[insert witty title]

I had a lot of fun writing the last 'This Week...' post so though I'd try my hand at it again. Once again most of the text is stolen from reviews with the occasional comment from me.

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Geisterfaust

Imagine a very attractive stalker. This is his/her soundtrack. Slow motions in the shadows, barbituate guitar slipped you a mickey and now you’re conscious but not really awake. Your pulse slows to a faint snare slap twitch every 5 seconds. You cannot tell where one track starts and the next begins, nor whereone disc ends. Monsters are scarier the less you see of them, thus this music is more frightening with fewer and fewer notes played. This nightmarish (and all instrumental) beauty was originally released by this German project back in 1995…they’ve since added a sax player; one hopes he can breathe deep enough to play notes slow enough.

Bohren make jazz so slow that I feel my blood pressure drop through the floor every time I listen.

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Prowler (YouTube link)

Venetian Snares - Rossz Csillag Allat Sznletett

[...] shattering breakbeats and post-Aphex Twin poetics, [...] although Funk's juxtaposition of drill'n'bass beats with chamber orchestral sounds has been done by others for more than a decade, most notably on Aphex Twin's I Care Because You Do. But to his credit, Funk takes a chipped, charcoal pencil and illustrates a forest of leafless trees filled with the pigeons that he daydreamt of while watching the birds at Budapest's Royal Palace. Even better, his beats work with the orchestration instead of pulverizing it for an ironic counterpoint. Funk's baroque strings fittingly strike the air, while just about every melody is played with grinded teeth and bloodshot eyes.

I don't normally get on very well with Breakcore, but for some reason this album has a very fond place in my collection

Venetian Snares - Szamar Madar

Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans

Seven Swans easily does the job of securing Sufjan Stevens as one of those songwriters you must become familiar with. It does so not only by proving his ability to turn out consecutive incredible albums, but also by showing his fluency in another medium. Stevens has tried his hand at a variety of jobs and instruments now, and he's been successful. Most of all, though, Seven Swans reveals what Stevens truly is: an inventive songwriter with an abundance of spirit.

Sufjan Stevens - Into the Devil's Territory

Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine

You're standing in line outside a club on a crisp autumn night, wondering why the queue isn't moving any faster. By the time you get within 30 feet of the door, the sound of crowd chatter and DJ music is interrupted by low, guttural bass tones, the incessant kickpedal explosions of a bass drum, and deafening cymbal crashes. After 10 painful minutes of waiting, you finally get into the building; by now, the sound is deafening, the full bass tones bouncing off walls, and but it's so crowded, you can't see where the noise is coming from. After carefully winding your way through the mass of humanity, there onstage, you see two sweat-drenched musicians thrashing away with a feral intensity, commanding the attention of every person in the room. One guy is on bass, spewing fast, distorted notes, while the shirtless drummer hammers on his kit and screams into a microphone.

Proof that you need nothing more than a bass guitar and some drums to make a lot of noise.

Death From Above 1979 - Black History Month
Death From Above 1979 - Pull Out