Arcane Candy

Good afternoon, freelance journalist. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to review a 10″ vinyl record album titled Gitanjali by the musical group The No Neck Blues Band. As always, should you be injured or killed by the artist or a representative of the label for writing a review that is highly critical of this release, the owner and staff of Arcane Candy will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This 10″ record will self-destruct in one hour.

Label: Ri Be Xibalba Catalog Number: OQ’EBAL 004 Format: 10″ Packaging: Jacket Tracks: 3 Country: United States Released: 2013 More: Ri Be Xibalba

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In alphabetical order by artist name.

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I’m not sure if White Zero Corp is the artist name on this CD or just the title, as it’s listed different ways on various web sites. Nevertheless, rest assured it is a musical project by two lads over in Poland named Pierre Jodlowski and Alexandre Babel. What they have on offer to your ear drums is heavy instrumental math metal interspersed with quiet interludes full of experimental ambient textures. When they rock out, they do so by way of odd, disjointed rhythms and tempo changes not unlike the Japanese band Ruins. The complete absence of tough guy Cookie Monster vocals—or any other kinds of singing for that matter—is a huge plus. Another thing other than the title that fooled me until I read the liner notes is that the instrument that sounds like a distorted guitar is actually a bass! Packaged in a DVD-sized Digi-Pak with a booklet of artwork depicting surreal nature scenes, this CD is highly recommended for fans of metal, math rock, ambient and experimental.

Label: éOle Records Catalog Number: éOr_017 Format: CD Packaging: DVD-sized Digi-Pak Tracks: 12 Country: France Released: 2019 More: Clic Musique, Pierre Jodlowski

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Not to be confused with the actor Tobey Maguire, MC Maguire “is a composer / producer who has created a very quirky post-modern hybrid that combines classical, pop, jazz, electro-acoustic, and world music traditions. He works primarily in his studio’s multi-track environment (up to 400 tracks) combining live recording, sampling, synths, exotic plugins, and digital editing possibilities. The finished product usually consists of a rigid, hierarchical, multi-layered construct, which is mathematically proportioned to reflect the philosophical / psychological thrust of each individual work’s raison d’être.”—Haro Street Music

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The book Secret Bali: Behind the Tourist Facade is a trinket for tourists on the Indonesian island, just like a set of postcards or a keychain. This is ironic, as the subject matter covered consists mainly of stuff the typical tourist would never encounter, like the animist cult of trees, Balians (traditional healers), and cock fights, as well as ceremonies for cremations, house building, and weddings. Text-wise, the whole thing seems like an amateur production. There are typos galore: missing words, commas where they shouldn’t be and commas missing where they should be, extra character spaces between words, and awkward grammar. The Ubud Palace chapter is not consistent with the others, as there is far less text and the worst widows (one word dangling by itself on one line at the end of a paragraph) ever. The whole thing reads like a blog that someone published as a print-on-demand book on Blurb. At least the graphic design and photos are decent (although I’ve seen much better photos of Bali on Flickr and Instagram). For a much more substantial primer on the traditional culture of Bali, just read the classics Bali: Sacred and Secret (a big coffee table book full of awesome photos) by Gill Marais and Island of Bali by Miguel Covarubias, which will fill you in on everything you need to know.

Publisher: NOW! Bali Publications Catalog Number: ISBN-13: 9786029797121 Format: Book Binding: Paperback Pages: 120 Country: Indonesia Published: 2012 More: Google Books

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Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) was a Greek composer, architect and mathematician who pioneered the use of mathematics in musical composition, participated in the development of early electro-acoustic and electronic music, and was among the first to write music for specific architectural sites and vice versa. Published in 1996, the book Conversations With Iannis Xenakis is comprised of two interviews conducted with the composer by Balint Andras Vargas in 1980 and 1989.

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Formed in 1967 in Champaigne / Urbana, Illinois, Spoils of War (named after one of Harry Partch’s self-built instruments) were an experimental psychedelic rock band that augmented their sound with a sawtooth wave generator, as well as employing the techniques of musique concrete tape manipulation and computer punch card madness to throw the whole mess on a slow boat to Weirdsville. After self-releasing an ultra rare seven-inch in 1969, the band went on hiatus for a mere 30 years until German label Shadoks released some of their material on LP and CD.

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Founded in London, England in 1968, White Noise was initially an experimental electronic music trio comprised of Delia Derbyshire (a sound technician at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who was best known for arranging the theme of the Doctor Who TV show), fellow BBC sound tech Brian Hodgson and American classical musician David Vorhaus. Their debut album, An Electric Storm, definitely lives up to its title, as seven short pop ditties—delivered with the help of three vocalists and a percussionist—are layered with early synth explorations and tape splicing / manipulation madness that contracts and expands all of these elements into a massive cloud of late night atmospherics.

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Tony Conrad and Alex Gelencser, 1998.

The early bird, I mean minimalist catches, I mean gets the worm, I mean word in edgewise–or actually a lot of words in every direction–all over the lengthy liner notes of the numerous LPs and CDs we will look at below. Tony Conrad is one such large, flightless bird. From 1962 to 1965, he played violin in minimalist music founder La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music group, also known as the Dream Syndicate, which included La Monte and Marian Zazeela on drone vocals, John Cale on viola and Angus MacLise on percussion. Since La Monte’s been keeping the tapes “safe” in storage since the mid ’60s–for the most part denying access and copies to the other group members and the public at large–very few people outside of the original small audiences have ever heard what must have surely been the most searing, transporting drone music of all time. Practicing regularly, the group developed into the most awesome unit of 4:00 a.m. hover power. Perfect pitch, just intonation, long durations and massive amplification of the vocals, viola and percussion to tympanic membrane-cutting levels were some of the ingredients of this galaxy hub-bound stew.

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Rumor has it that the album Bedlam by the Crazy People was actually the brainchild of one person: American jazz trumpeter, producer, and musical entrepreneur Johnny Kitchen (real name Jack Millman), who assembled it in 1968. Kitchen’s modus operandi was to cook up a well-seasoned sonic stew by combining discarded recordings from unreleased and / or obscure bands, combining them with other random bits and bobs that he found on tossed tape reels. What it all amounts to is a wacky, zany combo of 1960s pop, naïve song poem music and sound collage. The whole shebang includes but is not limited to: light, organ-led ‘60s pop with awkward starting and stopping shot through with accapella singing, really strange echoes, wailing voices in the background, a horn fanfare, a rooster crowing, a motorcycle’s racket, fuzz guitar, sudden explosions, chirping birds, snippets of classical music, a tinkling music box, bubblegum pop, sirens over

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