A Casa and Gouffre

Sometime ago I wrote about Ensync… this was the second release in the “Synesthetic Alchemy” series by 213 Records from Metz, France. The first release was by A Casa… which is equally interesting as the Ensync record…

The A Casa album is a psychedelic record with on the A-side music with a sort of indie feeling and mood… a drum computer with a steady but light rhythm and on top of this playful sounds and dreamy vocals… a sort of stretch version of Kim Ki O maybe… the B-side is less friendly so to speak… the piece starts with a high pitched tone… which keeps going on quite long and gets more intense along the way… and more annoying (in a good way!)… this evolves into a dark and ritual sounding soundscape with noises and screams… a rather occult listening experience for sure… you can listen to the A-side here…

Out most recently in this series is the Gouffre album… a band from the hometown of the label… like A Casa the A and B sides differ… but not as strongly… on the A-side you get a band sounding like The Velvet Underground with John Cale on cello instead of on violin playing totally on dope and freaked out… imagine this and you might get an idea where Gouffre is coming from… whatever way you like to describe the music on this record the result is absolute amazing stuff… ritualistic and occult sounding but never dull or cliché… this could also fit for music while watching “Carnivale”…

The B-side is a band maybe more related to Sonic Youth as The Velvet Underground… but a Sonic Youth armed with cello instead of electric guitars and sounding a bit more archaic maybe… it also calls to mind France with its hurdy gurdy and drums… they produce the same psychedelic drone-like noise… here you can listen to the A-side…

This “Synesthetic Alchemy” series has become one of my favourite labels/series to follow… and a fourth release is coming soon… I cannot wait for that one… It is all simply excellent  stuff until now!

In case you are curious I have a few copies of the Gouffre for sale in the webshop… and I think I have also some Ensync copies left…

 

 

 

Glice

Glice - LIX - ArtworkIn the end I am not a big noise fan… I do like noisy music and industrial music and sounds… but most noise is just noise to me… noise for noise sake is not my cup of tea…

But since a long time I do listen to noise music such as performed by Sonic Youth for example… this as it is not just noise… it has interesting narratives to get into and lots of dynamics and it plays around with genre definitions… well these same aspects I recognise in the debut album ‘Lix’ (it is a shamed but only available digitally for now) by Dutch noise duo Glice…

Glice did present an EP a few months ago which I enjoyed but this album is just way beyond that… the music is richer in sounds and textures and due to this much more daring and interesting… from the first seconds it grasps you and pulls you down under in creepy soundscapes and nasty noise pieces…

The opening piece “Terebinths” is a 10 minutes long ritualistic dark trip… something which will appeal to fans of old Lustmord stuff… and absolute highlight is “Flax” which is the most melodic (sort of of) and tranquil piece of the album… almost meditative but too disturbing in the end… another highlight is the bombastic “Tamarix”… which could have been on an old Cold Meat Industry record…

The 80’s and 90’s industrial influences seems to be there but the music by Glice is very much contemporary too… fitting in somewhere with the post-techno music by Kerridge for example… really an awesome release… also for non noise fans…

You can see and hear Glice live on Thursday 21st of January at the Radio Resistencia session at Kapitaal in Utrecht…

And… enjoy “Tamarix” here / below…

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Goo morning

SonicYouth_GooEvery morning before going to my job I have about time for one side of a record… often resulting that I play side A from a certain record one morning and the the next morning I continue with the B side… anyway last year the most played record in the morning was Sonic Youth’s “Goo”… an album from 1990 I totally rediscovered last year…

In the past I listened to a lot of Sonic Youth… then for some years a lot less and since two years or so I play their music again quite often… in the past I liked “Confusion Is Sex”, “Sister” and “Dirty” the best… “Goo” never really was among my favorites… maybe as it is a sort of in-between record… in a way it combines the sound of “Daydream Nation”… dreamlike sequences bordering melancholy melodies and noise eruptions… and on the other hand the song based tracks like on “Dirty”… or maybe this is all nonsense as the band has on many album (including “Dirty”) played around with noise, song structures and melodic movements…

“Goo” anyway made a lot of sense to me last year and I played it so many mornings… sometimes the A side and sometimes the B side… but mostly the A side…  And… you need to love the cover… also if you do not like Pop art… Also this record is a good starting point of picking up my renewed interest in Sonic Youth… I stopped following them after “Experimental Jet-Set, Trash And No Star “… so let’s see what is there to explore…