Moving right along ...
7. Glenn Branca -- Symphony No. 9. I drooled at the thought of something as powerful as his 8th and 10th symphonies (for guitar), imagining sheets of violin drone pouring down like sleet. But this isn't really Branca played by a symphony, it's symphonic Branca. Days later, I found the same CD in Berkeley for half the price. Huh. A, $14.95, L.
8. Cocteau Twins -- Tiny Dynamine. I’ve been on a Cocteaus kick lately. I grabbed the Harold Budd collaboration on vinyl a few days before this trip. I always find their harder-to-find singles at Amoeba, and can’t resist adding to my collection. In June I bought the gorgeous, near-unplugged "Twinlights". That EP, together with its sister disc "Otherness" (they were released within a month of each other as a stopgap before the "Milk and Kisses" album) are some of the finest work the Cocteaus ever did. Put them together and it's their best album, hands down. Basically, you can't go wrong with Cocteau Twins. At the very least, you end up owning some beautiful artwork. A, $2.95, M.
9. Andreas Tilliander -- Elit. Much of the usual clicks and cuts fare, but any album with song titles like "Kevin Shields" and "When Routine Bites Hard" (the opening line from Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart") is worth owning. A, $4.95, M.
10. Renegade Soundwave -- Soundclash. When you buy something old school that you haven't heard in a while, it may no longer sound fresh, but it's most important to hope that it won't be embarrassing. Fortunately, no such embarrassments are found here. Music deeply rooted in dub never really goes out of style. A, $1.46, M.
11. PWEI -- Amalgamation. Stuff like "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" used to unite the dancefloors. It was rough enough to please the metalheads, but not intimidating enough to alienate the Britpoppers. Whereas the indie kids already liked PWEI and were thrilled to hear something besides "Wise Up, Sucker" for a change. In hindsight, the militant stance and the liner notes describing the music as "noise pollution" were a prototype for what Primal Scream perfected six years later on "XTRMTR". C, $1.99, M.
12. Higher Intelligence Agency -- Colourform. Made in 1994 and sounding exactly like it. The remix EP "Reform", released the following year, is a shiny thirty minute jewel and has lost far less luster. B, $3.00, L.
13. Various Artists -- Kanzleramt 3. This is a nearly brand new release from just about the only tech-house label I’d admit to liking. A, $4.95, M.
14. Hash Jar Tempo -- Well Oiled. Cocteau Twins singles, Bardo Pond side projects. These West Coast shops seem to carry them all, the East Coast shops, nada. In June I picked up the second HJT (=BP + Roy Montgomery), "Under Glass". When questioned, I'd tell the hippie folks that it was "East Coast hippie music, much like the jam bands out in these parts", and point to the cover art depictions of neon lights shaped suspiciously like bongs to help support my argument. Yeah, I know the comparison isn't exact, but there's certainly some truth in it. Besides, how else can you explain it to uninitiated West Coast ears in ten seconds or less?
Lord only knows what they'd make of this, however. There's no band aesthetic for an unsuspecting hippie to grab on to. Unlike "Under Glass", this isn’t rock music, the drums and bass don't lead the band in a freeform jam, rather, it's not much more than chords played over and over and over and over and held in constantly circulating patterns and tremelos for ten minutes at a time. But there's an immense power in their stasis as they drag your wrecked body up the crescendos and down the diminuendos. I was absolutely transfixed. A, $7.95, E (and that's saying something, considering how highly I regard the BP outtakes and side projects).
15. Various Artists -- T_zero_O. A solid compo from Touch Records, it features oodles of prominent names (Fennesz, Brinkmann, Locust, Biosphere) and whackloads of weird and wonderful sounds. A, $7.95, M.
16. Pluramon -- Bit Sand Riders. Part of the Rasputin Birthday Special, this is a remix album stacked with big name remixers. Thus, I'm holding it to a fairly high standard. Consistency-wise, it's a bit of a mixed bag. It sounds like Mogwai weren’t trying too hard with their mix. Hecker turns in a Hecker-by-numbers contribution. It's difficult to figure out if he was actually trying or just noodling, but then again, it's difficult to figure that out with his own music as well. Fortunately, the good stuff is *really* good stuff, with remixes by Merzbow, Matmos and Atom as the standouts. C, $1.99, M.
17. Subhead -- Neon Rocka. It's on Tresor. Therefore it is good. That's all you need to know. A, $1.46, M.
18. Otomo Yoshihide -- Sampling Virus. No matter how many times I see them, I'm always shocked at the size of the Experimental sections in these stores. This is something you just never see in Toronto. Maybe the scene is more secluded than in other major music centers. It's not a Canada thing because in Montreal, the scene is more prominent, as is the CD selection. So when I'm presented with this kind of choice, I try to take advantage of it. This CD, on Extreme Records, is my first by the prolific Yoshihide, is a series of 77 "viruses". Each "virus" is a short track, anywhere from one second to three minutes long. There are blasts of noise, spoken word from Japanese TV shows or adverts, tape looping, tape shredding, and various combinations of some or all of the above. The liner notes explicitly warn against playing the CD from start to finish. Play parts of it on random play, use the pause button, loop tracks over and over, sample the tracks and loop parts of them yourselves, all is permissible except putting the CD in the tray and simply pressing play. The concept is so blatantly simple, but the best ideas always are. The concept and the record label helped me this Yoshihide album over the multitudes of others. For my first experiment, I put it through a five disc random play along with the new Mogwai and Tindersticks albums, and the aforementioned Flowchart and PWEI CDs. I'd be listening to a perfectly normal song and then I'd hear one, two, or sometimes even three tracks of Japanese mumbling or looped something-or-other. Then, I'd be listening to another perfectly normal song, until some undetermined time later when another little bad dream would interrupt once again. I can't wait to hear what happens the next time I try it. A, $7.95, E.
