Articles
2009 Top 10s and 20s
King Midas Sound
Starke
Albums
36
Aardvarck
Matias Aguayo
Anaphoria
Anduin
Arbol + Fibla
Aufgang
Beneva vs. Clark Nova
Black to Comm
Bvdub
Cornstar
Dinky
Enola
Fieldhead
FOURM / Shinkei / Turra
Billy Gomberg
The Green Kingdom
Chihei Hatakeyama
Ian Hawgood
Marek Hemmann
Khate
King Midas Sound
Marcel Knopf
Robot Koch
Lambent
Shinobu Nemoto
Olekranon
Laurent Perrier
Piano Magic
Porzellan
Pylône
Ryonkt
Shadyzane
Slow
Small Color
Solomun
The Sound of Lucrecia
Stray Ghost
The Use of Ashes
Sylvie Walder
Compilations / Mixes
Sebo K
Will Saul
Tama Sumo
VOLTT Amsterdam Vol. 1
EPs
Blindhæð
Roberto Bosco
Franco Cangelli
Dieb
dub KULT
Abe Duque/Blake Baxter
Gemmy
Christopher Hobbs
Duncan Ó Ceallaigh
Christopher Roberts
The Sight Below
Two Fourteen
Van Der Papen
Andy Vaz
Vetrix
Eddie Zarook
DVD
Optofonica
Stray Ghost: The Avalanche of Swollen Tongues
Dead Pilot
Anthony Saggers' Stray Ghost star is clearly rising. After issuing the well-received Losthilde in 2008 on Highpointlowlife Records, the Oxfordshire-born producer finds himself re-emerging with not one but two new collections. The wonderfully-titled An Avalanche of Swollen Tongues perpetuates the seething dark ambient style captured on Losthilde , while the EP Each Paradise is a Lost Paradise will form a precursor to Losthilde II, scheduled to appear on the Australian label Hidden Shoal in January 2010. There'll be no shortage of Saggers' blistering drones on offer in the months to come.
The Dead Pilot release begins audaciusly with the title track, which opens the album on a whisper before shattering the quiet a minute later with a massive swarm of noise—“An Avalanche of Swollen Tongues” indeed. For twenty-three minutes, metallic ripples of convulsive noise swirl, and one feels as if one is trapped at the center of a cyclone, holding on to anything for dear life until the ferocious storm subsides. Saggers wisely lowers the intensity level in the following piece, “Grains and Waves,” by bringing down the volume level and reducing its contents to gently flowing masses of hazy washes and string tones. The track's ten-minute running time, however, allows room for an escalation to a more epic stratosphere to transpire halfway through. Elsewhere, Saggers unleashes the controlled, nightmarish howl of “The Liberation of Vision” for eight minutes, and pummels the listener into submission with the seething, mini-epics “High Rise” and “The End.” Such tracks ensure that no one will categorize Stray Ghost as ambient in the ‘wallpaper' sense of the word. Throughout the album, a decrepit and corroded character also asserts itself in a way that helps separate Stray Ghost from the competition.December 2009