Articles
Robert Henke
Deepchord and Soultek

Albums
Amoebazoid
Boy Is Fiction
BTB
Calika
Vic Chesnutt
Enrico Coniglio
Eric Copeland
Deadbeat
Deepchord : Echospace
Ditch
Terrence Dixon
Brian Ellis
Reinhold Friedl
The Green Kingdom
Marc Hannaford
Hrsta
K. Leimer
Lights Out Asia
Nebula 3
Netherworld
Le Peuplier de Simon
Po
Portable
Lou Reed
Jeffrey Roden
Skallander
Swod
Gregory Taylor
Telephone Jim Jesus
Pau Torres
Tunng
Rolan Vega
Robert Vincs
Warmth
Otomo Yoshihide

Compilations / Mixes
Sander Kleinenberg
One Point Two
Total 8

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
Adultnapper
Arrow!!!
Ascoltare
Beneva vs. Clark Nova
Cinematic Orchestra
Deepchord : Echospace
Easy Changes
Fink
Peter Grummich
The Heavy
Isomer Transition
Laptik
Larytta
Nadja
Pendle Coven
Polvere
Redhooker
Spied
Andy Stott
Torrance & Hochstrate
Andy Vaz

Calika: Seedling Mother
Audiobulb

Seedling Mother, the sequel to Calika's first Audiobulb outing, Small Talk Kills Me, and his Benbecula release, The Bright Spot, finds Simon Kealoha convincingly bridging broad stylistic terrain using a wealth of electronic and acoustic sounds. Calika favours an off-kilter drum feel borne from assembled out of found sounds and processed kit playing. That loose feel extends to the tracks in general where myriad sounds, identifiable and obscure (piano strings, harp, mouth organ, acoustic guitar, synthesizer, bass guitar), slowly assume coherent form; consequently, Kealoha's material more often suggests an improvising post-rock collective than a singular artist assembling precision-tooled, repetition-based tracks (notably, he eschews loops on the album). Take away the portentous string elements and the disconcerting field recording that documents an argument between a teenage pregnant mother and her boyfriend, and “Seedling Mother,” for example, resembles the rumble and clatter of an instrumental band jamming. Driven by flailing cymbals and drums, “2 Quarters Make Half a Smile” finds Kealoha merging Squarepusher-like bravado with the type of rambunctious post-rock attack commonly practiced by Run_return.

The album opens, though, with two tracks one would mostly classify under instrumental hip-hop: “No Hope But Everything,” where brooding tones and a lead bass hover over a glitchy hip-hop rhythm bed, and “rep}eat Performance,” where acoustic guitar, bass, and assorted noise slowly settle into a head-nodding beat. Occupying the other end of the spectrum, the album's longest track, the eleven-minute “Mute,” navigates an unwavering meditative route. With each track metamorphosizing into unexpected form and each one filled with shape-shifting detail, Calika's Seedling Mother demands one's attention but largely rewards it.

September 2007