Anla Courtis, Pablo Reche: transistores de aire .ep

I'm tempted to write a blurb like "Now, that's what I call minimal drone music!", but that would wholly miss the point. Yes, this new release of CON-V by two Argentinean experimental artists is quite minimal (in the sense that you hear only a few sounds here) and nothing else than drone: long, low-pitched drones (presumably coming from a guitar) with occasional shifts in the pitch, moves in the stereo field, and some tiny quiet noises added here and there; there are also a few moments of overdrive, but I'm not quite sure whether they're in the music or caused by my headphones. Notwithstanding, calling it minimal drone would mask the main peculiarity of this 19 minutes piece of music.
Most music want something from the listener; they want you to have certain feelings at certain points, they have their tricks to grab and guide your attention, they flatter of frighten (and then most of the time soothe) you. This is true not only about pop music, though it is most visible there. (Laibach built the second half of their career on this assumption.)
There are only a few examples of music that does not want anything from the listener, and this EP is one of them. It is like the realisation of the dream of some avantgarde movements: to create a piece of art that exists on its own, not being the duplicate of anything in the "outside world" (nor the "inside world" of the psyche).
transistores de aire .ep doesn't contain any ornaments (or condiments, as the website's release note puts it); it doesn't have the usual structural points that tells you how to react to the music (intro, gradation, climax and the likes). It certainly has a structure, but it is a structure of a being totally independent of the listener, unaware of him or her. It also breathes and moves somewhere, but you don't know its aim - it is only known to this creature.
Calling it cold would implicate some intentional relation to the listener; but this music doesn't care whether you like it or not. Though I must tell I really like it.

kinoro shel rothschild - requiem dub

This album is the fourth full-length by kinoro shel rothschild, released by Miklatakiltim on CD-R and freely downloadable mp3 (the downloads section is here). It is beautiful and disturbing at the same time; works quite nice when listened in the background, but reveals its subtleties with close listening.
All the ten tracks are based on a repetitive, beautiful melody played on the piano, synths or guitar; around this core, some other melodies are arranged, blurred with dubby effects, which adds a certain ambientish quality to the record. And then come lots of everyday noises; sometimes they are distant soundscapes that withdraw to the backgroud, sometimes they are harscher and more "agressive", fighting for your attention. And the last ingredients are lots of speech-samples, sometimes looped or echoed, pitch-shifted, sometimes left untouched.
The whole record reminds me of the more ambient-styled Muslimgauze releases; except where the latter is blurred and hard to grasp, Rothschild's tracks have a more definite, focused character. Their emotional character shines through even the most chaotic moments: these are beautifully melancholic (almost-)songs.
My only problem is with the speech samples; though I really don't know anything about their political content (lacking all knowledge about "Israeli black panthers movement back at the 70's"), the musical "usage" of them is sometimes a bit to didactic to my ears; and pitch-shifting and other effects on the human voice are too easily fall to clichés, a trap Rothschild doesn't manage to avoid all the times.
But this is just a minor problem which doesn't prevent me from recommending this really nice release.

Larkian: Droxma_1

The first solo release of the young netlabel Adozen by the also young Larkian is really "beautifully crafted" as the label describes it; its strength lies more in its superb sense of timing, its structure than the sounds themselves.
"Based on guitar sound and feedback", it features mainly the not-so-thick flow of sounds that at the same time reminds you of drone and of psychedelic rock (certainly its more experimental side); for the most of the time of its 24 minutes duration, some tiny rhytmic noises (presumable also made with the guitar) are adding loose counterpoints.
What is the most exciting about this release that it manages to carve out its own place between the strategies of drone and of psychedelic music; which is quite a paradox, as drone mostly has a strong sense of stability (where changes often occur imperceptibly) while the kind of psychedelic music that is evoked here mainly uses the strategy of raising and raising and raising the tension - and then erupting at a cathartic culmination point.
For the first part of Droxma_1, the music (and the listener) is hesitating (perhaps lazily, an appropriate attribute used by Disquiet in a slighty different context) between the sense of stability and raising the tension; the you feel that things are getting thicker: you are waiting for the catharsis; but then in the last part, you get only the aftermath of the catharsis.
But it's not quite true: the catharsis is definitely there, except you can not show or hear its definite place (contrary to most psychedelic rock music). It is there everywhere and nowhere; one is tempted to say it comes afterwards, but certainly is not; neither consciously nor unconsciously, you hear it in retrospect. This is why this music certainly deserves repeated listening: you hope you will find it next time but you're sure you won't. And you know this is much better than the well-known worn-out catharsis you get most of the time.