Korianteri- Olli Aarni- Review

Corianders, in folklore, are traditionally associated with healing and love, comfort and balming. They also have a hypnotic effect, garnering the nickname "dizzyweed" from farmers observing the effects of the plant on grazing cattle. 

Olli Aarni, a sound art project from Finland, uses their native "Korianteri," meaning Coriander, for the title of their new album. It's a fitting title. Something about the two tracks presented here is kind and soothing, maybe even childlike, in a way that experimental music rarely is. The music here is soft, floral, heady, and a little bit brilliant. 

The music is broken up into two fourteen-minute tracks, Korianteri A and Korianteri B. Both songs use the same building blocks of tape manipulated cartoon samples, radio static, low, hushed vocals, and throbbing, subtle ambience, but are remarkably different in tone. 

Korianteri A sounds much more, well, calming. It's the aural equivalent of someone rubbing your shoulders after work. It bleeds innocent, analog nostalgia, Saturday morning cartoons and cereal, ugly wallpaper and super 8 cameras. Even the buried, barely audible vocals have the cadence and tone of a Dad asking you about your day.

Despite it's homespun sound, the embeded, glitchy synth drones present in the track adds a particularly cavernous quality that conjures images of childhood imagination gone awry.

Korianteri B is as relaxed as the previous track, but in a very different way. Instead of sounding like a tape recorded suburban living room, it sounds alien, inhuman, yet somehow benevolent. It sounds like kind crop circles, altruistic wolves. There's slight menace there, enough to keep you waiting for harshness that will never come. 

This album is worth listening, if only as background noise. I appreciate the albums basis in actual tape-looping and antiquated samples. It's a refreshing change from the digital harsh noise that so many people pass off as avant-garde. Well worth a purchase.

Buy here

Top 10- Boyd Rice Records

I refuse to open up with segment with some boring, trite recitation about the controversy surrounding Boyd Rice's behavior, political ethics, or aesthetic choices. There is no mystery about what he has to say and to explore them in writing, at least superficially, is pointless.

With that said, Boyd Rice, over several different projects and collaborations, has produced a massive amount of sonic work over the years. These next 10, in no particular order, are my personal favorites.

Spell- Seasons In The Sun 

This album, a collaborative work between Rice and Strawberry Switchblade singer Rose McDowall, is a total novelty record. Unlike most novelty records, however, this one is still funny after repeated listens. It's a series of played-straight covers of 50's and 60's pop music with the lyrics changed to include references to suicide, hell, and death. I mean, who doesn't want to hear "Johnny Remember Me" covered by a new-wave singer and some weird misanthropist?

NON- Back To Mono 

The latest album by Rice's most known project is a beautifully produced album of shifting, dynamic sound. It's worth noting that Rice is an excellent sampler. On this records he pulls from everything from 60's girl groups to war sounds to speeches by cult figures. Brilliant. 

The Boyd Rice Experience- Hatesville

A decidedly retro sounding album, Hatesville is a hilarious mixture of spoken word, noise, and lounge music. It captures Rice's bizarre, early 60's space-age meets black social-darwinist aesthetic. Choice guest appearances by the likes of Joel Haertling and Shaun Partridge round out the album's sound with their own rambling wittiness.  In my mind, this is a more vicious contemporary to Ian Svenonius' Play Power album, basically a comedy album.  

NON- God and Beast 

This is the heaviest, if not the harshest, material from NON. Rice really seems to want to impart some sort of wisdom on the listener. That statement of intent is always heavy, regardless of the message. The music itself is punishing and bleak looping walls of sound. Daunting. 

Death In June & Boyd Rice- Alarm Agents

Neo-folk legends Death in June have collaborated with Boyd Rice on a number of occasions and it's really not hard to see why. Both have an obsession with the darker side of history. Whether or not DIJ embrace it to the extent of Rice is debatable, but nevertheless, they work well together. On this album, DIJ bring Rice into their world of masks and symbolism, with Rice's spoken word sounding more cryptic and mystical than ever. 

NON- Rise

This 12" single, released in 1982, is a part of the early vanguard of industrial music. This release would go on to be heralded by the likes of Moby and Marilyn Manson. Totally worth a listen.

Boyd Rice/Frank Tovey- Easy Listening For The Hard of Hearing

This LP, a collaboration between Rice and Frank Tovey, a.k.a. Fad Gadget, is an exercise in musical minimalism. Surprisingly understated for both men. 

Boyd Rice- The Black Album

The record that started contemporary noise and Boyd's career. Not bad for a prank. It plays on any speed. 

NON- Children Of The Black Sun

This release is pure ambiance, an uncharacteristic sound for NON. Unfortunately, it went relatively unnoticed. It's definitely worthy of more attention. 

Boyd Rice and Friends- Music, Martinis, and Misanthropy

Music, Martinis and Misanthropy is a sister record to Hatesville, a calm excursion into spoken word, lounge, and neofolk. The role call for this album is simply massive. Douglas P., Tony Wakeford, Michael Moynihan, the list goes on. This album is perhaps best known for producing the song "People," a biting neofolk song demanding the return of Vlad The Impaler, Genghis Khan, Diocletian, and other dictators. 

Check it out!

Genocide Organ-Archive IV Review+Stream

Genocide Organ are legends for a reason.

With their long-form, wildly experimental take on industrial music, they've carved a niche for themselves as both a creator of a genre, Death-Industrial, and for being providers of some of the wittiest, and most misunderstood, political commentary since Jello-Biafra.

So, it goes without saying that any day that Genocide Organ puts out music is a good day.

With their Archive series, Genocide Organ has been releasing unreleased material on 10" records. Archive IV continues this concept, presenting three tracks recorded in the early 90s. 

Genocide Organ stands out to me as the kings of harsh industrial for two reasons. One, they clearly have some ability as composers. Although their music is infected with immense, harsh, swelling noise and glitching and samples, the heart of it beats with some very pretty, minimalist compositions. Two, their choice of sampling, and the way they place their samples, is thought-provoking and often quite funny. 

These qualities are highlighted on this release, partly because it's short length. At three tracks, it's a short experience, but because each track contains everything I like about this group it's not something I mind. 

The centerpiece of this album is a fourteen-minute track called The Lesson: selected-dislective-lectured-a paradise for the sublocotenent. It's a mouthful of a title and a mouthful of a track. It begins with rythmic, pulsating noise and militaristic samples, slides into a dancey middle section, before collapsing back into samples and harsh noise. The track conjures images of a boy-composer using post-apocalyptic, bombed-out industrial wreckage to make symphonies, perhaps while hiding underground. 

The subsequent tracks are much shorter. The second, called The Lesson: lection for a riot, begins with the military samples that tipify Genocide Organ's sound. They're more frantic than they were on the last track. They blend well with the marching beat present throughout the track. They do a good job of conjuring a totalitarian fear. 

Surprisingly, the album ends on a very musical note. Nix-On, besides being one of the less obtuse references in a Genocide Organ, is a song that wouldn't be out of place on a Cold Cave or Lust For Youth album. It shows off the ability of the Genocide Organ creator's to actually write a tune. Sure, it's a tune dipped in feedback and screeching samples, but it's something you can hum.

I was always a casual fan of the group, but this Archive series makes me want to pay more attention. I think that Genocide Organ full-lengths might have been a little bit too thick and foreboding for me to really sink my teeth into, but these 10" are short enough for me to love and, if newer material reflects Nix-On, something that I can put on regular rotation. A great listen.