Foxy Digitalis (10/10)

This is Max Bondi’s first full length album, and it is a piece of perfection. Created in just over a week at the beginning of this year from various home recording sessions, this disc really shows his equal talents as both a musician and architect of droning one man constructions. The multitude of instruments used makes for a density of orchestration which consistently engages the listener with its many subtleties.

Each track unfolds with the pristine structure of crystalline forms being borne out of pure air. Layer upon layer of subtly changing tones, rhythms, and tambres are introduced until you slowly come to the realization of what you are listening to. Every element could stand on it’s own within a piece and maintain your rapt attention, but all are interwoven into a completely immersing form which avoids taking any obvious direction and instead arrives at its own logical conclusion.

I would recommend snapping this one up, its release is limited to 200 finely hand packaged copies with some skillfully silk-screened artwork. I have the distinct feeling that this one is going to make some best of lists, or at least should. 10/10

Norman Records (recommended)

Max Bondi sounds like a cool jet-set actor from the 70s. Imagine my disappointment on finding he's merely another drone/experimental musician and not some perma-tanned, ice-white toothed Remmington advert guy. I'll let him off though cos not only does he run the amazing Tartaruga records of Bleeding Heart Narrative & Quinta fame but he's the fourth artist to unleash a lovingly packaged assault on the senses through the imprint. The green screen printed sleeve is well Sci-Fi and incredibly detailed, the music veers from tender drone to minimal dark ambient, through to some eerie tribal down tempo magic on 'Volante!'. This track reminds me a bit of some of the old Boom Bip stuff from years ago, also on a bit of a David Byrne/Brian Eno tip. His drone pieces err nicely on the neo classical side, very satisfying. Then 'Alina' arrives, a piece of haunting spectral chamber music that sounds quite beautiful whilst the remainder of the album resides back in atmospheric drone, field recording & sound design territory which I believe may be adequately enhanced by usage of headphones of a premium brandage & sturdy build. No'd of 200, worth it for the packaging alone, it's brilliant, but the tunes on here constitute a real grower of an album we reckon!

Cows Are Just Food

it’s been a strange old week and a bit.

involving migraines and hospitals and a bunchof daniel clowes graphic novels and drunks in masks and arguments and tears and coffin carrying (which frankly is rather unsettling) and abstinence (from alcohol and nail-biting (both equally tortuous)) and absinthe and talk of the future and a worsening of work relations and sleeping a lot (never a good sign) and vomit and… well you get the navelgazing picture.

tumultuous. i like words with ‘uou’ in them. where was i? oh yeah tumultuous. and brainbombs aside (who can catch me in the pits of misanthropy and make me want to kill and rape hence not the best listen just now) this little wonder has been the soundtrack to a distinctly music free time. other than a jim reeves funereal mix…

is it a suitably synchronous aural accompanier? mostly yes. it’s a chimeric bugger. shuffling between drone and hazy chamber music and percussive klang and twinkle and a dose of the old concrete. in a way it’s fitting (personally speaking) that it soothes, excites and disturbs in equal measure, flitting between dreamy violence and delicate unease. or maybe i’m just reaching, reading too much into it, huh amateur psychologists?

so max bondi. i have the tiny wee public guilt cd collaboration he did with destructo swarmbot bianca ala muerte (who guests on morendo). featuring a mélange of processed guitars and cryptic vox noises, veering between dreamy shoegazery and glitch e-lec-tri-city and detuned guitar and noise bastardry.

m presents much the same ingredients here (though with nothing like still’s wall of soothing aural brutality). from the opening organ drone wheeze and crystal chzing and clinklings of aleph, bet all the way to the closing water? noise and muzzy woozy fuzz of elonco this is a record of textures, of tactile touchable noise and sounds. all made on guitar and drums and keys and objects amplified and manipulated and soothingly stroked and viciously (mis)treated

it would have slotted in quite nicely, with minimal greasing, on constellation back in the day, particularly on the cello based alina (with oli from bhn) or when reminding me how ace hangedup’s clatter was on volante! all kinetic percussion and the squeal and squall of building string throb.

two swollen beasts form the heart of the album. in such seeming all things are is a swooning choral piece of discordant hymnal hypno drone. and the sixteen minute a desperate threnody glides easily from abstraction to celestial cum industrial guitar and/or synth drone (not too far removed from emeralds or james ferraro’s ethereal shimmerings) to metallic piano klang to decaying static crunch and hiss.

it’s another treat from tartaruga. the fifth (since i’m including the sourpuss dvd). all wrapped in the usual beautiful swaddling clothes – limited edition, hand numbered, insert and silkscreened card sleeve illustrated by bruno jones. perfection. again.

Mapsadaisical

It had been a while since I had heard the satisfying whump noise that a Tartaruga release makes when it falls through the door. Their hand-assembled silk-screen printed and sewn thick cardboard sleeves feel like the anti-jewel case, a gesture of love – love for the music as well as for the listener. This aesthetic, this painstaking cobbling together from natural and unusual sources, things at hand and things exotic, extends to the music – as is delightfully shown by the new releases from Max Bondi.

Max Bondi runs Tartaruga, so you can expect his debut album M to encapsulate the label’s ethos. And so it does: just look at the list of instruments involved here: a struggling laptop, a broken electric guitar, a borrowed acoustic guitar, an old pump organ, a bright green violin as well as kalimba, berimbau, stylophone, melodica…oh, and “hands and feet”. The results are thick clouds of acoustic and electronic drone, breaking occasionally to let hints of weighty melody cast their long shadows. It starts quietly, with the gentle tones of “Aleph Bet” twinkling in drizzle before the portentous drumming of “Morendo” suggests storms up ahead. Oliver Barrett from Bleeding Heart Narrative crops up to add cello to the hazy cracks of “Alina“. The centrepiece is the epic “A Desperate Threnody”, which opens with thunder, and whose granulated textures rip themselves apart on metallic percussion until they are flayed shreds flapping in the wind, the noise finally consuming the piano melodies underneath.

Music Musings and Miscellany

Tartaruga’s releases are always eagerly awaited around these parts. They don’t come around very frequently – this being just the fourth release since the label’s inception 18 months ago – but they’re always an aesthetic joy. Packaged in a hand stitched, gatefold recycled card sleeve, screenprinted in green and with a fold-out tracing-paper insert, Max Bondi’s first release M is a beautiful object. All the packaging in the world, though, can’t rescue a substandard record. This hasn’t been remotely a problem for the label thus far, and I’m pleased to say that their quality control department is still functioning perfectly.

There are a bewildering array of instruments used on M, and yet the album has an uncluttered simplicity to it. Most of the tracks are based around deep drones, but these are usually used as an enveloping sonic pallette through which other sounds rise and fall. There’s a fine balance of noise and quiet, of melody and dischord, and things tend to evolve unhurriedly, but not without tension or even violence.

Some of the bass levels are intense. “Morendo” has a deep bass drone underpinned by even lower sub-bass frequencies while a slow, echoing snare marks out a forlorn beat. “Volanté” also carries some subterranean tones with the percussion beating out a slow march and fuzzed up psychedelic guitar wending its way through the track. “Alina”consists of looped and overlaid cello phrases that both complement and contrast with each other as the track increases in depth, but always sound exquisitely mournful.

The epic “A Desperate Threnody” is the stand-out piece. Constructed like a three movement suite, it begins with a deep drone, as waves of grimy synth build to monumental proportions. When they seem about to crash, they fade into the long central segment which is constructed of chiming, metallic percussion and a gentle piano repeating the simple three chord theme of the first part. The finale is brief, a build-up of filthy static fuzz that obliterates the doleful mood with its malevolence. “Elenco” wraps things up, as sampled, distorted traffic noise and kids’ voices are eventually overwhelmed by a fuzzed up, spitting guitar coda.
M embraces the drone, the art of noise and reflective musique concrète.

The elements are familiar, but the extremities seem somehow heightened. It’s a terrific edition to Tartaruga’s small, but perfectly formed catalogue. The CD, limited to 200 copies, is out on July 27th, with an unlimited download to follow later in the summer. Go to the Tartaruga website for details.

Hardformat (more about the design than the music, but worth checking out...)