After the break-up of Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Erectus Monotone, bassist Jennifer Walker moved on to form Ashley Stove with Ben Barwick and Matt Brown on guitars and Bill Alphin on drums. 4-Finger Moon is full of fast-tempo ballast, with Barwick handling most of the vocals. Discordance enters to some small degree on songs like…
Drone, a New Zealand trio relocated to London, envisions a world of Casios, where the most uncommon sounds can create a new orchestra. Drum machine clicks and distorted keyboard strokes unfold to develop fugues and passages. Even with the occasional female voice, the sound remains inhuman. Drone sounds home-composed, aware and appreciative of the panoramic…
One-man recording group the Azusa Plane offers effects-centric guitar work from the sidelines. Unlike most home work, the music leans toward drifting atmospherics rather than angst-laden pop crooning. Multiple layers of guitar tracks are interspersed with contrasting strains of sound for a numbing overload damp with reverb and coasting on drones. And each sonic creation…
From the same overamplified home electronics realm as Shizuo and Rancid Hell Spawn, Gerty Farish records Casio noises, screamed vocals and three-chord guitar runs through blaring fuzz. Like its peers, Farish knows a sense of humor is the best way to approach this kind of music. The jacket of Save the Ants, a split release…
Not since Jennifer Herrema mumbled her way through the first couple of Royal Trux albums has a band extracted such beauty from disjointed chaos. Marcia Bassett’s slurred vocals recall Nico after a few too many drinks, yet she sounds absolutely sublime when paired with guitarist Grant Acker’s minimal strumming. UN’s self-titled debut is a masterwork…
As with many one-man bands, Japan’s Color Filter exists mainly as a studio project — in this case, by one Ryuji Tsuneyoshi. Drum machines and loops, guitars and soothing synthesizer sounds sway between atmospheric haze and obscured pop melodics. On Sleep in a Synchrotron, “Sad Grey Sky” deftly mixes My Bloody Valentine samples with vocals…
The three members of Danbury, Connecticut’s China Pig play rock with the protracted brutality of Caspar Brötzmann Massaker or the Melvins. Thudding beats, lumbering guitar and mumbled/growling vocals make up marathon-length tracks to create music full of evil intensity and distortion. The plodding tempos underscore the sounds between beats rather than an overall context for…
Nobody better flew the flag of New York’s indie underground than Azalia Snail. Now relocated to Los Angeles, the self-declared queen of “space folk” — with an arsenal of collaborators (including members of Fly Ashtray, Live Skull and King Missile) — has remained focused on the singular style and vision of her own trippy music.…
This seven-member ensemble from Richmond, Virginia plays soft acoustic songs that owe more to storytelling dynamics than the folk settings in which the instrumentation is usually employed. Mandolins, banjos, organs, a cello and an accordion delicately are combined into a sparse sound, wrapping a thin cushion around P.J. Alverson’s gritty, hushed vocals. The slow pace…
The members of Ontario’s Tristan Psionic are also the proprietors of the Sonic Unyon label. TPA Flight 028 displays adept playing, memorable songlines, unexpected time changes, and a host of payoff moments. By all definitions, Tristan Psionic flower from the indie rock tradition of artists like Versus and Polvo, but there is more than enough…
Much like their New York peers in Tower Recordings, Dan Brown, Samara Lubelski and Theo Angel of Hall of Fame view four-track recording as an opportunity for acoustic instrument experimentation. Brown (who first earned his New York underground elite stripes playing with God Is My Co-Pilot) and Lubelski were in the pranksterish Salmon Skin, before…
The melding of Sonic Youth-inspired feedback, thickly strummed guitars and pristine pop which came to be referred to as shoegazer music for the proponents who stood motionless on stage and looked down at their feet (or foot pedals) did not have a more apt representative than Charlottes. With airy female vocals, tom-tom drumming and buckets…
The Autumn Leaves was formed in Minneapolis in 1993 by David Beckey, who brought together ’90s pure-pop aesthetics with a ’60s approach to folk melodies and backup-singer choruses. Treats and Treasures shows an appreciation for jangle guitar (“You Didn’t Say a Word”), Ride-like shoegazer swirls (“Everynight”) and reverb-drenched balladry (“When I Close My Eyes”).
This trio from Champaign, IL encapsulated much of what is called “slowcore” — that is, the use of steady dynamics within tempered songs. Tempos mostly hover in the low numbers, as many notes are hit on the upbeat and instrumental development takes precedence over melody. Tom Fitzgerald’s vocals are appropriately deep, dismal and inexpressive throughout…
Catania, Sicily’s Uzeda (named for an ancient entrance into the city) plays angular start/stop aggression with uncommon time signatures. At least, that’s what the Italian quintet (more recently a quartet) eventually did. Out of Colors is a soft-edged approach towards what Uzeda would become. On it, Giovanna Cacciola offers her throaty vocal dynamism over some…
Guitarists Richard Conway Jones and Michael Beard create lulling, non-distorted instrumental music that drifts through a variety of techniques on The Marilyn Decade. The song titles from a poem on the inner sleeve are emblematic of The Marilyn Decade’s intended effect, that being meditation and relaxation. “Dawn Chorus” is full of slow volume swells and…
A truly collaborative group, Spent — Annie Hayden and Joe Weston (both of Alligator), guitarist John King (Humidifier, a band in which Superchunk’s Jim Wilbur was also a member) and drummer Ed Radich — formed in Jersey City and wore their New Jersey colors proudly, with hardly a whiff of hairspray about them. Vocal and…
Flowchart emerged from Southern Jersey as masters of electronic sounds and the spaces in-between. The duo’s music ranges from lounge-loving pop to abstract waves to sheets of noise, all while maintaining a playfulness that never lets pretension rear its swollen head. Sean O’Neil created the group in 1994 as Heroine, releasing a 7-inch of energetic…
Founded by Sushil Dade of Soup Dragons and former 18 Wheeler David Keenan (and, for a while, including ex-Teenage Fanclub drummer Brendan O’Hare in its ever-changing lineup), Glasgow’s Telstar Ponies fell somewhere between the atmospheric goth of Independent Project Records releases and the prolonged indulgence of freeform improvisation. The US-only Mors Factum Musica conveys something…
For some groups, a description like “too cutesy” is the greatest of compliments. As members in good standing of the British twee scene in the early ’90s, Strawberry Story were immersed in its sweet’n’infantile rules — fast tempos, upbeat songs and coy, high-pitched vocals (preferably female) — learned from such forerunners as Talulah Gosh and…
