BIRD SHOW - LIGHTNING GHOST
Field on Water
[5:14]12.6 Mb
Pilz
[5:03]12 Mb
Seeds
[3:39]8.7 Mb
First Path Through
[3:40]8.8 Mb
Beautiful Spring
[4:02]9.6 Mb
Lightning Ghost
[6:24]15.3 Mb
Greet the Morning
[4:09]9.9 Mb
On the Beach
[6:32]15.6 Mb
Sleepers Keep Sleeping
[4:10]9.9 Mb
Bird Show "Lightning Ghost" Album Review
Dewey decimal rearranged, reworked, and turned on its head
File this Lightning Ghost CD under original with a capital O. File this one-man Bird Show opus under do-it-yourself and anything I touch and own can also double as a musical instrument. File these nine songs under tree hugging, granola loving, world beat, be-here-now hippie, and veggie picnic, clothing-optional parade. File this digital wunderkind under unique and unusual. File this cosmic calliope under kaleidoscopic and phenomenal. File this tribal chant under - if that's a mantra then my guru must be near. For type, file this under freak folk, shoe-gazing psychedelia in a Grateful Dead, Spiritualized kinda' way. And lastly, file this sonic creed under as-cool-as-anything-you're-likely-too-hear-this-year - anytime, anywhere. Repeated listening pays high dividends - infinity looped endlessly. Far fetching out.
EKKEHARD EHLERS - A LIFE WITHOUT FEAR
Ain't No Grave
[4:22]6.7 Mb
Frozen Absicht
[4:32]6.3 Mb
Strange Things
[2:45]3.7 Mb
A Second Fire
[3:42]6 Mb
Die Sorge Geht Uber Den Fluss
[3:15]4.7 Mb
Nie Wieder Schnell Sagen
[4:52]6.4 Mb
Misorodzi
[3:33]4.8 Mb
Maria and Martha
[8:48]12.8 Mb
Meeresbeschimpfung
[4:06]5.9 Mb
O Death
[5:23]7.3 Mb
The End
[0:03]
Ekkehard Ehlers "A Life Without Fear" Album Review
Bleak, deconstructed blues
Ekkehard Ehlers seems to be one of those musicians working in the electro acoustic world that appears unafraid to completely jump styles with each release that he puts out. On Plays, he put together minimal electronic odes to different artists (both musical and other) while Politik Braucht Keinen Feind found him creating extended, uneasy drones in response to 9/11. My favorite work of his is still his collaboration with Stephan Mathieu on the great Heroin disc, where the two mixed field recordings and subtle electronics into something sublime.
A Life Without Fear is the sound of Ehlers diving into an entirely new world again, and it seems rather fitting that it's arriving almost 8 months to the day after Hurricane Katrina swept through the gulf coast. Inspired by Alan Lomax field recordings, damaged blues, world music, and his own sense of extended ambient and drone music, A Life Without Fear moves from claustrophobic unease to defiant confrontations and even a small sense of hope in places.
The disc opens with "Ain't No Grave," and the take on the traditional song finds queasy layers of guitars bending and weaving with one another while Howard Katz Fireheart (an NYC and Berlin renaissance man and member of Post Holocaust Pop,) adds some soulfull wailing. "Strange Things" has a similar modus operandi, finding Charles Haffer, Jr. crooning over deconstructed riffs that hiss with heavy fuzz that sound like they were culled from dirt-covered tape reels. The more ambient pieces on the album are split between discordant tracks (like the eerie "Frozen Absicht" and the jagged "A Second Fire") that find guitars making elbow room with dissonant stabs in gritty spaces while others (like the beautiful "Maria & Martha") pull together soft strings, fret noise, and trumpet into a lovely swirl of sound.
One of the most distinctive tracks on the entire album is also one of the best. "Misorodzi" is a somewhat downcast, African-inspired piece that mixing chanting and wailing vocals with minimal percussion to great effect. Because of the variety, the full effect of A Life Without Fear is rather disquieting in that it's unafraid to take the difficult path. At times comforting and at others bewildering, there's only a faint glimmer of hope peeking out from behind all the dread on this one.
(from almost cool music reviews)
AMPS FOR CHRIST - EVERY ELEVEN SECONDS
Demented
[3:24]3.9 Mb
Cock O the North
[2:02]2.8 Mb
Out on the Moon (Slight Return)
[4:42]7.4 Mb
Thompson Hunter
[0:41]0.7 Mb
Violated
[3:07]4.9 Mb
El Corazon de San Vicente
[3:42]4.5 Mb
I Hate this Dumpster
[4:22]8.3 Mb
Shiploaf
[0:42]1 Mb
Scotland the Brave
[3:02]4.1 Mb
Proof Man
[3:26]5.3 Mb
The Crossing
[2:32]4.8 Mb
Chorus
[0:37]0.6 Mb
Sweet Dove
[1:42]2.6 Mb
W I B
[4:03]6.6 Mb
Monkeys Gone Wild
[4:10]6.4 Mb
Amps for Christ "Every Eleven Seconds" Album Review
Album Description
Amps For Christ was founded by Barnes, guitarist and electronics wizard of Man Is The Bastard and co-founder of Bastard Noise. Barnes has been building and playing stringed instruments, tube oscillators, and caveman electronics in his home sound laboratories most of his life. His unparalleled background is what creates Amps For Christ's radically distinctive sound. "Every Eleven Seconds" is different from all other AFC albums, while retaining a folkcore tradition - exploring pure energy forms and varied influences. This record is an expression of Barnes' interests (time travel, wave theory, human politics, etc.) and reflects his evolution as well as that of the band's.
Video AFC Noise Folk - Cock O The North
This song (featured on the Album "Every Eleven Seconds") is an AFC favorite. This version of an Irish folk song is in an experimental noise style. You are warned, the tune may get "stuck in your head"! He is playing mandolin, plugged into to his custom tube distortion oscilators and amps. (This level of DIY is rarely seen!) My instrument, which you can't see very well, is an Electribe ESX beatbox. (I've never seen anybody else play it strapped like this?) You can see we are having a great time, perhaps TOO much fun. Beware, this melody can really get stuck in ones' head. This was filmed at a show in Pehrspace, in Echo Park, CA, summer 2007.
TOWERING INFERNO - KADDISH
The Rose
[4:01]4.6 Mb
Prayer
[2:57]4.3 Mb
Dachau
[2:41]3.7 Mb
4 by 2
[2:44]3.7 Mb
Edvard Kiraly
[3:25]4.5 Mb
Memory
[4:42]6.2 Mb
Not Me
[4:01]5.3 Mb
Reverse Field
[2:29]3.2 Mb
Occupation
[4:34]6.4 Mb
Sto Mondo Rotondo
[2:29]3.5 Mb
Organ Loop
[3:29]4.2 Mb
Toll I
[0:55]1.4 Mb
Toll II
[3:41]4.8 Mb
The Ruin
[1:59]2.7 Mb
Juden
[0:50]1 Mb
Pogrom
[4:10]5.6 Mb
Partisans
[6:11]8.6 Mb
Modern Times
[6:20]10.6 Mb
The Rose II
[3:35]4.6 Mb
The Bell
[5:04]6.4 Mb
Kaddish
[3:10]4.1 Mb
The Weaver
[1:05]1.3 Mb
Towering Inferno "Kaddish" Album Review
Making Art of History
The ostensible subject matter of "Kaddish" -- the Holocaust -- is in fact just the building material with which this collage was constructed. It is not so much ABOUT the Holocaust as it is an auditory artwork which stands alone. It helps of course to appreciate the gravity of some of the source material, but I don't agree with Amazon's contention that a libretto would be advantageous. Quite the opposite, I think it would limit the listeners' interpretations.
Wolfson (R.I.P.) and Saunders utilize several styles of music (rock, jazz, liturgical, folk, deep space electronics) as well as recordings of Nazi and Jewish speakers, crowd noises and various other sounds. The term "collage" isn't really appropriate I guess, because "Kaddish" is arranged into a series of musical vignettes, many with no sound effects over the top at all. It is this wide-ranging, unclassifiable character which makes "Kaddish" so difficult to pigeonhole, or summarize, or remember clearly. It is also what makes it endlessly fascinating.
East-German composer Georg Katzer made a collage in 1983 entitled "Aide Memoire" which contrasted Hitler's speeches and Reichstag rhetoric with Jewish folk music and popular music of the 1930s. "Kaddish" can be seen as the more-musical stepchild of that work -- more subtle perhaps, but no less powerful for that.
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