Impressions

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Steal Steal Ground

What am I not understanding about this album?
I read one review that compared it to Beck
another that called it pretenious. If anything
it seems to be a rather nice album of lo-fi
indie. Folk-ee, english vocals, moving slowly
through stalls of emotion and melancholy. It
reminds heavily actually of Coco Rosie now that
I think about it, it’s got the 60s feel to it.
On second listen I’m rather enjoying it, but
I feel like the hype or the criticism rather
seems unjustified. Steal Steal Ground make
the grounds of folk seem more barren than
Anne Briggs on a bad day. Ennui that’s not
afraid to tackle the games of the truly bored
Steal Steal Ground turn the quiet moments of
isolation into a connection of ping ponged beats,
thread barren guitars, and yet it’s so sincere
that the songs follow you around like a cloud.

Fleckfumie
Starcloud, Moonsky, and Ocean
Afterhours
Berlin via Tokyo band mastered by Stefan Betke.
The throw down of tech in Europe’s culture city
has lead to a few different directions stellar
indie-electronica from Barbara Morgestern and
the funk from Mouse on Mars. Fleckfumie could be Mum
if Mum has spent the last 10 years triffling through
minimal 12″s and practicing some light ethnic tones.
Get the feeling these guys are rather good live. Touches
of Indian music at places. That said I find the consistent
reemergence of emo in any forms rather annoying and here
Fleck and Fumie do some of that mid-90s ambience
of death cab and pedro shows. While it might be flourished
with some decent electronics tricks and a little of
a more world bearing ear, I keep wishing they
would break out of the olde American mold and beat
down the paths Starcloud, Moonsky, and Ocean only hint at.

Tori Kudo
Tori’s greatest wish, as he confessed once, is to abolish his
skill at the guitar, but as Lacan warns us, the will to
destruction is often the same will to the individual. Over
the years Kudo and wife Reiko and their jehovah’s witness
band Maher Shalal Hash Bash have continued to obliterate
themselves musical, but such damage has only given them joy.
Perhaps it’s part of that peculair Japanese will to degregation,
Japan isn’t a fairly happy land as of late, with less than 10%
of the people’s there admitting to any optimism about the future,
but Mr. Kudo seems to see this an opporunity to unhinge the constraints
of musicianship, and man it just keeps paying off. These works are
spirituals, constant and true, of a soul truly trying to achieve
more than just notes from his instrument. The fact of the matter is
Tori throws more than just naive-ism or

Vashti Bunyan
Just Another Diamond Day
How much we change in such short distances of time
well ok… I’ll be honest. Maybe I’m the only
one who has changed? But 2 years ago I rabidly
tracked down Vashti via mp3 after hearing about
her through a Coco Rosie mp3, the result was
one song occupying most of my time for probably
about 2 weeks straigt, but Just Another Diamond Day
in full I actually find a little boring. The orchestration
is great and were I in the mood to listen to this
I would probably think it’s pretty cool. But then again
a few months ago I was in love with Little Wings, this week not at all.
So things do change, but I find the album to constant.
Maybe I’m to jittery but I find it frustrating when an album doesn’t change
apurbtly and go from melancholic to wonderous to whatever
else comes next. Consistency annoys me.

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