Four things with Tim Albro

Tim Albro
White-Flag

A 3” solo disc with Albro on radio transmitter and electronics, this is a tough, tight little package of raw pulses and extreme noise. There’s a fine sense of control here, enough that when the performance arcs out into screeching chaos, enough of a foundation has already been laid to impart a foreordained feeling to the explosion. There’s often a kind of rhythm in play, even if it’s just the regular fading in and out of sizzling static, a sense of a current running through everything. Albro does a wonderful job of varying the surface details and textures, ending in loud, low feedback territory, a sound that can send the canines in your house (and possibly your mouth) running for cover. It’s a fine recording, well worth checking out.

Benito Cereno
Simple Geometry
sg004

“Benito Cereno”, apart from being a short work of fiction by Melville, is also a street in Philadelphia. I’ve no idea which was the dominant factor in the choice of name for this quintet consisting of Albro (guitar, radio, electronics), Ian Fraser (laptop, electronics), Dustin Hurt (trumpet), Jesse Kudler (guitar, electronics, radio, tapes) and Chandan Narayan (autoharp). Their debut recording, another 3”, is a rich, gnarly work, drone-oriented in terms of its consistent thickness and drive but undermined periodically over its 16 minute length by natural-sounding fissures and junctures that force the music to slant down unexpected passages. The density of the first half gives way to a well-considered sparse section where one is impressed to hear the quintet reining itself in so capably. When a drone is re-established, it’s occupying a very different though no less complicated zone, an area with acidic overtones. A tight, excellent first offering from this ensemble, hopefully the first of many.

Sympathizers
Extended Play for Nothing
Thnthn
Thn003

Sympathizers are something else entirely. Operating somewhere near the convergence of funk and dub with a healthy side helping of noise, it recalls nothing so much as early 80s experiments in similar directions by Love of Life Orchestra, the Golden Palominos, Byrne/Eno and the like. Archaic drum machines on tracks like “shoom” scream out, “1983!”. Jeremy Braddock (guitar, vocals), Damon Kean (bass) and Albro (electronics) are clearly having fun here, casually sung lines (with equally casual, quasi-surreal lyrics, bearing an urban tinge) coolly floating above chugging, danceable bass figures, conveying a generally light-hearted, geekily partying atmosphere. Lo-cal Blind Idiot God? It’s a good time though how lasting an impression it makes will doubtless depend on the listener. Then again, a lasting impression might be well down the list on matter of importance to this band.

Technicolor Hell
Malleable/Badmaster
MLR001/BM007

A compilation of the Philadelphia noise scene (á la No Fun), housed in mini-magazine format. As has been the case before, I find I don’t share very much common ground with the musicians who, loosely speaking, occupy this scene. If Albro’s contribution here, “Violence Is Not a Language”, is one of the better tracks, along with those by Mincemeat or Tenspeed and Sweet Nothing, it’s not enough to recommend the collection unless, of course, you think I’m entirely clueless on the genre. Which may well be.

But Albro’s work, along with that of any number of other youngish Philadelphia denizens (do check out the HZL disc with Albro and Jesse Kudler from last year) is one of the more encouraging evolutions on this coast in the last few years. Lend an ear.

More tracks can be heard here

Either of the first two discs can be purchased through Tim at t.albro@gmail.com

The Sympathizers’ music can be heard for free at thnthn

Hell is found here