Kram Ran

Two songs by one half of Alpha Couple on the suicide of the other half of Alpha Couple. & one demo recorded two years prior.

(Source: alphacouple)

If 2011 Was Defined By Music Only (and not the other 99%):

1. Winter Family - Red Sugar

The two individuals that comprise Winter Family have, from within the forms of ‘popular’ music song-craft, constructed an album that makes one re-think the structures of space vs. gratification. I have never heard such indie/folk/what-have-you music construed in the way Winter Family manipulates minimalism to enunciate the urgency of their brooding messages. With their disciplined approach they have reached a place how usually only random, accidental recordings can touch specific people on specific occasions have done. What does this mean? It means the album Red Sugar is no musical gem; it is a delicate artifact that holds profound intensity for those that share in the esoteric emotion held in the spaces created by Winter Family.

2. Pete Swanson - I Don’t Rock At All   /   Man With Potential

Unlike Winter Family Pete Swanson specializes in filling space with sound, and it is the density created in these two albums that invigorate the listener (different densities in either album). Either an artist will strip the listener by removing expected noise, leaving one vulnerable and open (like Winter Family) or one overcomes the listener, and hopefully perpetuates the motion, thus hopefully reaching the same ends: breaking down already conceived walls/limitations - this Pete Swanson has been working on for years. The most effective part is the means in which he does it, using musical techniques I can hear so closely related to my own approach. Pete Swanson deserves many accolades for his focus on stretching the effects of ‘noise’.

3. United Waters - Your First Ever River


Very much in keeping with Pete Swanson’s continuous efforts on stretching the effects of ‘noise’, Brian Sullivan (United Waters) deserves many of the same accolades. But with this project and this album he has tried to strip the noise from noise, and twist the use of his means. By removing the high-end static one is left with all that is buried beneath, the murky under-lair. Instead of being propelled by the protruding tips of noise one is swamped in the removed and normally hidden. What stands apart about Your First Ever River from many other subtle noise records is United Waters has attempted to take this noise and structure it, instead of just creating it and sharing it ‘as is’. The end result is a much more immediate accessibility (the attached video is the extreme example of how far it goes into the realm of accessible), though these gorgeous songs are made from extracted noise so one must still invest and engage to have it fully revealed.

Some more albums that provoked(1), inspired(2), related with(3), or simply intrigued(4) me:

Angels in America - Narrow Road to the Interior   (1,2,3,4)
Circle of Ouroborus - Eleven Fingers   (2,3,4)
The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond this World   (2,3,4)
Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestial Lineage   (2,4)
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres   (3,4)
Jacaszek - Glimmer   (3,4)
Tearist - Living 2009 - Present   (3,4)
Felt Drawings - Body   (3,4)