Hey everybody,

I don't use this newsgroup as much as I used to, but I thought you might want to
know that there're 4 new releases from Silber you can buy at www.silbermedia.com

Lost Kisses - My Life is Funny & Sad DVD
Moodring - Scared of Ferret
Aarktica - In Sea
Vlor - six-winged

MP3 samples to listen to & all sorts of other goodness.  Thank you all for your
continued interest & support over the years.  It helps us keep on going.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell

Hey Kidz,

A lot going on behind the scenes, but not much hard news.

Northern Valentine may make it to be band of the month at their weekly
in Phillie, if you have a chance, please help stuff the ballot box at
http://www.thedelimagazine.com/philadelphia/snacks.php

I don't think I ever posted the interview I did with my local weekly.
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A328925

Working on the new Vlor, the new Carta, the new Remora, new Lost Kisses,
& the Lost Kisses DVD.  So a lot behind the scenes.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell



type_N

Northern Valentine has been nominated for "Band of the Month", for
April, by Deli Magazine. Take a second (literally...a second) to stop by
their website and click on the little box on the right of the page to
vote for us. If we get enough nominations, we'll get a write up in their
blog and a banner on their site, which would help us get the word out
about the new cds and music!

You have until March 31st to vote...so please swing by for a visit and
vote for Northern Valentine ->

http://www.thedelimagazine.com/philadelphia/snacks.php



type_N

Hey Kidz,

A lot going on right now.  It looks like there might be ten releases
again this year before everything is said & done & that scares the crap
out of me given the current economic problems, but that's when the
amateurs go home & the pros stay on the field, right?  We'll see what
all ends up happening.

I'm seeking some advertisers for the upcoming QRD (info below) & even if
you don't have any thing to sell, for $15 you could buy a little spot
that says "John Smith supports QRD" & that would be funny/cool to me.
Heck, you could get 14 of your friends together & make an animated gif
of that & each of you pay $1.  If you know anyone interested, spread the
word.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell

QRD#39 Featuring:
Sarah June, Hotel Hotel, Northern Valentine, slicnaton, Brian John
Mitchell, Terrascope Online, Outside Left, Melissa Spence Gardner, &
more!

Here at QRD ( www.silbermedia.com/qrd ) we like to only charge what we
see as completely reasonable rates for advertisement/sponsorship.

You can get an ad on our frontpage measuring 468 pixels by 72 pixels for
two months or until an issue expires, whichever is longer for $10.  If
we host it the file size is to be 100 kb or less.  If you want to host
your own file & have us hotlink it & occasionally change the file, that
is cool with us.

A sidebar ad measures 200 pixels by 50 pixels & appears on the left of
every article in the issue as well as on the frontpage for the time of
that issue.  These advertisements stay up on the article pages
indefinitely & the cost is $15.  If we host the file, 50 kb is the max
file size; since this ad is an infinite ad however, we do suggest you
host it & we hotlink it so you can update it at anytime.  Changing the
URL of the hotlink incurs a $5 fee.



TAGS: QRD

type_N

Hey Kidz,

A lot going on right now.  It looks like there might be ten releases
again this year before everything is said & done & that scares the crap
out of me given the current economic problems, but that's when the
amateurs go home & the pros stay on the field, right?  We'll see what
all ends up happening.

I'm seeking some advertisers for the upcoming QRD (info below) & even if
you don't have any thing to sell, for $15 you could buy a little spot
that says "John Smith supports QRD" & that would be funny/cool to me.
Heck, you could get 14 of your friends together & make an animated gif
of that & each of you pay $1.  If you know anyone interested, spread the
word.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell

QRD#39 Featuring:
Sarah June, Hotel Hotel, Northern Valentine, slicnaton, Brian John
Mitchell, Terrascope Online, Outside Left, Melissa Spence Gardner, &
more!

Here at QRD ( www.silbermedia.com/qrd ) we like to only charge what we
see as completely reasonable rates for advertisement/sponsorship.

You can get an ad on our frontpage measuring 468 pixels by 72 pixels for
two months or until an issue expires, whichever is longer for $10.  If
we host it the file size is to be 100 kb or less.  If you want to host
your own file & have us hotlink it & occasionally change the file, that
is cool with us.

A sidebar ad measures 200 pixels by 50 pixels & appears on the left of
every article in the issue as well as on the frontpage for the time of
that issue.  These advertisements stay up on the article pages
indefinitely & the cost is $15.  If we host the file, 50 kb is the max
file size; since this ad is an infinite ad however, we do suggest you
host it & we hotlink it so you can update it at anytime.  Changing the
URL of the hotlink incurs a $5 fee.



TAGS: QRD

type_N

Hey Kidz,

Well I think this is my first newsgroup posting this year.  Not sure if
the newsgroup is as effective as Facebook & MySpace these days.
Anyway...

Kwoktalk reviewed the new comics in the current podcast
http://kwoktalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=425959

Working on about 8 comics simultaneously right now which is ridiculous.

A ton of recent reviews below....

hrt
Brian John Mitchell

REMORA: ENSOULMENT
A remora is a fish belonging to the family of the suckerfish that you'll
probably know of its modified dorsal fin with which it can clamp on to
its host, most often sharks. Putting this little biology lesson aside
for a moment (you ought to do something with your university degree,
no?), Remora is also the alter ego of the American Brian John Mitchell
under which he releases music at his label Silber Records. In a recent
mailing we were notified that a number of albums have been released
freely as MP3s and can be downloaded from their or other websites.
"Ensoulment" has been released on the label "ping things" and can be
downloaded from there. Ping thing's blog gives some more details on what
went into producing this album.
Around 1995 Remora started making drone/ambient music, using the guitar
as a sound source. Later albums explored different styles but this one
is a return to the guitar as source of sound instead of music (or as
mentioned so beautifully on ping things "six tuned wires mounted on
wood"). "Ensoulment" is one, nearly 72-minute soundscape that waxes and
wanes. Who thinks of a sound close to that of doomdroners like Sunn
O))), Nadja or OM; no, more drones, less music. The included press sheet
draws parallels to Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu), Mike
VanPortfleet (Lycia) or the Polish composer György Ligeti.
Remora manages to avoid monotony within this gritty wall by building up
to periods of clearer and more recognisable sound. I'm not too convinced
by the track overall (there's only so much one man can do with a
guitar), but it definitely is a enjoyable wall of sound for late-night
listening. Whether that's a recommendation? Since my taste in music has
been slipping into ever more abstract and inaccessible territories over
the last few years I find it increasingly difficult to say. Ask yourself
the question whether one track of 72 minutes is your cup of tea (please
tick "yes" when you like Moljebka Pvlse). Patient people approving of
abstract music, or metalheads into funeral doom or the droning of
above-mentioned artists might well appreciate this as a piece of music
to relax to.
~ IkEcht

SLICNATON, REMORA, NORTHERN VALENTINE: CLEAR FIELD
Slicnaton, Remora & Northern Valentine - Clear Field
Together with the recently reviewed album of Remora we also got word
that this collaboration was released for free by Silber Records. The
story goes that Nicholas Slaton of Slicnaton and Robert Brown of
Northern Valentine were working in the studio on the soundtrack for a
series of movies, when Brian John Mitchell of Remora came around town on
tour. At a certain point in time the three of them decided to make music
together; Remora and Northern Valentine took up their guitars, Slicnaton
did electronics and engineering. The resulting sessions have been
captured on this album "Clear Field".
Of these three acts I only knew Remora, but the other two largely
overlap with Remora's sound; ambient and abstract guitar soundscapes.
"Thousand-Faced Moon" and "Slightly Quicker Rotation" are the somewhat
calmer parts with the sounds of guitars being strung and being deformed
by pedals washing over you like an abstract mass. "Curiosity Makes You
Irresponsible" is a darker and noisier soundscape with growling sounds
and squealing feedback with little rhyhtmm to hang on to. "Slightly
Quicker Rotation" has to be my favourite though, especially if after
four or five minutes a slow, muffled beat kicks in. Although it
disappears, there are numerous echoes of repeating elements throughout
this piece.
Silber Records itself draws comparisons to the music of, for instance,
Brian Eno and I concur. Not dark, no, just ambient. Music that lends
itself to being listened to on headphones or late at night. Maybe not
for everyone, and for some perhaps too light of tone. But after a few
listening sessions I find myself quite enjoying this. The album can be
obtained from archive.org.
~ songsoverruins, IkEcht

NORTHERN VALENTINE: STARS WHISPER
This 3-song EP consists of long, slowly-shifting instrumental movements
that tries to take the listener on a gradual ambient journey by
balancing the weighted dissonance of attenuated soundscapes with
slightly quicker percussive elements that shiver and quiver like stars
in the deep night sky.  The Philadelphia-based members of Robert Brown,
Amy Brown, Jeffrey Bumiller, and Marc Carazo recorded this EP live with
no post-production soon after their album The Distance Brings Us Closer
was finished.
The opener "Perseus" is relatively short at under 4 minutes, with a
background of amorphous space sound that slowly gets louder, while
within the mass there are reverberations of tinging bells, echoed thuds,
hit sticks, trickling water, and once in a while, the strum of one
low-tuned guitar string.
"With the Stars" continues with the same deep space sound, but is
lighter overall, developing over time with various noises flitting in
and out, culminating mid-way with distorted neighing-horse-like sounds,
bell tings, and low strings played as notes.  The song then quiets down
with owl-like hoots and bird-type tweets and gives off the vibe of being
"Lost In Space" - in a forest!  By the end of the song there is a shift
in sonics to shuffling paper sounds, bell notes, rattling plastic beads,
and a quicker pace punctuated by R2-D2-type whistling noises and the
sound of plastic chips clinking against each other until it settles down
and fades away…
The tempo builds up quickly for a change on "We Walk Together Through a
Whisper", with an enveloping, elongated, distorted sound that presses in
pitch against "Whooing" owl-like sounds, alternating keyboard notes, and
a low, hollow, bending guitar tone that slowly builds up in intensity
and loudness, scraping the listener's ear a bit uncomfortably until it
slides away to a constant background burble and guitar strum.
~ Jen Stratosphere, Delusions of Adequacy

VARIOUS ARTISTS: WINTERIZING
As usual every other year, Silber Records has just released its
christmas compilation, the fourth one so far. Now, christmas has come
and gone and most of you will already be focussing on 2009. Covers of
typical christmas carols are lacking however, hence the more general
title, and in the meantime the whole of northern Europe is slowly
freezing over. So who are we to not review this wintry compilation from
2008?
With 26 songs of just as many artists and nearly two hours of music its
no use discussing them all, so I'll limit myself to some of my personal
highs and lows on this compilation. First thing I noticed was that apart
from several artists that have been reviewed here before (Remora, Hotel
Hotel, Electric Bird Noise or Slicnaton) there is a long list of
unfamiliar names that often have not released anything yet.
Highlights for me include songs like the ones from Sailor Winter who
combine claustrophobic noise with electronics. Miss Massive Snowflake
gives us a slightly chaotic and jarring christmas tune that has a very
sixties flavour to it due to it being acoustic. The disturbing bit is
that someone in the background is trying to recreate the sound of wind
blowing. At least, that's what I think, although it comes off as the
muffled screams of someone insane. Gorgons too go for a rather
disturbing christmas tune with some very subdued synths and vocals. More
abstract work is being delivered by Moral Crayfish, who use sounds of
scraping metal to make a rather messy and noisy tune, and the album
closer by Subscape Annex who use a combination of drones and sounds
extracted from guitar strings.
Some of songs I could have done without though. Charles De Mar plays
such a sweet acoustic song it hurts my teeth. The Carnage Visors'
contribution actually starts out promising with a moody organ and some
sobre percussion but is then ruined by a singer who constantly misses
his notes. Painful.
I wouldn't call this compilation a treasure trove and I wonder if it
would be an idea to be a bit stricter in the selection of tracks and
limit this to one disc only. Nevertheless, the compilation has turned
into a nice collection of calm ambient, drones and acoustic folk and I
can recommend it to people who want to experience or meet the Silber
Records sound. This compilation can again be found on the pages of
archive.org.
~ songsoverruins, IkEcht


NORTHERN VALENTINE: THE DISTANCE BRINGS US CLOSER
Ambient rock group Northern Valentine draws similar inspiration as many
of the emerging acts in the "glacial ambient" scene, most specifically
Netherworld, but besides using a more guitar-oriented sound, they differ
with their contemporaries by taking a more emotionally ambiguous
approach to their subject matter. Where recent albums by the likes of
Rapoon and Netherworld on the Glacial Movements label focus primarily on
arctic imagery as a metaphor for peace, tranquility and timelessness,
taking comfort in the emptiness and creating a similar sense of quiet
vastness in their music, Northern Valentine's work is much more
emotionally immediate; the emptiness is tranquil, but it's also lonely,
and that comes through especially on this album's opening track, "Born
Yesterday," with its rich, achingly cold guitar textures conjuring up
scenes of icy windswept plateaus, stunning vistas that wouldn't seem
nearly so stark if you had someone there to share them with you. "Dies
Solis" is darker still, the emptiness of the landscape lending itself
toward brooding and internal tension, a hint of nervousness and
self-criticism buzzing beneath the mournful guitar drones. "Dimanche" is
more ambient in the classical sense in that it soothes tension rather
than exacerbating it, the soft echoing percussive sounds drifting off
into the fuzzy tidal drones, and "Escaping Light," despite its title's
evocation of the last lonely sunset before a long arctic winter, is
actually a little playful, with pleasantly atonal pianos emerging
occasionally from the sleepy guitar textures. "Already Gone" continues
this trend, its tones warmer than any of its predecessors, the outer
calm of the music itself seemingly indicating the inner calm that comes
with accepting the loneliness of one's present situation. Likely to
appeal to fans of both ambient acts like Bass Communion, Lull, and
Oophoi and such instrumental rock acts as Stars of the Lid, Windy and
Carl, and Third Eye Foundation, this album is cold but powerful, its
subtle snowy soundscapes a portal to surprisingly rich emotional
territory.
~ Matthew Johnson, Grave Concerns

Following a series of CD-R releases beginning in 2006, the husband and
wife team of Robert and Amy Brown put out their first formal album
release via Silber Records in late 2008, The Distance Brings Us Closer,
also featuring guest performer Ben Fleury-Steiner. Northern Valentine's
music comes from a now very familiar space -- open-ended electronic and
guitar textures pitched halfway between contemplative ambience and
understated melodies, and to say that The Distance Brings Us Closer
would appeal to fans of nearly anything on Kranky Records, for instance,
would be an understatement. But if Northern Valentine works in known
ground at this point, they still do so with an atmospheric power and
grace. Perhaps their strongest knack is for how well they gently
disguise the core hooks without letting them get lost completely -- the
cyclical rise and fall of the main melody in "Born Yesterday," shimmers
through layers of echo and background texture, might be the most
breathtaking moment on the album. Other moments like the sudden
appearance of a clear piano part on "Dimanche" cutting through the
meditative flow of the song further demonstrate the group's abilities.
If Northern Valentine are still working towards finding their best
sound, they have strong bases to build on.
~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The cover art for Northern Valentine's The Distance Brings Us Closer is
an expansive sky/water landscape photo, a captivating one. It sets up
the notion that their music will similarly stretch out before our ears.
And it does. Right from the start this five-piece instrumental/ambient
band from Philadelphia �" three electric guitars, one bass, one
keyboard/violin player �" builds a big sound filled with
atmosphere. Its static qualities do bring to mind large open spaces. But
listen closer. Because it's not that static. Even within the first few
minutes of that opening track, "Born Yesterday", the seemingly peaceful
music is busy with unusual sounds. As the track continues, it gets less
peaceful, more ominous and stormy, without changing all that much. It's
a skill to make music where so much is happening even when it seems like
nothing is happening.
Each track was improvised around a theme, recorded live in the studio.
Each has a different feeling, a different sound even. For a while on
"Dies Solis" it's hard to hear it as particular instruments, more like
one wave of sound. Yet it progresses, as all of this music does, even
when it doesn't. "Dimanche" strikes me as carrying more of a film-score
atmosphere, and that's a compliment. A horror film, a domestic drama,
film noir, or a nature documentary; you decide. "Escaping Light" is
eerie too, and airy. There's quite a sense of space to the thing.
"Already Gone" sums it all up in some way, feeling more finite though no
more conclusive. Northern Valentine does generate closeness while they
emulate distance. They create musical places that do feel physical, with
their own visceral facets, but also open-ended.
~ Dave Heaton, Erasing Clouds

If you've stumbled upon this review with any knowledge whatsoever of
Philadelphia's Northern Valentine, it won't be because they're
responsible for that tune that's been stuck in your head all day. In
fact, so downright impenetrable is everything on latest release The
Distance Brings Us Closer that it's fairly unlikely you'll come across
them anywhere unless you're particularly willing to look. Sadly, it's
not worth your trouble. These five tracks run together so significantly
that to comment on them individually is a waste of time. Call it
post-rock, call it experimentalism, but ultimately this is a fifty
minute exercise in lifeless pretentiousness, never offering any more
than knowingly avant-garde atmospherics that lose their appeal in a
matter of seconds. Apparently The Distance Brings Us Closer is largely
improvised. Truth be told, this might serve to explain a lot, as it's
genuinely difficult to imagine such directionless nonsense being
premeditated. Avoid.
~ Mitch Bain, Rock Midgets

Couple �  la vie comme �  la scène, Robert et Amy Brown
forment Northern Valentine et jouent �  l'évidence de leur
osmose naturelle pour délimiter les formes alanguies, sortes
d'improvisations planantes �  base de nappes de guitares torves,
qui forment la texture abstraite de ce The Distance Brings Us Closer.
Plongé dans ce halo sonore de masses digressives flottant dans
l'espace du studio, on garde au fil des morceaux l'impression de rester
au plus près du duo tant la spatialité de l'enregistrement
et la force micro-statique des drones délicates qui se mettent en
place onduleusement dans ce schéma mental imaginaire se
révèlent prégnantes. Un exercice évanescent
en forme de torpeur sublime.
~ Laurent Catala, Octopus

HOTEL HOTEL: THE SAD SEA
Austin's Hotel Hotel return with their third record, The Sad Sea, on
Silber records. Considering how overpopulated the post-rock scene in
Austin is these days, it would be easy for Hotel Hotel to slip under the
radar. However, with such abundant talent and clear artistic vision, it
seems like it's a little easier for them to rise to the front than most.
The album's sound is hard to nail down, but haunting seems to be the
word that springs to mind. The band creates deep and absorbing
atmospheres using a wide array of voices, from swelling synths and
squeaking strings, to minimalist guitar drones and static noise. It is
something that is very easy to connect to, and you'll find yourself
drawn in with very little effort.
The band continually relies on mood and minimalist melodies to drive the
compositions along, and in turn they create something that defies any
clichés usually attached to bands of the genre. They rarely use a
quiet to loud structure, opting instead for continuous sheets of
sound-scape like atmosphere, allowing each track in the album to fit and
evolve in and of itself.
I don't like to say it, but this album has the same artistic execution
of a film soundtrack. Hotel Hotel focuses less on melody-driven songs
than other post-rock artists - the tracks are instead driven by mood and
rhythm. This is by no means a negative, and, in fact, it makes the album
more defined and therefore more memorable.
Its hard to pinpoint any faults with this album, but I wouldn't say it's
perfect. The way it has been arranged and written allows it to execute
everything it sets out to do with flair and beauty. I strongly recommend
you give this a try.
~ Idris Hussain, The Silent Ballet

In 2006, Hotel Hotel recorded their first full-length,
allheroesareforeverbold. They then went on tour and got signed to
drone/post-rock label par excellence Silber Records. However, shortly
after arriving home from their tour, the band's drummer disappeared at
LaGuardia Airport (and has not been seen since). The band went into a
tailspin and spent the next year trying to figure out where to go, when
some guidance came from the strangest place.
As the story goes, the remaining members were holed up in a bar one
night when a real, live, honest to God sea captain tried to convince
them to join his quest to find the "Mary Celeste", the ghost ship that
was presumably found in 2001. The band declined the offer, but the
encounter planted the seeds for what would eventually become The Sad
Sea.
Like Godspeed You Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Set Fire To
Flames, the eight songs on The Sad Sea are more dirge than anything,
mournful ballads full of weeping strings, glacial guitars, and spectral
static and feedback. And while Hotel Hotel do occasionally indulge in
explosive climaxes like those of their fellow Texans in Explosions In
The Sky�"e.g., "The Dirac Sea (High Tide)", "The Captain Goes
Down With The Ship ( Drowning)"�"the band is really at their best
when they eschew or at least minimize the percussion. Here, in the
album's softer and subtler moments, the band reveals a beauty in their
music, beauty that is nevertheless fraught with unease and disquiet.
"From Harbour" unfolds at a funereal pace, a lament for the sailors
lost�"and soon to be lost�"amidst the waves. The drums are
present here, but they serve mainly to hem in the swaying violins and
guitar rumblings, thus keeping the song moving forward in its inexorable
pace. There's a powerful sense of nostalgia and loss wafting through the
song that brings to mind decaying mementos found in abandoned
lighthouses or hulking wrecks washing up on foreign shores, and it
powerfully sets the tone for the rest of the album.
The drums are entirely absent from "Mary Celeste", however, and so the
drones are left to spill over and run amok. The listener is enveloped in
a thick, impenetrable fog that hides�"but doesn't
silence�"all manner of spirits and specters beckoning you to join
them in their watery realms. And as might be discerned by its title,
"The Shoreline Disappeared" is just one long goodbye, a lovely
melancholy ode of spiraling pianos and violins that serves as the
album's emotional core. As the track progresses, it grows more ephemeral
and intangible, like a brigantine disappearing over the horizon, until
all that's left is one final wisp of violin that scatters on a cold sea
wind.
I'll confess that I initially wrote off Hotel Hotel as a band too
indebted to the the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and those other
acts I mentioned earlier. The mournful, orchestral tone just seemed too
familiar, too similar in light of such albums as He Has Left Us Alone
but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms…
and Sings Reign Rebuilder. Despite those albums having been released a
number of years ago, there's no denying that The Sad Sea‘s
tonal palette exists at least partially within their shadow. However,
leaving things at that ignores the sad, eerie, and at times, very
heartfelt beauty that does loom and lurk throughout the album.
Not quite a concept album, The Sad Sea is nevertheless an evocative
recording for doomed voyages through uncharted, treacherous�"and
heartbreakingly beautiful�"waters.
~ Opuszine

Texas-based band members P.D. Wilder (guitar), Justin Lemons (guitar),
Patrick Patterson (violin), Francesca Riedle (violin), and Evan
Caverninha (drums) craft atmospheric violin and guitar-based
instrumentals and on this album the central theme of loss and the sea
washes over all the songs as the bittersweet pleading and, finally,
resigned aching of the violins strain against a more traditional base of
drums, cymbals, and guitar lines.
"From Harbour" starts with a slow, mellow drum beat and reverberating
guitar strum, until the violins arrive and form the main melodic line,
like the sweet, warm ache of someone hopeful, someone waiting
expectantly on the shoreline.  There is a constant frisson in the
background, like that of a radio dial turning through stations of
static, and a wavering sound like the wind that impinges on the sense of
calm.  A bed of lower-tuned, elongated strings and dawning guitar line
opens "The Dirac Sea (Low Tide)" amid tiny chiming notes and cymbal
shimmer, gliding through similar territory as Northern Valentine with
the introduction of distorted, arcing guitar lines that move in and out
of the orchestral texture.
By the time the midpoint of the album comes during "Equator in the
Meantime (Black Sabbath)", scorching rock guitar lines surface along
with a more forceful drum beat and cymbal crash pitted against slow and
measured orchestral strings that form the bedrock of the song.
Repeating runs of piano notes dot "The Shoreline Disappeared" amid
wavering woodwinds and a more placid tone that leads into the turmoil of
"The Dirac Sea (High Tide)", with its darker, low-register strings and
faster clamber of guitars.
The sea closes in on "The Captain goes Down with the Ship (Sinking)" as
higher, softer lines of classical strings embody the bittersweet,
plaintive sadness of a lost cause.  Closer "The Captain goes Down with
the Ship (Drowning)" is stamped with resignation, from its marching beat
to the somber rock guitar lines that mark the end of a journey.
~ Jen Stratosphere, Delusions of Adequacy

This Texas band's latest offering is as grand and sweeping as the state
itself (full discloser, I am a native son... So O.K. I left when I was
six, but still...). Like all Texans, these folks like to spin a yarn.
This tall-ish tale tells of the search for the ghost ship "Marie
Celeste." It recounts a seafaring journey from Galveston Texas to Haiti
in the middle of hurricane season.
"From Harbor" is a pastoral piece with strings, minimal drums and
guitars that gently lap along the surface. It sounds like early Rachel's
meets Mogwai's classic "Ten Rapid." The gentle beauty of the piece might
mislead the listener about the intensity to come. "The durac sea low
tide" actually opens with what sounds like wind. The violins soar as the
drumming slowly builds, first with cymbals then on toms and bass drum.
It then pulls back before the expected crescendo. In "Marie Celeste" the
strings seem thicker and more ominous; it almost enters a Tony Conrad
type territory. It builds layer upon layer. Unlike Conrad there is
variation in the drone; slight changes, while minimal, create a forward
movement.
I am not sure what the reference to Black Sabbath means in the song
title "Equator in the mean time (Black Sabbath)." I am not as up on my
Sabbath as I should be. Anyways, you can feel free to throw the horns or
spark a lighter during this song if you would like. It is the most
intense of the disc so far. Instead of Black Sabbath, this reminds me of
the more eastern-tinged dirges by Bardo Pond.
"The shore line disappeared" is back to the pastoral beauty of the first
song--piano and chiming guitars and what sounds like a saxophone-like
tone, but I think is a violin fed through a pedal. The piano has
suggestions of Peter Jefferies' playing at its most plaintive. It fades
out with layered violins.
"The Dirac sea (high tide)" also has the feel of early Mogwai. The drums
for the first time are way out front. The Guitar and Violin tussle for
dominance. There are electronic water-like gurgles in the background
that end the song.
The song title "The captain goes down with the ship (sinking)" gives you
an idea of the somber tone of this song. The guitar drones ominous
tones, while the violins rise and fall on an foreboding sea. If the ship
is sinking it is sinking slowly. The last song "The captain goes down
with the ship (drowning)" is noticeably more intense. The drums are
fuller, and the guitar is also in front instead of supporting the
violins. It builds and builds but before the release they pull back. The
drummer starts pounding out a military march and the violins let out
last sorrowful tones. Hotel Hotel have made an exceptionally beautiful
record. One complaint, and it is slight, is that I really wish, maybe on
just one song, they fully exploded. Otherwise no sophomore slump for
these guys.
~ Dan Cohoon, Amplitude Equals One Over Frequency Squared

Texas-based ensemble Hotel Hotel have created a near-masterpiece of
experimental rock with this album; mixing the classic set-up of drums,
guitar and bass with violins and an extensive array of effects pedals,
the group has created an opus that stands up alongside the best work of
such acts as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Rachel's, and Mogwai. Arguably
a concept album, The Sad Sea ties its tracks loosely together with
nautical themes that range from the literal, as on the drones and
looping scrapes of "Mary Celeste," to the abstract, as on "The Dirac
Sea," a two-part offering that ranges from tinkly ambient to stony
instrumental rock and which takes its name not from an actual
oceanographic feature, but rather a theoretical vacuum model used in
quantum physics. While the journey begins with the tranquil shuffling
snare and placid, indistinct guitars of "From Harbour," things gradually
begin to take a darker turn, culminating in the two-part "The Captain
Goes Down with the Ship," which starts off with bittersweet guitar-based
ambiance evoking a sense of quiet fatalism that eventually evolves into
a moody rock number, the drums slow but insistent, conjuring the
feelings of terror and claustrophobia as the metaphorical ship's crew
sinks into the airless depths. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating journey,
if not one that ends well, and post-rock fans will definitely find it
one worth embarking upon.
~ Matthew Johnson, Grave Concerns

The post-rock template of quiet/loud/quiet again applies itself well to
the elements. Take a storm, for example. You have the initial brooding,
sultry high pressure, the violence of the event itself and a final
period of placid calm. And where better to experience the intense fury
of nature than in the open ocean? Texan trio Hotel Hotel have taken this
idea and run with it. The result is The Sad Sea, an instrumental tale of
a journey from Galveston to the bottom of the Caribbean in hurricane
season.
As in "event movies" of the huge budget, high fx-count kind, the event
itself has to be convincing otherwise, no matter how well staged the
rest is, disappointment is inevitable. Unfortunately, this is where The
Sad Sea comes unstuck. The two big centrepieces �" "Equator in
the Meantime" and "Dirac Sea (High Tide)" don't convey the brutal force
of the elements in a sufficiently stirring manner. The former has plenty
of crashing cymbals and an organ drone straight out of "The End" by the
Doors, but no real sense of violence, and the latter has big drums and
fuzz guitar, but gets a bit lost along the way.
It's a shame �" the band are victims of their own concept,
really. The scene setting and the post-mortems work very well. "From
Harbour" has a folkish lilt to it, with a whiff of the sea shanty about
the violin. "Dirac Sea (Low Tide)" has a foreboding ambience about it,
and "Mary Celeste" feels genuinely as if all hell is about to break
loose, with its building drones and atonal violin that sounds like the
tension-screech of stretched rigging.
Post-storm, "The Captain Goes Down With His Ship (Sinking)" has a slo-mo
feel to it, like those movie moments when the sound of the surrounding
mayhem is stilled to concentrate on the noble demise of a major
character. "(Drowning)" with its martial drums sounds both like a
military funeral and the big end title theme.
"The Sad Sea" will certainly appeal to fans of Explosions in the Sky, a
band to whom Hotel Hotel with inevitably be frequently compared. It's a
good album, with some very fine atmospheric moments, but doesn't really
live up to the conceit of its concept.
~ Dez Innocent, [sic]magazine

Spirali malinconiche e riverberi spettrali
Presentato in un'elegante confezione cartonata arriva nelle nostre mani
la nuova fatica dei texani Hotel Hotel griffata Silber Records,
etichetta specializzata in musica sperimentale gi�  conosciuta nel
recente passato con gli album di Plumerai e Northern Valentine.
"The Sad Sea" si posiziona stilisticamente a cavallo tra le coordinate
di post-rock ed ambient, offrendo uno spaccato sonoro glaciale sospeso
tra chitarre spettrali e feedback eterei. I paesaggi nostalgici evocati
sono ulteriormente rafforzati dall'utilizzo indovinato dei violini che
accompagnano le evoluzioni musicali senza rubare tuttavia la scena. Le
percussioni si limitano invece ad assistere la strutturazione delle otto
tracce presenti solo con scarne incursioni nei due episodi in cui la
formazione statunitense decide di uscire allo scoperto con un suono
più organico e deciso, "The Dirac Sea (High Tide) " e "The
Captain Goes Down with the Ship ("Drowning").
Nel complesso una proposta corposa che interesser�  i cultori delle
sonorit�  più rarefatte.
~ Alessandro Bonetti, Kronic

Avec un batteur disparu dans d'étranges conditions en 2007 (il
s'est évaporé dans un aéroport sans laisser de
traces), une rencontre fortuite avec un drôle de personnage qui
les lance sur les traces d'une épave de bateau en mer
Caraïbes, les musiciens d'Hotel Hotel ont plus des allures
d'aventuriers ou de héros de roman que de musiciens post-rock.
C'est pourtant dans cette seconde catégorie qu'il convient de les
placer, et s'il est difficile de dégager la réalité
de la fiction concernant l'historique de ce The Sad Sea, force est de
constater la portée émotionnelle indiscutable de ce
disque, évoquant un GodSpeed ou un Stars of The Lid plongé
dans un bain d'abstraction, avec comme fil conducteur ce violon
digressif, instrument fantôme voguant au gré des ambiances
nébuleuses de l'album. Empruntant tour �  tour des mers de
glace ("The captain goes down with the ship") ou des mers de feu
("Equator in the meantime"), The Sad Sea s'affirme comme une �"uvre
elliptique, trouble mais irrémédiablement addictive. L'air
du grand large sans doute.
~ Laurent Catala, Octopus

MWVM: ROTATIONS REMIXED
MWVM, dat is Michael Walton. Een Brit, op gitaar en effecten. Het album
Rotations, dat uitkwam op Silber Records, bespraken we al eerder. Nu is
al enige tijd een geremixte versie van dit album gratis downloadbaar.
Maar hoe bevalt dat werkje?
Nou allereerst moet opgemerkt dat we Rotations al niet superspannend
vonden. Gitaardrones en manipulaties die niet erg donker of spannend
werden. Geleidelijk evoluerend, zonder echt spanning op te bouwen. Op
Rotations Remixed blijft dat probleem een beetje.
De nummers zijn herbewerkt door vrienden van MWVM, zoals Sonicslice en
de Astral Social Club. Dat levert versies op die flink van elkaar
verschillen. Op het ene nummer wordt compleet nieuwe muziek toegevoegd,
het volgende wordt vooral voller gesampled, het volgende juist
leeggeplukt.
Overall blijft echter helaas gelden dat daar waar het basismateriaal
niet spannend is, het erg lastig is om de remixes wel spannend te maken.
Eigenlijk zou ik mensen die mwvm willen verkennen aanraden te gaan voor
het originele rotations album, omdat dat meer een album is dan een serie
bij elkaar geraapte bewerkingen.
Voor hen die mwvm leuk vinden is deze gratis download ongetwijfeld een
leuke toevoeging. Voor mij is het echter compleet overbodig.
~ Jaap Kamminga, IkEcht

HOTEL HOTEL: UNDER SEA, OVER STORM
Hotel Hotel are from Texas--the land of Koresh, armadillos, and home of
the United State's 43rd President.
Don't let the amount of dreck to ooze from the Lone Star State frighten
you--for all the preconceived bad, there's a lot of factual good. Hotel,
Hotel just happens to represent the latter with their unique
guitar/violin assault on post-rock (or as label Silber puts it--and we
agree--whatever it's called this month).
The band is offering up a free EP in anticipation of the fall
full-length, The Sad Sea. The 40 minute live performance of Under Sea,
Over Storm was captured in October 2005 but is seeing the light of day
for the first time. To listen or download the EP, just follow the link.
It will be a triumph for the great state of Texas.
~ Electronic Voice Phenomenon

Het Texaanse Hotel Hotel is al sinds 2005 actief. In de tijd tussen toen
en nu kwamen er een EP uit en dit gratis te downloaden live-werkje uit.
Een werkje ter introductie op Silber Records, dat binnenkort hun
debuutalbum uitbrengt. Op dit live-werkje een optreden dat ook al uit
2005 stamt en is opgenomen in J&J's in Denton, Texas.
Wat brengt dit kwartet ons? We horen is experimentele post-rock, met
twee violen in plaats van een bas. Met noise-invloeden en flink wat
drones. Hierbij klinkt het alsof er ook flink op los geexperimenteerd
wordt bij een live-optreden. Het geheel levert een erg vol geluid op,
dat soms iets te veel een kluwen wordt.
Maar wat we ook door de kluwen heen horen is de grote invloed van
Godspeed You Black Emperor en het feit dat ze dat geluid wel degelijk
proberen te vernieuwen. Geen spraaksamples, regelmatig wel evenveel
beklemming. Als dit de opwarmer is en het "oude" hotel hotel, ben ik erg
benieuwd wat er van komt als ze de studio induiken en zelf al
doorgegroeid zijn.
Helemaal lyrisch word ik hier nog niet van, maar onder de indruk ben ik
zeker. Een aanrader, helemaal voor die prijs (helemaal gratis), zeer de
moeite waard. Doch luistert u hieronder toch zelf, alvorens u het werkje
download.
~ Jaap Kamminga, IkEcht

SLICNATON: THE NOISEFLOOR EP
Slicnaton is the work of bassist Nicholas Slaton, who combines
electronic music and improvisation to create haunting, challenging slabs
of musique concrète across this half hour EP. Compiled from live
studio improvisations using mistreated electronic equipment, Slaton's
glitch samples and looped sound effects battle hypnotic repetitions from
pedals and samplers to create ambient atmospheres that are equally at
home in a horror movie soundtrack or in Dr. Frankenstein's lab. Perfect
Halloween music, but not for the squeamish or feint of heart.
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis


ELECTRIC BIRD NOISE: LE VESTIBULE - VESTIBULE TRANSITOIRE
South Carolina guitarist Brian Lea McKensie's fourth album under the EBN
monikor is an ambient wash of haunting electronic soundscapes in the
mould of Stars of The Lid and Windy & Carl, et. al. As the title
suggests, the release consists of two sidelong tracks of soothing guitar
lines, supplemented by ebow stroking and feedback looping. (The titles
refer to the radio show, "Le Vestibule" with DJ, Jean-Francois Fecteau,
for which they were originally recorded and they are here released on
McKenzie's own label with distribution through the fine folks at Silber
Media.)
Fans of Eno's ambient works will also enjoy these soundtrack style
offerings, which paint musical pictures on the insides of your eyelids
with their swaying processed loops that will have your heads swirling
throughout. I can almost hear these sonic tones accompanying some
Discovery Channel special on the origins of the Universe! Warm,
enveloping, claustrophobic, yet as comforting as grandma's arms on a
cold Winter afternoon. Simply amazing!
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

On his latest release, Brian Lea McKenzie, otherwise known as
experimental rock composer Electric Bird Noise, moves further into
minimalist realms; the entire album, which consists of just two extended
tracks, was created using an electric guitar and an arsenal of reverb,
digital delay, and distortion pedals. The first track, "La Vestibule,"
is the more sonically extreme of the two, starting off with fairly
typical space rock loops and guitar effects that mimic vintage analog
synthesizers, but as the loops begin to pan sharply back and fourth
across the stereo channels it becomes hypnotic, almost disorienting.
There's a particular unsubtle quality to the song's trance-inducing
repetition that makes for an interesting listen; "La Vestibule" doesn't
try to lull you into an altered state of consciousness, it practically
forces you there, whether you like it or not. Despite it's more
insistent qualities, it does still leave room for subtlety, and if it's
rather intense in places, it's an interesting journey, especially in the
latter half of the song, where the distortion fades into a sparse but
still rhythmic loop of windy fuzz before building back into a wash of
freight train-sized clatter. Second track "Vestibule Transitoire" is a
much more mellow offering, with deep ambient tones and eerie, drawn-out
accents in higher pitches. It's also slightly more recognizable as a
guitar piece, with sparse harmonic touches giving way to a low feedback
buzz. More soothing than the previous track, it nonetheless employs
occasional moments of chaos to keep things from moving too deep into
drone territory, and makes for a wonderfully somber meditation,
especially paired with the more forceful "La Vestibule." Experimental
but quite listenable, this release will especially appeal to fans of
such acts as Fear Falls Burning, Windy and Carl, and Bass Communion.
~ Matthew Johnson, Grave Concerns

This is the 4th full-length album of Electric Bird Noise. This project
set up by Brian Lea McKenzie is a special one, as it sounds quite
different from his previous work. That's because there's a kind of
concept behind the album. It was made for a radio show "Le Vestibule".
It results in 2 long duration pieces of music bringing us more than 50
minutes of ambient music. The main instrument of McKenzie remains the
guitar and it's totally amazing to hear in which way he brings guitar
play into deep and meaningful ambient music. The opening cut (cf. "Le
Vestibule") is pure soundtrack like and I had to wait for more than 11
minutes to get some evolution in the song writing. A kind of disturbing
sound emerges to the surface accentuating a darker part. Next comes
"Vestibule Transitoire" which brings us 26 minutes of mysterious
atmospheres. This track is definitely colder while the low keyboard
tones only reinforce certain tormenting feelings. The guitar parts are
once again amazing and it's definitely magic to hear the way this
instrument can be played and used! Electric Bird Noise is minimal,
conceptual and experimental so definitely for a very restricted number
of people! Well, I'm sure they will love it!
~ Side-Line

The latest from EBN (interesting enough, the same initials for Emergency
Broadcast Network) is two tracks of about 25 minutes each. Because of
this, instead of informing us of "key" or "recommended" tracks, the
label gives us "recommended transition points." I think this is a first.
Brian Lea McKenzie's experimental drones --produced mainly by
guitar---are stunningly unearthly. If there are indeed cosmic soundwaves
eminating from the depths of the galaxy, the Bird Noise is eerily close
to its representation.
~ Kenyon Hopkin, Advance Copy

XO#4, LOST KISSES #6, & WORMS #2
More matchbook-size madness from Silber Media as the ultra-tiny comics
continue with humor and mayhem.
Writer Brian John Mitchell crafts three different stories with three
different distinct voices in each of his three matchbook style comics
�" an impressive accomplishment for an indie writer. XO is
written from the point of view of a cold-hearted assassin trying to
change his life… with a distinct lack of success, while Lost
Kisses chronicles the everyday adventures of a guy drifting through life
and coming to realize things profound, mundane, and sometimes stupid.
Worms, on the other hand, is an adventure in a surreal
dreamscape… or is it all a dream?
In this installment of XO our nameless hitman finds his nice neighbor
lady outside the apartment complex having an argument with her abusive
boyfriend. Of course, our protagonist tries to do the nice
thing…
In Lost Kisses the nameless lead takes a look at his current girlfriend
and tries to decide if her good qualities outweigh her bad or
vice-versa. Of course, what he considers good and bad qualities varies
considerably.
Finally, with Worms the unnamed female protagonist wakes up from her
nightmare… or does she? The surrealism continues �" is
this all just one extended dream? Is she insane and this is part of her
delusion? Or could there be more than meets the eye going on here?
Mitchell switches voice from comic to comic with ease and each one feels
true to character and to genre. With XO, while the story may be pretty
simple and easily straightforward, that is because it is really more of
a form to hang this peculiar brand of black humor on. That kind of black
humor that comes from awkward, sudden, and brutal violence and a person
so far outside of society they cannot see the strangeness of it all. It
is a little in the vein of the movie Grosse Point Blank. Lost Kisses, on
the other hand, is weirder and funnier. Based (a tiny bit) on Mitchell's
own life, the first person narrator seems stereotypically young and a
little off-kilter. Trying to make sense of life and of love, the voice
bounces from the ridiculous to the sublime and the reader can sometimes
see a bit of themselves here �" both the times when we are
unaccountably brilliant and the times when we are shamefully shallow and
superficial. Worms is an interesting experiment but, as an ongoing, it
has been a little hampered by the long delay between issues. I have to
confess that I didn't clearly remember the story from the previous issue
and, being the size of a book of matches means there isn't room for a
recap page. Still, Mitchell does manage to capture the twisted
surrealism and landscape architecture of dreams and bend them into a
story.
Mitchell puts on his artist's cap for Lost Kisses and handles the
simple, stick-figure art. There are no backgrounds to speak of but his
simple, deliberately kindergarten style adds to the humor, whimsy, and
oddness of the piece. Melissa Spence Gardner handles the artist duties
on XO, however, and she proves that she is growing more and more
comfortable with the space constraints and actually using them to her
advantage. The matchbook size makes extreme close-ups even more intense
and she sprinkles these throughout the story. Backgrounds, however, are
still mostly non-existent as she instead focuses on the characters.
Kimberlee Traub takes on the art for Worms. As with the others, the
small scale of the medium keeps her artwork limited… perhaps a
bit too limited. She has a nice, spare style and she obviously
understands the unrealism of the story but her single panels look a bit
disjointed when viewed as a whole.
These three mini-comics are each an interesting experiment in
storytelling in more ways than one. At $1.00 each they are an affordable
way to test out a unique series of independent comics and with a size
smaller than the palm of your hand they can be read anywhere at any
time.
~ Tonya Crawford, Broken Frontier

Lost Kisses, Brian talks about women in general.  It appears the
information is brought on from the experiences found in his life.  The
woman in focus in this story has a history of mental abuse and other
type of abuses.  She is a pathological liar.  She has been in terrible
relationships. The boy in this story is somewhat shallow and remarks on
the aberrations he finds on her body.  She appears to be a gold digger,
her intimacy seems faked.  You get two sides of this picture.  In a
second story, it seems like a dream come true and the other story is
horror around every corner.  Some of these stories remind me of my
Starbucks coffee dates.  There are personality conflicts, they don't
look like their picture, they live beyond their means, they are shallow
and egotistical.  To find the perfect woman is as hard as capturing a
Bigfoot.  In Worms, you have a woman that has a gun battle with a
policeman, she finds herself tied up on a gurney and taken to a hospital
where they are intravenously giving their patients a solution that has
tiny worms in it...yep, we have a big mystery and it will continue....
In XO, a guy is a good Samaritan and saves a girl from a brutal attack
by some ruffian guy.  The good Samaritan breaks the ruffian's finger,
punches him in the face and accidently kills him.  He now has to clean
up this accidental murder.  He should have minded his own business.
Silbermedia has extreme entertainment in small packages.  I am headed
for Aruba and Argentina, I can carry these comics in my shirt pocket and
read them on my layovers, it can't get any better than that!
~ Paul Dale Roberts, JazmaOnline

In this edition of Breaking Ground, we are taking a look at three
mini-comics produced by Silber Media: xo, Worms, and Lost Kisses.
We pick up the xo story with issue #4, "Neighbors" where our empathetic
sociopath is drawn into interfering with his neighbor's argument. While
our retired hired gun's interference is well intentioned, he only knows
one way to solve problems. He stuffs the drunken, abusive, passed out
boyfriend into a car, drives down the road, and...you have to pick up
this mini-comic! The art packs a TKO punch and the storyline is darkly
funny (along the lines of Chuck Pahaniuk's novels). The artwork is by
Melissa Spence Gardner and the story and words are by Brian John
Mitchell.
The Worms mini-comic is only two issues in, and the first issue tells
the story of how a young girl witnesses the murder of her father. Taking
a look at issue #2, "Capture" has our girl waking up, still clinging to
the gun she stole from the murderers. She tries to elude her captors in
hospital halls that never end, rooms that are reminiscent of WWII
infirmaries, and witnesses malevolent medical treatments. The art
conveys the confusion, fear, and entrapment mirrored by our heroin's
plight. For those of you who love H.P. Lovecraft and Franz Kafka, you'll
appreciate the references. The artwork is by Kimberlee Traub and the
story and words are by Brian John Mitchell.
Lost Kisses #6, "She's at least as Good as She is Evil," is a collection
of standalone laughs rather than a continuation of the story. This comic
is a veritable yin and yang with its "Reasons to Run and Hide" on the
front and the "Reasons to Stay by Her Side" on the back (or would that
be front?). As for "Reasons to Run and Hide," if you are bitter from a
recent break up, you will identify your ex-psycho on this side and have
a hearty (and relieved) laugh. Take solace, it was the right decision.
And for "Reasons to Stay by Her Side," this side will give the
self-aware co-dependent a good chuckle. As for me, I certainly see a
former boyfriend-turned-stalker depicted on this side. The draw-dropping
stick-figure art, as well as the story, is by Brian John Mitchell.
For comics that are only as big as a Goliath's thumb, I'm giving these
two thumbs up!
~ Katie Riley, Comic Related

In many ways, minicomics are the purest form of comicbook expression.
Written and drawn in an artistic form of guerilla theatre, they are
photocopied and stapled by people who genuinely love the artform and see
it as a way to present their thoughts and ideas and not just as a way to
make their name. Whenever I hit a major con, I always put aside a piece
of my budget to find and buy new minis. But occasionally, I also receive
some in the mail for review, and that was the case with these three
minis from Brian John Mitchell. And Mitchell has taken the minicomic to
an even more literal place; rather than the usual 8.5 by 5.5 inch mini,
these are two inches by two inches, about the size of a matchbook.
XO #4 is the best of the three, a surprising and darkly finny piece of
work. A man arrives home from the grocery store to find his female
neighbor arguing with her lout of a boyfriend and intervenes against his
better nature. What happens from there goes south in a hurry, and the
ultimate resolution has a wonderfully black heart in the center of its
chest. Melissa Spence Gardner does a terrific job of using the tiny
amount of space on the page to its fullest effect, employing her inks
diligently to maximize the panels' ability to move the story forward.
One recommendation- I didn't read the PR about the story ahead of time,
and I was glad because it contained a spoiler that would have taken some
of the edge off the story. Should you choose to buy one of these, avoid
any descriptive text.
Right behind XO in my preference would be WORMS #2. This story, which
focuses on a young woman waking to find herself in a nightmarish
hospital, fills its pages with tension and dread, and again finds a way
to use the small format to positive effect. Artist Kimberlee Traub goes
with a more minimalist look, allowing the reader's imagination to fill
in the blanks as the girl tries to free herself from what appears to be
a horrible fate on the horizon. Mitchell's script is mining a rich vein
of traditional sci-fi horror tropes here, but it doesn't feel warmed
over.
Lastly is LOST KISSES #6, Mitchell's meditation on whether or not the
woman in your life is right for you. It's a flipbook, presenting the
good things on one side and the bad on the other, and while I understood
what Mitchell was trying to do (be funny and work out some issues he's
gone through in his past) it just never took hold for me. I felt that
way in large part because nothing here felt surprising or revelatory;
instead, it felt like old hat- like a supplement to "He's Just Not That
Into You." Put up against his work in the other two minis, this is
definitely the weak sauce in the Mitchell oeuvre.
~ Marc Mason, Comics Waiting Room

LOST KISSES #6
The king of very tiny comics is back! OK, maybe I'm not allowed to call
him the king of tiny comics.  Many people are making mini comics, and
many of them are pretty damned tiny, but very few people I know are this
prolific while keeping their books this tiny… and still
managing to pack engaging stories in the little things.  This issue is a
flip book (both by Brian), with one half detailing the reasons he should
stay with his girlfriend and the other detailing the reasons he should
leave.  He makes a point in the beginning of the mini to say that this
isn't about any specific girl in his life, and I suppose that's true of
the comic as a whole, but a number of panels here just have to be about
one person.  Still, it's not like he's going to get sued or anything, as
these minimalistic images make lawsuits pretty unlikely.   On the
negative side, yes, he goes into things that are true of a lot of women,
and no, I don't think it's misogynistic to say so.  His negatives are
lying, a lack of willingness to deal with past emotional scarring,
spider veins, her being over her ideal body weight, appearance being
more important than reality, having no taste in art, and rogue nipple
hairs.  On the plus side, his positives for a girlfriend are
intelligence, a sense of humor, better self-esteem, the peace he feels
while holding her, good hair, musical skill, and the simple fact that he
loves her.  Granted, some of the negatives are pretty petty, and some of
the positives are generalities that you see in every dating ad to ever
exist, but this is still a fascinating book.  Leave this on the coffee
table (if anybody even sees it amidst the clutter) and sit back and wait
for all the awkward conversations that are sure to follow.  Like
everything else I've seen from this guy, it's well worth a look, that's
for sure.
~ Kevin Bramer, Optical Sloth

LOST KISSES #5 & xo #3
Yep, that's about actual size for this comic.  It was actually shrunk
from a smaller size a few years back and is now right around the size of
a pack of matches, but somehow Brian manages to pack all sorts of
goodness into this tiny package.  This is a short version of the story
of Brian's life, his struggles to keep friends, to distinguish himself
from humanity as a whole (although I would submit that a continuing
interest in this medium is a good start), and his surprising lack of
interest in many self-perceived failings.  Turns out (spoiler alert!)
that he has something called Asperger's, so maybe this odd
disconnectedness he's feeling is simply a matter of faulty brain wiring.
Honestly, when I see a comic this tiny, the best I'm hoping for is maybe
a good joke or two, something mildly amusing because of the novelty
format.  The fact that he was able to put together an emotionally moving
story while still being oddly disaffecting is impressive as hell to me.
You can order all five issues at his website for $3.50, or maybe, what,
$1 apiece?  This is well worth seeking out for anybody who has ever felt
listless and directionless, which I'm guessing is just about everybody
reading this at one time or another...
~ Kevin Bramer, Optical Sloth

Two different mini-comics tell two very different stories all in a
format no bigger than a book of matches.
Indie writer Brian John Mitchell continues two of his "tiny" projects
with new issues of his mini-comics XO, about a serial killer trying to
reform, and the slice of life story Lost Kisses, about a young man
trying to understand life, emotion and everything that goes with it.
Both comics are only about the size of a book of matches and black and
white.
In this issue of XO readers take a trip back to the past and witness the
first time this assassin for hire killed. It may not be for the reasons
you think…
In Lost Kisses the narrator ponders his bad luck at relationships,
questions his lack of feeling and then must struggle with a sudden
diagnosis that, while it explains certain things, now raises more
questions.
Mitchell has a genuine talent for managing to write stories that read
densely in just a short amount of space. This issue of XO, however,
feels a bit more like a vignette rather than a complete story. The
spare, clinical prose, while it does give insight into the mindset of a
man who can kill with an equal, clinical detachment, also keeps the
reader too much at arm's length. The tale ends up feeling more like a
vignette or a scene rather than a complete story.
Lost Kisses, on the other hand, not only feels complete, it leaves the
reader a bit dizzy and pondering. The narrator embarks on an almost
adolescent cataloging of faults and failings and yet breezes over them
with a self-deprecating humor that borders on self-flagellation. The
reader goes through an emotional turn as they may find the author's
attitude at times juvenilely annoying and at other times feel a kind of
sadness and sympathy for his plight. The interesting point being that
the narrator himself experiences no real emotions throughout and does
not experience the same events in the same way the reader takes them.
XO is illustrated by Melissa Spence Gardner in a simple, slightly
manga-influenced style that nevertheless manages to convey quite a bit
in just a little space. With a canvas only the size of a matchbook she
wisely focuses on close-shots and keeps the details and surroundings to
a minimum �" but not so little that readers cannot follow the
action. Lost Kisses, however, is illustrated by Mitchell himself and
features his usual stick-figure style. Being stick-figure based, he
focuses on representational and metaphorical action rather than
attempting for any kind of realism.
While both of these titles manage to provide quite a bit of story and
impact for a buck a piece, this month's edition of Lost Kisses is the
more well-rounded read. If you are in the market for something a lot
different, something imminently portable, and something that you can
read in class or a meeting without getting caught then these mini-comics
are worth a look.
~ Tonya Crawford, Broken Frontier

xo#1-3
Format can do a lot to influence the attractiveness of a book, but even
unique and unexpected styles of bookmaking can blend in at big
conventions like MoCCA or APE. However, at a small Midwestern show like
the Madison Zine Fest, unconventional books have a chance to really
stand out.
It was there that I noticed three ultra-mini minis
(1.75×2.25″) sleeved in small plastic bags and sitting
unattended on a banister. I thought about taking them. They would fit in
my pocket. No one would know. The sensation passed, however, and good
karma struck back. The books were given as a gift to my table mate who
gave them to me. Now I share them with you.
Baby corn, puppies, doll-sized furniture - typically these and other
small things define cute. One might expect that XO, a series of mini
minis would be cute as well. Even the series' title XO implies kisses
and hugs and touchy-feely stuff. However, these books are anything but
cute, because each contains a story of murder.
It's completely disarming and even kind of funny, if such a topic can
ever be funny. The stories are told from the first-person perspective of
a guy who without emotion keeps killing people either by accident or
without remorse. The guy is a total sociopath, and the things he does
are so unbelievably dry and strange, it makes the book's plastic
slip-case seem like a metaphorical body bag or some caution to keep out
the younger set.
Each page is filled with a single illustrative panel hovering above a
few sentences of plot, in a kind of Far Side style perversion. The odd
combination of art, layout and typography makes the stories seem even
weirder. Thick, awkward lines outline human shapes and thin straight
lines accent the shadows. Each drawing is trapped tightly in a box and
clipped at all sides to make room for the words. The font used is some
standard sans serif, one you might use on a website or a term paper or,
you know, an unassuming murderous comic book series.
Each book left me stunned and laughing awkwardly just to release the
unexplainable tension. I'd call them modestly awesome. You can pick up
copies of XO dirt cheap for $1 apiece or all three for $2 from Silber
Media.
~ Sarah Morean, The Daily Cross Hatch

Here's another tiny mini by Brian, as it looks like he enjoys sticking
with that matchbox format. This it's a fictional (I hope) tale about a
young man's first murder, as he sees another man with his girlfriend and
snaps. Smashing a head in is generally a sure way to kill somebody, and
the man spends the rest of the tiny issue methodically dealing with the
body and the consequences, slight as they are. It's a thoroughly creepy
book and Melissa does a great job with very little space to convey a
complex range of emotions on these characters. This is probably $1 like
the other issue and you could still get all of these comics for a
pittance, not to mention the ridiculously tiny envelope they could all
fit in…
~ Optical Sloth

ZOMBIE KISSES
Brian John Mitchell hits on naturalistic areas unexplored in the Zombie
sub-genre and out-Romeros [George] Romero in his social commentary of
modern man's proclivity toward mindless consumerist escapism in the face
of epidemic catastrophe...There is a subtle altruistic streak that
snakes through the seemingly cynical storyline, revealing the tender and
selfless inclinations incipient in even the most weary of 21st Century
post-Apocalyptic survivors. Every action his characters take is
devastating and enveloping, working that much more sharply due to the
fine episodic form in which they play out. Zombie Kisses is an ironic
work in that it dares to be serious.
~ Bob Frevillle, Kotori Magazine




type_D

Hey Kidz,

I know I should have posted this info to you long ago as I got the
reviews in, but here's a metric ton.

VARIOUS ARTISTS: WINTERIZING
You can tell it's Christmas when the nights start drawing in, the days
get colder (ok maybe not if you're reading this in the southern
hemisphere), the neighbours deck their abodes in enough lights to guide
the Shuttle and Silber release their annual Christmas compilation.
This years compilation is full of the usual intriguing collection of
Norwegian folk, shoegaze, nu-gaze, ambient and experiments in sound but
with a twist. There's a lack of covers of Christmas classics! But don't
let that get you down, if you want to hear the Christmas classics you
can take a trip to the local department store. This year is also unusual
as half the artists have never appeared on a Silber compilation before.
And, as every track can be downloaded for free from Silber's website,
the album won't set you back a penny. At a time of year when the credit
card goes into meltdown free is fantastic.
So sit back with a mug of eggnog in front of a roaring fire (or the
southern hemisphere's equivalent) for two eclectic hours of festive
tunes
Paul Kerr, The Devil Has the Best Tuna

NORTHERN VALENTINE: THE DISTANCE BRINGS US CLOSER
Northern Valentine's The Distance Brings Us Closer uses a familiar
ultimate atmospheric minimalist drone aesthetic along the lines of Stars
of the Lid to achieve its goal, but I can't say that I mind as long as
the results go this far into the eerie depths of the Atlantic Sea. The
always-reliable Silber label that put this disc out claims that drone,
love, honesty and sound are the key words to describe what they do and I
am tempted to use the very same words to describe this disc. This
husband and wife duo is apparently from Philadelphia, but judging by the
sound this was probably recorded with the imaginary view of a
never-ending horizon or the sea at dawn in mind.
~ Mats Gustafson, The Broken Face

Like the gorgeous, frozen landscape photographs (from their recent
Icelandic tour) that adorn the cover of this Philadelphia husband-wife
duo's seventh album, Amy and Robert Brown's music (supplemented by bass
and two additional guitarists) creates an expansive atmosphere of
loneliness. Like Stars of The Lid, Windy & Carl, and label mates,
Aarktica, Northern Valentine's music delivers a sense of floating in
space or a communion with nature where the listener is enveloped in
clouds of billowing sonics. The listener's imagination can run wild
creating images to accompany this ambient soundtrack and opener, "Born
Yesterday" seems to capture the awe and mystery of an infant floating
inside its mother's amniotic fluid.
The heavily treated trio of guitars imbues "Dimanche" with a frightful,
almost industrialized aura, which like much of the album could easily
serve as a post-modern soundtrack to David Lynch's underground classic,
Eraserhead. The syncopated sonar beeps hovering in the background of
"Escaping Light" add a Floydian touch, ca. "Echoes," while Amy's
extemporaneous piano tinkling adds an air of haunting dread. The set
ends with the melancholic-yet-hopeful, "Already Gone" that perhaps
signifies that the titular couple in the album's title have resigned
themselves to the distances that physically keep them apart, yet their
love strengthens their relationship and does, indeed, bring them closer.
In sum, an awesomely hypnotic listening experience. 9/10
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

Chilly spacious distance with random muted industrial movements in dense
fog. Full and shrouded in supernatural mystery. Cold empathic visions of
the beginnings and endings of the universe. Subtly warm reassurances of
far away factories humming with artificial life. Ice as far as the eye
can see, the wind murmurs like ghosts.
~ George Parsons, Dream Magazine

Over here in the UK Northern Valentine has been picked up for
distribution by Cold Spring Records, a low key yet superior outlet for
doom, drone, industrial and noise music. The cult following behind Cold
Spring will no doubt bring attention to the group that may have
otherwise been lost, and deserving they are of this attention too!
Consisting of Philadelphia couple Robert & Amy Brown, Northern Valentine
explores soundscapes and ambient, otherworldly drones with minimal
instruments (guitar, keyboard and on occasion Violin).
The first of these new recordings (‘Born Yesterday') on
‘The Distance Brings us Closer' is class A prime cut ambience,
an icy and echoed piece that glides effortlessly like Phlegyas might on
the river Styx and at fifteen minutes long, the group have more than
enough time to muse over and caress every subtle utterance from the
track for the listener to enjoy.
‘Dies Solis' follows in a similar vein, with a minimal and
haunting tone, both distant and meditative, that takes full power of the
senses when listened to, working on a hypnotic level that would have the
six minutes of transmission seem to last merely thirty seconds.
Likewise with ‘Escaping Light' that while still as ambient and
hypnotic as its predecessors carries and air of foreboding and
surrealism heightened when via the haunting piano piece that slowly
sneaks its way into the mix.
Silber once again are the unsung heroes of drone and ambience, taking up
the mantle for these genres by adding another strong and experienced
group to their roster, ‘The Distance Brings us Closer' is
going to be a palpable hit for drone fans everywhere.
~ Michael Byrne, Left Hip

Hailing from Philadelphia (USA) Northern Valentine is the brainchild of
Robert & Amy Brown (who are married and partners in crime for this
project). Armed with guitar, violin and keyboards they compose what has
been called ‘post rocking ambient music'. I totally agree for
the ambient part, which is for sure worthy of examination. While some of
their compositions can move on the edge of experimental (cf. "Escaping
Light") the main tracks are definitely covering a wide ambient fields
filled with icy tones. The guitar play is quite interesting for the cool
effects on top of it and comes to reinforce and enlarge the ambient
sonority of this composition. Northern Valentine has this little
original touch in composing ambient music and that's for sure what I
like here! The "Dimanche"-cut is a real outstanding piece in an
open-minded ambient style. After several albums on Baresongs Music this
project now joined Silber Records and this debut-album on their new
label is a fascinating piece and a real good surprise!
~  Side-Line

And Their Refinement of the Decline stands as the current high watermark
in ambient/drone music as far as I'm concerned. What Stars of the Lid
did on that album, more so even when compared to their past work, was
conquer the most valid criticism of the genre. Often drone can become
static and stagnant, even claustrophobic, but with Their Refinement,
Stars of the Lid showed that ambient/drone can contain constant subtle
movement and that with said movement comes a tremendous amount of
expression; a soundscape so bleak that it's entirely beautiful at the
same time. Essentially, Their Refinement is a successful synthesis of
form and expression.
So, approaching The Distance Brings Us Closer was a conscious decision
to establish both where the expression lies and how it's carried out.
The form doesn't make any great leaps outside of the established genre.
Comparisons can be made easily to other bands like Hammock or Windy &
Carl, but really only on a track by track basis, as the whole of the
album is something different. The rolling and sweeping movement of Their
Refinement is not here, but the album is not static either. The
expression of Their Refinement is that of rumination, almost a
travelling through the landscape of memory and regret, times long gone,
but The Distance it's something more immediate, something in the
present, distance itself perhaps, both a presence and an absence. At the
forefront of each track is the droning guitar work - all consuming,
demanding the listener's attention - but behind it, at all times,
there's something bubbling and changing and brewing.
There are five tracks on the album, but it's still a nice forty
five-minute piece. Often, the real gem of each track is buried deep
within it. There's a real patience involved; waiting out the distance
hoping it will bring us closer. Behind certain tracks there are subtle
hints of tribalism, as if Grails were recording in the studio next door,
and the walls didn't quite stop the bleed through. It never fully
develops, but it's often there. "Born Yesterday" is the opening track
and the longest at just over fifteen minutes, and just about halfway
through this swirling miasma of guitar, the tiny clear voice of chimes
cuts through. Similarly, the track "Escaping Light" has what sounds like
processed flute work in the beginning and the tiniest hint of hand drums
throughout. But, "Escaping Light" does a lot more too and is probably
the track that stands out the most as far as establishing a Northern
Valentine sound. Towards the middle of the six minutes piano keys starts
fluttering through the drone and an upright bass plods through the
background shadows as well.
If Northern Valentine set out to express the emotions felt in the face
of distance, the anxiety, the helplessness, the way it is a giant burden
made out of nothing, then I'd say they succeeded. The album is both
immediate and elusive at once. It requires both patience and the ability
to feel, and it can hold its own amongst the comparisons it's likely to
draw.
~ Michael Lutomski, The Silent Ballet

Thanks to bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, Explosions
In The Sky, A Silver Mt. Zion and especially Sigur Rós the
post-rock genre has grown up in the last few years. With every new album
these bands reached for a higher level, and thanks too that the full
level of this genre is now much higher than several years ago. The
consequence of this change is that other bands also need to release
better music. That means: if they want to follow these post-rock giants.
Northern Valentine from Pennsylvania is one of those bands. The band, in
which the married couple Robert and Amy Brown are the main characters,
is now releasing its new album The distance brings us closer. At this
album we hear post-rock in combination with ambient. You can compare
this music with the music of Sigur Rós, but without the angelical
singing and the energy that gives every Sigur Rós album a special
complexion. Northern Valentine is not doing much more than playing
nature like keyboard sounds, repeating soundscapes and a few guitar and
violin chords. Although it would not be honest to say this is terrible
music, it's also not honest to say Northern Valentine is doing something
very special over here. Even more, I think it's right to say that,
thanks too the lack of vocals, tension and creativity, this album is a
little bit boring. That's a shame, because listening to The distance
brings us closer it does sounds like this band could do a lot more. If
only Robert and Amy would experiment more, than this album could have
been much better.
~ Gothtronic

Une mer désespérément vide qui s'étend sans
limite jusqu'�  se confondre avec le ciel menaçant. Un titre
qui évoque un sentiment de solitude et d'abattement. La musique
de Northern Valentine ne respire bien évidemment pas la joie de
vivre. Et malgré son nom en chausse-trappe, le groupe de
Philadelphie ne s'adonne pas au même bouillonnement tellurique
que My Bloody Valentine. S'ils ont retenu une chose du génie de
Kevin Shields, ce serait plutôt cette capacité �
étirer une note de guitare �  l'infini. Au jeu des
références, il faudrait plutôt aller chercher un
rapprochement du coté de Windy & Carl, Flying Saucer Attack et
Labradford. The Distance Brings Us Closer est en effet une
odyssée aquatique qui se décline en 5 longues
pièces instrumentales. Born Yesterday, qui s'étire sur
plus de 15 minutes, donne vraiment l'impression de voler juste au-dessus
de l'océan, avec pour seul point de repère un horizon
vide, �  bord d'un avion d'espionnage. L'étendue d'eau
défile sous nos yeux, sans y déceler âme qui
vive...l'ambiance est tendue, les sens aux aguets, �
l'écoute du moindre détail. Avec un minimum de notes (et
quand même 3 guitares électriques !), Northern Valentine
s'applique �  instaurer une atmosphère, avec des nappes
lancinantes en lieu et place d'une ligne mélodique intelligible.
Réverbération et delays sont fort (bien) employés
pour créer la matière sonore qui ondule au fil des plages
vaporeuses, du roulis et des vagues qui incitent �  la torpeur.
Cette longue variation autour de motifs aquatiques entraine l'auditeur
au cours de fascinantes dérives, au fil des courants et des
rencontres inquiétantes (Dimanche, sur lequel se dessine la
silhouette d'un navire �  l'horizon, avant de disparaitre) et qui
mènent l'auditeur jusque sous la ligne de flottaison (la
plongée féérique d'Escaping Ligths) puis dans les
profondeurs du grand bleu, avec Already Gone balisé par le sonar
lointain d'un sous-marin furtif. The Distance Brings Us Closer
s'achève, on remonte �  la surface, on ouvre la
fenêtre, �  la recherche de l'équilibre et
d'éléments stables.
~ Denis Frelat, Autres Directions

É nuovamente tempo di tuffarci nel mondo post-rock e lo facciamo
questa volta immergendoci nelle sonorit�  rarefatte dei Northern
Valentine. Gravitante intorno alla coppia sposata e formata da Robert e
Amy Brown (rispettivamente chitarrista e violinista/tastierista),
aiutati da altri chitarristi e bassisti, la formazione di Filadelfia ha
sfornato un lavoro che affonda salde radici nella musica ambient.
Le cinque composizioni presenti sono immerse in riverberi e feedback
generando un suono composito, i cui molteplici richiami compongono un
mosaico omogeneo dove risaltano i quindici minuti siderali di "Born
Yesterday". La linea di demarcazione tra i singoli brani non è
sempre chiarissmia, l'opera di per sé è una lenta colata
lavica che scorre ininterrotta per quarantacinque minuti.
Delicatamente romantico "The Distance Brings Us Closer" è
un'interessante fusione ambient/post-rock che si articola lungo
molteplici strati sonori pur conservando un forte senso della melodia.
~ Alessandro Bonetti, Kronic

Marito e moglie nella vita di ogni giorno in quel di Philadelphia,
Robert (chitarra) e Amy Brown (violino e tastiere) vivono da undici anni
una curiosa storia discografica fatta di sei dischi ormai rari che un
giorno mi piacerebbe ascoltare. I cinque lunghi brani del nuovo "The
Distance Brings Us Closer", registrati "live in studio" con due chitarre
ed un basso aggiuntivi, navigano su e giù lungo i meridiani di
quel post-rock ambientale e dronato che è ormai il tratto
distintivo del catalogo Silber ("Dies Solis", "Dimanche" e i quindici
minuti di moto immobile di "Born Yesterday" sono esemplari in tal
senso). Consigliato a chi ha perso la testa per le ninne nanne spaziali
di Windy & Carl e Labradford e per i momenti più onirici del
repertorio dei Sigur Ros.
~ Raffaele Zappal� , Rockerilla

HOTEL HOTEL: THE SAD SEA
What makes Hotel Hotel's newest album, The Sad Sea, so utterly
compelling is that despite the lack of lyrics, or spoken language, the
album conveys complex emotions from every nook and galley. Filled with
ocean sounds and heavily affected tsunami crashes, the record tells the
tale of a nautical voyage in simple soundscape. Its eight tracks mimic
the undulations in the ocean tides�"in how they rise and fall
through pulsing, dramatic mix�"from a track aptly titled "From
Harbour" through "The Captain Goes Down With The Ship (Drowning)." Like
its inspiration, there is no sense of stasis.
From tip to tail, The Sad Sea is among the most listenable and
accessible electronic/ambient music in recent memory.
From Austin, Texas, the cryptically named band members enmesh themselves
in their oeuvre. Whether it is the deep water itself or the music
inspires it, it's difficult to tell. Billed as
post-rock/ambient�"even blues�"the band transcends the
ordinary from the shuddering open through depths ("Equator In The
Meantime (Black Sabbath)") and climaxes ("The Dirac Sea (High Tide)").
With their first full album (one EP, one live LP in their locker), this
band should grasp a healthy lot of the latter.
~ Erick Mertz, Kevchino.com

Enigmatic, post-rock Texans, Hotel Hotel hide behind confusing
pseudonyms like vortex/index, team/odessa, and chaos/trade union, but I
have it on good authority that P.D. Wilder and Patrick Patterson may be
amongst the culprits who recorded this concept album about the ghost
ship, Mary Celeste and its fateful voyage from Galveston, Texas to its
(alleged) discovery off the coast of Haiti in 2001. Packaged in a
marvellous, die-cut, trifold cardboard digipak, the slow as molasses
intro to "From Harbor" saunters into the room with the hesitant
expectancy of fellow Austin snorecore agents, Stars of The Lid and
Explosions in The Sky. Dual violins add a melancholic touch, yet the
melody is bright and hopeful, as the Mary Celeste begins her voyage. An
ominous sense of dread and terror envelops the listener as "The Dirac
Sea (Lower Tide)" begins, and I'm immediately reminded of Jocelyn Pook's
soundtrack for Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, particularly the spooky "Masked
Ball" sequence.
As with Windy & Carl, Landing, and label mates, Aarktica, my wife likens
the listening experience to hearing a bunch of guys standing around
tuning their guitars, so the listener is alerted not to come expecting
Top 40 pop, but swirling, soothing, sometimes frightening atmospherics
coaxed out of guitars, pianos, and violins. The swelling, sweltering
chaotic maelstrom of "Equator In The Meantime" comes with its own
parenthetical reference point, "(Black Sabbath)," while the delicate,
dare I say, pretty, "The Shoreline Disappeared" finds our crew floating
aimlessly, completely surrounded by an ocean-meets-sky horizon, as a
lonely piano tinkles out a forlorn melodic motif and a weeping violin
suggests something is askew. The album ends with two versions of "The
Captain Goes Down With The Ship" (subtitled "(Sinking)" and "(Drowning)"
respectively), so comparisons with the Titanic's fate will also spring
to mind as the listener hopefully, yet helplessly stands by as the
Captain and the crew are swallowed by the ocean.
This would work as a perfect companion piece to Jonathan Geers' 2005
debut, "Essex" (which also musically depicted the fate of a sunken
ship), but certainly stands alone as one of the year's strongest
releases, regardless of your stance on the ultimate fate of the world's
most famous ghost ship! Fans of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and the late
Jason DiEmilio's Asuza Plane will also be enthralled by these exciting,
emotional, at times, heartwrenching melodies and atmospheres. 9/10
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

Far away in another time and place, as space luxuriates and there's time
for the world to unfold at an unhurried pace. This cool evocative moody
ambience wafts through the lofty branches of the trees as they sway in
an invisble wind. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky,
meets Stars of the Lid, with a little spacious krautrock thrown in for
good measure.
~ Geaorge Parsons, Dream Magazine

Without words this album presented me 2008's most vivid musical story,
propelling me on a voyage upon The Sad Sea's fragile Mary Celeste, first
nearly soothing me into naïve complacency with the at once
tranquil and foreboding ‘From Harbour' and ‘The
Dirac Sea (Low Tide)', but finally destroying my calmness along with the
doomed ship, drowning me in waves of droning guitar and crying strings,
which seem to be struggling for air as feverously as the ship's fated
captain.
~ New Age of Heroes

Post instrumental rock in the style of GY!BE and A Silver Mount Zion,
Texan four piece Hotel Hotel have conceptualised their newest release
with a wonderful if suspiciously cinematic tale once told to them by a
drunken seafarer who in 2001 tried to find the hulk of the Mary Celeste.
Regardless of how true this tale may or may not be it provides the
perfect stimulus when listening to ‘The Sad Sea' with each
track title prompting the desired image. Take ‘From Harbour'
for example, which with its mixture of serene ambience and minimal
percussion conjures up a sound that could be likened to Popl Vuh's film
scores, likewise with ‘The Dirac Sea (low Tide)' that with
poise and equanimity manages to place you right within the album's
conceptual narrative.
Once we are upon the track ‘Mary Celeste' we are lead to
assume that our music-lead story has reached its destination, with an
intense and minimal use of violin overshadowing most other instruments
in the composition, changing the album's feeling dramatically from calm
to disquiet .
‘The Shoreline Disappeared' meanwhile takes on a sombre tone,
with a composition which, while seeming more simplistic perhaps in its
execution compared to the others on the album, is none-the-less still as
a dramatic and powerful as its counterparts.
Likewise with the last two tracks ‘The Captain Goes down with
His Ship (Sinking)' and ‘The Captain Goes down with His Ship
(Drowning) that together creating a bleak yet reflective atmosphere, the
perfect soundtrack when facing death head on, sealing a tragic fate for
our protagonist within the loose narrative that the album generates.
Indeed Hotel Hotel are not without their own melancholia and tragedy,
having had their first drummer disappear at LaGuardia Airport, never to
be heard from again.
In a strange way you could argue that the tale of seeking out the Mary
Celeste is metaphorically meaningful to the group, a personal catharsis
to come to terms with a truly haunting experience. That or you could
simply say it's a great and moving story and one not to be missed,
either way Hotel Hotel have done that old sea dog justice, whether he
truly existed or not, by producing a great post rock/ ambient album with
a unique and palpable sense of purpose as opposed to rambling self
interested orchestrations.
~ Michael Byrne, Left Hip

Few sounds in this world are less interesting to me than ones that fly
under the banner "post-rock." And even if I like the sounds of it, I'm
usually really put off by something else, like overly complicated CD
packaging, a band's mysterious need to punctuate the middle of their
name, or even just pesky reviewers who use the word "soundscapes" to
describe a record. (Seriously. Can that word go away? "Soundscape" is as
bad as "ringle", as far as dumb music terminology goes.)
So I should have hated The Sad Sea, an album that just dares you to
remove it from its form-fitting cardboard packaging without getting
scratches and/or fingerprints all over the damn thing. And to make it
worse, Austin five-piece Hotel, Hotel have a comma in the middle of
their name. But the sounds on the album�"and they're not
soundscapes, reviewers be damned�"are really achingly lovely, and
completely won me over despite myself.
A concept album about the wreck of a ship called the Mary Celeste, The
Sad Sea drones along slowly, with lots of droning, two violinists and no
vocals. On opening track "From Harbour" they sound like Low re-writing
the theme music for Twin Peaks, and from there the album just gets
lovelier. And as the ships slowly slips away in closing track "The
Captain Goes Down With the Ship (Drowning)," there's a sense of gloomy
peace that defies cheesiness somehow.
~ Matthew Lawrence, Providence Daily Dose

Hotel Hotel is an American band hailing from Texas. In Spring 2007 their
drummer disappeared in very strange circumstances and hasn't been seen
since than. The duo P.D. Wilder �" Patrick Patterson went on and
helped by several guest musicians they've finally launched this new
album. While they claim to compose post-rock music, I guess the
definition of experimental and soundtrack music is probably more
appropriate. They for sure have a very clear and explicit kind of
psychedelic rock influence and the use of guitar and drums can
definitely be linked to a wider rock genre. It can be really surprising
to hear the way they play the guitar. The song "Equator In the Meantime"
evolves into a sort of psychedelic-trance-rock. It's totally surprising
and definitely an original track. Hotel Hotel also brings more
soundtrack relevant pieces, which can be even filled with some
neo-classical impressions. The main thing with this band is that the
entire composition remains pretty experimental and like often with this
type of music it's less accessible for a wider audience. You'll either
like it or not, there's no where in between!
~ Side-Line

If true, it is indeed a fantastic story. A fantastic voyage, even. The
Sad Sea was derived from Hotel Hotel's expedition with a sailor/sea
captain searching for a ghost ship. i am so high right now. i'm doing an
interpretive dance to this.
~ Kenyon Hopkin, Advance Copy

Post rock is a genre that slowly but steadily is getting more and more
attention from different kinds of music lovers. The often lengthy,
complicated and melodic guitar pop with minimal vocals is best known
from band like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky. Hotel Hotel are on the
edge between ambient and post-rock, a little like Eluvium.
This is a disc for people that like very tranquil music. Where many
bands use tension spans that erupt in loud climaxes, ‘The Sad
Sea' of Hotel Hotel takes it much easier. The music flows easy without
any song grabbing your explicit attention. With several listening
sessions this pool of music becomes somewhat clearer and then there are
even songs that seem somewhat heavier than others, especially "Equator
in the meantime (black sabbath)" and the diptych "The captain goes down
with the ship". Hotel Hotel is being manned by two violists, a drummer,
a guitarist and a bass player who also added the space echoes on the
record.
This melting of post-rock and ambient will definitely please some
people. I do not, however, expect people to put on this disc when they
wake up, but I rather when they go to bed, and are setting sail for
Dreamland.
~ Gothtronic

Jamais vraiment remis de la séparation de Godspeed You ! Black
Emperor, les amateurs de grandes envolées instrumentales
épiques errent au gré de la production
étiquetée "post-rock", délaissant progressivement
les sorties du label Constellation parti défricher d'autres
terres. Silber Records et Hotel Hotel offrent un palliatif, dans un
registre plus ambiant et aquatique.
Le collectif texan, constitué initialement en marge des
activités principales de ces protagonistes, est devenu
après son premier album en 2006 un véritable groupe,
comptant deux violonistes, un batteur, un bassiste et un guitariste,
soit 5 musiciens (épaulés par quelques autres) qui
préfèrent se dissimuler derrière leurs instruments
et leurs compositions - en guise de photos de presse, Hotel Hotel
préfère des dessins de poulpes. Un univers maritime auquel
semble attaché le groupe, The Sad Sea se présentant comme
une odyssée épique sous le ligne de flottaison.
Passées des pièces aquatiques qui bercent au gré du
clapotis que n'aurait pas renié Sars Of The Lid, Equator In The
Meantime est une belle version du morceau de Black Sabbath,
démontrant les aspirations des texans, capables de faire vrombir
leurs instruments : une déflagration de guitare s'assoit sur une
section rythmique martiale pour ferrailler avec les violons
omniprésents. Les compositions instrumentales du groupe jouent
�  l'élastique, entre de vertigineuses ascensions et
l'apaisement des grandes plaines. Une suite sinusoïdale qu'on
suivi bien évidemment avant eux GY !BE ou encore Tarentel �
ses débuts, mais qui séduit une fois encore, comme sur le
très réussi morceau de clôture The Captain Goes
Down With The Ship (Drowning).
~ Denis Frelat, Autres Directions

Het Texaanse Hotel Hotel werd hier al eerder besproken met hun live
album "Under Sea, Over Storm". Nu is er dan hun eerste echte studio
album op Silber Records, "The Sad Sea Year". Volgens bijgeleverde
informatie heeft het album sterk vertraging opgelopen toen hun drummer
in april 2007 spoorloos verdween. Men kwam later een zeeman / drummer
tegen met wie nu dit album is opgenomen wat verhaalt over het spookschip
Mary Celeste.
Hotel Hotel - The Sad Sea
Hotel Hotel wordt door Silber Records als post rock / indie ambient
neergezet, en dat is best een rake typering. Eerder werden hier al
vergelijkingen getrokken met Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Voor mijn
gevoel is het allemaal net wat minder heftig. Drums, violen, piano en
gitaren zetten hier vrij rustige, instrumentale geluidslandschappen
neer, die voor mijn gevoel inderdaad erg neigen naar shoegaze / ambient
territorium. Op nummers als "Equator In The Meantime" of "The Dirac Sea
(High Tide)" gaat men los, soort van, maar zoals gezegd blijft het
allemaal vrij ingetogen, als golven die op een kust aanspoelen. Het
album galmt en gonst en op het prachtige "The Shoreline Disappeared" zou
ik zelfs het wordt "drijven" in de mond willen nemen. Rustige, soms wat
melancholische, mood muziek neer. Muziek om bij in de branding te staan
en eeuwigheid te overpeinzen. Ik merk dat het album mij als geheel niet
helemaal weet te overtuigen, en mijn aandacht niet altijd vasthoudt.
Tegelijkertijd is het er wel en vormt het heerlijke achtergrondmuziek.
Voor mensen die niet vies zijn van wat experimenteler geluid en was
rustigere en dromerige post-rock kunnen waarderen.
~ Ikecht

MWVM: ROTATIONS
"It´s Easy To Be Miserable", one of the track titles of this
album claims quite truthfully, so why not exert yourself and be happy
instead? On his debut album, Micheal Walton from Durham in the UK proves
to be a joyful, if restrained, guitar-teaser, stroking and molding it
with delay pedals and other electric acoutrements, looping, seeking his
own blissful ambience.
The soaring opener is a thermal-borne survey of the wonders of the
sunlit landscape below. Watson strives for clarity of sound, as opposed
to many colleagues who prize the overwhelming swarm of buzz and
distortion. Some of these ten tracks, ranging from three to twelve
minutes, are linear and narrative, others more static and ambient. There
is a great variety of texture and permutation, though the mood remains
constantly uplifting; even several forays into relative darkness, like
"Negative Pole", eventually emerge into the light. The album ends with a
beatific coda, promising to be "Never Constant".
This is thoughtful introversion that travels well, because it is based
on the expression of a fellow human being´s "within".
~ Stephen Fruitman, Sonomu

MWVM: ROTATIONS REMIXED
MWVM, dat is Michael Walton. Een Brit, op gitaar en effecten. Het album
Rotations, dat uitkwam op Silber Records, bespraken we al eerder. Nu is
al enige tijd een geremixte versie van dit album gratis downloadbaar.
Maar hoe bevalt dat werkje?
Nou allereerst moet opgemerkt dat we Rotations al niet superspannend
vonden. Gitaardrones en manipulaties die niet erg donker of spannend
werden. Geleidelijk evoluerend, zonder echt spanning op te bouwen. Op
Rotations Remixed blijft dat probleem een beetje.
De nummers zijn herbewerkt door vrienden van MWVM, zoals Sonicslice en
de Astral Social Club. Dat levert versies op die flink van elkaar
verschillen. Op het ene nummer wordt compleet nieuwe muziek toegevoegd,
het volgende wordt vooral voller gesampled, het volgende juist
leeggeplukt.
Overall blijft echter helaas gelden dat daar waar het basismateriaal
niet spannend is, het erg lastig is om de remixes wel spannend te maken.
Eigenlijk zou ik mensen die mwvm willen verkennen aanraden te gaan voor
het originele rotations album, omdat dat meer een album is dan een serie
bij elkaar geraapte bewerkingen.
Voor hen die mwvm leuk vinden is deze gratis download ongetwijfeld een
leuke toevoeging. Voor mij is het echter compleet overbodig.
~ Jaap Kamminga, IkEcht

HOTEL HOTEL: UNDER SEA, OVER STORM
Hotel Hotel are from Texas--the land of Koresh, armadillos, and home of
the United State's 43rd President.
Don't let the amount of dreck to ooze from the Lone Star State frighten
you--for all the preconceived bad, there's a lot of factual good. Hotel,
Hotel just happens to represent the latter with their unique
guitar/violin assault on post-rock (or as label Silber puts it--and we
agree--whatever it's called this month).
The band is offering up a free EP in anticipation of the fall
full-length, The Sad Sea. The 40 minute live performance of Under Sea,
Over Storm was captured in October 2005 but is seeing the light of day
for the first time. To listen or download the EP, just follow the link.
It will be a triumph for the great state of Texas.
~ Electronic Voice Phenomenon

Het Texaanse Hotel Hotel is al sinds 2005 actief. In de tijd tussen toen
en nu kwamen er een EP uit en dit gratis te downloaden live-werkje uit.
Een werkje ter introductie op Silber Records, dat binnenkort hun
debuutalbum uitbrengt. Op dit live-werkje een optreden dat ook al uit
2005 stamt en is opgenomen in J&J's in Denton, Texas.
Wat brengt dit kwartet ons? We horen is experimentele post-rock, met
twee violen in plaats van een bas. Met noise-invloeden en flink wat
drones. Hierbij klinkt het alsof er ook flink op los geexperimenteerd
wordt bij een live-optreden. Het geheel levert een erg vol geluid op,
dat soms iets te veel een kluwen wordt.
Maar wat we ook door de kluwen heen horen is de grote invloed van
Godspeed You Black Emperor en het feit dat ze dat geluid wel degelijk
proberen te vernieuwen. Geen spraaksamples, regelmatig wel evenveel
beklemming. Als dit de opwarmer is en het "oude" hotel hotel, ben ik erg
benieuwd wat er van komt als ze de studio induiken en zelf al
doorgegroeid zijn.
Helemaal lyrisch word ik hier nog niet van, maar onder de indruk ben ik
zeker. Een aanrader, helemaal voor die prijs (helemaal gratis), zeer de
moeite waard. Doch luistert u hieronder toch zelf, alvorens u het werkje
download.
~ Jaap Kamminga, IkEcht

SLICNATON: THE NOISEFLOOR EP
Slicnaton is the work of bassist Nicholas Slaton, who combines
electronic music and improvisation to create haunting, challenging slabs
of musique concrète across this half hour EP. Compiled from live
studio improvisations using mistreated electronic equipment, Slaton's
glitch samples and looped sound effects battle hypnotic repetitions from
pedals and samplers to create ambient atmospheres that are equally at
home in a horror movie soundtrack or in Dr. Frankenstein's lab. Perfect
Halloween music, but not for the squeamish or feint of heart.
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis


ELECTRIC BIRD NOISE: LE VESTIBULE - VESTIBULE TRANSITOIRE
South Carolina guitarist Brian Lea McKensie's fourth album under the EBN
monikor is an ambient wash of haunting electronic soundscapes in the
mould of Stars of The Lid and Windy & Carl, et. al. As the title
suggests, the release consists of two sidelong tracks of soothing guitar
lines, supplemented by ebow stroking and feedback looping. (The titles
refer to the radio show, "Le Vestibule" with DJ, Jean-Francois Fecteau,
for which they were originally recorded and they are here released on
McKenzie's own label with distribution through the fine folks at Silber
Media.)
Fans of Eno's ambient works will also enjoy these soundtrack style
offerings, which paint musical pictures on the insides of your eyelids
with their swaying processed loops that will have your heads swirling
throughout. I can almost hear these sonic tones accompanying some
Discovery Channel special on the origins of the Universe! Warm,
enveloping, claustrophobic, yet as comforting as grandma's arms on a
cold Winter afternoon. Simply amazing!
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

This is the 4th full-length album of Electric Bird Noise. This project
set up by Brian Lea McKenzie is a special one, as it sounds quite
different from his previous work. That's because there's a kind of
concept behind the album. It was made for a radio show "Le Vestibule".
It results in 2 long duration pieces of music bringing us more than 50
minutes of ambient music. The main instrument of McKenzie remains the
guitar and it's totally amazing to hear in which way he brings guitar
play into deep and meaningful ambient music. The opening cut (cf. "Le
Vestibule") is pure soundtrack like and I had to wait for more than 11
minutes to get some evolution in the song writing. A kind of disturbing
sound emerges to the surface accentuating a darker part. Next comes
"Vestibule Transitoire" which brings us 26 minutes of mysterious
atmospheres. This track is definitely colder while the low keyboard
tones only reinforce certain tormenting feelings. The guitar parts are
once again amazing and it's definitely magic to hear the way this
instrument can be played and used! Electric Bird Noise is minimal,
conceptual and experimental so definitely for a very restricted number
of people! Well, I'm sure they will love it!
~ Side-Line

The latest from EBN (interesting enough, the same initials for Emergency
Broadcast Network) is two tracks of about 25 minutes each. Because of
this, instead of informing us of "key" or "recommended" tracks, the
label gives us "recommended transition points." I think this is a first.
Brian Lea McKenzie's experimental drones --produced mainly by
guitar---are stunningly unearthly. If there are indeed cosmic soundwaves
eminating from the depths of the galaxy, the Bird Noise is eerily close
to its representation.
~ Kenyon Hopkin, Advance Copy




type_N

Hey Kidz,

So the big bit of news this week is that it looks like Silber will now
have some distro through both SquidCo & Soleilmoon.  At least on a
trial basis.  They both seem like good matches though.  It should be
in effect by the end of the month.

I made some alterations to the Silber start page (
www.silbermedia.com/start ) so that it has links to streams for the
radio stations that have been playing our current releases & also the
info for placing a request for them to play it.  Stuffing the ballot
box, I know.  It's like I think I'm one of the big indies that
literally have interns that just spend the day calling in requests at
a couple hundred stations.  Maybe one day....

Below are some recent reviews.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell

NORTHERN VALENTINE: THE DISTANCE BRINGS US CLOSER
Lead by a married couple from Philadelphia, Northern Valentine glides
through definitive icy spells that are remarkably created by guitars
and no post-production. Having already set a mood by placing a photo
from Iceland on the album cover, Amy and Robert (along with two other
guitarists and a bassist) easily evoke any kind of wintry, arctic
imagery. These are also some of the most haunting ambient sounds put
to tape, some of which play like the soundtrack for a crumbling and
crashing ice sheet.
~ Kenyon Hopkin, Advance Copy

Hailing from Philadelphia, Northern Valentine is a band built around
the core of husband and wife duo Robert (guitar) & Amy Brown (violin,
keyboard). Inviting two guitarists (Jeffery Bumiller and Ben
Fleury-Steiner) and a bassist (Marc Carazo) into the fore, the band
adds depth to their ambient post-rock sound which follows the same
aesthetics as Windy&Carl, Netherworld and Biosphere.
Like drifting in a bulbous cloud through a unpopulated, cotton-wool
metropolis, Northern Valentine score the soundtrack to an imaginary
Arctic dusk, an image which is perfectly conveyed by the album art.
Across the 5 pieces, elongated string melodies glide and evaporate in
spectral fashion as crisply effervescent tones occasionally glisten
within the drone laden expanse. Themes of glacial isolation,
depressive darkness and ominous paranoia fuse delicately with a
delicate romanticism and the silver lining of optimism in a soundscape
that floats between dense and minimalist textures.
Opener `Born Yesterday' is a cinemascope manifestation of ethereal
post-ambient music. Like a lingering nature shot in a Haneke or Coen
Brothers film that is riddled with a deep, emotive undertone, it grips
ones mindset through its subtle use of omnipotent drones and deeply
melancholic tone. The album then starts to slowly move into a
regressive lull, especially on the solitary introspection of
`Dimanche' which churns subtly with a windswept forlornness. Sounding
like The Caretaker meets The Necks played at 16rpm in the banquet hall
of the submerged Titanic, the delicious sub-aqua, minimalist piano
waltz of `Escaping Light' adds a much anticipated glow to proceedings
as glistening melodic droplets lace a backdrop of warmly buoyant
drone. The closer `Already Gone' is the most post-rockish of the 5
tracks as stretched violin and guitar melodies meander around each
other in ghostly fashion, all-the-while exuding that reflective and
melancholic timbre that poignant post-rock is all about as melodic
arcs resonate with compassionate fervor over a timeless soundscape of
drifting sonic spacedust.
Recorded live using a stereo field recorder and without any
post-production or overdubbing, the five-piece improvised off of each
other around planned themes. Thusly, such a process has led to a
natural and spacious soundstage that wrings with an all important
warmth. With all the pieces melding into each other to form an
engrossing 45 minute dreamscape, the emotive cinematic expanse of `The
Distance Brings Us Closer' will have you cloud surfing for many
enjoyable hours to come.
~ Ray Miri, experimusic

This is lovely. The cover features photos taken by the couple behind
the band, Robert and Amy Brown (guitar, and violin and keyboards
respectively), on tour in Iceland in June 2008 � that would be just
before the Icelandic economy evaporated like steam from a geyser, then
-  and the wide open spaces, airiness and atmosphere of the pictures
they've used sums up the mood of the album exquisitely.
A Philadelphia, USA, based duo, they are joined here by two additional
guitarists and a bassist, all of whom improvised together in the
studio around various themes to create the album. The title, which I
fretted at first might be suggesting that the band had mailed various
recordings to one another which were subsequently sewn together
digitally, rather references the trip to Iceland, and the songs
throughout are clearly inspired by this. The lengthy (15 minute)
opener `Born Yesterday' is glacial in its movement; fans of Windy and
Carl and Aarktika will smile knowingly and close their eyelids in
satisfaction are the soothing, intense ambience of the sound.  `Dies
Solis' ticks and burbles along like a slow train crossing a snowfield,
while `Dimanche' builds to a crescendo like a fish-gutting factory
waiting for the fleet to arrive. The stand-out for me though is
`Already Gone', with it's solitary keyboard "plink" lending inevitable
references to Pink Floyd's `Echoes'.
This is minimalist ambience at its best. Heartfelt, soulful and
affecting, like gazing at a scrapbook of memories. The ever-reliable
Silber Records are to be commended for bringing us this � repay the
favour by investing in a copy, since downloads won't help guarantee
there'll be more to follow.
~ Phil McMullen, terrascope online

Five tracks make up The Distance Brings Us Closer and each of them
take a similar format. These are soundscapes, great glacial swathes of
low frequency keyboard washes and intermittent guitar and percussion
interventions. The effect is of a series of sound collages, notably
lacking in some of the overindulgence that often spoils the intended
effects of this type of experimentalism, and the results are, over the
forty or so minutes, some of the most effective pieces of aural
sculpture I might've heard since the first S�gur Ros album.
Northern Valentine is very far from novice in this field though; the
members have been recording together in various forms for over a
decade, based around husband and wife team Robert and Amy Brown, and
The Distance Brings Us Closer is their seventh album. Working as a
five piece here (adding to the aesthetics here are Jeffery Bullimer,
Marc Carazo and Ben Fleury-Steiner) and eschewing a studio style in
favour of a more immediate "live in the studio" approach, the quintet
go some way towards pushing the boundaries of post-rock beyond
metallic repetition and on to some areas which I hesitate to describe
as ambient. There's simply too much backbone in Northern Valentine's
work for The Distance Brings Us Closer to find itself merely labelled
as Muzak.
I need to admit that I don't very often hear full albums of this type
of soundscaping. Those I do hear often slide into either chaotic
atonality or folk based whimsy, and Northern Valentine do neither of
these. There aren't any sudden feedback solos or overbearing
mood-shattering drumming going on here: The Distance Brings Us Closer
is a tightly-scored piece each of whose five parts properly cohere.
There isn't as much as a spare hi-hat tap on display, and if Northern
Valentine really are improvising, then their decade of practise has
worked any of the more effusive traits out of their composition.
Varying between the abrasiveness of third track "Dimanche" and the
sonorous glissandos of "Escaping Light" which, while it incorporates
some more identifiable post-rock touches, these are sublimated beneath
the vastness of the entire Northern Valentine armoury. Great swathes
of white noise and guitar hydraulics, blizzards of reverberating
electronics and a refusal to undercut the strength of this music by
adding more populist elements make for a challenging and rewarding
listen. Play it quietly, 90% of The Distance Brings Us Closer exists
beneath the surface.
~ Jon Gordon, Delusions of Adequacy

Northern Valentine is the husband and wife duo consisting of Robert
Brown and Amy Brown. Unlike most other husband and wife duos, however,
these folks do not create cutesy pop music. The Distance Brings Us
Closer presents five tracks of atmospheric drone. Recorded live in the
studio with no post-production or overdubs, this is definitely an
album that will create a mood. Joining the Browns on these recordings
were Jeffrey Bumiller (Doctor Scientist, Lunch With Beardo), Marc
Carazo, and Ben Fleury-Steiner (Light of Shipwreck). Even though
traditional instruments like guitars and basses were used in these
recordings, you won't hear any traditional or obviously familiar
sounds. Everything has been heavily treated and/or drenched in effects
to the point of becoming hypnotic noise. The folks at Silber seem to
be one of the main sources in the United States for this style of
music and, as such, seem to unearth some of the best of the best.
Intriguing stuff, rather heady and elusive...
~ Babysue

Disco difficile quello dei Northern Valentine. Tremendamente difficile
ed ostico, ma anche ragionevolmente molto bello. Ci vuole tanta
pazienza, ed un'assoluta predisposizone mentale per farsi coinvolgere
da questi suoni. La bellezza assoluta di "The Distance Brings Us
Closer" -disegnato amorevolmente da questa band statunitense
(Philadelphia)- risiede proprio nel lanciarsi (con dovizia di
particolari) in perfette divagazioni psichedeliche (per nulla tediose
e banali), dove gli strumenti scappano liberi. Cinque pezzi,
rigorosamente strumentali, dove i rimandi e le influenze musicali
spaziano dai Mogwai ai Sigur Ros. Northern Valentine percorrono
-dunque-svariate filosofie soniche, risultando alla lunga volenterosi
ed anche creativi.
~ Claudio Baroni, Musica su Libero

HOTEL HOTEL: THE SAD SEA
`The Sad Sea' is the long awaited sophomore album from Texas post
rockers Hotel Hotel. Formed in 2005, the band released their acclaimed
debut `allheroesareforeverbold' before their drummer, and the real
force & mastermind behind the bands formation, mysteriously
disappeared at La Guardia airport on April 11, 2007; not having been
seen since. You might think that this episode cast an aura of
disillusion over the remaining members and you'd be right- with the
band going on a year-long derailment. A chance meeting with a guy
dressed up as a sailor who was on an expedition to discover the real
"Marie Celeste" convinced them to sign up to the adventure and glory
to be had on the high seas and the rest is history.
`The Sad Sea' vividly documents the tale of this fateful voyage from
Galveston, Texas to the coast of Haiti during the thick of hurricane
season. Sprawling compositions see swathes of acoustic,
reverb-drenched ambience form a captivating blanket of sound that
washes over the ears with the dynamic buoyancy of a stirring ocean
illuminated by moon-light. Patience is the key to carving out an epic
and emotionally unhinging soundscape and patience is a quality Hotel
Hotel demonstrate in spades. They painstakingly work their instruments
up to vibrant crescendos and then reign them back in just as
meticulous fashion, but unlike the more popularized chief's of the
post-rock movement that crystallize such bursts of energy within
single tracks, Hotel Hotel do this on an album-wide scale.
Never brash or hasty, the group perfects the art of elongating tones
in a way that wrings out every last drop of emotional resonance.
Within such deep and spacious sonic tapestry's, twinkling melodics
shimmer quixotically over a molasses of gloomy deep-set drones, eerie
atmospherics and vertebral percussion. After a dreamy start laden with
drifting ambience and hazy sonics, proceedings burst into life during
`Marie Celeste' as the friction of industrial textures start to engage
with ominous atmospheric tones. It is very much like a solitary vessel
has journeyed into the deep abyss of the ocean and has been greeted by
a storm cloud from which escape is in the hands of the gods.
Follow-up, `Equator in the Meantime (black Sabbath)' is testament to
the ultra engaging dynamics of Hotel Hotel wherein they form a shroud
of melancholic sound in the vein of an opulent Grails meets Explosions
in the Sky at their most introspective. A grandiose cinematic swirl is
whipped up to envelop listeners like a whistling wind whilst
reflective yet haunting melodic tones tinged with a sense of romantic
desperation provide a deep and entrancing mysticism. The whole package
bobs and sways on a super dense and emotional current that moves
across subtle but nevertheless entrancing peaks and valleys. The
poignancy of closer `the captain goes down with the ship (drowning)'
showcases the crux of the bands abilities to carve out powerful
messages through sound. Being a perfect encapsulation of the albums
mystical and entrancing nautical theme, the group strike at the very
fabric of the anguish and hopelessness of being caught out at
sea-weaving through a repertoire of meticulously crafted
micro-crescendos in which melodious tones shimmer with a wry energy as
deeply textural tones and military percussion play out beneath.
Across its 8 tracks, `The Sad Sea' proves to be a tangibly executed,
cinemascope soundscape to an unmade film- its dulcet tones narrating a
story of suffering, solitariness, anxiety and deep pensiveness but
with a shimmering veneer of hope that prevails throughout. If you are
after top-draw `real' post-rock that shuns the immediacy of more
commercially minded bands in favour of a brand of subtle progression
that has melancholic and morose characteristics deeply intertwined
within its rich sonic texture, then `The Sad Sea' is for you.
~ Kamyar Sadegzadeh, experimusic.com

Texans Hotel Hotel have tapped into a fertile wellspring of melancholy
bubbling up from deep in the ocean's depths on this, their second
album (the first being 2006's `All heroes are forever bold', which
apparently featured a different drummer who subsequently disappeared
under mysterious circumstances at LaGuardia Airport, leading to
something of a hiatus in the band's career... however, I digress.)
Salty old sea dogs long in the whisker, such as myself, will
immediately identify with Hotel Hotel's modus operandi on `The Sad
Sea': the lengthy instrumental passages, seamless track-to-track
changes and the compositional unity is eerily redolent of a 1970s
Progressive Rock Concept Album. The eight titles all serve to
underscore this, ranging  as they do from `From Harbour' via `The
Shoreline Disappeared' and `The Dirac Sea' (wasn't Dirac that fellow
from Bristol who discovered antimatter?) to the inevitable closing
pieces, `The Captain Goes Down With The Ship' (two parts, Sinking and
Drowning, but no Waving.)
The album is however symphonic without once lapsing into
pretentiousness, and uses classical instruments whilst leaving its
feet remaining firmly rooted in rock, juxtaposing delicate, alluring
guitar work and atmospheric cymbal splashes with often quite sinister
howls from a violin. On `The Shoreline Disappeared' a piano is used to
great effect, adding movement to the fluid sounds; and on `The Dirac
Sea (High Tide)' a pounding drum riff drives the number forward.
Interestingly, an electric violin is used as a lead instrument here.
I'd love to believe there was a nod of recognition to the similarly
violin-driven High Tide and their signature album `Sea Shanties' from
1969, but sadly I rather doubt that's the case. Nevertheless, `The Sad
Sea' is a fine piece of work and I for one will be filing it amongst
the "keep" pile.
~ Phil McMullen, terrascope online

This band has an interesting story very early in their career. After
releasing their first album (allheroesareforeverbold), the band's
drummer disappeared at an airport and has not been heard from since.
Because he was the driving force in the band, the other members felt
somewhat lost initially...before running into a fellow in a bar who
was searching for a lost ship called the Marie Celeste. Thus, the idea
for The Sad Sea was born. If the idea was to create atmospheric pieces
to conjure up ideas of the seas and the skies above, then the guys in
Hotel Hotel have succeeded magnificently. The album is divided into
eight sections. The music might be described as ambient drone or even
modern classical. There is no percussion...only the ethereal and
slightly surreal tones ebbing and flowing in and out of the speakers.
Beautiful, intricate compositions include "From Harbour," "Mary
Celeste," "The Dirac Sea (High Tide)," and "The Captain Goes Down With
the Ship (Drowning)." Beautiful stuff, highly stylized. Housed inside
a really cool and classy cardboard sleeve...
~ Babysue

What happens when two post-rock land-lubbers team up with a
salt-sucking barfly and go seek out the Mary Celeste? Somewhere
between Texas and Haiti things got lost in low tides and gloom,
pounded by relentless dumpers and sent drifting for days beyond either
compass or Sat Nav. Luckily, the men on board the stricken schooner
found time to record that all important LP of fogginess and float it
home before the onset of yellow jack.
Slotting somewhere between the drones of Xela's Dead Sea (2006) and
most anything by the young Greg Haines, "The Captain Goes Down With
The Ship (Sinking)" rolls out soundscapes designed to cause
mindscrews, plus an extra peripheral element you really don't want to
entertain if you've just set foot on your first luxury liner. Violins
slide into a cold and watery grave�not quite with the grace of the
quartet in Titanic, but all the more authentic for it�conspiring with
a frozen Theremin line to ice-nine a vast sea that dooms the listener
to shivers. It's a stoic and ghastly little number, cold as corpses in
pack-ice and perfectly suited to anyone who gave up on the sound of a
rescue chopper. Just the job if you're into your brine and
bereavement, but to the more casual listeners out there, I'd recommend
heading Michael Caine's remarks from the last few moments of The
Prestige: "I once told you about a sailor who drowned. He said it was
like going home. I lied�he said it was agony."
~ George Bass, Coke Machine Glow

In "The Sad Sea" (nuovo lavoro degli Hotel Hotel) si percepisce tutto
il profumo acido e fetido del Texas pi� brutale. Il Texas caldo che
avvampa di mistero, e racconta le sue storie lancinanti. Gli Hotel
Hotel percorrono le strade sconosciute di questa regione degli Stati
Uniti d'America. Con la loro musica sanno, e possono, ricongiungere
pensieri che provocano solenni stordimenti dell'umore. Post rock che
mette i brividi, gela l'anima ed il cuore; ma scalda la mente.
Sonorit� lente e ben studiate, che avvolgono ogni singolo neurone del
cervello. Questo � il post rock che avanza con le sue forti leve,
questo � il post rock che si vorrebbe sempre ascoltare.
~ Claudio Baroni, Musica su Libero

MWVM: ROTATIONS
"It�s Easy To Be Miserable", one of the track titles of this album
claims quite truthfully, so why not exert yourself and be happy
instead? On his debut album, Micheal Walton from Durham in the UK
proves to be a joyful, if restrained, guitar-teaser, stroking and
molding it with delay pedals and other electric acoutrements, looping,
seeking his own blissful ambience.
The soaring opener is a thermal-borne survey of the wonders of the
sunlit landscape below. Watson strives for clarity of sound, as
opposed to many colleagues who prize the overwhelming swarm of buzz
and distortion. Some of these ten tracks, ranging from three to twelve
minutes, are linear and narrative, others more static and ambient.
There is a great variety of texture and permutation, though the mood
remains constantly uplifting; even several forays into relative
darkness, like "Negative Pole", eventually emerge into the light. The
album ends with a beatific coda, promising to be "Never Constant".
This is thoughtful introversion that travels well, because it is based
on the expression of a fellow human being�s "within".
~ Stephen Fruitman, Sonomu

HOTEL HOTEL: UNDER SEA, OVER STORM
Hotel Hotel are from Texas--the land of Koresh, armadillos, and home
of the United State's 43rd President.
Don't let the amount of dreck to ooze from the Lone Star State
frighten you--for all the preconceived bad, there's a lot of factual
good. Hotel, Hotel just happens to represent the latter with their
unique guitar/violin assault on post-rock (or as label Silber puts
it--and we agree--whatever it's called this month).
The band is offering up a free EP in anticipation of the fall
full-length, The Sad Sea. The 40 minute live performance of Under Sea,
Over Storm was captured in October 2005 but is seeing the light of day
for the first time. To listen or download the EP, just follow the
link. It will be a triumph for the great state of Texas.
~ Electronic Voice Phenomenon

ELECTRIC BIRD NOISE: LE VESTIBULE - VESTIBULE TRANSITOIRE
South Carolina guitarist Brian Lea McKensie's fourth album under the
EBN monikor is an ambient wash of haunting electronic soundscapes in
the mould of Stars of The Lid and Windy & Carl, et. al. As the title
suggests, the release consists of two sidelong tracks of soothing
guitar lines, supplemented by ebow stroking and feedback looping. (The
titles refer to the radio show, "Le Vestibule" with DJ, Jean-Francois
Fecteau, for which they were originally recorded and they are here
released on McKenzie's own label with distribution through the fine
folks at Silber Media.)
Fans of Eno's ambient works will also enjoy these soundtrack style
offerings, which paint musical pictures on the insides of your eyelids
with their swaying processed loops that will have your heads swirling
throughout. I can almost hear these sonic tones accompanying some
Discovery Channel special on the origins of the Universe! Warm,
enveloping, claustrophobic, yet as comforting as grandma's arms on a
cold Winter afternoon. Simply amazing!
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

LOST KISSES #5 & xo #3
Yep, that's about actual size for this comic.  It was actually shrunk
from a smaller size a few years back and is now right around the size
of a pack of matches, but somehow Brian manages to pack all sorts of
goodness into this tiny package.  This is a short version of the story
of Brian's life, his struggles to keep friends, to distinguish himself
from humanity as a whole (although I would submit that a continuing
interest in this medium is a good start), and his surprising lack of
interest in many self-perceived failings.  Turns out (spoiler alert!)
that he has something called Asperger's, so maybe this odd
disconnectedness he's feeling is simply a matter of faulty brain
wiring.  Honestly, when I see a comic this tiny, the best I'm hoping
for is maybe a good joke or two, something mildly amusing because of
the novelty format.  The fact that he was able to put together an
emotionally moving story while still being oddly disaffecting is
impressive as hell to me.  You can order all five issues at his
website for $3.50, or maybe, what, $1 apiece?  This is well worth
seeking out for anybody who has ever felt listless and directionless,
which I'm guessing is just about everybody reading this at one time or
another...
~ Optical Sloth

Two different mini-comics tell two very different stories all in a
format no bigger than a book of matches.
Indie writer Brian John Mitchell continues two of his "tiny" projects
with new issues of his mini-comics XO, about a serial killer trying to
reform, and the slice of life story Lost Kisses, about a young man
trying to understand life, emotion and everything that goes with it.
Both comics are only about the size of a book of matches and black and
white.
In this issue of XO readers take a trip back to the past and witness
the first time this assassin for hire killed. It may not be for the
reasons you think�
In Lost Kisses the narrator ponders his bad luck at relationships,
questions his lack of feeling and then must struggle with a sudden
diagnosis that, while it explains certain things, now raises more
questions.
Mitchell has a genuine talent for managing to write stories that read
densely in just a short amount of space. This issue of XO, however,
feels a bit more like a vignette rather than a complete story. The
spare, clinical prose, while it does give insight into the mindset of
a man who can kill with an equal, clinical detachment, also keeps the
reader too much at arm's length. The tale ends up feeling more like a
vignette or a scene rather than a complete story.
Lost Kisses, on the other hand, not only feels complete, it leaves the
reader a bit dizzy and pondering. The narrator embarks on an almost
adolescent cataloging of faults and failings and yet breezes over them
with a self-deprecating humor that borders on self-flagellation. The
reader goes through an emotional turn as they may find the author's
attitude at times juvenilely annoying and at other times feel a kind
of sadness and sympathy for his plight. The interesting point being
that the narrator himself experiences no real emotions throughout and
does not experience the same events in the same way the reader takes them.
XO is illustrated by Melissa Spence Gardner in a simple, slightly
manga-influenced style that nevertheless manages to convey quite a bit
in just a little space. With a canvas only the size of a matchbook she
wisely focuses on close-shots and keeps the details and surroundings
to a minimum � but not so little that readers cannot follow the
action. Lost Kisses, however, is illustrated by Mitchell himself and
features his usual stick-figure style. Being stick-figure based, he
focuses on representational and metaphorical action rather than
attempting for any kind of realism.
While both of these titles manage to provide quite a bit of story and
impact for a buck a piece, this month's edition of Lost Kisses is the
more well-rounded read. If you are in the market for something a lot
different, something imminently portable, and something that you can
read in class or a meeting without getting caught then these
mini-comics are worth a look.
~ Tonya Crawford, Broken Frontier

xo#1-3
Format can do a lot to influence the attractiveness of a book, but
even unique and unexpected styles of bookmaking can blend in at big
conventions like MoCCA or APE. However, at a small Midwestern show
like the Madison Zine Fest, unconventional books have a chance to
really stand out.
It was there that I noticed three ultra-mini minis (1.75�2.25″)
sleeved in small plastic bags and sitting unattended on a banister. I
thought about taking them. They would fit in my pocket. No one would
know. The sensation passed, however, and good karma struck back. The
books were given as a gift to my table mate who gave them to me. Now I
share them with you.
Baby corn, puppies, doll-sized furniture - typically these and other
small things define cute. One might expect that XO, a series of mini
minis would be cute as well. Even the series' title XO implies kisses
and hugs and touchy-feely stuff. However, these books are anything but
cute, because each contains a story of murder.
It's completely disarming and even kind of funny, if such a topic can
ever be funny. The stories are told from the first-person perspective
of a guy who without emotion keeps killing people either by accident
or without remorse. The guy is a total sociopath, and the things he
does are so unbelievably dry and strange, it makes the book's plastic
slip-case seem like a metaphorical body bag or some caution to keep
out the younger set.
Each page is filled with a single illustrative panel hovering above a
few sentences of plot, in a kind of Far Side style perversion. The odd
combination of art, layout and typography makes the stories seem even
weirder. Thick, awkward lines outline human shapes and thin straight
lines accent the shadows. Each drawing is trapped tightly in a box and
clipped at all sides to make room for the words. The font used is some
standard sans serif, one you might use on a website or a term paper
or, you know, an unassuming murderous comic book series.
Each book left me stunned and laughing awkwardly just to release the
unexplainable tension. I'd call them modestly awesome. You can pick up
copies of XO dirt cheap for $1 apiece or all three for $2 from Silber
Media.
~ Sarah Morean, The Daily Cross Hatch

Here's another tiny mini by Brian, as it looks like he enjoys sticking
with that matchbox format. This it's a fictional (I hope) tale about a
young man's first murder, as he sees another man with his girlfriend
and snaps. Smashing a head in is generally a sure way to kill
somebody, and the man spends the rest of the tiny issue methodically
dealing with the body and the consequences, slight as they are. It's a
thoroughly creepy book and Melissa does a great job with very little
space to convey a complex range of emotions on these characters. This
is probably $1 like the other issue and you could still get all of
these comics for a pittance, not to mention the ridiculously tiny
envelope they could all fit in�
~ Optical Sloth

Hey Kidz,

I hope you are all doing well.  Been pretty busy getting everything
ready for the release of the new discs by Hotel Hotel & Northern
Valentine.  Since you are all faithful I put up a place where you can
order the two of them together for $5 off.  Also I renewed the ten disc
discount.  Go to www.silbermedia.com/sale to order.

I've been using Grouply lately to manage my yahoogroups.  I suggest
checking it out, easier to sort the articles you want there than
elsewhere.

I'm really into this british show called No Heroics lately.  Not
available here in the states, but you can find it on YouTube.  It's
about super heroes hanging out in a bar.  What more could you ask for?

Talk to you all soon.  News is coming in pretty quickly lately.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell



type_D

Hey Starz,

So there's an mwvm video up for "context. where?" at
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F4uZ8Hx4Ka4

I hope you dig it.  Also on the Silber MySpace I am trying to do a blog
entry every day about Silber activities for this month.
www.myspace.com/silber

hrt
Brian John Mitchell



type_N

Hey Starz,

So there's an mwvm video up for "context. where?" at
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F4uZ8Hx4Ka4

I hope you dig it.  Also on the Silber MySpace I am trying to do a blog
entry every day about Silber activities for this month.
www.myspace.com/silber

hrt
Brian John Mitchell



type_N

Hey Starz,

Not sure how much I've told you of the following before, but here we
go....

I did an interview about the series of interviews I did with indie radio
music directors (obtuse enough for you?) for Spinning Indie.
http://spinningindie.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-with-brian-of-silber\
-records.html

It's going to be hitting stores in the end of October & I'm still
getting things rolling for the promotion, but we are now shipping direct
orders of Northern Valentine's The Distance Brings Us Closer (
www.silbermedia.com to order).

Hotel, Hotel's The Sad Sea is out for manufacturing.

If you want to check out some of the music I was working on over the
summer, go to www.myspace.com/panthan

hrt
Brian John Mitchell



type_N

Hey Kidz,

I know I've been missing in action for a while, but there will be some
major comebacks this fall, meanwhile....

We have a new Silber exclusive community on Ning, check it out & join
up. http://silbermedia.ning.com/

There's some remix materials for the upcoming Remora - Mecha release
on Centre of Wood.  Check it out here.
http://www.silbermedia.com/remora/mecha-remix

I just put up a little Lost Kisses documentary on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpEAVE2EpcI

As some of you are already aware, I have been doing some work on
mastering records & helping with promotion of CDs.  If you or anyone
you know might be interested in these services, please let me know.

Also I'm going looking for some folks interested in helping out as
unpaid interns helping with highly specified projects in a timely
manner (for example a month to do a 20 hour project).  Get to learn
what's really going on or improve your personal network if you are
already running a label of your own.  Contact me if you're interested.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell
www.silbermedia.com

wadebrigade radio on mediumrare.com

or open either MEDIUMRARE.COM or STREAM.MEDIUMRARE.COM in yr favorite

music player.

saturday night (sunday morning) 12 mindight CST (1AM atlantic/ 10PM pacific)

So Plumerai is vying for an opening slot for Coldplay & we need some help stuffing the ballot box.

www.coldplayontour.com/wfnx/

They're video is third from the bottom & is the one divided into three panels.  Just play it & rate it.

hrt
Brian John Mitchell