CHAS SMITH – DESCENT (CD by Cold Blue)
DANIEL LENTZ – THE LEOPARD ALTAR (CD by Cold Blue)
FRIEDL/VORFELD – PECH (CD by Room 40) *
ERIKM – SIXPERIODES (CD by Sirr-ecords) *
MATTHEW FLORIANZ – GRIJSGEBIED (CD by H/S Recordings)
MATTHEW FLORIANZ – NIEMANDSLAND (CD by H/S Recordings)
JIM SANDE – PARTICLE (CD by Labile Music) *
SAUL STOKES – VAST (CD by The Foundry) *
EGOCENTRIC – THE SKY WITHIN THE GROUND (CD by The Foundry)
JOHN HEGRE & MAJA RATKJE – BALLADS (CD by Dekorder) *
RONNIE SUNDIN – THE AMATEUR HERMETIC (CD by Komplott)
INCIDENTAL AMPLIFICATIONS (CD compilation by Room40)
RF – VIEWS OF DISTANT TOWNS (CD by Plop) *
SPIELEREI – PUBLIX (CD by Databloem) *
ANTIGEN SHIFT – THE WAY OF THE NORTH (CD by Ad Noiseam)
UW HYPOTHEEKADVIES – NATURE OR NURTURE (CDR by Uw Hypotheekadvies)
BJERGA/IVERSEN – DRAGGING WORDS OUT OF A STONE (CDR by Tib Prod)
IVERSEN – SINGLES (CDR by Tib Prod)
IVERSEN/SOUND_00 (7″ by Dirty Demos)
EMMANUEL MIEVILLE – DENKI COLORS (CDR by Tib Prod) *
DEADWOOD – TRIAL AND TERROR (3″CDR by Tib Prod)
PHROQ – ESTHETISM OF RANDOMS (CDR by Herbal/Why Not)
MIKE BULLOCK – GREAT MARSH (CDR by Herbal/Why Not)
LAU MUN LENG – ANTISEPTIC (CDR by Herbal)
JEFF GBUREK/RAVEN CHACON – JESUS WAS A WINO (CDR by Herbal) *
BILLY BAO – AUXILIO (CDR by Herbal)
GUIGNOL DANGEREUX – LIVE BY THE SEA (CDR by Herbal/Why Not)
DAN WARBURTON & TU M’ – MISSING IN AFRICA (CDR by Con-V)
MECHA/ORGA – HOLDER (CDR by Absurd/A Question Of Re-entry) *
@C – 42/44 (MP3 by Silence Is Not Empty) *
PAWEL GRABOWSKI – NOTES FROM THE HOUSE OF DEAD (MP3 by Silence Is Not Empty)
SHRINE – HARMONY, BLISS, RUST (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
ALEXANDER VATAGIN – VALEOT (MP3 by Mirakelmusik) *
THE WINTER QUARTERS – VID (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
MAURIZIO BIANCHI – MOKUSHI XVI, XVI (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
CHAS SMITH – DESCENT (CD by Cold Blue)
DANIEL LENTZ – THE LEOPARD ALTAR (CD by Cold Blue)
These two new releases on the Cold Blue label arrive on what might be the very first day of spring, at least here in The Netherlands. It’s the perfect day for it: cold and blue, with lots of sunny. Looking from the inside out, it seems perhaps a bit like San Francisco, where Cold Blue and many of their composers hail from. The first release is a new work by Chas Smith, a composer to invent his own instruments and plays his works on them. I discovered him years ago trough a sale on some of his early records, which I thought were beautiful examples of minimal music, played on guitars, using reverb and such like, working their way on the overtones. Later on I thought some of his works were a bit less interesting, but this new work ‘Descent’ is certainly quite nice again. Still far away from his old work, these three pieces use such instruments as a stainless steel sheet, Copper Box, steel guitar, jet planes and flutes. All knitted together by Chas Smith, merging all of these sounds together in a highly ambient work, which I must say sounds surprisingly darker than most of the releases on Cold Blue. Sunshine is not very present here, except in the lighter final piece ‘False Clarity’ (but who knows: that might be a prophetic title), but these a grim times anyway. Quite a powerful release.
The other new release is a re-issue of a LP that was released by Cold Blue in the 1984 (the first incarnation of the label) and is by Daniel Lentz, who still releases music on the label. The opening piece sounds very classical in 2006: it’s a vocal (with the addition of keyboards) piece along the lines of Micheal Nyman or Steve Reich, slowly drifting and shifting apart from each-other. The next piece is for no less than twenty-five wine-glasses, which is slowly drifting piece of resonating sounds, and it will later turn out the highlight of the album. The highly romantic title cut is, despite it’s conceptual side not well spend on me. So is the more lively ‘Wolf Is Dead’, which is better, but not great either. Both lack the surprise of the first piece. The sad final piece ‘Requiem’ is also perhaps a bit too much of a romantic cliche, sounding a bit like Enya, but it’s short and to the point (and doesn’t have the same structure as real requiem). So apart from the first two pieces, I must say I have rather a mixed feeling about it. A five out of ten rating, I’d say.
(FdW)
Address: http://www.coldbluemusic.com
FRIEDL/VORFELD – PECH (CD by Room 40)
The name Reinhold Friedl might not be well-known as such, but if you know that he is the founder of the Zeitkratzer Ensemble, performing works by Lou Reed, Francisco Lopez and Merzbow, to name but a few and also the many records he released himself, than a few bells may ring. He plays piano on this new release, which he recorded together with Micheal Vorfeld, a percussion player as-well as a builder of string instruments, whose work is more along the lines of electro-acoustic music, than anything improvisation. A piano has strings too on the inside, so together they decided to explore the world inside the piano and the vibrations of the percussion. In the opening piece, ‘Pech’, they sound very much like Organum circa ‘In Extremis’. Beautiful drones, almost piercingly loud, and working with a rich and changing variety of overtones. This is what they also do in the final track, in an even more ‘just not’ rightly piercing way. In between these tracks we find the more rhythmical ‘Keks’ piece, which has the sound of sparkles being set of (or so it seems) and playing the cymbals. Overtones are played here too, but I found in a somewhat less interesting way. The first and third track would have made up a great record, me thinks, and whereas the second piece is not bad at all, it seems a bit out of place. But throughout a strong release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.room40.org
ERIKM – SIXPERIODES (CD by Sirr-ecords)
The music of Erikm (or eRikm as he spells it) is something I came across, but always in the form of collaborations with other people, and Erikm played with almost everybody in the field of improvised music. I must admit I never heard any of his solo work, which he apparently does make: this CD contains six pieces which he made between 2001 and 2004 and they were made for dance, theater and cinema. Erikm uses samplers, mini-discs and vinyl to play his improvised music, and I must say I quite enjoyed it. It’s hard to tell what is on those records and tapes, but throughout everything jumps and skips around like crazy, creating things to be very vibrant and lively. Most of the times rhythmical in a sort of non-linear way (even when it’s a dance record!), combined with elements of noise and musique concrete, this also jumps stylistically all over the place, moving from strict improvised parts, such as the opening ‘Les Paesines’ to the more straight forward, almost industrialized rhythms ‘Paris Qui Dort’. But that keeps the adrenaline of this disc going round and round. I enjoyed many of his collaborative works already, but as a first introduction to his solo work, I am even more impressed. Very good material. The only point of critique is that a too large portion of the liner notes are in french, which is sad, since I would have loved to read more. (FdW)
Address: http://www.sirr-ecords.com
MATTHEW FLORIANZ – GRIJSGEBIED (CD by H/S Recordings)
MATTHEW FLORIANZ – NIEMANDSLAND (CD by H/S Recordings)
Although Matthew Florianz’ work was reviewed before, it was part of a group work, and a long time ago; and not by me. So these two albums are introductions to his work. I assume he is Dutch of Belgium, looking at his titles, even when his name doesn’t sound too Dutch. He plays ambient with the big A, and his music was used by various ‘airline in-flight entertainment programmes… also been successfully licensed or corporate clients, including US Healtcare firm Remodulin’ – yuck me thinks. Must be dreadful music, but ‘GrijsGebied’ (‘grey area’) a re-issue of a 2001 album is actually much better than aural wallpaper. A dark wall of synthesizer, feeding and looping through a bunch of sound effects, with an occasional tinkle on the piano. Nicely dark this album, thus defying the whole new age thing that we would find in elevators.
Florianz’ latest album is ‘Niemandsland’ (nowhere land), and maybe things changed? They did, but not for the worse. Apparently Florianz is now incorporating field recordings in his music, which are hard to recognize as such (although the cover indicates them as streets), but the music is throughout a fine example of dark ambient music, with here and there quite a chilling moment, like the processed sound of a rusty wheel. But it’s all embedded in this vast amount of truly dark music. Tracks flow into each-other and tell a story, the story of going to the nowhere land and back. Between each track there is the sound of traffic, transporting the listener to a new place. A nice album, again. For those who love their ambient a bit more daring and exciting, this is one to check out. (FdW)
Address: http://www.hsrecordings.co.uk
JIM SANDE – PARTICLE (CD by Labile Music)
The for me unknown Jim Sande hails from America and writes music, besides being interested in Buddhism and psychology. On ‘Particle’ he offers us five suites, ‘Particle’, ‘Condition’, ‘Deva Putra Mara’ (a Buddhist term for suffering caused through desire), ‘Suite Bomba’ and ‘Equus’ (the latin word for calm). The music is primarily composed for and on the piano, but there are also ‘real’ sounds as vibes, double bass, strings, clarinet, oboe along with ‘canned’ sounds such as voices, guitars and percussion. I found it really hard to make up my mind on this. Sometimes the music is nice, to the point, sketch-like, witty and remembering me of some of Andrew Poppy’s work. Sometimes it is downright kitschy and cliche-like, such as the quite horrible ‘Crooked Man’ or ‘Life In Reverse’. They has vocals, ‘ooh-aah’, and sound like every cliche from the book. Some of the tracks are a bit too sketch-like and could have lasted a bit longer, but throughout it was an OK work. Maybe a bit too smooth, too slick produced, but it’s all OK. Not great, not brilliant, not showing an entirely new path in music, but quite entertaining. (FdW)
Address: http://www.jimsande.org
SAUL STOKES – VAST (CD by The Foundry)
EGOCENTRIC – THE SKY WITHIN THE GROUND (CD by The Foundry)
It’s been a while since we last heard music from Saul Stokes, apart from his live album on Databloem (see Vital Weekly 479). Previously his albums were on Hypnos, but date back years and years ago. But here he kept on playing live, on his self-built instruments and now there is also a new CD. The Foundry name-checks ‘Air, Isan, Arovane, Black Dog, Ulrich Schnauss, Beaumont Hannant and Tonto’s Expanding Head Band’ – quite an impressive list, but don’t mistake this for the next click ‘n cut ambient record. Saul Stokes plays ambient music with a firm dose of rhythm, but these rhythms aren’t exactly the kind that you find on many of the people name checked here. It’s more rhythms that were used more than a decade ago when ambient house was its peak: pseudo ethnic/tribal rhythms, set against this massive wall of ambient synthesizers. Occasionally there is a trace of techno rhythm or bass synth, but they are all kept to a minimum. The music is quite alright for what it is, and maybe there are even new fans to be found, who missed out on the original ambient dance explosion of the early nineties, but to me it sounds a bit outdated and not really fresh. Production is more than excellent, but it seems to be lacking the new path.
Something similar can be said of Egocentric, aka one Brian Naas, of whom I never heard before. On his, I assume not very recent CDEP we find five tracks of guitar playing and some trip hop like rhythm parts. The first three pieces are along these lines, even when ‘Biting Clock Return’ is a bit more along techno lines. ‘Exit Door’ is an all guitar based thing that falls a bit out of place here, and the final ‘Labor Pained’ dwells heavily on drums that sounds like falling objects and processed guitars. By themselves these tracks are not bad, and would certainly do well on a compilation of whatever kind, but now, when put together I must admit they didn’t do much for me. It’s ok pass-time music for sure, but not so engaging, except maybe for the final piece, which had lots of tension. (FdW)
Address: http://wwwfoundrysite.com
JOHN HEGRE & MAJA RATKJE – BALLADS (CD by Dekorder)
Yeah, right, a album of ballads by these two renowned noise artists? Hegre, member of Jazzkammer and The Golden Serenades among others and Ratkje of Fe-Mail as-well as a bunch of improvised music projects, doing an album of ballads? Yes, it’s true and it’s great. They carefully play acoustic objects and hardly use any electronics. Sometimes the elements are looped, forming a block of repetitive sound, sometimes there is a far away sound of sound processing. But that is far away, almost hidden in the mix. Soft electro-acoustic music, crafted into songs, rather than lengthy improvisations. It’s already beautiful material, but the best is saved to the end: ‘Hammock Moods’ has a looped guitar, loose sounds but every once in a while there is a soft melody in the background, which even might be called romantic. An almost epic piece, which alone would be the reason to get this album. This is noise with the big N, and this is the future of noise music. Excellent! (FdW)
Address: http://www.dekorder.com
RONNIE SUNDIN – THE AMATEUR HERMETIC (CD by Komplott)
It’s been about a year without a new Ronnie Sundin CD, whereas in the past he produced many new works. I have no idea why this is, although the information gives some indication: ‘a nomadic lifestyle of moving to a new flat every second year, about deeding children and getting lost in occult references and religious doubts, about growing a beard’. Perhaps Sundin has different interests and occupations these days? I also read something about using the recording of ones own voice, so perhaps this album contains just the sound of Sundin’s voice, or perhaps voices of others. Like so many of his works, ‘The Amateur Hermetic’ is just one track, just over forty minutes, and like the previous ‘Hagring’ (see Vital Weekly 461), this isn’t exactly a work of silence and careful crackling, none of the glitch material. But Sundin goes a step further. ‘Hagring’ had silence in between the various parts of the work, but here he plays an extended piece of drone related material, that is however always forcefully present, but it never gets to the point of complete ‘noise’. Sundin builds a clever work, all based on highly processed voice material, which can hardly be recognized as such. Sometimes operating as a dark cloud, sometimes the various elements sparkle of into the wild, but a moment of silence, in the micro-sound sense of the word, is not to be found in here. Although this work might be easier to be accessed as ‘Hagring’, it’s also quite difficult to say what he wants. The listener is shut outside and has to make up his own story to the material. It’s hermetically closed. That is however not a problem at all. It leaves much room for suggestion by the listener to find in here whatever he or she thinks is right. Quite strange, but captivating. Sundin once again pulled a new trick out of his hat. (FdW)
Address: http://www.komplott.com
INCIDENTAL AMPLIFICATIONS (CD compilation by Room40)
Day and night we are surrounded by sound, and most of the time we don’t want, or at least: we wouldn’t choose this to be. Worst of all sounds is music that we hear in the supermarket: muzak. Muzak tries to hide the unwanted sounds, or what the owner of the supermarket thinks to be unwanted sounds. Room40 owners Lawrence English and Lloyd Barrett invited a whole bunch of sound artists to provide them with a piece of music that was used in a spatial sound installation in a variety of urban shopping areas in Brisbane, Australia in July and August 2005. Like with film soundtracks, it’s hard to see the music separate from the installation, and in case you didn’t see that, just like me, it’s hard to relate to these music pieces. I guess we could also treat the music pieces for what they are: music pieces, somewhat loosely dealing with field recordings and muzak. In that respect it’s quite a ‘normal’ compilation with sometimes highly unnoticeable pieces of music and sometimes great pieces, such as Daniel Blinkhorn’s piece of sampled electro-acoustica and Terre Thaemlitz’ playing around with notions of popmusic, fighting the muzak with it’s own means. And sometimes pieces are just too dam soft to be noticed, such as Brandon Labelle’s piece. Also included are Chris Watson, Domenico Scianjo, Le Grand Jeu, Camilla Hannan, Joe Mushgrove, Aaron Ximm, DZO, M. Rösner, Mathieu Ruhlmann, Blake Stickland and Thembi Soddell. Quite a nice bunch of field recording artists, who deliver a varying degree of sound processing. (FdW)
Address: http://www.room40.org
RF – VIEWS OF DISTANT TOWNS (CD by Plop)
Japanese Plop label never ceases to surprise me with new artists who do absolutely great music. RF stands for Ryan Francesconi from California, who is responsible here for voice, guitars, strings, horns and field recordings, as-well as all sorts of tricks with software. Apparently he also runs the Odd Shaped Case label and a software company. Probably some people never sleep. For this CD he found inspiration in the book ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ by Haruki Murakami, about a man who feels lonely, longing for ‘something’. A sense of desolation and loneliness, which is well captured in the music by RF, who includes field recordings made in Japan. Throughout the music is soft and not very outspoken, but it stands firmly in the tradition of popmusic. There are vocals, usually more mumbling and whispering than singing, horns coming out, and rhythm-machines providing some sort of rhythm. Guitars are sometimes highly processed, sometimes crisp clear. Singer-songwriter material of the new millennium, the acoustic guitar being replaced by the laptop. Great popmusic standing in a long tradition of song writing, but surely with an entirely twist of its own. However, a few remarks are to be made: the CD itself is a bit too long, with twelve tracks that all easily take up five minutes. Sometimes, especially with the instrumental tracks, the material is too sparse to keep up the attention for the duration of the piece. Maybe some of these could have been shorter and maybe a bit more selective, and at forty or so minutes, this would have been a brilliant album, whereas now it’s just very good. That’s not bad either. (FdW)
Address: http://www.inpartmaint.com/plop
SPIELEREI – PUBLIX (CD by Databloem)
Just two weeks ago we reviewed a whole bunch of new CDR releases on Databloem, which is now followed by a new CD by Spielerei. I must admit I am bit clueless as to why Databloem releases Grassow on CDR and Spielerei on CD, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that Spielerei is Dennis Knopper, he who controls the label. Whatever, me thinks. I remember meeting Knopper ages ago, being a serious young man interested in things synthesizer. Over the years he developed his interests from old masters such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, via Pete Namlook and (old) Biosphere to the more recent ambient techno of Pub, Waki and Vir Unis. All of these influences, spanning thirty years of melodic and rhythmic synthesizer music, are used by him in his work ‘Publix’. And it’s surely a fine work indeed, leaning more towards Schulze to Biosphere than to the latter ambient techno. Synthesizers with the arpeggio buttons working over time is what we get here. Highly atmospheric music in the best cosmic tradition, which means nothing new under the sun, but nevertheless this is well executed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.databloem.com
ANTIGEN SHIFT – THE WAY OF THE NORTH (CD by Ad Noiseam)
Ottawa-based electronic composer Nick Theriault a.k.a. Antigen Shift impressed me both with his debut debut-album “Implicit structures” (2001) and the mini-CD titled “A distant exit” released in 2004. Now almost four years after his debut-release comes this second full-length album. Build as a homage to the icy northern lands, “The way of the north” turns away from the Power-Noise driven Industrial and focus more on melodic expression rather than harshness. Not that the rhythmic distortion has disappeared on “The way of the north”. But the strength of “The way of the North” is unquestionably Antigen Shift’s ability to create eerie ambience with the help of continuous waves of atmospheric sounds-capes. The slowly drifting sheets of ambience create the perfect background to the mainly mid-tempo rhythm textures of distorted heavy pounding beats. On the track “L’horizon”, the rhythm tempo keeps changing from ritual beats into breakbeat textures always with slow waving soundscapes as the dark companion. Another track, “Toppling drunk into the river while trying to embrace the moon”, goes all the way into rhythmic chaos with excellent breakbeat-structures moving from subtle to full throttle while slower heavy rhythms moves along the sinister ambient-spheres. Especially that certain track reminds me of another excellent Ambient/PowerNoise-act Gridlock (R.I.P.). Also the track “Tundra” represents an astonishing moment on the album with some beautiful nocturnal piano-moments being swallowed by hordes of violent breakbeats. With it’s great variety of uniquely arranged soft and hard soundscapes “The way of the north” provide a range of aural moods. Especially listeners of aforementioned Gridlock as well as Welsh IDM-project Somatic Responses will certainly find a number of treasures on this fully satisfying album. Highly recommended! (NMP)
Address: http://www.adnoiseam.net
UW HYPOTHEEKADVIES – NATURE OR NURTURE (CDR by Uw Hypotheekadvies)
Behind this confusing name hides a trio from Nijmegen, Netherlands. With just bass, drums and guitar they produce some interesting noisy free rock. Its a surprisingly good demo with recordings made in september-october 2004, offering a very dynamic answer of an old philosophical question. The cdr opens with a very loud piece. Fast and furious. Followed by a track where they make effective use of some undefinable cut-up treatment, playing tapes backwards, and things like that. Beefheartesque moments prevail in track ‘(D.Turpin/B.Rogers)’. ‘De Kandidaten’ is an exercise in postrock noisy soundscaping. ‘Helmut Wagner’ opens with a long and slowly developing intro of soundscaping culminating gradually in a very hectic noisy hell with some real hot boiling moments. If you want a ballad go to track ‘Rennen Ruud’. It shows Uw Hypotheekadvies from their most friendly and pleasing side. When listening to it for the first time I was constantly waiting for the moment it would derange in some cacophony, but it didn’t. We catch them here in a serious romantic mood. The short piece ‘8 Doublures (part one)’ impresses because so much happens in 1:44 minute. The track is composed with the help of some nice tape treatments afterwards. And so they chose for a different angle in each piece. To conclude, Dries (drums), Rob (bass) and Martin (guitar) make instrumental noise rock of a considerable level. They make good use of their technical skills and make a coherent and thoroughly constructed rock with a total involvement of all three players. Whether their qualities are innate (nature) or acquired through intense learning (nurture) makes no difference to me. What counts is that this is an adventurous and varied cd! I really had fun with this one! (DM)
Address: http://www.uwhypotheekadvies.com/
BJERGA/IVERSEN – DRAGGING WORDS OUT OF A STONE (CDR by Tib Prod)
IVERSEN – SINGLES (CDR by Tib Prod)
IVERSEN/SOUND_00 (7″ by Dirty Demos)
EMMANUEL MIEVILLE – DENKI COLORS (CDR by Tib Prod)
DEADWOOD – TRIAL AND TERROR (3″CDR by Tib Prod)
Late last month and early this month the Norwegian duo of Bjerga and Iversen were on tour in the low countries, but sadly I missed them (even when I am probably one of the few people to hear their music around here) due to other commitments. Special for this tour they released a tour benefit CDR, which is a collection of various shorter bits and pieces they had lying around. Normally Bjerga/Iversen play much longer tracks, so it’s interesting to see what they do when things are much shorter, see if it works too. It does. Taking a quicker curve to built tracks in their usual psychedelic noise fashion works well. The guitars are played with ebows or violin bows, fed through half-broken sound effects, producing a sound that is alike fire, and sometimes some distortion, but throughout they maintain their trademark sound. Very nice, once again.
From the same Iversen, Jan-M, there is a
collection of tracks that he released as MP3s in the past, as-well as a few previously unreleased tracks. It’s almost eighty minutes long, but Iversen suggests to put this on your computer and put the tracks you like in a play-list and forget about the rest. Of course, naive as I am, I played this from beginning to end. Iversen is a man to produce much music, perhaps too much, and of a varying quality. Sometimes noise related, but only on a few spots. Iversen’s usual interest lies in more ambient territories, albeit of a darker and more experimental kind. Sometimes tracks are without much structure or idea and drag on too much, but sometimes he’s witty and to the point. The liner notes are surely fun to read.
On a different label, Iversen releases I believe his first piece of vinyl, a collaboration with Sound_00, aka Toni Dimitrov, aka Every Kid On Speed/Acid. They exchanged sound files back and forth and the first four results are on this 7″ (other pieces to come on a compilation by Dirty Demos and on their website). Sound_00 provided some loud, gritty, laptop based music in the past, but perhaps it’s the Iversen influence that keeps the noise reduced here. The four pieces are excellent displays of microsound of a rather darker than dark nature, with occasional rhythmic elements and likewise bits of repeating noise. Quite strong material.
And the onto the non-Iversen releases, as Tib Prod is a busy label, producing many items. They do mainly CDRs and MP3 releases, but in the past they released a real 3″ CD by Tore Honore Boe and Emmanuel Mieville (see Vital Weekly 468). The same Emmanuel Mieville now releases a new CDR release on Tib Prod, but for whatever reasons unclear to me his previous piece of the 3″CD is also included here. Lack of new pieces? Mieville studied with Phillippe Mion and Jacques Lejeune, and is in general the more serious composer. Like before (hard to avoid if tracks double), his material moves alongside the more serious electro-acoustic, acousmatiq composers, usually lurking about in the INA/GRM studios and releasing their works on Empreintes Digitalis. Before I wrote that I would needed to hear more to form a better judgement, but now that I heard some more I must say that it’s something rather too normal, too sterile for me. It’s by no means bad, but like with so many other examples of this music, it is also too distant, too cold.
Behind Deadwood is Adam Baker, not to be confused with Aidan Baker. This Baker is from the UK and he runs the Dirty Demos label. His 3″ CDR release has five tracks of computerized music. Long live the age of plug-ins. Baker puts in whatever sound, and then keeps on treating them until he has something that he likes. He puts all of these sounds together into something that is quite a nice form of collated music, but throughout misses out to have something of it’s own. Or perhaps, better, at least a bit of something that he calls his own. Now it sounds too much like so many other things in this already overcrowded musical arena. (FdW)
Address: http://www.tibprod.com
Address: http://www.dirtydemos.co.uk
PHROQ – ESTHETISM OF RANDOMS (CDR by Herbal/Why Not)
MIKE BULLOCK – GREAT MARSH (CDR by Herbal/Why Not)
LAU MUN LENG – ANTISEPTIC (CDR by Herbal)
JEFF GBUREK/RAVEN CHACON – JESUS WAS A WINO (CDR by Herbal)
BILLY BAO – AUXILIO (CDR by Herbal)
GUIGNOL DANGEREUX – LIVE BY THE SEA (CDR by Herbal/Why Not)
The Herbal Records, owned by Goh Lee Kwang, is slowly expanding their catalogue, beyond the work of Goh himself. There is a regular series of Herbal Records and a series of limited CDRs in an edition of just forty copies. That seems like a rather low key affair, but apparently attractive enough for musicians to join in. Some of these artists have already made their name in the world of CDR and MP3 releases. People like Phroq for instance. In many of his work the use of field recordings play an important role. On his release he has four sounds running at the same time and some random filter to process his sounds. The original field recordings disappeared almost entirely from the scene and is replaced by the static crackle and hiss of the computer filters, sometimes being under attack by the deep drone bass of a refrigerator coming alive. Quite nice.
Mike Bullock is already a renowned player of the upright bass in the areas of his home city of Boston, where he frequently plays with people such Vic Rawlings and Howard Stelzer. The cover for his release seems to be a hasty job: the cover says it’s a live recording, but there is no date. Also the label nor the website address isn’t mentioned anywhere. ‘Great Marsh’ is a musical trip of about thirty minutes of bass playing and electronic treatment, but not necessarily a treatment of his bass playing. It starts out with some strumming and bowing but as the piece progresses electronic sounds drop in and even seem to be taking over the proceedings. Quite an interesting recording of some extended bass playing.
Much more conceptual is the release by Lau Mun Leng. She is foremost a visual artist, but also plays music. She recorded ‘Antispectic’ in april last year and it’s strange release. She plays keyboard on this release. The first track is just a very short rhythm loop and third track sounds like an electronic pulse sounding like water – or vice versa. In between the second is very long piece for static sine wave, the kind of stuff that Sachiko M is well-known for. Played softly it’s not so bad, as the frequencies fly nicely through your space, but I can imagine that a louder volume this is most irritating.
I never heard of Jeff Gburek or Raven Chacon. The first one is from Berlin and plays guitar along with his computer. He played with Ephia in Djalma Primordial Science (theater) and improvised with Keith Rowe, Micheal Vorfeld, Tetuzi Akiyama, Kyle Bruckmann, Pascal Battus, and Tom Carter (Charalambides). About Raven I still don’t know anything. Their disc holds a solo piece by each and one duo piece. Gburek’s solo piece is quite distantly there, playing the softer card in music of faint hums and deep end sound. But as soon as they play together things get more and more heavy. The duo piece is one of droning short-wave sounds and contact microphone movements over some objects. Quite an alright piece of noise music. Chacon’s solo piece is of very high pitches and low end rumble, but it’s causes a bit of headache. This we heard done better by others.
A short live release by Billy Bao, the group around vocalist Billy Bao (also Xabier Erkizia on guitar and computer, Mattin on guitar and computer and Alberto Lopez on drums). Their short release is quite powerful. It opens with a few blasts on guitar and drums, before exploding into a heavy weight noise rock release. The computers are nicely hissing somewhere deep down in the vaults of this otherwise top heavy release. And not a second too long.
The odd one in this bunch is the release by Guignol Dangereux, whose release is also an odd ball in his back-catalogue. So far his releases showed an intelligent form of ambient industrial music in combination with technoid rhythms, this one, apparently recorded ‘live by the sea’ is a pretty straight forward techno trip of ongoing rhythms, doing the usual 4/4 stuff. Although for what it is its not bad, but it’s a bit too regular underground techno stuff, one you can hear at your underground rave every Saturday night, but it would have been nicer to see what Guignol Dangereux could do with his real (?) music in a live context. (FdW)
Address: http://www.geocities.com/herbalrecords
DAN WARBURTON & TU M’ – MISSING IN AFRICA (CDR by Con-V)
A while ago I made the mistake of calling Dan Warburton an American in Paris, but he’s actually from the UK. Besides doing an excellent website of reviews (Transatlantic), he is also a musician himself, mainly on the violin. Here he works together with Italy’s Tu M’, a most active duo who have various releases available on various labels, such as Fallt and ERS. The press statement is not very clear about this, but somehow I don’t think they played together in making this release. It has ‘all tracks sourced in recordings by Maikol Seminatore, May 17th 2003. Live processing recorded entirely from samples of violin’. So rather than having two Italians on their laptops and one guy with a violin, I assume Tu M’ fools around with recordings of Dan’s violin playing, mainly looping them around (does the text really suggests it’s just the programm fruity loops?). Cut them short, making them a little bit longer and than shorter again. I must admit I wasn’t overtly impressed by this. I would have hoped for some more live action or better inter-action between the musicians. The best piece was he final ‘Missing In The Dark Forest’, in which sadly the violin disappears but at least there is some interesting music to be discovered. (FdW)
Address: http://www.con-v.org
MECHA/ORGA – HOLDER (CDR by Absurd/A Question Of Re-entry)
Hopefully everyone goes to the dentist every once in a while, but let’s hope not the same happens as what happened to Yiorgis Sakellario: he fainted and was taken into in the hospital and one of the exams they did was ‘the holder’, in which they make a recording of the heart for some time. Registered on to a regular audio cassette in a very slow speed, Mecha/Orga, for it is him, took the recording home, together with his healthy self and played the tape. The first piece on this CDR has the original tape: a raw, almost industrial piece of music, a bit like the good ol’ Maurizio Bianchi sound, which is nice to hear (and probably nice to use in your music), even when some of the heartbeat sounds don’t sound like a heartbeat at ll. It’s however the second piece that is of most interest. Here Mecha/Orga samples the sound and makes a new piece of music out of it. Here Mecha/Orga successfully transforms the recordings into a piece of music that reflects the heartbeat rhythm much better, along with sounds that are heavily filtered. More like a journey through the body than the original recording. A pity that this is so much shorter than the original source recording. Length-wise it would have ben nicer if it was vice versa. (FdW)
Address: http://www.anet.gr/absurd
@C – 42/44 (MP3 by Silence Is Not Empty)
PAWEL GRABOWSKI – NOTES FROM THE HOUSE OF DEAD (MP3 by Silence Is Not Empty)
Silence Is Not Empty is the name of Pawel Grabowski’s own MP3 label, where he not just releases his own music, but also that of others, such as the Portuguese laptop improvisers @C, who had some releases on Cronica Electronica and Grain Of Sound. Here they offer two pieces, that ‘as with most of our hard drive compositions, these pieces incorporate sound produced over a somewhat long period of time, ’42’ from 2002 to 2005 and ’44’ from 2004 to 2005. ’42’ is a rhythmical affair, with sounds falling over-each other, rather than producing a steady beat. The rhythms seems to be made from sampled electro-acoustic sounds. Somewhere the sound of steam leaps in. That seems also to be the foundation of the second track, except that it plays the main role in this piece. Slowly evolving and objects roll of the conveyer belt. A darker but also intenser piece of music.
Labelowner Pawel Grabowski offers a new release, of three tracks, which is his first attempt to write shorter tracks, whilst keeping the same tension. Like the title suggests, these are more ‘notes’ than complete pieces, which of course you could say that Grabowski didn’t succeed in writing short pieces. However, there is good portion of tension to be noted in these pieces. Working his way around with just a few sounds per tracks, but looping them around, forming delicate pieces. Maybe it’s a pity that he uses a portion of reverb that is a bit too much, certainly in ‘The Dead’, but throughout it’s quite alright. Certainly a new route to explore in future works. (FdW)
Address: http://www.silence-is-not-empty.com
SHRINE – HARMONY, BLISS, RUST (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
ALEXANDER VATAGIN – VALEOT (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
THE WINTER QUARTERS – VID (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
MAURIZIO BIANCHI – MOKUSHI XVI, XVI (MP3 by Mirakelmusik)
The Swedish Mirakelmusik label say that they are a young net label, yet they already have twenty releases to their name. These four are part of the latest bunch. It contains three unknown new names for me and one big surprise. Mirakelmusik wants to release ‘more or less experimental music, like ambient, electronica, industrial, noise, but no idm, techno or alike’. The first one is by Shrine, aka Hristo Gospodinov from Bulgaria. He started his career playing various, unnamed acoustic instruments, before turning his way to sampling. The three pieces on ‘Harmony, Bliss, Rust’ were made to play ‘unusual’ ambient, which in a way is true, but perhaps it’s unusual to those who never heard ambient played in a more experimental fashion. Shrine plays nicely around with elements of distortion, but they are embedded in a strong wash of nice sound treatments, which makes a nice balance between the ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ elements. Dark, atmospheric and experimental ambient, just the way we like these things. Not necessarily innovative, but very nice for sure.
Also new for me is Alexander Vatagin, who plays bass since three years. First in his band Tupolex and later joined Und Morgen, Der Asphalt. Both bands have released works on 12rec, which I didn’t hear. His solo work more or less started by accident, when he picked up a cello and started to play some more abstract songs, compared to his bands, which are more poppy/folky. Vatagin plays around with drone like material on this work, bowing his cello to work around with nice overtone textures. As a counterpoint some of his friends from the bands provide some extra instruments, such as piano, drums and vocals, even when not on all tracks. Although especially the piano is not recorded very well, they add just that little bit of extra to step out of the usual areas of a drone record. Sometimes it comes close to a singer-songwriter album, but then of a rather unusual kind. A very fine album altogether.
Behind the Winter Quarters we find one Robin Rådenman, who works under various guises of whom we’ll hear more in the future. Three tracks on this shorter MP3 release, which sound to be made exclusively in the digital territory, but Winter Quarters are playing the atmospheric card. Even when winter time is over about two days, the music here at hand is still chilly and cold. A desolate winter landscape is depicted here, especially in ‘Hackren’, which might be a bit too noisy for the true lovers of the more daring ambient. The guitars in ‘Like Snow On White Sand’ have a nice Fennesz like feel to it. Nice one, perhaps a bit too short.
The big surprise is of course the presence of Maurizio Bianchi in this lot of MP3 releases. I am not really sure why he releases his works as MP3, but I’m sure there is some reason for it. ‘Mokushi’ is the Japanese word for Apocalypse, still, as always, an important theme in the work of Bianchi. In the book of Apocalypse, chapter 16, verse 16, the Armageddon is mentioned and Bianchi hopes that ‘the wickeds, the arrogants, the oppressors, the unthankfuls, the disloyals, the selfish persons, the God’s opposers will be totally destroyed by the angelic armies’ and the innocent will be alive. So, not an entire destruction of life on earth. However the music of Bianchi is not a cheery post-apocalyptic one, but a soundtrack for the proceedings of armageddon themselves. Loud and dirty. Moving away from the new age soundtracks he made after his return, this new material harks back to his early, even going back to his Sacher-Pelz material, of old reel-to-reel tapes being sped up into an almost false concerto of decay. Nice one indeed. The earlier new age sound didn’t do much for me, but this is very much alright again. (FdW)
Address: http://mirakelmusik.se
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