Releases that range from okay to magnificent (at least to our ears).

Loiis - Wimbledon

The second album by Mexico City's Loiis feels like a lateral movement instead of a step forward. While their debut was not precisely original, it had more to it: there was a subtle ambition to create something more personal even when it was still informed by a very, very specific set of idiomatic limitations, especially -and almost exclusively- those set by bands like Duster, Helvetia, Low, and whatever copycat the algorithm may throw at you if you listen to those bands. Un Final Feliz was a little uneventful not because of the music itself, but because it felt like one of many, and unfortunately, this is still the case.

As always, I will respect the effort put into an album. The songs are well written and performed, but in the end, you could leave them in the background with the guarantee that nothing will be missed. It's almost like a Gestalt effect: a few seconds in, and we can fill in the gaps in terms of where the songs are going.

For all its restrictions, Un Final Feliz had more variety; Wimbledon never surprises. The only highlight is a noisy cut that manages to wake us up before we realize we're just listening to typical shoegaze dynamics. Again, it's not that the song is bad, it's just too familiar.

If the album had the Slint-tinged aura that Un Final had in its better moments, Loiis could have a jagged, quiet-loud formula that would be far more interesting from what we are presented with; as it is, it would seem that this project only exists for its members' love of slowcore and shoegaze. Loiis seem more concerned with following those idiomatic footsteps rather than taking them as a reference to go somewhere else.

SCORE: 5

Artur Ruminski - Steep Hill

Mixing clean, arpeggiated synth lines with distorted beats and melodies, as well as plain noise, Steep Hill is a contrasting album that feels as if it's aiming for normalcy, but its inner demons keep showing up, messing up the works; in that sense, this album unfolds as a character study explained through music.

Ruminski is not concerned with nuance. When Steep Hill starts, the soundscapes on the first track have a cinematic range, bordering on ambient music, moving at a spectral pace, after which we immediately hit a (noise) wall. The change is abrupt but there is a hidden sense of continuity since we are able to hear tinges of melody and pristine textures underneath the chaos ensued by the crushing static. On further tracks, we can also hear rhythm and more arpeggios running up and down, but they are all distorted; in a way, we could consider this album as a pretty straightforward mix of ambient, kozmische, harsh noise, and industrial music, but, as blunt as the changes are, there's a narrative element tying all the disparity together.

The last track features an untempered synth line that can finally move freely along an illuminated path perhaps hints at the fact that we have made it to to the top of the titular steep hill. Again, there is no segway leading to this aesthetic change, although the prior two tracks started showing more aperture, this suddenness serves a conceptual purpose: it is not for shock, nor or because of a lack of style, or for trying to display a false sense of variety; Artur is effectively telling a story through these pieces.

SCORE: 7.5

Películas - Películas

Debuting with an album that is a very detailed love letter to vintage electronic composition, Películas both fails and succeeds. Their setup -two marimbas, analog synthesizers, and reel to reel tape recorders- sounds amazing on paper, but the reality does not meet the expectations. Along with an artist like Camedor, Películas have an aesthetic that overly relies on the past, which can be a double-edged sword: they masterfully recreate a sound and feel, but the result ends up being too anchored to one specific time period.

The pieces are long, but not self-indulgent, although some parts extend to the point of redundancy, and when you think the duo might be taking their dynamics into new directions, they cut the track short. The result is a bulk of songs that, while far from boring, become a numbing experience with sudden moments of lucidity.

"Horizonte de Sucesos.", the longest cut on the album, shows the duo finally exploring different variations on the same theme, keeping the track dynamic. We can hear it evolve into something beautiful as the initial ostinato takes different shapes, forms, and textures until we don't hear it anymore; the song becomes unrecognizable as it progresses, making it one of the few moments in which Películas manages to make a song feel alive and play out like a full experience within itself and not just a piece of something greater. "Horizonte" has so much emotional power and its metamorphosis is beautifully complex, that the album could have easily been composed of that one track, and it would’ve had more impact.

I don't think this is their first shot at making kozmische muzik, but in some instances, it sure feels that way; in others, what the duo manages to create is actually very exciting, albeit dated. Películas feels like a dreamy time machine that, for now, only seems to be able to take us to the past, but the trip is worth the few bumps in the road and the all-too-familiar destination.

SCORE: 7.6

Patrick Shiroishi - Resting in the Heart of Green Shade

Los Angeles saxophone player, Patrick Shiroishi, debuts a solo album under the recently created Tripticks label. Shiroishi has always carried the torch of the more avant-garde side of jazz with his highly expressive, loose, and very personal way of playing. His lines can be both explosive and meditative but they always have this unique desperate energy, along the lines of Kaoru Abe's style.

Patrick's ability and knowledge of the instruments he's playing give the album nuance. "Words Turn into Stone" has an almost silent intermission after a noisy outburst, in which we can hear Shiroishi's breath more than we can hear the instrument itself. In "Orange Pedals", the apparent serenity being displayed at the beginning is broken by screeching notes that come and go, creating a tension-and-release dynamic that fleshes out the song.

Resting is raw and intimate, it is a direct portrayal of Patrick's emotions that avoids being a melodramatic histrionic exercise. Instead, Shiroishi is not afraid of relying on tension and dissonance to accompany the overall melancholy these pieces expel. This is not dark or utterly disheartening, but the delivery is so visceral that its emotional core can be whatever we want it to be; it can convey anxiety, anger, sadness, or euphoria. One thing is for sure, though, whichever emotion we project into it, it will be absolute and extreme, as Patrick doesn't hold back.

SCORE: 7.7

VASCO TRILLA - Unmoved Mover

Percussionist Vasco Trilla delivers a meditative experience guided by ethereal metallic vibrations that feel almost colorful to our ears. Unmoved Mover is psychedelic in the true sense of the word and it's all thanks to his restrained and delicate delivery; what he is giving us is not necessarily new, yet it feels fresh, but most importantly, it feels sacred because everything is achieved organically, and that's what gives it its psychedelic nature.

There's a timbral interplay that gives these pieces depth and volume; with their metallic high and medium pitches, the timpani and gong provide a sense of closeness, ringing endlessly through our heads, while the drums resound in a low register, their vibrations being absorbed by our lower regions as if we were being scanned by sound. Even the more aggressive moments are hypnotic: as we're hit with all frequencies at once, the effect is immersive rather than repelling, as beautifully displayed on "Nous".

Lately, I've been having severe cases of nocturnal anxiety and this album managed to bring me calm, and perhaps that is why I'm being so romantic about it. But besides the gentle touch of Trilla's playing, there's the excellent production value, which allows all these sounds to either shine or be as cavernous as needed resulting in a highly vivid and tactile experience. This is an album that can be processed both emotionally and rationally, but however you approach it, make yourself a favor, and make sure to let your whole body in on the experience.

SCORE: 8

by Sebastián Franco

Double Vanities - How Come Your Sister Doesn’t Know My Name Anymore

Matthew Goethe is a poet and musician based in Atlanta, Georgia who, under the Double Vanities moniker, is in charge of creating melodic and dissonant passages from a strange and folkloric vision that is fused to instrumentation close to the mystical.

With How Come Your Sister Doesn't Know My Name Anymore, Goethe finds himself in organic, but at the same time, logical and coherent arrangements that fit in perfectly with one another. His voice sounds thorn and broken, and the words become almost unintelligible as the songs advance, but they will undoubtedly transport the listener to humid and foggy forests.

Examples are plenty, such as “Black Coral”, the second track on the album, where Goethe's deep voice slowly recites what seems to be a 19th-century proclamation, while a dissonant, lo-fi, viola tries to accentuate the background of the song with exact precision, while layers of almost cacophonic chaos that seem to eat up space and silence are heard in the background.

Another example is, "Kansas Power Mower" where again, the mourning viola is fused to a lethargic cello, both of which dance with each other in a slow and gloomy cadence, while Goethe recites another story that seems ancient and unintelligible. With an almost ceremonial tone, the mystique with which Goethe adorns Double Vanities becomes an essential stamp in these seven tracks. In “Good Brisk Blues” a guitar appears and will inevitably remind us of those long-suffering chords played by Robbie Basho, John Fahey, or even contemporaries like Bill Orcutt; but, despite the fact that these influences are traceable, Goethe makes this a unique liturgy, completely separate from those references.

How Come…, is an album that rescues both the tradition of ancient folk music and an experimental heritage with which it manages to tie in this material. An album that seeks to be a transdimensional experience, beyond just a simple album, but on the contrary, it creates spaces between piece and piece that are formed in complex memories of other times and other lives.

SCORE: 8

Sacrilegious Crown - Plenilunium Cult

Another great release by the Italian black metal label, Xenoglossy Productions. Sacrilegious Crown is not new to the game; this is his seventh output, and he has been consistent qualitywise and soundwise. There’s not much in terms of “technical growth”; this is not an album where the riff is king, but texture and ambiance surely reign supreme, and their kingdom is vast.

An atmospheric setting is kind of a given of black metal, but Sacrilegious Crown achieves massive sound and clear textures even if the album is -purposely- unpolished. Without being completely deranged or violent, κενός’s performance adds so much weight because of the angst that comes through his slow riffing. Preferring full chords rather than serpentine, tremolo-picked, staccato lines, SC creates massive walls that we are trapped in between.

The formula is well-tested, but it is done right and it has personality. It can definitely be compared to other artists, but more than likely, the list of references will include a wide array of projects that have their own voice. It has the hypnotic effect of early Darkthrone, the overall ambiance of an LLN release (without being completely off-kilter), Hate Forest’s angry melancholy, and so on. Yet, SC doesn’t sound exactly like them at all.

The guitar lead on the first track, as simple as it is, packs so much emotion within it, and this is a constant throughout the album; it successfully sets a mood in which the emotions are free to be felt instead of forced upon the listener. The album mostly flows like one single song until we get to the ending, where a haunting lo-fi ambient piece locks us inside a dim-lit dungeon, probably forever; the feeling of closure is eerie, yet beautiful. Sacrilegious Crown achieved more with limited resources than most ambient artists do with expensive equipment and clean production.

SCORE: 8.2

Wau Wau Collectif - Yaral Sa Doom

It is rare for an artist -or a group- to be able to fuse different genres without coming as a mere collage, but Senegal’s Wau Wau Collectif manages to blend a lot of styles resulting in a rich set of songs that, despite their extended stylistic range, flow cohesively between one another. This feature is doubly impressive considering that these tracks are performed by different musicians.

Yaral Sa Doom has a utopic, dreamlike quality. The sound is somewhere between lo-fi and polished (the result of trading audio files via Whatsapp and mixing and mastering in a professional studio) and it’s filled with hope thanks to the uplifting mood brought by the collaborative and bohemian nature of its inception. (For reasons concerning space, we cannot go into detail but you can check the whole story in the liner notes).

The album’s variety doesn’t take long to show: from the first three tracks, we go from a unique dreamy take on dub to something more tropical and upbeat, and then to a more austere cut where we can listen to call-and-response dynamics between the singer and his children, surrounded by crystalline arpeggios that pan from one side to the other. The last two tracks connect with one another thanks to a flute line that lingers on after “Si Tu Savais Jute’s” laid-back funk ends, paving the way for “Legi Legi’s” more avant-garde approach; the song itself feels like a dream as it goes back and forth, adding and removing elements, changing the voice, and ending with the closes thing to an outburst that we will find in an album as wholesome as this one.

Even at its most melancholic (“Gouné Yi”), Yaral Sa Doom retains a hopeful stance. The track has a slight 70’s psych-ballad tone (it reminded me a little bit of Black Sabbath’s “Solitude”), which, would make it the most straightforward song in the bunch, but still, its mere emotional impact may even make it a highlight; nonetheless, Yaral Sa Doom is pretty much full of them.

SCORE: 8.5