Anti-Gravity Bunny

Pataphor – Public Transit (MRSA)

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A Boston newcomer, by way of Milwaukee, Pataphor (aka Shannon Smith) has made some awesomely inaccessible noise on Probably Not. 3 tracks each around 10 minutes or so, the middle one a slight respite from its two rattling bookends. It starts with an interrupting “Special News Bulletin” morse code thing, attention grabbing tension, building/crumbling into a public school fire alarm, standing right in front of it, no chance of walking by and unplugging your ears, repeated indefinitely, which is definitely a theme here. Nothing is too dynamic, she finds a group of tones and just works & tweaks until you’re left with an erupted eardrum. The second track starts by dropping all the harshness and upping the creep factor, the sounds of a haunted swamp, gurgling on its own, ghastly moans drifting through the fog, peepers & cicadas making a tinny racket, but not even the swamps are safe because by the end of this it builds into another static shriek of noise. The final track is for the most masochistic. Solid square waves of sustained tinnitus, it’s amazing what she can do with just a few sounds, terribly piercing, an impenetrable sheet of high wire feedback, with just enough alterations along the way to make it fucking incredible and not making you want to jump through a 10th story window. This is some creatively despicable noise, and fuckin killer. It’s the first release on her own MRSA label, and you can pay whatever you want for a digital copy.

C. Spencer Yeh – Two Guitars (Intransitive)

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A “proper” solo album from C. Spencer Yeh… finally? 1975 is being billed as a debut of Yeh’s, but regardless of what solo-type stuff he’s released in the past, this is a departure from his usual Burning Star Core sound. This is, um, weirder. And way more minimal. The track titles are either hyper-descriptive or giving just enough info to make your mouth water depending on your point of view. I’m in the latter. “Voice”, “Drone,” “Two Guitars,” that’s about as much as you’re gonna get from Yeh. But he’s being pretty straightforward about it. No mysteries as to what’s involved, just infinite mysteries as to what the fuck is going on.

The first half is alternating back-to-back “Drone” & “Voice” pieces, the drone ones being perhaps most similar to BXC material, just way more stripped down. Sustained piercing tones, just hanging in the air. “Voice” is some of the most engaging stuff on here, with Yeh’s vocals chopped up into discrete millisecond notes, patched together in a mind-bending glitch with almost no pattern or rhythm. But the best pieces on here are the couple of “Two Guitars” tracks. Absolutely amazing. Taking the stretched out tones from the “Drone” songs and adding a few more layers of rumble & grit but still keeping it totally bare, not one sound more than is necessary. The end of the record looks back to early avant garde electronics, the lo-fi scattered experiments that paved the way for today’s accessible niceties. Yeh burns through the weirdness like it’s his job, pounding away on echoing pianos and retro sci-fi effects. Unbelievably cool.

I haven’t heard a record like this in a while, and definitely not from anyone contemporary. Yeh is pushing for an old new drone noise, ignoring his bliss-obsessed colleagues and making something that requires more attention and contemplation. You need to try a little bit more with this one. And godDAMN it’s worth it.

MicroD – Prime Part IV (self released)

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I’ve sort of stopped paying attention to straight up 8 bit music lately. No fault of its own, I just have gotten a little disinterested. It needs an extra hook or something for me to give it a chance. Not a gimmick, just a theme or a variation on the sound. MicroD’s got that shit taken care of. His chiptunes are 100% Game Boy goodness but to spice things up he gave himself some constraints, working with prime numbers. Math + chiptunes = fuck yes I’m listening. He’s got “Prime” parts I-IV and he composed each one in a different prime time signature, starting with 3/4 and working up to 11/4 time. The artwork is based around primes (location of orange) and some of the tracks have prime beats per minute. Dude knows his primes. Plus there’s a song called “Fist.bmp.” Brilliant! Add all that fun up with the catchy as fuck super solid 8 bit housewarmers and you’ve struck gold. The real kicker is you can grab Prime in all it’s digital sexiness for free (if you want) or you can cop the limited analog for a mere $5. The power is yours!

Flossin – The Launch (Overlap)

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There are three well known facts. 1: Zach Hill is awesome. 2: Christopher Willits is awesome. 3: Matmos is awesome. Flossin is those guys (along with Nate Boyce and Carson McWhirter (the bass player for The Advantage)). Sadly, it’s also known that super groups don’t always amount to the sum of their parts. Flossin is not that kind of super group. Originally, it was Willits, Hill, and the almighty Kid 606, but that was just for the first record, Lead Singer. It was pretty great. But then the Kid left and Matmos took his place (along with those two other dudes who everyone for some reason seems to ignore is part of Flossin?) for the second album, Serpents, from 2009. I haven’t heard that one. I’ve heard this one, though. White anaconda And The Rainbow Boa.

WOW. How has this not received any fanfare? You guys, it’s Christopher Willits, Zach Hill, and MATMOS. The blogs should be all over this. Not just because of who’s involved but that should at least be your entry point into this mess. And this is a mess. They spent two days improvising in the studio and the result was White Anaconda, a glitchy free jazz noise fest. Willits and Matmos (and those two other dudes) fuck around with their electronics & guitar processings, whining & clicking, droning & exploding, melting their sounds into one indistinguishable whole because honestly, who knows who’s doing what on this, while Hill destroys his drums in the way only he can. Yes, normally he’s a beast on the kit, but in Flossin he goes the spastic Eli Keszler route and takes his already inhuman skills to the next level.

Flossin is a furious monster of chaos, a reigning maelstrom of glitch, that is the least jazz-like jam session I’ve ever heard and somehow makes all of this flurrying actually soothing & relaxing. For all of it’s precise notes & isolated tones, it blurs into a smooth pink bliss, something that’s surprisingly transcendant, a soft wash of zen over your mind, ambient glitch pushed so far to the limits of glitch it collapses in on itself and becomes ambient again. 100% top notch. This is what should be expected of supergroups. White Anaconda is fucking it.

Good Weather For An Airstrike – Cast Aside (The Briefest Of Pauses) (Hibernate)

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This dude, Tom Honey from the UK, has a vision. And it’s one I am fucking psyched about. He drones in ways that I want everyone to drone. His music is as serene as heaven itself. Overwhelmingly understated minimal drones, like Windy & Carl at their most subdued, or Eluvium on codeine, just steady innocuous loops that blow your mind with their subtleties. It’s the sound of air, sitting motionless above freshly greened treetops in the spring, almost completely unmoving, save for the warmth of the sun stirring the currents a bit. This is quiet purity, perfection on top of perfection. Don’t let the outside world ruin this for you. It’s meant for you, and you alone. Immerse yourself in it and you will be a better person.

 
Everyone should remember Christina Vantzou’s gorgeous Nº. 1 on Kranky last year. And if for some reason you passed over it, let me be the last to tell you that it’s fantastic. She’s one half of The Dead Texan, the other half of whom is Adam Wiltzie, one of the dudes from Stars Of The Lid. Nº. 1 is the Kranky release that got overshadowed by A Winged Victory For The Sullen, another Wiltzie duo, this time with Dustin O’Halloran. But all of this is just precursor, and only for those of you who are unaware, which I hope is few and far between.

So in addition to but separate from the Nº. 1 release on Kranky, Vantzou put out on her own a film accompaniment to the album and a slew of remixes of tracks from Nº. 1. The contributors to the remix project are an insanely awesome bunch: Koen Holtkamp, Loscil, Ben Vida, Dustin O’Halloran, White Rainbow, Robert Lippok, Ernest Gibson III, Montgomery Knott, Isan, and there’s even a new Dead Texan track at the end. All of their takes on Vantzou’s subtleties are just as grand and wonderful as Nº. 1.

And the movie is stunning (trailer is below). It’s 47 minutes, running parallel to the record, although it’s broken up into chapters that don’t necessarily coincide with songs. There’s a golden beauty to it, with lots of found footage manipulated to meet Vantzou’s high standards of quality, taking everything from large crowds to intimate portraits, expansive mountain ranges to solitary swaying trees, and adding a layer of flickering patina to make it all shine. There’s an especially peaceful segment of planes flying through the clouds, as shot from another nearby plane. Truly stunning.

The movie is only available physically through Vantzou’s site and it comes with the remixes. Or you could just knab the remixes digitally and forgo the exceptional video experience. Your choice. But I will judge you if you ignore the movie.

Aidan Baker – Return To The Cave Of Time (Robotic Empire)

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Aidan Baker, who is undeniably the most epically prolific dude of our generation, has somehow even outdone himself on this new one. 97 tracks, with something like 18 drummers from bands like Locrian, Swans, The Jesus Lizard, Slowdive, Jesu, Batillus, and Neptune, 2 CDs worth of music, all meant for random play, making each time you throw it on more or less a new experience. Baker solicited drum tracks from masters the world over and ended up with 6 hours of drums (which I think you have access to if you drop some cash on this?) and then boiled it down to about 2 hours of finely chopped tracks that he laid guitars & bass lines over.

Most songs are pretty damn short (less than a minute) but there’s some fully formed songs on here too, some spiking up to 7 minutes. The sound of Distraction is all over the fuckin place, there’s skittery free jazz, furious black metal, white hot psych grooves, gritty black ambient, lullaby drones, and, most importantly, massive Nadja-esque metalgaze. This is every side imaginable of Baker, and he shines at every moment.

The whole “distraction” thing is a valid theme, very topical, etc, but I think the best part of this is the complete opposite of everything else that Aidan Baker has created, aka chaotic as fuck. So much of his work requires your full attention, you need to put it on and do nothing but listen to it. This is something I’ll put on so that it won’t keep my attention. This is supremely awesome, it showcases all of his mad skillz from every direction making it a record for the background of everything. Fucking brilliant. Dude still remains the best ever.

Dog Hallucination – Untitled 2 (Intangible Cat)

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A tightly compacted 3″ where Dog Hallucination (Doggy P. Lips & D. Petri) is joined by Bob from Headless Ballerinas Underwater. Weirdness abound on this one, the guitars getting fucked up & beatified by Bob with some added field recordings thrown into the mix. Gentle looping guitars, droning into the ether alongside ruptured electronics gurgling everywhere, phasers set to “caress,” celestial warmth feeding the fire, all infused with a solid rhythm, a noisy techno-drone that does more to invoke lucid dreams than it does the urge to party. But this is still totally partyable (at least a couple of the tracks are). And totally awesome. Here’s hoping Bob joins in the Hallucinations more often.

Twink – Tumble Bunny (Twink Tones)

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It might be hard to break the barrier on this one. A band named Twink with a record called Itsy Bits & Bubbles and album art like that? Everything about this screams that it’s for kids. And here’s the kicker, it’s primarily made with toy instruments. Now, before you get all Judge Judgmental on me, let me remind you that Self’s Gizmodgery was made with toys (“Trunk Fulla Amps” anyone?) and then there’s the fact that Twink really knows what the fuck he’s doing. This is high quality toy pop with quirks, charm, and hooks galore. It’s like if Amiina and The Books had a kid who grew up to worship Dan Deacon and was best friends with a sedated Foxdye. Toy instruments are just the beginning, Twink will open up any toy that has a fuck-withable circuit and make it do his bidding, 8 bit rainbows looping in danceable harmony, and wobbly dubstep leaking into the strangest places. Plus, there’s an “Axel F” cover and he’s from Lowell! If this shit doesn’t put a little joy in your heart, maybe it’s time to give up because you’re just too far gone.