by eyes cast down | Feb 16, 2011 | Poems
This poem was the next one written after Camille Claudel, and the thematic connections are clear enough. I was reading books like The Beauty Myth as my daughter approached her third birthday, and contemplating her place in this… well, Marilyn French’s...
by eyes cast down | Feb 14, 2011 | Album Reviews
Rudy Ensueno’s long-form Burundanga plays like a film-noir soundtrack. Juggling a small number of elements to carve out his piece, Ensueno builds a series of scenes, ratcheting up the tension and letting it fall, carrying us along as a great film always does. He...
by eyes cast down | Feb 10, 2011 | Album Reviews
The Relaxed Machinery label celebrates its first anniversary with its 9th release: sleepMODE, a compilation featuring all 13 of the label’s artists. As can be discerned from the track titles, some of the artists used the Philip K. Dick-inspired question...
by eyes cast down | Feb 9, 2011 | Poems
Back in the mid-90s, I wrote some poems to indulge my love of wordplay, which also served as helpful venting. Some of them were published in various periodicals from 1993-96. I was going to publish them as a book called Divinations, but circumstance intervened. Maybe...
by eyes cast down | Feb 7, 2011 | Album Reviews
Longform pieces and albums abound, but this is only the second album that I’ve heard of featuring more than one longform piece. This by itself is merely eyebrow-raising; the real astonishment is the music presented by Steve Brand in his double-CD Coniunctio (Relaxed...
by eyes cast down | Feb 3, 2011 | Album Reviews
The music of Chris Russell and Disturbed Earth (Dean Richards) on their first Relaxed Machinery release, The Approaching Armada (RM0008) fully lives up to any expectations created by such a compelling and dramatic title. This album is beatless, atmospheric and...
by eyes cast down | Feb 1, 2011 | Album Reviews
Glancing over the notes I made while listening to this album for the second time, I felt disoriented. The materials used by Bob Ohrum on his third full-length release are minimal; my notes hardly amount to anything. I glanced at them and wondered: is that it? The...
by eyes cast down | Jan 28, 2011 | Album Reviews
The old truism about an artist’s first album embodying his entire life’s musical quest up to that point certainly holds for this first effort from åpne sinn (Geoff Small). Espiritista (Relaxed Machinery 0015) explores a fine range of styles, weaving a rich tapestry...
by eyes cast down | Jan 25, 2011 | Album Reviews
Jack or Jive’s Kakugo, released in 2008 by their longtime friends at Prikosnovenie, was their first release after 2006’s 3-CD box set Issin, which closed the circle of their first 18 years. That set featured a vast selection – one CD of unreleased songs...
by eyes cast down | Jan 24, 2011 | The Creative Life
A friend in the Relaxed Machinery community, for his English class paper on “Underground Musicians”, drew up a set of questions and invited answers. They are excellent questions, cutting to some fundamental issues, so it was a pleasure to participate. My...