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blackest ever black

Album Review: Secret Boyfriend – This Is Always Where You’ve Lived

by Rio Toro

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Secret Boyfriend: This Is Always Where You’ve Lived
Similar Artists: Helm, The Hospitals, 18+
Genre: Not-noise, Experimental, Shitgaze, Sound Collage
Label: Blackest Ever Black

Usually when I write a review, I try to focus on the emotional impact of the music, as well as the response the music is intending to make on the listener. However, with This Is Always Where You’ve Lived — the first true full-length from North Carolina’s Ryan Martin (AKA Secret Boyfriend) — nothing comes easy in terms of categorization. In fact, these mysterious and elusive tracks often resist words at all, which in my interpretation is one of the reasons so little has been written about the artist throughout his nearly decade long career. Until now, he has made ends meet in the music world through a limited run of cassette only releases, split LPs, and his own Hot Releases imprint. This release sees Martin combining his wide array of musical ideas into a concise and fully realized statement that borrows little and asks for nothing. Still, as big a statement for Secret Boyfriend as this is, these 12 largely dissimilar tracks — while somehow coexisting harmoniously within the same album — all contradict one another as pieces, and one by one will blank out your previous theories about exactly who this Secret Boyfriend guy is.

It turns out I’m not the only one having trouble pinpointing this artist either, as Ryan Martin has become known in the N.C underground for his unpredictable live shows which range from aggressive, anarchistic noise fests to creepy vocal modified acoustic numbers. While starting off as a kind of tongue-in-cheek performance artist looking to breed awkwardness, he has clearly moved on to bigger and better things in recent years. The music on this release is a combination of dreamy, painfully lo-fi (folk?) songs, divisively simple keyboard melodies, abstract electronic noodling/sampling, fuzz-laden ambient soundscapes, and the occasional detour into Japanese caliber noise. It’s quite possibly the most varied of the DIY albums I listened to in 2013, and certainly one of the most unusual to come out on Blackest Ever Black. Despite these contrasting elements though, the music works because all of these fragmented pieces join arms and unite to create a musical experience that’s quite unlike any other I’ve had within recent memory. It’s a bizarre, otherworldly venture that’s also strangely nostalgic; like we are being taken down a chain of childhood memories that we never actually had.

Calling Secret Boyfriend a collage artist might put it best, because his productions consist of around half a dozen simple elements that are loosely conjoined to form a new, alien-like identity. It must be said, even for music this independently based, the core musicianship here can be pretty lousy. Fortunately, it appears that Martin knows what he’s doing around 3/4ths of the time and for the most part what he’s doing remains impressive despite some obvious shortcomings. All the leading melodies are well thought out, and his occasionally shoddy guitar playing/keyboard skills actually end up adding personality instead of distracting from the experience.

Unlike most non-musicians working in the field of experimentalia — excepting the opening 5 seconds of “Summer Wheels/Mysterious Fires” and the battalion ready final track — Martin mostly strays away from anything violently harsh. All the haphazardous knob twiddling and amateurish discrepancies are reserved for the background, which is why these tracks happen to be such a warm and inviting bunch for a scene that prides itself with freakouts. As daunting a title as This Is Always Where You’ve Lived may seem, it wouldn’t be a bad place to settle down in for a few months, which isn’t something I could say about most music this daring and abstract.

The world that Martin has created here is one that’s steeped in fantastical daydreams and a youthful longing. Above all else, the album is defined by its hazy atmosphere and ultra loose feel that refuses precision as a means towards greatness. Only occasionally — such as on the Haxon Cloak-like “Remarkable Fluids” or the titular closing track — does this lighthearted mood transform into something nightmarish, and even then it remains an exciting detour. On the other hand, many tracks, including the 8 minute standout “Deleted Hill”, are so devoid of structure that they end up falling apart entirely, so it’s a good thing that watching them do so happens to be absolutely mesmerizing.

Upon closer inspection, Secret Boyfriend is far from lazy, and he has indeed put a plentiful amount of work and detail into these productions: his talent just doesn’t happen to be in the places you would normally look for it. Even after listening to This Is Always Where You’ve Lived for several days, I continue to be surprised at how Martin can be wondrously adept in certain fields (layering tracks, atmosphere) while being mindlessly incompetent in others (properly tuning a guitar, remaining on beat). Despite these factors though, listening to Secret Boyfriend is far from frustrating , and I would recommend taking a peek to anyone who’s looking for a journey through the strange and bewildering without wanting to sacrifice the chance to be uplifted.

Track Listing:
1.) Summer Wheels/Mysterious Fires*
2.) Silvering The Wing
3.) Form Me*
4.) Flashback
5.) Remarkable Fluids
6.) Beyond the Darkness*
7.) Dream Scrape
8.) Glint and Follow You
9.) Have You Heard About This House
10.) Last Town
11.) Deleted Hill*
12.) This Is Always Where You’ve Lived*

Album Highlight – *

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC, OPINION, REVIEWS Tagged With: Album Review, blackest ever black, experimental, Secret Boyfriend, This is always where you've lived

Album Review: Tropic of Cancer – Restless Idylls

by Rio Toro

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Tropic of Cancer: Restless Idylls

Similar Artists: Silent Servant, Raime, Regis, Grouper, Vatican Shadow

Genre: Goth, Minimal Wave, Drone, Shoegaze

Label: Blackest Ever Black

 

Camella Lobo’s Tropic of Cancer alias represents the epitome of a “musical project”. Her tracks — which are a particularly unglamorous tour through goth, minimal wave, and drone — feel more like art installations than traditionally evolving songs. We feel as though the music being presented has been premeditated, catering towards some kind of definitive aim, without ever once becoming an inch more or less than what it’s meant to be. As listeners, we are simply left to examine these pieces in their unwavering state, hovering over them without ever being completely immersed — or even knowing much about what they are supposed to represent. In fact, the entirety of Tropic of Cancer might as well be represented as one towering sculpture sealed behind a glass box; each of the individual tracks represent this unknown entity from a similar, but slightly altered viewpoint.

Despite the influence of shoegaze, Camella’s palette of colors revolves almost strictly between black to dark gray. Nearly every track to come out of her project thus far has been based around the convergence of drum loops, Joy Division baselines, reverbed guitar textures and melted, undecipherable vocals (from Camella herself). It’s a style that is in no way unique unto itself, as this cold-wave music has actually become somewhat over-popularized through the last few years, but ToC has proven to stick out from many of their peers through a dedication to craft and unrivaled authenticity.

Part of why Tropic of Cancer’s singles and EP’s have been the source of such intrigue and speculation is that they have come out on Downwards — a label run by minimal techno titan Karl O’ Connor (AKA Regis), that specializes in dark, industrial electronic music. Now however, for their true debut (2011’s The End Of All Things was only a singles compilation) TOC has moved to the london based Blackest Ever Black. Since TOC share a thing or two in common with Blackest Ever Black showcase artist Raime, the move couldn’t be more fitting.

Restless Idylls is Camella Lobo’s attempt to take her project in some brighter directions — although I say this reservedly as the tracks here are as haunting and mournful as ever; just about as far away from tropical as one could get. However, a few tracks do see Lovo experimenting with some brighter chords and textures. The prime example of this is “Children Of A Lesser God”, the unquestionable highlight and centerpiece of the album. Though the track was actually released a year ago, this rerecorded version easily stands as the most vibrant and audacious track in the ToC library. It’s the track that all the others seem to revolve around, and it proves to be enveloping without sacrificing any of ToC’s grit or integrity.

This is also Camela Lobo’s attempt to make her project work in an album format, and on those fronts she hasn’t faired so well. In addition to “Children Of A Lesser God”, many other tracks on Restless Idylls have been released beforehand on singles/EP’s (although they seem to have been slightly altered), which is a bit underwhelming. In fact, there is actually very little that separates this from her 2011 singles compilation — both in reference to the quality of the songs and overall mood.

Karl O Connor — who is credited with production and mixing duties — has added some rippling, electronic undercurrents to Camella’s otherwise stable sound, and if you’re playing the music loud enough, it’s enough to give the pieces an intense quality to them; especially during otherwise bland tracks like “The Seasons Won’t Change (And Neither Will You)”. But otherwise, Restless Idylls is so unambitious and lacking in variety that it will be hard to recommend to much of anyone. Overall, these are tracks that travel in a circular motion, never ending up much further than where they started. While this may be the point of their existence, if so, their premise has become tired and predictable over the course of the artist’s 5 year career. If you’re willing to give Restless Idylls a shot, just know that you’ll have to give it a mighty big push to get it anywhere off the ground.

 

Track Listing:

1.) Plant Lillies On My Head*

2.) Court of Devotion*

3.) Hardest Day

4.) Children Of A Lesser God*

5.) More Alone

6.) The Seasons Won’t Change (And Neither Will You)

7.) Wake The Night

8.) Rites Of The Wild

Album Highlight – *

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC, OPINION, REVIEWS Tagged With: blackest ever black, cold-wave, drone, experimental, restless idylls, tropic of cancer

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