experimental

Record #1002: U2 – Achtung Baby (1991)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I have always freely admitted that I have some glaring blind spots in my musical knowledge. And some of them are embarrassing. It’s not unusual for me to miss important artists in scenes that I follow closely—sometimes that have even toured with my favorite bands (see: Manchester Orchestra, Touché Amoré).

But what is unusual is ignoring what many regard as the best album from one of my favorite bands.

I had somehow gotten the impression that Achtung Baby was where U2 had jumped the shark. Per the joke I would repeat loudly and often, U2 fell off halfway through The Joshua Tree and never recovered. Somehow, it took until last month for someone to challenge that assertion.

And while Achtung Baby was indeed a massive shift for the band, it wasn’t downward. The group ripped up most of their playbook and radically reinvented themselves, kicking off perhaps their most forward-thinking decade of work.

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Record #989: Do Make Say Think – You, You’re a History In Rust (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I have spoken at length about the opposing camps within the history of post rock: Team Mogwai and Team Tortoise. It seems that by and large, Team Mogwai has been the victors. These days, the term generally refers to the dramatic, climax-chasing narratives of bands like Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, and MONO.

But across the pond from the Glaswegians, you have Tortoise, whose compositions are more groove oriented, taking nods from jazz, Krautrock, and dub. Bands like Collections of Colonies of Bees, Bark Psychosis, and Do Make Say Think.

As much as I love the emotionality and bombast of the climaxcore side of post rock, I often find myself being drawn to the more cerebral side. So when I found this copy of DMST’s celebrated You, You’re a History In Rust in a used bin, I snagged it without a thought.

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Record #971: Emma Ruth Rundle: EG2:Dowsing Voice (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Among the broad expanse of Emma Ruth Rundle’s oeuvre, you’ll find psychedelic tinged shoegaze, Pink Floyd-y post rock, no-holds-barred art rock, dark folk, doom metal, and more—not to mention her expansive visual work.

Even as far-reaching as her catalog is, nothing can prepare you for EG2: Dowsing Voice, the second of her experimental, instrumental records released under her name. But where Electric Guitar One still mostly stayed within the realms of post rock, this record is positively feral.

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Record #962: A.R. Kane – Sixty-nine (1988)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It’s said that there is a fine line between genius and madness. I’m not sure just how universally true that axiom is, but in the case of Sixty-nine, the debut full length from British dream pop duo (note: they coined that term themselves), they ride that line like Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove.

The record is fiercely experimental—to the point that it’s almost a wonder that anyone agreed to release it. Nevertheless, the record became a huge influence on trip hop, post rock, and shoegaze.

I want to be clear that I love this record. There is nothing quite like it. But as is often the case with these sorts of artistic milestones, the scope of its influence may far outshine the record itself. Not everything thrown at the wall sticks. In fact, depending on my mood, this might strike me as completely transcendent, or as the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Continue reading →

Record #943: Agriculture – Agriculture (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

“Ecstatic black metal” seems a bit like an oxymoron. If you were to ask someone to describe black metal in one word, “ecstatic” might not come up very often. In fact, if you were to create a relevant Family Feud category, guessing it would land you a big fat X and a Steve Harvey overreaction.

Yet when you listen to Agriculture’s debut full length, it makes perfect sense that they would describe themselves as such, using the white-hot sonic bombast of black metal as a vehicle for transcendence and jubilation.

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Record #854: Helms Alee – Keep This Be the Way (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Helms Alee has always been unpredictable. Even besides the triple-vocal attack—which ranges from throaty screams to dreamy cleans to riot grrrl-esque shouts—they have always implemented a number of styles into their brand of heavy, weird music. I first discovered them on a Wikipedia article about sludge metal fusions, describing them as “Sludge/shoegaze,” even though they themselves simply call themselves “grunge” (probably just because they’re from Seattle).

But they have never been as fearlessly inventive and monstrously heavy as they are on Keep This Be the Way. Nonsense title aside, this is a staggering album that showcases the best that Helms Alee has to offer, and pushes them into bold new territory.

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Record #850: Cremation Lily – Dreams Drenched in Static (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Album art is a funny thing. As often as the warning is given not to judge a [record] by its cover, sometimes the visual aesthetic of the record perfectly matches the sound contained therein.

Take for example Dreams Drenched in Static, the new album from Cremation Lily, the solo project of Zen Zsigo. Soft images of waves, grasses, and sand dunes are torn apart and combined to form a jagged abstract collage. It’s a stunning visual representation of the sounds on the album: gentle elements like ambient guitars, floating keyboards, clean vocals, and laid back drum machines are chopped and manipulated and pasted together to create something that is harshly overexposed and monstrous. But at the same time, beneath the hiss of white noise and squeals of feedback is a sort of zen-like peace, like the warm embrace of the snow after an avalanche.

(And if it sounds like I’m just parroting the promo email from The Flenser, that’s because they quoted me in it).

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Record #833: Boris – W (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands are as prolific as Boris. The Japanese trio has done everything from shoegaze to synthpop to drone to thrash metal to harsh noise to garage rock to punk to hardcore to post rock to rockabilly (probably—I’m not actually sure if they’ve done any rockabilly, but probably). The sheer mass and diversity of their output makes for some great moments, but it makes it very difficult to call any of their albums essential. 

Sure, there are some legendary mile markers in their discography: most people point to Pink, I point to Noise. But for the most part, while their consistently enjoyable and impressive as a whole, most of the individual albums aren’t very distinctive from one another.

To that point, W is their twenty-seventh album—a number that doesn’t include their seemingly endless list of collaborative works. However, W feels unique enough even among Boris’s discography that it warranted adding it to my collection.

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Record #811: Autechre – Tri Repetae (1995)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last week, while recording an episode on experimental music for my new podcast (oh yeah, I have a podcast now), I remarked that part of what makes Radiohead great is that they take the harsh weirdness of far more inaccessible bands and mold it into pop structures. “Radiohead would be the first ones to tell you, ‘just listen to Autechre,'” I said, and then I realized two things.

One: I didn’t know how to pronounce Autechre.

Two: I had never listened to them.

I promptly sought to correct that, and within half an hour of listening to their pioneering opus Tri Repetae, I ordered a copy. And now, I’m not sure which is harder to believe: that this record came out in 1995, or that humans had anything to do with its creation.

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