Indignant Senility, Consecration of the Whipstain (side C)

Indignant Senility is Portland solo artist Pat Maherr, who also makes hip-hop under the excellent name DJ Yo-Yo Dieting.  2011's Consecration of the Whipstain, his second release under the Indignant Senility moniker, follows the album Plays Wagner, which apparently employs samples of the composer's work.  There's an obvious antecedent in ambient music, as Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project also appropriates excerpts from Wagner.  Where GAS places beats underneath ambient drones, Consecration of the Whipstain consists only of ambient drones.  While most ambient albums today feature loud mastering and an extreme frequency response with de-emphasized midrange, these drones emanate quietly from the speakers, and consist largely of midrange frequencies with an especially absent treble range.  The double-album consists of four side-long tracks.  Modest differences in palette identify each track, and there's no other obvious track structure.  The sounds float by organically until they end, with volume, density, and frequency distribution generally remaining consistent.  Maherr's palette here is beautiful, lush, and engaging, and its beauty is emphasized by the undisciplined structural content.  The abstract cover image, with slight variations in a tan monochrome field, fits the music perfectly, and printing it on reverse-stock paper flatters the image.

Wire, Pink Flag (side A)

In some ways, 1977's Pink Flag feels merely ahead of its time.  Everything from the thin guitar sound to the blunt and ideological lyrics, which felt explosive on its release, is heard constantly on new releases today.  The song structures stretched the boundaries of punk and rock conventions, but current songs that are considered accessible pull in much odder directions.  Even the jarringly short gaps between tracks no longer feel surprising.  While Pink Flag lacks the sheer innovation of the two Wire albums that followed it, the songwriting still surpasses the countless albums that have arisen in its wake.  The balance between standard rock structures and unusual twists always feels perfect — Wire had clearly internalized everything that made the traditional structures work, to an extent that's rare today.  While the jarring lyrics no longer surprise, the content is balanced with an impressive attention to poetic detail.  The simple, iconic image on the album's front cover will also always look modern (though the back cover feels a bit dated).  The slightly-muddy guitar sound might be the only musical element that dates Pink Flag, as there's an obvious frequency hole between the top of the guitar and the cymbals — I doubt that this is an anomaly of my New Zealand pressing.

Blank Realm, Deja What? (side A)

My enjoyment in seeing Blank Realm perform live in 2013 inspired me to buy both albums available at their concert.  I listened first to Go Easy, their then-most-recent album, which was apparently close in content to the live performance that I'd seen, and it left me a bit cold.  I then went back to 2010's Deja What?, and immediately had an enthusiastic reaction that exceeded even the concert.  Deja What? seems to predate their existence as a live band — there are mostly guitars, keyboards, and two voices.  Cymbals occasionally seem to have been played live, but most tracks are built over loops or drum machines, with an approach to construction that loosely references the Tall Dwarfs, including its purposeful approach to lo-fi recording.  The guitars are often heavily processed, using classic effects that reference the 60s and 70s.  Where groups like Luxurious Bags borrowed from this palette to create dark atmospheres, Deja What? uses a similar palette to emphasize Blank Realm's youthful exuberance.  The approach to vocal melodies loosely references rock traditions, but the song structures never rely on simple verse / chorus arrangements.  An analogy might compare Deja What? to Perfect Sound Forever, and Go Easy to Crooked Rain Crooked Rain — the Pavement influence is small but clearly perceptible, though Blank Realm seem to have skipped Slanted in their chronology.  The calligraphy font on the cover resembles a heavy metal album, but the simple collage behind it more closely fits the band's approach.

The Door and the Window, Detailed Twang (side A)

On 1980's Detailed Twang, The Door and the Window display an obvious passion for their work and a real love of music, to an extent that seems almost overwhelming in retrospect.  Their lyrics, both on original songs and their stripped-down cover of Television Personalities' "Part Time Punks", reflect their expectations that artists and fans make a strong commitment to their music and values.  Unlike overtly political bands like Crass, these songs focus entirely on their own artistic community — the intention seems to be community-building and reinforcement, rather than a didactic assault, but it's nonetheless a fairly extreme approach.  The music itself relies heavily on austere primitivism, but well-crafted songs and surprisingly competent performances manage to shine through, in part thanks to a recording style that successfully balances clarity with simplicity.  The Door and the Window exploit a broad range of sonic elements, ranging from the abrasive Wasp synthesizer that was already associated with Whitehouse, to toy pianos and saxophones, with bits of electric guitars and rock drums thrown in too.  The song structures utilize verses and choruses, and they generally fall well within the rock idiom.  Mark Perry from Sniffin' Glue and Alternative TV, who shares much of the group's aesthetic vision, helps out on drums, saxophone, and more.  The cover collage, with appropriated text about music alongside staff notation, fits the album's concept perfectly, as does the hand-lettered declaration "Do Not Pay More Than £3.00" in the lower-left corner.

Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc (side A)

After countless albums spanning 15+ years, Joan of Arc chose a the band's name as the title of this 2012 LP.  The band has zig-zagged in the last few years between albums of songs and more abstract explorations, and Joan of Arc includes one side of each.  Its biggest differentiation within their catalog might be the absence of amplification.  The first side includes six solo songs of Tim Kinsella's vocal and acoustic guitar.  It's bright and airy, but not at all harsh or modern sounding.  As is common in Kinsella's writing, the songs fall somewhere between traditional pop structures and more abstract exploration.  Most songs feature more chords and an emphasis on the acoustic nature of the songwriting — the exception is "Peace Corpse", with angular guitar lines that would not be out of place on the group's electric records.  Side B is filled with a long instrumental called "Chaplinesque", on which layers of acoustic guitars spread across the stereo field, with a simple drum part underpinning them.  It loosely resembles some of Rhys Chatham's work, recast with acoustic instruments and less propulsion.  It's recorded nicely, with less character but more fidelity, than the side of songs.  The excellent cover painting depicts Charlie Chaplin and the elephant man, without any other design elements, on reverse-stock white paper — its only connection to the music is the "Chaplinesque" title of side B.

Sandy Bull, E Pluribus Unum (side A)

The first two Sandy Bull albums from 1963 and 1964, are both fairly diverse in content.  While some material on them is original, covers and interpretations range from Bach and Orff to Chuck Berry and Luiz Bonfa.  Billy Higgins drums on some tracks on both albums, and each album includes a long track plus a series of short ones.  After a five-year hiatus, he returned in 1969 with the more personal and daring E Pluribus Unum.  Each side of the album is a single composition, and Bull plays all of the instruments including any percussion.  The tracks themselves have limited compositional arrangement, emphasizing drone and variation as their underlying structural premises.  Their palettes are both narrow and diverse— within guitars and oud, Bull juxtaposes acoustic and electric instruments, and tremolo provides a defining effect for many of the electric sounds.  Bull's minimal percussion complements his guitar and oud playing to help provide movement, but it's never a foreground element — the tambourine sizzle provides nice brightness to an otherwise slightly-murky mix.  The cover photo of Bull appearing to record his oud playing hints at far less creative and distinctive contents than the open-ended explorations of E Pluribus Unum.

Lou Reed, Transformer (side A)

When mixing a rock album, it's common to focus on the lead vocal and the snare as central elements.  For much 1972's Transformer, Lou Reed's vocal and the drum kit are often murky and buried in the mix.  While the radio hit "Walk on the Wild Side" is a notable exception with a more conventional mix, most of the album focuses on guitar, piano, and strings.  It's a pretty daring sonic footprint for an album now perceived as canonical and timeless.  "Vicious' kicks off in a defining fashion — the vocals sound dark and murky, and they're the quietest element in the mix, with the blown-out guitars in front.  The clicky metal percussion in the right speaker is far louder than the drum kit.  The sequence of the album is full of startling juxtapositions.  Louder songs with heavy guitars nearly alternate with soft piano songs, preventing any obvious congruity or flow.  The most obvious example ends the album, with "I'm So Free" between the oddest songs on the album, "New York Telephone Conversation" and "Goodnight Ladies".  The recognizable cover image does emphasize the iconic nature of the album.  Its obvious references to classic album covers help to draw attention to the classic songwriting on the album, which shines through Transformer's many quirks.

Ted Curson, The New Thing and the Blue Thing (side A)

1965's The New Thing and the Blue Thing is a bit overtly pretty for my taste.  There's very little grit — the compositions and performances are full of consonance and beauty.  Because the execution is so impressive, it's a pretty amazing listen when I'm seeking out simple and pretty.  The engineering was the first thing that caught my ear, with the trumpet's lack of harshness and the piano's rich high-end standing out.  The arrangements are great too, with surprising unison sections reminiscent of Fire Music-era Shepp.  The head of "Ted's Tempo" is split between two instruments, and the excellent musicianship feels like one continuous line.  The perfect attention to detail on the glossy cover image reflects the care in making this record — the fonts and colors are great, and Curson's outfit is styled perfectly in the large portrait.