TranscendNoise

Lily & Madeleine - ST My first contact with Lily & Madeleine was their short and sweet Tiny Desk Concert for NPR. Their instrumentation was pretty minimalistic and after the first few words, I knew why. Those lovely vocal harmonies don´t really need anything more than themselves. After the three songs they played, Amazon was the place to go and get what I had to own. Gladly their self-titled debut doesn´t disappoint one bit. But there is one thing that distinguishes the performance which I have come to love from their approach on their recording. I guess for the most musicians it is pretty natural: You play a blend of modern vocal centered folk music, so what you need to add for variation is different instrumentation. The sisters Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz followed this thought for their debut record or maybe, they were advised to do so. What you get is mostly the same blend of two honey sweet voices singing songs about love, relationship and even abstract ma...

Oneothrix Point Never - R Plus Seven One of the first outings of the newest brainchild of Daniel Lopatin, recording under the moniker Oneothrix Point Never, was the video for “Problem Areas” featuring artist Takeshi Murata and his digital installations. You can see a silver, terminator-ish skull surrounded by oranges, eggs and a book titled `Art and The Future´ or another installation with a miniature ship sitting in a plastic bottle; all set to the sonic ideas of Lopatin.  Out of many writings about the artwork and installations of Murata, the best term to describe his work and to put it into context with R Plus Seven must be something close to `digital vanitas images´. Just like the art movement in baroque times, artists would take various objects and put them in context of worldly existence, death, decay and eternity. While formerly this would include burning candles, wilting flowers, human skulls and even instruments paired together on canvases, Murata brought th...

Tim Hecker - Virgins You´re in a dark place. All your senses seem deprived, malfunctioning and don´t serve as an indication of time, space or anything close to reality. Then there is light. Not of the bright and enthralling   type as one might imagine in a transition from death to the afterlife, more like a glimpse of something that doesn´t intend to be crushing you – With this metaphor the transition from Tim Hecker´s “ Ravedeath 1972 ” to his newest effort Virgins seems to be described best.  As many listeners might have first heard Hecker through his 2011 album, there is no doubt that with every release, he furthers his lane of innovative instrumental – any other tag such as ambient seems to be failing for me – music. His Ravedeath is best described as nocturnal, maybe even depressing music. And this doesn´t necessarily mean synonymous with sad and downbeat, but rather refraining from every color, black and grey in tone and putting the listener through a se...