EMILIANO ROMANELLI – UNTITLED (9 PATTERNS) (CD by Senufo Editions) *
THE TOUCHABLES – THE NOISE IS REST (CD by Conradsound) *
FLY PAN AM – C’EST ÇA (CD by Constellation Records) *
180º – SUBMENTAL (CD by Splitrec) *
ANEMOCHORE – SUITES AND SEEDS (CD by Creative Sources Recordings) *
SLOTH RACKET – DISMANTLE YOURSELF (CD by Luminous) *
KASPAR DEAD PAIN (CD by H.A.K. Lo-Fi Records) *
SLEEPLAND – OUT OF HUE (CD by Spekk) *
JON ROSE & ALVIN CURRAN – CAFE GRAND ABYSS (CD by ReR Megacorp) *
JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS – CURLING (CD by Eich Records) *
JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS – REFLEX (CD by Eich Records) *
HESSEL VELDMAN/ENNO VELTHUYS – BOEZEM BALLET/IN IJLE LUCHT (7″ by Stroom TV)
CONTRASTATE – AN EXERCISE IN DEFASCINATION (7″ by Black Rose Recordings)
QUEST – WINTER’S SUN (CDR by Fuzzy Panda) *
DC (CDR by Setola Di Maiale) *
HARSH NOISE LONDON RECYCLED TAPE SERIES #20: CANNON (recycled cassette by Harsh
Noise London)
HARSH NOISE LONDON RECYCLED TAPE SERIES #18: KIKIRIKI “PERCEIVERS” (recycled
cassette by Harsh Noise London)
IAN STENHOUSE/POOL PERVERT (cassette by Non-Interrupt)
MUSIC FOR A FEW PEOPLE VOL. 2 (cassette compilation by Non-Interrupt)
ANTOINE PANACHÉ / MODELBAU – COSMIC TWINS (cassette by Barreuh)
EMILIANO ROMANELLI – UNTITLED (9 PATTERNS) (CD by Senufo Editions)
Work by Emiliano Romanelli is quite sparse and I almost wrote: I never heard of him, but then I read
the press text and noted that he was a cofounder of Tu m’, a group and label dedicated to the fine
art of laptop music, albeit at the turn of the century. It turns out I reviewed two of his previous works
(Vital Weekly 926 and 1034), which I would think were also in the domain of digital music and his
work deals with generative system and “the perceptual relationships between sound and space”.
This new work bears this subtitle ‘music for acoustic guitar and cassette players”, and was recorded
live between August and September 2018, so I assume ‘live’ is not necessarily in concert. I would
not have thought about a guitar here, to be honest. In the nine pieces, there is nothing that sounds
like a guitar. It sounds like hissy field recordings of a very static nature; I thought of modular
synthesizers. I was reminded of Richard Francis’ work; it had that same, hissy, quiet quality that he
also has. Each of these pieces is minimal work, exploring a few sounds that wander around for a
bit and then stop. There is no narrative involved, just a few loops/sounds/longer sketches hovering
about. It has something quite mysterious that I like. It is like being present at some small-scale
event, not necessarily a music event that is, and you watch it from a distance; you can’t see what is
happening, and you hear some faint traces of sound. And that’s about it; it is enough, however, to
keep you listening. At least it would do for me. Oddly all of the pieces have an exact full minute
length, 2:00, 3:00 etc., except the third being 4:30 and the last is 5:30; I am sure there is meaning
there that I have not yet discovered. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.senufoeditions.com/
THE TOUCHABLES – THE NOISE IS REST (CD by Conradsound)
Acoustic noise music is not a new thing. Zeitkratzer Ensemble from Berlin is world-famous for it.
Here is a duo from Norway who plays two extreme instruments. The Octobass is a giant upright
bass and is played by Guro Skumsnes Moe, while Ole-Henrik Moe plays the piccoletto-violin,
which is a very small violin that produces very high notes. Both Moe’s play in improvised music
and rock bands. Ole-Henrik is a member of Motorpscyho and composes serious works, while
Guro has her band called MoE and an acoustic noise (again!) group Sult. The Touchables is them
together playing extreme music on extreme and unusual instruments. It is music that contains very
high and very low pitches. The high pitched sound like feedback from time to time. There is some
fascinating stuff going on here. In ‘Blackout Lighthouse’ for instance there some strange hissy
effect created; I have no idea which of the two instruments is responsible for that but it works very
well. The strings are played slowly yet with some great intensity. It seems to take quite some time
to get the bow across, even if the violin is small. None of these pieces has that free improvisation
hectic or nervousness, except in ‘Unicorn Stocking’, when the piccoletto violin makes quick
manipulations. In the other pieces, the evolution of the music is rather slow and solemn. With the
microphone close to the instruments there is an additional layer of noise being added and that
also works very well. This is something that needs to be played with some considerable volume
and is surely not for the weak of heart. (FdW)
––– Address: http://conradsound.com
FLY PAN AM – C’EST ÇA (CD by Constellation Records)
After my late discovery of Godspeed You Black Emperor, I followed them quite a bit and that
included every new release on their Constellation Records. I was closer to the forces of promotion
back then, handing out this stuff to every potentially interesting looking person, of which I seemed
to be one. Probably as sudden I gave up, too distanced as I became from said forces and the
industry in total. I am sure I heard the first two releases, but I am not sure I heard ‘N’Ecoutez Pas’,
their 2004 album. I also have no recollection of how their music sounded, no longer owning the
original releases. That happens with the passing of time and the waning of interest. Now, the
band returns with a come-back CD. I have no idea if the line-up that is mentioned on Discogs is
still valid; Eric Gingras, Felix Morel, Jean-Sébastien Truchy, Jonathan Parant, Roger Tellier-Craig.
On Discogs this caught my eye, when I was listening to ‘C’est ça’ (meaning: that’s it); “French pop &
krautrock, as well as a forward-looking experimentalism guided by an unshakeable faith in the
unfulfilled possibilities of minimalism and musique concrète in punk rock”, being their description,
and that is indeed something I can see easily in the nine pieces here. A record band let loose in
the studio, opening all the boxes and trying out every button available and see what happens.
The result is as easily rock music or disco (in ‘One Hit Wonder’; perhaps a fuck-the-disco punk
remark?), drones (opening of ‘Interface Your Shattered Dreams’), and everywhere they use
scattered sound effects and tape collage/de-montage; mild but they are surely there. Vocals seem
to be a new feature for the band, and here they are in a punky mood as well. Thirty-minute fly by
with this vibrant record, this controlled burst of energy. I have no idea if this their swansong even
when the title may be an indicator to that, but let’s hope it’s the fresh start again. (FdW)
––– Address: http://cstrecords.com/
180º – SUBMENTAL (CD by Splitrec)
With 180º we are in the company of veterans of the Australian improv scene. Flautist Jim Denley
is a real pioneer, member of the group Machine for Making Sense. That also counts for Amanda
Stewart member of this same group together with Rik Rue, Chris Mann and Stevie Wishart.
Collaborations and projects by Stewart and Denley are uncountable. So both are very skilled and
experienced musicians. And it is great that they are still performing as this new release proves.
180º is a very recent project, started in August 2018 with Nick Ashwood from Tasmania as a third
member. He is a musician of a younger generation. His main focus is “exploring and utilizing the
acoustic possibilities of the steel-string acoustic guitar”, what is practised by him on this album.
He is based in Sydney and related to the Split Records scene. The three produced an intimate
and sensitive recording of subdued improvisations. Stewart seldom raises her voice, mixing
verbal and non-verbal sounds in her performance. Their sound-oriented and stretched-out
improvisations are radical but also very organic. Open free-floating improvisations that develop
as a constant stream of sounds. They have the voice of Stewart in the centre, embedded in the
textures by the wind and string instruments. But it is also the other way around. All three equally
contribute in a harmonizing way to the whole. (DM)
––– Address: https://splitrec.com/
ANEMOCHORE – SUITES AND SEEDS (CD by Creative Sources Recordings)
Anemochore is a new quartet of Frantz Loriot (viola), Sebastian Strinning (tenor sax, bass clarinet),
Daniel Studer (bass) and Benjamin Brodbeck (drums). It is a Swiss unit that was started in 2016 by
Loriot and Studer to investigate new playing techniques and forms of improvisation. Of these four
musicians, it is Loriot I know best, who impressed me for example with duo effort with Christoph
Erb (‘Sceneries’) and ‘The Assembly’ by his Frantz Loriot Systematic Distortion Orchestra, to name
a few. It is not common practice in circles of improvising musicians to come up with a name for
their collaboration. Here musicians choose Anemochore as the name for their collaboration,
denoting the phenomenon of seeds of plants distributed by the wind. Probably chosen as a
suitable metaphor for their collaboration. And inevitably the metaphor colours the visualizations
that merge while listening. The small gentle sounds that come from their interplay parallel the play
of the wind with these seeds. Overall the players interact though very short gestures and subtle
movements. So one has to stay very alert. Every moment is a different one. One cannot lean on
motives or whatever that are repeated for a while. In twelve improvisations they excel in
concentrated and bolded improvisations. The interplay is very communicative and all bring in
lots of ideas and possibilities. At first listening, one might miss dynamics as an ingredient.
However if one engages with full concentration, their interactions open up a fascinating and
rich micro-world. Great work! (DM)
––– Address: https://www.creativesourcesrec.com/
SLOTH RACKET – DISMANTLE YOURSELF (CD by Luminous)
Cath Roberts is a young musician (baritone sax) exploring combinations of improvisation and
composition. Besides, she organizes concerts, festivals, etc. Together with Dee Byrne she has
also time to run the Luminous-label. From what I read Sloth racket is her main project. A quintet
that already has several albums out since their start in 2015. That year Roberts presented a new
project at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival and was stimulated to continue this
collaboration. She also leads an ensemble of double size, the tentet Favourite Animals. And with
Anton Hunter, she has a duo named Ripsaw Catfish. Sloth Racket is Cath Roberts (baritone sax),
Anton Hunter (guitar), Sam Andreae (alto sax), Seth Bennett (bass) and Johnny Hunter (drums).
All compositions are by Cath Roberts. They are about “combining written fragments with a graphic
notation to explore the balance between freedom and structure”, which is a game that is often
played by improvising musicians. In the case of Roberts’ compositions, this means that each
performance of the material is different. So the versions that made it to his recording fixate only
one possible recording. The balance they seek is one by which the written material is never
completely out of sight. The improvisations always stay related to the written material. This makes
that the music has a clear balance between written material and improvisation. Another aspect
that becomes evident after listening is that the collective is more important than the individual
player, although all of them have and took space in their communication. Use of electric guitar
and bass often give the music a rock vibe, like in the opening of the title track. Or the great guitar
work by Hunter in the opening track ’Proximity Warning’. Where both blowers intertwine of
operating more or less unison, like in ‘Terraforming’ I had difficulties with their sound. But overall
these guys make good work from their qualities exploring new possibilities with engaging results.
(DM)
––– Address: https://luminouslabel.bandcamp.com/
KASPAR DEAD PAIN (CD by H.A.K. Lo-Fi Records)
This is an oddly named trio, I should think, consisting of Guido Henneböhl (geräte; which you
could translate as apparatus. It is a self-built device with strings), Kris Limbach (microphones,
mixer, effects) and Hopek Quirin (bass, motors, microcassettes). The trio of them met up in
Limbah’s Emitter19 studio and recorded this almost in one take. What I know from Limbach and
Quirin (I had not yet encountered work by Henneböhl) found them in the world of electro-acoustic
improvisation of a heavier variety. Noise is certainly a term that would apply to them, but it is not
noise for the sake of noise. I would think it all has to do with using lo-fi means (see also the name
of the label) to extract some radical sounds out of it; in which feedback/distortion takes an
important place, but also the collage-like playing. Things are being struck, hit and smashed and
overlaid with each other. I would think, but not sure, that this is sort of thing that is recorded live
and perhaps save for some edits is presented as they are. It is not put meticulously together, but
rather the enjoyment of the process in real-time. Like with the recent release by Anton Mobin and
Benedict Taylor, which had a similar approach to noise and free playing this too would fit that
description. This too could be called “a hyperactive version of AMM, Noise Maker’s Fifes,
Morphogenesis or Kapotte Muziek, moving around like the angry young man they are”. The
additional thing Kasper Dead Pain has to offer in the two pieces a voice, reciting the text. Maybe
the text printed on the cover? That was as hard to read as it was to understand, but then I imagine
this to be part of the overall behind all of this. Play loud! (FdW)
––– Address: https://hakrecords.blogspot.com/
SLEEPLAND – OUT OF HUE (CD by Spekk)
Kengo Yonemura, also known as Sleepland, was some time in Berlin, in autumn and winter
2017-2018 and found the city cold and dark. It made him think of deceased friends and he did a
visit to Auschwitz. Surely you can imagine the music from this period in Berlin is not be some
cheerful music. I heard a previous release by him, ‘For Silentseeing’ (Vital Weekly 1008) and that
one was also quite ambient and atmospheric. I understand he now traded in his guitars and got
him a modular synthesizer, which he uses here, along with field recordings; I assume these were
taped in Berlin. Sometimes I had the idea the guitars were still present. The music is dark here,
but does it reflect some of Yonemura’s inner feelings? Of course, I am inclined to say ‘yes’ on that,
but there is me thinking: so much of the music reviewed in these pages are dark and not all come
from a winter in Berlin or a trip to a former concentration camp. In other words, would we have
known some/all of Yonemura’s reasoning for doing this music, just by listening to the music? I
doubt that. I would have, perhaps wrongly, assumed this guy likes to compose dark music. Music
that is, despite being dark and atmospheric, is also quite a bit experimental. No new age leanings
for Yonemura here, which is great. The field recordings are melted, warped and garbled and
sound like a bit of percussion, such as in ‘Gnarled Limbs’, which sounds like being recorded in
a rain forest. As I said, it sometimes sounds like a guitar is present in this music, such as in the
opening and closing piece. I guess it is not important to know the exact ins and outs here of how
the music was produced, and I quite enjoyed it all. It is a fine combination of moody electronics,
shimmering field recordings, additional layers of hiss, with a bit of noise in ‘Dot Touch’ and, while
perhaps all a bit long, a most enjoyable combination of lots of things, all primarily a bit dark. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.spekk.net
JON ROSE & ALVIN CURRAN – CAFE GRAND ABYSS (CD by ReR Megacorp)
A very long time ago I had a local radio show on an illegal station, spinning the sort of music I still
write about. I did that show with some friends and one of them organised concerts in town and one
day brought in Jon Rose and Eugene Chadbourne. I think the idea was to interview them about
their work, but instead, they took over the show, using the two tape decks and two turntables to
play all their records simultaneously, with the microphones open so they could babble their
nonsense. It was lovely and shamefully not recorded. It is a story I always think of when I see the
name Jon Rose (well, or Chadbourne’s!), like on this release he did with Alvin Curran. Both are
old men now, Curran is 80 and Rose is close to 70. The first four pieces were recorded live in
Rome in 2016 and the final two in Sydney in 2018. Rose plays the violin, amplified tenor violin,
6-string drainpipe and singing saw (some of these only on one piece) and Curran plays the piano
and sampler, and on ‘Shofarshogood’ he plays the shofar (“ancient musical horn typically made
of a ram’s horn, used for Jewish religious purposes”). This is improvised music and perhaps
better suited for Dolf Mulder, but I started to play this and kept playing it until the very end, and
like it quite a lot. There are many crazy interactions here, hardly a surprise knowing these two
plays are gifted improvisers. They play intensely, quietly, minimal, maximum, joyful and sad,
atmospheric and vivid. The samples of Curran are weird and hard to place. In the Rome
recordings, this brings some fifty minutes of call and response, whether or not it is intended and
some fine music. The Sydney pieces, eleven minutes in total, are a different thing. It is some fake
bar music that they meltdown and re-shape radically. Not strange since both musicians worked in
bars and restaurants to earn money in their younger years and here and here show off how not to
do it properly but at the same time improve quite a bit on it. There is some excellent stuff happening
here. (FdW)
––– Address: http://rermegacorp.com
JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS – CURLING (CD by Eich Records)
JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS – REFLEX (CD by Eich Records)
Eich Records is a new label founded by Jean-Philippe Gross to release solo work and
collaborations. I only came across a work by him in improvisational modus with Xavier Charles,
Franz Hautzinger and Lionel Marchetti (see Vital Weekly 839), but now I learn he’s originally a
drummer and playing within the fields of electronics, experimental and improvised music since
2001. These two releases present quite different sides of his work. ‘Reflex’ is a work for the Serge
Modular System and consists of sixteen pieces ranging from a mere twenty-five seconds to six
minutes. The cover mentioned these were recorded in 2013, 2016 and 2018 and ‘edited and
mixed’ in 2018 and 2019. I found it hard to say if these pieces are various layers of modular
sounds, or perhaps extracted from bigger, improvised sessions. I think that is perhaps the problem
I have with solo modular systems. It all too often sounds like someone is let loose on a machine,
extracts some interesting sounds out of it, but it rarely goes beyond that. Gross is someone who
does similar experiments and many of them are quite loud and vicious, which is nice; certainly
when they are also brief and to the point. But beyond that, I wasn’t that impressed; again. It is all
a fine work, no doubt, but I like it to be part of a bigger picture, a composition if you will.
Now, ‘Curling’ is just that; a composition. Yes, curling the sport that is “shown very late at
night on public television channels and played on ice with granite stones, where the aim is to get
them as close as possible to a circular target, using a sweeping motion with a brush”, and I
honestly don’t know anyone who likes it or plays it. I probably don’t know many who are in sports
anyway. This piece is twenty-two minutes long and quite a strong piece. You hear people shouting
instructions, players perhaps; coaches maybe and occasionally we hear the granite stones over
ice. There is a very fierce drone backdrop heard, which seems to be getting more and more
weight as the piece evolves, and which works great with the voices. I knew what curling is about
and yet I don’t understand much of what is said (English by the way) while at the same time I
understand much of the tension that is going here. There is shouting, talking, communication,
sighing, heavy breathing and the typical sounds that come with curling. The ending of the piece
is also a great one; I won’t spoil it. I have no idea if this is the typical length of a game or fixed part
of it, but I wouldn’t have minded if this was all a bit longer. This was a very example of radiophonic
drama. I am curious to hear whatever Gross has up his sleeve! (FdW)
––– Address: http://eich57.bandcamp.com
HESSEL VELDMAN/ENNO VELTHUYS – BOEZEM BALLET/IN IJLE LUCHT (7″ by Stroom TV)
Just because I made a small booklet in 1984, listing all known Dutch independent cassettes,
people think I am a sort of an expert on the scene and often get asked this question: “whatever
happened to…” Since about ten years one name is on repeat: whatever happened to Enno
Velthuys? Since his cassettes were shared online about a decade ago many people wanted to
be in contact with him, because the quality of his music stood out. Sadly Velthuys died in 2009.
He was quite a recluse with not a great mental health. His work was released by Dutch labels
such as Kubus and Exart; the latter being run by Hessel Veldman. He was in contact with Enno
Velthuys since the early ’80s, when they both had their music played by Willem de Ridder,
erstwhile Fluxus artist and a great inventor when it came to radio programs. Both De Ridder and
Velthuys seem to have the masters to Velthuys’ cassette works and for years there has been the
talk of CD or vinyl re-issues, yet nothing ever materialized so far. This 7″ is the first-ever vinyl
work of Velthuys and, as I understand it, the point of departure for a serious reissue campaign of
his cassettes on some kind of sound carrier, starting next year. ‘In IJle Lucht’ (In Thin Air, almost a
title of one of his cassettes, ‘Landscapes In Thin Air’) is a previously unreleased piece by Velthuys
and it comes as a surprise. I know his cassettes quite well, which are very ambient and all
instrumental. For this 7” I expected this to be something along those lines (and I was quite
surprised that he had something that would be suited for this format), but this here is a song; a
proper song. With a slow rhythm, sweet and all, and a voice. Is this Velthuys singing? It almost
sounds like a female voice. There is a sweet melody with a finely woven drone going on (is that
a guitar? A synthesizer? I have no idea). What a lovely song! Can’t wait for those re-issues!
On the other side, we find a likewise lovely song by Hessel Veldman, the man from Exart
Tapes, but who also had solo projects and bands like Gorgonzola Legs and Y Create. His musical
interests are quite diverse, running from improvised music to electronic noise and more pop-based
tunes. The song here was released on ‘Far From The He(a)rd’, which I surely heard back then, but I
don’t remember this great tune. Veldman’s music is a touch more experimental, with a few strange
synthesizer sounds, but here too a drum machine is used, a bass line and Veldman singing
(maybe with the help of a vocoder). I would think that his work is also way due to some re-issuing
and re-mastering, but somehow that seems less likely to happen. Stroom TV’s pairing of these two
great songs that are slightly similar and then again maybe not, did a great A&R job there. It gives
both men the attention they deserve and is a fine little teaser of something great to come. (FdW)
––– Address: https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/
CONTRASTATE – AN EXERCISE IN DEFASCINATION (7″ by Black Rose Recordings)
Ah, the 7″ format! Sometimes misused by drone musicians, fading in and out a song, but hardly
ever a complete rounded song. Contrastate is surely a band that could pull off a great song (as in
‘a song’) for which this format is well suited. They have been around since close to thirty years now
and in the early years, I was a big fan. Their combination of moody electronics, drone experiments,
industrial electronics and song format worked great for me, but I found them moving a bit too much
in a what I would loosely call ‘gothic’ area when they started to work with vocals. So I am sure I
missed out on some development there. It might also be that they aren’t as active anymore. These
two songs are alternative mixes from pieces that are going to be on the next Contrastate album.
The Italian Giallo films of the 1970s inspired the album. (“Giallo is a 20th-century Italian genre of
literature and film. Especially outside Italy, Giallo refers specifically to a particular Italian thriller-
horror genre that has a mystery or detective elements and often contains slasher, crime fiction,
psychological thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror
elements. In Italy, the term generally denotes thrillers, typically of the crime fiction, mystery, and
horror subgenres, regardless of the country of origin.”) I don’t think I ever saw one; I know, my bad.
It makes me not the likeliest candidate to review this, but I would think the title track on side A
builds quite a nice, orchestral tension, which would easily a horror or thriller movie. There are
some dramatic climaxes along some suspenseful sustaining strings. On ‘Spasmo’, there are
some narrative vocals (lots of reverb!) along with a more radio play like a dialogue of sounds,
synthesizers, and bows on the guitars, making it all sound very retro, but I mean that in a very
positive way. It reminded me of the first time I heard Contrastate and I was reminded straight
away why I like it so much back and still would play with great fondness. Yes, indeed that
ambient industrial slightly gothic sound. (FdW)
––– Address: <blackroserecordings@yahoo.co.uk>
QUEST – WINTER’S SUN (CDR by Fuzzy Panda)
Quest is QST when you drop the rhythm. See: you get more letters, sans the beat. Make sense?
Doesn’t? Oh well. Drone it does. In a washing, ebbing and flowing and quite soothing of ways.
With a hint of krautrock, too. Maybe it’s me, but my thoughts do drift off a bit too nebulous synth
sweeps from stellar constellations like Tangerine Dream. Floating in a tin can, up there,
somewhere.
On ‘Winter’s Sun’ Frans – Quest/QST/Modelbau – De Waard, Vital Weekly’s maestro too,
presents a solid slice of transporting ambient with an intimate delicacy of touch which betrays the
bold streaks of SF-imbued massive interstellar supermassive black hole space opera. There’s an
innately humane, perhaps even fragile touch to the gleaming sounds that appear shiny and bright
like polished chrome fuselages at warp speed. Just wait for the neo-classical piano and strings (a
bit too much sugar-coated for my taste) to fill out the breathless spectrum.
Where earlier works under the Quest moniker could have tricked you into believing
electronic sounds were in fact of a natural origin and vice versa ‘Winter’s Sun’ wholeheartedly
commits itself to the dawn of the age of the synthesizer and electronic manipulation. An age that
is, too, pregnant with hope and promise: a realm of interplanetary possibilities in the big black
void, inviting those with enough daring to boldly go where no (wo)man has gone before.
Strangely, picking up threads from those already bygone times where SF ruled imaginations
from teenage boys and girls to serious established composers and visual artists, Winter’s Sun
doesn’t so much hark back to those days and star crossed nights with a dusty sense of nostalgia,
but touches upon exactly the yearning adventure-spirit embodied in the stories of breaking free
from earth’s gravitational pull and safe orbit.
Though by no means connected to the previously mentioned sentiment, ‘Winter’s Sun’ also
seems to project a vision of ease within despair. A form of vanitas and memento mori. Not with
sadness per se. More a state of as-is. Res Extensa, perhaps, even. Oddly enough this appears to
be of a solid constitution, however fluid and fleeting this ambient flows. (SSK)
––– Address: http://fuzzypandarecordingcompany.com
DC (CDR by Setola Di Maiale)
Behind the acronym DC, we find Andrea Dico (drumkit for kids, walkie-talkie, toys, vibrators,
blades, objects, samples) and Francesco Carbone (lap steel guitar, electric guitar, tin can,
transistor carillon, pedals, loop station). The duo was born in the spring of 2018 “on the way from
Cape Town to Milan”. Their interest lies in the dialogue between ‘poor objects’ and conventional
electric and acoustic instruments. The music on their self-titled release was recorded in December
last year and I found it quite interesting, partly fascinating. This label I know mostly for their releases
in the realm of improvised music and, certainly, this too is improvised. I would think more so in the
drumming of Dico, who rattles the cages quite a bit, using bell-like sounds and quick interactions.
Carbone’s playing might also be improvising but his playing is something that I found more along
the lines of drone, rock and ambient. He extracts quite a bit of sustaining sounds from his guitars,
which adds this fine rock-like element to the music. In such piece as ‘Rainingindesign’, Dico’s
drums are very much on top of things and here the verge into something that is way more
improvised. But among the six pieces that one is an exception. In ‘Tralfamadore’ all of the
instrument except the drums seem to play a role. It makes all of this quite a heavy release, DC
holds no suspects but seems to be leaping out the full force most of the time, even in their quietest
moments (‘Intergalactic Mechanical Workshop’). ‘Il Sogno di Giulio’ was the oddest song of the lot,
with quite some melodic guitar parts. This is quite a beauty, this release. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.setoladimaiale.net
HARSH NOISE LONDON RECYCLED TAPE SERIES #20: CANNON (recycled cassette by Harsh
Noise London)
HARSH NOISE LONDON RECYCLED TAPE SERIES #18: KIKIRIKI “PERCEIVERS” (recycled
cassette by Harsh Noise London)
The immediate problem with these two cassettes is identification, as the recycled cassettes only
have their original data, one “Orpheus in the Underworld” and the other “All-time greatest hits –
Roy Orbison”. They arrived not in cases so the recognition was difficult, made more so by the only
contact being “Find us on Facebook”. I actually signed up a few weeks ago but by the end of the
day of ever more prompts about people I might know or want to know or people who I don’t want to
know to want to know me, I deleted my account. I first came across ‘recycled’ tapes with the RRR
series by Ron Lessard, however, he wrote details of the release in felt pen on both label and
cassette body, and Ron it seems has now somewhat departed the ‘noise scene’. Cassette #20
has an A-side by Teknocannibaal, two tracks, ‘Sell yourself to Satan and be good’ (12:37) and
‘You were born to be a cocksucker’ (11:01), a B side by Harsh Noise Movement, one track ‘Violent
Traffic”(19:00). #18 side A, ‘Shallow depths’ (07:07), ‘Small-fry Tyrant (6:56), and ‘Reflex
Action’ (7:35), side B, ‘Nothing Concealed’ (6:36) and ‘Eroded Hills’ (14:14). I’ve tried the various
Bandcamp sites these ‘Artists’ are credited with little luck, a large range from noise, pulse, to
technoish stuff, lots of reverb. So now I’m playing the B side of the Roy Orbison to see if it’s a single
19-minute track and so HNM’s Violent Traffic. It might be? Fairly harsh rumbles and static, though
the word ‘fairly’ is working overtime, it is only the static that prevents it from being a drone. It’s a
slow rumble… changes in texture but @ 10 minutes is no longer what I would call harsh. A fairly
continuous rumble with occasionally higher pitches. A few even higher at the 18-minute mark…
The odds are it’s Violent Traffic as at around 19 minutes there is silence and so not two tracks of
over 20 minutes, thus identifying the Roy Orbison cassette as Cannon. Harsh Noise Movement is
Ade Rowe, “British experimental / noise artist. Owner of HNM Records. Harsh Noise Movement
had been producing numerous bad quality cassettes featuring experimental loops and noises as
early as 1984 for his enjoyment…” I must have before mentioned the Jacques Attali quote… so here
will not… “The name Harsh Noise Movement came as a sarcastic joke from 2011.” – from the
Discogs entry. To be sure I’m now going to give the “Orpheus in the Underworld” B side a listen.
This should be ‘Nothing Concealed’ (6:36) by KIKIRIKI, “one woman live noise band, playing
experimental, freestyle noise of all kinds.” – see what I mean about the identification of sounds,
the track has different electronica on the stereo fields, pulses, gurgles, drones, all against a static,
slowly mutating… so at around 7 minutes it stops and a new track begins, quiet blippy pulses and
loops of electronica. Which eventually continues, slow deep drones emerge…now the stereo field
splits… swathes of white noise, looping blips and filter sweeps… we have identified who is who.
The A side’s 3 tracks are of similar construction. Teknocannibaal’s first track utilizes tons of reverb
and is it seems a re-issue or a piece of the same name from 2012, as is the second track. The
Discogs gives the genre as “Electronic, Jazz, Rock, Latin” and the style as “Noise, Tango,
Industrial, Power Electronics, Vallenato, Experimental”… this and the label warns, the recording
has playback problems with dropouts of the recycled tape, and is aptly itself a recycle. The
problem is that there is no problem, it may be serious it may not, it may matter it may not. The
very act of recycling can bring with it irony which mitigates or occludes the nihilism. Anyway,
these tracks are Harsh and Noisy. Hooray! But that was 7 years ago, maybe when there could
be harsh noise, and a different time when we didn’t have Trump, Brexit and the Amazon on fire.
Now do the likes of Harsh Noise London, purveyors of filth, destruction and gore rejoice at these
current events? The FaceBook site amplifies my feelings that Noise ‘Music’ and Harsh Noise are
no longer terms used for what was a fairly abstract sound idea, but it re-capitulates ideas around
from the days of Whitehouse about extreme violence, sexual depravity and horror. But that they
thought was anti-establishment. And the only thing that is wrong with this is that there is now
nothing wrong with it. It’s the establishment’s lingua franca. The question might be is all this
interest in gore and horror genuine or just an interest in the safe versions of it in the media, and
does asking such questions matter? FaceBook I am told now provides all the responses one
requires… I speak as an ex butchers lad whose first job of the day was sorting out the offal, sheep’s
lungs, heads and eyes, unpleasant work because it was done in a walk-in refrigerator. (jliat)
––– Address: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1753676681522146/
IAN STENHOUSE/POOL PERVERT (cassette by Non-Interrupt)
MUSIC FOR A FEW PEOPLE VOL. 2 (cassette compilation by Non-Interrupt)
Probably I noticed this before in these pages, but most cassette releases are not very long. Thirty
to fifty minutes is the average length. More thirty than fifty I would think. It is perhaps so people can
have more releases. Here we have a C90 cassette, a split one with more or less forty-minute per
side of music. I had not heard of Ian Stenhouse before. The only person by that name on Discogs
has a few graphic design credits. Pool Pervert is Egbert van der Vliet, whom we know, so far by the
name of Klinikum. He’s also the man behind the label. As Pool Pervert (sometimes called Pool
Perverts), he continues his work started as Klinikum. That means extensively plundering the World
Wide Web for sound sources, be it from free sound libraries, movies or music and using free
software altering these beyond recognition. This software allows you to slow down music, add
crude sound effects such as delay and reverb, play around with the frequencies so that all
sources are rendered beyond recognition. The four lengthy cuts here display a love for ambient
industrial music via long spun out sounds, deep atmospherics, film dialogue (in ‘Scent Of The
Moon’) and field recordings. It reminded me of zoviet*france at times, which in my book is a good
thing. Ian Stenhouse may also plunder online sources for his music, but he arrives at a noisier
end of things. He uses shorter, looped sounds and a slightly more distorted backdrop, which not
always works well for me. His music is stuck in a loop from time to time, without many variations.
That is a pity but some of the pieces worked quite well, such as ‘Carl Orff Reimagined’ (judging by
the percussive sounds, Orff’s instruments for kids and not another take on ‘Carmina Burana’). It is
altogether a fine introduction.
‘Music For A Few People Vol. 2’ is the label’s second compilation, and has two bands of
previous compilation return, Lärmschutz and Modelbau, adding David Lee Myers, Dirk Serries,
M. Nomized (all three with a lengthy history dating back to the halcyon days of cassette culture)
and Ian Stenhouse. The label boss didn’t contribute any work, other than the lovely wilfully naive
cover. The music is quite a fine trip into the land of experimental music. David Lee Myers delivered
a fine piece of feedback music, just as elegant as he did when he worked as Arcane Device,
Lärmschutz doing their improvisation going from quiet and introspective guitar playing in the
beginning to distorted mass tangle of sound. Modelbau’s field recordings, sound generators and
electronics are the usual drone meets darkness, whereas Dirk Serries, formerly known as Vidna
Obmana and Fears Falls Burning, combines his current interest in free improvisation is now
combined with some very dark layer of electronics. Or maybe it is recorded from a distance? Hard
to say, but it is surely different than his other recent work. Ian Stenhouse uses short loops and long
drones, and combines these with feedback; not as gentle as Myers but not bad at all. M. Nomized
was always a blind spot for me; back in the day, I never heard many cassettes by No Unauthorized,
the name he used for many years. I am pleasantly surprised here by the minimalist techno beat he
gives us and swirling electronics. Not necessarily dance music, or aiming for the dance floor, but it
certainly is quite a different thing here. One could hope a few more people would hear it! (FdW)
––– Address: https://non-interrupt.bandcamp.com/
ANTOINE PANACHÉ / MODELBAU – COSMIC TWINS (cassette by Barreuh)
Don’t be fooled by the strange and colourful drawing by Ton Scheerder you can see at the Barreuh
website or on Discogs (which is in fact, not the main part of the package of this tape), this is one of
the most luxurious and glistening releases by Modelbau to date. Sic! Gold foil in the cassette, gold
print on the white sleeve, neatly folded jacket of sturdy cardboard with a gloss finish and all of that
for a release run of only thirty hand-numbered (and already sold out) copies. Oh, and none of the
customary Modelbau orange, even. Did I mention this is a special release? A point in case.
Panaché recorded the A-side at Willem Twee Studios in Den Bosch, The Netherlands in
March of this year as part of Et#Her by New Emergences at FAQ Festival. We hear a maelstrom of
slow-moving drone and noisescapes merging into ambient-industrial territory with a definite touch
of decadent darkness (not to say: gothic gloom) courtesy of words by Crowley and Poe. This eerie
Raven-blackness pervades the scene here not as a blanket smothering all lifelines, however, but
much more like a state of consciousness and sensibility more akin to the works of Danish
masterminds such as SØS Gunver Ryberg or Puce Mary. Avant-garde with a hint of smugness or
poshness and noise from the l’art pour l’art-kind all bundled into a sound art-ish collage of rather
beguiling gender-bending dandy-ism: this is stuff I wouldn’t be surprised to see released by
Fragment Factory for example.
Modelbau starts off the proceedings on the B-side with an odd serving of Chinese whispers,
i.e.: a not so very faint shard of far-eastern melody scrambled through the static of kilometres and
hours so it seems, before it reached the Frans de Waard-shores to be washed up and streamlined
into a blistering woosh of chiming ambient waves. There’s a futuristic quality to this work that seems
to hint towards the orange skies and constant rain from Blade Runner. Following a hard switch,
however, the tape side continues with throbbing analogue synth blobs and a deep, compelling
cushion of a piercing drone. Video may have killed the radio star, but that bygone age in which SF
reigned supreme, radio plays were all the rage and krautrock ruled the charts, that era of radio
tubes and glowing glass frequency dials, the time David Stubbs recalls in his stellar book Mars by
1980, seems to have found its very own revenge of telegraphed analogue sensitivities with this
track – surely one of Modelbau’s very best. Did I mention this is a special release? There you
have it. A must-have, even. (SSK)
––– Address: https://barreuhrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-twins