I read a disturbing article in the New York Times yesterday about Specialist Jeremy Hall, a soldier in the U.S. Army who has been systematically harassed by his peers and superiors since becoming open about his atheism.  The article, self-explanatorily-titled “Soldier Sues Army, Claiming His Atheism Led to Threats,” by Neela Banerjee, describes the army as, though officially non-denominational, permeated by a culture of evangelical Christianity, in which Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports that, “[y]ou’re promoted by who you pray with.”  Further, Hall reports that an officer, Major Freddy J. Welborn, told him that “[p]eople like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!”   (more…)

By now this kind of thing is old hat.  Still; the results are pretty mindblowing.

I was recently going through some old bookmarks and happened upon this site. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was lucky enough to have one of The Yes Men (Igor Vamos AKA Mike Bonanno) as a professor during my all too brief stint at RPI. I only hope I’m ever as brilliant…

I sort of tried to restrict my choices to some of the more low-key releases of the year. Here goes…

3/4HadBeenEliminated – The Religious Experience/Theology [Soleilmoon]
These are certainly the most lavishly packaged pair of albums I purchased all year, The Religious Experience coming in this perfumed sugarcane fiber sleeve, and Theology coming in a hinged wooden box, with both covers resembling Josef Albers’ “Homage to the Square” or some of the more abstract Schoenberg/Ligeti covers on Deutsche Grammophon or something. On The Year of the Aural Gauge Operation 3/4HadBeenEliminated instantly struck me as a band that was culling from so much more than a lot of others working the same street. This might stem in part to the fact that coincidentally 3/4 of these guys are accomplished soloists in their own right, yet while presumptions can sort of be made as far as who’s contributing what it all comes together with no hesitation. It makes me wonder if with The Religious Experience and Theology they’re commenting on the process of improvisation versus composition as much as anything else with these two releases. Either way the result is at times devastatingly beautiful.

The Religious Experience (Excerpt)
The Religious Experience (Excerpt)

The Cradle (Excerpt)
I Am Daughter (Excerpt)

Circular – Shaping the Unknown [Loki-Foundation]
I was looking through the Loki-Foundation website one night, anxiously waiting the Herbst9/Z’ev collaboration, and this CD immediately struck my eye, with its sort of pseudo-art nouveau/post-industrial revolution/geometric artwork. Loki seems like a pretty close knit group so I was surprised to see someone new on the roster. This album reminds me a lot of some of the best moments of Popul Vuh, without all the wonky prog-rock meanderings that usually never made it to film anyway, or any of the darker, less synth-laden moments of Tangerine Dream, or even some of the more ambient Markant releases—the drum beat on “Eclipse Unveiled” is 100% Markantian. Shaping the Unknown also manages to sound exceptionally dense, cinematic, and wholly atmospheric not just because of its use of reverb, which seems to be this kind of music’s biggest crutch. Check it:

The Triangular Center
Eclipse Unveiled
Volcanic and Fervent

Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words – Fall, Fall, Falling [Kalligrammofon]
I try to make it a point of almost fanatically following Thomas Ekelund’s music now not only because it’s usually so limited but because I’ve become increasingly intrigued at tracing his stylistic development from album to album and the tangents he builds off of on each release in between. Ekelund has been continually honing his style over the past several years, with the drone pretty much remaining the guiding light. His last album, Circles Turned to Lines Turned to Circles was among my last year’s favorites, and Fall, Fall, Falling is a natural extension of the foundations laid out on that album. While Fall, Fall, Falling might not come as such a surprise in relation to where Ekelund may be taking his music, it’s clear he’s continually perfecting a succinct, coherent album narrative. This isn’t to say it’s his music is any less challenging than before, but it seems to me that with each album anyway, Ekelund is getting better at expressing a solid narrative stream that forces a full listen, where all the facets of his sonic personality are there in some form begging to be peeled away with intent listening. I have to say, I almost feel that the joy of delicately peeling away the politics of the Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words sound becomes a reference point for appreciating it on some secret, unspeakable level. Listen.

July 12th 2005

Do Make Say Think – You, You’re a History in Rust [Constellation]
Much better said.

Giusepi Ilesai & Nicola Ratti – Bellowes [Kning Disk]
While listening to the second track of this at home downstairs, my father blurted out, ”Your music’s a little monotonous, isn’t it’?” That was the second time he had said something to that effect in a one week span. It’s some wannabe-renegade bullshit, I know, but for his remark I appreciate this album even more now, and I even decided to replace Ilesai’s solo work August with this one in the year-end list only because I honestly expected something a little more challenging and arguably less stereotypically Fennesz-ish from Ilesai’s most recent album. On the other hand, while this album really doesn’t offer anything groundbreakingly new, it does at least see some fading back to the more discordant or dissonant sounds I’ve heard in Ilesai’s work, and even harkens back to the, while still fairly subtle, more explicitly Techno underpinnings I’ve come to appreciate and find so little of elsewhere from artists on a similar wavelength. I don’t want to downplay Nicola Ratti’s involvement, but I’m new to his work, yet from what I’ve heard of it, who contributed what is anyone’s guess. Not a bad thing.

I
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Neurosis – Given to the Rising [Neurot Recordings]
I have to admit, with the weight of influence these guys pull, thinking back to when I first heard them, I sort of couldn’t stand the vocals. Honestly, at their most contemporary sounding they’re kind of glaringly obtuse, but not always. And to be fair, they really did grow on me over time. It’s in the way this guy (Scott Kelly) inflects I guess. I think for a newcomer, once you get past the at-times kind of mediocre vocals, you might appreciate just how fucking killer this album really is. “Fear and Sickness” is just fucking mammoth. The other thing that struck me about Given to the Rising is that it caused the second instance I can remember of outside sound affecting my dreams, where I dreamt of a small propeller plane landing in my other neighbors’ driveway from to the kind of rumbly lull that starts off “At the End of the Road”. Goddam incredible.

Water is Not Enough

Rosetta – Wake/Lift, The Cleansing Undertones of Wake/Lift [Translation Loss]
While from what I’ve read, it seems like Wake/Lift wasn’t quite the follow-up people were hoping for, but experiencing such a devastating live version of “Clavius” from their split with Balboa, I couldn’t help but mention them. One thing that really had an impact on me about Wake/Lift is that there’s this guitar feedback going on, most notably in “Red in Tooth and Claw”, that’s played up in the mix which almost sounds violin-like. It’s got this distinctly sweet scratchy-ness that’s pretty unmistakable. Moreover, while these guys are totally indebted to Neurosis (who isn’t with this stuff, right?), I think what sets Rosetta apart from some of the other post-metal or whatever bands these days is that their work remains fairly serious while lacking a lot of the pretension associated with bands like ISIS, which I guess stems in part from their choice of subject material. That said, though, it was pretty depressing seeing these four guys play so commandingly for such a short amount of time, simply because they had to get to work in the morning, only to walk away with $25.00 plus merch money between the four of them.

(Rosetta @ Myspace)

Scraps of Tape – This is a Copy is This a Copy [Tenderversion]
I almost forgot this album came out in 2007, but I pulled it out recently while tracking down all those perfect soundtracks for a snowy winters. This album embraces even more delicate electronic underpinnings compared with their debut, mixed with care, unobtrusive and almost easily overlooked. That said, this album definitely rewards repeated listens. Subtleties are played up in all the right places, like the string slides or meticulous feedback swells of “Death as it Should Be” or on the crushing “How Your Heart Gets Thrown”. Overall, the guitar work is pretty incredible, and the production-level is noticeably heightened over their debut, where then it seemed like someone thought the only way to make everything sound even more forceful was to just over-compress and hard-clip everything in mastering. Scraps also have a drummer that at the right times sounds like Art Blakey gone post-rock or something—i.e.: heavy-handed destruction. To name-drop for the neigh-sayers, this is right up there with any of Do Make Say Think’s finer moments, and that’s saying a lot for a band with only two proper albums under their belt now. Look forward to more Scraps of Tape. Don’t take my word for it, though:

Death as it Should Be
Pickpockets Vow
Since all the Birds are Moving, Shouldn’t We

Stephan Bodzin – Leibe ist… [Herzblut]
If I had to describe this album I guess I would say it’s sort of like the French square-wave disco-revivalist scene meets Pan Sonic at some Bauhausian minimalist refuge piped out of a Minimoog. I have to be honest, I wasn’t initially expecting the level of detail this album delivers either, like the creepy vocal underpinned high-hats on “Leuchtraft”, and other weird ornamental shit slowly revealing itself after repeated listens. This album also manages to have the gruff underbelly of any of the grimy bass-heavy stuff coming out these days, while somehow paying homage to forgone synthesizer music in all its delayed and arpeggiated glory. Apparently this guy is like a world-wide Techno sensation and sometimes plays to crowds of like 10,000 people or something. Who knew?

(Stephan Bodzin @ Myspace)

Uusitalo – Karhunaninen [Huume Recordings]
I make it no secret that I’m a huge Sasu Ripatti/Vladislav Delay fan. His music never ceases to amaze me or make me rethink why the hell I would bother trying to finish my shit anyway. Mark once told me, though, that the best concerts make you want to go home and work on your shit, and I think the same applies to albums, so in that respect this one is no different. That said, I was really surprised at how discreetly this one passed through some online stores, Boomkat especially. I can’t remember what did, but for whatever reason this album didn’t manage to make their best of the week list, despite being better than a whole assload of Techno out these days. What I like about Karhunainen is that Delay has gotten a little more daring in the repetitiveness of particular phrases in his tracks, still keeping them loose, while as always lining them with subtle shards of sound. That and the basslines are to die for. “Sikojen Juhla (Feast of Pigs)” and the title track are just fucking relentless. Kill it:

Korpikansa (Backwoods People)
(Uusitalo @ Myspace)

Part of me wanted to devote the letter D to my very particular – and potentially embarrassing – opinions on Def Leppard’s classic slice of diamond-encrusted, super-refined lite metal, the “Hysteria” album. But that will have to wait for “H,” I think. Pop metal temporarily suppressed, I’ll proceed to “Dear God,” a habitually elegant song from eighties New Wave/post-punk’ers XTC. One of the reasons “Dear God” is so rewarding (aside from its nice arrangement) is that it can be read on two distinct levels: first, as an angry young atheist’s violent but articulate argument against the existence of God, and second, as an illustration of the frustration and contradiction at the heart of many peoples’ struggles with faith. I was only aware of the first of these levels until recently, which is sort of embarrassing. But really, how much time can I devote to revisiting New Wave standouts like this one? I have a dissertation to write!
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