ELIANE RADIGUE – PSI 847 (2CD by Oral) *
AUS – RECOLLECTED (CD by Plop) *
RICK REED & KEITH ROWE & BILL THOMPSON – SHIFTING CURRENTS (2CD by Mikroton Recordings) *
CATHERINE JAUNIAUX & ERIKM – MAL DES ARDENTS/PANTONEON (2CD by Mikroton Recordings) *
HANNO LEICHTMANN – MINIMAL STUDIES (CD by Mikroton Recordings) *
NAPH – AUTUMN OF THE SAROOS (2CD by Ambiencephono) *
THE JAZZFAKERS – HERE AND NOW (CD by Alrealon)
JURICA – DISTANT MEMORIES (CD by Alrealon)
NICOLA LANCEROTTI QUARTET – SKIN (CD by Den)
WHYOAKTREEOH – HERE NOR THERE (CD by Den)
WEBSTER & HOLUB & ANORAK – LANGUAGES (CD by Gaffer)
BRIAN GRODER & TONINO MIANO – FLUIDENSITY (CD by Latham)
KATSURA MOURI & TIM OLIVE – VARIOUS HISTORIES (CD by 845 Audio) *
FOSSILS – KORJEV/WET INDUSTRY (7″ by Cardinal Records)
BOAR – DEAD EXISTENCE (CDR by Breaching Static Records)
ADERN X & TIZIANO MILANI – CINEMA SHOW (CDR by Xevor) *
PALIX & BENJAMIN L. AMAN – TRANSPORTS (CDR by Razzle Dazzle) *
SUB LOAM – RUDERAL MEMORY (CDR by Dissolving Records) *
SONOSPIES (CDR by Cameras Animales)
BIOGRAFIA DI TE (book by Ognidove)
ATARAXY – IDOLATRY (3″CDR by Vomit Bucket Productions)
NEGERIA – ENDE GUT – ALLES GUT (3″CDR by Vomit Bucket Productions)
SLEEP OF AGES/GOD PUSSY/SHUE (split CDR by Vomit Bucket Productions)
BROKEN SPIRIT – MEDICATED (cassette by Worthless Records)
MSHING – INTERFERING WITH A CORPSE (cassette by Worthless Records)
JON ERIKSEN – THE PALE LIGHT (cassette by ELM Recordings)
COLORGUARD – CHANNELS (cassette by ELM Recordings)
ARABIAN BLADE – PERPETUATE MYSELF (cassette by ELM Recordings)
THE REVENANT SEA (cassette by Auditory Field Theory)
ELIANE RADIGUE – PSI 847 (2CD by Oral)
Look up the Greek letter for Psi, and put that in front of 847. That’s the title of this work, and how that came about is a silly story, dealing with one of the first 747 Boeing flights, a failing engine and how that reflected, and then misspelled 847 instead of 747. ‘Psi 847’ is a work composed by Eliane Radigue in 1972, using an ‘Arp 2500 synthesizer on magnetic tapes’. She has performed this piece in various places ever since, but in January 2012 it was Lionel Marchetti who performed this piece, in the presence of the composer, who is by now an old lady, in Berlin. In the days before the concert, radigue was actively involved in placing the speakers, as this is not just a stereo phonic concert but more like something in which the speakers use the building as a soundboard. Now, that is of course is not easy to capture that spirit on to a recording, which reduces everything down to stereo again, but, phew, I must admit: what a fine disc. Music by Eliane Radigue is very slow moving, usually very drone like, very zen like if you will, but also at times working with these fine pure tones. Here in ‘Psy 847’ this works well. I am not sure how the mixing works, and what exactly Marchetti’s role in this, but it sounds great. Not low humming deep end but certainly after forty minutes (of the total of seventy-three) quite high end and perhaps even loud – but once the applause sounds you hear the real volume of that and it seemed all rather soft. I think it’s best to have this played at a rather soft volume in your space, sit back and let it all just flow over you. On the second disc we find a studio version of the same piece. I loaded both of them on my computer to spot the difference, but it was very hard to note the difference between the live and studio version. Marchetti stays very close to the original when it comes to playing it live, perhaps the material doesn’t allow for much other interpretation? Or maybe Marchetti is an excellent performer, who more or less knows how to play the same thing again and again? The live version seemed a bit more edgy, the studio version a bit more smooth. But all of that is in the detail. Surely not something to play in one row, but rather to choose your own favorite and play that over and over again. (FdW)
Address: http://www.oral.qc.ca
AUS – RECOLLECTED (CD by Plop)
A compilation? Remixes? You know what I think of reviewing those, but actually this is something different, a bit. Yasuhiko Fukuzono is Aus, and over the years he did a lot of remixes, because, well, remixing is fun to do, and if you are good at it, you’ll be asked a lot. From his vast catalogue of remixes, Aus and Plop collected fifteen remixes. Aus did remixes for a good many people I never heard of, like Geskia!, The Storms, Motoro Faam, Miyauchi Yuri, Miou Miou, Christopher Berg, Origamibiro, Fedaden, Cokiyu, The Declining Winter, Matryoshka and Henning Schmiedt – yes, that means I only recognized Tujiko Noriko, Northerner and Park Avenue Music. So, yeah,while not a compilation but at the same time being remixes, all performed by one artist, one could easily say that this is an album by one artist and one that performs some nice coherent stuff. You could easily lay down his interests: rhythm, a fine sense of melody, digital sound processing, a bit of vocal when needed, ambient, down tempo house, elektro and intelligent techno. Fifteen pieces with a great amount of variation around them, from introspective mellow tunes to almost dance like pieces and everything in between, placed in such a way that it works very well as an album. What more do you want from an artist who understand his trade? (FdW)
Address: http://www.naturebliss.jp
RICK REED & KEITH ROWE & BILL THOMPSON – SHIFTING CURRENTS (2CD by Mikroton Recordings)
CATHERINE JAUNIAUX & ERIKM – MAL DES ARDENTS/PANTONEON (2CD by Mikroton Recordings)
HANNO LEICHTMANN – MINIMAL STUDIES (CD by Mikroton Recordings)
Now here’s quite a pack of recordings from Russia’s Mikroton label. Two double CDs and a single one. The first double one clocks in just 85 minutes, so perhaps you think: why not some more editing and let it all fit on a single CD? We are dealing here with two live recordings made with sounds from an installation by Bill Thompson, which was recorded in Huddersfield, Stirling, Aberdeen and ‘s-Hertogenbosch – the latter being in The Netherlands. Recordings from the first two are to be found on this double CD. The sound is being distributed over 6 speakers and 3 sub woofers or 12 speakers, and 6 subs etc. The performers, and I assume Thompson is part of that (and gets credit for live recordings) are in the centre of the audience and have instruction to ‘improvise sensitively to the sounds of the installation and each other’. Rick Reed plays EMS synthesizer and Keith Rowe plays guitar and electronics. It’s funny (?) to read that about sensitivity, as what is pressed on these two discs, one concert of fifty-four minutes and one of thirty minutes, is not exactly always very sensitive. These men know how to hit their instruments – metaphorically speaking – and it comes in like a mighty blow. I guess it’s not always to say what exactly someone does in here, wether it’s the EMS, the guitar or the installation sounds, which I guess is a good thing. It all blends together nicely in these recordings, which were picked up using microphones, which added to spatial quality of the music. Quite dense at times, certainly in the Stirling recording, which seems to have less space for a longer introspective moment, which is something that we can find in the Huddersfield recording.
The other double CD is a bit longer, around a hundred minutes. The shortest disc was recorded in two different concerts in 2010, while the longer CD was recorded in one concert in 2000. Maybe we are to see the second disc as a kind of bonus, or historical artifact? erikM man the turntables, electronics, live sampling and architect lamp (I am just quoting the cover of course), while Catherine Jauniaux uses her voice, bird call, cupule and cazoo. You could know her from her work with Des Airs, The Hat Shoes, Les Sculpteurs De Vinyl and The Work: the world of die hard improvisation, although perhaps all of that in a more rock like context. Here of course it’s all highly experimental and Jauniaux uses her voice in all sorts of variations. She howls, whispers, screams, sighs, sings in the best tradition of say Jaap Blonk or the recently deceased Moniek Toebosch – to mention two Dutch counterparts. erikM provides the right soundtrack for such expanded vocal techniques. His music bounces too, whispers, screams and scratches his way about. A question I can imagine to be asked: what are the differences between the old and the new recordings? This might be it: in the old recordings one has more the sense that they are playing songs rather than improvising pieces of sounds together. I am not sure if I can substantiate that notion, but it’s my best guess anyway. Unlike the previous double CD, which can easily be enjoyed in one go, I think this package is one to take in one at a time. Playing these two in one row is perhaps too much, but each one by itself is a great CD.
And finally perhaps a somewhat more unlikely presence on Mikroton, which we always know to be into improvised music, is Hanno Leichtmann, who is perhaps also known for his work as Static. His (single) CD has ten tracks, all around the four-five minute break, recorded using modular system, bass synthesizer, guitar, ebow, organ, sampler and signal processors, plus a couple of guests on electric pump organ, trumpet, clarinet and violin. While this is probably quite removed from the more ‘dance’ like sounds of Static, the element of rhythm is not far away. It’s funny that just the other day I was playing a Steve Reich remixed CD (with Coldcut, Howie B, Matronik and such like), and then this arrived, which seems like a straight continuation of those remixes, embedded in an even more minimal surrounding. Leichtmann creates samples of his sound material and loops them around. Not in a static (pun not intended) way but in a rather musical fashion. The very short loops – some of them – are ultra short and remind me of Oval, but they are spliced together with longer sound particles and it makes all very nice music. The missing link – perhaps – between minimal dance music and improvisation, albeit with electronics. Bouncing stuff, that floats around nicely, and with all of these piece within reach of the length of a ‘pop’ song, this works even better. Leichtmann’s emphasis on the bass sounds unveils his roots in dance music, but his overall notion stretches far beyond that. Excellent work, genre crossing and boundary hopping. (FdW)
Address: http://www.mikroton.net
NAPH – AUTUMN OF THE SAROOS (2CD by Ambiencephono)
Surely one of the stranger releases recently. Naph is from Tokyo, where is a musician, sound engineer and label owner. His first album was ‘Wind Mill’ on Pastel Records in 2010, but now ‘Autumn Of The Saroos’ is the first (double) album on his own new label. The first disc, (dubbed Side A, which I think is very funny) is called ‘Far Away’ and sixteen rather short tracks, save for the last two. The cover lists for this CD acoustic guitar, flugelhorn, minimoog, ‘other equipments and more soundscapes’ and by and large you hear indeed the gentle strumming of the guitar and the sorrowful tones of the flugelhorn. Electronics, mini moog and sound scapes are pushed to the background more, until they are released to play their own tune, such as in ‘Stones’, or the extended field recordings of ‘Far Sounds’. It makes a very odd combination, having both these ends together, and I must admit there isn’t that much difference among the guitar/flugelhorn pieces. It’s quite daring even to do so, I was thinking. The other CD is called ‘Autumn Of The Saroos’ and here we find electric guitar, acoustic guitar, flugelhorn and ‘other equipments and more soundscapes’ – again so to speak but with a minor difference: the electric guitar. Here we have no gentle strumming or improvised flugelhorn parts, but something that works with feedback in the space that is used to record this, and has most definitely an experimental edge. The press text talks about ‘musique concrete, room feedback, experimental music, Alvin Lucier, Joe Meek’, the latter which I don’t really see. I see the connection with Lucier however, but maybe not as conceptual as he does things. Naph seems to be more about letting things happen, and not with some bigger acoustic concept behind it. Here the music is only far, far away related to the first disc. Yet it’s not difficult to see both works together in one package though. It’s two sides of the same coin. However it’s perhaps more difficult to win over listeners to like both sides. I can see one would like the first over the second, or vice versa, but both is perhaps a bit much. (FdW)
Address: http://ambiencephono.comhttp://www.naturebliss.jp
THE JAZZFAKERS – HERE AND NOW (CD by Alrealon)
JURICA – DISTANT MEMORIES (CD by Alrealon)
Third release by The Jazzfakers, produced by Martin Bisis of Material-fame. A crew of four madmen: David Tamura (sax, keyboards, guitar), Raphael Zwyer (bas, electronics, samples), Steve Orbach (drums) and Robert L. Pepper (violin, electronics). The group emerged in 2008 from the New York scene by an idea from Tamura. Hectic and eclectic music is what they offer. They copy and paste influences from about everywhere in their loosely defined pieces. No wonder this brings many surprising and humorous moments. But for me it also implied that I missed depth in this music. Pleasantly anarchistic on the one hand, but lacking focus and sense of urgency on the other hand. They hop from total cacophony, to more relaxed sound improvisations, to rock or jazz based ‘songs’. Judging from the sax playing by Tamura, he has background in jazz. ‘Horse Wine’ sounds like Can in one of their E.F.S.-pieces. Robert L. Pepper is also involved in PAS. This network keeps up the “PAS Currated Series” offering unknown composers and musicians an outlet. After Blue Sausage and Thorsten Soltau, they present this time Croatian musician and composer Jurica Jelic. He has already several albums out, but with “Distant Memories” probably new listeners are found. He plays fretless guitar, fretless baritone guitar, c-sound, and manipulated field recordings. In this electro-acoustic music Jelic evokes old memories of places and people that left some marks in his life and memory. The pieces are a bit formless, abstract constructions, but they make sense from time to time. (DM)
Address: http://www.alrealonmusique.com
NICOLA LANCEROTTI QUARTET – SKIN (CD by Den)
WHYOAKTREEOH – HERE NOR THERE (CD by Den)
Two quite different releases from the Italian quality label DEN. Thus far their releases were surprising and satisfying. This time however I’m a bit disappointed. WhyOakTreeOh is a English-Hungarian trio featuring Lawrence Williams (saxophones, voice), Hock Erno (double bass, bass guitar) and Sàrvàri Kovàcs Zsolt (drums). They started from totally free improvisation and are developing their own language. Williams is a saxophonist and composer. During 2001-2010 he lived and studied in London. Nowadays he has his base in Paris. Zsolt (drums) and Hocks (bass) operate from Budapest and I can’t tell you much on their musical whereabouts. “The Wild Party’ a obviously Ornette Coleman-inspired short, up tempo piece. In most other pieces however the trio operates at a slower pace, offering plenty of room for solos by all three players. What they built from their vocabulary didn’t talk to me. The playing however is fine and inspired, but very original if you ask me. Alas. So let us turn to the release of the quartet led by Nicola Lancerotti, an Italian double bass player. With Daniele Martini (tenor/soprano sax), Jordi Grognard (tenor sax, flute, clarinets) and Nelide Bandello (drums) they make a quartet, combining jazz traditions with free improvisation. Together with Belgian player Grognard, Lancerotti is also in two trio’s: one with pianist Eve Beuvens (Kroon Trio) and another one with drummer Tommaso Capellato (Remember Frank?). So I suppose Lancerotti has his base in Belgium. Anyway with his quartet he delivers well structured and harmonic jazz, but not of a surprising kind. Their performance is not spirited enough for me to make it interesting. It all sounds tame, not sparkling or edgy. A bit dry. Result: it did not excite me. (DM)
Address: http://www.denrecords.eu/
WEBSTER & HOLUB & ANORAK – LANGUAGES (CD by Gaffer)
A very international outfit. Full names are Colin Webster (sax), Mark Holub (drums), Sheik Anorak (guitar). Holub comes from the US and lives nowadays in London and Vienna, and is most known for his work as a bandleader and composer for Led Bib. Sheik Anorka, from Lyon, is guitarist who has worked with people from all over the world. Holub and Webster released ‘The Claw’some time ago, an album of duets. In trio format, accompanied with Toby McLaren (keyboards) they released ‘Koi Bombs’in 2013. Now they return accompanied with Anorak . The opening piece ‘Il fait chud’ immediately grasps you. It was one long intense struggle. Also ‘Languages’ unfolds as one long stream of concentrated group improvising. Their improvisations are not about virtuosity. They generate power through relatively simple means. They keep the pressure through a strongly linear moving and pulsating interaction that give the music a very massive body. (DM)
Address: http://www.gafferrecords.bandcamp.com
BRIAN GRODER & TONINO MIANO – FLUIDENSITY (CD by Latham)
A record that grows and grows after each listening. ‘Fluidensity’ is the outcome of a new project by Brian Groder. On his website he explains “the Fluid Density project is spontaneous improvisational piano-trumpet duet interpretations of modern classical new music. There are no written scores, outlines or overdubs, just the exchanged words between takes, exploring the improvisational possibilities of 20th century & contemporary classical music.” Groder realized it in companionship with Tonino Miano. Miano is an Italian-born pianist and composer with a background mainly in classical piano performance, turning to improvised music when he moved to New York in 1993. He has several CDs out, one of them being another duet-album with a trumpet player: in 2009 he recorded ‘Curvature of Pace’ with trumpeter Mirio Cosottini. Brian Groder you may have met earlier in Vital Weekly when I reviewed his solo work ‘Torque’ and collaboration with Burton Greene ‘Groder and Greene’. He is also a New York-based musician (trumpet) and improviser. This new duo work was recorded in july 2010. Both improvisers know their musical history and are interested in connecting improvisation with composed classical music. They make their statement in eight pronounced improvisations. One of them being based on composition by Frederic Rzewski. All of them elegant and lyrical pieces, with fine interplay. They improvise in a style that makes you probably thinking modern composed music instead of jazz. They are also not interested in extended techniques, so piano and trumpet sound as we know them. Their research is more directed towards structure and phrasing. They interact in a thoughtful way, and chose their notes efficiently and to the point. A very rewarding experience offered by an extraordinary duo. (DM)
Address: http://www.braingroder.com
KATSURA MOURI & TIM OLIVE – VARIOUS HISTORIES (CD by 845 Audio)
Improvising noise maker Tim Olive strikes again here, with a new disc which he recorded with Katsura Mouri over the years 2010 to 2012. Mouri (wo-)mans the turntables and is also responsible for edits and mix, while Olive plays pick-ups and metals. A five piece disc, with a total of thirty-four minutes of music, all of a more heavy nature. Its not that we are dealing with heavy noise here, but the sounds played with turntable and pickups on metal objects are recorded quite directly in a no victims spared manner. It bumps and bounces here, with some mighty fine deep end sound and occasional collapse in the higher frequency range. It’s the heavy weight version of AMM going all for the noise generators and without any instruments. Mouri and Olive play with great care and style – true noise is, as said, far away from this, but they are not entirely shy of it also. When it happens, it happens. In other occasions they manage to arrive at a standstill and they look around – just as in the fifth and longest (all untitled) piece happens. They stumble upon feedback and let it flow for a while and play some softish rumble with their equipment. In terms of improvisation meets noise, I thought this was a pretty fine disc, which was played in an excellent manner and had a whole bunch of interesting notions on the subject. (FdW)
Address: http://845audio.org/
FOSSILS – KORJEV/WET INDUSTRY (7″ by Cardinal Records)
From our more and more beloved Canadian improvising lot, the duo Fossils, who are trying to be present in every Vital Weekly, or so it seems. There is somehow, somewhere somesort of connection with Graham Lambkin for this record, as the catalogue reads ‘Farr/Payne mixed and mangled by Graham Lambkin’, but as to what that means I am not sure, but the website says ‘transferred to Lambkin for special treatment’. What this treatment is, is not easy to say. It could be anything that involves a pair of scissors and magnetic tape. Maybe it’s all spliced together, over laying various recordings, but then recorded onto a dictaphone to obscure the sound material a bit more. Your guess is probably as good as mine’s. It sounds all very obscure and vague, but I mean all of that in a very positive manner. It’s the obscurity factor that makes that I like records like this. The fact that this is a lathe cut – edition of 50 – further enhances this obscurity factor, topped off with a cover that doesn’t tell us anything else. Nice. Fossils galore! (FdW)
Address: http://cardinalrecords.blogspot.ca
BOAR – DEAD EXISTENCE (CDR by Breaching Static Records)
Breaching Static magnate Alex Nowacki is the likely-deaf fixture behind Boar, one of the obsessively productive characters of the contemporary noise underground. He’s poured heaps of effort into ‘Dead Existence,’ a half-bleak/half-goofy title that hints at the nihilistic cinder-block of noise contained within. Over nine dense compositions, which range from from one-and-a-half to twelve minutes in length, he strings up a whole miniature world of ugly textures. I really admire Nowacki for concentrating his efforts on this release; whereas it’s something of a noise tradition to churn out CDR after CDR of practice sessions, outtakes, and recordings collected while asleep at the mixing board, here Nowacki has directed all his energy towards a polished and coherent ALBUM. Although ‘Dead Existence’ is a CDR release, it involved a substantial investment: it’s been pressed and printed professionally, decorated in a rich, mottled brown that portends its inner grotesqueness. Like most noise releases, it is difficult to identify a theme running through the release – apart from homeliness – and its abstract form eludes attempts to chart a consistent meaning or thesis that binds it together. Yet by wedding these tracks together he underscores the differences in grain between them: the cantankerous gravel of “Memory Lapse/Fuck/Gone,” pierced by steamy laser-hits, diverts from the torrential blur of “72nd Death.” Elsewhere the listener gets a-spankin’ with some wiry giblets of high-pitched squall, which seep in through the chaos at occasional checkpoints. A few interludes even break from the ruckus: these offer an appreciated respite, as evidenced by the ominous “Angel Skin Decaying” and the last-gasp guitar hum that draws “Walking Love Corpse” to a close. As is often the case with noise releases, the track titles often take the macabre factor a tad too seriously, but that alone shouldn’t discredit this ambitious work of longform noise. (MT)
Address: http://breachingstatic.blogspot.com
ADERN X & TIZIANO MILANI – CINEMA SHOW (CDR by Xevor)
An odd place to tape your field recordings, but why not? The cinema! “The source material for this release is a bunch of field recordings made in a cinema as electroacoustic music is influenced by the theory of editing of cinematography”, it says on the cover, which seems to me a rather bold statement. Not mentioned is which movie Adern X and Tiziano Milani actually went to. Or movies perhaps? Both of these artists are known, to some extend, for using electronics in their work, mostly laptop, but also mentioned here are ‘loop, SW radio, digital manipulation, concrete’. As said, it’s very hard to recognize any movie sound track here, or the chewing of pop corn for all we know, although maybe in the first piece, the entrance of the viewers might have been used as a sound source, but otherwise it’s also not easy to relate this to the world of cinema and “theory of editing of cinematography”. If all, there isn’t much editing as such, in these four lengthy and one shorter piece of ambient like electronics, this warm mass of glitch sounds. Here the pieces gentle flow about in the best microsound ambient glitch tradition. If anything, the slow movie is celebrated in these five pieces, painting in technicolor tones, hazy, blurry, abstract even but nevertheless telling a nice story. Nothing spectacular, but surely a more than pleasant release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.xevor.net
PALIX & BENJAMIN L. AMAN – TRANSPORTS (CDR by Razzle Dazzle)
More music by Palix, improviser on his laptop, of whom we saw a bunch of releases in more recent times. Here he teams up with Benjamin L. Aman on analog electronics and tapes. They played together on January 15, 2012 at 64 in Paris and this we can find on this almost thirty nine minute work. I assume, but I might be wrong, that this recording is a pretty straight forward documentation of that concert, as it doesn’t seem to be edited, whereas it would have been a nice idea to do so. Not every moment in this collaboration has an equal amount of tension and it seems that sometimes they are searching for the next move. These two collaborators are close on each other’s patch, working with slightly similar sound material, which might be a problem then. There would have been other possibilities. One plays short sounds and one long, one very rhythmical, the other melodically, for instance. Now it all remains very much on the same level and there is, especially after the twenty minute break, a long passage in which they seem to be searching for a sound, both waiting for the other to make the move, which happens after thirty minutes when it becomes more noisy. It’s all ok, but I must admit I don’t see the added value of this being released on a CDR. A link on bandcamp or something similar, purely as a form of documentation would have been nice enough as far as I’m concerned. (FdW)
Address: http://www.razzle-d.com
SUB LOAM – RUDERAL MEMORY (CDR by Dissolving Records)
Quite an obscure release here, but it’s apparently released for the Vernal Quinox, which happened here without noticing it. Behind Sub Loam we find Thomas Shrubbsole, and if I am not wrong it has been a while since I last heard his music; his ‘2’ was reviewed in Vital Weekly 732. At the very foundation of this work there is the soprano saxophone playing, along with a ‘multi-cassette, twin reel-to-reel set up’ to do some further manipulation. With a reel-to-reel you can easily slow down things, going from 19cm/per second to 4,5cm/per second, and perhaps that’s something that Shrubbsole does here, but in a clever way. He slows down his sounds but not all of them and not all the way. Just a few, and keeps other running at regular speed. His saxophone playing reminds me occasionally more of a trumpet actually. While the whole thing sounds at times a bit crude – which may be because it is recorded live in one take – it also has a fine orchestral feel to it. Glissandi appear out of nowhere, together with a low rumble of slowed down tapes and throughout it’s perhaps heavy but also in a way zen like like. Somewhere in the middle of you would find drones and improvised music, all with a classical touch, certainly in the last ten minutes. Dense meditation music, and perhaps not that spring like yet, more like a farewell for the winter season. Raw and intense, but never noise based. Very nice! (FdW)
Address: http://www.dissolvingrecords.blogspot.com
SONOSPIES (CDR by Cameras Animales)
Sonospies is the first edition of Camera Animales from Marseille. Until now, the publisher published seven books, but the time has come to publish independent music. The goal is to make a compilation of musicians who mix different styles and have a certain stubborn individuality. Sonospies stands for an autopsy of the sound and the title alone is already an invitation listen to the CDR. The collection begins with the adventurous with a track of SAEomulci Gonnac, a project of Jme Guggino, with incomprehensible lyrics and a beautiful song composed of abstract percussion and electronics. A promising start. The album is varied and the voice and the word are central elements. Mushin from France has a wonderful radio play composed with a warm voice that subtly different filters rhythmically tells a story. Entirely different from the piece of Ichtor Tides. Occasionally, the voice sails past, but this is especially the electronic glitches and drones which are the main parts of the composition. Meryl Marcetti is more the recitation of poems with minimal acoustic accompaniment of sound. R3PLYc4N is of an entirely different order, the music is built into the computer. His track varies from breakbeat to quiet moments with a voice that is submerged by the electronic sounds, and then again a dominant role. El Fuego Tatuo is a French-Spanish collective and shines in the combination of sound and powerful presentations. Forakte comes with a dark metal song with a bluesy start and a grungy voice. Sun Thielf comes with a drony beautiful song, but the voice is missing, though it is not strictly necessary in this compilation. The compilation ends with a powerful song by Thierry Theo winch with a powerful noisy rhythm. The voice is also powerful. The question is why Mr. Savant Stifleson has the opportunity to present four songs. The music is pretty poppy, little experimental and playful. Okay, the songs are short, but there are more projects that are interesting enough to become more present. In one way or another asks this CD to always be turned, because it is a nice mix of different music styles is autonomous, but more focus on the use of words would have been nice and a strong complement to the work that the publishing along progress. (JKH)
Address: http://www.camerasanimales.com
BIOGRAFIA DI TE (book by Ognidove)
What is sold here is essentially a book, with a download link to a film. I got that one on CDR for convenience – thanks! “‘Biography Of You’ is a project consisting of questions and (possible) answers. It is a choral work, which like a surrealist Cadavre Exquis, weaves a thread made of thoughts, images and feelings, allowing many to contribute to it and then to tie it again”. There are (moving and still) images, sound, text parts of this. A small book of poetry and poetic sounds and images, with an extensive list of collaborators, of which I recognized Iris Garrelfs, Dick Verdult and Nicola Catalano, but there’s twenty people at least working on this. That makes it very hard to say who did what and that’s exactly the beauty of it. All of those boundaries seem to have disappeared here. It raises questions indeed but we don’t always understand them. I think I heard English, Italian and German, so perhaps it’s not always easy to find answers in here. I have no idea how to interpret all of this, but it looks and sounds good. Very art-ful, very modern and with relatively melancholic music. It’s all very nice. But is that helpful to you, as review? (FdW)
Address: http://www.ognidove.eu
ATARAXY – IDOLATRY (3″CDR by Vomit Bucket Productions)
NEGERIA – ENDE GUT – ALLES GUT (3″CDR by Vomit Bucket Productions)
SLEEP OF AGES/GOD PUSSY/SHUE (split CDR by Vomit Bucket Productions)
The thrust of ‘Idolatry’ is bitterness towards society’s obsession with physical beauty, which Ataraxy’s Gag thinks is destroying our lives. The solution, as only Gag can bring it, is a seventeen minute interval of ugly pedal noise underscored by some trashy drum-set bedlam. I dig the organic touch – this sounds like a rock band scorched to the ground – and the cacophony of the screeching noise apparatus is, like the best of the Japanoise crew (The Gerogerigegege especially), rendered in life-affirming, fleshy form. Ataraxy perceives the beautiful people as today’s false idols, and advances this CDR as an ugly (and invariably bitter) counterpoint to that end. It’s a tidy encapsulation of noise music’s function, obliquely paralleling that tidy Masami Akita axiom, used to justify his life’s craft: “If by noise you mean uncomfortable sound, then pop music is noise to me.”
The Negeria title refers to the combined efforts of noise juggernaut Bodo (of To-Bo) and Problem Anderer Leute’s Marvin, who conspired to produce fifty tracks through 2011 and 2012 before summarily evaporating into noise music’s enormous ether of dissolved side-projects and abandoned one-offs. This tiny disc collects the four final products of that bout, each a muscled wallop of rapidly contorting harsh noise. “N48” and “N49” are the most froth-mouthed of the set, flapping about in their ambiguously-directed ire. Meanwhile, the ultimate artifact, lonely “N50,” sends the series off in a burdened hairball of burnt-out pedal rubble.
Last up is a split between three exponents of the Brazilian scene, including two hyper-productive agents, Sleep of Ages and God Pussy, and one newcomer, Shue. The latter turns out not to be a tribute to Elizabeth Shue but instead the doings of Martin Shue, who treats synth loops and wailing electronics with scissoring tiles of in-the-red noise. The sting of power-electronics and the grandiosity of Industrial music color his mealy sonic perpetrations. But prior to Shue’s inaugural rumbles, the veterans make their presence known. Sleep of Ages ekes out two longform improvisations with dubious religious themes; one sinuous and menacing (“God Bleeding Colors Over Me”), the other awash in shrill electronic malevolence (“Hideous Sun God”). Then the ever-nasty God Pussy churns out his signature breed of macerated dissonance over a triplet of tracks, ranging from the deplorable fax machine’s lament of “Tabu Étnico” to the subjugated primitive rhythm of “Doença Cultural.” (MT)
Address: http://vomitbucketproductions.blogspot.com
BROKEN SPIRIT – MEDICATED (cassette by Worthless Records)
MSHING – INTERFERING WITH A CORPSE (cassette by Worthless Records)
In a sleek case with a cover that closely approximates the vague grain of an ultrasound image, Broken Spirit’s ‘Medicated’ portends its innards: a world of sound that hints at its underlying components but avoids denuding them. This album is built of the grumbling consonance of noise music, but largely wades away from the gruesome abrasives turfed by similar pedal-worshipers. Side A assumes a faded cloak of ambient sound, blending what might be a roadside field recording of a storm with the persistent hum of a high school boiler room (lathered with some burnt-out noise for good measure). When reduced to mere sound, the broad soundscape becomes especially compelling: what sounds like cars passing by a mic become shapeless, obfuscated Goliaths strafing past the sound field. Side B revs up the chilly industrial angle, suspending the listener in the steamy broil of sub-basement machinery before enormous planks of mechanized noise start bursting into frame. ‘Medicated’ deserves to be played loud; if given space to completely fill a room, it’s flatly astounding.
Meanwhile, MSHING is Australian Luke Holland’s noise project, active since 2005 (roughly the same time he sprung his Trapdoor Tapes imprint into action). ‘Interfering with a Corpse’ evokes some pretty ominous images as a title unto itself, but it is no surprise from the artist behind such titles as ‘Hatred’ and ‘Bloodyard’ that this is a choppy endeavor. The record kicks off with a swell plank of twist-your-nipples harsh noise, auguring a torrential twenty-six minutes of effects-pedal goodness. Nestled in the monochrome muddle is ridge after ridge of molten sound, a dense connective tissue of chaos embedded with mean little blebs of sub-chaos. Despite its massiveness, the maximalist entirety of ‘Interfering’ spirals the listener into an almost comfortable sort of trance. It’s something like being in the eye of a storm: there’s an eerie feeling of inner peace that engulfs you as you watch your neighbors getting slung up into the air and impaled on their own weather vanes. (MT)
Address: http://worthlessrecordings.blogspot.com
JON ERIKSEN – THE PALE LIGHT (cassette by ELM Recordings)
COLORGUARD – CHANNELS (cassette by ELM Recordings)
ARABIAN BLADE – PERPETUATE MYSELF (cassette by ELM Recordings)
Three rather short tapes here. Arabian Blade is with thirty minutes by far the longest. Jon Eriksen from Sweden/Norway (which, I should perhaps point out to the American label are two countries rather than one, so which is it?), who is a visual artist and noise maker. He played New Haven and made a solid impression. Maybe some of that ended upon this fifteen minute tape? This is all heavily rooted in the noise scene – with the capital n that is – but its sounds quite interesting. Relying on the use of sound effects to create an ever moving, yet heavy mass of sound – celebrating noise in the mass – with slightly rhythmic moves through super slow sequenced effects. Maybe a bit digital come to think of it, but maybe not purely laptop? The question mark indicates I am thinking out loud. Eriksen seems to me a man who likes control over the subject matter and yes, that usually helps, when listening to me; for me that is. Great release.
Kryssi Battalene is Colorguard and she is from New Haven and plays guitar with bands as Mountain Movers and Medication, however leaves her guitar and enjoys the turntable in her thirteen minutes of ‘Channels’. The level of control is in place here too, but it only for the use of the turntable. What records she spins is a bit unclear since whatever else she adds in the form of sound effects makes it all quite difficult to figure that out, but surely it’s not intended to be like that anyway. Here too we don’t deal with ear bleeding noise throughout, even when it’s all considerable loud. The best is kept for the b-side in which the noise element seems to have vanished and replaced by a minimalist loop of one kind or another and without much variation over those six minutes have a nice trance like effect. Longer would have ruined it, I think.
Christopher Donofrio (who is apparently also in Reviver) and Donovan Fazzino (likewise in Roman Wolfe) are together Arabian Blade and according to the label they play ‘creeping, plodding, warped synth jams’ (‘from experienced CT duo’, it also says). Here too we served noise, and while not as loud as on some of the others here, it’s heavy as a block of concrete. These synths are set to fire off black holes of super heavy blocks of sound, carried around on the shoulders of sound effects. They have various pieces ranging from heavy to top heavy and is certainly not for the weak of heart. Here too we sense a form of control, but of these three the least controlled one; these jams might sometimes spin out of control. Of the three however my least favorite one, perhaps just for that lack of control.; maybe I was expecting too much? (FdW)
Address: http://elmrecordings.tumblr.com/
THE REVENANT SEA (cassette by Auditory Field Theory)
One Matthew James Bower is The Revenant Sea – and it’s a different Matthew Bower. This one sometimes works as Wizards Tell Lies. Apparently this debut album as The Revenant Sea “elaborates on ideas Bower seeded on Wizards Tell Lies’ “The Failed Silence” (First Fold Records, 2012)”, which I didn’t hear, so it’s a bit hard to concur that statement. It’s also hard to tell what Bower does here, both in terms of what he uses for instruments or how it sounds. It might be a combination of ambient sounds, field recordings and lo-fi recording equipment to get that lo-fi quality to the music but hey, this would not be the first time I am all wrong. The sound is not per se ambient or drone like, but rather rough at the edges, with a dark rumble in the opening piece ‘It’s Been Following The Plane Since Moscow’ – maybe a voice activated recorder was hidden in the overhead compartment? This is continued with more music that is not entirely strictly to be found in the world of ambient and drone, but rather of engaging musique concrete, with trips to cosmic space as easily to land on planet noise, flies back to earth and visits a ping pong game on the outdoor playground at the opening of the b-side. Odd, as I said. A bit of a lot of everything, and actually quite enjoyable. Quite dark, a bit mysterious and ultimately quite nice indeed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.auditoryfieldtheory.org/