Articles
2009 Artists' Picks
Lymbyc Systym

Albums
Cory Allen
aus
The Bird Ensemble
Canaille
Catlin & Machinefabriek
Greg Davis
Loren Dent
Dirac
Drafted By Minotaurs
Flica
Sarah Goldfarb & JHK
Gown
John Hollenbeck
Viviane Houle
I/DEX
Akira Kosemura
Andrew McKenna Lee
Le Lendemain
LRAD
Lymbyc Systym
Melorman
Muskox
The Mercury Program
Nikasaya
Northerner
nörz
Noveller / Aidan Baker
Redshape
Marina Rosenfeld
Stripmall Architecture
Sturqen
Wes Willenbring
The Tony Wilson Sextet
Julia Wolfe
Peter Wright
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Blackoperator
Glimpse Four:Twenty 03
Kod.eX
Portland Stories

EPs
Molnbär Av John
Tommi Bass & B.B.S.C.
Julian Beau
Colours-Volume 5
Dalot
Echologist
Simon James French
Geiom & Shortstuff
General Elektriks
Geskia
Ernest Gonzales
Gradient
Jacksonville
Joker
Ann Laplantine
Loko
Machinefabriek
Stefano Pilia
Damian Valles

Zelienople: Give It Up
Type

A soundtrack to accompany gloomy hours trapped inside while rain drenches everything outside, Give It Up is clearly not music designed for sunny days. Zelienople's latest presents forty-six minutes of ghostly spell-casting by the Chicago-based trio of percussionist Mike Weis, guitarist-vocalist Matt Christensen, and multi-instrumentalist Brian Harding. The material breathes naturally, as one might expect it would considering that the songs were recorded in Weis's basement during the winter of 2008-09. Beneath the surface of the music's semi-controlled surface an impassioned heart beats, something audible in many songs when desperation intrudes upon the twilight stillness. A piece such as “All I Want Is Calm” argues that a typical Zelienople track might better be characterized as incantation rather than conventional song.

The album gets underway via the slow-burning “Aging,” replete with a vocal alternating between narcoleptic murmurs and desperate pleas (“How did we get this way?”), a funeral lounge cymbal pattern, and creeping guitar atmospherics—in the Zelienople universe, nothing makes more sense than setting sail with a nightmare. A softly galloping percussive pattern lifts the energy level a notch in “Can't Stop,” and the band follows suit by delivering a lively performance as it navigates the song's psychedelic haze; shuddering guitars and vocals are audible despite the cloudy blanket that coats the song. The group intersperses a few instrumentals amidst the vocal pieces (phantom voices rise from scattered crypts during the organ-fueled death ambient of “Water Saw,” and wind briefly whips up a blinding sandstorm in “Dust Bowl”), and when it does veer closer to more conventional song form (as happens during “I Can Put All My Faith In Her”), it does so without compromising its hushed vocal style and crepuscular sound design. It's also worth noting that initial copies of the vinyl edition come with accompaning CD featuring the score to Donald Prokop's short film Gone.

January 2010