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Quarterly Review: Sergio Ch., Titanosaur, Insect Ark, Never Kenezzard, The Kupa Pities, Warpstormer, Ricardo Jiménez y Antonio Ramírez, Children of the Sün, Desert Clouds, Gondhawa

Posted in Reviews on January 19th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

Getting to the halfway point of a Quarterly Review is always something special. I’m not trying to say it’s a hardship reviewing 50 records in a week — if anything it’s a relief, despite the strain it seems to put on my interpersonal relationships; The Patient Mrs. hates it and I can’t really fault her for that since it does consume a fair amount of my brain while it’s ongoing — but some days it comes down to ‘do I shower or do I write’ and usually writing wins out. I’ll shower later. Probably. Hopefully.

But today we pass halfway through and there’s a lot of killer still to come, so plenty to look forward to either way. The day starts with an old favorite I’ve included here basically as a favor to myself. Let’s go.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Sergio Ch., La Danza de los Tóxicos

Sergio Ch La Danza de los Tóxicos

Comparatively speaking, La Danza de los Tóxicos is a pretty straightforward solo offering from Soldati/Ararat/ex-Los Natas frontman Sergio Chotsourian, whose ealrier-2021 full-length, Koi (review here), featured both of his children, one rapping and one joining him on vocals for a Nine Inch Nails cover. Perhaps it’s in reaction to that record that this one feels more traditionalist, with Chotsourian (aka Sergio Ch.) still finding 11 minutes to drone out instrumentalist style on closer “Thor Hammer” and to sample Scarface at the start of “Late Train,” but in his guy-and-guitar ethic, a lot of this material sounds like the roots of things to come — Chotsourian has shared songs between projects for years — while keeping a balance between exploratory vibe and traditional structures on pieces like “Skinny Ass,” “La Esquina” and “88.”

Sergio Ch. on Facebook

South American Sludge Records on Bandcamp

 

Titanosaur, Absence of Universe

Titanosaur Absence of Universe

Coated in burl and aggressive presentation as well as the occasional metaphors about stellar phenomena and hints/flourish of Latin rhythm and percussion, Titanosaur‘s fourth long-player, Absence of Universe, sees multi-instrumentalist, producer and vocalist Geoff Saavedra engaging with aggressive tonality and riff construction as well as the various instabilities of the moment in which the album was put together. “Conspiracy” feels somewhat self-explanatory from a lyrical standpoint, and both opener “The Echo Chamber” and “Shut Off the Voices” feel born of the era in their theme, while “So Happy” seems like a more personal perspective on mental health. Whatever a given song’s subject throughout the nine-track/42-minute offering, Saavedra delivers with a heavy rock born out of ’90s metal such that the breakdown in “So Happy” feels natural when it hits, and the rush of finale “Needed Order” seems like an earned expulsion of the tension so much of the record prior has been building, incluing the chugging force of “I Will Live Forever” immediately prior.

Titanosaur on Facebook

The Swamp Records on Bandcamp

 

Insect Ark, Future Fossils

insect ark future fossils

Future Fossils would seem to take its name from the idea of bringing these tracks together in some effort toward conservation, to keep them from getting lost to time or obscurity amid the various other works and incarnations of Insect Ark. The first three songs are synth-only solo pieces by Dana Schechter, recorded in 2018, and the final piece, “Gravitrons,” is a 23-minute live improvisation by Schechter and then-drummer Ashley Spungin recorded in New York in 2016. The sense that these things might someday be “discovered” as one might unearth a fossil is fair enough — the minimalism of “Gypsum Blade” has space enough to hold whatever evocations one might place on it, and while “Anopsian Volta” feels grounded with a line of piano, opener “Oral Thrush” seems more decidedly cinematic. All this of course is grist for the mill of “Gravitrons,’ which is consuming unto itself in its ambience and rife with experimentalist purpose. Going in order to have gone. As ethics go, that one feels particularly worth preserving.

Insect Ark on Facebook

Consouling Sounds website

 

Never Kenezzard, The Long and Grinding Road

Never Kenezzard The Long and Grinding Road

Sludge and grind come together on Denver trio Never Kenezzard‘s The Long and Grinding Road, and through what seems to be some modern metallurgical miracle, the album sounds neither like CarcassSwansong nor Dopethrone. After the pummeling beginning of “Gravity” and “Genie,” the interlude “Praer” and the subequent channel-panning-screamer “Ra” expand an anti-genre take as bent on individuality of sound as they apparently are on clever wordplay. “Demon Wheel” has a genuine heavy rock thrust, and “Slowburn” and the looped clock noise of “11:59:59” provide buffers between the extended cuts “Seven Statues” (11:31) and “The Long and Grinding Road” (14:55) itself, which closes, but by then the three-piece have established a will and a way to go wherever they want and you can follow if you’re up for it. So are you? Probably. There’s some underlying current of Faith No More-style fuckery in the sound, something playful about the way Never Kenezzard push themselves into abrasion. You can tell they’re having fun, and that affects the listening experience throughout the purposefully unmanageable 57 minutes of the album.

Never Kenezzard on Facebook

Never Kenezzard on Bandcamp

 

The Kupa Pities, Godlike Supervision

The Kupa Pities Godlike Supervision

There’s a thread of noise rock that runs throughout Godlike Supervision, the debut full-length from Munich-based four-piece The Kupa Pities, and it brings grit to both the early-Clutch riffing of lead cut “Anthology” and the later, fuzz-overdose “Queen Machine.” It’s not just about aggression, though there’s some of that, but of the band putting their own spin on the established tenets of Kyuss-style desert and Fu Manchu-style heavy rocks. “Black Hole” digs into the punkish roots of the former, while the starts-and-stops of “Dance Baby Dance” and the sheer push of the title-track hint toward the latter, even if they’re a little sharper around the edges than the penultimate “Surfing,” which feels like it was titled after what the band do with their own groove — they seem to ride it in expert fashion. So be it. “Black Hole” works in a bit of atmosphere and “Burning Man” caps with a fair-enough blowout at the finish, ending the album on a note not unfamiliar but indicative of the twists The Kupa Pities are working to bring to their influences.

The Kupa Pities on Facebook

The Kupa Pities on Bandcamp

 

Warpstormer, 1

warpstormer logo

A newcomer trio, London’s Warpstormer brings together guitarist Scott Black (Green Lung), drummer Matthew Folley and bassist/vocalist Richard J. Morgan (ex-Oak), and their aptly-titled first EP, 1, presents four bangers of unrepentantly brash heavy rock and roll, channeling perhaps some of earlier Orange Goblin‘s boozy-wrecking-crew vibes, but on “Ride the Bomb” digging into post-hardcore and metal as well, the abidingly aggro sense undercut by a quiet stretch holding its tension in the drums as well as the drunken quiet start of “Devourer,” which gets plenty bruising by its finish but is slower in procession certainly than were “Here Comes Hell” and “Storm Caller” at the outset. They’re in and out and done in 19 minutes, but as what otherwise might be a demo, 1 gives a look at where Warpstormer are coming from and would seem to herald future incursions to come. I’ll take it. The songs come across as feeling out where the band wants to be in terms of sound, but where they’re headed, they’re headed with due charge.

Warpstormer on Facebook

Warpstormer on Bandcamp

 

Ricardo Jiménez y Antonio Ramírez, Génesis Negro

Ricardo Jiménez y Antonio Ramírez Génesis Negro

Génesis Negro perhaps loses something in the audio-only experience. To wit, while Ricardo Jiménez Gómez is responsible for all the music on the album, it’s the illustrations of Antonio Ramírez Collado, bringing together in Blake-esque style mysticism, anatomy, and ideas born of research into early Christian gnostics, that serve as the root from which that music is sprung. Instrumental in its entirety and including a reprint of the article that ties the visuals and audio together and was apparently the inspiration for exploring the subject to start with, its 43-minute run can obviously offer the listener a deeper dive than just the average collection of verse/chorus songs, and no doubt that’s the intention. Some pieces are minimal enough to barely be there at all, enough to emphasize every strum of a string, and others offer a distorted tonal weight that seems ready to interpret any number of psychedelic spiritual chaos processes. If you want to get weird, Ricardo Jiménez y Antonio Ramírez are way ahead of you. They might also be ahead of themselves, honestly, despite whatever temporal paradox that implies.

Sentencia Records on Facebook

Sentencia Records on Bandcamp

 

Children of the Sün, Roots

Children of the Sün Roots

Tracks like “Leaves,” “Blood Boils Hot,” and “Thunder” still rock out a pretty heavy classic blues rock vibe, but Swedish outfit Children of the Sün — as the title Roots would imply in following-up their 2019 debut, Flowers (review here) — seem to dig deeper into atmospheric expression, emotive melodies and patience of craft in the 13-track/44-minute offering. From the the mellow noodling of “Reflection” at the start, a piano-led foreshadow for “Eden” later on, to the acoustic-till-it-ain’t “Man in the Moon” later on, the spirit of Roots feels somewhere between days gone by and days to come and therefore must be the present, strutting accordingly on “The Soul” and making a pure vocal showcase for Josefina Berglund Ekholm, on which she shines as one has come to expect. There are moments where the vocals feel disconnected from the instrumental portions of the songs, but where they go, they go organically.

Children of the Sün on Facebook

The Sign Records on Facebook

 

Desert Clouds, Planexit

desert clouds planexit

Is that flute on “Planexit,” the opener and longest track (immediate points), on Planexit, the latest outing from London-based grunge-informed heavy rockers Desert Clouds? It could well be, and after the somewhat bleaker progression of the riffs prior, that escape into melody comes across as well-placed. The band are likewise unafraid to pull off atmospheric Nick Cave-style storytelling in “Wheelchair” and more broodingly progressive fare in “Deceivers,” leaving the relatively brief “Revolutionary Lies” to rest somewhere between Southern heavy, early ’90s melodicism and a modern production. Throughout the 45-minute LP, the band swap out various structural ideologies, and while I can’t help be immersed in the groove and bassline of “Deceivers,” the linear build and receding of the penultimate “Pearl Marmalade” feels no less essential to the impact of the record overall. Behold a band who have found their niche and set themselves to the task of refining its parameters. As ever, it works because songwriting and performance are both right on.

Desert Clouds on Facebook

Mandrone Records website

 

Gondhawa, Käampâla

Gondhawa - Käampâla

Comprised of Clement Pineau (drums, kamele n’goni, vocals, percussion), Idriss Besselievre (vocals, guitar, sanxian), Paul Adamczuk (bass/guitar, keyboard) and Margot GuilbertGondhawa bring forth a heavy psychedelic cultural sphere throughout the still-digestible six tracks and 37 minutes of Käampâla, with the French trio’s penchant for including instrumentation from Africa or Asia alongside the more traditional guitar, bass, drums, keys and vocals resulting in a lush but natural feeling psychedelia that seems to be all the more open for their readiness to jam outside whatever box expectation might put them in. The title-track feels like Mideastern prog, while the subsequent “Assid Bubu” shreds out an echoing lead over a slow-roller of a stoner-jam nod. Their willingness to dance is a strength, ultimately, and their inclusion of these arrangement elements, including percussion, comes across as more than dabbling in world music. They’re not the first to look beyond their effects pedals in manifesting psych rock, but there’s not a lot out there that sounds like this.

Gondhawa on Facebook

Stolen Body Records website

 

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Insect Ark to Release Future Fossils EP Sept. 24

Posted in Whathaveyou on August 24th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

insect ark (photo by Anther Dens)

New Insect Ark? Classic no-brainer interest. Insect Ark exploring synth minimalism in Stockholm and Brooklyn? Coupled with some live improv? Yeah, mark it an EP. I’ll check that out. Duh.

Future Fossils will see release Sept. 24 through Consouling Sounds and follows the full-length The Vanishing (review here) released last Spring through Profound Lore. Though comprised of older material, the upcoming EP brings Dana Schechter‘s once-solo-project back to that status at least in part, as the last of the four inclusions features drummer Ashley Spungin, who appeared on 2018’s Marrow Hymns (review here) before her time in the band was done. As the PR wire tells it, though, the shift away from duo work isn’t permanent — Insect Ark is too experimentalist to commit believably to something like that anyway — as there’s an assortment of new offerings in the works, including collaborations.

Good to know. There’s a teaser up for Future Fossils now that runs all of 24 seconds but at least gives some sample of the synthy sound. First question: Why are you not soundtracking movies?

Not that I was thinking of hitting up Schechter for an interview or anything.

Again, from the PR wire:

insect ark future fossils

INSECT ARK To Release Future Fossils EP Via Consouling Sounds September 24th; Trailer Posted + Preorders Available

INSECT ARK, the long-running exploratory endeavor led by Dana Schechter, will unveil its Future Fossils EP via Belgium’s Consouling Sounds. An alluring collection of solo archived outtakes, excerpts, and live improv tracks born between 2016 and 2018, the entrancing offering will see official release on September 24th with preorders available today.

When Dana Schechter started INSECT ARK as her “true” solo project in 2012, she set out to build desolate and hallucinogenic galaxies of sound entirely on her own. Writing and playing solo offered an escape into the deepest realms of self-reflection, dredging and birthing a hitherto sonic beast that was, it turns out, utterly unhinged and totally liberating. Focusing on experimental, drone, noise, and avant-garde noise, INSECT ARK’s first years produced records that were raw, ominous, and totally unique. While defying comparison, these new sounds possessed Schechter’s distinct musical spirit, woven throughout her twenty-plus years of band/collaboration work.

After three releases (2012’s Collapsar 7”, 2013’s Long Arms 10”, 2015’s Portal/Well LP), INSECT ARK added live drums to the mix, and the resulting albums — 2018’s Marrow Hymns (with drummer Ashley Spungin) and 2020’s The Vanishing (with drummer Andy Patterson) — showed that her singular vision could also expand into heavier and more crushing territory within a collaborative space. The power that live drums brought to INSECT ARK helped gather a new fan base in the heavy-music world, adding another layer to the band’s palette.

Now, after nine years of existence, INSECT ARK has come full circle to once again embrace solo work on 2021’s Future Fossils.

Side A features three all-synthesizer compositions by Schechter. “Gypsum Blade” and “Oral Thrush” were both written and self-recorded in 2018. These tracks were recorded by Schechter on the Buchla 200 Synth on the last day of a Guest Composer residency (for Schechter and Spungin) at the legendary EMS Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, Sweden. “Anopsian Volta” was written and self-recorded in 2019 at Schechter’s home studio in Brooklyn, New York — the same location which most of her albums, starting from the early 2000’s until 2019, were written and often recorded.

Notably absent on these three “synth” songs are two of Schechter’s “main” instruments: lap steel guitar and bass guitar. But their omission is not a new direction, as much as an alternate facet and an exercise in the spirit of stark minimalism, as INSECT ARK continually grows and metamorphosizes.

The album’s B Side, “Gravitrons,” a live noise improv set, was performed at a converted church in Brooklyn in 2016, with Schechter on lap steel/synths, and Spungin on synths/percussion. This performance was a one-off instance; the two musicians were not accustomed to improvisations together, normally performing in the “band” duo format of bass, lap steel, drums, and synths. “Gravitrons” dates to the period shortly after Spungin joined the band, and prior to their full-length recording together, 2018’s Marrow Hymns.

Future Fossils is the first step in a continuing revisitation of Schechter’s solo work. “I felt now was a good time to do solo work again,” she offers. “I love to collaborate, and always will, but I also relish the sense of discovery, of reaching uncharted territory, and the freedom to adapt and shift at a moment’s notice. Those can only happen when performing alone.”

With two more new albums on the immediate horizon — another all-solo-synth material, as a full-length LP, and a full new “duo/band” LP — Schechter’s musical output as INSECT ARK has once again proven to defy genres, resist trends, and thwart expectations, leaving us all guessing to where she will traverse next.

“Oral Thrush,” “Gypsum Blade,” and “Anopsian Volta” were recorded and performed by Dana Schechter at EMS Studios in Stockholm, Picasso Machinery in Brooklyn, and D. Diamante in Berlin between 2018-2021 and mixed by Simon Goff at Hiddenseer Studios in Berlin, June 2021. “Gravitrons//Live Improv,” was written and performed by Schechter and Ashley Spungin and recorded and mixed by Josh Wertheimer in Brooklyn in November 2016. The EP was mastered by James Plotkin.

Future Fossils will be released on CD, LP, and digitally with teaser tracks to be unveiled in the days to come. Find LP preorders HERE and CD preorders HERE. (Digital orders will be available in the coming weeks).

Future Fossils Track Listing:
1. Oral Thrush
2. Gypsum Blade
3. Anopsian Volta
4. Gravitrons

http://www.insectark.com
http://www.insectark.bandcamp.com
http://www.facebook.com/InsectArk
http://www.instagram.com/insectark
http://consouling.be
http://www.facebook.com/ConsoulingSounds
http://twitter.com/consouling
http://www.instagram.com/consouling

Insect Ark, Future Fossils trailer

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