Article
Talvihorros and Valles

Albums
Tomas Barfod
The Beach Boys
Peter Caeldries
Carlos Cipa
Cordero & Guajardo
Cristal
Darling Farah
DeWalta
Forrest Fang
Geskia!
Helena Gough
The Green Kingdom
Harper and Smyth
Hideyuki Hashimoto
High Aura'd
François Houle 5 + 1
I:Cube
Marielle V Jakobsons
Akira Kosemura
Kshatriy
Landing
Library Tapes
Lights Out Asia
Elisa Luu
Moon Ate The Dark
Murmer
Norman Conquest / Szelag
Novak and Crouch
Pausal
Pawn
Pig & Dan
Sterac
S_W_Z_K
szilárd
Antonio Trinchera
Damian Valles
Josh Varnedore
Zilverhill

Reissue
David Bowie

Compilations / Mixes
Digitalism
Guy Gerber
Poolside Sounds
Tempo Dreams Vol. 1
Variables

EPs
Celer & Machinefabriek
Claws For?
Flowers Sea Creatures
Kangding Ray
Purple Bloom
Stellate 2
szilárd
Andy Vaz
Windy & Carl

DVD
Stefan Goldmann

Cristal: Apostate
Flingcosound

Perversely timed for a summer release, Cristal's digital album Apostate might be the most disturbing recording you'll hear during the summer of 2012 (it's also being made available from the FSS Bandcamp page on a pay-what-you-want basis). In developing the album material, the group—Gregory Darden, Jimmy Anthony, and LaBradford member Bobby Donne—shared ideas digitally before the album's three sections emerged, each of them comprised of sub-sections. A thirty-nine-minute follow-up to Homegoing, the trio's 2010 FSS release, Apostate carves out a macabre path through multiple dronescapes of varying intensity levels.

After opening in ambient-gloom mode, “I. 1.Without Water 2. April (reprise) 3. Sutta 4. Dormition 5. Muezzin 6. Manse, the Nighthawked” segues into a gentler episode that's in turn supplanted by foreboding string atmospherics and the muffled call of a muezzin, the crier whose vocalizing summons Muslims to prayer. Changes occur rapidly, the music never staying in any one place too long, until the sixth part settles in for an extended exercise in blurry dronescaping big enough to swallow entire towns whole. A subtle Gothic quality characterizes “II. 1. Oscines 2. Last in the Heights 3. Dormition (reprise) 4. Bels,” an impression especially evident when muffled bell tones emerge midway through the piece, after which “III. 1. Burn Witch, Ye Sin 2. Betrayals 3. April” presents a more harrowing series of set-pieces. The opening section is actually less unhinged than one might expect in its evocation of the violent madness inherent in witch-burning; if anything, it's the second part that's more aggressive as it points Cristal's sound in the direction of industrial scene-painting. Its intensity makes the relative peacefulness of the closing piece's third part all the more welcome.

July-August 2012