Sunroof! - Cloudz (2003)

I planned to post this a while ago, but better to post it now than never. Sunroof! is Matthew Bower from England; he's been active for 25 years and has released over 60 albums under a variety of names. This happens to be the best release he's had in my opinion, as his genre is hard to pin down considering that he also works in the post-punk and noise scenes.

There's a lot to enjoy here. "Machine" is a beautiful opening to the 70-minute album. "Zero" is expectional. "Primavera" is fantastic fuzzed-out noise/experimental rock. This is nine tracks and 70 minutes long and it's hard to find a single minute that isn't worthy of repeated listens.

Try it
Buy it

(editor's note: you'll get several posts from me today; I'll attempt to stop being lazy)

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001)

It’s a cold Chicago night. You’re freezing and struggling to keep warm even under your heavy coat. You light another cigarette as you enter your car to keep warm. Turning on the radio, you switch to some weirdly wonderful pop station, punctuated by static and the sonic bleed of competing signals. The music is distorted and jarring, but strangely beautiful.

Named in honor of the three-word codes used by short-wave radio operators, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot can often evoke such an image in a listener’s mind. Perhaps one of the most brilliantly-crafted pop albums of all time, the Chicago alt-country rockers’ fourth album takes listeners on an existentialist trip, creating a loose sonic meditation on distance and love, using random radio signals as a metaphor.

These songs are not ordinary pop songs by any means. Utilizing blips, radio pops and starts, and all forms of odd sounds and fillers pushed through filters, the band creates a sonic palette that ends up sounding like nothing else before it. Songs like “Ashes of American Flags” and “Poor Places” end in a chaotic catharsis of distortion. “I’m The Man That Loves You”, probably one of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard, is utterly destroyed by short bursts of ear-splitting, finger-bleeding guitar soloing. The closing track, “Reservations” could not have ended the album more gorgeously and elegantly, leaving the listener lost in a world of ambient sounds.

As lyrically sophisticated and provocative as it is noisy and serene, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is often a dark and melancholy affair. The piano-led “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” is a portrayal of drunken lovesickness, delicately laced with a cacophony of noise, whistles and percussive clutter. The acoustic “Radio Cure” is glum, moody, intriguing and emotional. “Ashes of American Flags” is a cold, chilling poem that is not so much cynical as it is a longing for the days of honest patriotism.

That’s not to say there’s not enough radio-friendly pop to go around, with the anthemic country psychedelia of “War on War” or the nostalgic yearning for a time of youth, innocence, and Kiss covers in “Heavy Metal Drummer”. The song “Pot Kettle Black” in particular makes you wonder just what Reprise was thinking when they dropped Wilco from their label because the album, in their opinion, wouldn’t sell.

You continue to listen to radio station with all of its static and cluttered noise. It is a sound that is sad, celestial, and lovely. You suddenly begin to feel much warmer as a cathartic sense of comfort washes over you. The music makes you feel relieved; you are at peace.

FLAC
v0

Jyoji Sawada - Base of Fiction (1994)

Blogs been up for a while, so I figured I'd give a special treat of the greatest album of all time.

To start, it's probably important to consider the "state of Japanese independent music" at the time of release. A huge style was the sort of "neo-zeuhl", rio-influenced kind of music largely championed by bands like Bondage Fruit, Koenjihyakkei, and a number of other greats. Heavy use of classical stringed instruments, largely technical music, operatic vocals, and other outrageous sounds highlight the genre. Along side that we had the "noise rockers": Ruins, Ground Zero, High Rise, etc. Anyone vaguely knowledgeable of the sort of "experimental" movements within Japan will know of this style. Thirdly, "Japanoise". Exhibited by Merzbow and Masonna, this brand of free noise has become largely acknowledged as some very "outside" music. And floating in and out of all of that, we have the avant-garde and generally humorous stylings that seem to be present in anything that comes out of Japan.

Enter Jyoji Sawada, a self taught bassist that builds himself off of classical composition, film soundtracks, and even a fair bit of Brazilian and Indonesian influence. After some experience with jazz improv and some work with Choro Club, he set off to combine his large vocabulary of sounds into wild, avant-garde compositions for a solo career. And as wide as influences are, Jyoji seems to want to condense the entire state of Japanese Independent music with his debut, Base of Fiction.

But for this seemingly defining piece, it isn't really a solo project. Although all is settled with Jyoji's vision, he combines his talents with some of the largest figures of Japanese music, including: Yoshida Tatsuya drumming on several tracks, the incomparable Otomo Yoshihide appears a few times, Seiichi Yamamoto lends his guitar, and the album is produced by the God Mountain head, Hoppy Kamiyama. This is almost more of a collaboration of Japanese music as a whole than it is Jyoji's band, although it's execution should be attributed significantly the the man that composed all but the first track.

That execution, you ask? Brilliant. Sonic insanity from the beginning to the end, with those previously mentioned styles all making appearences in one way or another. Largely dominated by Jyoji's obscure atmosphere, created from a mixture of a chambered string section and an overall menacing figure that looms from the noise and ferocity of his more rockish elements, this album takes us in and out of "reality", which Jyoji himself notes in the title for the 9th track (trans.) "Between strangeness and the reality of daily life" [please inform me if this is incorrect]. Schoenberg-esque, "spechstimme" comes in and out from female vocals, strings shift from dense soundscapes to more technical passages, maybe recalling Glass and his use of arpeggio (as in Einstein on the Beach), sampling is frequent and jarring (Jyoji explores the wide range of electronic expression) and even toy instruments make an appearance as we are left either frustrated or impressed (or both) and most certainly confused by the inner workings of Jyoji Sawada's mind.

To dissect this album is futile. At any given second, there is too much to consider, and at the next moment, you're taken to a completely different realm without warning. It's best to let this album wash over you, let it jerk you back in forth between signature changes, let it turn your mind into putty and watch the abstract figures that form as it splatters on the wall.

Buy.... good luck. Out of print. I was able to get a used copy (for a hefty amount that I will not disclose so easily), but it's a tough find, for sure

Download V0 | FLAC

official site | Myspace (The samples of music on here recall his more contemporary classical/ soundtrack styles that he explores on his later albums and film scores. Don't expect to find such warmness on this one)