Sunday, January 15th, 2006

Sunday Cleaning – Volume 20

Dungen / Stadsvandringar (Astralwerks)

Listening to this reissue of Dungen’s first album, made available in North America thanks to the success of their latest Ta Det Lungt, I have to wonder. Would people over here be as gaga about this record if Gustav Ejstes were singing in English rather than his native Swedish? Because listening to this collection of psychedelic, hippy-dippy aural patchouli, I can’t imagine Ejstes is singing about anything besides mystical badgers or pirate unicorns. It doesn’t sound at all unpleasant, but not especially remarkable and it sounds suspiciously like good soundtrack music for flower weaving. I mean, flutes? Flutes?!? No codpiece music for me, thanks.

Dungen @ MySpace

Boards Of Canada / The Campfire Headphase (Warp Records)

I have never been an electronic music guy. Too much of the time when I listen to it, I find myself getting impatient, waiting for something to happen. And I understand that’s just as much my problem as it is the music’s. In the case of Scotland’s Boards Of Canada, the journey seems to be just as important as the destination – or to be a little less cliched and metaphorical, the sounds used are just as important as the songs themselves. They find very pleasant and soothing combinations of laid-back beats, samples and sounds and then just let the run, creating perfect soundtracks for low-impact activities. It’s easy to just close your eyes and let the music carry you away, but it’s kind of weird to open your eyes fifty minutes later and realize you’re still in exactly the same place.

Boards Of Canada @ MySpace

Sailboats Are White / Turbo! (Let’s Just Have Some Fun)

Wavelength described this Hamilton quartet as “Big Black meets Black Flag” and while I can neither confirm nor deny these comparisons since I barely know either act, I can say that Sailboats Are White are buzzsaw abraisive, spastically tempoed and full of screechy, mealy-mouthed vocals. But perhaps despite their best efforts, there’s usually some sembalence of melody underneath it all and the keyboard lines are kinda nice. I fully expected to hate this album, but don’t really. That said, I don’t think I’ll be listening to it again.

MP3: Sailboats Are White – “Veto”
MP3: Sailboats Are White – “Mutiny Disease”
MP3: Sailboats Are White – “Let’s Set Up North On Fire”
Sailboats Are White @ MySpace

np – Low / Trust

By : Frank Yang at 10:25 am
Category: Uncategorized
RSS Feed for this postNo Responses.

  1. 1/15/06 9:05 pm

     angryrobot says:

    Regarding BOC, , I am reminded of something Brian Eno wrote that helped me open my ears to ambient/electronic music. Essentially, he said that whereas pop/rock is primarily concerned with a horizontal, or linear, sequence of events, moving from point A to B, ambient music was based around a vertical stacking of sounds and textures. I’m not sure if this profound or not, but it really opened my mind to the idea of a type of music trying to "do" something very different from what I was familiar with. By that point, I was already listening to ambient and electronic music, but Eno’s words really made it "click" for me (pun only partially intended).

  2. 1/16/06 10:22 am

     suckingalemon says:

    you need to see sailboats are white live to enjoy them i think.

    cheers

→
←