chrispower

If you want to read the greatest English-language work of literature to come out of the war, David Jones's In Parenthesis is essential: http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/in-parenthesis/
(Jaggishly enough, I recently wrote a piece about it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/feb/04/first-world-war-novelist-david-jones)

For the record, Splazsh was the lead review in armchair dancefloor back in May (http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4139594-armchair-dancefloor-019-incl-iori-mix), so it was, in its own small way, kind of reviewed by DiS after all.

but it seems odd to take issue with a remix album for lacking coherence. Unless all the artists were working in a coordinated fashion, or failing to move very far away from the source sound, surely coherence is the last thing to expect (or want) from a project like this? I think there's some really strong work here. Particularly, as you say, the Broadcast/Focus Group and Oneohtrix Point Never tracks.

but they're usually drunk and/or loudly speaking English. Steer clear of those two and you should be fine!

next month, I think. Great stuff. You really should go there: the greatest big club space there is, for me.

I'd recommend anyone to spend 45 minutes with it.

I agree with what you say about Mount Kimbie, but reading the capsule review back I realised I'd phrased my comment on 'Between Time' a little clumsily. I mean limping in a good way! Yes, I have my reservations about the album, but I still think (as you do too, I believe) that it's a good piece of work.

I spotted the label error when I wrote the column and promptly forgot to fix it. The FoF/FiF debacle is down to plain idiocy/odiocy.

Month of May still sounds way more pub rock than Stooges to me, but 4 out of the 6 new songs they played sounded really, really good. Praise for the bass, too: the most upfront I've heard (without it being a technical error) at a rock/indie gig since...maybe ever. Love it or hate it, it's arenas for them now.

This undercooks it for me. The way the album bleeds out into raga-like jams towards the end makes explicit a thread of their music that's implied even in Pigeons' earlier, powerfully focused tracks. In this way Pigeons is like a negative of the previous album, which foregrounded - as Dannii says - HWGM's blearier aspects.

I can't get with the criticism of 'Moon'. How can anything with the motorik drive of that bassline be thought of as directionless? It's a groove, and as such slots into the ritualistic current where a lot of the band's songs reside.

As for 'Collector' overshadowing 'Casual', while I agree with the appraisal of the former I think the latter track is the best on the album. Particularly lyrically, which is a strength of this band that seems to be regularly overlooked.

when I saw them at the Lexington a few weeks ago.

I think it's very tenuous. I'm sure part of this is me getting old and therefore taking issue with contemporary terms of the like I had no problem with 10 years ago, but I'm really trying to get away from the use of quick identifiers that wind up occluding what you're talking about rather than better explaining it. I'm still guilty of it right now, but I'm going to see if I can kick the habit!

Agree also re: Blake/Cunningham and the emotional inflection they put on things. I think that's a very useful way to look at what they do.

for inclusion here, but it's very likely to stick around for June's edition. Excellent on first listen. I agree with you on the Fehlmann, too: not 100% great, but the great stuff is...well, really great.

I actually think Maze sounds a lot better rising out of the centre of the album as it does, when it's bedded into a dequence of tracks, than as a standalone on a 12. I never disliked it, I was just a little disappointed because I was so keen to hear what Actress would come up with. As I said above, one of the most admirable things about the album is the way it coheres: all these disparate ideas and styles are bonded together in very subtle, even unidentifiable ways. I suppose the best way to put it is that it's down to Cunningham's guiding intellect.

I'm a little chary of the hauntological tag, precisely because it is, as you say, such a catch-all. House and techno has always plundered the past to invent the (sonic) future, and the 'older samples + fuzz + modern sound' equation could just as easily have described Moby's 'Play' in '99. Any tag that can sit that together with Burial's or Actress's stuff is a tag that is, perhaps, too broad to be of any real use.

Looking forward to reading your words on Guido.

The Kowton really is something, isn't it? So dirty and doomy.

yes. Although it's largely based in 4/4 territory it's more of a listening album than an array of dancefloor tracks. As such, I think anyone who's into more or less abstract electronic music will really get into it.

It's pleasant enough, though. Still, looking forward to see what the album holds.

I really like the clips I've heard of the NonPlus 12. I find myself admiring Paint, Straw and Bubbles more than loving it.

it's one of the best electronic albums of the 90s. Glad to see this reviewed here as it hasn't made it into the upcoming armchair dancefloor. After quite a few listens it's definitely good but not great for me.

should check out this great feature.

http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2010/03/03/primer-now-that-theyve-broken-up-and-released-one-of-their-best-records-yellow-swans-give-us-a-beginners-guide-to-yellow-swans/

It's amazing to learn that Going Places was recorded without any overdubs. Fantastic playing.

but you guys are going to have to report back on how it was. Guttingly enough I won't be able to make it.

Look out for a review of Voigt's new release as SOG in ad017. It's both the nuts and nuts.

I'll check out the BD mix on Sonic Router, too. I enjoyed the interview. And it goes without saying that I'm far too much of a gentleman to tell you I've been sitting on this mix since early December...

for the picture of the German Office-Chair Racing Championships. It's not all dub techno, émigré DJs and sausages over there, you know.

Thanks for the link.

What a combination! Om supported them at Koko, which was a superb pairing for me, but that would have been something to hear.

There's something about the sprawling, field recording nature of the original Margins Music that really appeals to me, but you're right to say that Grievous Angel's take on it is superb. So superb it's taken my 4 months to get around to reviewing it! I laugh in the face of release schedules.

It's a decent mix.

East Coast.

that's gratifying to hear. As for keeping up with the good work, I certainly intend to!

your cloth-eared correspondent on some of their recording processes:

"It's interesting to hear the feedback on our recordings and what listeners speculate on our "tools of trade." For instance, "Water Saw" is a live recording without any manipulation, edits or over-dubs. The sounds that might seem like digital trickery are just our analog equipment (organ, voice, mallet rolls on a Chinese gong rattling on a drum head, bass drum rumbles and a bowed "Ski Bass" which is an instrument that Matt invented from a discarded exercise ski). Just thought I would illuminate our process a bit."

There's a mix from him in the works, too. Look out for it over the next couple of months.

over the past couple of weeks and it's nice enough; there's nothing here that's sonically 'new' to me, though, and nothing as emotionally engaging as I found last year's Moth/Wolf Cub 12 to be. The beats in particular seem very staid on this album, particularly when you compare it to Hebden's work with Steve Reid. 'Everything Ecstatic' was rhythmically a lot more interesting, too, as was the Ringer EP.

I think you're right to cite 'Dig Your Own Hole', Sean, although I'd disagree with 'This Unfolds' being 'timeless' in any way: it sounds dead-centre retro to me. I have no problem with that; electronic music has as much right to be static as guitar music, as long as *somebody* *somewhere* is moving things forward. That person isn't Hebden, though; not with this album, anyway.

good point about Ramadanman, too - another arid sound that really works. I've got a copy of the Brainmath 12 but haven't had a chance to check it out yet - it'll definitely appear here next time around if it's anywhere near as good as the rest of his productions have been this year.

I'd urge you to check Redshape when you get the chance; the album takes you on a really satisfying journey.

definitely among the more interesting releases of the year. It should be mentioned that Aguayo's multitracked voice provides the much of the instrumentation throughout.

especially Moskow Disko!

I'm glad some people have enjoyed reading these reviews; I've certainly enjoyed writing them. I'm glad, also, that you asked about my sources, @sonnypike. As well as an awful lot of internet trawlinbg and magazine reading over the years, I made much use of Pascal Bussy's Kraftwerk: Man, Machine & Music. It's not particularly insightful on the music adn the prose is pretty characterless (not helped by a rather clumsy translation from the French), but good on the history. Naturally there's a lot of supposition and guesswork as to motives and decisions, but Bussy spoke to Hutter, Schneider and Karl Bartos, as well as band associates such as Maxime Schmitt and Emil Schult. In his foreword he tells a great story about receiving a call from Schneider just after the book first came out. The first words he heard when he picked up the phone were "Le livre, c'est de la merde."

Sorry, @edgar_allan_poe! I know my neglect of the remastering itself has been an irritant. I can't hear any difference whatseover between this version and the 2003 original.

and it's an interesting one because as much as Joy Division enthused about that side of Kraftwerk's ouevre, New Order were heavily influenced by the more explicitly dance-oriented facets of The Man-Machine and Computer World when they came to record Power, Corruption and Lies in '82/'83.

in the next installment, more attention is paid to the remastering itself in the Man-Machine review. I must admit I can only detect extremely minimal changes in sound quality on The Mix and Tour de France - these were digitally produced to exacting standards at the time of their initial release. The compression sounds more likely, although for the most part @DJAlbertFreeman's fears are unfounded - there's minimal squashing going on (maybe a little bit on Computer World, but that's not until tomorrow!)

I did address the remastering in a general sense in the introduction to Kraftwerkweek which accompanies the Autobahn review, but that should really be reiterated in each individual review. My position on the remasters is that yes, they do in the main sound a little bit crisper, but not enough to justify buying the albums again if you've already got them. These albums *always* sounded great, and despite the band converting all their analogue tapes to digital in the mid-80s and now releasing these remastered versions, they were never really going to be made to sound all that much better.

I'd advise sitting down for today's double-header.

@bornin69. The remastering doesn't really add much; certainly not enough to shell out for records you already own. I did mention this in the introduction to Kraftwerkweek which nestles in the Autobahn review (http://drownedinsound.com/releases/14727/reviews/4138102), but your comment makes me think that I should of course mention the remastering in the body of each review.

you've got until tomorrow before Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine...

lovingly reproduced inside the slipcase, e.a.p. That's true of all these releases, in fact.

Excellent stuff!

that's aesthetically of a piece with his Planet Mu releases? Your argument's no doubt sincere but it seems a little muddled, @gargantic.

You can definitely see Burial's influence at play in Lustman's work, but saying something sounds a bit like Burial and leaving it at that is becoming the lazy critical judgment of the year ('en trend' iconoclasm that requires zero original thought). For one thing it ignores much of FaltyDL's output. What's Burial-like about Human Meadow?

As for bloodlessness, I admit I didn't get the charge when I read it in The Wire and I don't get it now. I find tracks like 'Bravery', 'Must Sustain' and 'Play Child' on the forthcoming mini-LP richly evocative, and his work as a whole appeals so much to me because it has an emotional as well as technical impact.

You're right about the d&b but you're eliding important elements of the story. Don't forget it was none less than Boxcutter who suggested that Lustman's style might profit from slowing his productions down to 'garage' speed (an instruction which, as he's refreshingly honest about admitting, he didn't understand at the time), rather than it being a cynical decision to catch the ear of Mike Paradinas.

That's gold.

Have a great time, @Jimi. Look out for a review of the Terror Danjah set next time around. Killer!

smacked of a cursory listen to me. It certainly seemed cursorily thought out.

is stunning. It was meant to feature here but time didn't allow it - it'll be in AD013. Bravery's extraordinary, I think: at least half of it is a real step up from Love is..., which is one of my favourite albums of the year.