Sector 2814

 just a quick note before we start: moving forward I won’t likely be putting up quite as many reviews. quite often I’m listening to older stuff, which I figure most people don’t need yet another opinion on. when I come across something older that I still think is worth mentioning, I will. but talking about everything I listen to will quickly turn this into a chore and that’s hardly the point, so from now on I’ll stick to stuff that I’m actually enthusiastic and/or have something to say about.  

John Zorn – “Astronome”: a second “trio” piece from last year featuring Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn and Joey Baron on voice, bass and drums respectively. a review I read somewhere indicated that between “Astronome” and it’s companion piece “Moonchild” (released a little earlier last year) that this was the more extreme of the two… I personally couldn’t disagree more. where “Moonchild” features the same trio performing several short bursts of chaos akin to some efforts by Patton’s well known Fantomas project or some of Zorn’s earlier works with Naked City or Painkiller; “Astronome” consists of three longer pieces, averaging about 14 minutes a piece. it’s far more akin to Painkiller’s later effort “Execution Ground,” except with less emphasis on the dub aspects and (usually) heaps of distortion on the bass. in fact, Dunn’s distorted bass tone here is nothing short of phenomenal. of course a big difference between either of these projects and Painkiller is the replacement of Zorn’s sax squall with Patton’s tortured vocal inflections – the man truly does (ab)use his voice as an instrument. I missed it last year which is when it actually came out (there were so many good records out last year, after all), but having now caught myself up, this could easily find a high spot on my “best of 2006″ list.

Massacre – “Funny Valentine”: released back in 98 on Tzadik, this features three legends in the realms of music covered by that label: Fred Frith, Bill Laswell and Charles Hayward (if these names are unfamiliar to you, stop reading… just kidding, let’s mention a few projects they’ve been involved in: Material, Skeleton Crew, Henry Cow, This Heat, Camberwell Now…). in many ways this hearkens back to the NY no-wave/art-rock scene that spawned the original incarnation of this group with Fred Maher on drums. it recalls their earlier effort “Killing Time,” though this time around the trio were leaning far more toward gentler, almost ambient pieces. head and shoulders above most music out there period, this is pretty much an essential avant-rock release. some of todays pretenders should pay attention to how their masters do it.

 The Bark Haze – “Total Joke Era”: only Thurston Moore could make an art concept out of misunderstanding/misspelling the name of another band and get away with it. he does so here in a guitar duo with Andrew MacGregor, who I know little else about except for the fact that he also apparently goes by the name GOWN. incidentally, the misheard band name in question here is apparently on older R&B group by the name of The Bar Kays… at any rate, despite the “my four year old could come up with that” aspect of some of his “art” concepts, thankfully pretty much any recording featuring Moorethat also involves ambient guitar is usually worth a few listens and this one is no exception. an enjoyable effort that I’m looking forward to hearing more of.

Dodheimsgard (DHG) – “Supervillain Outcast”:despite my general dislike for Pitchfork, occasionally one is able to read about a good band on their site. what’s even more surprising than that can be sometimes is the fact that, in this particular case, the band in question happens to be of the black metal variety. ok, well, that’s not entirely accurate. to offer some perspective, I had never heard of this band prior to today. or if I had, either the name didn’t stick in my memory or I disregarded them as likely being just another band among the often-boring black metal hordes. I still have not heard any previous efforts at this point, so for all I know that may have once been true. but what I hear on this album is a band that breaks the mold of the genre in ways that so few before them have, and in ways that I wish more bands would. it’s almost unfair to even call these guys BM at this point, but the traces are still there – buzzsaw guitar tones and near-blast beats still show themselves. just as often though, the fast stuff comes off almost tech-metal;and there are plenty of other facets to their overall sound as well. another impressive factor is that they use synths. synths are not new to black metal of course, but the way this band uses them – for squiggly noises as accompaniment or during breakdowns instead of the usual faux-gothic “string” trappings that most BM-with-synth bands fall into – score them a few more points in an already impressive game. although they may not compare very much stylistically, I haven’t run across this much of a genre-bending BM band since Sigh - and much like I said when I covered the latter’s “Scenario IV” a few days back, I wish there were more BM bands like this. but then again, it’s probably preferable to let a few masters like this stand on their own than have them lost amid a sea of imitators without the skill to equal their ambitions. that said, DHG have (forgive me) mad skillz at their disposal and everyone should buy this when it comes out later this month. I know I will