Release of the Month: September 2010
The Silent Ballet staff counts down its top picks of September.
In September, we went back to school, both as teachers and as students. We cracked open real books – not summer paperbacks, but textbooks. We said goodbye to carefree, simple days, and re-entered the world of complexity. This change in season and mood – from the playful to the serious – is reflected in September’s picks. The three albums chosen by our staff this month (out of a pool of a hundred) represent some of the year’s most intricate and daring experimentation.
When encountering such music, many novices exclaim, “It’s too weird. I don’t get it.” The criticism frequently lobbied at experimental music is that it is experimental for the sake of being experimental, and that no one would ever like it, although one might pretend to like it in order to prevent hazing by pretentious, like-minded peers. Yet by nature, experimental music is meant to be challenging, and it serves a crucial purpose: to propel art forward, away from stagnation. Imagine a world in which art never evolves, and one will swiftly see the necessity of innovation. There will always be people who prefer the familiar, but what is familiar to one person would have seemed foreign, perhaps even threatening, to prior generations.
Art for art’s sake? That’s not what we’ll find on these releases. Instead, we’ll find composers stepping out of their comfort zones to deliver bold and risky statements. One day, if the sounds we’re hearing today become popular, and poke into the mainstream, we may look back and say, it all started here.
World’s End Girlfriend ~ Seven Idiots
Virgin Babylon Records
Seven Idiots is a sonic apocalypse, a battle between melody and dissonance, accessibility and the avant-garde, the spiritual and the material. On this album, Katsuhido Maeda succesfully salvages portions of his former work, melding them to sparkling new sounds for an entirely new creation. Dante’s Divine Comedy is the backdrop, as listeners are dragged through the levels of hell, then upward through purgatory and on to paradise. This high-concept release calls multiple instruments, genres and studio tricks into play; it’s all hands on deck for the album to end all albums. No, it’s not subtle: but themes of salvation and damnation rarely are, nor should they be. (Richard Allen)
Marcus Fjellström ~ Schattenspieler
Miasmah
Marcus Fjellström’s Scattenspieler is a bad trip translated to tape, a sonic reenactment of the burgeoning realities buried beneath our subconscious. This Swedish composer combines dissonant strings with sharp-edged synths in a way that leaves mouths agape in awe. An ambitious effort that unsettles its audience from the very beginning, Scattenspieler refuses to abbate the tension until the very end. It’s not a bedtime album, but it may be frightening enough to keep even the bad dreams away. (Mohammed Ashraf)
Sam Prekop ~ Old Punch Card
Thrill Jockey
Sam Prekop is best known as the vocalist and guitarist of The Sea and Cake, a band that also features Tortoise mastermind John McEntire. Along with other Chicago area bands like Gastr del Sol, The Sea and Cake has consistently defied categorization and made highly original and accessible music. Prekop’s previous two solo records, released in 1999 and 2005, were fantastic explorations of rock’s potential, incorporating his vocal style with arrangements that were rightly praised as highwater marks of pop. But his latest solo record moves in an almost completely different direction. Old Punch Card is entirely instrumental, and almost completely devoid of guitar. Prekop explores the potential of what sounds like dozens of analogue synthesizers working together, and in so doing has created one of the warmest, weirdest and most worthwhile electronic albums of the year. The first 1000 LPs featured hand-painted covers by Prekop himself, a highly regarded painter. Sadly, they’ve already sold out. At least we still have the music. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Date Posted: 10/4/2010
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