Coppice
Coppice – Surreal Air Fortress
Posted on June 16, 2018 • 13:10 by 5:4	in CD/Digital releases | Leave a comment
For many years now i've been following the output of Joseph Kramer and Noé Cuéllar's experimental duo Coppice. Their music is not only difficult to categorise, utilising a vast array of appropriated, re-purposed, handmade and/or otherwise kludged bits of elaborate mechanical paraphernalia, but also impossible to predict. 'Frictional' is a word that would once have gone some way to characterising the basis of their sonic palette, but over the last few years the range and nature of the sounds they've employed has expanded to the point that, if you weren't told what was being used, it would be nigh-impossible to work out. And Coppice (not unlike Matmos) have always been supremely good at detailing the appliances they wield, testifying to the sense of pride the duo has in them, and in the case of their latest release, a 30-minute album titled Surreal Air Fortress, the list of 'instruments' is typically eclectic, including a 'reconstituted copper plate', a 'barbed object', 'pining object' and 'dead air object', a 'Prepared pump organ', a 'fake Leslie Cabinet' and 'fake Rhodes', a 'modified boombox' and some 'no-kink corrugated tubing'. Such a variety of sources points to either the kind of pell-mell whimsy where random things are thrown together, or to a fastidious, considered approach to the juxtaposition of elements. i think there's a bit of both, actually – even at their most austere, Coppice display more than a trace of caprice – though overall it's the apparent care taken in the creation of their music that's most evident and consistently impressive.
Even making allowances for Coppice's unpredictability, Surreal Air Fortress came as a genuine surprise. There are words! They sing!! Described by Cuéllar and Kramer as "songs for physical modelling and modular syntheses", the essence of the two tracks on the album undeniably fits within an expanded notion of 'song'. Each takes the form of a triptych, only the first of which, Privacy and Difference, contains words. The opening section establishes a paradigm for the whole album, specifically an intriguing lack of clarity about whether it's the duo or their apparatus that's the driving force, making most of the decisions. Indeed, 'decisions' may not really be the best word, as one of the key attributes of Surreal Air Fortress overall is incidentality: a strong sense that the collection of pulsed episodes we pass through – to call them 'beats' would be absurd, and even describing the music as 'rhythmic' is stretching a point – have emerged inadvertently as a by-product of the literal machinations of the equipment. Read more
Tags: Coppice, electroacoustic, USA
Posted on January 1, 2016 • 12:00 by 5:4	in Best of the Year, Mixtapes | 5 Comments
A very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!
In keeping with 5:4 tradition, here's the new year Mixtape showcasing music from each of my Best Albums of 2015. Three hours that demonstrate something of the sonic wonders that materialised last year. Enjoy! — and there are links to buy each of the albums featured in the last two days' articles.
As usual, the mixtape can either be downloaded or streamed via MixCloud. Here's the tracklisting in full: Read more
Tags: Alex Rodgers, Alva Noto, Andrew Liles, Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, Autechre, Ben Salisbury, Benge, Björk, Brian Gascoigne, C Duncan, Cemeteries, Coppice, Disasterpeace, East India Youth, Eivør, Geoff Barrow, Gilles Gobeil, IAMX, Ingar Zach, Jacek Sienkiewicz, James Newton Howard, Jennifer Walshe, John Wall, John Williams, Julia Holter, Kate Havnevik, Kenneth Kirschner, Kreng, Lana Del Rey, Line Katcho, Man Without Country, Mark Andre, Miguel Angel Tolosa, Monty Adkins, Purity Ring, Somatic Responses, Steven Wilson, Sunken Foal, Susanne Sundfør, Syl Kougaï, Vanbot, Veli-Matti Puumala, Volker Hennes
Posted on December 30, 2015 • 11:26 by 5:4	in Best of the Year | Leave a comment
Pausing only to reiterate once again how fundamentally definitive and provisional are all lists, here we go with my countdown of 2015's best albums, starting with numbers 40 to 21. Part 2 tomorrow.
40 | Andrew Liles – Miscellany – Lussuoso (Electronics: 1990 to 2015)
The first of several epics on the list, Andrew Liles' consistently unpredictable output was dominated in 2015 by this dazzling three-hour celebration of diverse electronic works dating back a quarter of a century. As the name implies, Miscellany is a veritable hotchpotch, one with a distinct leaning toward the more raw end of electronics. But this is merely the basis for a kaleidoscope of works encompassing radiophonic mayhem, intense beat-driven numbers overlaid with John Carpenter-esque basslines and/or Wendy Carlos-esque baroque twiddling, expansive ambient vistas and delicate, multi-layered bits of melodic tracery. It all makes for an entirely bewildering yet mesmerising experience. [self-released]
39 | Benge – Forms 4 – Moor Music
The latest in Ben Edwards' ongoing 'Forms' series (begun in 2013) is this fine album, created using just a single synthesiser, the Yamaha VL1-m. The sense of evocation here, mingled with elements of nostalgia and retro sensibilities, is strong, conjuring up a soundworld that's abstract and elemental yet drenched with connotations and allusions. And on top of all that it's really very beautiful. [self-released – free download]
38 | Kate Havnevik – &i
Punchy, imaginative pop that builds directly upon the foundations set out on her 2011 album YOU. Smooth electronica is still the music's most prevalent quality, but Havnevik keeps it informed with gruff basslines and itchy rhythmic diversions. Her voice is as gorgeous and indeed gymnastic as ever, turning endless cartwheels and somersaults which both reinforce the emotive core and embody the anthemic frivolity of her exquisite songs. [self-released]
37 | IAMX – Metanoia
The product of a runaway success crowdfunding venture, Metanoia finds Chris Corner extending further the utterly unique IAMX sound. His songs have always inhabited the widest of extremes in order to capture faithfully life's emotional highs and lows, embracing grit and grime as well as the most ecstatic heights of elation (that voice!), and this album is no exception. Song titles like 'No Maker Made Me', 'Say Hello Melancholia' and 'Oh Cruel Darkness Embrace Me' are simultaneously brave—potentially suggesting a rather off-putting emo sensibility at work—and profoundly honest; yet the beat goes on, and while there's more than an element of danse macabre permeating these songs, the restlessness of their rhythms keeps them from becoming self-indulgent. [self-released]
36 | Alva Noto – Xerrox Vol. 3
"Xerrox Vol. 3 inhabits a very personal environment, founded upon broad washes of soft ambience, overlaid with bursts of electronic babble and semi-arbitrary burblings that more-or-less coalesce into melodic shapes. The slow, sedate manner of the first two Xerrox albums often suggested the solemnity of a ceremony, but Nicolai keeps things lighter on this occasion: materials are thinly-layered and clearly demarcated, and the general tone is one of buoyancy and lift, each track practically floating on its own thermal currents […] Avoiding the tendencies so many ambient composers make when attempting to tap into the idea of outer space, Xerrox Vol. 3 instead offers something that manages to evoke immensity and things unknowable from the perspective of a lone, small individual, at once infinite and intimate." (reviewed in June) [Raster-Noton]
35 | East India Youth – Culture of Volume
William Doyle's second album is a little hard to pin down. "The end result is not what was in mind" he sings, and it's tempting to hear that as a descriptor for Culture of Volume itself. At its heart is a light-footed pop sensibility—Doyle is an irresistible melody-maker—yet this sits within a context of convoluted structures that often feel like miniature operas, their drawn-out dramas telescoped into four-to-six minute time spans. Whether expressed over an unstoppable pulse or through long-form lyrical lines (as in album highlight 'Carousel'), they make Culture of Volume one of the year's most beguilingly off-kilter pop albums. [XL] Read more
Tags: Alva Noto, Andrew Liles, Ben Salisbury, Benge, Björk, Cemeteries, Coppice, East India Youth, Eivør, Geoff Barrow, Gilles Gobeil, IAMX, Ingar Zach, Jennifer Walshe, Kate Havnevik, Kreng, Lana Del Rey, Miguel Angel Tolosa, Purity Ring, Somatic Responses, Steven Wilson, Vanbot
New releases: Gottfried Huppertz, Elliott Sharp, Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, Coppice
i want to flag up a few more new releases that have recently been tickling my jukeboxical fancy. To begin with, music that's not remotely contemporary, but which in its own way marks an important contribution to the development of a particular musical strand that began early in the 20th century. Gottfried Huppertz was the composer for two of Fritz Lang's most impressive films; his 1927 score for Metropolis can be heard as a progenitor of the style and approach that is at the heart of composers like John Williams. But it's his score for Lang's massive 4½-hour two-part epic Die Nibelungen, composed three years earlier, that can be heard to contain the quintessence of the movie soundtrack in a startlingly nascent form. In contrast to Metropolis, where mechanistic machinations dominate its narrative, Die Nibelungen is a score rooted deeply in lyrical melodic action. Huppertz's musical language is sumptuous, echoing the shifting harmonic sensibilities of Richard Strauss, but above all strikingly redolent of the impassioned melodies (and instrumentation) of Scriabin's symphonies. His approach is essentially leitmotivic, establishing a variety of principal ideas that are continually repositioned and recast in different lights and flavours in response to the events on-screen.
Tags: Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, Coppice, Elliott Sharp, Gottfried Huppertz
New releases: Hans Werner Henze, Coppice, Galina Ustvolskaya, Gabriel Ledoux, Susanna Gartmayer, Alva Noto, Robert Normandeau, Erik Nyström
Posted on June 5, 2015 • 10:55 by 5:4	in CD/Digital releases | 1 Comment
Not many new releases have made much of an impact on me during the last month. Among the few that have, though, is a new box set from Wergo bringing together all ten of Hans Werner Henze's symphonies, performed by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Marek Janowski. Henze's symphonies were an early interest of mine; as a teenager i became closely acquainted with the Deutsche Grammophon recording of the first six symphonies made by Henze himself with the Berlin Phil. i say 'acquainted', but at the time i was semi-mystified by various aspects of these pieces, and i'm not sure that the passing years or Janowski's superb new rendition of them has made that mystification any less present. Which is not to say these symphonies are baffling or unengaging—not in the least—yet Henze's mode of speech takes more than a little getting used to, and his inclination to veer between extremes can be decidedly disorienting. Those first six symphonies remain a challenge, and to no little extent they are 'symphonies' only in name, inclining more towards the heightened drama of music theatre. This, in fact, is a characteristic of all 10 symphonies, which is in turn one of the main facets that prevents them from sounding problematically abstruse; their swift adjustments and shifts between states—of behaviour, atmosphere, emotion, charge—is exhilarating and continually offers new ways into the often churning underlying mood. Read more
Tags: Alva Noto, Coppice, Erik Nyström, Gabriel Ledoux, Galina Ustvolskaya, Hans Werner Henze, Robert Normandeau, Susanna Gartmayer