Wandering Bear – Happoppy Flipper Trigger [2009; Glitch City]

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Eight tracks of mostly-instrumental playful beats and breaks, occasionally with a high-bit chiptune flavor to them.  Some circus-like flavor leaks in at times, thanks to the jaunty rhythms and high-pitched peeping, which makes for an odd mix with the more heavily hip-hop-styled portions.  Generally entertaining, but the lightness of it all makes it feel unfortunately low-budget, without much fleshing out of the song ideas, or balance between the high and low ends.

Ulver – Teachings in Silence [2002; Black Apple Records]

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Compiling Ulver’s Silence Teaches You How to Sing and Silencing the Singing EPs (both originally released in 2001), this CD opens with the title (and only) track of the first EP.  Stitching together aural fragments including static, rotary phone dialing, record sticking, and cell phone interference into more solid elements (e.g.,
synthesizer arpeggiation, wordless vocalizations, and piano), “Silence Teaches You How to Sing” rolls on across 24 minutes of slow-change, low-energy atmosphere.

The content of the second EP begins with “Darling Didn’t We Kill You?”, shuffling muffled percussion through muted guitar loops, drones, distorted laughter, and piano accompaniment, leading through a strong beat-loop bridge, and finishing with a low-end rumble.  “Speak Dead Speaker” follows this with more quiet clattering, bumping, and fuzzy feedback, while thin synthesizer tones grow in prominence before transferring to strings.  Lastly, “Not Saved” takes a cathedral atmosphere of bells and organ and applies light disruption effects to the sounds, making for a relatively calm finish.  Oddly disquieting for such downtempo material, but for the right wintry mood, highly satisfying.

Here’s the album art used for the vinyl reissue.

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The original cover art for Silence Teaches You How to Sing.

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And the original cover art for Silencing the Singing.

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