number 1076
---------------------
week 13 ---------------------
Vital Weekly, the webcast: we offering a weekly webcast,
freely to download. This can be regarded as the audio-supplement to
Vital Weekly. Presented as a radioprogramm with excerpts of just some
of the CDs (no vinyl or MP3) reviewed. It will remain on the site for a
limited period (most likely 2-4 weeks). Download the file to
your MP3 player and enjoy! Listen to the podcast on Mixcloud! before submitting material please read this carefully: http://www.vitalweekly.net/fga.html Submitting material means you read this and approve of this.
ULRICH TROYER - SONGS FOR WILLIAM 3 (CD by 4Bit Productions) PHILIPPE LAUZIER - A POND IN MY LIVING ROOM (CD by Sofa Music) MIGUEL ANGEL TOLOSA - EPHIMERAL (CD by Sofa Music) STEFAN THUT – ABC 1-6 (CD by Moving Furniture Records) THE URGE TRIO – LIVE AT THE HUNGRY BRIAN (CD by Veto Records) FRED LONBERG-HOLM & ADAM GOLEBIEWSKI – RELEPHANT (CD by Bocian) SARAH-JANE SUMMERS & JUHANI SILVOLA – WIDDERSHINS (CD by Dell Daisy) JUHANI SILVOLA – STRANGER FLOWERS (CD by Periskop) PLURALS - ATLANTIKWALL (2CD by Silken Tofu) DAVID FYANS - TRÜBHAND (CD by Moving Furniture Records) KATJA INSTITUTE - THIS AGE (CDR, private) MR. CONCEPT - XXXVII (CDR by Klappstuhl) CELER - ANOTHER BLUE DAY (CDR by Glistening Examples) LEO OKAGAWA - THE NOTIONAL TERRAIN (CDR by Glistening Examples) PATRICK FARMER & DAVID LACEY PELL-MELL THE PROLIX (CDR by Caduc) MARK SO - AND SUDDENLY FROM ALL THIS THERE CAME SOME HORRID MUSIC (CDR by Caduc) ZAVOLOKA - SYNGONIA (CDR by Kvitnu) MICHAEL VALENTINE WEST - VON BOCK STRASSE 18 (cassette by Ana Ott) BR'LÂAB - MOLOCHVILLE (cassette by Ana Ott) YANNICK DAUBY - MAGICIEN ROUCH (cassette by Tanuki Records) EDWARD SOL - BELLADONNA PSYCHED ASTROLAND (cassette by Sentimental Productions) ULRICH TROYER - SONGS FOR WILLIAM 3 (CD by 4Bit Productions) Sadly I missed out on 'Songs For William' and 'Songs For William 2', the predecessors to this new one, as I am enjoying this quite a bit. It is the end of the day and after a full day of listening to 'difficult' music it is now time to hear something that is less 'difficult' and even when this wasn't planned as such, it just worked out that way and I sat back and read the 'hand-drawn bonus track track' "William - The Seven Year itch", a comic book about the breakup of a stomp box named William and a MS-20 filter clone named Charlotte. There aren't enough comics in the world of Vital Weekly! Ronnie Sundin, when are you starting again? Troyer, with quite a career in electronic music, has eight pieces here of slow, dub inspired electronic music, starting off with the catchy and spacious 'At Muff's Place', going via vocoder voices, the bouncing of 'Dark Roots', the chippy tunes of 'Horny Chiptunes'; the speed never goes up that much and the element of reggae dub is never far away, except maybe in the somewhat alien spaced out, just a slow bass drum heavy 'I Miss Your Noise' and 'Alone On A Crowded Bus', less noisy than the previous but also perhaps a bit out of place. But then I am playing the CD; on the double vinyl these two are to be found on the fourth side of the record. At the end of a long day with difficult music those two odd-balls didn't matter, it was the overall joy that counted. The music of Ulrich Troyer invites the listener to stop working, open up a cold beer, light a cigarette and turn up the volume a bit more and have some friends over and start a proper party; it's a pity it is still cold and winter like, as this the kind of music for a hot summer's evening. (FdW) ––– Address: http://4bitproductions.com PHILIPPE LAUZIER - A POND IN MY LIVING ROOM (CD by Sofa Music) MIGUEL ANGEL TOLOSA - EPHIMERAL (CD by Sofa Music) For a while I thought Sofa Music was another label for the improvised music from Norway, a bit like Hubro, but the more music they release, the more I realize they are onto something bigger, less easy to classify. A crossroad if you will where improvised music meets modern classical meets microtonal music, if you catch my drift. Philippe Lauzier is perhaps a fine example of how that works. Much of his music so far was in the world of improvised music, but a month ago he surprised me with the release of 'Dôme', a cassette of works with an instrument of his own making, creating richly layered overtone music that reminded me of Organum and Paul Panhuysen. Those two pieces were very microtonal and perhaps I listen now with fresh ears to his new work and here he returns to his original instrument of choice, the bass clarinet. In the four pieces he presents here he uses a multiple tracks of his playing mixed together and he created a true beauty here. In each of the four pieces he is keen on using long form sustaining sounds and let this intertwine with each other. In the first piece, 'Bleu Penombre' it sounds like he also using loops of acoustic sources being rubbed on the body of the clarinet. In 'On The Window Side' he drops in occasionally a sound and that adds a collage like aspect to the music; or perhaps the added value of the improvisation? It's not easy to say. Composer Phill Niblock is thanked on the cover and that is hardly a surprise. Lauzier's music is very much on a similar trajectory of long form sounds but it seems to me that he's a bit more playful, especially when he adds that extra sound, that drop or what seems to me loops of acoustic sound (which they might not be), but all along there is sine wave like sounds floating about in the best Niblock tradition. Maybe you remember Ubeboet from Spain? That was the name chosen by Miguel Angel Tolosa, who these days abandoned the name Ubeboet and uses his own name. Tolosa studied composition with Antoine Beuger and electroacoustic music with Jean Claude Risset and Eduardo Polonio and there is not a lot of difference between the work he created as Ubeboet and Tolosa. He's not interested in any 'extramusical contents', such as of religious, political or commercial things, but "the object of his music is the experience of time through listening with an additional, subtle emotional element. Music as time made audible, music as beauty made to sound". Perhaps this is something more of an oddball release for Sofa Music. So far their releases had real instruments, even when perhaps not conventionally played. In the case of Tolosa I would think there is a lot of computer processing going on, in which he transforms a lot of other sounds, which might be field recordings, acoustic sounds or synthetic/electronic sounds, into a gentle microsound mass of ambient sounds. Sometimes a bit dark but gentle it surely is. I can imagine this might be something new in the living room of Sofa Music, but in the world of Vital Weekly it is something that is hardly unusual. Not a single week passes without a release that consists of field recordings, software and processing resulting in something very much ambient. That is not to say that Tolosa released a CD that is 'bad', actually far from it; it is just not something that is very new. What Tolosa does, he does very well. In the ten relative short pieces, ranging from one and half minute up to almost nine minutes, we hear a fine variety of approaches on these sounds and the result is very much dark, microscopic and atmospheric, but as said with a fine amount of variety in the shades these pieces will put on your wall. (FdW) ––– Address: http://sofamusic.no STEFAN THUT – ABC 1-6 (CD by Moving Furniture Records) Stefan Thut's process based compositions carry determined, yet unpredictable elements in their sonic resulting outcomes. The Swiss composer not only composes for the classically known acoustic instruments; he also makes use of quotidian sounding materials, such as cardboard and paper. Focus on the box, for Thut, means to bring forth the spatial and resonant characteristics of the form, the tactile aspects of the paper of board and the spaces contained within boxes versus the room outside of same said box. As a member of the Wandelweiser group of composers and performers Stefan Thut invites close listening, working with spaces between notes or sound events and a definite organic quality in composed elements merging with the sounds of the everyday – all systems open. Moving Furniture Records now release 'ABC 1-6' as performed by Cristian Alvear, Cyril Bondi and D'Incise. In the piece, which clocks in a little over 47 minutes in length Thut presents a work that evolves around “faintly coloured noise”, “an amalgam of noise and pitch” and “a pitch”, so the composers says. The structure is, one might say: of course, open ended and ever changing. 'ABC 1-6' juxtaposes white noise and environmental sounds, the latter colouring the whiteness of the noises, on record that is. And upon playback these slightly toned noises mesh yet again – now with the ambient sounds and noises in the playback space, adding yet another layer or touch of colouring. This coloration is not per se extremely exuberant, but it's definitely present, offering interesting, though quite subtle shifts in intonation and tonal perception. Thut sees and hears this as his baseline, point zero, t=0, starting point. When working from there, he encounters a “fundamental step in determining further a sound.” Thut adds acoustic instruments; tools to produce sounds. These 'scream' for attention by cutting a way through the fogs of white and other colours of noise. These make themselves heard. And in this making-heard, the ear focuses on these acoustic tool-sounds immediately, suppressing the attention for the soft spoken, barely there granular noise (moving from centre stage into the decor back ground). From these sounds being heard, picked up, in focused attention with the listener, Thut then highlights the chosen pitch(es), from amongst the noises and above that, the multitude of sounds produced. But his structure is never this linear, nor predictable. Lines cross over, run backward, seem to feedback on each other. Pitch dissolves rapidly into thin noise of near silence. Strings activated slowly hover towards just notable difference in volume while soft rasping touches on a drum's skin caresses the ear away from a shimmering drone tone towards a small gesture which presents itself as a major aural force in the paired down sound field of the composition. Merging, leaving alone, single focusing or smears in mixing, divergence and convergence are constantly questioning relative relations between the sonic materials, the performers and the cues given (or not given) by the score. Where do we go from here? If we go at all. And what do I hear? Or how? Or – better still, maybe, too – am I listening, and not (just) hearing? Does this becoming, growing awareness take time alone? To me it seems like the record begs for multiple performances, varied playback locations, opening and closing of windows, headphones off and on listening, close attention and playing as a backdrop to conversation and everyday living et cetera. A record that is, to live with; a composition not per se as 'ameublement', but like a good work of art hanging on your wall, catching your eye and your mind's eye, heart, soul at yet another angle every time anew again and again. The more you know, the more you know how little you know – and in a way I'm still not quite sure if ABC 1-6 let's you get any closer or enlarges the riddle with every new encounter. Like learning to read and count anew. And time and time again doing your homework by saying your ABC's and 123's over and over, only to learn there's literature and poetry too; there's math too... (SSK) ––– Address: http://www.movingfurniturerecords.com THE URGE TRIO – LIVE AT THE HUNGRY BRIAN (CD by Veto Records) The Urge Trio is Tomeka Reid (cello), Keefe Jackson (reeds) and Christoph Erb (reeds). In 2015 Veto released their debut cd, a live recording dating from October 5th, 2013 at the Robinwood Concert House in Toledo, Ohio. This new live recording dates from exactly two years later, and is recorded at the Hungry Brain, Chicago in the same line up. Both released on the limited Exchange Series, documenting the Chicago-Lucerne partnership. And again like all preceding releases, this one comes with beautiful artwork by Sonnenzimmer. The CD contains one improvised set of 34 minutes called ‘Hecha de toda la agua’. Often line-ups as this one exist for a very short time, maybe doing a short tour. Make some recordings and then split. And then, after a considerable period of time they decide to synchronize their agendas once again. In the meantime a lot happened, habits and ideas changed, new techniques are developed, other collaborations passed by, etc. One has to attune to one other once again and see if things still work. In the case of Erb and his Chicago-connections this seems no problem as this new recording proves. Jackson and Erb both play tenor sax, Erb also soprano sax and Jackson sopranino sax and bass clarinet. Reid plays cello, in a minor but providing essential details and delivering some fine underlining of the sax players. Halfway she has a solo-moment, but as soon Jackson and Erb join, her playing. Erb and Jackson prove to be in a very sensitive mood. Their interactions are of a moderate and fragile kind. The music constantly changes and evolves. Repetitive patterns never take long. Conversing strategies follow up to diverging ones. They squeak, babble, etc. The spirited improvisation ends with a powerful swirling climax that fades away slowly. (DM) ––– Address: http://www.veto-records.ch/ FRED LONBERG-HOLM & ADAM GOLEBIEWSKI – RELEPHANT (CD by Bocian) ‘Relephant’ is a collaboration of Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, electronics) and Adam Golebiewski (drums, cymbals, objects). Lonberg-Holm needs no introduction I suppose. Composer, improviser, cellist, studied with Anthony Braxton and Morton Feldman, played with Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, and so many other musicians from all over the planet. Adam Golebiewski needs more introductions; he's an improviser, percussionist and musicologist who lives and works in Poznan, Poland. Experimental and improvised music is his territory, worked with Mats Gustafsson, Thurston Moore and of course musicians from the Polish scene. As both act in the same circuit of improvised musicians they probably met in other combinations and projects. ‘Relephant’ is however their first duo-effort if I’m not mistaken. The CD has four improvisations, recorded live at MDK Dragon, a club in Poznan. Golebiewski uses a lot of objects, adding a lot colour to the sound spectrum of these improvisations. Lonberg-Holm uses a lot of electronic devices that are hard to define, producing noisy and weird sounds. But that just means to an end. Both players were very well connected during these recordings. One can hear these improvisations are very focused and together, also very dynamic, spirited and playful. It is as if they are telling stories in their improvisations. But that again that is just a metaphor, or an image for the experience this music has a strong nucleus. Everything abstract improvisation needs to offer; in order to deliver a satisfying listening experience is offered by this duo. (DM) ––– Address: http://www.bocianrecords.com/ SARAH-JANE SUMMERS & JUHANI SILVOLA – WIDDERSHINS (CD by Dell Daisy) JUHANI SILVOLA – STRANGER FLOWERS (CD by Periskop) The first is a Norway-based duo of two exceptional musicians, who are also a couple in everyday lives. Sarah Jane Summers plays fiddle, Juhani Silvola guitar. He is of Finnish, she of Scottish origin. Both have their roots in their respective traditional folk music. Together they make an interesting blend of traditionals and their own compositions. In 2013 they released their first collaboration that received positive reviews. ´Widderhins´ is their second effort. This is music that is not often covered in Vital Weekly. So for me as an outsider to this kind of music, it is my impression that also their own compositions move within the paradigms of folk traditions. ‘Widdershins’ is a Scottish expression for going against the norm. But that is not what they themselves demonstrate. They are not into far out experimenting with folk music material. Often it is dance music what they write, with melodies and harmonies that I associate with folk. What impresses me most is the high level of musicianship. Both are gifted players. Summers is in the most of the tracks in the leading role. Which is no problem, as her expressive and spirited performance is a joy to listen to. Also the sound of her violin helps a lot. She plays a Matthew Hardie violin, dated 1812, and often described as the ‘Scottish Stradivari’. Silvola is prominent in the pieces that are by his hand, ‘Silver Spring Reet’ and ‘Burning Sands’. The music is recorded live in the studio and without overdubs. ‘Strange Flowers’ is the debut solo album of Juhani Silvola (guitars, synthesizers, electronics and percussion) who also mixed and produced the album. He received help from by Sarah-Jane Summers (fiddle, viola) and Timo Silvola (drums, percussion). Again this is an instrumental album but of a different kind. The duo-album was strongly oriented on folk music; this one starts from other inspirations. The opening track 'The Gods That Built This Place Were Mad', is plain blues. Most other tracks move between ambient and rock, and are quite undemanding and don’t contain many compositional surprises. I was sometimes reminded of the charming simplicity of the solo work of Michael Rother, if you need a comparison. Everything is very well played, arranged and produced by Silvola. However it is a bit too polished for my ears. Happily there a few strange things I can mention. The creepy sounds in ‘Vents of the Underworld’ and spooky atmospheres in the dark ambient track ‘Black Breath, Black Blood’, the most experimental track of the album, with scratchy violin playing by Summers. (DM) ––– Address: http://www.sarahjanejuhani.com/ ––– Address: http://periskopmusic.com/ PLURALS - ATLANTIKWALL (2CD by Silken Tofu) Now here's a name I remembered, but it had slipped very much to the back of my mind. Plurals had two of their releases reviewed, as it turns out from their earliest phase (in Vital Weekly 679 and 732) and since then released a few more works, on such labels as Tor Press, latitudes, Oaken Palace and Structured Disasters. I now learn they are a trio of Daniel Mackenzie (of whom as solo release was reviewed in Vital Weekly 1065), Michael Neaves and David Hamilton-Smith. Silken Tofu invited them to play a four-hour concert inside a former German military fortification near Ostend in Belgium, in an empty circular gun emplacement. They set up their gear, which included guitar, synthesizers, keyboards, vocals, tape machines, radio and reed and string instruments and do what they always do, which is improvise. I may have missed out on a few years of their development as a band, but at the same time it seems like coming home, to find it sounding better. Plurals are still that lo-fi noise rock band; with a cling-clang approach on percussive bits, distortion pedals held down, and everything on an endless sustain release. On top of that they drop in occasional sounds, gather loosely arranged loops that throw about on the surface, or sometimes just below the surface, adding minimal changes to the über-drone. Most of the times it is quite noisy, but I don't think they go for cheap noise overkill. The second and third piece on the second disc proof such a thing, when they go out, in their way, into some introspective mood of atmospheric, menacing drone material and not just a random clash of noise elements. As said development in each of the seven pieces is not very quick and evolve around slow moving themes; and to think that this is just two of the hours they played. I am sure this was a very intense evening, even if one decided to catch only a bit of this. I wasn't there, but this sounds like a fine selection to me, and two hours for me personally was quite sufficient. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.silkentofu.org/ DAVID FYANS - TRÜBHAND (CD by Moving Furniture Records) Previously David Fyans worked as Erstlaub and as such had a release on Moving Furniture before (Vital Weekly 685) but also on labels as Highpoint Lowlife, Broken20 and ConV, and now returns with another release on what slowly becomes the most important Dutch label for all things experimental and drone music, Moving Furniture Records. "Trübhand", which according to the label means something as Cloudy or Turbid hand, was recorded in February 2016 when Fyans and his wife were "living in north Germany in exile at the time as a result of untenable UK visa policy", and the flat land he found there made him more homesick and isolated. There are two pieces here, each lasts exactly twenty-three minutes and they were recorded "using a small case of eurorack modules, a mixer and a couple of guitar pedals as two separate live performances to a zoom H4 recorder". Both of these pieces are very minimal when it comes to development and very strong on the drone front. Both of these pieces are structured the same way: fade in, stay on that volume is arrives at, all sorts of minimal developments going in a slow course, over time and fade out at the end. That's how these things work and that's not very likely to change easily; it's also not really a problem. Fyans music is quite dark and highly atmospheric, two things that perhaps also aren't in for a total change. There is something about this release that I really like, but somehow don't know what it is. Perhaps it is that somewhat sinister ring some of this has, a particular spooky character, that nocturnal flat land feel in which a stale cold wind blows? I am not sure, but I thought both pieces sounded truly fascinating. I realize that a lot of drone music sound very similar and maybe that is the whole point, this one surely sounded a bit different and so much more I liked it. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.movingfurniturerecords.com KATJA INSTITUTE - THIS AGE (CDR, private) Back in Vital Weekly 1064 I wrote this about 'A Monument For Your Enthusiasm': "Maybe adding information of whatever kind is regarded by some as… old hat? Superfluous? A pain? A trouble? It is hard to say. It is not something that Katja Institute likes to share with us. This is a CDR; right out of the shop, with absolutely no information, no cover, no writing on it, nothing. Not easy to find again if you are looking for it." Now there is a new release, their sixth and again it comes with a David Lynch quote. This time there is one piece on the CDR, exactly clocking in at sixty minutes, but if you take a look at the Bandcamp version (which actually comes with an image in the form of a text), then you'll notice the group sees this as eight separate pieces. Opening this as a wave file I can see two breaks so that would mean there are three separate pieces. The longest one, starting around nineteen minutes, going all the way until the end, definitely moves through a bunch of textures. Like before all of this is very much part and parcel from the world of drone music, and this is not different. But as with the previous release, some of this seems to be taking too much time, or, in different words, it stays too long in the same place without too many changes. That is a pity as what they have to offer sounds pretty good. There is some strong dynamic music to be found in this, with especially in the first thirteen minutes (these tracks have no titles, but I am guess you don't think that is a surprise for a no-cover release?) a very deep bass sound. It is followed by a short piece of some mid-high frequency sample/hold sound, after which the 'rest' of 'Time Age' starts. It is all quite enjoyable, these remaining forty minutes but I couldn't help thinking that perhaps a somewhat faster curve, say doing all of this in twenty-five to thirty minutes would have made the whole release a bit stronger. I know drone music is supposed to sound spaced out but there is a risk of the listener dozing off. Unless that of course is exactly what Katja Institute wants? But then I would think that the listener should actively rework some of the frequencies before trying to go to sleep, as it might be a bit too heavy on the bass tones. So, all in all, not a bad and somewhat long release and I for one hope the next one will be sporting a cover, however minimal that will be. It will be difficult to tell them apart in the future. (FdW) ––– Address: http://katjainstitute.bandcamp.com MR. CONCEPT - XXXVII (CDR by Klappstuhl) With me being trained in matters of history, I know the title stands for '37' in Roman numbers but my memory is not that well trained that I recognize the name Mr. Concept straight away from the old cassette days (daze more likely) and yet it sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe I saw it on a blog when those started to delve the mines for all that obscure stuff. Behind Mr. Concept is one Rob Grant, who released his last cassette “Conceptum Umbilicus” (Concept City) twenty years ago, then spend time of his family and gardening, and now presents eighteen pieces he recorded from 1988 to 1992. Some of these pieces had a digital release in 2007 as “While My Sitar Gently Beeps”, but that is now deleted and presented here as well. So what is it that Mr. Concept does, what is his concept? I am not sure if there is really a bigger concept behind all of this, except for making some synth pop music; armed with a guitar, a rhythm machine, bass guitar and keyboard, plus very occasionally vocals or sampled voices, everything is recorded on a Portastudio 4-track machine, which I guess is the classic way of going about for any good old Do It Yourself musician. The guitar sounds from time to time quite twangy, vibrating and resonating against the beats produced. All of this bringing us some very joyful pop tones, quite upbeat but without being quirky. Songs are between three and four minutes (with a few exceptions, but then they are a bit shorter) and, as said, mostly instrumental. Now, perhaps, that is the only downside to the music; why not go the all-pop way and add more vocals or silly samples, like Margaret Thatcher in 'Do It', which sounds very much retro electro from the late 80s, including that ubiquitous political message. A bit more of those kind of vocal tracks and in any event we hope to see Mr. Concept around earlier. (FdW) ––– Address: http://klappstuhl.bandcamp.com/ CELER - ANOTHER BLUE DAY (CDR by Glistening Examples) LEO OKAGAWA - THE NOTIONAL TERRAIN (CDR by Glistening Examples) Just the other day I was re-reading a biography about Brian Eno, so when I saw a new CD by Celer called 'Another Blue Day' I smiled and thought of Eno's 'Another Green World'; perhaps I could have made the connection Eno and Derek Jarman (in his 'Jubilee movie) and been thinking about his movie 'Blue', but I just didn't. I did now. The cover surely has a similar blue cover as the soundtrack to that movie, but this one lacks completely in narration. On the labels' website there is a text from Celer's only member Will Long and it reads like a dream; perhaps one that inspired him to record this. It could be; it's about running and falling asleep and while the music certainly makes no hazy impression, it could very well be about sleeping. Just today I had a conversation about music while you sleep and with the same person about 'innovation', both topics that make good copy for a release like this. Personally I like to keep music away from the bedroom; I prefer to read a book (from paper) and no music, or other distractions. When I was reading from an iPad, I would have Eno's app 'Bloom' playing in the background, which I guess was all right, but I was too much doing other stuff on such a device that can so much. With or without I am ever the bad sleeper. However I can imagine people spinning some music to make them drowsier, or who can switch off all electrons and fall asleep straight away. Those people should try 'Another Blue Day' by Celer, as it would work perfectly well. My friend talked about innovation, as the thing reviewers always seem to seek, because it makes good copy, and I think that might be true, also in the case of Celer. Many of his releases are alike and 'Another Blue Day' is not different, although I seem to be doing not too bad in producing a lengthy review. I too am someone who likes people to try new stuff. From Will Long I know he does that, albeit under different guises. Celer is his outlet for ambient drone stuff. 'Music should grab the listener and a review should tell me that there is something new'; which in this case is the perfect example. Ambient music doesn't grab the listener per se, I would think, and probably has lots of other functions (sleeping for instance, meditation) and while I had this on, I picked up that Eno biography again, read a few more pages and thought that music by the likes of Celer, who produce a lot of similar music, exists very much in the 'now'. It is great music for this specific moment, but if I want to have a similar experience I could easily take another Celer of the shelf and play that. This new one is just as good as many of his other releases; the man can't wrong as Celer. An extensive body of work and they're all great. I never heard of Leo Okagawa and the cover, nor website, doesn't tell us much when it comes to instruments and such like, except that it was composed and recorded in Tokyo in 2016. This is first release under his name and before that he had a release as Protocell called 'Shipwreck Poetry', released by Obakekoubou. On Discogs it also says: 'He creates sounds mainly using edited field- recorded sounds and raw noises.' There are five pieces on 'The Notional Terrain'. That is probably something I would have written anyway, based on the actually hearing music. There is for instance the ducks/seagulls/birds at the opening of 'Lumbar Spine', recorded in a zoo, along with more obscure rumbles from broken down electrical equipment, slowed down cassette recordings of rain and more of these delights. All of this is put together using collage techniques, so for instance, a piece starts by opening a door, and then we hear animals, or people talking and slowly it gets transformed into a more drone like experience; we are resting our heads against a faulty transformer, an loud ventilator, up the escalator into the second floor of a shopping mall. This is the kind of thing that sounds like radio play or a damn fine piece of musique concrete, emphasizing the longer form of composition. Okagawa moves carefully through his material, going from something that is very quiet and introspective towards something that is angular and brisk; noise is something that is present but it never becomes loud and distorted. If Okagawa takes noise material to work with he tones it down a bit, adds colour to it and as such he may be working along the lines of say Francisco Meirino or Joe Colley, he keeps it all together a bit more. No rapid, harsh cuts or noisy intersections are created here. Quite a fine release and first introduction. Let's wait and see what else he has up his sleeve. (FdW) ––– Address: http://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com PATRICK FARMER & DAVID LACEY PELL-MELL THE PROLIX (CDR by Caduc) MARK SO - AND SUDDENLY FROM ALL THIS THERE CAME SOME HORRID MUSIC (CDR by Caduc) By now Patrick Farmer has quite an impressive series of releases, yet very few reached these pages. I only seem to have done two of them, and quite some time ago, in Vital Weekly 793. Here he teams with David Lacey's, of whom I actually reviewed more; mainly works carried out with Fergus Kelley and Chip Shop Music. Both musicians are active in improvisation and seem to be interested in playing percussion. Farmer writes on his website: "‘Pell-Mell’ was recorded during a short residency at SARU in Oxford Brookes university, where we made use of their variety of percussion, predominantly recorded to tape, in ways which seemingly befit our discussions concerning Jean Luc Godard’s ‘Film Socialisme’", which made me think if you haven't seen that, it makes one an outsider to that discussion; or indeed even to the music. The music is quite strange, to say the least, as it seems to be removed quite a bit from the world of regular improvisation. The music seems to have been recorded on tape and in some crude way it has been processed further; at least that's what I believe to hear. It has been cut into loops and played back in a space of some kind, picked up with lo-fi microphones, or even contact microphones against surfaces and then occasionally there are gaps in this material, just dead silence, in irregular intervals. I was reminded of Hands To at the end when Jeph Jerman started to play more and more percussion; Farmer and Lacey reach for a similar crude 'concussion'/percussion music, sometimes with a similar noisy outcome, when a radio blears along. This I thought was noisy music, but it was quite intelligent and very good noise music. Less noisy is the duo of Cristian Alvear (guitar) and Gudinni Cortina (turntables) who recorded their duo in Santiago de Chile. No doubt along the lines of some concept or score. Perhaps that in one speaker we hear Alvear and in the other we hear Cortina? Maybe we are invited to adjust which player we'd like to hear? It is the sort of thing I very rarely try actually, just leaving everything as it is. The work, lasting thirty-one minutes, consists of four parts, of which the first and third are quite the same and the second and fourth also. Alvear plays very minimal, yet rhythmical patterns, with or without a delay pedal, I am not entirely sure here, and in the fourth part he's actually present on both channels. Cortina plays records filled with dust and at some point I was thinking he has a record that already has Alvear playing, or perhaps he's picking up the sound from Alvear through the stylus? I found all of this very confusing and therefore it wasn't easy to concentrate on the music. I decided to close my eyes and just listen, regardless who was doing what on this release and where sound was coming from. It worked so much better. The music is very much like a Wandelweiser piece; quiet, unintentional and engaging for some kind of meditation. With early spring sun outside creating some warmth, this was quite a beauty. Very thoughtful and best played at a soft volume. (FdW) ––– Address: http://caduc.org/ ZAVOLOKA - SYNGONIA (CDR by Kvitnu) Following 'Volya' (see Vital Weekly 948) here's a new release by Kateryna Zavoloka, who uses her last name as artist moniker. She's been around for quite some time now, working with Mark Clifford of Seefeel, AGF (Vital Weekly 515) and Kotra (Vital Weekly 545) and who played around the world, sometimes as part of more art events, but also in clubs. 'Volya' seemed a to be a very political statement, all about the Russian invasion of the Crimean peninsula, but that seems not be the case on 'Syngonia'. It says that this is the 'third volume from a series of albums dedicated to Purification by Four Elements: Earth', even when I am not sure what that means. The music seems to be gentler than before, or in fact than much of the music on Kvitnu, which we know to be rhythmic and noisy. The eight pieces on this CD are all rhythm heavy, but 'nicer', 'sweeter' than before; it's not that Pan Sonic machine drift that many of Kvitnu seem to love, but a fine techno beat, and the there are some excellent melodies on top of that. This time around it is not the cascading of sine waves together, but Zavoloka plays a bunch of synthesizer melodies; dark but gentle, laced with the right amount of sound effects; much delay and reverb, as things should be. I don't know that much about the world of techno, house or such like to say what this sounded like, but I thought this was a most enjoyable record (also available on LP it seems). Very danceable, even for those who don't dance. (FdW) Address: http://www.kvitnu.com MICHAEL VALENTINE WEST - VON BOCK STRASSE 18 (cassette by Ana Ott) BR'LÂAB - MOLOCHVILLE (cassette by Ana Ott) Ana Ott released in 2014 a previous work by Michael Valentine West, and now it's time for thirty new minutes of music on this cassette. I didn't hear that previous release, or other works by West, who is called 'a composer/decomposer utilising lessons learnt from various musical disciplines such as minimal, ambient, avant-garde, music concrete, jazz and sound design'. Sometimes he uses other names such as Twiggy And The K-Mesons, K-Meson 4, Suck Susan, Lower Third, Mikimo Sosumi or Anal Teens, and he does music for films. There are no instruments mentioned but listening to these three I heavily suspect him to be using all analogue gear or something to do with Ableton Live; or a combination of both. The results are quite different from each other. On the first side we find the sidelong 'Another Alice' piece, which is a piece that is best described as a light ambient piece; synth sounds got stuck inside a delay and reverb unit and all of that is opened more and more and slowly takes on a different shape, a much darker one, and yet the original starting point can still be recognized. The two pieces on the other side have rhythm; a minimal, slightly distorted synth sequence rather than something that comes out of a rhythm machine. 'On-Off' is more the sampled sound of a switched on (off?) machine, crudely sampled so it now sounds like a Pan Sonic rhythm, albeit with not a lot of bass sound. I thought all three pieces were rather simple in approach and not very engaging to play. 'So what?' was my thinking after I heard it. I have no idea how to pronounce Br'lâab, the musical project by Brecht Ameel, who is also a member of Razen (which I missed when they played my town). According to the text this consists on 'the one hand of themes from Ameel's songbook for the Acid Boogie Quartet, on the other hand of tape collage pieces based on recordings of found audio, ultra-fi sampling, degraded VHS, skipping CDs and sandpaper vinyl', which works best if you know what the Acid Boogie Quartet is, which I don't. These pieces, three on the cassette and two further more in the download, were made after hours and names to reference are Raymond Dijkstra, Slint, Tape and Peer Raben, some which may also not mean that much to me. The music is indeed a curious mixture of sounds and music, as if one could find a distinction between the two of them. On the A-side there is 'Moloch 50', which is Br'lâab at his most experimental, a collage of found sound indeed, stuck together in the best random ways of John Cage, including cutting-up a jazz record. The two pieces on the other seem to be using loops more effectively to create a new song out of it, and both the dusty obscurity of an old soundtrack, one from the 40s and the title track from the seventies. Also in the two bonus pieces there is an overall obscurity in play, but these work also quite well. The A-side didn't work for me that well, but the other pieces surely did, albeit all too brief. I would not mind hearing a bit more of this. (FdW) ––– Address: http://anaott.bandcamp.com/ YANNICK DAUBY - MAGICIEN ROUCH (cassette by Tanuki Records) Even when not the most active composers when it comes to releasing music, the name Yannick Dauby popped up on quite a few occasions in the past years. We know him mostly as a composer of serious music, dealing with field recordings, mainly from the country where lives since 2007, Taiwan. This new work is quite different. He went back to the country where he was born, France, and in the archives from the INA GRM and French radio he found interviews and texts by Jean Rouch about his 1955 movie 'Les Maitres Fous', which shows Hauka's voodoo rituals. "Mainly composed of migrant workers from the countryside of Niger and Ghana, this community, principally found around the city of Accra, devised possession rites to imitate, to emulate and to mock the British colonial authorities, and thus steal their life force", says the press text and on this thirty-three minute, one piece on each side of this cassette, we hear Dauby cutting he voice of Rouch up, adding a bit of alien electronic sounds to the proceedings. I am not sure to what extent we are supposed to understand this text that Rouch tells us, as the way Dauby made his cuts and loops makes this quite impossible to understand (besides of course the fact that knowledge of the French language is required). At best there is a radio play quality to these pieces even when much of the process applied by Dauby is on a similar level, which is okay if one sees this as one long piece; but a bit more variation would have been nice, I would think. In the catalogue of works by Dauby this is surely quite an odd ball that will surprise his fans. (FdW) ––– Address: http://tanukirecords.bandcamp.com/ EDWARD SOL - BELLADONNA PSYCHED ASTROLAND (cassette by Sentimental Productions) Music by Ukrainian Edward Sol has been reviewed quite a few times and it becomes stronger and stronger with every new release. His LP with Brume (Vital Weekly 1030) was a highlight and since then he's been on that high end. This new work is not much different, be it that I think some of these pieces are a bit too long. I still have very little knowledge as to how this music is created, but I would think it includes a fair bunch of electronic devices, as well as a guitar, voice and perhaps turntables. The ten tracks here are defying categorization. One moment you think that it is 'industrial music’; the next it is all some wacky pop music, culminating in swift montage techniques not worlds apart from what one calls musique concrete. Throughout the music is 'heavy', in terms of production, which sounds like it was recorded it much ear for the small detail, but also perhaps a bit heavy on the moody side of things. It all sounded great; it just that when Sol tries to combine all the elements he puts in a great four minute piece and extends that into something that lasts seven to ten minutes, you notice that the tension evaporates. It goes on a bit too long and couldn't hold my attention. That happened on all of the four pieces that have such a length. Sol's strength lies in keeping matters short and to the point. I prefer a shorter cassette that sounds so much stronger, then a lengthy one with some weaker brothers. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.facebook.com/sentimentalproduction |