The experimental surf rock duo Crno dete, from Serbia, just released their latest opus: the massive Neponovljivo album. This set is an improvised performance that goes on for about forty minutes; uncut, unedited, and unrepeatable. It has been divided into eight tracks, but the truly uncut version is available as a forty-three-minute single track. The music resembles experimental math rock and post-rock, but the utter flood of reverb on the guitars make me think of surf rock more than anything else, really. From the moment you press play, the guitars and the drums catawompously barge in and don’t stop … Read more
Monthly Recommendations: 2017
Yup, that’s a year, another one! I’ve changed my writing routine a couple times, but I think it’s the year in which I’ve been the most active as a music writer. As a musician, I’ve only released one single track with my current band; one of my least productive years as a musician. In 2017, I’ve also started the Not Music label, which will be the tool with which I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and help promote and distribute the same kind of music that you find on this website: experimental, progressive, bewildering, innovative, and … Read more
Monthly Recommendations: December 2017
Cleric – Retrocausal
[Review under construction]
Taylor Brook – Virtutes occultae
Somewhere between procedural, improvised, and strictly composed, the eighteen parts of this magnum opus take you into the world of overtonality. In a nutshell, this album is played by six virtual pianos, each tuned to a different 11-limit just intonation tuning.
Vexovoid – Call of the Starforger
… Read moreCall of the Starforger is great and the flow of riffs is unstoppable, making it a very welcome addition to the not so expansive array of releases of that ilk. With a compelling science-fiction theme and bulls-eye, overexcited riffs, Vexovoid’s debut
The Metal of 2017
CTEBCM started mostly thanks to progressive metal. Since then, the scope of the website has widened quite a bit, but there’s undeniably a stronger focus on metal music than any other. Thus, the metal albums of the year post (the one you’re reading right now) will divide the metal releases into various subgenres. Obviously, there is a lot of crossover going on so you might question some of my allotments. Some bands really do fit into more than one broad category, and so I put them in the one I think is most fitting, but you might have a different … Read more
Travis Orbin – Silly String Ⅱ
More than two years after the release of the original Silly String, drummer and composer Travis Orbin comes back with its sequel to close off 2017. On Ⅱ, Travis inflates the concept of the twenty-minute predecessor threefold to a staggering sixty minutes. This expansion has it benefits – for one, there is more material to listen and enjoy –, but it also has its shortcomings. While the first of its name was concise and to the point, keeping only the absolute most mind-boggling tracks on record, the second one seems more spread out, less focused, and filled with … Read more