This week we take a look back at some of our favourite tunes of 2011.

1.K Flay – Waiting
2.Bernard Parmegiani - Instant 0
3. Earth – Father Midnight
4. Furniture Huschle – Selling My Nipples To Science
5. Adam WarRock & Mikal kHill – Firefly
6. Eyvind Kang – Invisus Natallus
7. Amon Tobin - Kitty Cat
8. Klaus Kinski – Christopher’s Walking
9. Rappy McRapperson – So Punk Rock Like Avril Lavigne
10. Belong – Make Me Return
11. Dissolved – Doll That Carries Erosion
12. David Bazan – Strange Negotiations
13. Hectic Zeniths – Curtain

If you want us to play your band/noise/whatever, drop us a line here.

Peace.

***Signal Ends***

Click here to view the embedded video.

Look down there…yeah, at the bottom of the page. See all those other articles that come up, they’re all about Dissolved. You know, Dissolved. Scottish bloke, writes albums in his sleep. Stirs his tea to a 7/8 time signature and lives in a ruined castle in the Highlands playing digital bagpipes. That Dissolved.

Shortly after releasing “Snowy Psychoplasmics” the people who are milking Dissolved have decided its time to turn the thumb screws again and set him in motion, extracting yet another album from him. In his own words he described it as “a bunch of outtakes” and I thought “Yeah I’ll grab that in a bit”. I forgot about it and then two weeks later remembered and sat down to give it a listen. And very swiftly realized this wasn’t “some outtakes” but a fully fledged album that delivers the classic Dissolved sound in a concise and elegiac way.

Each and every track has some feature that renders it meaningful. The compulsive bassline and fluttery synths of “Sleep of Thorncombe Beacon”, the spiralling arpeggiator or fantastic sample on “Anxiety Plasm”, the squishy insectile noises or b-movie synths of “Charmouth Sentinels”. None of that sound appealing ? What about the beautifully catchy lead synth hook on “We Don’t See The Birds They Do” or its disarmingly simple melody or the Radiophonic Workshop like intro to “Scent of the Tectonic States” and its minimal beats. If you’re still not interested what about the first of two secret tracks (sorry for the spoiler)“Landslid” with its archetypal twisted Dissolved melody and interlinked bass and beat work, which serves as a perfectly workable intro to the all out psyche-fest of “Arctic Ultra”. I won’t say anything about “Arctic Ultra” other than its one of those moments that you just don’t want to end…and it very nearly doesn’t. Oh and I think there are bagpipes on it (no, really). So far, so bloody good, but then “Magma of IO” pops up and what a closing track…sci-fi bossa-nova that caused me to jump to my feet and perform a sort of Lambeth stroll meets robotics dance that I have never been able to recreate but enjoyed immensely.

Dissolved is something you either like or don’t, I’m not sure you can grow to like his music. So why do I write review after review of his albums ? Because if someone out there can be bothered to write music that time and again finds a point of emotional contact within the dead husk of my soul, the least I can do is repay the favour, dust off the old shit-spewer and spew some shit. This album is firmly within my top ten Dissolved releases. It may not have a strong overall identity but it is full of great songs and would act as a perfect lure to draw people further down the murky rabbit hole of Dissolved’s world.  And it’s free from here

http://dissolved.bandcamp.com/album/black-ven-walkers

Kim Monaghan

1. HIV Plus – Hell on Hamilton
2. Gimmik – Sister Moon
3. Illness – Cleveland Police
4. Subtle – The Long Vein of the Voice ft. Mike Patton
5. Dissolved – Doll That Carries Erosion
6. Earth – Descent to the Zenith
7. Silent Stranger – Stae Cis
8. The Secret - The Weathermen
9. Fugazi - Walken’s Syndrome
10. Broken Shoulder – Ultimate Donko
11. Bobby Conn – Never get Ahead
12. Dels – Trumpalump
13. Belong – Never Came Close

If you want us to play your band/noise/whatever, drop us a line at behindcloseddoors@sittingnow.co.uk.
Peace.

***Signal Ends***

This is a split release on a netlabel that is available for free from here (http://section27netlabel.blogspot.com/). The Dissolved tracks sound like Dissolved basically, most remarkably so on “Cold Immersions” or the fantastically named (and fantastic sounding) “Mrs Peacock, Study, Ouija Board”. Not the best work he has ever done but still pretty damn fine stuff. If you want more info on Dissolved go and read one of the six or seven older articles I have written for this very site.

Trills is new to me and so to some extent I was paying a little more attention. On “Ningxia” thudding industrial drums and a shrieking guitar sample are overlaid with barely audible, but sinister sounding vocals. Happily, instead of settling into a comfortable rythmn, Trills decides to take us into a mind melting breakdown before eventually settling back into his original tune. “Madakava” sounds like Boards of Canada being melted into a pot of hip-hop breaks while the time-space continuum struggles to establish order. Intriguing.

“Bia Lola” starts out as a monosyllabic exercise in brutalism before becoming a psychedelic noise fest that shocks your ears back into paying attention. “Suck Cable” appears to be heavily distorted CB radio samples over thudding, time signature free kick drums while hi frequencies make your face hurt. Like a less cheerful cousin of “Grace” on Ministry’s “Psalm 69”. “Pink Carbide” is almost Autechre-ian in its obtuse approach to music as noise/art/madness, consisting as it does of some loops and screaming feedback noises being bounced round inside something like Ableton.

“Flicalic” is more “gibber and squeak” noises but with some masterful production elevating it to something that should have been used as the soundtrack for “Fantastic Voyage” but only if it was set inside a robot. Final track “Plumb” sees a return to more tuneful territory with a normal hip-hop break over some power synths that would sound awesome over a slow motion montage from Terminator.

Kim Monaghan

Click above to download this free of charge...Donate if you enjoy!

Another release from Dissolved. Another free release. Another brilliant free release. Dissolved is the hardest working man in one of the least fashionable types of music out there (electronica) and consequently I review at least one of his albums a month, it seems. I am sure by now I must have repeated myself when talking about Dissolved’s music, all superlative this and unrewarded that but god damn it, the music he makes is consistently better than most of the stuff I get to review or even buy, so here we go again.

“Why don’t you make Maremire ?” was on the recent Behind Closed Doors podcast if you want a sneak peek. Crunchy Autechre-an drums, circuitous squishy melodies and a beatific choir all combine into an opening track that is plainly Dissolved but operating at extremely high levels. “Trimantid Replacement Theory” features an elastic phased drumline as a hook and a shadowy sinister synth melody, which combine to create a perfect incubator for the sun-dappled lead synth that appears and transforms the track into the audio equivalent of skipping round a sunny forest glade waving at friendly woodland creatures. “Xylophonic Non Spectre” is a chirpy and chunky piece of beats-y electronica that is elevated to a level of special-ness by a perfectly placed choral sample and the intricate layering of sounds that make electronica and Dissolved such an endlessly fascinating and rewarding musical experience.

“I Learned Machine Code In 30 Minutes By Drinking Dye”. If you don’t want to listen to a song with that title then stop wasting my time and your own time by reading this review. I could say the same about “Ganymede Diver Spasm” but instead I will say that it is a percussive and rumbly little tune enlivened by an electric guitar solo…of sorts. “Stestelid” is a drone-y and dream like excursion into the quiet side of Dissolved’s brain and sounds like a watercolour of an abandoned fairground being flushed down a toilet. “Argon Laser Inaccuracy” is all about the tough, tough beats that keep cycling round and round while at the edges of your hearing bad things wait to do you harm. “Blaschka’s Glass Vision” sounds a bit like Global Communication being attacked by giant robotic insects. It really does.

There is no excuse for not getting this album. It is free to download from dissolvedamberrooms.com but you have the option to donate money via Paypal. If you don’t donate money via Paypal I will come and find you and rob you. Seriously.

Kim Monaghan

Download this album for free here. Donate some money if you enjoy it.

Broadcast #016

***New Signal****

1. Hrvatski - vatstep dsp
2. John Baker – Vendetta:The Ice Cream Man
3. Pedestrian - Arrest the President
4. Poirier - WHA LA LA LENG
5. Big Black – Kerosene
6. Lorn - Army of Fear
7. Z’EV Vs Pita – live in Colchester
8. Bong-Ra – Terrorizah
9. Herbaliser (ft. MF Doom) – It aint Nuttin
10. Dissolved - Why don’t you make Maremire ?
11. Busdriver - Imaginary Places
12. Simple Vehicle – Dipped
13. Cleric - A Rush of Blood

If you want us to play your band/noise/whatever, drop us a line at behindcloseddoors@sittingnow.co.uk.

Peace

***Signal Ends**

Broadcast 005

***New Signal****

The Siegfried Sassoon – Muscle Beach

That Fucking Tank -Keanu Reef

Black Saturn – My New Spacesuit

Earth – Ourobourus

Dissolved – New Year Brings An Intracellular Tracer

This Ain’t Vegas – Ku Jumping

Folchen- The Believers

Phantom Float – teeth

Fibla – Montsianell

Lovvers – Wasted Youth

Mare – Anisette

Mochipet – thizznation.

If you want us to play your band/noise/whatever, drop us a line at behindcloseddoors@sittingnow.co.uk.

Peace

***Signal Ends**

The workaholic Scotsman returns with another serving of complex ambient electronica. Introverted synth lines mesh with intricate drum programming and layered melodies to create a strangely familiar but rewarding album. It follows on from the recent double album “Emit Like A Prothonotary” and is quite similar in tone, in that it sounds like Dissolved but given a fresh coat of paint and a couple of new keyboards. It doesn’t stray from the territory he has made his own, but a successful formula can’t really be argued with in his case.

Highlights on the album are “Sondrophet” with its dripping synths and dank cave atmospherics, “Gifted Mantis” with its collapsing, barely audible beats and vaguely insectile sound. “Nymphing” which is the bastard offspring of a secret collaboration between Autechre at their most paranoid and Dissolved at his most obtuse, with hectic broken beats and hissy drones. “Glint From An Eprom Oil Shroud” reuses the brilliant kids keyboard sound used in “Fentrostic Girl Storm” (from an earlier release), a sound so innately cheerful that it makes me want to run up to strangers and stick my headphones in their ears so they can be cheerful too. “Needle Rain” is another ambient / industrial mood fest with scattered, invasive and glitchy beats. “New Year Brings An Intracellular Tracer” is my out and out highlight from this album and I put it in the self-invented pigeon hole of hyper-kinetic math-rave. It represents Dissolved at both his most focussed and aggressive and is one of the tunes I would bring out in attempting to convert people to his work.

Moments that troubled me were rare but it’s worth mentioning that I was very intrigued by the opening of “Ideomotor Action Disrupter”, it builds in a clanky and harsh fashion and has all the makings of a Dissolved classic but falls apart under the weight of an unwieldy bassline which is just too much for my delicate ears to process. The only other flaw, and it is very minor, is that just as I was getting into “Lantern For The Myasmic” it uncharacteristically faded away leaving me feeling slightly cheated on this one track. There are also some moments on the album from which you come away slightly unmoved, but they do serve the purpose of breaking the album up and providing light and shade.

Despite having releases in the double figures Dissolved is still making music that while sometimes flawed, is always possessed of dark energy and is always interesting, and for that and innumerable other reasons you should begin getting hold of his older albums and EP’s from http://www.dissolvedamberrooms.com

Finally, I would like to ask and answer the following questions. Is this an exceptional Dissolved album? No. Is it the one I would recommend first? No. Is it free and should that make it an essential download for anyone bothering to read this review? Yes. Is it representative of how good electronica can be in the tired old year of 2009? Yes.

Kim Monaghan