SIC MAG by Dani Jané Sors

SIC

MAGAZINE nº1

Revista de músiques estranyes MAIG 2012. Barcelona.

AUTECHRE / FEIST / RADIOHEAD / BECK / ANI DIFRANCO / TOUCH RECORDS

8,50€

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MAGAZINE

Idea original, disseny i direcció Dani Jané Sors Comunicació Starfuckers, Inc. Social Manager Go Fist Foundation Seccions RECOMANA: Boomkat ENTREVISTA: COS (Consequence of Sound) VA DE CONCERT: Tulsa, Barcode-Zine, The Gazette ENTRA AL SEGELL: Buzznet ESPERA: Pitchfork Il·lustració de la coberta Dani Jané Sors Agraïments Boomkat, Touch, WARP Records, Nothing Interscope, Discogs, Pitchfork, Los Angeles Times, Tulsa, Consequence of Sound, Barcode-Zine, Mike Gatiss, Bulz-Eye, The Gazette, Tampa Bay University & Buzznet.

SIC MAGAZINE és sota una llicencia Creative Commons “Reconeixement No Comercial sense Obra Derivada 3.0. No es permet un ús comercial de l’obra original ni la generació d’obres derivades. Es permet reproduïr el contingut total o parcial sense el consentiment previ de l’autor sempre i quan es citi la font www.sicmagazine.com.

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CONTÉ

4 RECOMANA 8 ENTREVISTA Autechre El duet britànic Autechre, format per Sean Booth o Rob Brown, icones del moviment musical conegut com IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), preparen el llançament del que serà el seu novè àlbum: ‘Quaristice’,compost per ni més ni menys que 20 temes.

10 VA DE CONCERT Feist Live @ Chicago’s Riviera Theatre / NOV. 5th 2011 Leslie Feist, ofereix un espectacular directe des del Chicago’s Riviera Theatre, on la solemnitat de la música de cambra es va fusionar amb una vena outsider guitarrera. Incendi canadenc!

Ani Difranco Live @ Orpheum Theatre / APR. 2nd 2011 Potser no és la típica imatge d’”American rocker”, però no ens importa: Increïble guitarrista, lletrista i cantant, amb un directe realment fascinant, Ani Difranco, desprèn lesbianisme i talent.

Beck Live @ Chicago’s Riviera Theatre / NOV. 5th 2011 L’autor de Loser, l’himne de la generació perduda dels ‘90, ofereix un directe surrealista i ple de naus espacials que es desplacen per l’escenari. Dadaisme musical intel·ligent? Si, és possible.

Radiohead Live @ Tampa Bay Forum / FEB. 29th 2011 Thom Yorke entregadíssim, oferí més de dues hores de delícia musical: intensitat en estat pur, rock atemporal, una visió artesanal dels sons més vanguardistes i perfecció lírica.

14 entra al segell Touch

15 ESPERA

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RECOMANA cybersensual Trance, kinda like Araabmuzik meets Laurel Halo. Tipped for the debonaire hirollers - you know who you are.

Beaumont

Never Love Me EP Label: Hotflush Recordings Genre: BEATS / DOWNTEMPO

Beaumont follows up his outstanding debut for the Boxcutter-affiliated Kinnego Records with a ruder, more chiselled single on Hot Flush. The elegance of ‘Blush Response’ is still there on the ‘Never Love Me’ EP, but now steeled with a discernibly heavier club edge. Finding a handsome poise between ‘Cocktail’ soundtrack-era Tangerine Dream and modern hyperBass Boogie, the title track sets off thrilling synth f lares and vocoders over tuff kick/ snare syncopation and club-satisfying chords, while ‘R endez-Vous’ pushes into slow/fast, 4

are illuminated with a cold hard light, while their physical shape feels viscerally intimated. Receiving another remix call-to-arms, Regis transforms ‘Church Of All Images’ from Vatican Shadow’s recently reissued ‘Kneel Before Religious Icons’ LP, adding another vividly compelling episode to his important cache. Unmissable.

Vatican Shadows

Iraqi Praetorian Guard Label: BLACKEST EVER BLACK

glimpsed witihn modern music. Comparable to Ryuichi Sakamoto in terms of its gracefully hypnotic and deeply textured poetic outlook, the fact that Basinksi managed to retrieve such emotional tracts from decaying source material is testament to his towering talent. Made up of three extended pieces, each composition is unique in terms of sound, but united by a very real sense of unyielding emotional responsibility. Basinski’s work is accessible in rarefied way.

Genre: TECHNO / HOUSE

For anyone familiar with the original 2010 tape or mp3 release, we should say this record sounds radically different, thanks in no small part to a pedigree mastering to vinyl by Matt Colton at London’s Air facilities. The haunting synth washes, grinding bass distor tion and chopper blades of ‘Cairo Sword Unsheathed’, and the subharmonic bass of ‘Gunmen With Silencer’

William Basinski

Disintegration Loops IV Label: 2062 Genre: DRONE / METAL

The final reissue of Basinski’s ‘Disintergration Loops’ series sees yet more mediations on the subject of mortailty, brought to bear through a level of fragility rarely

Luigi Archetti Null II / Null III

Label: DIE SCHACHTEL Genre: DARK AMBIENT / DRONE / METAL

Noted Italian sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Luigi Archetti presents the 2nd & 3rd parts of his studies in abstracted minimalism meditating on the theme of “nothing”. With a stoically glacial approach reminiscent of work by Eliane Radigue or Thomas Köner, these pieces engage with gradually accumulated masses of sound detailed with filigree elemental disturbances. Perhaps more like Köner, these take shape as shorter, fragmented segments of a whole, as opposed to hour-long unbroken compositions. But their slow motion and density still offer huge potential for hypnotic, immersive effect. A hidden sleight of hand is key: motions conduct incremental changes, morphing stillness into vast shapes and spaces which reveal an internal grain as detailed as the walls of some pitch black cavern. The sound is preciously elemental making for a deeply listen from start to finish.

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Andy Stott

We Stay Together Label: Modern Love

ded sauna, before inescapably tumbling into the sheer black hole of ‘Cherry Eye’ and left to the slompy jack of ‘Cracked’. Blatantly, we rate this record massively, and although it’s not for everyone, those looking for a more visceral, intense form of dancefloor pressure would do very well to check in.

minutes later to find a computer dub masterpiece. On the other hand you’ve got ‘Faceless’, taking a plunge into pressurised aquatic electro, like the spawn of Drexciya left to evolve in the sewers of Detroit. Aces, both of them.

Genre: TECHNO / HOUSE

‘We Stay Together’ is a brand new doublepack from Andy Stott, a companion piece of sorts to the radical inversions of the ‘Passed Me By’ EP released earlier this year. Its predecessor left many heads dazed upon impact - in the best possible sense - and these six tracks, produced in its wake, amp the pressure to throttling degrees. Entering the digital compression chamber of ‘Submission’ you become a willing participant, before the lights are cut and you’re forced to adjust to the humid atmosphere and bruising, musclecontracting darkroom throb of ‘Posers’. Fully submerged by ‘We Stay Together (Part One)’ time becomes elasticated like worn VHS tape, calling to mind Jamal Moss and James Ferraro soundtracking a rave in a sodden, floo-

holo-space. The Cyclotron edit duly reduces this to a more brooding, minimal variation. Flipside, Substance aka one half of Scion and the venerable DJ Pete outdoes himself with a sort of take on crushing ‘80s dancehall augmented by visceral electroacoustic texturing and a speaker-threatening B-line bound to incite daggering androids. Mastered at D&M and well recommended.

or even Grimes, matching effete, blu-eyed vocals with bedroomsimulated electronics. It works beautifully well on the tight but sweetly blurred slowfast burn of ‘Sisters’ and the etheric spaces of ‘Southern Place’, but our favourite has to be the dreamy motion of closer ‘Playpen’. Def initely one to check for fans of forward-facing underground pop music.

butions from Groundislava, Samiyam,and Dabrye alongside weirder jammers from ESMK, Hudson Mohawke and Bruce Haack. Well good.

Mmm / Apparatus Shangaan Shake

Label: Honest Jon’s Records Genre: ELECTRONIC

Oubys / Substance Actress

Rainy Dub / Faceless Label: Honest Jon’s Records Genre: ELECTRONIC

Red-eyed electro-dub wickedness from the one and only Actress. His ‘Rainy Dub’, “the implacable, alien Son Of Sleng Teng” is one of the most blunted tools in his box. Imagine Tapes and Zomby smoking themselves fluorescent green and forgetting to press the buttons, leaving a wormy, irregular bass loop to burrow inside itself and secrete a silvery contrail of fuzzy, evanescent delay, returning nearly nine

Positronium EP

Label: TESTTOON RECORDS Genre: TECHNO / HOUSE

Very fine and experimental modern electronics outta Belgium, backed with a KILLER Substance remix. The original ‘Positronium’ appeared on Oubys’ 2nd album ‘Terra Incognita’, a set steeped in rich ambient textures arranged from his live electronic improvisations and field recordings. The same track is edited down to form the unreleased ‘Positronium I’, a prologue of sorts to ‘II’ sounding something like John Carpenter meets Senking in a simulated

Gracie

Kutmah / Various

Treehouse

Presents Worldwide Family Vol. 2

Label: SMALL PLATES

Label: Brownswood Recor-

Genre: BEATS / BOOGIE

dings

Limited edition vinyl pressing with insert and sticker and download code redeemable from the label** Brilliantly realised electro-R&Bpop from Philadelphia, PA’s Gracie aka Andrew Balasia. With the ‘Treehouse’ EP he’s comfortably slotted alongside the likes of How To Dress Well, Lucky Paul,

Genre: BEATS / BOOGIE

Killer selection here from LA transplant Kutmah, who calls in some favours from his mates to grab hold of some sick exclusives for this widereaching exploration of the West Coast beat scene and beyond. Golden boy Flying Lotus pops up of course, but we’ve also got diamond contri-

Devilishly hot final remix session from two of the dancefloor’s most revered servants. After the thrilling exploits of Actress, Oni Ayhun, RP Boo, Theo P, Demdike and many more, MMM close out with possibly the most faithful tribute to the source material. Although it’s at a much reduced tempo, their rework of ‘Nwampfundla’ retains the tucked-in nuance thanks to loose swinging but ultra-precise drum programming and tightly clipped synths making for a pure booty weapon if we’ve heard one. Flipside, the mysterious Old Apparatus shows he 5

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still can’t be locked to any one style, trodding on a half-stepped Techno rhythm dubbed out to the very peripheries with a masterful touch which shall reveal itself fully on headphones. Big twelve.

Digable Planets follows up his Sub Pop album ‘Black Up’ with an abstracted, robotic remix of ‘White Electric’ reminding of a lysergic APC.

Temporal Marauder Battles

Dross Glop 2 Label: Warp Records Genre: ELECTRONIC

2nd in a 4-part 12” series features remixes by Kode 9, The Alchemist and Shabazz Palaces. Best of the lot is Kode 9’s soured, strange-tasting ‘Africastle’ remix, isolating a youtube-like resonance to the swirling lead motif while shredding the rhythm into body-bumping Funky rotations. As The Alchemist, the classic Battles line-up of Dave Konopka, Ian Williams, John Stanier and Tyondai Braxton give a low slung remix of ‘Futura’, and Shabazz Palaces aka Ishmael Butler of 6

Temporal Marauder Makes You Feel Label: Spectrum Spools

Reaction’ and ‘Glances Under Glass’ sound like leep-deprived, heroinsick techno, juddering 4/4 pulses struggling manfully through dense foliages of squirming, teeming electronics. ‘Subtractive Existence’ dazzles with its canny deployment of angular no wave guitar and a gleeful surplus of analogue scree over an undulating almost-groove, perfectly encapsulating the LP’s spirit of psychedelic inventiveness. Do not attempt to listen to Temporal Marauder while driving or operating heavy machinery. Highly Recommended!

plangent psych licks on ‘Enlightenment’ calls to mind Forest Swords jamming with a lo-fi Raime, on some sweet Hoffman’s in a cabin in the Alps, after listening to loads of Amon Duul. Flipsude ‘Phrenesia’ is a moodier counterpoint, sucking us in with wormholing synthline while blunted programmed beats and a lone rave mistress vocal threaten to almost launch into a kind of FSOL track, but thankfully hold back and ends up spinning into a sort of smudged Balearic trance pattern for the Knew Age mystics. Aces, both of them.

Holy Strays

No UFO’s

Zomby

Label: NOT NOT FUN

Label: Spectrum Spools

Label: 4AD

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Holy Strays follows up his scuzzy debut tape for NNF with two surprisingly lush and undeniably ace electronic trips. The meld of sparse, reverberating drums and

Following that f ine side for the UK’s Public Information label, Konrad Jandavs No UFO’s decamps to Spectrum Spools for a new vinyl edition of his debut

The absolutely boss ‘Riding With Death’ is like grime from outer space, smacked-up and dubbed-out but iterated with an almost Teutonic discipline, while

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Heady album of synth exploration from Temporal Marauder, new on Spectrum Spools, the Mego offshoot curated by Emeralds’ John Elliott!** While the majority of SS releases thus far have tended towards the whooshing, new age end of kosmische, Temporal Marauder dares to traverse more hostile and troubling terrain. While there are some nice arpeggiated ragas on offer in the time-honoured German style (‘Llissa’s Lament’, ‘I Saw You Walking’), the going rate is more rough-hewn and experimental: ‘Temporal Shift

Enlightenment

cassette, 2010’s Soft Coast. Though it has a clear and central debt to 1970s German electronic music, Jandavs pulls on various other inf luences - minimal synth, new age ambient, Detroit techno - to craft his hypnotic, pulsating synth-scapes. The weirdest tracks are the most rewarding: the beatless, almost Autechre-style techno of ‘Cajmere Dreams’ and the sly guitar drones of ‘00_00_2010’, which makes us think of The Velvet Underground if they’d formed in ‘91 under the influence of E. For dedicated freaking crazy fans of reconfigured kraut and kosmische tropes, Soft Coast is beyond essential, but is singular and strange enough to deserve attention and captivenessfrom the rest of you too.

Soft Coast

Following impressive entries for Kranky and Kraak, San Franciscan synthesist, Jonas Reinhardt offers the synaesthetic salve of ‘Music For The Tactile’ on NNF. This is deepest, learned Kosmiche/ Krautrock terrain, assisted by Diego Gonzalez (Bass) and Damon Palermo (Drums/ Rhythm Programming) in his quest for the stars and some kind of trance truth. Quite brilliantly, their revelations are far more concise than many of their fellow explorers, like short stories as opposed to light year-long sagas.

Dedication

Jonas Reinhardt

Music, Tactile Dome Label: NOT NOT FUN Genre: ELECTRONIC

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‘Vortex’ and ‘Lucifer’ team the kind of brazen synth stabs favoured by R&B overlords like TheDream and Timbaland with a heart-catching isolationist sensibility more in keeping with vintage Ae or Source Direct. In the context of the album, the Panda Bear-vocalled ‘Things Fall Apart’ makes perfect sense, preparing the ground for the fetid fourth world techno of ‘Salamander’. ‘Digital Rain’ and ‘Devil Lay Here’ are pure, Zombypatented dubstep bubble-bobble, the latter knocked nicely off-kilter by ear-worming horn sounds, while the wildpitching arpeggios of ‘Mozaik’ and ‘Black Orchid’ hark back to his game-changing Hyperdub double-pack. ‘Florence’ teams the most delicate, tremulous piano sequences with scuttling junglist breakbeats, prompting inevitable comparisons with classic Aphex gear; pianos are in fact all over the album, culminating in the straight-faced, unadorned solo piece ‘Basquiat’. The guy has really cultivated his patch of digital flora to perfection, and we just can’t fault him here; recommended journey into the heart of sound psychedelia, Zomby-style.

and the culture mulching 4th world experiments of John Hassell, and there’s certainly an affinity with the work of James Ferraro. Mindbendingly surreal and utterly zonked.

Kwjaz

KWJAZ Label: NOT NOT FUN Genre: ELECTRONIC

Absolutely killer album of frayed and unstable electronic mutations from the Rangers-related KWJAZ project* NNF present the hallucinatory first LP from Rangers associate Peter Berends aka KWJAZ after a blink-and-missit debut cassette for the Brunch Groupe in 2010. We enter a potently warped world of decomposing ambient electro-jazz with ‘Once In Babylon’, ferrying us along a ferric-murky exhalation of blurry mixtape-styled moments flopping from loungey, twinkling keys to blunted synths nd proggy rhythm switches to the deserted-harbour-cruising drones and soggy bossa-lite inflections of ‘Righteous Wane’. His sound has been aptly c o mp a r e d w i t h t h e more esoteric jazz of Madlib’s YNQ outings

mix of ‘Auntie’s Harp’ making for a spiritually lush experience. Breakage’s mix of ‘Testament’ is probably the biggest surprise, cooling out with a downtempo cut that any fans of the 2nd disc of his ‘This Too Shall Pass’ set will love, while Dimlite bakes a beat driven mix of ‘Infinitum’ and Take splays the rhythms of ‘Parisian Goldfish’ with a brittle soundsphere. This 12” should massively appeal to anyone into Carlos Niño’s work or Flylo.

Flying Lotus

Los Angeles EP 3 / 3 Label: Warp Records Genre: DOWNTEMPO

The concluding section of Flylo’s 3x12” remix trip takes an astral derivé through meditatively calm avenues guided by Dimlite, MatthewDavid, Take, Breakage and Rebekah Raff. In comparison to the previous 12”s there’s more emphasis on beatless ambience here, from the head swimming dynamics of Matthew David’s ‘Comet’ rework, to two exclusive Flylo compositions featuring the talents of Harpist Rebekah Raff; the DMTdreamy ‘Endless White’ and ‘Spin Cycles’, plus Raff’s own emotive re-

Peaking Lights 936 (UK Edition) Label: WEIRD WORLD Genre: ELECTRONIC

UK Edition of one of the standout albums of the year - an Incredible mixture of dub groovers and psyche pop. Properly immersive album of lambent kraut-dub groovers and fuggy psyche from the Madison, WI duo of Peaking Lights sounding something like

the bastard child of Forest Swords, Zola Jesus, Tom Tom Club and Nite Jewel. Their hauntingly melodic ‘936’ is made of the stuff we could happily hear on loop all day. Like Pocahaunted or Sun Araw minus the noisiest elements, their trance mantras lasso the flightiest psyche essence and lets it guide them through ethereal other-zones, Indra Dunis’ vox streaming echoic comtrails across dusted desert dub landscapes on ‘Amazing And Wonderful’ or like a distant cousin to Dadawah on the twinkly telepathic skank of ‘Birds of Paradise Dub version’. ‘Hey Sparrow’ is more pastoral, with an effusive melodic nature warranting comparisons with Harmonia, while ‘Tiger Eyes’ bridges the gap between Forest Swords’ loping dub repetitions and handbuilt synth-pop. However, highlights have to be ‘Marshmellow Yellow’ and ‘All The Sun That Shines’, both using slinky House and minimalist disco rhythms to utterly sublime effect, kinda-like more dosedup post-dancefloor versions of the 100% Silk releases. Very highly recommended - one of the albums of the year fo’ sure.

Main Attrakionz

808s & Dark Grapes II Label: Type Recordings Genre: BEATS

These tracks are available cut to double disc at D&M, with productions by Clams Casino, Friendzone, Marlee B, Keyboard Kid and more This 15 track set includes the Clams-produced ‘Take 1’ - always weighted with bootheavy bass, but liable, and willing, to let their heads roam in freer, futurist ambient space with an unforced and natural f low. But this ain’t no earnest, college-educated backpack sound; it’s zoned-out and with a sense of discipline curiously balanced between the more roadwise hivemind of the ‘net and real life sensibilities. It’s perhaps this element that’s their most defining and unprecedented feature, reflecting where the real energy, innovation and attitude in contemporary Hip Hop exists and flourishes. 7

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E N T R E V I S TA Autechre

El duet britànic Autechre, format per Sean Booth o Rob Brown, icones del moviment musical conegut com IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), preparen el llançament del que serà el seu novè àlbum: ‘Quaristice’,compost per ni més ni menys que 20 temes. Quaristice is Autchre’s 9th album, does it feel like you’ve been in this game 15 years? It’s funny, I was just saying to someone that me and Sean (Booth) have known each other for 20 years – we met in 1987. A lot of the kids that are getting into our stuff were barely born when the foundry was at it. I still feel like that 21-year-old guy who is still up against it with regards to what everyone else thinks about music and what it should be like, yet at the same time blessed that technology, music equipment and fashion in music has more or less retained all the things I wanted it to have. Even though it’s a shame that hip hop is so mainstream now, if somebody had told me that hip hop was going to evolve and become really mainstream and techno was going to last longer than, say from 1988-1992, then, I’d have been chuffed really. I’m more happy to be able to be doing what we’re doing for a living as well, it sounds like were still causing a bit of a stir once in a while. I presume that was your motivation from the start? Putting music out in the first place on a CD on a record label was an ambition that wasn’t really supposed to be fulfilled; it was kind of a hobby, or more like a desperate pursuit to see if we could achieve 8

something making music. We achieved that pretty quick from our bedrooms, realising that we could do mixes, then make those mixes our tracks, and make our tracks, hopefully, in our humble opinion, a bit better than what was going out because it was sort of trying to fill a gap in our lives of what should really exist musically and sonically. Of course when you first started, the sounds you were using were not unique, but the method of creation was perhaps innovative. However, from a technological perspective, everyone’s starting on a level playing field now aren’t they? Absolutely, [technology] certainly creates a glut of every synth sounding the same - if everyone’s technologically-driven then there will be a common theme. I’d like to think it was different in our case but, being realistic, when we started everyone had the same gear – it was just a matter of how much money you had. People like 808 State did pretty well but we slowly built up over the years. I sort of disagree with you in a certain sense, I think we we’re being innovative in some ways, but to us there had already been Kraftwerk, there had already been Mantronix, and there had already been Eno. But from a “sound design” perspective you were different?

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Yeah, we were aiming to do something different, that was the whole point. I think there was a yearning to have something special. I mean we’d send demos over to Belgium, because there were a lot of Belgian techno labels like Music Man and R&S, and then there were labels in Britain who would say, “Yeah, it’s really good – it’s a bit freaky. It reminds me of Brian Eno, but it’s a little bit protracted, maybe if you put an element on there and looped it a bit more regularly, like the Prodigy record does”, and we’re like, fucking hell, Prodigy’s great, but that’s done – we don’t wanna add vocals, that’s really horrible.

not quite. I say it’s electronic; it can be really hard dance material or really cinematic stuff that can be quite enchanting or sometimes quite blurbing. As far as really trying to be technical about it, it’s impossible – and it tends to go over people’s heads if you do. At the same time you wanna big it up because you’re proud of it.

Me and Sean have both got our own particular set-ups in a live situation; usually with album material we’re both behind a computer or at the workstation and it’s like a relay race, a tag-team, but this time we had two particular set ups sideby-side, like we would on stage. A lot of the album is material cut down from these huge jam sessions that we’d done, then put all the best work together, condensed if you like into a tangible passage of music – then boiled down into discreet sections that would make a good track.

It was such a digression, we just rejected the whole policy of trying to get a deal and thought, fuck it, we can press up some white labels or some cassettes, or do a night of our own playing live – and things sort of stemmed from there. Before we knew it we were sending tracks to Warp Records. It took two years - we sent loads of tapes actually, and even though we stuck tracks on there that were created for universal listening, hardcore or ambient, they liked the mad tracks that we did for ourselves. We found that our own language was the one that was being pursued; it was more original and everything just fell into place. Maybe you can help me out; because when I mention to people the name Autechre, I find that volcabularising your music is difficult, so how would you? Tell me about it. Say I meet an old uncle and he says, “what you up to these days”, I say that I make music for a living, and he says, “oh, pop star”, and I say no, not really, so he says “how do you make a living if you’re not popular”, and I say, we’re sort of popular, we just about break even and I don’t have to sign on and my rent’s paid. I try and describe it, but I can’t really. Or if an electrician comes round and says, “What’s all that gear for? Is it like 2 Unlimited?” I’d say, yeah, maybe, maybe, but

doing one-off festivals with and touring. So there was a lot of material in the hardware that was relative to the live set of the last album, which was a fusion of studio-based computer hub material containing painstaking stuff we did on computer, but the majority was hardware interfaces doing a lot of the commanding and telling the computer what to record as opposed to the computer telling them what to do.

I can see the lineage in that it does sound a quite varied album. Dare I say, some tracks are, not commercial-sounding, but have a bit more immediacy?

How would you say Quaristice has developed stylistically since your previous album, Untilted? It’s a shift in some ways because when we started working on the material it wasn’t actually supposed to be album material. Basically, Sean had moved house and the studios were in limbo for a while. I’ve got a studio at home, but when I’d go and work with Sean there was no major setup to work with, and all we really had was our live set equipment that we’d been

Yeah, but they’re usually backed up by a serious amount of detail; it just doesn’t meet the eye at first glance. We want longevity in every track, so even the ones that appear to be the most robust, balls-out, that’s all you’re getting – there’s a lot more to it. There were tracks taken from limbo, using elements of tracks that weren’t finished when the last album was done, or tracks that were just tiny ideas that needed something substantial behind it. But, yeah, in a slightly old-school way, some of these tracks were started from the ground up. “I would hope we’re trying to be a bit more magical than to just laden tracks with loads of events to blindside people.” *Fragment de l’entrevista extreta de http://www.barcodezine.com/Autechre%20Interview.htm

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VA DE CONCERT

Feist Live @ Chicago’s Riviera Theatre / NOV. 5th 2011

Leslie Feist, ofereix un espectacular directe des del Chicago’s Riviera Theatre, on la solemnitat de la música de cambra es va fusionar amb una vena outsider guitarrera. Incendi canadenc!

eslie Feist gave Chicago concertgoers a night of peaceful indie rock on Friday. Playing to a soldout crowd at the Riv (including Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a box seat), Feist came on after what might be described charitably as a “weird” set from The Happiness Project. The crowd was polite towards the rangy six-member collective, with their wandering mix of spoken word and emphatic saxophone, but they were really there, of course, for Feist. Feist seems smaller in person than one might expect, a strangely compact vessel to carry such a voice. She brings lots of personality to the stage with her, though, stamping a booted foot in time with her guitar playing and shaking her heavy, long hair back from her face as she sang. Accompanying her as she played primarily tracks from recent release Metals was a backing band of three plus a trio of female singers known in their own right as Mountain Man. Their voices lent a honeyed warmth to Feist’s floating vocals, widening and deepening her sound, even as they harmonized. But Feist on her own is a force of nature. Her voice is distinctive, one of those you can always recognize; under any circumstances, you’d know it was her. She toyed with the tempo on a number of tracks and didn’t often let her vocals escape in their full force; when she did indulge, though, they were glorious. “A Commotion” let her voice out particu10

larly, notes catching on the smoky corners, even her breath into the microphone audible. “Comfort Me” started with her alone on guitar, singing softly, almost teasing us before the song slammed into the full band, lights f lashing, drums pounding. The crowd was particularly excited for “The Bad in Each Other” and classic “Mushaboom”. Feist invited them to sit on the edge of the stage with her: “But gently! Gently. This is adult contemporary rock.” During the encore, The Reminder single “I Feel It All” ran at such a fast tempo that it was hard to recognize save for the lyrics; it was an upbeat, celebratory take on the track. For closer “Let It Die”, she invited couples on stage to slow dance around the band as they played, which quickly turned into a crowd. The members of Mountain Man danced together, couples swirling around them, faces crowded behind Feist looking out. She thanked the crowd politely and hugged fans onstage before she left.

Setlist:

The Circle Married the Line So Sorry Anti-Pioneer

Undiscovered First

Bittersweet Melodies

Graveyard

Comfort Me

How Come You Never Go

The Bad in Each Other

There

My Moon My Man

Mushaboom

Caught a Long Wind

A Commotion

Get It Wrong, Get It Right

Foto: http://www.thistulsa.com Crònica: http://consequenceofsound.net

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Ani Difranco Live @ Orpheum Theatre / APR. 2nd 2011

Potser no és la típica imatge d’”American rocker”, però no ens importa: Increïble guitarrista, lletrista i cantant, amb un directe realment fascinant, Ani Difranco, desprèn lesbianisme i talent.

a t u r d ay n i g h t a t t h e O r p h e u m T h e a tre in downtown Los Angeles, singersongwriter Ani DiFranco joked that she’d finally gotten better at writing songs about happiness. But what the 41-year-old really revealed while juxtaposing old material with new was a consistency of political vision and artistic integrity that has only ripened with age. Despite an ongoing ear infection that had forced her to cancel the previous night’s concer t, she delivered an 18-song show that w a s s i m u l t a n e o u s l y f i e r c e a n d t e n d e r. DiFranco, who strapped on a revolving cast of guitars (one of which nearly dwarfed her slender frame), melded seamlessly with her sole accompanist -- master jazz drummer Herlin Riley. The two performed a set list drawn equally from fan favorites (“Gravel,” “Swim,” “Nicotine,” “Marrow”) and material from her new CD, “Which Side Are You On,” whose title is drawn from her cover of the iconic Pete Seeger protest song. Her conversational/confessional lyrics draw equally from folk and punk traditions, deftly straddling sensitive singer-songwriter interiority and snarling riot grrrl explosions. The crisp, clean sound at the Orpheum made it possible to take in the full dynamic of her work so that even new, unfamiliar material was within grasp. It helped considerably that the packed house, though full of rabid Ani lovers, wasn’t as gratingly intrusive as her crowd can sometimes be. Anyone who’s been to a DiFranco show knows every pause can be filled with screamed declarations of love and lust that overshadow what’s coming from the stage.

Foto: http://www.mikegatissphoto.com Crònica: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

This night, though the air was often peppered with shouts of “I love you” and inquiries about the singer’s 5-year-old daughter, the reverent largely hung on every word and sank admiringly into every extended jam, which cleared space

for the numbers to be appreciated by everyone. The biggest compliment most modern pop acts can receive after a concert is that they sound just like they do on CDs. But DiFranco -- even in a slightly diminished state from her illness -- sounded better than on her recordings. Her voice was warm and pliant, soaring on “Both Hands” with its rueful ‘50s-pop melody, and then turning biting and weary on “J,” a track off the new CD whose social commentary ranges from bitter disappointment in President Obama (“He’s just shifting his weight/ And the disappointment is the knockout blow…”) to a lament for the battered state of her new home, New Orleans. But it was the powerful camaraderie between DiFranco and Riley that galvanized the night. The two created such a robust sound that it was sometimes hard to believe it was all coming from just a guitar and drum kit. Violinist Jeb Bows joined up on “Splinter,” and Isakov added backing vocals on the closing “Hypnotized” What matters most, though, is the music, and at the end of the night the example she’d demonstrated was that motherhood, career pressures, a demoralizing political system and disappointing romances haven’t hardened her, haven’t had her turn cynical and cold -- that she is, in fact, even more herself than fans could have hoped for.

Setlist:

Gravel Who i she and what is she to you?

Anticipate

W.O.W

Splinter

Two Little Girls

Manhole

Reckoning

Promiscuity

Everest

Fire Door

Present/Infant

Sunday Morning

Which Side Are You OnThere

Albacore

Shameless

See See J

Hypnotize

SIC VA DE CONCERT Foto: http://gothic-addiction.blogspot.com Crònica: http://blogs.montrealgazette.com

Beck Live @ Chicago’s Riviera Theatre / NOV. 5th 2011

L’autor de Loser, l’himne de la generació perduda dels ‘90, ofereix un directe surrealista i ple de naus espacials que es desplacen per l’escenari. Dadaisme musical intel·ligent? Si, és possible.

ere are three words for fans leery of attending a Beck show after witnessing his lowenergy tour in support of the 2002 album Sea Change: Beck is back. Now touring in support of his new album, the excellent Guero, the singer played a rare show “behind the orange curtain” (that’s how Los Angeles residents refer to Orange County) at the Pacific Ampitheatre in Costa Mesa, California, as part of the Orange County Fair concert series. Sea Change was written about a tough breakup, while Guero was recorded after the singer married and had his first child. As a result, Guero has a drastically different tone than the previous album, and that difference translates onstage. The Decemberists, a six-piece indie pop ensemble hailing from Portland, Oregon, provided support. Focusing on material from their recently released third album, Picaresque, frontman Colin Maloy anchored the group with his quirky vocals and guitar work. The highlights were the catchy “16 Military Wives” and “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.” After a fairly long set change, Beck emerged and delved into a 24-song set list, which technically included a medley or two. Oddly, he opened with 12

“Clap Hands,” a song left off of Guero, before moving into two good tracks from the record, “Black Tambourine” and “Girl.” Two of the next three selections were from the 1999 album Midnight Vultures – “Mixed Bizness” and “Nicotine & Gravy.” The highlight of the first half of the set was probably the back-to-back performances of “Que Onda Guero” and “The New Pollution.” After playing his first hit “Loser” and another Vultures song, “Sexx Laws,” Beck went solo for seven of the next eight songs. This series included “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes” (which he recorded for the “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” soundtrack) and three tracks from Sea Change – “Guess I’m Doing Fine,” “Lost Cause” and “The Golden Age.” The band joined him in the middle for a humorous cover of Nelly’s “Hot In Herre” before Beck was alone again for the crowd-favorite “Debra.” Afterwards, he said, “We keep trying to retire that song,” which garnered a chorus of “boos” from the crowd – he continued, “but it just keeps coming back.” The band rejoined him to close the main set for a rousing rendition of “Where It’s At,” and after taking short break, returned to close the show

with the Guero track “E-Pro.” While there was a noticeable lull during the solo section of the show, Beck’s attitude and energy on stage was markedly improved over the dreary mood surrounding his previous tour. He may never return to post-Midnite Vultures form, but for the fans he won in and before that era, Beck is definitely back on track. Late in the show, he invited out openers MGMT (young glam-pop-psych-rock buzz-band du jour) for a set of covers of songs by post-punk pioneers Wire (who, coincidentally, played Pop Montreal on Sunday), T.Rex, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. He was bringing in the new kids to play tribute to the old masters. On this night, Beck fell somewhere in between.

Setlist:

Mixed Bizness Nicotine & Gravy Guero

Loser

Hell Yes

Nausea

Black Tambourine

Girl

Modern Guilt

Timebomb

Where It’s At

Devil’s Haircut

Gamma Ray

Soul of a Man

E-Pro

SIC VA DE CONCERT

Radiohead Live @ Tampa Bay Forum / FEB. 29th 2011

Thom Yorke entregadíssim, oferí més de dues hores de delícia musical: intensitat en estat pur, rock atemporal, una visió artesanal dels sons més vanguardistes i perfecció lírica.

hom Yorke is a weird cat with a gorgeous purr, a soaring, seemingly incongruous puzzle piece in the confoundingly beautiful — and sometimes just confounding — art-rock band known (and loved, and loathed) as Radiohead. At the Tampa Bay Times Forum on Wednesday — aka Leap Day, appropriate for a band whose massive success leaps commercial logic — the eccentric Yorke and his brainy Brits made pretty, perplexing noise for 11,962 fans. Not a sell-out, but it roared like one. Even if you didn’t so much sing along as play connect the sonic dots. That might be a melody — grab it! Has there ever been a band that so bucks the mainstream and yet plays spacious venues seemingly built for Bruces and Bon Jovis? It’s pretty cool, although to see these guys in a small, quiet joint is the ideal, such are the paisley, electronic portraits they paint about love, alienation and, well, Myxomatosis. Opening the two-hour show with Bloom, a tumbling collage of sound that kickstarts their latest album, 2011’s The King of Limbs, the quintet played five warring parts until it all made a certain cosmic sense. All of this, played with a guge sense of concentration and good manners. Just exotic. Yorke’s nutter-in-crime ripped off a heavy lick for the new Little by Little, a relative return to bombast for these blokes. Fan fave Staircase was next, setting a nightlong trend of newer material in lieu of stuff from their mid-’90s genesis. Part of the art in Radiohead’s art-rock is its visual sense, and as the band played the hypnotic Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, from 2007’s groundbreaking In Rainbows, myriad screens tilted this way and that, flashing oceanic blues and blurring shapes that matched the rhythm. Drummer Phil Selway should get a medal in math for keeping the complex beat. Just as it started to moosh together, Yorke took to the piano for Pyramid Song, a makeout special for strange lovers. This, as well as the lovely All I Need, signaled a change from their tour-opening setlist in Miami two nights earlier. They also sent Radiohead-heads into delirium with unreleased cut Identikit. If you craved older stuff: Idioteque, when Radiohead first vastly altered their vibe, turned the venue into a squirming, strobing rave. From that same album, the insistent Everything in Its Right Place was a highlight of the first encore. And then, in the second encore, as a gift for those who’ve followed the band for two decades, Radiohead played the softly menacing Karma Police from 1997 masterpiece OK Computer and then the transcendent Street Spirit (Fade Out) from ‘95’s just-as-good The Bends. Wow. Didn’t see that coming. And if you, like me, left the show floating on a cloud of “What just happened?”, well, mission accomplished.

Foto: http://cdn.buzznet.com Crònica: http://www.tampabay.com

Setlist:

Pyramid Song

Reckoner

Nude

Separator

Identikit

All I Need

Bloom

Lotus Flower

Myxomatosis

Little by Little

There There

Everything In Its Right Place

Staircase

Feral

Give Up the Ghost

Weird Fishes / Arpeggi

Idioteque

Creep

Morning Mr. Magpie

The Daily Mail

Karma police

Meeting in the Aisle

Bodysnatchers

Street Spirit (Fade Out)

SIC SIC ENTRA AL SEGELL

entra al segell What are your thoughts about music streaming and sharing online? How does this affect your label and sales? Do you think it affects major labels more than others?

ouch is a visionary UK record label that was established by Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft back in 1982. Touch is not just a record label in a common sense, it’s more an audio-visual entity and a multimedia publishing company. In it’s three decades history they have released bona fide artists and composers like Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz, Soliman Gamil, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Phill Niblock, BJNilsen, Chris Watson and Jóhann Jóhannsson on their roster. Benedikt Reynisson spoke to Mike who’s also well known curator, lecturer and producer. He started Touch’s sister label Ash International, in 1993 with Robin Rimbaud. He’s also a member of freq_out and THE FREQ_OUT ORCHESTRA and has overall responsibilities for running Touch, dealing with artists, websites and general management.

How does “Touch” sounds like? Certainly recording technology has changed and developed crazily in last years. I think one of the main reasons for the change in techniques of field recording, for example, which has progressively gained more importance in recent years in various areas of electronic music, has to be the advance of technology… although microphone technology has not changed much in the last century, the onset of digital recording has resulted in lighter and better quality recording devices, and more recently the arrival of digital multi-channel equipment… this process began with the advent of the Sony pro walkman in the 80s, which enabled, for example, Jon Wozencroft to make recordings on his Asian travels, which resulted in the cassette Islands In-Between (T33.2, 1984), and other contributions to early Touch releases.

There is a historical and technological inevitability here, so we see our role as showing people that things don’t need work to be presented and consumed in a corporate/ cannon-fodder way. The more you give, the more you receive, so we have a very loyal following who understand and support what we are trying to do. This is a period of great change – witness the re-rise of vinyl and cassettes. Who would have thought that could happen? At last, people are looking at digital technology more critically and recognizing the limitations of that form of expression and storage. Over the years there has been various usages of Touch Music works; from ballet to film, theatre to dance, the range of titles available seem to suit many different media. Lynn Ramsay, Gaspar Noé, The Royal Ballet (London), Terrence Malik amongst others. Long life Touch Records!

How you got involved with music and why you started Touch? I was working at Zig Zag magazine (edited by Kris Needs) and I met Jon Wozencroft at The Moonlight Club in north west London. We got talking and he had this idea of an audio-visual production which sounded really interesting. So we carried on talking and in December 1982 Touch released its first edition, Feature Mist, a magazine and C60 cassette in a clear plastic A5 wallet. 14

Our aesthetic only applies on an individual project basis – there is no overall house style, audio or visual. If you put all the Touch covers on a table, you may be surprised how many are not landscape photography, for which perhaps Jon Wozencroft is best known. Try it! We don’t “select” artists… we have a full roster who keep us on our toes. But we never try to repeat ourselves and I believe you have to have your own sound.

Photos taken during Performance night by BJNilsen & Mike Harding * Foto: Transmedia Crònica: http://blog.gogoyoko.com

THANKS

SIC ESPERA

SIC

ESPERA

Black Dice

Ribbon Music; 2012

Leaf / Hometapes; 2012

Since Black Dice’s M.O. has always been at least partly

Both Lights, Luke Wyland’s latest LP as AU, is ne-

about chemical-laden anxiety, it’s easy to forget that

ver the same from one moment to the next. Prisma-

they can be pretty funny, and Mr. Impossible in par-

tic, kaleidoscopic, and oversaturated with color, it end-

ticular is filled with playful silliness. The “lead” voice

lessly resituates itself between towering chamber-folk,

on “Outer Body Drifter” basically sounds like a cou-

cyclonic Marnie Stern-style spazz, and orchestral psych.

ple of fun-loving dudes trying to get a party started, but

Wyland may be a dedicated craftsman, but he’s an im-

Mr. Impossible

Both Lights

their voices have been ripped from their throats and

patient tourguide, and on Both Lights, his insisten-

packed together into a single gooey, wholly unintelligible ball. The absurdity of these sor-

ce of forward motion leaves the listener without much time to settle down and en-

ta-chants over the stomping, buzzy beats sounds both darkly fucked up and also hilarious.

joy the view. He gets off some lovely harmonies here and a couple oddball lines there...

In other places, though, Mr. Impossible is a little more abstract and experimental and also a bit

Sometimes it seems constant forward motion is the only thing holding these tracks together, but

less interesting. “Spy vs. Spy”, which has squelchy synths and a vocal loop consisting of a single

these little shards of melodies often slip by quick enough to escape your notice. It’s not that there

chipped syllable, is Black Dice by numbers, the kind of thing that seems to come almost too easily

aren’t plenty of fine ideas swirling around Both Lights; there are, in fact, altogether too many,

to them; listening to it, it’s hard not to feel a bit wistful for when they seemed to re-write the rules

resulting in something of a head-spinning mess, one Wyland’s got to somehow settle out if he’s

every time. Still, on the evidence of Mr. Impossible, they still sound like no one else and they’re still

ever going to connect with people the way the music of his peers has. His commitment to constant

thinking hard about music and texture. When you’re craving something trashy and tripped-out

movement is, oddly enough, both the best and worst thing about him; Both Lights may be plenty

in this very particular way, they still deliver the properly damaged goods.

gorgeous, but in Wyland’s never-idle hands, that beauty proves fleeting.

SIC

MAGAZINE 2012