MONO "Beyond the Past • Live in London with the Platinum Anniversary Orchestra (TRL)"
From Temporary Residence Ltd.:
Beyond the Past • Live in London with the Platinum Anniversary Orchestra documents MONO’s extraordinary performance from the Beyond the Past event that celebrated the band’s 20th anniversary, which took place at the historic Barbican Centre in London, England on December 14, 2019. For that once-in-a-lifetime event, MONO selected a memorable lineup of old and new friends, including fellow Japanese underground icons, Boris and Envy, as well as French post-metal legends, Alcest, and UK collaborators A.A. Williams and Jo Quail. The event culminated with MONO performing with The Platinum Anniversary Orchestra, featuring National Youth String Orchestra to a rapt, sold-out audience of 2,000.
Playing through a two-hour set that touches on the band’s entire history, the sheer euphoria and dynamic resonance that engulfed the massive crowd was captured in brilliant detail by MONO’s live sound engineer, Matt Cook. Meticulously mastered by Bob Weston and presented here in its entire two-hour glory, Beyond the Past is one of the most essential MONO recordings. Packaged in a triple gatefold with accompanying 40-page photo book, this is the rare document of an event that is an event in and of itself.
Manslaughter 777 "World Vision Perfect Harmony (Thrill Jockey)"
From Thrill Jockey:
For their debut as a duo, Buford and Jones blend bracing and imaginative takes on rhythmic-centric forms from dub, breakbeats, hip hop and beyond for a phantasmagoria of bristling drumscapes.
Manslaughter 777 pulls together a vast array of disparate percussive traditions and patterns into a veil of dark, propulsive energy. Recorded and mixed by Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets, the album’s mélange of live and sampled beats fizzle, splat and rupture with an edge. While there are sounds that could be at home on a record by The Body, Manslaughter 777 inhabits much more open spaces. The duo’s music is based primarily on drums and eclectic samples, shifting melodic ideas to the overtones and resonances of their respective percussive thuds or clicks. Buford and Jones incorporate hybridizations of live, sampled, and electronic percussion obscuring their boundaries while highlighting their specific tonal and timbral qualities. The repetitive amen break of “ARC” creates a hypnotic stasis before being broken wide open by bending and grizzly distorted hits. “Gainax” and “Mag Tech” both utilize a rolling tom pattern as a tonal drone that interplays with pitched bass drums to startlingly contrasting effects. Elysian vocal snippets and laidback tempos spin pieces like “I Can Not Tell You How I Feel” and “Do You Know Who Loves You” into more contemplative and ecstatic atmospheres. An alchemical balance of detailed and dynamic production guides each element to the fore in steady waves of relentless momentum.
Taken as a whole, World Vision Perfect Harmony is a cornucopia of rhythmic texture. Manslaughter 777 channels a deluge of kineticism into a web of syncopated grooves that are equally entrancing and provocative. Audacious sound architects, Buford and Jones built an album that passionately revels in the world of rhythm. Manslaughter 777’s constructs glide as gracefully as they rumble. Together, they are a monument to the power of percussion.
Double Celled Organism "Time and Other Things That Don’t Exist (Team Love)"
From Team Love:
Bill Brovold and Richard Carr are Double Celled Organism. Time and Other Things That Don’t Exist is their second collaborative album released on Team Love. Bill Brovold plays guitar, banjo, drums, and home-made instruments. Richard Carr plays violin, keys, and samples.
Richard Carr is a violinist, composer and music educator, with a doctorate in music education from Columbia University. He has recorded numerous albums under his own name and with artists such as Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, Bootsy Collins, Sly & Robbie, The Swans, Milt Hinton, Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli Jr., Alan Dawson, Howard Alden, and Karl Berger. He has performed with James Williams, Kenny Davern, Doc Cheatam, Jay McShann, Jamal Nasser, Mike Nord, Georg Hofmann, Steve Gornthe Go:Organic Orchestra and the American Festival of Microtonal Music. He is a former radio host on WDST in Woodstock, NY. He has climbed to the summit of Mt. Kilamanjaro in Tanzania, and trekked in Nepal, Peru, New Zealand, Patagonia, France, Switzerland, Italy, The Rockies, The Sierra Nevada, and a bunch of other places.
Bill Brovold is a painter, composer, and artist. In the early 1980s, he was a member of a number of New York avant- garde, No Wave groups including Rhys Chatham Ensemble, East Village Orchestra, Fast Forward and the Zen Vikings. Bill created the Detroit bands Larval and Strange Farm, whose revolving line-ups at times included Billy Ficca of Television, Ernie Brooks of Modern Lovers, and Ron Asheton of The Stooges. Brovold’s long musical history overflows with interesting projects and obscure yet essential names in the worlds of art and avant-garde music.
Field Works "Cedars (TRL)"
From TRL:
The mystifying 9th album in the Field Works series, Cedars combines cosmic Americana with Western ambient and Middle Eastern influences. Delicate layers of pedal steel, banjo, oud, and hurdy-gurdy float atop looping guitar drones to create a soothing, atmospheric chamber where folk and electronic music coalesce. Set to Arabic and English poetry, the song cycle examines some of Earth’s most iconic and ancient forests, revealing our complicated relationship with the natural world. For this special dual-language release, Field Works producer Stuart Hyatt has assembled a supergroup of musicians, poets, and artists. The album is narrated by Youmna Saba and H.C. McEntire. Instrumentalists include Marisa Anderson, Fadi Tabbal, Dena El Saffar, Danny Paul Grody, Bob Hoffnar, Tomás Lozano, Nathan Bowles, Alex Roldan, Youmna Saba, and Stuart Hyatt. Renowned illustrator María Medem brings poems by Todd Fleming Davis and Youmna Saba to life in the accompanying full-color Risograph comic book; and longtime Field Works collaborators PRINTtEXT design the packaging.