Increasingly, our guitar heroes seem to be genetically recombining to meld the traditions of folk mystics (Fahey, Basho) and electric pyrotechnicians (Hendrix) into one frame. Steven R. Smith developed mutations of both strains over ten years spent in both Mirza and Thuja, but it was perhaps his more recent Hala Strana project that led to this recording. Billed by Soft Abuse as the first instalment in their Ceremony series, Smith adapts his interest in Eastern European musical structures to an overdriven and fractured electric recording of striated guitar layers with occasional minimal percussion. The result does conjure mist-shrouded metaphysical graffiti in search of some lost truth. The nine untitled tracks are curiously compact given their outward reach but cumulatively they read like prophecies interpreted from several interlinking points of view. They are also like powerful little engines that rage against an encroaching darkness that is dissolving the clean lines of defence. (Soft Abuse)
Aleuchatistas -
Where to begin? Captain Beefheart meets Yes at a dance where the Locust opens for Fred Frith and Fantτmas? This latest release of the Aleuchatistas no prisoners manifesto is actually a re-release of their second CD. This wound up in the hands of John Zorn, who promptly offered them a release on
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Christopher Bissonnette -
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Though In Between Words is Windsor, ON resident Christopher Bissonnettes second album for Kranky, Bissonnette has been a part of the fragmented Canadian ambient landscape for years now as a member of the Thinkbox Collective. Thinkbox Collective was necessarily a compendium of its numerous
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The cobra that's poised to attack on the front cover of The Budos Band III isn't just aesthetically cool; it's an apt metaphor for the Staten Island, NY-bred ten-piece thus far. The underrated Budos Band's tough, instrumental fusion of Afrobeat and vintage American funk and jazz (self-dubbed...
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Weezer. For her.
A prolific, popular group for 16 years, Weezer must be aware that fans cite their 1994 self-titled debut and its 1996 follow-up, Pinkerton, as their best works....
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Kick-Ass 3292 (Matthew Vaughn) Kick-Ass an intense superhero movie based on an indie book by comics vet Mark Millar doesn't just want to play in the big boys' sandbox; it wants to piss in it and run away giggling. Reasoning that if people want to be Paris Hilton, why can't they want to be Spider-Man, high school nerd...Full Review
Where to begin? Captain Beefheart meets Yes at a dance where the Locust opens for Fred Frith and Fantτmas? This latest release of the Aleuchatistas no prisoners manifesto is actually a re-release of their second CD. This wound up in the hands of John Zorn, who promptly offered them a release on
...
Though In Between Words is Windsor, ON resident Christopher Bissonnettes second album for Kranky, Bissonnette has been a part of the fragmented Canadian ambient landscape for years now as a member of the Thinkbox Collective. Thinkbox Collective was necessarily a compendium of its numerous
...
The cobra that's poised to attack on the front cover of The Budos Band III isn't just aesthetically cool; it's an apt metaphor for the Staten Island, NY-bred ten-piece thus far. The underrated Budos Band's tough, instrumental fusion of Afrobeat and vintage American funk and jazz (self-dubbed...
A prolific, popular group for 16 years, Weezer must be aware that fans cite their 1994 self-titled debut and its 1996 follow-up, Pinkerton, as their best works....
Kick-Ass an intense superhero movie based on an indie book by comics vet Mark Millar doesn't just want to play in the big boys' sandbox; it wants to piss in it and run away giggling. Reasoning that if people want to be Paris Hilton, why can't they want to be Spider-Man, high school nerd...
