I found this concert to be tremendously exciting and the first time I’ve heard Nils Molvaer build upon the promise of Khmer, his debut release as leader. His subsequent recordings have generally exploited contemporary production values and dance-derived beats without ultimately achieving much in the way of originality or managing to expand his emotional palette.

The sequencing revealed an impressive structure that alternated between subdued threat and magnificent noise. Already well-versed in Audun Klieve’s talents, I was particularly struck by the grinding abstractions of Stian Westerhus whose work I’d not heard before. I was also very much struck by the staging of the concert in terms of lighting, sound quality and video backdrop. I think I’ve seen Nils play live four or five times previously and it’s been my experience that he’s much more thrilling in concert than on record, where his productions smooth over the occasionally ragged glory of his band’s live performance. So too here although Hamada is very much worth hearing.

Although aware of Hamada’s release, I’d not bothered to seek it out and only through the kindness of a friend did I get to attend the concert. I’m extremely glad I did as I’m now a renewed fan and very much look forward to hearing where Nils goes next, now that he’s begun to develop his own voice again. I’d love to hear him move in the direction of the dark metal that Hamada hints at, as the likes of Steve Noble/Aethenor and Julian Priester/Sunn o))) have done.

Here’s a brief excerpt from a quieter passage:

For a diametrically opposed perspective, see John L. Walters’ review.

The realisation crept up on me rather slowly that this was a very special line-up. As soon as I heard that Moritz was performing, I’d booked tickets for Dan and myself. The only other time I’d caught Moritz performing live, apart his DJ sets was as Rhythm & Sound in the former Subterranea, Notting Hill with Tikiman a/o. The nostril and trouser quivering bass, full-frontal sonic attack, small audience and freedom to dance like a dervish made that experience one of my all-time favourites. Despite the subsequent, fascinating Recomposed and last year’s Trio release, I doubted the evening would be anything like as profound an experience. Though very different, it turned out to be very special indeed.

Of the people I spoke to, it seemed I was the only person to much enjoy Bugge’s opening set. I’d seen a few short videos of the duo and hadn’t been very impressed. However, their melding of house, techno and jazz in longform streams was a real pleasure. Bugge’s return to a house/jazz marriage was very welcome given my love of his Moving album (his other masterpiece is the solo piano Im). Once or twice Bugge veered a little too close to Cafe del Mar territory for my taste, but their marriage of lyricism, percussive experiment and pleasure left me wanting to hear more.

Despite thoroughly enjoying their set at The Scala a few years back, I wasn’t at first sure what might interest me about them, Matmos turned out to be a pleasure exploring areas of body horror and acid-drenched Disney in a short, but perfectly formed set.

The strikingly youthful pianist Francesco Tristano has performed with Craig, Oswald and orchestra and released an album produced by the latter. Neither had particularly engaged me. Saxophonist David Brutti was a new name while the other two are surely the techno equivalent of royal family. All bar Fox were distributed across the stage positioned at instrument stations with Craig at the centre. They performed a single lengthy piece that morphed between sections without pause. The music began in a becalmed state with a 4/4 pulse so distant that I wondered whether it was emanating from outside. Brutti improvised passages on bass and sopranino saxophones while Tristano supplied flourishes, melodic touches and comping. So far, so mundane, but what really impressed – what had me realise that I was experiencing something new and deliciously unfamiliar was the ambition and rigour of the music. The idea of marrying the techno grid to larger structures, improvisation and an approach that might best be termed symphonic sounds like an awful idea. However, the four of them made it work. Throughout, it felt like a tightrope, as if at any moment one of them might slip and bring the others crashing down.

Very little and a hell of a lot happened in the 45 minutes (that’s a pure guess) that the music lasted. It could have lasted much longer, but all too soon someone appeared on stage tapping his watch and indicating five minutes to go. The set received a mixed reaction from my friends, some enthusiastic, some not. I loved every moment and would be fascinated to be able to hear the music again. I hope they’ll release a recording although it would be fascinating if the music went unrecorded, remaining only in memory.

Afterwards, in the RFH lobby DJ Sprinkles played a fine house set which Dan and I shuffled to for a little while. I had to leave reluctantly at midnight lest my carriage turn into a pumpkin and leave me stranded. What a marvellous night!

Sick of end of year lists? Well, here’s another one.

Sometime around June 2009 seemed like a really promising year, but now I’ve come to make this list of my personal favourites, it doesn’t look as impressive as I’d expected. Boomkat’s end of years seemed a bit meh and The Wire’s rewind likewise imparted a sense of the lacklustre. It might just be me. Despite that, there were some really strong albums and my shortlist of enduring releases expanded from 2008’s trio to a quintet this year.

Enduring

• Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care
  Subtle pop masterpiece, distressingly ignored in year end lists, this even bested their debut Last Exit for me.
  
• Jon Hassell – Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street
  There are few such original instrumentalists left, though this release wasn’t revelatory that doesn’t seem important at this stage.
• King Midas Sound – Waiting For You
  More coherent and convincingly haunted for me than the Burial albums though I realise I’m in the minority with that opinion. Roger Robinson is amazing and it’s great to hear K. Martin rein in the bombast to
  
• Kraftwerk – The Catalogue
  An all too obvious choice I know, but an unavoidable one all the same.
• Moritz Von Oswald Trio – Vertical Ascent
  Vertical Ascent is a significant new approach for Moritz, particularly in light of his joint responsibility for the deep innovation of Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound (I’ve never been able to feel the claim for Monoton’s prior claim). Can’t wait for the second album from the trio.
  

Well worth hearing

• Broadcast & The Focus Group – Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
• David Sylvian – Manafon
• Martyn – Great Lengths
• Monolake – Silence
• On – Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night
• Ryuichi Sakamoto/Alva Noto – UTP
• Shackleton – 3 EPs
• Snd – Atavism
• Tortoise – Beacons of Ancestorship
• Various – 5 Years of Hyperdub
• Vladislav Delay – Tummaa
• Zomby – One Foot In Front of the Other
• 2562 – Unbalance

Meaning to hear

• Supersilent 9
• Peverelist – Jarvik Mindstate

Music released prior to 2009 that I loved in 2009

• Steve Tibbetts
  This was the year Tibbetts’ music made sense to me. Unfortunately I struggle to articulate that sense to anybody else.
• Jimmy Giuffre – Free Fall
  Though I’d heard Free Fall before, this was the year I found it absolutely riveting in its exploration of the atavistic. I kept thinking of Harrison Birtwistle’s unrecorded opera Yan Tan Tithero. Giuffre’s 1961 live recordings Emphasis and Flight and Free Fall’s precursors Fusion and Thesis (reissued by ECM as 1961) are essential companions.
  
• John Martyn
  I cried buckets on learning of his death this year and listened to his ’70s albums on repeat for a long time after.
• Lech Jankowski – Institute Benjamenta.
  Long familiar with the film, 2009 saw me search out the soundtrack and found it to be a fascinating masterpiece. It’s OOP and rare as hen’s but the torrent is easily found.
  
• Neil Young – Dead Man.
  See above.
• Scritti Politti – White Bread, Black Beer.
  I really, really struggled with this album, but I finally appreciated its otherworldly strangeness this year.
• Jan Garbarek – Paths, Prints; Wayfarer
  Garbarek’s acerbic sound balances beautifully with Bill Frisell’s wafting chords on this pair of albums.
• Bugge Wesseltoft – Im
  Beautiful solo piano.
  

Other noteworthy lists

• Milkfactory, Mapsadaisical, Resident Advisor poll top 20

Previous years

• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003

I listen to too much music so I’m sorely tempted to list a slew of records, but I’m going to resist that temptation. Instead I’m going to choose just one record from the last ten years. It didn’t take me long to decide.

Scott Walker’s The Drift was released in 2006, I’ve listened to it a lot though I might wish I hadn’t. For the first year or so I could only respect it from a distance. It was monotonous, monolithic, monstrous, implacable, unforgiving. Much of it refused comprehension. Much of it still does.

Then I began to do things I’ve since come to deeply regret. Nothing about The Drift changed, but I did. I closed the gap until it became a part of me. I love and sometimes dread this record, but I don’t like it. Could anyone?

None of this justifies The Drift as a work of art to be picked out from the deafening labyrinth of music released in the last decade, but that’s my assertion. It’s a courageous work that refuses to look away from death and madness, from the darkness and horror perpetrated by other people who have names like ours – Clara, Jesse, Jones – and but for different circumstances might be our stories.

The Drift traverses nightmare dreamscapes, 9/11, Elvis Presley, genocide in the former Yugoslavia, fascist Italy, and the bl(e)ackest humour imaginable. It fixes the political and the poetic in its unblinking gaze and thereby sheds light on the darkest part of our souls.

I’ve heard no record that approaches its dark ambition, integrity or singularity.

To see more images of The Drift, please visit the post on Hard Format.

I’ll be damned if I can get WordPress to remember the lightbox setting so it’s just pics on sub-pages for the time being.

Stunning.

Robert Longo website
Via ISO50

Unofficial they may be, but lovely to behold. Note pointed use of original Olympic rings…

All designs by Alan Clarke.

My review for the Beeb:

SND
Atavism

Atavism is intense, utterly stripped-down and as persistent as an angry hornet. There’s nothing superfluous at all. Although the music may initially appear forbidding, SND achieve a striking degree of variety from a carefully reduced set of elements.

SND’s music has always been as consistently minimal as the most severe conceptual art. Thoughts of Donald Judd or Dan Flavin, however, don’t usually centre on their art’s funkiness, whereas SND’s rhythms trace their routes back to the dance floor.

As with the group’s name, from which all vowels have been removed, a key characteristic of their music is a striking absence: there’s no bass at all. All  sonic activity occurs in the middle and upper registers. When combined with the jaunty rhythms of UK Garage as on their first three albums, their music appears to be the haunted reverse of Dubstep’s bass-heavy progress.

With Atavism, SND draw their inspiration from a point further back in time, indicated by the titular reference to the ancient or ancestral. On the evidence of Atavism’s reduced sonic palette, this relates to the electro-inspired bleep tracks released by the likes of Unique 3 and LFO in the group’s Sheffield hometown at the turn of the ‘90s.

With the absence of bass and any extraneous elements, the sound becomes meditative, strangely so for something so exacting and unforgiving. Atavism is SND’s fourth album, their first in five years and their debut for Raster Noton. As such, it’s the point at which two arcs intersect: releases on Raster Noton have gradually become less ascetic and more listener/dance floor-friendly while, with Atavism, SND appear to have jettisoned the UK Garage-derived syncopation that made their music so immediately palatable.

Jon Hassell is the only consistently original successor to Miles Davis’ electric output and one of the most original instrumental stylists of the last thirty years. His regrettably low profile is ascribable to the sui generis nature of the thirteen albums he has recorded. Though primarily associated with his own Fourth World tribal/technology concept, his oeuvre reveals a range of other possibilities including bayou jazz (Fascinoma), digital cut-up (City: Works of Fiction) and hiphop (Dressing For Pleasure). Everything, including this album, is worthy of serious attention.

Last Night The Moon… takes its name from 13th century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi and continues a narrative initiated by Hassell’s previous album, 2005’s Maarifa Street. That album shares with this latest release a sense of balance between past, present and future. Here, though, the practice reveals an even greater subtlety than the self-referential practice essayed by its predecessor.

Although performed by a patchwork quilt of different musicians, including Norwegians Jan Bang and Eivind Aarset, only violinist Kheir Eddine M’Kachiche and bass player Peter Freeman are distinctly recognisable. The ensemble creates delicate, cloud-like atmospheres that wreathe the listener in music that could be experienced as scent or touch. The album is a collaged snapshot of a working group: four of the ten compositions are live recordings. However, there are no rough edges and no audience noise. Tracks bleed into each other, signalled only by a renewed sense of oblique perspective.

Blue Period is a further exploration of the sublime Amsterdam Blue which only appeared on the soundtrack to Million Dollar Hotel and sounds like an infinitely weary cortege spied through a veil of mist, while  Courtrais is representative of the larger whole: a brooding, pendant atmosphere kneaded by powerful bass and haunted by Hassell’s warm-blooded, but spectral presence.

Last Night The Moon… offers up an impeccable soundworld which gradually reveals a sense of deeply meditative interaction from a group of individuals listening intently to one another. The music repays similar attention from the listener.

Lovely new science-fiction book cover designs on Gollancz.

As see on Creative Review.