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10 January 2006

The Watery Graves Of Portland, Caracas (Marriage) Rating: 7
This instrumental album is an enjoyable romp that mixes jazz with other experimental acoustic touches. Featuring members Adrian Organ, Davis Lee Hooker and Curtis Knapp, the band manage to make themselves an heir apparent to the eclectic Dirty Three outfit, particularly on the challenging "The News" that crawls into a lean but alluring jazz/avant garde piece. A softer "Dead Body in the Water" features piano that you have to strain somewhat to hear, but it slowly grows on you, plodding along. There are no really beginnings or endings with these songs, just moments of creativity like "Sailing Takes Me Away (To Where I'm Going)" with its jazzy, lighter funk groove. Hooker plucks away on his upright bass during the unnerving "Sleeping Fox" with its sparingly used effects that leads straight into "The Bottle of Clouds". The best of the lot has to be the toe-tapping Latin hook poking out of the aptly titled "A Very Beautiful Composition", which it is. The title track puts a damper on the record briefly, but this album is one you could enjoy as background music. But you would be truly cheating yourself!
      — Jason MacNeil

Whitelodge, + (Beta-lactam Ring) Rating: 5
Only 10 seconds short of 80 minutes, Whitelodge's + is nothing if not big. There's a reason for this: + is not a new album per se. Rather, it is a compilation of two already-existing releases in the Whitelodge discography, the entirety of their 2004 self-titled LP and most of 2003's Stream of Dreams 10" EP, of which only "White Butterflies" was omitted. There's a new track included to make up for this omission (and to get the true fans salivating, undoubtedly), the eight-minute "Illumination of the Sylph". Together, it's a thick soup of acoustic guitars, spooky keyboards, and whispered vocals, a little bit like Current 93 (though less atmospheric) fronted by the Legendary Pink Dots' Edward Ka-Spel (though with less of a lisp). Despite a couple of standout tracks like the xylophone and bass saxophone-augmented "The Unbroken Circle" and "The Last House", which morphs from a quiet lament into a spooky, sinister dirge, much of the album bleeds together. This is surely done intentionally for the sake of sonic continuity, but trudging through 80 minutes of artsy, slow majesty with hardly a mood change attached can get tedious for even the most patient listeners. Whitelodge has an interesting sound with a lot of potential -- now it's just a matter of figuring out what to do with it.
      — Mike Schiller

Altamont, The Monkees' Uncle (AntAcidAudio) Rating: 3
Some solo projects seem entirely unnecessary. Emerging out of ego or envy, they're only a diluted likeness of their origin. With Altamont, Dale Crover steps out from behind the thunderous drums he provides The Melvins to front just such an inconsequential excursion. While the band indulges in the same style of skewed and sludgy riff rock something is sorely lacking. Some of that is the absence of key counterpart Buzz Osborne but there's also an inexplicable lack of Crover's unmistakably heavy-hitting drum work. Focusing instead on guitar and vocals, he makes a case for keeping him at the kit. His voice is weak and his guitar prowess proves negligible. Sounding like a cloned and neutered Osborne, he offers little more than imitation and the irritation that the time and effort behind this album was wasted. Fans of The Melvins will find it frustratingly familiar and wish Crover has turned over a few tracks to the band and fermented them into something much more intoxicating.
      — Josh Berquist

Anomaly, "Chill" b/w "Dust" [7-inch] (Stuart Geerts Entertainment, LLC) Rating: 5
Anomaly's new seven-inch is a teaser for his upcoming album, his first solo instrumental project and second full-length release. The Chicago Producer's a-side, "Chill" stays smooth and mellow, its melody veering almost into ambient territory. The b-side "Dust" splits itself into several sections, the most memorable (and jarring) led by a synthesized horn. The portion gives way to a darker stretch with sampled, unintelligible human vocals. That final period sounds disconnected from both "Chill" and the first half of "Dust", yet it arrives naturally. Anomaly shows his ability to change moods smoothly, even within a small framework. He's not quite made a convincing argument that he can stay intriguing for a full album, but this 45 might prove to be a nice shift in your next trippy mix.
      — Justin Cober-Lake

.: posted by Editor 8:51 AM