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Written by: Anthony D'Amico

Category: Albums and Singles

Published: 04 July 2024

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This latest album from Vicki Bennett, her first since 2018, is a characteristically dizzying and multilayered collage fantasia drawn from her currently touring AV performance "The Library of Babel." Fittingly, the album title has a dual meaning (either "abundance" or "copy"), but the deeper conceptual vein lies in the AV performance's title nod to a Jorge Luis Borges short story. In that story, "isolated librarians" struggle to "find meaningful texts amidst an overwhelming number of nonsensical or irrelevant books." Naturally, that nicely mirrors our own existential struggle to make sense of life while drowning in vast amounts of information, which Bennett colorfully portrays as "a journey through cinema and sound where the actors are set adrift from their story, left with pure experience." Fans of Bennett's previous work will find a lot of familiar samples, melodies, and themes set adrift from previous songs as well, as COPIA feels like a fever dream tour of the project's discography distilled into one memorably unhinged plunge down the psychedelic rabbit hole. Such self-cannibalism is very much in character for the project, of course, but a few of COPIA's fresh variations on a theme rank among Bennett's most mesmerizing work.

Cutting Hedge

The album is billed as a plunge into "profound realms of existential collage and sampling" in which Bennett and her many collaborators (Ergo Phizmiz, Matmos, etc.) celebrate the gleeful appropriation and recontextualization of our shared pop culture "as expressions of timeless connectivity." I mention that last part because the project can seem fun and kitschy on its surface, but Bennett rightly sees herself more like a folk artist, collecting meaningful fragments of culture and recombining them in alternately amusing, insightful, and poignant ways. In particular, Bennett has always seemed especially drawn towards American and British pop culture moments from the mid-20th century that portray society in romanticized, innocent, or utopian ways and that remains true here, as COPIA is teeming with kaleidoscopic fragments of iconic Disney moments, easy listening crooners, Motown, snatches of The Wizard of Oz, and the wide-eyed optimism of songs like Percy Faith's "A Summer Place" and Jackie DeShannon's "What The World Needs Now." It is hard to say how much of COPIA's source material has previously surfaced (somewhere between "most of it" and "all of it," I think), but the context is definitely a new one, as this album feels like a delirious longform hallucination rather than a collection of discrete songs.

That said, there are still some great individual pieces lurking within Bennett's mind-bending technicolor fantasia. To my ears, the best of the lot is "LSD Cha Cha," as Bennett packs a tight 3-minute collage full of stuttering brass hooks, sensuous and swaying grooves, chopped and ghostly vocal hooks, jabbering electronic weirdness, and a healthy dose of submerged and mangled Jackie DeShannon. Elsewhere, "Nature" is a delightfully bleary swirl of jazzy and sentimental easy listening favorites bleeding into one another. The unifying theme of the samples loosely seems to be references to stars, but there are a number of cool surprises like an outro that sounds like backwards Gregorian chants and a poignant sample of "don't they know this is the end of the road?" that nicely cuts through the plunderphonic fog of decontextualized pop hooks. "You Wish" is yet another instant classic and it appears in two separate forms (a "Dark World mix" and a "Babel mix"). I am tempted to say that the "Dark World" version goes on a bit longer than I would've liked, but it would probably be more accurate to say that the curdled and disorienting repurposing of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "When You Wish Upon a Star" makes me feel like I am uncomfortably trapped inside a horror movie. That said, it does feature an extremely cool interlude in which the word "wish" is looped into a groove and I was very entertained by the well-placed snippet of John Lennon proclaiming "nothing is real." The "Babel Mix" seems to reprise all the same samples, but feels more tight, fun and Latin-tinged (though it also feels like a cascade of flickering pop culture memories experienced at the moment right before death).

For the most part, however, the merits of any individual piece on COPIA are beside the point, as the whole album has the immersive feel of drowning in a vivid cacophony of cultural quicksand while also careening back and forth through time. Some passages are beautiful, some are funny, some are disturbing, and others feel uncomfortably manic, over-caffeinated, or actively annoying, which I suppose makes it an impressively representative mirror for Western culture. Notably, Bennett and her collaborators ingeniously blur the lines further by obsessively reprising some motifs throughout the album and singing passages that appear in sampled form elsewhere: everything is both comfortingly familiar and disorientingly unfamiliar at the same time.

In short, COPIA is a disorienting mindfuck from start to finish and I feel like my brain has been rewired (or at least further broken) in some new way every single time I emerge from a full-album immersion. I can only imagine that the experience is even more intense when accompanied by the full Tower of Babel visual accompaniment, as the album alone hits some truly operatic levels of intensity (and of gleeful indulgence, best illustrated by the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink lunacy of "Hymn to Collage"). Given that, COPIA is probably not the ideal People Like Us album for new listeners, but it certainly makes for compelling art and feels like a culmination of Bennett's life's work. If COPIA had been made by an artist who was less of an unpredictable and mischievous visionary, it would probably have the feel of a greatest hits album, but Bennett has instead pried open a Pandora's Box of our shared cultural stories and allowed them run amok, go feral, and cross pollinate. That can certainly feel messy, crazy, and overwhelming at times, but life can feel that way too and Bennett is an exceptionally entertaining and insightful guide for a lysergic descent into the unknowable depths of the human psyche.

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Written by: Anthony D'Amico

Category: Albums and Singles

Published: 04 July 2024

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This Swiss percussionist has been quietly carving out a very cool and unique niche for himself over the last decade, as he continually finds unusual conceptual scenarios to combine with his virtuosic playing. I greatly enjoyed 2021's aptly titled Locked Grooves, but had not yet delved too deeply into his earlier work, so I had missed the first installment of Hidden Tracks: 2017's Basel – Gen​è​ve. For that album, Sartorius brought his drumsticks along for a 10-day, 270km hike along Switzerland's Jura Ridgeway Trail and recorded improvised beats on whatever intriguing sound sources he encountered (trees, empty silos, corn stalks, etc.). On this latest installment, his journey is now vertical, as Sartorius kept a similar beat diary as he climbed from the Italian village of Domodossola "to the peak of Weissmies (4017m above sea level) in the Swiss Valais." In theory, that upped the game considerably constraint-wise, as Sartorius gradually leaves behind both humanity and trees in his ascent, but that comparative dearth of available sound sources was no match for his resourceful inventiveness.

Everest Records

The album is presented as a series of eight pieces that mirror Sartorius's ascent in 500 meter intervals, so the first piece (272m_↗_500m) is built from sounds recorded in Domodossola and the last piece is assembled entirely from sounds collected near the mountain summit. Notably, Sartorius was joined by videographer Stephan Hermann and his footage makes for a wonderfully illustrative guide to the shifting terrain that the duo encountered. It also helpfully illuminates how Sartorius was able to make these recordings, which is something that initially baffled me, as some of these pieces seemed impossibly complex to perform in real-time and Julian made a point of stating that "no electronic effects or sound processing were used." That claim is indeed factual, but there was some post-recording assembly involved: Sartorius recorded multiple tracks (usually played one-handed while the other hand wielded a microphone), then assembled layered beatscapes from the sounds collected at each elevation. That essentially means that a kick drum pattern might have been recorded with one pile of rocks, but the rest of the beat may have been recorded using a completely different pile of rocks. That said, that finished recordings make for a very impressive audio illusion, as it often sounds like Julian's drumming is taking place in real-time and intuitively interacting with non-percussive field recordings of cars, birds, planes, radios, cows, and sprinklers.

The array of seemingly unpromising sound sources that Sartorius employs is similarly impressive: the sounds of human civilization only last for the first three pieces. After that, there is only forest...then only grass and stones…then only stones…and finally just snow and ice. As a result, the sounds are much more varied at the beginning of the album, as Sartorius was surrounded by benches, railings, sculptures, and buildings with pleasing acoustic properties. As the range of available sound sources narrows, however, Julian's inventiveness necessarily increases to fill the void: drum sticks scythe through tall grass and snow banks, wobbly rocks are stepped on, rhythmic splashes are made in ponds, sturdy icicles become ersatz cymbals or snares, etc. All of those improvised drum components became even more fascinating when I learned that another one of Julian's self-constraints was that he would not move things around or visibly disturb his surroundings, which precluded the assembly of any kind of makeshift kit.

With the tracks combined, however, these pieces do convincingly sound like the work of a virtuosic drummer on an unconventional minimalist kit, yet the pleasures of this album are far more unique than that: on pieces like "500m_↗_1000m," Sartorius's achievement feels like he has evolved John Cage's "4'33"" into a duet for percussion and field recordings. Elsewhere, I especially loved how "2000m_↗_2500m" evolved from clacking stones and mooing cows to a twinkling finale of layered bells borrowed from Sartorius's new ovine and bovine friends. There are also a few pieces that inventively incorporate gurgling water or make rolling pebbles sound like some kind of rhythmic prehistoric Rube Goldberg contraption. Obviously, that is admittedly niche terrain, but I personally love listening to talented percussionists with inspired ideas indulging themselves, so I could listen to Julian Sartorius jam with a cow or a sprinkler all day. Moreover, this is a genuinely rewarding headphone album, as the pieces fluidly segue into one another and the ambient environmental sounds add an evocative sense of place.

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Written by: Creaig Dunton

Category: Albums and Singles

Published: 04 July 2024

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This is an odd collaboration in multiple ways. Andrew Quitter (Suburbia Melting, Regosphere) and Jonathan Canady (Deathpile, Dead World) is not the noise excursion I would have expected based on the artists involved. Instead, it is more of a deconstructed sludgy rock/metal album, with production as influenced by noise as it is cinematic sound design.

Malsonus/Dumpster Score

The genesis of Psychological Morphology is another collaborative project never manifested. Canady started a noise rock project called Diamond Cult that involved one performance and a few releases, existing only between 2009 and 2011. The raw material he provides on here (guitars, synths) was intended for a collaboration that never occurred. These sessions (recorded with James Plotkin) were pulled out of storage a decade-ish later and handed over to Quitter, who took these bits and constructed a full-fledged record out of them.

Perhaps it was due to the combination of heavy guitars/electronics/rhythms/odd production, but my initial listen to this tape felt like a throwback to some of my favorite projects from the mid 1990s (a nebulously defined "scene" that blended guitars and synthetic stuff). Basically, the multitude of projects from the likes of Justin Broadrick, Robert Hampson, Mick Harris and, ironically enough, James Plotkin. The ways in which familiar touchstones of "rock" music appeared in entirely different contexts, conventional song structures deconstructed via odd production, and so forth was a major thing for me at the time.

In no way does Psychological Morphology sound like it is explicitly from that era, but that sensibility seems to permeate. "Invasion of the Night" opens with expansive distorted guitars and layers of synthesizer, cast over rhythms that are at times restrained, and at other points explosive. Quitter's use of rhythms and production also makes "Fog Gog Magog (Intoxicated)" stand out, with the odd filtering and production strategies to the beats propelling the slow sustained guitar and scraping synths perfectly.

Canady's guitar gives faster paced doomy chug to "The Vertigo of Eros," a driving dynamic fleshed out with dub-like echoes and delays, treated percussion, and a subtle use of synth melodies balancing out the heavier emphasis on rhythms here. That same stoner-ish vibe appears on "To Give Painless Light" although both the guitars and synths are more expansive, and the rhythms could almost be defined as funky.

Psychological Morphology is one of those rare releases that truly draws in elements from the best of both worlds. Sneaky melodies, chugging guitar riffs, and memorable rhythms are all present here, but the ways in which Andrew Quitter treated (and added to) the more conventional raw materials provided by Jonathan Canady make for an entirely different beast. There are not too many releases that I can both ponder how these unconventional sounds were created and manipulated like I would some obtuse avant garde album while still enjoying some heavy guitars and memorable rhythms, but this is definitely one of those few.

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Written by: Anthony D'Amico

Category: Albums and Singles

Published: 04 July 2024

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I am always eager to hear anything new from the reliably weird and inventive Klara Lewis, but the unpredictability of her collaborative releases is especially pronounced. Notably, Salt Water is the first of those collaborations in which I was not previously familiar with her creative foil. It also seems like quite a leftfield pairing on paper, given that Yuki Tsujii is best known as the guitarist for a hard-to-categorize Japanese rock band based in London (Bo Ningen). Fortunately, everything made sense once I learned that Tsujii is now based in Stockholm (Lewis is Swedish) and that he had previously collaborated with both Faust and Keiji Haino (his primal, convulsive playing here would be right at home on an album by the latter). Also of note: Lewis is described as a "loop finder" in the album's description, which feels like an extremely apt description of her role on Salt Water. Unsurprisingly, the loops that she found are extremely cool, resulting in an album that often sounds like scrabbling guitar noise assaulting an eclectic array of '60s exotica, classical, and film score samples.

The Trilogy Tapes

The album opens in simultaneously promising and frustrating fashion, as Tsujii unleashes a fitful, stuttering, and scrabbling spew of notes over a gorgeously shimmering and pulsing loop. Initially, that feels like quite a winning combination, but it soon starts to overstay its welcome a bit and often feels too improvisatory to justify its nearly 9-minute running time (it's more than twice as long as any other piece on the album). That said, it still ultimately winds up at an interesting destination, as the sounds gradually become more gnarled, grainy, and distorted in a way that calls to mind early laptop pioneers like Fenn O'Berg. The following "Close Up" also initially sounds like it could have been plucked from a laptop album circa 2000, as its haunting and sensuous vocal loop is strafed by sputtering static and possibly a chorus of frogs. Notably, however, Lewis and Tsujii quickly transcend that "early laptop" aesthetic to evoke something akin to a haunted sex lagoon, which is quite a neat trick. Moreover, the pair do not unnecessarily linger around and move onto the next piece after about three minutes, which feels like just the right length for a piece with the stylistic constraint of having a single repeating loop as its backbone.

It is probably fair to say that the rest of the pieces on Salt Water live or die based on the quality of Lewis's central loops, albeit with some consideration regarding whether an individual piece errs on the side of being too short to be fully satisfying (several pieces are only a minute long). That said, I do genuinely enjoy Tsujii's unconventional playing, as he gamely spews scrabbling entropy all over Lewis's loopscapes in interesting ways. Analogy-wise, I feel comfortable in stating that Lewis's loops are the cake and Tsujii's guitar playing is the frosting: the guitars are rarely the most compelling aspect of these pieces, but they are certainly a very welcome enhancement. There are exceptions, however, as Tsujii's playing does become a bit more central on the album's second half (especially on the tropical-sounding "Welcome Back"). Also, the line between Lewis's loops and Tsujii's guitars can get rather blurry on pieces like "Dear," where a descending classical guitar motif battles intrusions from retrofuturist computer bloops and various scrapes and harmonics from Tsujii's electric guitar.

To my ears, the strongest piece on the album is "Bed of Sand," which is built from a lovely classical guitar loop that unexpectedly slows and pitch-shifts into a somber and elegiac coda beset with surreal insectoid clicking. Elsewhere, "Pool" makes unsettling magic from an elusively shimmering and fluttering loop propelled by a lurching, groaning bass pattern. "One Two Three Embassy" is yet another highlight, combining a tense, obsessively looping string motif with spacy electronic sounds and a heaving, wobbly bass pattern. Just about every piece on Salt Water has some kind of inspired motif at its core, however, so the only real caveat is that a lot of these pieces feel like vamps, sketches, or snippets of larger improvisations rather than fully formed compositions. That is perfectly fine by me, as they cumulatively add up to an absorbing and unique album packed with great ideas (and a lot of great loops too). Obviously, the same can be said of Lewis's other collaborations as well, but this album stands out because Tsujii's aesthetic is more divergent from her sensibility than that of previous conspirators, resulting in quite an effective balance between sublime repetition and unpredictable and spasmodic spontaneity.

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