Tag: drone

DECAYCAST Reviews: SHARKIFACE “Climax In A Process” (No Part Of It, 2023)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: SHARKIFACE “Climax In A Process” (No Part Of It, 2023)

Bay area “static witch” Sharkiface aka Angela Edwards shocks the underworld with her stunning new full length album “Climax In A Process” on the once Chicago- based No Part Of It imprint. Through many collaborative projects such as Pigs In The Ground, Tarantism, Crack W.A.R., DemonFace, Secretarial Pool amongst many others. Much like her live performances, “Climan In A Process” is dark, haunting, ethereal and throbbing saences. These works hold sharp, nuanced pillars of tension, like tightroping along razor blades into the foggy night, just outside the casting eye of a killer. Sharkiface employs an unknown array of unique, handmade, customized loopers, synths and samplers which sew webs of haunting vocals, human voice modulations and distortions, slow throbbing synthesizers, and distant strings and percussion.

Hell bells, back masking, throbbing pulses of invisible shards of glass slice your feet and ears as you glide backwards into a terrifying and unknown world. Shrieks of ritualized chaos peak and flow throughout a barren, cold psychological architecture. Pulling from Pauline Oleveros, Meredith Monk, Diamanda Galas, Throbbing Gristle, Italian Horror, Russolo and Mario Bava excavations, On “Climax In A Process” Edwards has crafted and refined a sonic world all her own in all it’s bloodsoaked, chaotic, tense walls of whispers, an absolutely terrifying sonic form and space. Absolutely essential listening.

DECAYCAST Reviews: Robert Schneider “Songs For Other Worlds” (Cloud Recordings, 2022)

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mynameisblueskye reviews Songs for Other Worlds by Robert Schneider

The Elephant 6 collective: let’s discuss the legendary psychedelic pop collective for a minute. As the story goes, Elephant 6 is a group of artists and bands who come together to share their love of making music inspired by bands in the 1960s. Elephant 6 is filled with bands who have their own creative spin on the psychedelic pop genre. If i were to ask you which artist is the standout, which one would you say? of Montreal for the endlessly prolific Kevin Barnes tackling idea after idea, genre after genre on a yearly basis? Neutral Milk Hotel for releasing an album that is the most unanimously loved in the inside rock/lo-fi genre, In an Aeroplane Over the Sea? The Music Tapes for Julian Koster’s ramshackle and decidedly lo-fi compositions using instruments such as the banjo or the saw? Any answer will do, but my pick would be that of Robert Schneider.

Robert Schneider is a leader of the power-pop band Apples in Stereo who released an album named New Magnetic Wonder years ago. On said album, Robert Schneider introduced a new musical invention: music composed using the non-Pythagorean scale. To get a better explanation, I suggest searching “Non-Pythagorean Music Scale” where Schneider himself not only breaks down the music, but also demonstrates with a song named “Sun is Out”. (On the same channel, you will also see him composing music using prime time signatures, but I digress.) This year, Robert Schneider himself put together an album of music that uses said non-pythagorean music scale, and  your enjoyment will depend upon your curiosity concerning the many things you can do with music. An curious and experimental ear, if you will.

Out of the gate, “Space Song of the Blue Sky” sounds exactly like music you would imagine if aliens were to have created the music, but is made with circuit bent synths. Largely, the music ranges from atonal ambient (“Composition No. 6”, the classical/synthwave fusion of the title track) to almost the dark end of new age (“Song for Whales”, the droning “Non-Pythagorean Prayer”, which sounds like a more tuneful version of when your ear rings in complete silence). A song like “Clouds on a Mountain” sounds like it would really soundtrack a suspenseful video game, if the opportunity presents itself with how dissonant it all feels and sounds. Oftentimes, such invention does yield bright and uplifting results, such as the luminous and calming “Song for Sea Vegetables”.

Albums like this is likely to be dismissed as a curiosity for those used to more conventional practices, but if you are willing to open your ears up, Songs for Other Worlds will expose to you some interesting musical treasures.https://cloudrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-other-worlds-2

-Mynameisblueskye

DECAYCAST Announces Preorder For HAURAS 4/9/21  “Chant For A Broken Chalice” OUT 5/7/21

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DECAYCAST Announces Preorder For HAURAS 4/9/21  “Chant For A Broken Chalice” OUT  5/7/21

HAURAS has crafted a lush and foreboding sonic landscape with “Chant For A Broken Chalice”, their first release for Oakland based imprint DECAYCAST. On “Chant For A Broken Chalice” intentional and otherworldly sounds envelop into a whirlwind of a slow churning concoction of beauty and anxiety. Dense choral envocations pulse over a sea of strings, keys, percussion and voice. HAURAS crafts tense and delicate music concerned with the rapid decline of empathy as intensified through the violent throes of capitalism. Both meditative and a warning, like a distant pulse of a lighthouse gently peaking over the fog as a distant warning of impending doom and collapse, scary and at this point completely unavoidable, but wow the beauty and elegance of the message is not something to soon be forgotten. 

“My work is concerned with the psychology of society at the end of Civilization.” – HAURAS

 The first single “Hold My Hand” takes a psychedelic dubbed out industrial approach to transport the mood and psyche of the listener to a blissful yet slightly unnerving underworld. The vocals glide through the mix like a robotic worm infecting an unknown host. Like most of Hauras’s work; “Chant For A Broken Chalice” holds the listener in an hourglass where time is rapidly and chaotically slipping away.  Intentional, heartfelt, and intense. 

“You’ve heard of the Music of Tomorrow? This is the Music of the Day After

Tomorrow.” – Chris Ryan (Composer, Cerddorion Ensemble,, Tzadik)

“The sonic equivalent of expired film in my Holga.” – Richard Youngs

RIYL: COIL, Psychic TV, The Residents, Snickers 

“Hold My Hand” Public Stream

Tracklisting:

1.  Somnia

2.  On The Morning

3.  Rotagivan

4.  Hold My Hand

5,   Chant For A Broken Chalice

6.   Standing At The Entrance

HAURAS has shared bills with:

Sarah Davachi, Laaraji, Father Murphy, Low, Tom Carter, Common Eider King Eider, Mary Lattimore, Tom Weeks, Lee Noble, Louise Bock, Clarice Jensen, Jonas Reinhardt, Carl Hultgren, John King, Lea Bertucci,

Saariselka, Nels Cline, Jessica Moss

ARTIST PHOTO:

More info / questions / press requests: decaycast@gmail.com

http://decaycastoakland.bandcamp.com

DECAYCAST Premieres: Home Learning Shares New Video “Let Us Know You Are Here” – Watch Now!

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Home Learning has shared their newest video and song “Let Us Know You Are Here” from their new album released this past December, “The Case for Final” via Healing Sound Propagandist. “Let Us Know You Are Here”– is a beautiful ambient, soothing A/V tone poem exploring slow undulating shifting spaces within a beautiful marriage between image and sound. The track is evocative of sadness, unknowing, maybe even discovery, but within a paused and pregnant framework and the slow moving psychedelic visual eruptions are constantly birthing something new to be contemplated.

“This video for the first track off of Home Learning’s album “the case for final” was put together during the COVID 19 pandemic. It combines footage of suburban mall-sprawl, crowded with shoppers in spite of the health risks, with abstract visuals that evoke chemicals, fire, and a gradual build up of distortion/disintegration. Not everything is bleak…the colors and sounds also bring metamorphosis, slow but significant change, and eventually, light sifts in. “

Ethereal washes of sound and shape blend together like flickering bacteria under a microscope excited by a newfound chemical reaction. Gentle explosions are what come to mind visually, and the track itself brings thoughts of time collapsing between unknown worlds. Sounds delicately drone slightly in the red which gives the recording a slight bit of intensity without compromising the vibe or intent of the morose, and often times blissful offering that is “Let Us Know You Are Here”. Smoke dances across the failed architecture of a forgotten society and we dream and try to dream of a land almost totally forgotten. Very beautiful marriage of parallel moods to create an evocative and intriguing visual representation of the track bringing to the table both uncertainty and emotional resolution. WATCH BELOW NOW!

Home Learning is a long distance collaboration between Tom Schmidlin (Pagination) located in Bentonville, Arkansas. and Edmund Osterman (Screener) in Covington, KY

DECAYCAST Reviews: Electric Sound Bath “Of This World” (Moon Glyph, 2020)

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Electric Sound Bath is the new age / ambient duo of Angela Wilson & Brian Griffith. Their newest, “Of This World” is out now via the mighty Moon Glyph Records. Large, swelling synths, rumbling sub bass undulations slowly bubble up through ambient swells on forgotten tones, a warm but slightly unsettling and unresolved tension. Electric Sound Bath is the perfect conceptual and sonic reference for this work, as the tones eclipse the listening space in a spacious and breath-like eclipse of sound. Channeling early Eno and Godspeed You Black Emperor, ESB’s tones slowly peak and dip with a graceful ease, a constantly shifting tone poem enacted with grace and precision. relaxing, calming, and blissful despite holding a tight intensity at times, never fully resolving to “background sounds” but engaging movements of pressure and movement.

The duo’s sounds have room to undulate within controlled structures, allowed to breathe on their own without much chaotic interference. Like an old ham radio beckoning into an empty sky, with hope of contact returned. Bordering on psychedelic ambient, and new age, the sound switches gears occasionally but slowly and carefully, dark and low string sounds guide the work like a distant light ahead, while warmer and more glassy synth voices continue to pulse – shimmering ever so steadily through the thick fog of the sonic space.

“This long-form creative process mirrored the duo’s own life trajectory and experiences ‘of this world’. The result is a celestial wash of MIDI-driven modular synthesizers crafting slow, unfurling caverns of sound. The type of deep, meditative tones that reward loud and close listening. Allow this music to patiently flow over you, reveling in the crystalline details and heavenly peace.”

Order now via Moon Glyph Records

DECAYCAST Premieres: Ezra Feinberg “Castle and Sand” & John Kolodij “Beyond the Fragile” streaming now! (Whited Sepulchre Records, 2020)

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Ezra Feinberg & John Kolodij share the first two tracks off of new LP on Whited Sepulchre Records. , 

The preorder is live now and the LP comes out August 28, 2020.

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Ezra Feinberg shares “Castle and Sand”, A beautiful, warm, introduction to a slowly shifting, bending, humming soundscape, unfolding inside the ear, setting off a trigger of washed out humming strings, a caucophanous silence, a briightly lit star millions of miles away, these. tones escape the source and paint a distant hum that grows brighter, and quieter. John Kolodij’s “Beyond the Fragile” escalates the listener to fever pitch psychedelic hums of bending light across a plush, dimly lit, mist cloaked forest.

On his side Feinberg compliments Kolodij perfectly with warm strings resonating and shaking across a barren sea. drenched in reverb, archaic strums pluck broightly across a sea of glass. Friction like a creaking ice tray about to crack Feinberg’s music is relaxing bt holds an intensity that could erupt at any moment but never quite does, leaving us on the edge of bliss and loneliness.

from the label:

“Bless whatever cosmic winds brought together this split between NYC guitarist and composer Ezra Feinberg and multi-instrumentalist John Kolodij. Traveling deep blue highways of the mind, their split LP opens up the stunning vistas that link these two artists in sound and texture.”

Preorder the LP HERE,  scope out W S R  vast and eclectic discography  HERE

DECAYCAST Reviews: Tristan Welch “Asset / Defect” (Self Released, 2020)

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On his newest EP, “Asset / Defect”  Tristan Welch explores a timeless dichotomy  of positive and negative expansions and contractions through space, silence, time and sound. Through glassy, shifting drones and tone poem movements ringing present, like a warm blanket after a cold night adrift on the nights moon last beam.  The album opens up with beautifully articulated  mid tempo oscillating synth pulses,  a faint buzzing underscored with a warm bath of tones; a calm yet slightly unnerving  respite; a rest for the restless, for the anxious, and for the forgotten.  This is slow patient, music, for one in a process of uncertainty, as well as one of discovery knows  that things can change, and every once in a great while, for the better, and maybe this time they will, that is the question this music asks, what is  change,  and when will it be cast upon us?

‘Given the inherently political nature of most of his music, “Asset / Defect” is a rare turn inward for Welch. As a person in recovery, “Asset / Defect” is an audio/visual accounting of sorts, a result from tallying up the ledger of negative character defects and positive assets. An accounting feat that is musically reflected in the clear balance between beautiful, ebullient tones and grainy distortion held at tension within the work.”

The A side  “Asset / Defect” seems a bit brighter in sound presentation overall but across the twenty minute EP, Welsh offers two movements which compliment each other in a dichotomy of undulation.  Wet delays and thick intertwined braids of reverberated strings cast doubt to those casting doubt, give hope to those giving hope, and push us all to look inward to a change of fresh air and relief.  The B side offers a similar, more contemplative, introspective place where the listener can identify with these living breathing wave manipulations, like a warm bath, tingling the skin, but never fully encapsulating the full dynamic of touch and pressure. Beautiful music for complicated times.

 

Highly recommended.

 

-Dr. Decaycast

 

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: Corsica Annex “Doors Outside” (Ingrown Records, 2020)

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Corsica Annex from Brooklyn creates delicate washes of ambient hum that will aide to calm even the most nervous and pent up listener.  Beginning  with wishing, weeping waves of  encapsulated warmth; a homely and resounding analog synthesizer din. The  psychedelic sound of “Doors Outside” slowly envelops and drifts away to a different place. Fuzzy, dream like tones gently lift light into the barren, lost eyes like the morning sun’s cast across a frozen, unsuspecting rose from the night before.

The mossy vibe slowly shifts into a repetitive string piece, undulation coupled with a morose progression that leaves the listener in the unknown. Warm organ like tones pulse uncertainty like a shifting leaf lost in the wind. Steve Reich style  string arpreggiations gloss over even more dense patterns of organic sounding  water-grown, nano bots, sonically somewhere connecting  Cloudland Canyon , Tim Hecker “Radio Amor” and later era Tangerine Dream, Corsica Annex have concocted a heartfelt electronic mood  bound to resonate with even the most passive listener.

Buy ‘Doors Outside”from the Ingrown Records bandcamp page, and check out the rest of the tapes from the batch here

 

-Dr. Decacast

DECAYCAST Reviews: Marlo Eggplant “Loose Footing” (Dubbed Tapes, 2019)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: Marlo Eggplant “Loose Footing” (Dubbed Tapes, 2019)

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For her newest cassette “Loose Footing”, underground experimental sound artist,  curator, and all-around master of her craft, Marlo Eggplant further refines her minimalist sound discovery practice for a frightening and dynamic sonic offering. “Loose Footing” is a haunting, dark and powerful delve into the deeper trenches of experimental sound and composition. The tape opens up with a twisted and mangled voice piece that turns into flowing water, a distant wind, a failed communication; we’re not really sure, except that it’s a new part of the journey. This work functions sort of as a “mixtape” style release in the sense that it contains lots of short compositions that all gel into an overall vibe, while maintaining their own individuality of experimentation, free from the flow of an “album” but structurally just as completed, and in some ways perhaps more profound and detailed than many noise “albums” where everything is presented as one long track. After the twisted, demonic voices subside,  A more melodic, undulating sine-wave drone piece eclipses from the crumbling fog, like an intense pulsing light escaping from the distant mountain peak at sunrise, warming the inner ear with a comforting din. Eggplant has always worked with a diverse palette of sounds, however this cassette composites so many different styles of composition and techniques that almost no two minute section is the same as the last- we are always led to a new sonic discovery with Eggplant at the controls.

Her sounds hold power and often a cinematic vision, I often found myself closing my eyes and dozing off into an unknown and slightly frightening world of unknown origin. If there’s one person who can transform sound and take us to another place, it’s Marlo Eggplant. The  B side contains more of the same, dark, heavy drone-based works which morph strings, turntablism, voice, and mixed electronics for a highly dynamic, tense,  and complex effect-my favorite listening experience. Eggplant is one of the best in the game and you should follow whatever she’s doing, including her label and distro and LADYZ IN NOIZE series. Also check out an older review we did of Marlo’s last tape  “Head/Rushed”  (Vaux Flores) here 

DUBBED TAPES 

MARLO EGGPLANT

DECAYCAST Premieres: Experimental Artist OUTPUT 1:1:1 Shares “Retroactive Rock Record” Video/Single

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Output 1:1:1 is currently preparing for the release of his upcoming EP “Retroactive Rock Record”, due out on November 1, 2019, and has been kind enough to share with us the premiere of the second video, Directed by Elias Campbell and single from the album under the same name, “Retroactive Rock Record”. The track blends slow moving hypnotic vocals, dark plucked ethereal synthesizers and strings, and lush, ominous and lonesome sounding electronic background sounds. The sound of “Retroactive Rock Record” tells a dark and confusing story about confusion, loss, the unknown. The tones blend together perfectly to create at once a hopeful, albeit slightly unsettling sonic vibe. Take a look at the video below and make sure to pick up the album on November 1.

: “Writing this song was incredibly freeing, despite the central idea of it being a complete lack of control. I wrote the lyrics of the song the night of the 2016 US election. I felt a sense of helplessness swell as Trump’s election became inevitable-Canada seems to follow US election cycles pretty closely. I think helplessness can really encourage shame-the sense that I’m terrible and I am in this mess because I deserve this. It takes a lot more than reinforced positive thinking to work through, and writing this song was an attempt to redirect my helplessness into creating something.

watch the video here: