mportant notice: Vital Weekly relies on receiving actual promotional material through the letterbox and in the past few weeks this seems to be getting more and more difficult due to various shutting borders. For our publication, this means a dilemma. Do we continue on a weekly basis, albeit much smaller or maybe bi- or even tri-weekly in the size you may be used from us. Currently, we have not made up our mind about this, and we will see this as it plays out. You will see Vital Weekly arriving, but it might be with a bit of a delay.
To all labels who mailed us something in the past 3 weeks and a review has not yet been published we ask to send us links to places where we can download the music and take the review from there. If you are planning to send us something, please do so. It may turn up one day. However, feel free to direct us to a place where the music can be downloaded. For the moment we do not plan to review download-only releases, nor releases promoted through downloads. For our publication to survive we rely on the sales we do and donations coming in. There might be a time in the future we offer free work, but not just yet.
JARL – SYMPTOMS VARIATION/SENSORY DEPRIVATION (3CD by Reverse Alignment) *
LIMITED LIABILITY SOUNDS – GLASSWORKS (CDR by Tides Of Cluster) *
KIM MYHR & AUSTRALIAN ART ORCHESTRA: VESPER (CD by Hubro Music) *
ERLEND APNESETH – FRAGMENTAROUM (CD by Hubro Music) *
CHRISTIAN WALLUMRØD ENSEMBLE – MANY (CD by Hubro Music) *
SESTETTO INTERNAZIONALE – LIVE IN MUNICH 2019 (CD by Sluchaj)
CASSERLEY/ILLVIBE/MORGAN/SJÖSTRÖM – LIVE AT CLUB DER POLNISCHEN VERSAGER, BERLIN 2016 (CD by Unisno Records)
JESSIE COX & SAM YULSMAN – TRANSSONUS: WEAVING MUSIC (CD by Gold Bolus Recordings)
OHAN ARRIAS / ANGHARAD DAVIES / LISA ULLÉN – CRYSTALLINE (CD by Ausculto Fonogram)
DITTERICH VON EULER-DONNERSPERG/FELIX KUBIN – 1#IONN (LP by 90% Wasser)
SIAMOIS SYNTHESIS – FEU AIMANT (LP by Actuellecd)
EDWARD KA-SPEL & THE SILVERMAN – THE 30 YEAR ITCH (CDR by Terminal Kaleidoscope) *
EDWARD KA-SPEL & THE SILVERMAN – THE 40 YEAR SCRATCH (CDR by Terminal Kaleidoscope) *
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – KLEINE KRIEG (2CD by Klanggalerie) *
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – BLESSED MEMENTOS (CDR by Terminal Kaleidoscope) *
EDWARD KA-SPEL – AN ABANDONED LABORATORY VOLUME 3 (CD by Klanggalerie) *
VOMIR / MILAT (split CDR by Innercity Rising) *
CARSTEN VOLLMER – GRUPPE RALF FORSTER (CDR by Econore) *
BRIAN RURYK – NO GIGS NO TOUR DATES (cassette, private)
JARL – SYMPTOMS VARIATION/SENSORY DEPRIVATION (3CD by Reverse Alignment)
LIMITED LIABILITY SOUNDS – GLASSWORKS (CDR by Tides Of Cluster)
Behind Jarl is Erik Jarl, who, over the years, released quite an impressive body of work (Vital Weekly 1106, 1102 and 1029) for instance. This new work spans three CDs, and while not filled to the maximum, it is still quite a massive listening session. But I am not going anywhere anyway and I do what I always do; sit back and listen. With what I gather is a bit less in the mailbox, there is more time to consume works like this. Jarl is a man with a strong love for the use of modular synthesizers and he doesn’t doodle away. There is lots of stuff he doesn’t do; Jarl is not the sort of man to play ominous long drone works; also he’s not into playing some plink-plonk filter/frequency exercise. His music is spacious, psychedelic but also strong and alien. It must be a sign of times, but the word that came to mind is ‘dystopian’. It is the sound of the flickering of machines around us, controlling and checking on our well being and how easy we exchange ‘privacy’ for ‘safety’. The modules of Jarl bleep and beep, but are also covered with a fine sense of drones. Jarl employs minimalism as his trademark, slowly shifting his sounds around until they are landed in a different area than where they started. It is demanding music, this dark soundtrack for a dark world and not easy to digest, but I played all three in a row and then the next day straight again. Each disc has a title and is separated in more parts, except the third one which is ‘Conclusion’; the first is ‘Repetition’ and the second is ‘Darkness’. I am never sure how much should be read into the titles of releases, but I can see the ‘variation’ mentioned in the title in all of these eight pieces; like bacteria or a virus (who said something about reading too much in this?) crawling below the microscope. It’s massive and it’s moving. There is a most pleasant touch to the dark nightmarish soundtrack I must say. The soundtrack for the times we live in.
Tides Of Cluster is a new label; a sub-division, in fact, from Reverse Alignment. I must admit I am not sure where it differs from the mother ship. “Sound art/Field recordings/Experimental avantgardism”, might as easily apply to the releases on Reverse Alignment. There are two releases available (soon?), of ‘Glassworks’ is the first. It is by Adam Mankowski’s project Limited Liability Sounds. It has nothing to do with the ‘best of’ record by Philip Glass, but with “one of the tools of our daily lives: the glass”. I am not sure if the glass is a tool or rather a utensil, but that’s splitting hairs maybe. I only heard very few of his fifteen or so releases (see also Vital Weekly 905, 1070 and 1167) and I am not sure how his music is made. Mankowski draws his inspiration from musique concrete and composers such as Luciano Berio. I like to think he used recordings he made using several different kinds of glass and rather than breaking them, he uses the surfaces to have them ‘sing’, like a glass harmonium. I might be entirely wrong of course and perhaps he did break a whole of glass and then treats the sound beyond belief (and above all, recognition). In the five pieces that we find on this disc, we hear some very refined sound treatments that bring out deep ambient sounds, best exemplified in ‘Open Glass Work #3’, the longest piece on this release. There are very few acoustic sounds to be detected and the treatments bring out a fine, ambient piece of music. The shortest piece, ‘Open Glass Work #2’, is an excursion into high-end feedback like sounds and ‘Open Glass Work #4’, we have an open room approach to the sound, far away, the rattling of acoustic objects in the distance, gives the piece a spacious character, while the opening ‘Open Glass Work #1’ is a more regular dark drone feature. In each track, Mankowski takes a different approach and that works out perfectly. (FdW)
––– Address: https://reversealignment.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://tidesofcluster.bandcamp.com/
KIM MYHR & AUSTRALIAN ART ORCHESTRA: VESPER (CD by Hubro Music)
ERLEND APNESETH – FRAGMENTAROUM (CD by Hubro Music)
CHRISTIAN WALLUMRØD ENSEMBLE – MANY (CD by Hubro Music)
Here we have three jazz releases; at least that’s how Hubro announces them. The first is by Kim Myhr, who wrote a piece for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival in June 2018. He performs t along with the Australian Art Orchestra, a seven-piece group among which we find Joe Talia on Revox B77 and electronics, and Tony Buck on drums and percussion. Myhr wanted to compose a night-time piece, of slower nature perhaps. I am sure that kind of thing works for everybody quite different of course; right before I go to sleep I like to read a book, from paper (while not being averse to digital books; me no snob, of course) and hear no music, see no lights flickering. I am not sure if the music of Myhr would be something for me as ‘sleep well soon’ music. Right now, it is somewhere in the middle of the day, with sun brutally shining (however cold it is) and I’m reading in between and listening to Myhr’s music. That music meanders about and is a most curious mixture of jazzy leanings on the wind instruments, strings and some of the more out there drumming by Buck. But, throughout the three pieces on this CD, there is strange mellow flow in the music; a flow that isn’t perhaps too mellow. It seems as if underneath it all there is much-hidden tension, a form of unrest. I like this a lot, this ‘go with the flow’ versus ‘some danger lurking’. Maybe, after all, there is a nightmare waiting for you? You never know. As much as I know about this kind of music, and I am the first to admit ‘not a lot’, this sounded quite ‘Australian’ to me. Quite some time I heard quite a bit Australian new jazz music and this sounded oddly quite like that. Great stuff.
As I enjoyed the previous release by the Erlend Apneseth Trio, recorded with Frode Halthi, I was excited to see something new, even when the word ‘trio’ is gone now and so is the contribution by Halthi. Instead, he works with other musicians, Stein Urheim (guitar, fretless-bouzouki, electronics), Anja Lauvdal (piano, synth, electronics), Hans Hulbækmo (drums, percussion, jew harp, flute), Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson (double bass), Ida Løvli Hidle (accordion), while the composer plays the Hardanger fiddle. There are also samples used, courtesy of a folk museum. Just like the previous release (Vital Weekly 1183) I have no idea what I am hearing and I find it hard to find the proper context for it. What happens after more than thirty years of writing about weird electronic, I should think. The pieces were commissioned, this time by the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in 2019, leaving Apneseth free what to do. Whereas his previous release was folk meets experiment, here everything meets everything; well, almost, that is. It is folky, mainly because of the Hardanger fiddle no doubt, but also jazzy, exotic, ambient, cinematic, rock-like, classical and even jazz-rock (in Det Mørknar’); you name it. It is at times standing in a mediaeval courtyard, like in the title piece, or in a film noir setting in ‘Gruverne’, along with some aliens. What is this about? I have no idea? No historical context, no musicologist context, nothing. But just as ‘Salika, Molika’ I very much enjoyed this. It is rich music, lots of variation, sometimes with the space of a few minutes the piece lasts and each musician seems to be on top of their game. This is more great stuff.
The final new release by Hubro Music comes from Christian Wallumrød, who composed the music on this CD and plays piano, harmonium, and electronics. Let’s do a spoiler straight away; here too I have very little idea what is going on, but from all three new Hubro Music releases I would think this is one I understood best. Wallumrød is surrounded by a quartet of musicians, Eivind Lønning (trumpet, electronics), Espen Reinertsen (saxophone, recorder, electronics), Tove Törngren Brun (cello, electronics) and Per Oddvar Johansen (drums, vibraphone, electronics) and the music they play is improvised in a slow strict minimal fashion. It’s part jazzy, part rock; part modern classical but with all the electronics involved also quite a bit owing to the world of musique concrete. Maybe not a very traditional form of musique concrete with the tape-recorder playing a central role but each of the players adding electronics to their instruments and that results in some fascinating results. This album too bounces all over the place, yet not so much in the various musical styles, but rather in the way the pieces are played out; chaotic, quiet, fast, slow, and such like, all of which do a balancing act between the electronic and the acoustic. This is best exemplified in ‘El Johnton’, with its starts and stops, the way it starts and ends, like a jazzy big band but with all the weird stuff in the longer middle part; you could easily think they are two entirely different ensembles playing. It is strange music for sure, but it sounds as lovely as it sounds crazy and that’s entirely up to our alley. Expectations shattered. (FdW)
––– Address: https://hubromusic.com/
SESTETTO INTERNAZIONALE – LIVE IN MUNICH 2019 (CD by Sluchaj)
CASSERLEY/ILLVIBE/MORGAN/SJÖSTRÖM – LIVE AT CLUB DER POLNISCHEN VERSAGER, BERLIN 2016 (CD by Unisno Records)
Recently I presented two of Harri Sjöström’s latest collaborations. Here are two more that have the Finnish saxophonist Sjöström. Two very different ones. With Sestetto Internazionale we are speaking of a very international line up with unique instrumentation: Veli Kujala (quarter-tone accordion), Achim Kaufmann (piano), Gianni Mimmo (soprano sax), Harri Sjöström (soprano-, sopranino sax), Ignaz Schick (turntables, sampler) and Alison Blunt (violin). No idea how they met and who or what initiated their collaboration. But is a very fruitful one! In 2017 they released their first album ‘Aural Vertigo’ (Amirani) with live recordings that took in place in Finland, 2015. This follow up is again a live recording (Munich at Offene Ohren on January 18th in 2019) and released on the Polish label Fundacja Sluchaj. Must have a memorable evening for the Munich audience, as these improvisations are very impressive. Enclosed are three group improvisations and three duo meetings of respectively Blunt and Mimmo, Kaufmann and Schick, Kujla and Sjöström. The cd opens with a very lengthy group improvisation of about 37 minutes. Sometimes improvised sounds similar to modern composed music. Which is very much the case for this one. From slow and weeping movements they gradually built up the drama and complexity of their interactions. They put a lot of poetry and style into their sophisticated performing. The improvisations evolve very organically and everything sounds as it is meant to be. There are many beautiful moments like when dialogue between violin and accordion is in the forefront, or the to the point interruptions and accentuations by Schick from sampler that add an extra dimension. Also how both reed players join and participate is a joy. The duet by Mimmo and Blunt is pure joy. What inspired players they are! The one between Kaufmann and Schick is of another sensibility. A very interesting meeting between piano and electronics, that learned to appreciate more the interaction between acoustical and electronic instruments. Very engaging. This also counts for the sparkling meeting between the two Finnish players, using a wide range of dynamics. ‘Quasars 2” has very concentrated textures and soundscape like entities. ‘Pikku Pala’ opens very playful and continues exuberantly. A very inspired meeting of six excellent performers that invite you to a musical world that is tremendously rich and a very lively happening.
Also, The Quartet of Lawrence Casserly, DJ illvibe, Jeffrey Morgan and Harri Sjöström, presents an extraordinary combination of instruments. Clarinet (Morgan) and saxophones (Sjöström) are combined with electronics by Casserly (signal processing instrument) and DJ illvibe (turntables). A quartet with an even more radical combination of instruments than the Sestetto, more explicit aiming at a meeting of acoustic and electronic instruments and sounds. DJ Illvibe is Vincent von Schlippenbach, son of the free jazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. With hip hop as the main influence in his youth, he tries to introduce elements of it in improvised music. Casserly is a composer from the UK who composed his first works in the 60s. He is a pioneer of electronic music and member of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Jeffrey Morgan is an American composer and musician active mainly in the fields of free jazz and improvised music. Since 1991 he is based in Germany and worked with many European colleagues (Alan Silva, Keith Rowe, Peter Kowald, Paul Lytton, etc.). So we are speaking here of a combination of musicians of very different experience and backgrounds. But they succeed in an interesting first meeting, condensed in two lengthy experimental improvisations, with the puzzling titles ‘Onklaguta’ and ‘Gutaonkla’. They create some very imaginative soundscapes and audio worlds, using, for example, many samples from the acoustical world. Their performance shows that the combination of live electronics and acoustical instruments works well in the hands of creative musicians. (DM)
––– Address: https://sluchaj.bandcamp.com/; https://unisono-records.de/
JESSIE COX & SAM YULSMAN – TRANSSONUS: WEAVING MUSIC (CD by Gold Bolus Recordings)
From the first second I said to myself, ‘wait a minute, what do we have here? This is something different’. And original too, when my ears got more accustomed to this experimental music. That was my first impression while listening to this recording by Sam Yulsman and Jessie Cox. Yulsman is a composer, pianist and multimedia artist. His works have been performed by many ensembles (Wet Ink Ensemble for example) and soloists on many different festivals. Jessie Cox is a composer and drummer. He composed over 100 compositions and played all over the globe with a diversity of musicians. As a duo, they work since the summer of 2018 in the New York scene. With ‘Transsonus: Weaving Music’ they deliver their debut recording, guested by Bethanie Younge (voice) and Dani Dobkin (synthesizers). Recorded at Columbia University’s Computer Music Center. Not often the title of a piece is a sentence, as is the case with the opening track of this album: ‘Noises and Sounds are Sonus’, it says and seems to imply something of their musical vision. In this opening work, we hear very odd keyboard playing using melodic elements that are mixed however in the background. In the forefront, there is the intense improvised drumming by Cox. A strange balance. In ‘Tardigrade Journey’ imaginative textures are evoked by dark synths, percussive manoeuvres and what sounds like some flute. It reminded me a bit of some work by Charles Hayward (This Heat). It has some otherworldly quality. ‘Anatomy of an Instrument’ stays close to silence. It starts with a voice speaking, later on screaming impressively and in interaction with sparse percussive and electronic sounds. Again a very strange structure. Brendan Younge is a young composer and vocal performer. Her unpolished vocal contributions are full of energy and drama. ‘LoFi-Airways’ has over the top weird electronics, travelling the spaceways in a Sun Ra-related universe. ‘Transsonus Music’, the last piece of this album is very playful group improvisation. In all, Cox and Yulsman take influences of improvisation, electronics and contemporary composed music for their very own challenging music. Surely this is a very puzzling and fascinating release, full of unexpected movements and turns. Abstract in one way but also very down-to-earth and physical music, originating from a strong musical intuition. (DM)
––– Address: http://goldbolus.com/
JOHAN ARRIAS / ANGHARAD DAVIES / LISA ULLÉN – CRYSTALLINE (CD by Ausculto Fonogram)
Last year I reviewed the remarkable and personal solo album by Johan Arrias. This time he presents an album again on his own Ausculto Fonogram label of a trio of Angharad Davies (violin and preparations), Lisa Ullén (piano and preparations) and Arrias himself on clarinet, alto saxophone and preparations. Both Stockholm-based musicians Ullén and Arrias worked as a duo for a while, before they decided to invite Angharad Davies in 2014. In 2017-2018 they picked up this collaboration again, resulting in this recording dating from September 7th, 2018 at Atlantis in Stockholm. Ullén studied classical piano at the Royal Musical Academy in Stockholm. In the 90s she turned to the practice of improvised music as well as contemporary composed music. Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist, based in London, working with free-improvisation, compositions and performance. She worked with very different artists like Tony Conrad, Eliane Radigue and J.G.Thirlwell. All three performers contribute with a composition of their own. Supplemented by two group improvisations. Despite all differences what strikes me most is the homogeneity between these works, which is most of all due to their common focus. All works are built from fragile and breakable interactions between the performers that arise from a minimalistic and reduced approach, resulting in a dark and serious atmosphere. Sometimes the lines played are rubbing against one other, resulting in a penetrating dissonance and even irritating sections. Overall there is a focus on the concrete sound of the instruments, especially for the violin and wind instruments. A convincing debut by this new trio (DM)
––– Address: https://auscultofonogram.bandcamp.com/album/crystalline
DITTERICH VON EULER-DONNERSPERG/FELIX KUBIN – 1#IONN (LP by 90% Wasser)
Ah, those Germans! While my German reading abilities are not bad, I couldn’t properly translate what it says on the cover, but here’s what I gathered from a bit Google. There is a festival called NNOI, which is an open-air camp, and “for 12,756 tone music, obscure teaching & organ of the world-ventriloquist-lodge, according to the theses of Ignaz Senger ‘the dismemberment of the dismemberment’. But look for the festival online and check some of the photos. It looks cosy in a sort of modern hippie-way. There is some more text on the cover here, which I couldn’t find online, nor can easily translate. However I do know there are more records planned and it is all some kind of documentation of the festival, but maybe not live recordings? On this record, we find the music of two men from Hamburg, Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg and Felix Kubin; for both not their real name. Whatever I heard of Euler-Donnersperg is not a lot, but enough to know I have no clue what he does and again, Bandcamp isn’t helping either; “unreleased tracks from his wild beehive”. Suppose these are recordings from bees (I am pretty naive in that respect and belief a lot) then they are quite heavily processed in various ways and I would think with computer technology. But I know Euler-Donnersperg is closely connected to Asmus Tietchens, so I would not be surprised there is some influence/tips/tricks exchanged there. The pieces are short, like vignettes or sketches of sounds buzzing around (pun intended). The approach here is that of musique concrete with the current means of laptop technology. Think Marc Behrens or Roel Meelkop and you get the drift. Gone are the days of heavily processed voice-based music and now these finely treated field recordings in a fine tradition, whichever you choose.
On the other side, we find Felix Kubin doing a soundtrack for Rene Clair’s 1924 silent movie ‘Entr’acte’, which is a classic. Find it on YouTube, kill the music it comes with and play the Kubin soundtrack. You’ll notice that the timing doesn’t exactly match, for reasons I am not sure of but it works quite well. Kubin plays electronic music that has a charming naive approach; it sounds like 60’s modern electronic record from a home studio. I know Kubin’s love for the Korg MS-20 and I can easily imagine him working with some acoustic sounds being fed into the machine and via some expert knob twiddling arriving at all sorts of sounds which become the construction of the music. At times I had no idea where to place the music into the film but the death procession speeding up is nicely laid out in a bit of speeding of the synth tones. Kubin shares in all his work the wacky, Dadaistic humour that Satie, Duchamp and Picabia also had back then. Maybe a DVD release with the complete soundtrack would be great one day? (FdW)
––– Address: https://90-prozent-wasser.bandcamp.com/
SIAMOIS SYNTHESIS – FEU AIMANT (LP by Actuellecd)
Siamois Synthesis is a young quartet of Sylvain Gagné (bass), Maya Kuroki (vocals), Simon Trottier (guitar, lap steel) and Maxime Corbeil-Perron (keyboards, electronics). They have their base in Montréal and make their first statement with ‘Feu Aimant’. Kuroki is a musician, performer, director and visual artist who is active in Montreal. She worked in theatre and as a professional actor in her homeland Japan. In Montréal music became more important. She started her group of experimental rock Dynamo Coleoptera. Also, Maxime Corbeil-Perron is a multi-disciplinary artist, working as a composer, audiovisual performer, etc. Simon Trottier is a guitarist and composer from Montréal and founding member of Last Ex and Ferriswheel. Also, he had a duo with Perron (Le Pélican Noir). Sylvain Gagné is an active force of Montréals independent scene and worked earlier with Trottier in the White Noise Ensemble. So they all met in the Montréal scene. Four of seven compositions are by Perron and Gagné. Three others by Perron, Gagné and Kuroki. All lyrics are by Kuroki. This music somehow has its roots in rock. But it is very experimental with the keyboards and electronics by Perron dominating the sound. Other contributors are mixed more into the background. This especially counts for the ghostly vocals by Kuroki. But it is a well-chosen balance that works very well for the sound they want to create. All songs are drenched in a thick and multi-layered sculpture of sound. The opening track is dominated by dark and ominous textures. In ‘4 AM’ they create an imaginative and ambient-like soundscape with fine guitar playing Trottier. Also ‘Random Other’ continues in a similar ethereal way. In contrast ‘Urizen’ is a heavy beat-driven track. The outspoken colouring by keyboards and electronics of Corbeil-Perron is what impressed me most on this interesting debut. (DM)
––– Address: https://actuellecd.bandcamp.com/album/feu-aimant
EDWARD KA-SPEL & THE SILVERMAN – THE 30 YEAR ITCH (CDR by Terminal Kaleidoscope)
EDWARD KA-SPEL & THE SILVERMAN – THE 40 YEAR SCRATCH (CDR by Terminal Kaleidoscope)
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – KLEINE KRIEG (2CD by Klanggalerie)
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – BLESSED MEMENTOS (CDR by Terminal Kaleidoscope)
EDWARD KA-SPEL – AN ABANDONED LABORATORY VOLUME 3 (CD by Klanggalerie)
For music reviewers being locked up at home it is a normal thing, so apart from not much mail these days, not a lot changed. It means I can do something like being holed up for a day with a whole bunch of releases by The Legendary Pink Dots, Edward Ka-Spel and him together with The Silverman; together they are The Legendary Pink Dots, but that includes also the guitar of Erik Drost, so a Ka-spel/The Silverman is another part of their particular universe. It is also the first time that the two release something together, however odd that may seem after working together for forty years, albeit always with other people. There are two pieces on ‘The 30 Year Itch’; the first is ‘Katrina/A Splash O’Blue/Space Is Cheap’ and it is a recording from April 1st, 2009 at Extrapool, where the two performed as part of a program called ‘Audiotoop’, a live version of a radio drama. As one of the visitors that evening, I remember seeing The Silverman playing some odd synthesizer, and objects and synthesizers being played by both. Edward Ka-spel recited one strange story about Katrina, New Orleans, a strip joint and no doubt something about the tragedy that hit the city in 2005. There is a fine nautical quality to the music, I think, but Ka-spel takes matter beyond the city, the country or even planet Earth. It is all very intimate and without the visual aspect becomes, even more, a radio play of some kind. Also on this disc is ‘Slogans on a Cold Steel Canvas’, which the two recorded as part of improvisations that were later used on their ‘Seconds Late for The Brighton Line’ release. As is the case with improvisations from the Dots, this one is all instrumental and without much of the intimacy of the previous piece. It’s heavy on the synthesizers playing fine, fat drones, combined with what could be field recordings and objects, both sampled and in real-time, cut together like a fine collage (I assume from longer session recordings) of musique concrete inspired electronics.
‘Katrina’ is the link between ‘The 30 Year Itch’ and ‘The 40 Year Scratch’, as the two men attempted to do a studio version of it, but it is combined material they recorded on the Island of Hydra and in the hands of Ka-spel and The Silverman this becomes a new hybrid of things. Whereas ‘The 30 Year Itch’ is a live recording (well, the ‘Katarina’ part at least), this is very much a studio recording, even when it is recorded in an isolated place. The first fifteen minutes seem to be from the ‘Katrina’ session, again with this hurricane/nautical/shipwreck approach, but then everything becomes quiet again and for a long it is very spacious with very few music, lingering in the background, before it is all picked up again with a rhythm and a synthesizer melody, before slipping into a fine cosmic ending. Again, this is not as song-based as the more usual Pink Dots music and it’s a very fine way of celebrating forty years of musical activity.
Very few bands existing for such a long time can resist the temptation to re-visit older releases and with new technology coming up, a re-master is always possible. About four years ago, the Dots did a CDR version of ‘Kleine Krieg’ and now there is a 2CD version on Klanggalerie, the Austrian label who are experts in digging up old gold. This is a very early work by The Legendary Pink Dots from 1981 and shows the band in rapid development. The influence from the older, hippy days’ bands such as Magma and Can, and not forgetting Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett, combined with a charming naivety when it comes to early forms of tape-manipulation. In my previous review, in Vital Weekly 1037, I rave about the presence of early classic songs such as ”Defeated’, ‘Soma Bath’, ‘Legacy’, ‘Break Day’ and the jumpy rhythm box and the voice of the young Ka-spel, the funny experiments. If you missed the 2016 version or if you don’t like CDRs, then this is your chance to replace it with a proper CD version. Ninety minutes of great music, but maybe this isolation time makes me sentimental? It was all such a throw-back to what I perceived as happy days.
And we make a small leap and arrive at ‘Blessed Mementos’, a compilation of some of the band’s earlier, more experimental outings. When they started doing music fulltime, many recordings were made, expanding on simplest musical themes and explore these for the possibilities of complete songs. This release could be seen as a companion release ‘Crushed Mementos’ (see Vital Weekly 424), which compiled similar experimental pieces, sometimes relayed to hard to get compilation releases. There is surely a small overlap with ‘Kleine Krieg’, doubling such pieces as ‘Die With Your Eyes On’, but there is much else to enjoy and explore here. The songs and jams are fully formed now and throughout there is much more idea of direction. You can easily hear the resulting songs emerging, such as ‘Flesh Parade’ or ‘No Bell No Prize’ or the speedy version of ‘The End Of The World As We Know It’, which also shows the Dots in a much more rock band version, which of course they were also in the early days. You might expect such releases to be for completists only but that is not the case, I think. This is something that shows the development in the early days of this band when song crafting and experimentalism started to go hand in hand, and that approach is maintained to the current day. You can easily see why I like them.
It is not just The Legendary Pink Dots who have a scattered collection of pieces in their long career, on obscure bits of vinyl, cassette compilations and bonus tracks, also Edward Ka-spel himself has by now a discography as long as your arm (two probably). Here we have a release that includes a bonus track from a CDR version of ‘Trapped In Amber’ (Vital Weekly 708), along with an alternative version of a piece Ka-spel did with Philip Petit and Asva. It seems as if the others are new or unreleased, but I am not sure. In his solo work, Ka-spel opts for a musical approach that is less based on the fullness of sound as the Dots do, but rather sparse and leaves much room for his voice, reciting texts (rather than singing) and he uses the various form of effects to alternate within the same voice; almost like a conversation with himself. The effect of that is great and even if you don’t follow what these texts are about (and you know me and texts, of course) you certainly get the magical drift of it. But there is also another approach by Ka-spel and that is the pure musical approach, such as in ‘Amber’, intense yet spacious and the heavy slab of noise approach, the full psychedelic treatment of ‘Dismantling The Tower’; no intimacy there, just a full, rainbow-coloured blast of electronic sounds and radio transmissions. No throwaway pieces are to spotted here, just five great pieces, a fine combination of stories and electronic music. (FdW)
––– Address: https://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: http://www.klanggalerie.com
VOMIR / MILAT (split CDR by Innercity Rising)
Harsh noise wall – which now has a wiki page you will read Vomir “no ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse”. From memory of an interview, Romain Perrot has added to these sentiments no prohibition on others taking his work differently. Add to that the auditory fact that much HNW sounds the same, and this is not a surprise if all three ingredients are present, there can be little or no point to writing about it. To describe it, or to relate it to some emotional, or musicological description. Any interpretation of the same wall of sound being possible? I will argue differently here, as elsewhere. Firstly the dangers of ‘it means what it means to you’ was the illegitimate child of the likes of Jacques Derrida’s which despite his plea for respect which if missing will “authorize itself to say almost anything’ has authorized any and everything. To the extent that now there are objects which are even unknowable to themselves, a thought which immediately provokes, ‘and how is this knowable?’ Let me respect M. Perrot, there are no ideas, not in the work. There is no change or development, in the work. But outside, there is change, simply in the quantity if not the quality of the works. That is trivial, what is not is the idea outside of the work, of the work, of saying it is or is not part of ‘music’. Certainly, it has none of the internal plays of difference, but so too in its idea does 4′ 33”, the piece does or might have played of difference, but these are not present in the score, and within the Untitled of Vomir there may well be discernible differences, but they are for at least myself and M. Perrot irrelevant. What are we left with is sound. However, sound as music – (and not of!). The final step in this logic, given Untitled, 4′ 33” or Götterdämmerung … is that they are works of sound as art, which makes them ‘music’. This in effect is to remove the actual sounds themselves as the qualifier for being music, sound merely differentiates types of music. Which inevitably leads to the conclusion that music, musicologically needn’t be heard. Thus HNW / Vomir’s ‘Untitled’ mark the conceptual limit of music, its essence. If noise as noise music famously eschewed skill and so altered ‘music’, HNW must be the final point at which music’s essence is all that remains. Milat’s track “You are alone” is a live-sounding track of noise electronics and maybe recorded processed voice, speech, police sirens? Pulsing rhythms and spoken text, “Alone… No one calls… not even a letter I’m lost… unwanted…No point.., You are alone I have got you nothing, you are alone, no hope, no point no future Alone etc.” against the general noise… which I guess pushes it into Power Electronics territory? And nihilistic expression. Traditionally some music has always had an expressive, even self-expressive content, unlike HNW. How such expressive acts make sense is an engagement with skill, if they are to work, however, I’m thinking of Stockhausen’s or Adorno’s comments relating to 911 and Auschwitz respectively. In light of the coronavirus’ global pandemic, a global emptiness and fear which reduces all subjectivity as expressive art to zero, if art is to differentiate itself at all. All performative gestures are empty in the context of the “performances” or not being made now by billions. Unfortunately for anyone expressing in art nihilism and isolation, we have global expressions of just that, and the strange reversal of the point of being alone as now life-affirming. (jliat)
––– Address: https://innercityuprising.bandcamp.com/album/split-8
CARSTEN VOLLMER – GRUPPE RALF FORSTER (CDR by Econore)
There is little information here, “Econore is a record label focussing on experimental music and all kinds of noise music.” Discogs gives Carsten Vollmer – sound engineer, artist, based in Essen, NRW, an empty website, if this is he? Eleven tracks, titles 1-11, shortest just over a minute, longest nearly 8. It’s difficult to say why these tracks are their respective lengths or that they are separate, as many consists of similar soundscapes, the main element is frightening high feedback as well as distorted white noise associated with clipping by massively overdriving the audio in the mix, together with deeper bass feedback at times. Whether these are the result of acoustic feedback is not given, whatever the cause there is obvious modulation and manipulation of the feedback, pseudo pulses and interplay between the high pitch feedback and the bass. Very much a performative set of pieces, which might be described as extreme free jazz! My feeling, and it must be just that, that this is some kind of instrument-based improvisation, maybe a no-input mixer, or some kind of wind instrument, sax? And even drums, but the extent of feedback and the recording being so overdriven it’s impossible to say. And as there is no information I can find it remains uncertain. Tracks are all fairly violently animated, some more than others into extremes. There are in the main just two pitched feedback screams and the distorted white noise of clipping, no feeling, again just that, of synthesizer modules, or various electronics as sound sources. My feeling is also these could be live performances, improvised animations, but again this is guesswork, though the clipping must be post-production I would think. An interesting set of tracks given the ‘performativity’ and repeated riff like themes, with the bass almost taking on the role of percussion with the higher pitch a sax, though I can no way be certain that they are ‘real’ instruments as such, the feeling is instrumentation at its extreme. Not typically noise. As a shear exercise in improvised experimental noise, interesting and enjoyable! (jliat)
––– Address: https://econore.bandcamp.com/album/gruppe-ralf-forster
BRIAN RURYK – NO GIGS NO TOUR DATES (cassette, private)
According to Bandcamp, this was released on February 29, 2020. That seemed an entirely different time. What did Ruryk already know what we didn’t? No gigs, no tour dates. How prophetic. From what I gather Ruryk has no gigs and decided to do a tape that is a “concise version of his ‘oeuvre'”. “Each piece features the bickering interplay Ruryk is ‘famous’ for, but this time it’s underpinned with standard chord changes and even covert structure. This tape could all of the above and more, or nothing, or perhaps just Ruryk pretending everything is okay when it isn’t. You decide”. The state of the world if not okay, so, again, what did he know? Nothing. There is a list of releases mentioned in the press text, dating back to 1983 and many cassettes, CDRs and vinyl and I may have heard some, but surely not all of these. Not by a long stretch, so I can’t say if this is something that is such a thing as what he does, music-wise, but I quite enjoyed his maltreatment of the guitar along with his stompboxes, Dictaphones with found sound, and whatever else managed to make it to tape. Chaos, I would believe, is a word he loves and in forty or so minutes, he offers fourteen pieces of wild guitar playing. Loud, chaotic, the usual attack on strings/no chords approach, bits of feedback sparking around like a chainsaw on the guitar (and for all we know that could be the case), but there are also fine moments of introspective and controlled chaos. Is that what he is known for? Maybe and maybe this is indeed a good point of entry. With everything being controlled and isolated, it is a good thing to have something wild and uncontrolled. (FdW)
––– Address: https://brianrruryk.bandcamp.com/