The Rubber Room column is a weekly look at recent and notable releases that don’t fall into the rubric of traditional reviewed material—namely 7”’s, 12”’s, 3” CDs, EPs, cassette-only, DVDs and MP3-only releases.

Eels
Living Life (from The Late Daniel Johnston)
[At Large / EMI , 2004]

Eels have a rarely equalled habit of wrapping the straight-up heartfuckingly tragic shit that life throws our way in a cotton bundle of positivity. Covering the people’s poet, the incredible Daniel Johnston, they manage to lift heads, dry tears and open up shades against a backdrop of simple strumming and spring breeze chimes. Lines like “Hope for the hopeless / I’m learning to cope with the emotionless mediocrity of day-to-day living” make you want to throw out all the Billy Corgan bullshit on your shelves. A perfect piece of music. Everyone hug the person on your left.
[Scott McKeating]

Team Sleep
Death by Plane
[Team Sleep Homepage, 2004]

Rumours of Team Sleep’s album dropping have been cropping up every couple of months since their demos leaked way back in 2002. Aside from a few low-key remixes and a Matrix OST instrumental it seemed like Chino Moreno and his less famous friends were more interested in smoking themselves unconscious than dropping LPs. These two minutes of smoky daydreaming Slint follows in the hoof prints of the more delicate side to White Pony. Backed by a video of early 1900’s soft porn and live footage this breathily droney strum whispers about illicit condensation managing to be both cheap and beautiful.
[Scott McKeating]

HP Stonji
Metic
[Spezial Material, 2004]

With this massive 12”, HP Stonji (Hans Platzgumer and E. Stonji) matches the incredible Spezial Material standard previously set by Traject’s Strengir Hrynja and Intricate’s In Pectra. The opener “Metic,” a hallucinatory electro-funk burner with deep synth banks and whirring melodies the group elastically stretch like so much silly putty, is state-of-the-art and so strong it seems a manifesto. While the remaining tracks never quite match its incredible level, they impress nonetheless. Amidst whomping bass lines and busy breaks, writhing figures groan in “Httr” like some chained beast desperate to break free. Whether unfurling jubilant synth clusters over pulsating drum patterns (“Errorbeauty”) or squeezing melancholy themes through dizzying clanks and whirrs (“Meo”), Metic showcases HP Stonji’s awesome command of the electro-synth genre.
[Ron Schepper]

Bill Wells
Pick Up Sticks
[Leaf, 2004]

Pick Up Sticks may be issued under Wells’s name, but it’s more a trio outing as all music was composed and improvised in the studio over five days by Wells (computer, sampler), Annie Whitehead (trombone, melodica), and Stefan Schneider (synthesizer, bass) with Barbara Morgenstern adding keyboards to two of its eight jazz-tinged pieces. There’s an exploratory and relaxed feel to these understated vignettes and, remarkably, the musicians squeeze some impressive group interaction into a mere twenty-one minutes, especially on “A Soldier’s Shoulder” where insistent martial rhythms underlay multi-tracked trombones, dulcimer-like thrumming, and glockenspiel tinkles. While Wells’s colouristic electronic dust is sprinkled throughout, Whitehead’s trombone, its soft timbre often resembling a French Horn, is the warm melodic nucleus the others gravitate towards.
[Ron Schepper]

The Vanisher
The Tic-Tac Tactic
[Spectral, 2004]

Sweden’s Håkan Lidbo dons The Vanisher moniker for this fine Spectral three-tracker. On the acidic title cut, Lidbo enriches a dark base of pounding beats and rollicking percussion patterns with whispered vocals and gossamer synth waves that float serenely in the background. By contrast, the fleet “The Tic-Tac Tactic (Osborne’s Simulacrum Mix)” pursues a sunnier vibe where vaporous smears rub elbows with rubbery bass lines and swinging microhouse clatter. “Toothpaste,” on the other hand, oozes portent and mystery. Here ghostly voice snippets and spectral glimmers flutter overtop subtly percolating techno rhythms until its flute-like whistles vaporize and the track itself vanishes. In spite of its brevity, The Tic-Tac Tactic satisfies with its compelling array of contrasts.
[Ron Schepper]

Cepia
Dowry
[Ghostly International, 2004]

With its multi-layered comminglings of clanking beats and melancholy themes, Dowry, the first release from Minneapolis-based Huntley Miller (aka Cepia), follows in the mechanical footsteps of Autechre and more recently Traject. The familiarity of its style is more than compensated for by the quality of its tracks, however, even if one (“Gas”) is a mere fragment. On the atmospheric tip, there’s the gently percolating “Countrytime” and “L2,” a mournful coda of gauzy ambience. Harder-edged bass pounds and fuzzy skitter enliven “The Marina, The Bank and The Eels” but the title track, where stately melodies stubbornly bleed through entangling tendrils of squawks, whirrs, and clicks, is the real stunner. A strong debut from Mr. Miller.
[Ron Schepper]

The Research
She’s Not Leaving (limited edition 7”)
[At Large / EMI, 2004]

There are obviously quite a few things as stirring as dropping the needle on a record without knowing what’s going to leap out of the speakers, but discovering great debut singles the old fashioned way makes it that little bit more pleasurable. Skirting around the edges of scuzzy hook-stuffed Bis pop, the title track’s Stereolab harmonies and tasty atonal keyboard break (which is reminiscent of, but utterly unrelated to, the spectrum jabs of Dizzee’s “Stand Tall”) is elegantly punchy weighed up against the Gallon Drunk oompah of “Stand by my Man”. A minuscule maritime adventure in the shape of “Love Me Tender” rounds off a cracking debut.
[Scott McKeating]