Ben Frost "Scope Neglect"
Ben Frost presents his first studio album in six years, Scope Neglect, via Mute. Available January 11th on limited edition white vinyl, followed by black vinyl, CD, and digital formats on March 1st.
In the sonic crucible of Ben Frost’s Scope Neglect, music undergoes a metamorphic alchemy. From the album’s opening seconds, the familiar aural chemistry of metal is immediately untethered, isolated in the vacuum, stripped of its cultural trappings and heavy armory, and loaded into a particle accelerator.
Where Scope Neglect leans sonically into metal – fuelled by progressive metal outfit Car Bomb’s guitarist Greg Kubacki and bassist Liam Andrews of fellow Australians My Disco – its true form seems to draw more upon the transcendental reveries of the West Coast minimalists. What at first appears confrontational, and ephemeral, is meditatively and methodically unfolded through time, revealing crystalline vulnerabilities.
Frost’s titles weave narratives of cycling, perpetual attempts at ignition, math, and mythology; ‘Tritium Bath’, ‘Lamb Shift’, ‘Chimera’… The slow burn of ‘Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead’ channels the disorienting writings of author W.G Sebald, whose own work often gives the impression of being only the faint, flickering shadow of its actual referent.
Similarly, this genre-defying music seems to feed on an unseen dark matter. Detached from their native surroundings, guitar shapes roar through negative spaces whose dimension is only revealed through the shadows cast upon them. What remains is the outer scaffolding of structures long since dismantled, and which we can no longer see. What Frost wants us to hear, in other words, is frequently not what he wants us to feel.
Scope Neglect is a deliberate opposition in terms; a dualistic game of obfuscation and obliteration, mechanics reconfigured and reengineered, old energies diverted and redirected, scope expanded, contracted and dissolved.
Mary Timony "Untame the Tiger"
Singer-songwriter and guitar hero Mary Timony new album, Untame the Tiger, marks her fifth solo album, her first in 15 years (and first for Merge). It’s a startling document of an artist fully coming into her own power during the fourth decade of her career, the product of lessons learned during life-altering struggle.
Lead single “Dominoes” is a cynical and funny description of a relationship not working out, and a reminder of the healing power of music. “This song was almost not on the record,” says Timony. “We needed one last song, and I found a demo of it I had forgotten about at the last minute.” Mixed by Dave Fridmann (MGMT, The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev), “Dominoes” features album contributors David Christian (Karen O, Hospitality) on drums and album co-producer Dennis Kane on bass.
Persher "Sleep Well"
Persher, the duo of Arthur Cayzer (Pariah) and Jamie Roberts (Blawan), take the same subversive, boundaryless approach to extreme music that underpins their electronic explorations. The pair together run the influential Voam label, whose releases are as forwardthinking as they are eclectic. Their output as producers is always highly anticipated in the dance world, in part because of their affinity for expression beyond a trend – an independent streak that shares much in common with the philosophical ethos of punk, hardcore and extreme metal. Cayzer and Roberts started Persher as an opportunity to explore their shared love and extensive knowledge of heavy music. The duo’s debut release, the limited- edition Man With The Magic Soap CD thundered out of the gates as an astounding statement of intent – sidestepping underground orthodoxy with gleeful buzz-saw riffs and baleful howls enveloped in coruscating noise and texture, sounding like a bad trip at a basement show. Persher’s debut album Sleep Well manages to be even more ferocious and innovative, as direct and incisive as it is ingenious.
On Sleep Well, Cayzer and Roberts take a decidedly unconventional approach to writing, using the full potential of the studio in their exploration of extreme music. What sounds like a live band performance is more often than not an amalgam of many different sessions, the duo applying techniques from electronic music to heavier sonics. Recording in Roberts’ studio at Funkhaus, the home of the former East German state-owned radio station, Cayzer would improvise long takes on guitar and bass, contorted and mutated by Robert’s using his extensive modular setup to add weight and texture. This primordial ooze of raw sonics was then chopped up and reassembled into bristling hooks and corrosive atmospheres. The duo’s playful, exuberant approach to making music is palpable throughout Sleep Well – evident as much in the album’s absurdist themes and lyrics as its exhilarating sonics. “Medieval Soup From The Milkbar” references a particularly bad mid-studio session meal of gray, gruel-like soup, which seeps into the track’s noxious slurry and stomach churning riffs, while “Portable Aquarium” references a cup of herbal tea overflowing with foliage. The duo’s wry and often self-deprecating sense of humor allows them to find inspiration even in the most seemingly mundane of life’s events.
Persher’s Sleep Well provides a daring, revelatory expansion on heavy music’s myriad mutations. The duo use their production skills and wry humor to embrace the powerful release they find in extremes. Persher’s debut album exudes the sheer joy of making music unconstrained by genre-boundaries, as gleefully weird as it is visceral and primal.
Mint Mile "Roughrider"
Mint Mile – the “new” band from Silkworm / Bottomless Pit’s Tim Midyett – is nearing a decade of existence. With Jeff Panall (Songs: Ohia), Justin Brown (Palliard), Matthew Barnhart (Tre Orsi) and a cast of fellow travelers, the group has to its credit a trio of EPs, the acclaimed double album Ambertron (which improbably owned its otherwise-ill-timed March 20th, 2020 release date) and now…Roughrider, the band’s second full-length.
Roughrider pulls from all the rest stops Mint Mile have traversed to get here. “Sunbreaking” opens the album with a timeless chord progression, hidden melodies sketched throughout the margins.
“Interpretive Overlook” is shockingly bare, dwelling on perspective and differing vantage points, with its final line (“This place so old…it needs something new”) both certain and open-ended. Songs like “Halocline” have become the heart of Mint Mile – Crazy Horse-fluent pieces that let Brown’s pedal steel do heavy lifting until the finale, where every instrument pours in all it can. The kinetic energy the band brings – aided by excellent alto saxophone (hold onto that thought for a second) – indicates that the group is far from out of new ways to immerse themselves in this world.
“Empty Island” is perhaps the band’s finest moment as “rockers,” and the record’s second track, the seven-minute “Brigadier,” loses itself completely in its main metaphor, unmooring Roughrider from any convenient frame of reference almost immediately.
Contributions from cellist Alison Chesley and Corvair’s Heather Larimer, both long in Midyett’s orbit, are welcome, although nothing prepares one for hearing Nina Nastasia – whom Silkworm covered on an EP over twenty years ago – sing Roughrider’s aching closing track. Nastasia gets some of the album’s darkest lyrics, and “I Hope It’s Different” sounds as beautiful as its last stanza (“Scrub off your history / Don’t learn / Don’t remember anything”) is uncomfortable.
That saxophone on “Halocline?” It is provided by founding Silkworm guitarist and vocalist Joel R.L. Phelps, a truly momentous occasion for those of us who still listen to In the West regularly. His contributions are a fascinating coda to “Halocline,” and on “S c ent” he is possibly the backbone of the entire song.
Change and “the new” hover all over Roughrider’s lyrics and subjects, from the peaking sunrise in the opening track to Nastasia’s fervent hope echoed by the title of the album’s closing number. In that sense, it’s not surprising that the song that most prominently features Phelps is the one that sounds the least like anything he or Midyett have ever done, together or separately.
Every trip through Roughrider is its own look, a new perspective on constant themes, with fresh elements coming to the fore. – Rosy Overdrive