The Black Dog – Radio Scarecrow

There’s retro and then there’s frozen in time.
There’s a revivalist techno thing going on with labels like Dust Science and Soma, and specifically the resurgence of B12 and these guys.
A bit of history – back in the day, The Black Dog was the two dudes from Plaid (before they were Plaid) and Ken Downie. The [...]

Dreadfully Obvious Classics #2 – Selected Ambient Works Volume 2

A few years back I wrote an email to a friend who had asked for an Aphex Twin recommendation. For whatever reason I closed my email to her with the following line:
“Burroughs was the Venetian Snares of magickal sodomy. SAW2 wears a rubber glove.”
Now, that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense whatsoever. The first [...]

Bardo Pond – Dilate

2001 was a year that could be described as psychomimetic, if not genuinely psychedelic*; at the very least it was a psychoactive hallucinogenic launchpad for all sorts of horrendous bullshit.
I don’t belive I listened to this album that year; I was neck deep in NYC’s tiny IDM scene and related hijinks, like watching people I [...]

I Have A Divination: The New Mastodon Sucks

http://www.culturebully.com/mastodon-divinations-video
Are they serious?
The song is pretty bad; it picks up on the prog landscape where Blood Mountain left off, and is not my cup of tea. But the video? Really?
Clarification: The advent of Metalocalypse changed the game. It’s not enough to be ridiculous, ambiguously.

Burial – Untrue

Untrue is a parade of simple, stilted beats and R&B vocal samples pitched about while drowning in reverb. It’s poorly mixed and almost ugly. It evokes a nearly universal reaction of what the hell from everyone.
But despite sounding like poo, it’s very engaging. The mood is, however, entirely that of feeling like the dude(s) who [...]

Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light

Antony has a tear-strained voice that will forever overwhelm anything the rest of his ensemble may do. That’s the nature of vocal-driven music. Even the minor instrumental patters here and there on The Crying Light never actually go beyond setting the stage for the next reappearance of his pained, absurdist melodrama.
Some might complain this is [...]

Genghis Tron – Board Up The House

This was another memorable record of 2008. Great big ole spasms right at the intersection of late 90s IDM and grindcore, with a taste for epic flourishes. It’s a bit more “mature” than Dead Mountain Mouth, in that there’s a slightly wider spread of styles, a handful of slowdowns before the big speed-ups. At its [...]

Burning Witch – Crippled Lucifer

This reissue was one of my favorites of 2008. The name of the band is kinda dumb. References to Lucifer are generally to be avoided. It’s got that dude from Sunn O))) in it, and it’s a decade old.
But damn, I love it. I love it so much. There’s this part in “Sacred Predictions” where [...]

Drone On You Lazy Diamonds (Nadja & Asva)

Band recommendations, like deaths, are rumored to come in threes. Obviously that’s just selection bias, like a lot of what we’d call “folk wisdom” or “making shit up”. Oral traditions are a tangled web, and say what the Zerzanites and the back to the land types will, but I’m all for indexed Google searches and [...]