Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante - Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante [Ever/Never]
When something cool finds its way to me from Spain, there’s a good chance Mattin is involved somehow (see La Grieta) and Al Karpenter is no different. Much like Alice Cooper before him, “Al Karpenter” is both the name of the bandleader and the band. On The Forthcoming LP released by Ever/Never, Al Karpenter (the band) is rounded out by Marta Sainz, Enrique Zaccagnini and Mattin, of course. The participants don’t stop there. Ever the collaborator, Al Karpenter (the band) is joined by one or more of the following on five out of six tracks: Triple Negative, Suni Kim, and Dominic Coles. The Forthcoming is a calculated mess, and a pleasant one at that. The earth is ever shifting beneath the listeners feet but Al Karpenter never assaults nor overwhelms. There is a surprising amount of space given the number of humans who had a hand in the birth of these sounds. Karpenter’s fragmentary lyrics find air to breathe amid rumblings of double bass, frayed guitar chords, left-channel jazz band ruminations, bleep-bloops and shhhhzzkkszzz of digital sandpaper. Just about everything is at Al Karpenter’s disposal to form these fractured fairy tales. There’s little in the way of suspended sounds, which makes the sustained tones that rear their heads on album highlight “Happy B-Day! (with Dominic Coles and Suni Kim)” all the more arresting. And when you finally arrive at the epic closer “Drood (Can You Hear Me Now?)” you know for sure that Mr. Karpenter kneels at the altar of St. Scott (Walker) and everything becomes clear as a stained glass crucifixion. Pulling from eras as far ranging as dada, beat poetry, underground rock and software-derived sound design, Al Karpenter brews a cauldron of complex and complimentary sonic scraps.
The supergroup attempts to make a hardcore record and a Mark E. Smith tune at the same time on “Public Scaffolding” with Al Karpenter seemingly doubling its typical tempo. The arrangement shifts imperceptibly at first sounding like a theoretical rock band then an industrial appliance testing facility by the end. Every anti-rock & roll record has got a party tune, and “Medieval Cocaine” is the party tune here (fans of Budokan Boys’ I’m So Broken Up About You Dying oughta take note). Feel that bass curling up your belly making you want to freaky deaky? It wraps with a plunderphonic D’n’B jam just to keep you on your toes. Perhaps most disturbing of all are “Put On Your Mask” and “This is an Invisible Song” which are the most harmonious moments of the album making them somehow more deeply unsettling than the cacophonies. I think it's pretty easy to figure out whether Al Karpenter or any of his/its collaborators are for you.
Now something for the techno-hippies. At its core, the first side of Stimulus Overinclusion is about sparking up some incense and summoning sonic spirits under the sullen night sky. However, that tuneage is thoroughly electronically molested by the hands of the 21st century media gods. What I dig about (blouseusa) is that it’s not a folktronica act. Some delicate acoustic plucks, a little skittering tick-tick-ticka-tick. Snooze... That act expired almost immediately upon birth and it was only the truly inventive ones (or ones with really good songs) that got any mileage out of those rather docile, barren “soundscapes”. The great Blouses of America, however, avoid that trap (beat). Most of the time they’re mingling their dalliances with acoustic and non-acoustic realms so that they form one thoroughly merged sound simulation. Take for instance the “drum solo” that opens the second side of the tape (the title track, naturally). Perhaps that drum solo was at one time played by a human but what you’re hearing is not just a human playing a drum solo. It’s edited, refracted, though not enough for the distracted ear to notice. It’s defiantly not a drum circle either, the lux blouse has left all that hippie shit on Side A. The real surprise here is “Digable Kale”, which features an unspecified contribution from Nathan Smurthwaite and recalls the bygone era when the youth cared about smashing their faces to bands like Polvo and 8+ minute complex rock & roll tunes. How’s that for a left turn? Oh yeah, Stimulus Overinclusion wraps on a 90 second Tangerine Dream-damaged sermon. Tons of ideas on display here, most of ‘em good, and no real unifying element. A cassette for those who like surprises!
Released in the dying light of 2023, this eponymous debut LP by Kingbird appeared out of the blue on my doorstep earlier in the year, in the middle of a city-debilitating ice storm no less. I was unexpectedly perplexed that the United States Postal Service even bothered to drop by in such dire circumstances, let alone that the proprietors of the aforementioned Kingbird acted on the notion of scrawling my address on a cardboard box. As though I was not already a recipient of great generosity from strangers, I was blessed to find that this mysterious Kingbird who nested on my welcome mat was actually quite good! Not so mysterious after I read the back cover that delineates the responsibilities of Kingbird’s two members, Patrick Crowson and Josh Allen. There are several wonderful qualities at play, one being that I can’t pinpoint a perfect analog to compare it to. Hall of Fame or early Caethua came to mind. Califone maybe, less the electric tricks. And wasn’t “kingbird” in a Califone album title? (It is actually Heron King Blues, you buffoon Ed.) Perhaps Mickey Newbury’s art-country opuses on the blissful mist of “Healed Already”. But none of them are right. When you fail the comparison test, that’s a pass in my book. The sound is rustic. A touch old timey, but not full revivalism a la The Wandering Stars, and the tunes are delivered in 21st century fidelity so this isn’t a past-fixated duo. Songs often just seem to linger, hover, gently existing. Open but intimate. A hummingbird is moving even when it's still, apparently a Kingbird is part of the same genus or phylum or whathaveyou. There is a pleasing amount of rust on Crowson’s pipes, and his raspy croon sells each one of the LP’s tunes. Take a trip to the pond, float on your back and gaze at the leaves on the trees for a while. Kingbird is a nice place to be.
What a great name. Power Strip. I’m amazed I haven’t come across someone else using it. I’m ashamed that I didn’t come up with it for my list of generic utility product names that have no bands attached. Nothing Yet, the second PS release for Drongo Tapes, is a handful of songs in the solo “shoegazey” dream pop vein that grows ever more popular and I become ever more suspicious of. But, hey, not only does Power Strip have good taste in names, Power Strip has good taste in tunes. Power Strip a.k.a. Nellie Albertson has a lovely voice and paces Nothing Yet quickly (perhaps a little too quickly at times) so things don’t get boring, or sound especially derivative. Sounds like she’s a fan of the full 4AD roster rather than copying a specific band. Nothing Yet is fragmentary, light not weightless, conjuring a vague apparition once or twice of the easy listening version of The Goslings’ sludge dreams. The obvious centerpiece here is “Fog Bath” which feels like it takes up half of the tape’s runtime. Albertson manages to move the song gracefully through various permutations, never once stepping wrong. However, the finale “Hole”, delivers the only misstep according to my rulebook: the appearance of a cheapo drum machine. It’s a bit of a buzzkill but the song is strong enough to succeed anyway, with Albertson freely showing off her pop prowess. All in all, a promising tape.
In the not too distant past, I had a dream where I somehow invited myself into Tyvek, then convinced everyone in the band to record a Christmas song that I had written “in the style of Tyvek”. The song was really good, naturally. Some months later, I had a sequel dream where this classic Xmas recording not only still existed but was popular enough that I was gallivanting around my undergrad university being chased by campus police, ostensibly for the shooting of a music video. A true rebel. So, last December, when I was completely caught off guard that Tyvek had dropped their first LP, Overground, in 7 years—a Christmas miracle in my mind—I guess I shouldn’t have been. The Lord had been speaking to me the whole time: “I shall summon forth a new Tyvek and the world will rejoice.”
Tyvek breathlessly tears through seven songs on the A-side, tried and true behavior replete with bashed strings, bashed drums and rapid fire plosives. “What Were We Thinking” already feels like it’s been a Tyvek classic for years. (The twin 50s rock & roll guitar leads are not to be missed.) I can say the same about “What It’s For”. It's like a Tyvek tune I’ve known all my life. Except there’s honking sax all over it. Oh yeah! Did I mention that the band has a full-time sax player (Emily Roll) on the LP? How cool. Kevin Boyer, Tyvek President & CEO, has been the preeminent master of turning the quotidian experiences of daily life into rallying cries and he reveals another “Low! Tumble Dry! Low! Tumble Dry! Low! Tumble Dry! Low!” on “Going Through My Stuff”. And effortlessly turns “I’m seeing U-Hauls everywhere” into a singalong chorus on (you guessed it) “U-Hauls”.
Overground really blasts off on its second side. “Rhythm/Pattern” is the frantic, syncopated highlight of the record. Paired perfectly behind it is the comedown,“Trash & Junk”, grooving like a caffeinated Velvets jam. Speaking of… Tyvek venture to the outskirts with their own “Gift”, the loose limbed, free flowing title track. It’s killer. Up there with the great Tyvek experiments like “Underwater 3”. Boyer ruminates on the weather, and poses inward questions like “Is it too late to be stateless?” as the band unfurls the groove around him. What more to say? Nearing the two decade mark, Tyvek are living legends at this point.
When pedal steel, “incidental percussion” and test equipment appear in the list of credited instruments my ears always perk up. What is a duo Alan F. Jones, the steel player, and Dave Abramson, the percussionist. I’ve got a solo disc somewhere from Jones (he records as A.F. Jones) and a Sloow tape with Abramson in duo mode with Wally Shoup (R.I.P.) but this is the first time I’ve heard them join forces. Going through my memory banks, I think the only other recording I own of this pedal steel+drums configuration is the wailing splatter of The Rocker by Jailbreak (the duo of Heather Leigh and Chris Corsano) and What generates vastly different results.
The Unconscious is a Machine for Operating an Animal is meditative at times but always a little scary. Alienation via vast emptiness. Jones can make the pedal steel sound like an air raid siren or a shadow falling across a rock face, depending on mood. Opener “Mesopause” is as perfect a statement of purpose as I can imagine. The sounds positively fill the room, harrowing haunt-factor well-intact. The album title is taken from a scientific essay by Cormac McCarthy and I can’t say that I’m surprised that that’s where these guys’ heads are at. The title track is the most serene moment on the tape, as the pedal steel is let loose to indulge in the unbridled beauty of the instrument’s endless tones. Alternately, “The Charm of Crisis” sounds as if it’s nearly a solo percussion piece yet the atmosphere is as thick as ever. “Sun-Bleached Mandible” seems similar from the outset with lots of space (not silence) with massive thwacks raining down from the heavens every so often. Almost imperceptibly, the scattershot ambiance settles into a serious groove. Not funky in the least, in fact it’s pretty unfunky, but totally hypnotic with spastic bouts of free drumming dappling the pulsating surface. A tastefully minimalist trip to the kosmische-zone and What’s best track. There is such a mindmeld between Jones and Abramson that it’s frankly jaw dropping that Animal is only What’s first release. These guys were born to play together.
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