd go back if another good-sounding concert came there. Anyway, on to the bands:

Struck by Lightning

I'd never heard of this group before the show (apparently they are not only from Columbus but have a former member from Mouth of the Architect, which is awesome) so I had no expectation of what I was getting, and I was really impressed with them. They play a sort of crust punk-sludge metal hybrid that sounds really nice; it didn't get too deathcore-y like a lot of bands who try that do. The band all had pretty good chops and although the music wasn't anything incredibly mind-blowing, they did put on a really good show even though the crowd wasn't much into it, and I'm a bit disappointed they didn't have any CDs for sale (no, I'm not paying $25 for your record).
8 • Coolest-Looking Speaker Stacks Award

Junius

Junius is another band I had almost no experience with—I heard their track on their split with Rosetta the day before so that hardly counts. They put on a hell of a show, though. Their music is of the "heavy alt/post-rock" variety and the songs all sounded basically the same to me, but they were pretty energetic and always set up a really great groove and atmosphere. Their drummer is pretty magnificent, too. Worth seeing again.
9 • Best Beards Award

Alcest

This was more or less the band that I actually came to see, and I wasn't disappointed by them either. They sounded pretty bad at first—you could barely hear anything but drums, probably some mixing issues—but that was fixed throughout the show and they wound up sounding really great. I was a bit disappointed that they played mostly new stuff that I wasn't terribly familiar with, but they played "Souvenirs d'un autre monde" which is one of my favorites of theirs, so that was really cool to see. At this point in the show some of the crowd started to get a little rowdier (perhaps it was the effects of the bar) and there were some people who were a little too excited to see Alcest play, but I guess these things happen.
8 • Sexiest Band Award

Enslaved

I have never really been a huge fan of Enslaved; I heard one of their older albums, Below the Lights, and thought it was pretty good, but by the time Enslaved started their show you'd think you were at a goddamn Lamb of God concert or something, everybody went pretty crazy. It was especially irritating since for some reason I decided to stand behind two pretty tall guys and couldn't see much. Anyway, their set was decent; they only played one song I knew (from Below the Lights) (and "Immigrant Song" for their encore—since when do metal bands do encores, anyway?) but the stuff I didn't know wasn't bad. I will say that their more Viking metal type stuff translates better to a live setting since you can actually tell what they are playing rather than just blasting, during which I couldn't tell what they were playing at all. (I'm pretty sure their keyboard player didn't actually play anything, either, because the keyboard was completely inaudible throughout.) Enslaved was definitely my least-favorite act of the night but they aren't really my style of music anyway; besides, they had a lot of hardcore fans cheering them on anyway.
6 • Biggest Tom Rack Award