L’ECLIPSE NUE — ZAYIN (CD by (CD by Shiver To Death Recordings) *
THOMAS TILLY — TEST/TONE DOCUMENTS (CD by Drone Sweet Drone) *
GREGO APPLEGATE EDWARDS – TRAVELS IN TYME (CD by Ruby Flowers)
ROBERT DICK & URSEL SCHLICHT – THE GALILIEAN MOONS (CD by Nemu)
AUTOPSIA — IN VIVO (CD by Death Continues) *
ENSEMBLE PHOENIX BASEL & JEROME NOETINGER — LES VOIX DE L’INVISBLE
(LP by Bocian Records) *
MATTHEW ATKINS — IMAGINARY CARTOGRAPHY (CDR by Minimal Resource Manipulation) *
SANTIAGO ASTABURUAGA — GRADO DE POTENCIA #1 (CDR by Caduc) *
TAKU SUGIMOTO — MADA (CDR by Caduc) *
SAN ANDREAS — OLD MEN DREAM IN REVERSE (3″CDR by The Ceiling) *
NICK STORRING — EXAPTATIONS (cassette by Notice Recordings)
CHRIS STRICKLAND — EXCRUCIATING CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE KINGDOM OF ENDS
(cassette by Notice Recordings)
ERIK LEVANDER — MIMESIS/UTVECKLING (cassette by Kosmisk Väg)
COLDSORE — HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS (cassette by Totstellen) *
LIBBE MATZ GANG/COLDSORE — [0+0=0] (splitcassette by Totstellen) *
GRMMSK/MENTAL HELL — GHETT OKIDZ (splitcassette by Totstellen) *
GRMMSK/KEMIA — TRUE LOWS (splitcassette by Totstellen) *
GRMMSK — ONE WORLD/NOWHERE TO HIDE (LP by Sozialistischer Plattenbau)
L’ECLIPSE NUE — ZAYIN (CD by (CD by Shiver To Death Recordings)
Back in Vital Weekly 1032 I already noticed that this one man band recently moved from Tokyo to
Connecticut yet this new album was the last one that he recorded in the old country. This is the
seventh album by Daniel Sine’s project and it’s also the seventh year of the band’s existence. ‘Zayin
refers to the seventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and so the number 777 becomes an important
thing here. The album is to be released by October 31st 2016 (which seems a long time away),
so July 7th was missed as a ‘better’ date. The pieces on this album, says Dine, “illustrate a perverse
relationship with an abusive and unfathomable God. The women on the cover is meant to represent
an angle of death” — ah that explains and most likely one has a pretty good idea what the musical
content will be. The musical territory of L’eclipse Nue is to be found in the world of industrial music/
power electronics/noise, which ever is the preferred word. Much of what L’eclipse Nue deals with
voices, feedback, and distortion and while it is not always clear what these lyrics are supposed to
mean, it is most likely not something about sunshine and love. Pieces are called ‘Ego Incinerator’,
‘Crawling To Heaven On Abscessed Limbs’ or ‘Screaming until I Go Deaf’, but what I particularly
enjoy about L’eclipse Nue is that it isn’t all one long howl or an endless screech of noise. He knows
how to pull back and give his pieces a bit of air by asserting control over his musical matter, such
as the desolate keyboard in ‘How Do You Get To Heaven?’, along with some remarkable ‘low’ vocals.
I would say this new album is a remarkably good one; it is finely balanced with all shades that noise
has to offer, and as such quite a leap forward from the previous album, which I also quite enjoyed.
Noise of this kind is not my daily cup of Joe, but all of this is very enjoyable. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.leclipsenue.com
THOMAS TILLY — TEST/TONE DOCUMENTS (CD by Drone Sweet Drone)
This particular release comes with a great package consisting of celluloid documents, poster, all in
a black aesthetic sleeve, which looks austerely beautiful. I reviewed some of Thomas Tilly’s music
before, mainly a massive double release in Vital Weekly 934. Much of what he does deals with field
recordings and he seems to be taking a more conceptual route into the material. The five pieces on
‘Test Tone Documents’ is about an installation piece by the name ‘Test Tone’ for ‘plans, recordings
and speakers’, which he made for La Cartonnerie/Palais du Tau in Reims (France) in 2007. “Through
the filters constituted by a building’s walls and the complex electrical network composing its nervous
system, sound appears as a residual matter of the building’s activities, eroded by the architecture.
The geographical situation of these acoustical phenomena is representative of this activity’s nature.
Test/tone is a listening space, created through a study of the building that hostes La Cartonnerie’,
it says somewhat mysterious (or crippled; you choose) on the information. But it’s all we know about
this, and that leaves us with some questions; such as are these pieces built from sounds used in
the installation, or are these recordings from the actual installation? That’s something we don’t know.
The compositions have certain spatial qualities, as in: quite some reverb, and consist from time to
time of field recordings of apparatus, keys dangling and motorized objects which culminates in
ominous drones, so its somewhere half way through dark, atmospheric drones and electro-acoustic
music, and all of this presented with a fair bit of noise, so it reminds me of Joe Colley meets
Francisco Meirino meets Roel Meelkop meets Marc Behrens; keeping a fine balance between the
louder end of electro-acoustic music and the processed sounds using big spaces for further
transformation. Music wise I’d say this is a great release. (FdW)
––– Address: http://dronesweetdrone.bandcamp.com/
GREGO APPLEGATE EDWARDS – TRAVELS IN TYME (CD by Ruby Flowers)
In all aspects a true solo album. Edwards created a very personal, idiosyncratic musical
universe. Who is this guy, as for me he comes out of nowhere. He is an active blogger on music
(gapplegatemusicreview), and wrote in earlier days for the Cadence magazine on jazz and
improvised music. But he is educated as musician and composer himself. He studied composition
with Ornette Coleman, and drums with Elvin Jones and Barry Altschul, to name a few (!). At the
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center he studied electronic music. He played jam sessions
in his early days. A career as a professional composer didn’t follow, except for being part of The
Yodlers, an experimental outfit. Edwards absorbed many influences: rock, avant jazz and modern
classical and ethic music. This didn’t make it difficult for him to find his own voice as a composer,
on the contrary it helped him, I suppose. Edwards composed, arranged and played everything
himself on this one. Nine multi-layered compositions, recorded in his studio with the help of multi-
tracking. The works have no particular instruments in the forefront. Every instrument contributes
to the ingenuous musical constructions as a whole. Often built from strange cyclic patterns and
phrases. Listening to this one, I often imagined being inside huge and bizarre clockwork. An
experience that was similar to my first meeting with the work of Dimthings (‘Heart of the Klux Flux’),
or more recent, the work by Vincent Bergeron. Music that is difficult to categorize, but evidently
springs from a well-focused mind. What a job! Chapeau! This is truly an amazing and adventurous
album. Released already in 2014, but don’t overlook this one. Makes me looking forward to his
second one ‘Collage for Jack Kerouac’, that was released recently. (DM)
––– Address: http://www.rubyflower-records.info/
ROBERT DICK & URSEL SCHLICHT – THE GALILIEAN MOONS (CD by Nemu)
After a 5-year travel Juno arrived finally at Jupiter recently, sending pictures of the planet and its
moons. Several of these moons served as a source of inspiration for Dick and Schlicht on their new
CD. It is the follow up to ‘Photosphere’ (2005), again a release by the German Nemu label. Klaus
Kugel and Albrecht Maurer founded Nemu is 2004 and it has a small catalogue of jazz and improvised
projects. Most of them have the involvement of Kugel and/or Maurer. The new collaboration of
Schlicht and Dick is named after the four-part suite “The Galilean Moons” inspired on four moons of
the planet Jupiter, Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. These four seem to have significant physical
contrasts. These contrasts are ‘translated’ into music. Okay, not a common source of inspiration
although spatial metaphors are common of course! Schlicht of Dick embeds the suite in a selection
that include five more compositions. Some of these works seem completely scored, while others
leave room for improvisation. Dick is absolutely an authority in his art. For decades he is an
important flutist, composer and improviser. I remember a solo-concert back in the 80s. I remember
concluding this is not playing music, he ís music. Schlicht is of a younger generation and is also
a composer and improviser like Dick, but with piano as her main instrument. She has played all
over the planet in concerts of new music, jazz, impro and world music, with a special interest for
multi-cultural collaboration. Often she works in a duo-format with musicians like Hans Tammen
(guitar), Bruce Arnold (guitar and live electronics), Reuben Radding (bass), etc. On ‘the Galiliean
Moons’ both bring a wide scope of musical ideas into practice. Dick uses many of flutes and his
techniques, creating fine textures, timbres and harmonies. Schlicht plays mostly in a modern
classical way. Both interact and communicate very well, resulting in lively chamber music, with
sometimes echoes of world music. ‘Dark Matter’ has Dick using nonsensical phrases from spam-
emails, interspersed by a bass flute, and Schlicht most of the time responding to this nonsense.
The four-part suite on the Galilean Moons I liked most. Here Dick and Schlicht make the most
extensive use of extended techniques in order to create intriguing and fascinating structures and
textures. (DM)
––– Address: http://www.nemu-records.com
AUTOPSIA — IN VIVO (CD by Death Continues)
Look up ‘In Vivo’ on discogs and be amazed, as this writer was. There are two versions of this, with
the same music, released in the 80s by Sound Of Pig and Korm Plastics on cassette. Then there is
a self-released version by the band, with different titles and now there is a CD with the same title but
again different music. Discogs list this version of ‘In Vivo’ under compilations, which perhaps also
the old ones should have been. Back then I thoroughly enjoyed Autopsia, and I think their ‘Death Is
The Mother Of Beauty’ is still a personal favourite, but I lost interest over the years, even when the
recent ones were accepted with some enjoyment. The pieces here date from 1982 to 1989 and shows
the band using tape-loops with some great refinement; that, or they use some early form of sampling,
which was still in its infancy back then, and at that quite expensive. Along with these loops the group
(person? a mystery as far as I am concerned) plays sometimes percussion or other instruments and
while it sometimes sounds ‘industrial’, the music of Autopsia is not that much rooted in the world of
‘noise’. It is probably safer to say this is somewhere in the world of plunderphonics, with all sorts of
orchestral loops (even at this early stage in their career), bouts of percussion and other stolen bits.
All of this predating John Oswald but without Autopsia getting the recognition in that world. This is
actually, and probably I am not allowed to say this, funny music of tormented orchestral sounds
and industrial rhythms; think Laibach but probably not as doom and gloom as them. The music of
Autopsia exists by itself rather than by commenting on other cultural references. Parts of this
overlap the earlier cassette release by the same name so some of these pieces rang familiar in
these ears, but in this new collection of old songs I immediately realized why I thought Autopsia
back was so good; the orchestral touch that seemed both to ridicule the official classical music
and the seriousness of which this was played. The remastered version made it sound even better
before. This is a most welcome re-issue.
––– Address: <deathcontinues@hotmail.com>
ENSEMBLE PHOENIX BASEL & JEROME NOETINGER — LES VOIX DE L’INVISBLE
(LP by Bocian Records)
Jerome Noetinger is a man of action and improvisation and not one to compose a bunch of notes
on paper, so when he was asked to compose a piece for Ensemble Phoenix Basel he hesitated,
but then later accepted the commission. He writes: “Not knowing classical notation, I decided to
do what I do know: that being, working with recording and loops, and thereafter, ask the musicians
to play by ear. After a first session, having their interpretations in mind, I could reorganise it all
taking into account the physical limits of each instrument”, which is not exactly clear to me, but
as far as I understand that he uses recordings of the group and played them against them playing
on top of them. I might be wrong of course. The ensemble has flute, clarinet, saxophone, synthesizer,
electric guitar, double bass, percussion (the late Daniel Buess) and electronics. I think it is a working
method that fits Noetinger very well, as he manages to make the ensemble sound like both a real
ensemble but also guide them in the world of free play — although I am sure the ensemble were
no strangers to that world anyway. In the thirty-plus minutes of this record they move along from
nervous and hectic playing to some more introspective moods, and the doubling of instruments
works quite well here. Noetinger uses loops with silent gaps in between, so that the instruments
can add their own playing and sometimes all of this sounds together, in big clusters of sound,
explosive and massive, almost like acoustic noise. Both sides of the record move cleverly between
the introspective side of the music and it’s opposite, the expansive side of the music. I am not
sure if this was all one piece on the night or perhaps a post-production collage of the material,
cut and pasted by Noetinger. Whatever it is, it is something that works very well. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.metakime.com
CONTRASTATE — TRUE BELIEVER/THE 10/40 WINDOW (7″ by Dirter Promotions)
Since the release of ‘A Breeding Ground For Flies’ UK’s Contrastate is back (see Vital Weekly 870),
but that didn’t lead to a lot of releases since then. However this 7″ on a thick platter in very shiny silver
(almost like a mirror) cover contains two new pieces of the trio. Their return made them a bit more
pop like, than their somewhat more gothic approach of before. Their earliest work I really enjoyed for
their mixture of industrial music and ambient soundscapes. When Contrastate went more vocal heavy,
it wasn’t really my cup of tea.
‘True Believer’ on the first side is a mood piece. A bit of piano, spacious electronics, a more or less
whispering voice, before there is a sudden brief burst in sound activity, ending on the same sparse
piano notes. This is an elegant and somewhat sombre song.
‘The 10/40 Window’ on the flip side is an even moodier piece of music with some heavily processed
guitar sound, creating a fine drone pattern and voices that seems to slip in through backdoor, but then
suddenly seem to be present, like a small choir of all half-chanting, half spoken word. Music is quite
sparse, so it seems, on both sides, and Contrastate didn’t develop into more ‘pop’ ground, which I
thought they might do. This is some mighty intense music, but only short; such is the nature of a 7″
release, I guess. I was longing for some more of this, so let’s hope their next release will be a full
length CD again. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.dirter.co.uk
MATTHEW ATKINS — IMAGINARY CARTOGRAPHY (CDR by Minimal Resource Manipulation)
Here’s someone who seems a lot less active than before, but I believe he puts a lot more music online
these days and a lot less on physical formats, and no doubt what is physical is also digital. ‘Imaginary
Cartography’ is a limited edition of fifteen copies only and has a sort of handmade cover. Atkins works
both as Platform and under his given name, and the difference is that the first uses quite a bit of rhythm
and the second is all the more computer processed sound. He writes that he recorded piano, guitar,
percussion, cymbals and cello in a studio in Brixton some time ago and that these are the sources for
this work, along with field recordings from all of the UK. I am sure I believe this, but it is not easy to
find evidence that supports this in the music itself. For whatever Atkins does everything is transformed;
ranging from mildly (yes, a piano is in ‘Floral Calyx Phase’) to severely, as in everything has been taken
to an extreme level of being unrecognizable. Much of this deals with taking small blocks of sounds
and stretching them out a bit, creating stuttering Oval-like movements, granular synthesis and melting
sounds down into drones. All done with software that is commonly available these days, but Atkins does
throughout a fine job in applying electro-acoustic techniques but the overall mood that Atkins goes for
is not one of crude cut n paste but of gentle, atmospheric sound collages. The rattling objects in a warm
bed of drones. Think Fennesz but on quite a mellow day; such as I am experiencing right now, and
Atkins plays exactly the right soundtrack for such a beautiful mellow day. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.mrmrecordings.bandcamp.com
SANTIAGO ASTABURUAGA — GRADO DE POTENCIA #1 (CDR by Caduc)
TAKU SUGIMOTO — MADA (CDR by Caduc)
This time I started with the one that said to me: you don’t know anything about this. I only came across
the name Santiago Astaburuaga as the composer of the piece ‘Piezo De Escucha III’, as performed by
Cristian Alvear Montecino (see Vital Weekly 970). Here he acts again as the composer of a piece,
performed by a group of fourteen musicians, and their instruments include more regular instruments such
as clarinet, cello, double bass, viola, bassoon, bass clarinet, snare drum and trumpet, but also lists ‘no
tone arm, turntable, plastic brush, diapason, laptop, no-input mixer, radio, bow, cassette case, sand-
paper, industrial sanding discs, guitar and blackboard’ (some people play more than one instrument).
Astaburuaga doesn’t belong to the performers, and his role is strictly as a composer. It would have been
nice if we learned a bit more about the score, which I gather to be of a more graphic nature, rather than
notes to be performed. I am not sure but Astaburuaga might be a Wandelweiser composer, even when
this particular work is not entirely about quietness. Here it alternates between being quiet, using sparse
sounds and notes and blocks in which maybe everyone is allowed to play. These blocks usually have a
sustaining and orchestral feel to it. Sustaining through the use of the non-instruments, I would think and
orchestral through the instruments. When things are quiet we hear all of this also, but then reduced quite
a bit, and with what seems to be field recordings, or perhaps this is an outside recording? I am not sure.
With the amount of instruments used there is naturally quite an amount of variation in this approach.
All of this makes up quite some intense music, with lots of things happening on all levels and there is
a solemn feel to the work. All of this is perhaps modern classical, but it is for once something I very
much enjoyed from that world.
Also in the case of the second disc, the front cover lists the composer, in this case Taku Sugimoto,
and not the performers. The piece has two parts and the players may shift between instruments, so
Ryoko Akama plays electronics on the first part, piano on the second, Cyril Bondi harmonium and
percussions, D’incise bowed metals and electronic and Christian Alvear is the only one to play guitar
on both parts. Now here we certainly have something that is closely related to the world of the
Wandelweiser composers. These two pieces use notes very sparsely, as is to be expected from
Sugimoto, whom we best remember when he played this kind of music himself. A strum here and
there and then usually followed by quite a bit of silence. With instruments in both pieces that play
short sounds one could easily think it’s just that but the electronics and harmonium make sure there
is also something to last a bit longer; but then sometimes things are also just quiet. And at that: this
is not just very quiet music, it is also recorded very much with a low level, so either one has to open
up the volume quite a bit, put it on the computer and give it some more gain, or enjoy the silence.
If one chooses the latter, then one needs to be in a fully Zen like state, I guess, to enjoy this, as this
is not the most easy music there is. Only by fully opening up, one can totally enjoy this I would say;
otherwise one would probably just be annoyed by the lack of action. This is some very intense music,
and some refined beauty. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.caduc.org
SAN ANDREAS — OLD MEN DREAM IN REVERSE (3″CDR by The Ceiling)
Here’s another one of those mildly confusing discs by the guy who once was The Infant Cycle, but since
earlier this year goes by a plethora of names, all related, such as The Sand Rays, Ray Sands and Sandray,
and now it’s San Andreas. It is produced by The Sand Rays, which ties it in with the previous release (see
Vital Weekly 1030) and the first piece ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ is crossed out on the cover and is seven
seconds of silence; perhaps some conceptual joke (that I didn’t get)? The other piece is close to seventeen
minutes and is called ‘Your Narrator Lies In The Middle Of The Street’, which made me think about A
Clockwork Orange (and I was reminded that I bought a copy three years ago, but still didn’t get around
reading it again) but I might be entirely wrong of course. Music wise San Andreas expands on the musical
journey from before and finds himself in another heavily treated world of acoustic sounds being bend and
twisted by the use of over active electronic circuits. The piece has three distinct parts; a long ambient
opening, then a more electro-acoustic excursion from the frying pan and finally some darker set of drone
material and mild glitches. This last part sounds quite obscure and ‘dirty’, with something that seems not
to have been recording properly. All of this had quite a cinematic feel to it, and sums up a fine addition to
what is probably a whole series of connected works. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.theceiling.ca
NICK STORRING — EXAPTATIONS (cassette by Notice Recordings)
CHRIS STRICKLAND — EXCRUCIATING CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE KINGDOM OF ENDS
(cassette by Notice Recordings)
The first time I heard of Nick Storring was when I reviewed a work his group Picastro did with Nadja (see
Vital Weekly 800) where he played cello, and the second time he played the same instrument on release
by Aidan Baker (see Vital Weekly 871) but this is the first time I hear his solo music. Storring had pieces
performed by ensembles such as Esprit Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini, Madawaska String Quartet, but also
he has a cello noise duo called The Knot. While the cello is his primary instrument, on this release he also
plays percussion and found objects, vibraphone, glockenspiel, balafon, hand bells, thumb piano, electric
bass, Yamaha CP60M, Hohner clavinet D6, harmonica and much more. And that’s just the list for the piece
on the first side, ‘Field Lines’, which he composed for a dance by Yvonne Ng. The piece is mostly heavy on
the use of percussion instruments, which he plays with great care. Thanks no doubt to the use of layering
sounds it has a great multi-layered feel, but it is also very open. In the first half of this piece sounds seem
to tumble around, sparkling and fresh without keeping very much a strict tempo. In the second half there is
a bit that is more dark and droney, based on resonating surfaces, but all of this remains fluid and light in
nature. Almost like something that Cold Blue could have released. For the second side, ‘Yield Criteria’ he
uses less instruments, mainly cello, electric mandola, toy piano, harmonica, duck call, voice, hand bells
and glockenspiel, and overall sketches a darker mood here, with longer sustaining resonating below the
surface and throughout quite dark and slightly menacing, also thanks to using transducer speakers, talkbox
and other lo-fi means of recording. Storring has two quite different pieces on this cassette and both of them
were equally great.
From Chris Strickland I reviewed a CDR before (Vital Weekly 954), which I enjoyed and found somewhere
on a crossroad between electronic music and improvised and something similar can be found this very long
cassette, which lasts close to eighty minutes. Strickland has three pieces here and he plays ‘acoustically
filtered broadband noise, sine waves, resonating tin foil’ in the first piece, objects, field recordings and sine
waves in the second, and in the piece that covers the entire second side whistles, glass jars, paper, hair,
key, sine waves and field recordings. In each piece there is an additional instrument; Guido del Fabbro plays
violin on the first and the third piece and Solomiya Moroz plays flute on the second. This is certainly not
‘easy’ music. In the opening piece ‘Excruciating Circumstances’ the music is very much about a mid to high
end frequency range pitch, which are played like an endurance test, but it is not in an annoying way; actually
a rather a pleasant one. ‘A Little White Space’ is all about highly obscured field recordings and objects rubbed
on surfaces and here the flute is the instrument that performs the duty of long ringing sounds, but overall is
tone in the lower frequency range, with much subdued textures. ‘Kingdom of Ends’ on the second side
continues this sort of sound trajectory: lots of field recordings, mainly from quite some distance, along with
the steady long bow on the violin and the rattling of objects. I am not entirely convinced that the length of
these pieces is really necessary; I couldn’t help to think that perhaps half of it would be of the same quality,
unless of course I fail to see the necessity of this length. I thought it was quite long, but also quite
all right. (FdW)
––– Address: http://noticerecordings.bandcamp.com
ERIK LEVANDER — MIMESIS/UTVECKLING (cassette by Kosmisk Väg)
So these thing go, apparently. You don’t hear from someone for years and then all of a sudden two (or more,
who knows) releases by that person, in this case Erik Levander, of whom we reviewed ‘Halv’ only two weeks
ago. Here he has a cassette with e already recorded in 2010, but which is only recently released. ‘Mimesis’
means the imitation or representation of aspects of the sensible world, especially human actions, in literature
and art, so I just learned and ‘Utveckling’ means development in Swedish. Two parts of the first title can be
found on the first side, while three parts on the second. The music here seems a bit more experimental than
on the previous release that I heard. The pieces are also longer and work more as soundscapes than as songs,
which they did on the previous release. Levander uses field recordings more than before and embeds these in
electronic music, playing the atmospheric drone card. On very few moments we seem to be able to detect a
guitar, unless of course this is used and transformed to such an extent that it is all a guitar; one can never be
sure these days. Just what it is that imitated is not entirely clear, unless it is electronic music soundscapes
that sound vaguely like real sound environments, such as the various recordings of subways. The music was
quite different than on his previous release, and yet it also sounds strangely coherent, like something he could
also do. Maybe all of this is less ‘pop’ (alternative that is) based, but it was quite compelling music. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.kosmiskvag.com/
COLDSORE — HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS (cassette by Totes Format)
LIBBE MATZ GANG/COLDSORE — [0+0=0] (splitcassette by Totes Format)
GRMMSK/MENTAL HELL — GHETT OKIDZ (splitcassette by Totes Format)
GRMMSK/KEMIA — TRUE LOWS (splitcassette by Totes Format)
GRMMSK — ONE WORLD/NOWHERE TO HIDE (LP by Sozialistischer Plattenbau)
It has been quiet for sometime for the Totes Format label from Finland, one of the finer merchants of noise,
released on cassettes. I started with Coldsore the latest of names used by the guy who is also Totstellen and
GRMMSK. Both of the ten-minute pieces on this tape are inspired by political events; the first side is a benefit
piece to support a homeless support group from London and the other side is about building walls around nations,
a hot topic and that Coldsore surely doesn’t like: “We believe to [make room] is not achieved by building walls.
We demand space + freedom of movement for all”. For the music he uses “selfmade electronic + electromechanic
generators + manipulators”, and taps into the area of drone and noise, keeping both on an equal level. In ‘Living
Hungry’ there are also voices used, sampled from other sources, but it’s not easy to make out what these are
about. Both sides are built in very minimal fashion; ‘Living Hungry’ more or less from the start on an equal level
and ‘Building Walls’ has long crescendo, and along it’s pick up a faint beat/thump. It then suddenly stops but it
followed by a noisier coda. I found this most enjoyable, these two crude noise pieces.
More music by Cold Sore can be found on the release with London’s Libbe Matz Gang, of who I never heard.
The words on the bandcamp page a bit cryptic, I must admit. A handwritten note says that this “tape deals with
involuntary medication for ‘therapeutic purposes'”. The music is all electronic and moves through various stages
of roughness. The first eight minutes are actually quite mellow, well, as mellow as that can be actually, along
however with a deep rumbling bass sound to make your walls tremble moving towards a finely feedback process,
but in the final five minutes it’s all good solid music again, with a vast sonic overload. On the other side is
Coldsore in quite a mellow and dark mood, with an excellent piece of moody and atmospheric electronics,
which show the newly found for love for minimalism and the piece doesn’t go anywhere, necessarily, but that’s
okay. These are fourteen minutes of a small electric storm.
Then we have music by GRMMSK, as it is preferred to write. Two split cassettes and a 12″. GRMMSK uses
electronics, but also drum machines and are probably less about noise. The band calls their music ‘doomdub’,
which I can see; they take the spirit of reggae but then totally transform it via some very lo-fi spirit, being quite
chaotic and using wildly some delay pedals. The bass that is so characteristic for dub is quite far away. Mental
Hell is from Berlin and the bands played together. Mental Hell, or rather M€NTAL H€LL, keep a more organised
time line in their music, using slowed down voices, dub inspired bass and drums and the effective use of the
delay pedal. I must say I enjoyed especially Mental Hell’s side, but I also thought that ten minutes gave me
just not enough idea about their music.
The other split by GRMMSK is with Kemia, from southern Germany and it’s a bit longer this time around. The
four pieces by GRMMSK are also a bit more organized it seems, in the beat department and more care has been
used to make the bass sound better. On top there is the dubby use of voice treatments, slowed down and
sounding quite all right. Kemia on the other side could have used a bit more mastering I would think, as it sounds
quite ‘soft’, and without much power. It’s not easy to say what Kemia is about at all; there is a bit of rhythm, dub
inspired techniques, moody ambiance at times, but all of which is a bit unclear what it is that he wants. It seems
that he needs to make up his mind about his music.
On to vinyl then, or rather via a download code thereof, we end with the first 12″ slab of vinyl by Helsinki’s
GRMMSK, released by Germany’s Sozialistischer Plattenbau. From the works I now heard this I thought was the
most coherent one. The music is slow, and there is obviously quite some thought into this. It takes the notion of
dub, it’s slowness and studio trickery into a world that is much more experimental, but one easily recognizes it
sources. I doubt whether a dance hall in Kingston would go wild over this though. And perhaps that’s not the
intention anyway? GRMMSK use quite a bit of reverb, which is not something that blows me away, but throughout
I thought this was a most enjoyable record. (FdW)
––– Address: http://totstellen-grmmsk.bandcamp.com
––– Address: http://spb-hamburg.bandcamp.com/