The Green, Green Grass of Home -- a Field Hymns overview

It's amazing how many cassette labels keep springing up all over the world. This ostensibly outdated technology, whose demise has been lamented in many mainstream news articles, is enjoying a very real renaissance. I wouldn't be surprised if a few manufacturers start building Walkman-style machines again to keep up with the demand.

In the meantime, there are zillions of decent used decks and portable machines floating around, and you can set yourself up for many hours of enjoyment with an hour or two's wages at your local pawn shop or thrift store. And sweet Jesus, you should get on it quickly if you haven't already, as a lot of the most innovative and inspiring music being created today is coming out in batches of cassette-only analog joy.

While I'm digging the collected output of a whole bunch of cassette labels these days--be on the lookout for upcoming reviews of stuff from Eiderdown, SicSic, Orange Milk, Planted Tapes, Crash Symbols, New Atlantis, Centipede Farm, Personal Archives, Constellation Tatsu, Words + Dreams and more--today I want to celebrate the back catalog of Field Hymns, whose frantic series of releases in a few short years have turned vast stretches of my life into fully satisfying synth-fueled hallucinations.

Field Hymns does things up in a most deluxe way--releases feature 4-panel J-cards, printed on both sides with excellent art by label mastermind Dylan McConnell (you can see more of his design work at Tiny Little Hammers). McConnell has a fun, recognizable style that brings continuity to the whole catalog, but he also squeezes in great individual touches that give each release an appropriate personal feel. This art is seriously beautiful. I've stared at these gorgeous tapes for hours. And I really admire the work put into these designs, while most tape labels are only rocking 3-panel, single sided J-cards.

On the practical tip, the pro-dubbed tapes of Field Hymns releases feature additional thoughtful design work on their labels, and most of the cassette shells he's chosen are the kind with screws, a nice practical feature in the event of an occasional spaghetti-tape catastrophe. You can fix yr analog "glitches," boys and girls, and have a little fun while you're doing it. And the whole label is seamlessly integrated with BandCamp, so you can have those squishy digital files for your iDevices, too, and place your orders using PayPal. It's a perfect marriage of old and new technologies: you get all of the best in www.convenience along with the inherent beauty of these albums as physical objects and analog wave-slinging vitamins via pony express just a few days later. Beautiful.

Onto the music: like most of my favorite labels, Field Hymns obviously invests a lot of energy in the curation process. These albums all feel like they belong together while leaving room for lots of diversity. Generally speaking, this catalog tends to focus on synth-based instrumental music, heavy on kosmische and avant-dance vibes, though there are some well-placed exceptions. Artists in the Field Hymns roster tend to focus on longer-form compositions that evolve patiently, but what I find unique in these selections is a shared sense of fun and adventure. While a lot of slowly-evolving, drone-oriented recordings assume fairly dark moods, I find almost every FH album I've experienced to be way more uplifting than the norm for these genres. And fresh--these albums don't want to be heard as 70s Faust outtakes; they have their own collective vibe happening that's still vital and playful.

Fortunately, all of these mood-enhancing oscillations don't come at the cost of frivolity, either. I pay special attention to any musical efforts that manage to be on the happy/dreamy side of the musical spectrum without feeling shallow or empty, and if I had to guess what curatorial standards for FH might include, they seem to recognize the significance of that difference. Another weird line to avoid in drone/ambient/electronic music is that sort of neutral, new-agey kind of inconsequential meandering--you know, that stuff on the Avalon Music comps you find on that endcap at every Target or Bed Bath & Beyond store. Needless to say, FH confidently steers well clear of that lack-of-vibe, too.

In the Field
I've listened to almost the whole Field Hymns catalog now, and while I like almost everything on the label, here are a few of my favorite artists/tapes I would strongly recommend checking out. Album titles should link you to appropriate places at Field Hymns if you want to explore them yourself.

Giant Claw - Impossible Chew
How does Giant Claw and Orange Milk Records co-founder Keith Rankin find the time to be so prolific? Hot on the heels of his film music comp on Constellation Tatsu, which I reviewed here, Giant Claw dropped a BandCamp-only EP, "Attorney Struggle," which made me feel like I was a kid playing Gogol-13 all over again, and the next cassette has already arrived via Field Hymns. If you're into previous Giant Claw efforts, you'll feel at home again in "Impossible Chew," with its many arpeggiator-fueled ostinato lines and characteristic swagger. Many of these short pieces feel like library music cues, but uniquely morphed over impossible combinations of eras: 70s Kraut synths simmer with mod wheels pushed up just a touch, but the rhythmic figures feel like exuberant mid-80s synth pop. Cluster fronted by Olivia Newton John? Amazing as always. The standout track for me is "Meal Brothers Theme," which feels like it absorbed a bit of 90s hip hop as well, with lots of portamento lines and repeated high note rhythms. A great addition to the Giant Claw discography.

PLVS VLTRA - Yo-Yo Blue
Field Hymns brings us the sophomore album by Toko Yasuda's PLVS VLTRA solo project, and it's one of those rare albums that has a strong appeal for both pop and weirdo music scenes. There are plenty of trippy backwards edits, startling punctuations of Bollywood flourishes, and modular synths galore, but most of these pieces are very beat-oriented and almost always melodic. Without being derivative of Bjork, PLVS VLTRA masters a similar unity between experimental soundscape work and very catchy songwriting. My favorite track, "ちょ-ちょ " (pronounced "Cho Cho"), has a great beat, reverse reedy-sounding synths, and a chill vocal from Nico. A great summer night jam while keeping all of your strange-music cred fully intact. This should be huge.

Black Hat - Covalence
This record is heavy on sonic contrasts, frequently traveling into darker corners than a lot of Field Hymns releases. At first it presents itself as a percussion dominated early industrial album, but the drums get out of the way by the second track, revealing wide vistas of sound incorporating lots of orchestral instruments. I don't know if they're samples or performed just for these pieces, but strings and horns and harps combine with delicate field recordings and synths to produce great pieces like "Jaune," a nurturing wash of slowly-moving melodic ideas that stays just a touch pensive. By the time percussion reappears in "The Lattice and the Comorant," the ambient textures themselves begin to absorb rhythm, flexing and pulsing in time. Using a wide dynamic range and sound sources from the conventional to pure electrical hums, "Covalence" is a sophisticated and rewarding listen.

Jonathan James Carr - Well Tempered Ignorance
If you're in the mood for a full-on psych synth blackout, "Well Tempered Ignorance" is your jam. What sounds like a warehouse full of synths begin to breathe together as Carr nests beautiful legato melodies atop the whole organism. I sometimes wish that more psych/drone albums found ways to incorporate virtuoso playing, and this album really delivers on that front. Field recordings that sound like they alternate between exotic locales and suburban back yards blend perfectly with the music, often sneaking in to delineate between musical transitions. And those sounds--pretty much every crazy patch you might hope to hear from an armada of ancient synths makes an appearance somewhere. Confidently performed and thoughtfully paced, Carr's solo debut is a real treasure.

Boron - Aria Statica
I reviewed Boron's most recent online-only effort here a few months ago, in which I lamented not having heard this sophomore release. Since then, I tracked down a copy, and I'm so glad that I did. As its name implies, this album is made of many slices of granular synth textures. Overall, it's a quiet, subtle collection of ideas, with occasional bits of radio sound or possibly other found sounds I can't quite identify. It feels like an extension of early electronic and musique concrete disciplines, suspended in time and just waiting for the right audience to catch up. Compared especially to Boron's Beige album, the hermetic focus here on a narrow palette of static-y buzzes feels a little clinical, but I get the impression that's part of the intended vibe: synths as mad science.

Mattress - Lonely Souls
This sounds like a slaying underground mid-80s album that never happened but should have: Suicide jamming with Nick Cave on vocals. Edgy vocals are draped in harsh reverb, the synth choices have the perfect amount of organ stops opened into the mix, and the whole recording is toasted to mid-fi mono perfection. Some awesome, simple-and-savage live drums surface in a few tracks, along with some gnarly live bass in the very no-wave instrumental "Dead Ends." Big organ riffs keep propelling these tracks into the rock and roll retrofuture--these are seriously great songs that anybody into Birthday Party or Love & Rockets or name your own postpunk guitargoth poison-of-choice will totally enjoy. While this isn't my usual kind of thing, it's so well executed that I find myself listening to it more than the actual famous bands I've namedropped above. A sweet surprise.

Bastian Void - Fluorescent Bells
This baby is sold out everywhere, but it's so damned fine that I just have to mention it. One of a few projects that Moss Archive's Joe Bastardo is currently rocking, Bastian Void makes intrepid synth soundscapes that unite solemn oscillating goodness with toy keyboard drum patterns and uptempo arpeggiator cycles. While this is by no means a jazz record, its earnest pace and synths that often sound like they're pumped through an overwhelmed tube PA remind me more of the urgent passions of 70s fusion than relaxed kraut ambience. And the 20-minute, 5-section ride of "In Common Outlets" approaches a prog level of compositional sophistication, though it's the most abstract and soundart-oriented section of this gratifying album. And for what it's worth, this tape has joined a small number of records receiving the "what is this, I love it" phone call award from a random listener on my radio show. This is probably my favorite Field Hymns release to date, and while the physical release seems to be sold out, you can still pick up the digital edition from the Bastian Void BandCamp. Be sure to check out the recent releases from Bastardo's other projects while you're at it: the new Homeowner album on Orange Milk, and the new Looks Realistic release on Constellation Tatsu, are both exquisite as well.

Deep Listening and serendipity: a Taiga Records overview

When I was a teenage ruffian entering music school, I loved shred guitar more than just about anything. I had hopes for a life of long solos and longer hair, and I was pumped to learn commercial composition to write the next big hits. But sometime in that first week, I was a passenger in a car with a fellow student who was jamming Gorecki string quartets and Penderecki's "Threnody" as we drove around Denver. My small-town head was blown wide open, and I changed my major to classical comp the next day. Those couple of hours completely changed my life.

I'm roughly twice that age now, and I'm amazed and excited to report that I've been feeling the same kind of all-encompassing shift in my music listening, and my life in general, after opening a box of promo records last November from Taiga Records. I've been adjusting to the aftereffects of this music for months, and the time has come to write about it.

Like all epiphanies viewed in reverse, delineation isn't perfectly clear--I had already been into some non-pop music like Zorn and Ornette and the Residents well before I hit music school, for example, and in the case of Taiga records, I was already familiar with a couple of their releases and had been following the work of Tatsuya Nakatani for a while. But there's a spark, a serendipitous moment, that draws a line all the same, and everything is different. For me, this has all happened at a nearly perfect moment where it seems like there is a renaissance of "other musics" happening: the disciplines of delicate electronic composition, lowercase improv, eai, and field recording/manipulation are all experiencing some of their best periods ever, as experienced composers and performers release some of their best work and new folks are imparting waves of fresh ideas into their scenes. These musics have been part of my aural diet for some time, but this batch of records from Taiga has done something radical to me, and I feel like I'm listening to everything with a new set of ears.

The Taiga vibe
Taiga works slowly and carefully to deliver recordings that will stay with you forever. Focusing on thoughtful curation, founder Andrew Lange has only released 25 albums over the course of 6 years. The recordings are prepared for release with audiophile care, cut with a direct metal mastering technique and pressed to very heavy vinyl--these often go beyond the 180 gram "audiophile" standard all the way to 200 grams. Every record I've spun sounds phenomenal from a production standpoint, with very low noise and incredible high-end detail, a must for the kinds of program material highlighted by the label.

Beyond the music, the attention to design details on these releases is among the best I've ever seen from any label. Every release is treated with the kind of archival-level care that most labels reserve for special occasions. While I've always admired thoughtful presentation, these records go so beyond my usual knowledge of packaging ephemera that I've picked up a whole new vocabulary just to comprehend the consistent level of production quality involved with this catalog. The jackets are made of heavyweight, rich papers. Some are Stoughton tip-on jackets, wrapped in a variety of approaches: colored papers, textured papers, metallic inks, letterpress work, etc. Many are gatefolds, and many have slipcovers or belts as well. A lot feature "flooded pockets," where color enhancements have been added to the insides of the jackets--a subtle gesture, but it really adds to the aesthetic when you remove these substantial-feeling records from their packages to play them. And the records themselves look amazing--there are black vinyl editions of the releases, but many of them are also issued with colored or clear vinyl variations that resonate beautifully with their artwork. A couple of releases have etched D-sides, too. I can't really think of a production technique that hasn't been featured in a Taiga release. Beyond the music, connoisseurs of print/packaging/design work taken to the level of fine art will find much to love in this catalog.

Where appropriate, additional written/printed materials supplement these releases beautifully. Some releases contain printed scores, essays, or additional photo/art inserts. I don't think of these additions so much as "packaging," because they're much more directly related to creating a context for understanding the music they accompany, but here too you will find thoughtfully considered papers, inks, and printing techniques. When you pull out a Taiga record, you can feel confident that you have all of the resources you need to fully get into the music, with packaging created just as attentively as the sounds it contains.

This unflinching attention to the multimedia level of composition in each of these releases pays off. Although many musical genres find a home together in the Taiga stable, all of this music shares an aesthetic of immersion--that is, this is deeply contemplative music. These aren't records you put on before you clean your house. They demand your attention, they beg for long-term relationships. So this kind of packaging doesn't feel like a consumer goods "vinyl fetishist" kind of thing--it's something real and substantial, creating a full and present experience in the face of a heavily mediated digital age. Since you can plan on sitting with these recordings with your full awareness, the art and liner notes and design work are there to enrich and focus your experience on repeated listenings. I'm reminded of the "slow food" movement in culinary circles. This is a great foundation for a "slow music" movement.

The Music
I'd like to highlight a few of my favorite artists who are featured in the Taiga catalog, along with a few recordings I'd strongly recommend. But again, I feel like all of this music has been commingling in my ears, mind, and heart for a while, and if you're a person who wants to fall in love with creative, inspired music again and again, I don't think you'll go wrong starting anywhere in the Taiga roster. This is a perfect example of what a great label can do through careful curation and devotion to detail. Taiga is a label I can trust.

Pauline Oliveros
The last few years have been incredible for celebrating the work of composer and improviser Pauline Oliveros. Last year's 12-disc box set on Important Records documented much of her early tape and electronics works, and her newer recordings, both under her own name and as part of the Deep Listening Band, have been  flying off the shelves at both Important and Taiga. In fact, it looks as though only one of the releases featuring her is still available directly from Taiga. The Timeless Pulse Trio, featuring Oliveros joined by percussionists George Marsh and Jennifer Wilsey, is a wonderful double-LP, rich with drones and intertwined modulating rhythms. Even though most of Oliveros' playing in this group focuses on shifting clouds of dissonance, I've been really obsessed with non-equal temperament tuning systems for several years, and as this music progresses, there are frequent triumphant moments where overtones coalesce into beautiful walls of perfectly-tuned sound, supported by perfectly-placed percussion embellishments that leave me wanting to revisit this album immediately.

I also need to mention that I've been reading Oliveros' book "Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice" in the same timeframe as my newfound love affair with Taiga, and it too is contributing to my sense of "new ears." I've found myself in the Slow Walk more than a few times with Timeless Pulse and other records, and I'm excited to continue exploring the practice of Deep Listening, which feels like a valuable system for musicians and music lovers alike. I can't express my gratitude for this music and these practices. You can find out more about Deep Listening on the Deep Listening Institute website.

Tatsuya Nakatani
As mentioned above, I've been deeply affected by the work of Tatsuya Nakatani for almost a decade. While in some ways I think seeing him work his magic in person is the best way to experience his music, many of his recordings are powerful documents of his approach, too. Tragically, it looks like his "Fever Dream" Taiga album with the MAP trio has been out of print for some time. A real shame--this collaboration with guitarist Mary Halvorson and Reuben Radding on bass is a true gem, and one of my favorite records featuring any of the three. Fortunately, though, his recent "Nakatani Gong Orchestra" release is still available, and it's a great record. While Nakatani tours the country playing almost indescribable solo percussion sets, he's also been staging "Gong Orchestra" concerts over the past few years. Using local musicians (and sometimes non-musicians) who he quickly trains to bow his collection of gongs, Nakatani conducts a chamber ensemble of performers after a brief rehearsal, drawing out a surprising variety of metallic drones and even fortuitous melodies that astonish humbled audiences in a variety of acoustic spaces. This LP seamlessly combines passages of recordings made in six cities into two sides of uninterrupted gong worship. In person, these performances feel transcendent--on record, this album feels a little more haunted at times than at least some of the live shows, but it's a powerful experience, made all the more remarkable when you consider the humble palette of sound sources and the sometimes inexperienced collaborators involved in producing the music. It looks like it's still available in a clever "gong" colored vinyl edition as well, which is a perfect way to celebrate these sounds.

Rafel Toral
Taiga has been involved with electronic musician Rafael Toral's "Space Program" series from the beginning--indeed, the first trio of releases from the label lay out the foundation of the project. However, I find it interesting that this small-run label, whose releases mostly sell out, still has remaining copies available of all six Toral releases they've done. Lucky for you, dear readers, as you can still get into the Space Program on the ground floor.

I can see how these albums can be a difficult proposition to get into, as some of the sounds coming from these experimental instruments can be harsh and foreboding at times. But in conjunction, these records combine to reveal different attributes of a galaxy of sounds that come together in the the "orchestral environment" of the "Space" album itself. The overall "program" is hard to describe briefly, but in essence you get music that combines the sound exploration of new music/eai circles with the kinds of musically communicative interactions one finds in the work of jazz outsiders. "Space Solo" albums focus on individual instruments that contribute to the whole, and "Space Elements" albums feature a variety of collaborations that put these instruments through their paces in surprising contexts.

There are "blips" and "bloops" and gnarly distorted retrofuturistic electronic sounds that split the difference between Stockhausen and Merzbow at times, especially among the "Space Solo" efforts, but it's truly amazing how diverse these instruments can get in the "Space Elements" series. And the "Space" album itself is a total must-have, uniting the many musical threads behind the whole concept. It might take some time to wrap your head around the project, but I have found that it's totally worth the effort. There is nothing quite like these beautiful and strange records.

A few other recommendations
Kayo Dot has been one of my favorite bands since their first release on Tzadik almost a decade ago, and their deluxe vinyl release of "Coyote" on Taiga is gorgeous. While a lot of the folks who got into KD largely because of their earlier avant-metal affiliations might not have vibed on this record, I think it's a great album that continues to improve with each spin. Composer/bandleader Toby Driver transitioned from guitar to bass on this recording, and horns assume an increasingly dominant musical role. In some ways, it's both the "proggiest" and "gothiest" KD album to my ears, an unusual combination of styles, but Driver's increasingly mature compositional style makes it all work.

Composer and traveling field recording archivist Douglas Quin's album "Fathom" was particularly striking to me, too. Made of underwater recordings split between the Arctic and the Antarctic, these recordings transcend the whole notion of composition. This record sounds like nothing I've ever heard within terrestrial music, and frankly it's hard to believe these sounds are happening anywhere on our planet at all. If you want feel humbled by just how little of our own world we experience under ordinary circumstances, get a taste of "Fathom."

I'll close with a few photos of these amazing records. Thanks to Taiga for turning me all the way on for a second time in my life!

Heavy, clear vinyl and a red flooded pocket on Rafael Toral's "Space Solo 1":

The beautiful gong-colored vinyl of the Gong Orchestra LP:

Interaction of beautiful letterpressed textures on "Fathom":

Little Women - Lung

Already a band I've been following for some time, I'm delighted to review the newest epic from Brooklyn's Little Women. Two years in the making, "Lung" has just been released by Aum Fidelity, and this album-length composition is easily set to be my favorite record of 2013. "Lung" is an enormous step forward, compositionally and emotionally, by a band whose previous work already forged a totally unique sound, equal parts plaintive and powerful, in the grooves of the debut EP "Teeth" and followup LP "Throat."

I've long admired the Little Women sound for a kind of feral energy few bands can achieve, steeped in an Ayler-esque free blues but with the aggression of NYC hardcore and compositional and technical rigor rarely found outside of the classical world. This band can embody many genres, but we're a full generation beyond the collage/montage approaches of bands like Naked City. Little Women transcends imitation and cultural references--having long ago fused their influences into a new essential substance, their work is forceful and direct. And even at their harshest moments, the music is driven by a deep archetypal understanding of melody--indeed, the full and unflinching devotion to melody sometimes takes the music into a violent heliosphere. In a world of cynicism and emotional detachment, Little Women plays with a raw sincerity that makes the impossible become the inevitable.

"Lung" adds a new set of dynamics to the work of Little Women in the form of patience and silence. And it's a major change in the sound--as a composition, "Lung" demands a lot of patience and incorporates a tremendous amount of silence. The opening several minutes of the piece, for example, are almost completely without sound, as occasional brushes of percussion gradually open the space into music. The first introductory section of full-band playing that follows is the most gentle recorded offering from Little Women to date, melancholy and careful and respectful of the silence from which it was born.

The vocal section that evolves out of the introduction is a major revelation all its own. The whole band intones together, becoming one, preparing to act as a unit through the upheavals and calamities to come. Vocals made a brief appearance on the debut EP "Teeth," but they were deployed as more of a weapon there, distorted, with harsh, short articulations. The long tones here bring us all together as well, band and audience, recognizing the shared experience this music demands.

I'm not going to do a play-by-play of this whole disc, as this is a composition that simply must be heard to realize its full impact. But I want to return to Little Women's approach to silence and patience throughout the piece, as I think the emotional impact of silence shifts between two roles as "Lung" unfolds. In what roughly amounts to the first half of the album, silence is centering, imparting a rejuvenating effect that nurtures subsequent musical sections into being. In the second half, which starts just before the literal center of the piece, moments of silence are shorter, mostly stop-time holes in increasingly-punishing rhythmic passages, and they assume a role of "negative space" analogous to its use in painting or architecture, weightless pauses absolutely alive with the anticipation of oncoming mass.

This isn't a precise division into two, but to my ears the piece coalesces around these contrasting approaches of patient anticipation and aggressive release. The band reports that the piece evolved around "Shakespearean form," following elements of beauty toward tragic ends, and the record succeeds at manifesting these contrasts powerfully, both within smaller sections and looking at its timeline folded against itself. The extreme contrasts of "Lung" make its aggressive passages feel much more piercing than their previous work, which generally stayed frantic and violent for long stretches. "Lung" invites you all the way inside.

"Lung" is a really rich, complex piece, though, and repeated listenings will reveal many kinds of narrative forms. The liner notes suggest a division into four rough sections, mirroring the passage of seasons, and the band further reports that the primary themes of this record "exist simultaneously inside every sound, every phrase, every section, and the entire piece." With such a powerful, resonant recording, finding your own ways to relate to this music is part of the process.

While it's fair to say that the dual (and sometimes duel) saxophone attack of Darius Jones and Travis LaPlante constitutes the dominant voice of Little Women, "Lung" provides more space to showcase the work of Andrew Smiley on guitar and Jason Nazary on drums than previous albums. The introductory cymbal work, for example, sets the tone for the whole first "inhalation" of the piece. And while Smiley leaves most of the melodic territory of this music to the saxes, his multifaceted approach to guitar quietly holds this piece together. With strategic chord work, weird textural approaches, and stabbing brutal riffs, mostly played through a clean sound that just begins to break up on hard attacks, guitars fill all of the right places in this music. You know you're doing a few things right when there are never any moments when you wish a bass player was sitting in with the band.

Like the previous Little Women releases, "Teeth" features freaky cover art from guitarist Mick Barr, whose instantly recognizable drawing style adds a lot of continuity to the Little Women oeuvre. And speaking of Barr, Aum Fidelity's decision to skip releasing this album on vinyl reminded me of my purchase of Orthrelm's "Ov" LP years ago. Right in the middle of that dense, relentless piece, there's a quick fade, and you have to flip the record, clean, cue, and jump in again. I love vinyl, but I always wished I'd opted for the CD version of that album--you have to stay in the zone, no distractions, to fully vibe on it. "Lung" is very much the same, demanding uninterrupted attention, and I think Aum Fidelity made the right decision sticking to CD (but still go back and pick up the previous album "Throat" on vinyl if you haven't). This is a beautifully recorded album, too, captured live in one take, and it's perfectly mixed and mastered, retaining a wider dynamic range than most orchestral albums.

It's a seriously heavy experience--do yourself a favor and spend some time with "Lung." Few bands even try to write something this musically and emotionally ambitious, and even fewer succeed. But I think fans of creative music from a wide variety of camps, metal to jazz to classical, will find this record to be a deeply moving experience.