The Third Eye Foundation – Ghost

There is a dreadful sorrow that hangs over this album, masterful as it is. The best indie-fuzz /drum-n’-bass/ shoegazer/ Bristol/ breaks stuff you’ll ever hear.

I bought this record in Amsterdam; in Staalplaat actually, which itself is a nice, if tiny, record store by some canal. I walked around all day after buying it, mostly on the recommendation of someone who knew I didn’t particularly dig on drum n’ bass, especially not that British shit that just plain sounded like poo.

They were right on with a vengeance.

But I have a bad batting average with The Third Eye Foundation. I loan Ghost to people and they return it, mostly complaining about the recording quality. It is noisy and fuzzy. It’s not ultra-clean breaks from the robot future. It’s more like breaks for nerds who can’t dance, with lots of guitar noise sampling ambient feedback joints to keep them from getting too sweaty.

So if I loan this album to you, please keep this in mind. I walked around a lot, never really getting the hang of the trams until it was nearly time to get home, and I listened to this.

www.thirdeyefoundation.com

Today Is The Day – In The Eyes of God

Of all the bands I like that my wife does not, Today Is The Day may be her least favorite. She will grudgingly acquiesce when I rail about how talented and intricate the playing is, but when it comes to the vocals – lady just can’t hang.

While for the sake of sanity and marriage I will write “I can’t entirely blame her, since Steve Austin‘s near-falsetto screaming can be a little harsh” but we all know the real deal, Neil. This band is ridiculously good.

Not Breathing – The Black Old Pueblo

Density. Denseness. Densosity. Densitude. Uh, je ne soi densis? Most of these fabricated words aren’t really very helpful in describing a whole lot of sounds smashed into one place, but neither is saying “there’s a whole lot of sounds smashed into one place and uh, it’s cool and stuff.” But that’s basically the deal here – catchy whisps of melodic themes smothered by choppy beats and booty-ish bass. Not Breathing (Dave Wright and collaborators, including Jack Dangers and Mark Spybey on this release) has followed a long chain – at least a decade – of progression from a mutated technoid existence to a stunning array of modified toys, drum machines and home-brewed synths. This process has left us somewhere at the intersection of breakcore, 3rd wave industrial and IDM, which is about as helpful as saying something is “not meat.”

[…]

This is not meat.

Biosphere – Microgravity, Patashnik and Substrata

“Satellite…Baby”

“Satellite…Baby”

Unless you’re willing to pay 30 bucks or more, you’re not going to find a physical copy of Microgravity. Since no one buys music anymore, this isn’t really an issue. But read on, and we shall explore why the damn thing is worth $8.91 from the iTunes store or an even ten bucks from bleep.com, to keep it truly, really and really truly real.

These days Biosphere is all about the ambient; an icy ambient that’s filled with coldness and ice cubes and other words that mean “weird and somewhat spooky.” Dude even climbs mountains in his spare time and samples the mountain sounds after he’s done climbing it – the musical equivalent of screwing a supermodel and then tattooing your name on her neck in your own blood.

Drifting beyond the “the arctic sound” of recent albums (though Autour de la Lune is so minimal as to be nearly inaudible) is a past when Geir Jenssen was an ambient techno badass. Seriously! If The Orb were a drug-addled maniac, Biosphere was the methodical cop who would burst into the interview room, kick over a chair and pin Alex Patterson into the corner all in one fell swoop.

Do not fuck with Biosphere.