Violet Noise: 05
Violet Noise's Favorite Albums of 2020 (so far)
Hi everyone. My name is Sam Tornow. Welcome to the fifth edition of Violet Noise, a bi-weekly newsletter/gathering place for all things experimental music.
Today marks the first special issue of Violet Noise!
This list is in alphabetical order and blurb length has no meaning. The “honorable mention” section at the bottom only differs from the rest of the list due to the entries having no blurbs. I do not enjoy them any less. Finally, due to the experimental focus of this newsletter, I will be missing a lot of *hype* albums.
Let’s go.
Quick Note
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Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel by 36 & zakè (Past Inside the Present) (excerpt from Violet Noise: 04)
“‘Space,’ it says, ‘is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.’” - Douglas Adams
The latest in the long history of space-based ambient music (shameless plug alert, I wrote about that long history for Bandcamp last year), Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel calls back to the Krautrock records of Cluster and Harmonia, with massive, echo-filled tracks, evoking the image of the grandness of the final frontier.
FFO: Steve Roach, Cluster, Max Richter, Robert Rich, Celer, That One Bibio Album, The Eno Brothers, Watching the Ship Rotate in 2001: Space Odyssey, Sleeping for Years
Listen to Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel here.
Shrines by Armand Hammer (Backwoodz Studioz) (excerpt from Violet Noise 04)
Armand Hammer, the rap duo made up of billy woods and EUCLID, is the most potent pairing in experimental rap right now. On their own, each of the collaborators has had critical success, but together, they’ve been three steps ahead of what anyone else is doing since their 2017 debut Rome.
Shrines is the duo’s third album. It’s a jam-packed, fully realized 14-track album filled with loads of one-liners and no filler. The record is only made better with a cacophony of collaborations, making the pair’s work feel even more communal thanks to artists like Quelle Chris, Moor Mother, Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blu, Andrew Broder, Fielded, Messiah Muzik, August Fanon, KeiyaA, Kenny Segal, Nicholas Craven, and many more.
FFO: EUCLID, billy woods, MIKE, Milo, Ka, Quelle Chris, Earl Sweatshirt, Moor Mother, Ripping It Up and Starting Again
Listen to Shrines here.
how i’m feeling now by Charli XCX (excerpt from Violet Noise 02)
So much has already been written about this album. So much has been said by Charli during the transparent writing and record process. Now, I’ll offer my critique, which is quite similar to everything I’ve been saying about her work since she appeared in the “Fancy” music video:
It’s Charli, baby.
FFO: Unnecessary
Listen to how i’m feeling now here.
Gloam by Cole Pulice (Moon Glyph)
Gloam is the first solo record by Minneapolis-based saxophonist Cole Pulice, who plays in Iceblink, toured with Bon Iver, and has worked with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Gloam is a patient record, filled with lengthy notes and rests. During the extended notes, harmonics fly out of the sax like sparks coming off a grinding stone. The rests give the sounds time to drift and the listener time to appreciate.
Per the PR statement, Gloam is "a collection of electroacoustic lullabies for holodecks, interstellar rest stops, and cryo-chambers." Which, unlike the majority of PR statements that come with albums, holds up.
FFO: Moon Hooch, Bon Iver, The Comet is Coming, Pauline Oliveros, John Coltrane
Listen to Gloam here.
Scramblers by Container (Alter)
With Scramblers, Ren Schofield, known as Container, has created a unique sonic palette in which everything sounds like it exists in a parallel dimension filled with cartoon springs, noisy drums, fuzzy atmospheres, and non-stop action. What’s even more impressive is that the record was recorded, mixed, and mastered in a day.
Did your local carnival have the similarily named Scrambler ride (AKA The Gee Whizzer, Grasscutter, The Twist, Cyclone)? That's what's happening here. For 30-minutes, Schofield spins the listener around and around and around and around, until they crash onto the ground like a meteor, before getting up and asking, “Can I do that again?”
FFO: Blanck Mass, Peder Mannerfelt, Demdike Stare, Roly Porter, Forest Swords, Buying Unlimited Tickets at the County Fair, Dumpster Diving, Walking Around Scrapyards
Listen to Scramblers here.
Mystic Familiar by Dan Deacon
Since I first heard Dan Deacon, I’ve been saying that he’s the sonic equivalent of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time. I believe in the comparison so much, I've unapologetically put it in writing multiple times. Mystic Familiar, Deacon's first album since Gliss Riffer in 2015, reinforces the comparison. Like his previous works, Mystic Familiar is full of bright colors and surreal lyrics that evoke images of anthropomorphic creatures and psychedelic dream quests.
The difference with Mystic Familiar, though, is that it’s Deacon's most mature work, but don't take that to mean it's boring or that the Baltimore-artist has lost his edge. Much of Deacon's output since 2015 has been scoring, and his new composition skills are on full display here, especially on the four-part track “ARP.” In addition, due to the turbulent nature of his personal life since Gliss Riffer, Deacon picked up a meditation habit, which is heavily represented in the lyrics and his decision to show off his vocal chops in all their unedited glory for the first time.
Listen to Mystic Familiar here.
Algorithmic Music for Synthesised Strings by Dane Law (Astral Plane Recordings) (excerpt from Violet Noise: 04)
Dane Law’s first record for Astral Plane Recordings, Algorithmic Music for Synthesised Strings, is made up of, as the title says, algorithmic music for synthesised strings. To create the record, Law built upon MIDI files processed through a second-order Strong Markov (more commonly known as the law of large numbers) algorithm.
The result is something akin to an uncanny MIDI valley; or, the score to a Black Mirror episode that doesn’t suck. While swatches of ambient patterns lay the foundation of each track, the strings come out in not-quite-normal rhythms and melodies. Many of the tracks are reminiscent of an old, clanked up music box that’s ticker got rusted out decades ago, in a good way.
FFO: James Ferraro, Biophilia-era Bjork, Triad God, Mary Lattimore, Ka Baird, Autechre, ASMR, Nature Documentaries, Reading About MIDI 2.0
Listen to Algorithmic Music for Synthesised Strings here.
Volume 00 by Disworld (Quiet Earth Records) (excerpt from Violet Noise: 02)
Are you one of those people who drool over the sound of MIDI-instruments? Same. Volume 00 is based on anonymous MIDI files found on an external hard drive years ago. It’s muscular, cheesy, danceable, and a little “vapory."
FFO: James Ferraro, YMO, Carly Rae Jepsen, MIDI, The Rugrats Theme Song, Playstation 1 RPGs, Arizona Green Tea T-Shirts, Lego Island (1997)
Listen to Volume 00 here.
Music For 18 Musicians (Steve Reich) By Erik Hall (Western Vinyl) (excerpt from Violet Noise: 02)
Erik Hall is a Michigan-based producer/composer, who took it upon himself to “recreate” Steve Reich’s minimalist classic Music for 18 Musicians solo, using only the equipment he had available to him. Nevermind the impressive fact that Hall played each pulsating part solo and then mixed them, this version of 18 Musicians offers a new perspective on the sound. The hi-fi notes smudge together due to recording limitations and the instrumentation is clever. Whereas Reich’s original score can seem cold and mathematical, Hall’s take is a much sunnier one.
FFO: Steve Reich (duh), Phillip Glass, La Monte Young, Being Pleasantly Surprised by the Quality of a Local One-Man-Show, Lo-Fi Minimalism to Study/Relax To, Abusing Adderall for Good Grades, Jogging
Listen to Music For 18 Musicians (Steve Reich) here.
Ultrasonic by Field Works (Temporary Residence) (excerpt from Violet Noise: 01)
The most recent Field Works’ record focuses on the echolocation of the Indiana Bat, an endangered species. The record also acts as a who’s who of experimental artists, with artists such as Sarah Davachi, Kelly Moran, Mary Lattimore, and many others composing pieces around field recordings of the animal.
Shameless plug: Here’s a piece I wrote up for Bandcamp about the album. If the premise sounds at all interesting, this is a good place to get more insight from the artist, including a description of how he managed to make the inaudible sounds of the animal audible and what it’s like to work with National Geographic.
FFO: Any of the Featured Artists, Dracula, Listening to Frogs, Looking at National Geographic’s Instagram Page
Listen to Ultrasonic here.
Room For the Moon by Kate NV (RVNG Intl.) (excerpt from Violet Noise 04)
Kate NV has been killing it outside of the mainstream music press’s eyes for a few years now and finally, finally, they’re taking notice. On previous albums, Binasu and для FOR, the Moscow-based artist’s sound has been comprised mainly of squiggly, organic synths paired with MIDI-mallet hits. Room for the Moon maintains those squiggly synths, but scales them back considerably and fills in the rest of the space with hints of new wave, synthpop, and fully fleshed out vocal sections, making Room her most conventionally digestible album yet.
Fortunately, NV’s tightening of the experimental reins has resulted in a fantastic, colorful record. Leading up to the release, the artist, born Ekaterina Shilonosova, claimed that the album was an exercise in escapism, her fairy tale to get lost in during a lonely period of her life. I’m just grateful that she let us in.
FFO: Blondie, Stereolab, ARP, Yasuaki Shimizu, Talking Heads, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono, City Pop, Crash/ Bandicoot OSTs
Listen to Room For The Moon here.
Technical Mentality by Long Distance Poison (Hausu Mountain)
Memorable drone music goes somewhere. It doesn't just stir. It has a “point,” an objective in mind. Long Distance Poison’s “Giving Up on Me” from Technical Poison, which makes up half of the record, is a masterclass in this technique. The track is largely made up of an ominous back and forth between the LDP’s two members, Erica Bradbury, who handles analog synthesis, and Nathan Cearley, who focuses on modular synthesis. But then, in the final quarter, the duo kicks it into hyperdrone mode: the distortion amplifies, the drive picks up, and it burns the listener’s ears, singeing the tiny hairs inside.
The hyperdone section doesn’t hit quite the same if you start listening to the track from that point, or even halfway through. LDP glacially builds up to it, almost tricking the listener into thinking that nothing new will happen. Right when you start thinking that, oh, they've got you.
And don’t even get me started on the album’s other track, “Sunset in a Server.”
FFO: Pulse Emitter, Tim Hecker, Emeralds, Forest Management, Earthen Sea, Ben Frost, Machinefabriek, Listening to White Noise While Cooking
Listen to Technical Mentality here.
Weight of the World by Mike (10k)
Weight of the World finds the New York-based rapper MIKE continuing to face the death of his mother. Early on during the introduction track "love supremacy," he sums up the entire mood of the album: “I got my mother's laugh, grinnin' through a bunch of bad shit.”
Mike’s MF DOOM-inspired flow, wherein words fall over each other as if he’s trying to figure out what the lyric will be as it’s coming out, combined with the lo-fi, dynamic production gives the album a fleeting feeling like he's working out emotions as they come to him. On the final track, "Allstar," his co-conspirator Earl Sweatshirt steps out of the shadows and up to the mic, giving his endorsement of the record in the form of a verse filled with knotty rhymes.
Weight of the World is also the first album to reference COVID without it being a total cheese-fest.
FFO: Earl Sweatshirt, billy woods, Your Old Droog, Lojii, Milo
Listen to Weight of the World here.
Crack of Stone by Pulse Emitter (self-released)
“The nights were comfortless and chill, and they did not dare to sing or talk too loud, for the echoes were uncanny, and the silence seemed to dislike being broken--except by the noise of water and the wail of wind and the crack of stone.” J.R.R. Tolkien
The majority of Pulse Emitter’s, real name Daryl Groetsch, deep discography is made up of meditative music. The name of his last major release, Swirling, is the perfect word for the gentle catalog. On Crack of Stone, inspired, at least partially by a passage from The Hobbit, Pulse Emitter turns off the light and steps into the dark forest. Groetsch makes liberal use of an amplified, distorted spring. The vibrational sounds range from ray-gun imitations to industrial, noisy zaps that echo infinitely. Underneath the springs, Groetsch uses dark synth pads to mimic elemental forces like wind and rain. Nature has never sounded this noisy.
FFO: Fogweaver, The Haxan Cloak, Deathprod, Nurse With Wound, Doth’s Tweets
Listen to Crack of Stone here.
Sawayama by Rina Sawayama (Dirty Hit)
While I could go on and on about Sawayama, I already wrote about it for Tone Glow’s “Our Favorite Albums, April-June 2020” issue You can check out that blurb here. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and listen to it.
FFO: Britney Spears, Korn, Deftones, Dorian Electra, Caroline Polachek, Kero Kero Bonito, Slayyyter, Evanescence, 2000s MTV, Y2K retromania
Listen to Sawayama here.
blood blood blood blood by RXM Reality (Hausu Mountain)
blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood
FFO: blood
Listen to blood blood blood blood here.
OTOHIME by Toiret Status (Orange Milk Records) (excerpt from Violet Noise 02)
In 2018, during a Giant Claw performance, a group of people stood in front of me near the stage. They were talking, clearly uninterested, and put off by the barrage of noise. As they were getting ready to leave, one person noticed that they’re friend had been standing still, quietly with her eyes closed. After being nudged, she opened her eyes, smiled, and said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon through heaven.”
I had a similar sensation listening to toiret status’ latest release, OTOHIME. The Japanese producer takes sounds and mangles them up, as if they’ve been digested and flushed out, and puts them into these overwhelming pieces filled with technicolor tones. It’s both difficult and fun to listen to, and humorous and experimental in concept, something I think we need more of.
FFO: Seth Graham, woopheadclrms, Literally Any Orange Milk Records Release, Plunderphonics, Sound Collage, Toy Stores, The Toilet Section of Home Depot
Listen to OTOHIME here.
Honorable Mentions
Hymn For Anyone by Blithe Field
FFO: Spencer Radcliffe, The Books, Ricky Eat Acid, Happy Trendy, Avery Tare, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Coke Machines, High Fantasy, Going to Church for the Community Aspect
Listen to Hymn For Anyone here.
Balani Fou by DJ Dlaki (Neyege Nyege Tapes)
FFO: Duke, Sisso, Jay Mitta, Bamba Pana, Hama, Ivan Conti, 99Jakes, Pixie Sticks, Wonka Bars, Pulling Up to Soccer Practice at High Speeds
Listen to Balani Fou here.
Hill, Flower, Fog by Emily Sprague
FFO: Lightbath, r beny, Amulets, Ann Annie, Jogging House, Green-House, Taylor Deupree, Marcus Fischer, Saying Things like, “Being Radically Tender,” Doing Yoga in the Morning
Listen to Hill, Flower, Fog here.
BRAT by NNAMDI
FFO: Naeem, Armand Hammer, Open Mike Eagle, R.A.P. Ferreira, Medhane, Spongebob Memes, Saying Goofball, 50 Cent Gum Balls from Family Video
Listen to BRAT here.
Yeo-Neun by Okkyung Lee
FFO: Felicia Atkinson, Kali Malone, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ian William Craig, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Listening to Chopin very quietly, Secretly Enjoying Spotify Study Playlists
Listen to Yeo-Neun here.
Vertical Jamming by Phew (Disciples)
FFO: Oval, Jan Jelinek, Early Industrial, Sound Art, CDs Glitching out, Low-Frequency Oscillation, Birdsong at 3:45 in the Morning, Using Drum Machines Unconventionally
Listen to Vertical Jamming here.
Am I Free To Go? By The Soft Pink Truth
FFO: Matmos, Xiu Xiu, Hexa, Aus-Rotten, Discharge, Napalm Death, Screaming Into Pillows, Reading Theory, Working Out to Be Ready for the Revolution
Listen to Am I Free To Go? here.
To Kiss Earth Goodbye by Teleplasmiste
FFO: Long Distance Poison, Pulse Emitter, Emeralds, Lawrence English, Forest Management, Ys’ Album Artwork, Building Multiple Fountains in Animal Crossing
Listen to To Kiss Earth Goodbye here.
Tumbling Towards a Wall by Ulla
FFO: Disasterpeace, Mister Water Wet, Heurco S., Malibu, Topdown Dialectic, Meitei, Floating in the Ocean, Being “Over” Brian Eno, Candle Shops
Listen to Tumbling Towards a Wall here.
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