THOMAS NEWMAN & RICK COX – 35 WHIRLPOOLS BELOW SOUND (CD by Cold Blue Music) *
MICHAEL JON FINK – FROM A FOLIO (CD by Cold Blue Music) *
SENSAROUND – ISOTROPES (CD by HelloSquare Recordings) *
KARL J. PALOUCEK – SAIL (CD by Latest Flame) *
ALESSIO RICCIO – NINSHUBAR (CD by Unorthodox Recordings)
FUYURU0 – ESTHESIA (CD by Fumin.) *
LITTLE PHRASE – FIND YOUR SENSE (CD by Nature Bliss) *
REET – EESTI RAHVALAULE (CD by Panai) *
G.I.A.S.O. (CD by Fibrr) *
PACIFIC 231 & BARDOSENETICCUBE – THE TRADITIONS OF CHANGES (CD by Silken Tofu) *
JEAN-CLAUDE ELOY – BORDERLINES (CD by Hors Territoires) *
DNMF – DNMF [DEAD NEANDERTHALS & MACHINEFABRIEK] (LP by Moving Furniture)
SCHREIN – EINSZWEINSCHREIN (LP by Meudiademorte)
JADA – THE VAULTS (double 10″ by Cosmic Volume/Innerlandscapes)
IL GRANDE SILENZIO – DRY LAKE/EMPTY KETTLE (7″ by Meeuw Muzak)
DUKE ST. WORKSHOP – CABIN 28 (CDR by Static Caravan) *
SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON – A LONG WALK ON WATER (CDR/book by Some) *
STEREOCILIA – GROWING (CDR, private) *
MARK O’LEARY – ELEKTRONISCHE MUSIC (CDR by TibProd Italy)
MARK O’LEARY – MARKETS (CDR by TibProd Italy) *
STATIC SOUND – WEST WILL NEVER BE A MUSLIM’S LAND (CDR & Download by Static Sound)
SOCRATES MARTINIS – NORTH (3″ CDR and booklet by More Mars)
VISITORS – HELLO WORLD (cassette by Barreuh Records) *
THOMAS NEWMAN & RICK COX – 35 WHIRLPOOLS BELOW SOUND (CD by Cold Blue Music)
MICHAEL JON FINK – FROM A FOLIO (CD by Cold Blue Music)
California’s Cold Blue Music is best known, at least I hope so, for their modern classical music meeting minimalism, but always, it seems in a more ‘sunny’ way; it’s probably all my imagination to combine these things (sunshine, minimalism). The label’s latest release by Rick Cox and Thomas Newman is something different. This is a work of electro-acoustic origin and performed by the composers. Rick Cox plays guitar, prepared guitar and worked with Jon Hassell as well as with Thomas Newman, who is best known for his scores to movies; a whole list of them, but I’ll mention my favourite from this list: American Beauty (recently seen again), which is not only a great movie but with a very significant soundtrack. How often do I hear that melody as a ringtone in a later movies or TV series? I assume these two men work together because they know each other, and wanted to have a great time working together, other than also creating a fine work. Cox plays prepared guitar, xaphoon (whatever that is), cello, and voice, and Newman, toy accordion, violin, piano, phase metals and there is help from Jeff Elmassian on clarinet and a bunch of field recordings (wind, leaves, water, cars) are also used. This is quite a strange release: it has the bearings of improvised music, but then with sampled sounds of instruments. Sometimes it all seems very simply to me – too simple perhaps, but in many of the other pieces there is a beautiful tension between the players, with a fine deep end bass rumbling below, sparse piano tones set against a drone or two, and all of this in nineteen rather short pieces, ranging from just below one minutes to a handful and one of seven. This release seems an oddball in the catalogue of Cold Blue Music, but I quite enjoyed it. Sometimes it sounds like a processed orchestra, then purely musique concrete, followed by a bit ambience. Excellent!
The other new release by Cold Blue Music is a short CD, nineteen minutes, of pieces for piano, played by the composer himself, Michael Jon Fink and Derek Stein on cello. Six pieces by the hand of Fink and one in the middle, a piece by Stein on six cellos (I assume not at once). These seven pieces are quite short as you can imagine and there are all beautiful and elegant. Lots of space is suggested and these pieces sound perhaps a bit like music for mourning? Maybe I am wrong and it’s these grey clouds that I can see from my window that literally cloud my judgement. There is not really a lot I can tell about this. It’s modern classical, it’s a bit minimalist, it’s beautiful, it’s sad, yet it’s full of hope. It’s music like this the world needs, I’d say. But who’s listening? (FdW)
Address: http://www.coldbluemusic.com
SENSAROUND – ISOTROPES (CD by HelloSquare Recordings)
It has been some while since I last heard from Shoeb Ahmad – I think (!) – and his HelloSquare label. Here he presents another new name from that current Australian jazz scene: Sensaround. This is a trio with ‘well-known Australian jazz innovator Alister Spence on fender Rhodes piano and pedals, from Scotland Raymnond McDonald on alto and soprano saxophone and Ahmad on two samplers. In January 2013 they went into the studio for a day to record pieces that ended up on ‘Isotropes’, which hold ‘Sense IV’ being twenty-two minutes, two pieces of four minutes and three curious short bits. I’m told they blend free improvisation, electronic music and indie pop in this project, and I might not be too sure about the latter. I liked the new Aussie jazz movement so far but Sensaround is the first I am not altogether sure about. Normally it’s all quite soft, jazzy, freely meandering and that’s what we have here too, at least to a certain extent, but it seems also at times a bit different; a bit more experimental? Or better: a bit of an uneasy marriage between sounds, especially in the shorter pieces – like everything doesn’t quite fit together. It rubs more against each other than that it bounces nicely, but I assume that’s the whole idea. The samplers and keyboards work together quite well, but sometimes McDonald wails a bit too much on top of things. When he’s receiving some treatment – delay, reverb – he fits better in. Don’t get me wrong: I quite enjoy this release! It’s not what I expected, and that, I guess, is always a good thing. It also shows there’s more to the new Aussie jazz than being free and smooth; that it can sound a bit more experimental, or uneasy. This is quite a strange release, but after hearing it a couple times it grew more and more on me. Excellent oddity. (FdW)
Address: http://hellosquarerecordings.com
KARL J. PALOUCEK – SAIL (CD by Latest Flame)
Following an introduction release on Eric Lunde’s Trait Media, here’s another new release by Karl J. Paloucek from Milwaukee. He was in his earlier years a member of Fuckface, Boy Dirt Car and Impact Test but also played with Violent Femmes and working for Einsturzende Neubauten in a non-musical capacity. He spent twenty years to compose the pieces on ‘Sail’, in a variety of studios and various engineers. This year he had the ‘flurry of creative energy’ to finish the album. He describes this album as ‘aiming for a terrain somewhere between the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Mnemonists’, which is quite a curious place, I’d say. Like on ‘K’ (see Vital Weekly 870), the piano plays an important role in these five pieces. Maybe that’s the Penguin Cafe Orchestra influence here, so I was thinking, with whatever else is happening being the Mnemonists influence? The latter was a rock group using the studio as an extra instrument, giving treatments to the rock sound, which made it sound like musique concrete, including the use ‘extra’ musical sounds. Penguin Cafe Orchestra I remind as more filmic in approach and I don’t feel Paloucek’s music shares a similar smoother sensibility – save maybe for the title piece, in which he aims for a minimal, orchestral sound. Paloucek’s music seems to me more intense and, perhaps, creepy. His use of instruments (pianos, bass, organ, French horn, trombone, tam tam) and objects (sewing machines, assorted metal pipes and rods, titanium disc, aluminimum sheet, metronome, clock gongs, crystal ware, lock grooves, printing press recordings), blends together in a wonderful, beautiful way. In that sense it’s the work of an instrument that is not mentioned as an instrument on the cover and that’s the multi-track recorder and multi-track mixer. Like the Penguins, Paloucek’s music is also cinematic in approach, but it seems to me a bit creepier, such as in the scraping drone sounds of ‘Jutland’ or the revolving clock sounds that appear in various tracks. A well-crafted work; Paloucek knows what he’s doing in the studio, and employs all the tricks quite well. Twenty years seem to be a long period to create one album; I surely hope there is more of this guy soon. (FdW)
Address: http://www.latestflame.com
ALESSIO RICCIO – NINSHUBAR (CD by Unorthodox Recordings)
The experience of being totally flabbergasted by a piece of music is an experience I always hope for but happens not very often. With ´Ninshubar´ – a Sumerian goddess – it happened. It left me completely disoriented and impressed at the same time. Feeling that I witnessed something very special, but not being able to identify what it is. Beyond known categories. Well, calm down a bit, you might think. But I’m with both feet on the ground while writing these lines. Again, what a records this is! First I was attracted by the name of Catherine Jauniaux, who was involved in Marc Hollander’s Aksak Maboul in the 80s. Together with Monica Demuru she supplies the vocals for this work. Hasse Poulsen plays guitar and Riccio himself drums and percussion, plus laptops, ‘hybrizided rhythmicity’ and ‘organic sound mosaics’. Alessio Riccio originates from Florence, started as a drummer and developed himself also in the world of electronics. He released several albums between 2000 and 2003. Then a period of ten year silence followed. With ‘Ninshubar’ he breaks the silence with a tornado of sounds, noises, in a megalomaniac audiowork. ‘Megalomaniac’ has a negative connotation, but please erase that here. This electroacoustic work combines progressive rock and electronics in an impressive way. How to describe this work more specific? It is psychodrama, audioplay, a multi-dimensional electro-acoustical soundwork. Sometimes rock, sometimes jazz, contemporary music, easy listening, but whatever style one may identify it is from beginning to end something completely else. The work is divided into 18 small units, but the work comes to you as one massive whole taking about 66 minutes. This music is so incredibly rich. So much detail in the sounds. So many movements, little gestures, colours, etc. Riccio lists also indirect performers, from Aphex Twin to Frank Zappa. He uses samples of them I suppose. In all its complexity there is also much drama in this music of theatrical proportions. There is truly blood streaming through the veins here. An essential record! (DM)
Address: http://www.alessioriccio.com
FUYURU0 – ESTHESIA (CD by Fumin.)
LITTLE PHRASE – FIND YOUR SENSE (CD by Nature Bliss)
REET – EESTI RAHVALAULE (CD by Panai)
There is not a lot of relation between these three releases, except that they were send in one bundle by Japanese promoters Nature Bliss, maybe also your home to purchase them.
Since having a tennis elbow I am a bad sleeper, so I take, occasionally, a pill to get me to sleep. That’s why I recognize some of the song titles by Fuyuru0, like ‘Zolpidem’ (actually the brand I have) and ‘Flunitrazepam’. Another piece is called ‘Nocturne’, so perhaps this is all a bit ‘music to sleep by’? Fuyuru0 is the ‘fresh hope’ of Japanese ambient music – is the scene in a dirge need for a fresh hope, I wondered – and his classically trained background as a piano player helps him creating his ambient tunes. Ten in total, all about three to four minutes (kinda unusual perhaps, normally ambient music takes more time), and each is a very nice miniature. A dash of rhythm, some found loops, some computer treatment of piano sounds and all of that woven together with some ‘real’ piano sounds. Not always, but carefully balanced. A bit drone like, lots of atmospheric ambience, a bit of technoid beats thrown in. I liked it a lot, while I was reading last Sunday afternoon, and enjoyed myself. Looking at this more critically a few days later, I think it’s all quite unsurprising and sometimes relatively easy made. He could put out an album like this every week, which I am sure is not what he would like to do.
Not too far away, musically speaking, we find Little Phrase, but this is more in the field of ambient post rock and Little Phrase is a band, with a traditional line-up: guitar, bass, drums, percussion, synthesizer, piano, programming (they even have a resident VJ, who is also responsible for the artwork). The programming seems to me an important feature as overall the music has quite an electronic touch to it. This the bands second album, and I don’t think i heard the first, but I learn that they are inspired by ‘small beautiful things in their lives such as colours, seasons and feelings’. You might expect this works out into quite a bit of dark and dramatic music, but it’s not; not always. Little Phrase also has something that makes their music light (not light-weighted) and bright as a star. Songs for the rising sun over a green field, such as ‘Airport’ – oh maybe I am mixing up metaphors here. It’s all quite breezy anyway, and another fine delight. Still the same Sunday afternoon, still a nice firm post-summer sun shining here, and no doubt there are countless other bands doing ‘something similar’ – too lazy to think of any one in particular right now, actually – but who cares about that? Little Phrase does what they do, and they do that extremely well. And hearing a typewriter used in anything ambient like means these boys and girls (?) know their Erik Satie quite well.
I never heard of the legendary Estonian folk singer Reet (which in Dutch means ‘ass’…), short for Reet Hendrikson (1944 – 2000), who produced one LP in 1969, re-issued in 2008 on vinyl and now on CD in Japan. These songs are traditional Estonian folk songs, finding their roots in oral tradition. She sings and plays guitar and it sounds great. I must admit that, but it’s also music about which I have no idea about its background, or anything else really. It sounds like one of those David Tibet could have found but he didn’t. Hearing is believing. A short album but sung wonderfully with a clear crisp voice. If you like that and never heard of her before then it’s about time you did. (FdW)
Address: http://www.naturebliss.jp
G.I.A.S.O. (CD by Fibrr)
The name stands for Great International Audio Streaming Orchestra and the cover reveals us what this orchestra does: “an international online orchestra whose compositions are created in the net only. Its goal is to create an experimental space for networked performance. The Internet becomes an instrument for collective sound production. The collective creates a new orchestral form, where composers become virtual entities that emerge from a global community of nodes. During the performance the transferred streams are re-composed and spacialized in the concenert venue. The different stations are visualized by pre-produced videos. The projections in the performance space create visual reference points for the activities contributed by the remote players”. Long quote, and if I understand this well, it means that lots of people perform music at home, which, transported via the net ends up in a concert space, mixed collectively by… I am not sure who or what. Among the names of the members I only recognized Julien Ottavi – who also did the final mix of this – and The Noiser. I assume all these people work with laptops and whatever forms of free audio software and no doubt is a community of its own. Collected here are four live recordings (this band obviously doesn’t do studio recordings!) from four different locations. You could perhaps think this would lead to a lot of mindless noise and occasionally, yes, there are bursts of noise such as in ‘Live At Piksel – Bergen’ recording, but throughout these girls and boys know how to keep things to a minimum and instead listen to each other and interact accordingly. It buzzes and crackles, chuckles and peeps, and it makes a solid impression. It’s good, but is it super good? That is something I wonder about. I am sure that seeing and hearing this live has more impact than listening to it on a CD. Now we have four fine pieces of electronic music, highly experimental, in field of noise/ambient/musique concrete/computer processing, which are good but not super good. Fibrr Records is best known for its more conceptual approaches, which I usually like a lot, but sometimes the execution lacks a bit. (FdW)
Address: http://metamkine.com/
PACIFIC 231 & BARDOSENETICCUBE – THE TRADITIONS OF CHANGES (CD by Silken Tofu)
It seems that Pacific 231 has been around forever, but maybe there was a hiatus for some time. I remember Pierre Jolivet from France, but living in Dublin for quite some time now, as an active participant in the eighties underground cassette scene, and on lots of compilations with his own, not always unique brand of industrial noise, but back in Vital Weekly 888 I got the updated Pacific 231 sound, which I enjoyed very much: minimal electronics, psychedelic and intense. Here he has a collaboration with Igor Potsukaylo, who works as Bardoseneticcube, a name we have seen before a few times; he is a man of atmospherics, drones and the louder edges (outer edges?) of ambient. Jolivet supplied the ‘field recordings and analog structures’, while Potsukaylo takes credit for ‘electronic construction’. Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis” inspires the music, or as they call ‘an utopian sonic maelstrom’; a maelstrom it surely is. No sound effects have been spared in this work. Everything and everyone, or every possible level, there seems to be something happening. You get distracted, follow the loops, but then on a different level something else seem to be happening. A lot of it stays in the same place, yet a lot of it seems to be moving all the time. Yes, that is confusing, but then such is the nature of this music: very confusing, but pleasant at the same time. Music that is one large head trip for you, providing of course you are open to such buzzing activities. I can easily imagine or even agree if someone would say: but, look; now this is all way too much. If you don’t let this in, you might easily be annoyed by the mass attack of sound. So, open your mind, and flow the waves, the ever-cascading waves of this massive music, then you’ll be in for onehellofa trip to the backside of the moon. That, or maybe a rollercoaster to New Atlantis. (FdW)
Address: http://www.silkentofu.org
JEAN-CLAUDE ELOY – BORDERLINES (CD by Hors Territoires)
In the early nineties French composer Jean-Claude Eloy worked on a commission for the German radio, and recorded a bunch of female voices, reciting texts by his favourite female German writers and decided he also needed some ‘vocal material’, like sighing, shouting, rustles, whispers and for that he recorded one afternoon the voice of Petra Meinel-Winkelbach. That recording he kept and was found last year again and used for this piece, ‘Borderlines’ (which is incidentally also the name of his label, as he’s fascinated with borderline individuals), which makes this a very recent piece, as opposed to some of the older pieces he has been releasing in recent times. It lasts almost eighty minutes and at its foundation is the voice material as well as his set of cowbells, all of them from his own collection. Miss Meinel-Winkelbach died a few years ago and this work is in her memory. It’s a great work; starting out loud with pitched bell sounds, stretched voice material and then in the middle it’s all very quiet and spooky. Buzzing, sparkling, glissandi, sustaining and broken up: all those ingredients of a fine musique concrete piece are in here. It seems to be always on the move however, never staying any long in a particular place, but something new comes in and changes the form of the piece over and over again. This is one to those pieces, at least, that’s how it worked for me best, and to sit back and simply let it roll out, all over you. Don’t spend too much time thinking about it; just close your eyes and enjoy. (FdW)
Address: http://metamkine.com/
DNMF – DNMF [DEAD NEANDERTHALS & MACHINEFABRIEK] (LP by Moving Furniture)
This is one of the few collaborations between artists from completely different backgrounds that just makes sense from the moment you drop the needle until the very last second. Veteran electronic experimenter Rutger Zuydervelt/Machinefabriek and free jazz mammoths Dead Neanderthals teamed up for a show in 2013, only to come up with this beast as a result of that coalescence a year later. With two tracks that visit abyssal and ominous panoramas through slow build-ups and monolithic climaxes, this album drenches you in a soundtrack to soil-covered feral nightmares and unworldly vistas. For those who are into Sunn O))), Ascend, Æthenor and the bulk of stuff out there on Southern Lord, Aurora Borealis and the like; this is an album that really fits right into that spectrum without being an obvious copy of any of those bands, but actually adds some diversity to it. The Lovecraftian titles seem only fitting, though for me the record creates an authentic atmosphere that does not require any reference to a framework of bizarre storytelling. Still, as an analogy, it is very much a valid one. Playing the record for the third time in a row struck me with the thought that this LP puts The Netherlands – which is quite a poor country when it comes to monumentally grotesque musical works – single-handedly back on the avant-garde world map; as an ancient obelisk raised in its darker domains that is. And while I am jotting this eulogy down, the physical release has almost sold out entirely. One can only hope for a repress… (PJN)
Address: https://movingfurniturerecords.bandcamp.com/album/dnmf
Address: https://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/dnmf-2
Address: https://deadneanderthals.bandcamp.com/album/dnmf
SCHREIN – EINSZWEINSCHREIN (LP by Meudiademorte)
JADA – THE VAULTS (double 10″ by Cosmic Volume/Innerlandscapes)
From Germany hails the trio of Schrein: Ruth-Maria Adam, Bastian Hagedorn and Ronnie Oliveras they recorded their album in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin. There are drums, clarinet and violin, and occasionally the addition of their voices; I assume all three of them take duties in that. The members have been involved with the Flamingo Creatures (sometimes with Limpe Fuchs) and Datashock, and claim they ‘are experienced players in a mostly invisible German Experimental Music Underground’. Hagedorn was also member of Gtuk and Ben Butler & Mousepad – I must admit: all very invisible as I never heard of any of this. They shout, scream, whisper and whatever else, while there is a fine torture of instruments going on. Not necessarily very loud or obnoxious (well, perhaps obnoxious to some it will always be), but sometimes carefully playing away their instruments. There is a certain raw and untamed quality about this music, a fine energy in this musicianship, which doesn’t seem to be dealing with how well instruments are played. It’s a clear manifestation of non-musicianship with some hilarious moments, some total embarrassments and some great introspective playing. One of the weirdo’s.
And I hate to lump things together, but I think the new JaDa record is not unlike Schrein, and yet quite different too. Music is one of the many activities of Jan van den Dobbelsteen (Ja) and Danielle Lemaire (Da) who occupy themselves also with visual arts and performances. They have been doing this for a long time, maybe seventeen or so years. This new record, and the title indicates that, is a collection of pieces that have been lying around in their ‘vaults’. Unreleased bits and pieces from all these years. JaDa don’t use a rock line up, but have a wide collection of toy instruments, organs, keyboards, string and whistle instruments, all of which they are not the most proficient players either. Much of this comes with the voice of Lemaire, who recites texts, sings and whispers. Some of these pieces are just them playing around, talking to each other (“don’t make that sound, it’s doesn’t fit”, “what’s this about?”) and as such I think it shares the same non-musicianship sensibility of Schrein and maybe all of this we could see as outsider music. Which in the case of JaDa means they are outsiders when it comes to such notions as a ‘good composition’, ‘a fine recording’ but knowing them it very much their ‘art’ in general and as such they are respect as ‘artists’ by ‘official’ channels. Me personally I liked their more organised music best, but this peak into the vaults is surely as often hilarious, funny and serious. (FdW)
Address: http://www.meudiademorte.de
Address: http://www.iae.nl/users/jada
IL GRANDE SILENZIO – DRY LAKE/EMPTY KETTLE (7″ by Meeuw Muzak)
Meeuw Muzak, the label, and Minoru Sato, the musician, aren’t the busiest around; or, let’s rephrase that, not always the most visible ones. Meeuw Muzak’s 44th release is obviously a 7″ (besides 2 10″ records and one 8″ record there wasn’t anything else) and here’s the work of Il Silenzio Grande: Atsuo Ogawa on banjo and Minoru Sato on electronics. I wasn’t blown away by their debut album on Two Acorns (see Vital Weekly 844), which I maybe thought was all too similar and maybe a bit non-descript, especially Sato’s part of it. But also I surely missed out the conceptual edge of this. Maybe what Il Grande Silenzio does is popmusic? That’s a thought I had when I was playing this 7″. Here Sato’s sine waves come out loud and clear, while Ogawa on the banjo plays some very sparse two notes, every now and then, also loud and clear (I did turn up the volume, I must admit). The other side has a start-stop motorik sound every once in a while. This makes this a totally different song, but surely a great one too. In this format, these two songs, Il Grande Silenzio made much more sense! Excellent record!! (FdW)
Address: http://www.meeuwmuzak.net
DUKE ST. WORKSHOP – CABIN 28 (CDR by Static Caravan)
Believe it or not, but just very recently I started to watch ‘The X Files’ for the first time in my life. I think I wasn’t into TV watching in the nineties when this was first aired, or perhaps it has to do with watching Doctor Who again, that I like to see series like this? Oops, that Doctor Who reference I also made when reviewing the previous release by the mysterious Duke St. Workshop (see Vital Weekly 920, but also 888). According to Static Caravan ‘Cabin 28 is the soundtrack to a cold case from 1981’ and the music, nine pieces in twenty-six minutes depicts a day from dawn till dusk. We now know what Duke St. Workshop does: using some old, analogue synthesizers, a drum machine, maybe an organ of some kind and even a voice through the vocoder in the title piece, makes this another highly retro release. This is the space movie soundtrack of yesteryear. Maybe the lost soundtrack to an episode of ‘Doctor Who’ – first series -, the good old ‘Twilight Zone’ or indeed ‘The X-Files’. Nicely spooky music, but also played with a fine charming naivety. A line from the seventies cosmic music goes right into the eighties synth music (area of Flowmotion and Neumusik) but still sounding very fresh today. Excellent release, sadly one that is way too short! Boohoo. (FdW)
Address: http://www.staticcaravan.org
SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON – A LONG WALK ON WATER (CDR/book by Some)
Another highly limited release by Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, but the book is this time a bit bigger in size, full colour but fewer pages. I realized I never say a lot about his drawings. More so because I don’t consider myself to be an art-critic of any kind but I do like his naive style. It always looks like something rather quick has been made, but it’s the massiveness of drawings in similar style that is what impresses me a lot. It’s perhaps a lot of pictures telling one big story? (See? I’m not an art critic). The music, this time on CDR rather than cassette, is a nineteen minute piece, which we are to understand is a sort of remix of an Icelandic band, Malneirophrenia, of whom I never heard. Sigmarsson had access to the various multi-track parts of the band and without hearing what the total result was of the original songs he started chopping things up, re-arranging and such like right away. Maybe you call this a remix, maybe a rework, but I prefer the more old, 80s expression ‘recycling’. The old music is recycled into something new. This is the kind of piece that has Sigmarsson’s love for drones, but especially towards the end it’s all a bit more acoustic drones, with the multiple layered cell sounds and some isolated piano parts playing along. Maybe an uneasy marriage at that end bit, but in the first sections it works quite well, classical music melted into a gorgeous drone. Another excellent release. Art with the big A! (FdW)
Address: <stilluppsteypa@gmail.com>
STEREOCILIA – GROWING (CDR, private)
Moving from London to Bristol gave John Scott, the man behind Stereocilia, the possibility to build his own studio space and last June he spend time working on new music, which resulted in ‘Growing’. Here we have two pieces of thirteen minutes and in between those one of nearly six minutes. These pieces were all improvised and then edited down. In his new studio set up the looper pedal(s) still play an all-important part. Bits of guitar playing are looped around and used on top of each other and form an endless myriad of sounds – well, at least a few. There isn’t that much difference with the previous release (see Vital Weekly 907) where I compared Stereocilia with Robert Fripp and his mobile unit of tape-recorders, of which the current generation of loop devices is essentially just a new form. It’s all quite easy listening music (not in a new age sense of course), but it tinkles away nicely and it leaves your mind to be free. Sit back, enjoy, do nothing, do a lot. Again we don’t find something that is very new or different than lots of other people who work with guitar and loop devices, but surely I enjoyed this one. (FdW)
Address: http://www.stereociliamusic.com
MARK O’LEARY – ELEKTRONISCHE MUSIC (CDR by TibProd Italy)
MARK O’LEARY – MARKETS (CDR by TibProd Italy)
Household appliances are to be seen on the cover of Mark O’Leary’s ‘Elektronische Musik’ and it says on the information that he was ‘always inspired by the work of Stckhausen and Ligeti created at the Experimental Electronic Music Studio in Cologne’. From then on I must admit I understood less of the information, but I understand label boss Daniele Santini did a remix before releasing this. Or something like that. I had hoped that recordings of household appliances would have been the foundation of some serious electronic music, in good sixties spirit, but these nine pieces are all about minimal techno music. Thanks to Ableton (as mentioned on the cover), whatever original pieces of music there were, are being transformed into beat stuff and I must say it sounds well. I have no idea about the current state of Ableton and how ‘easy’ it is to create music like this, but these nine pieces are quite nice to hear. Nothing new if you have been listening to click ‘n cuts for the last fifteen years or so – say anything from Frank Bretschneider and beyond – but I was doing some cleaning and this surely helped speeding up those chores.
The other release contains music that is better enjoyed when sitting down, which I did after cleaning, drinking coffee. Here, I think, we have Mark O’Leary’s own music, not remixed by someone else and each of the four pieces deals with the sounds of the market. Or markets, plural, I am not sure here. It may be one and the same market these recordings were made, but maybe the plural refers to the four pieces of music that this resulted in. The original recordings are still to be recognized in all four of the pieces and electronic processing is kept to a minimum. Maybe some sounds were accentuated, or treatments were mixed in somewhat more to the low end of the actual mix. There isn’t much variety in this release, I must admit, and it sounded all right, but perhaps it’s also something that you might be able to do yourself all too easily. Tape some sounds with your iphone and get some free granular synthesis patch on the net and no further shopping is required. (FdW)
Address: http://www.tibprod.com/italy
STATIC SOUND – WEST WILL NEVER BE A MUSLIM’S LAND (CDR & Download by Static Sound)
Apparently Static Sound is / are some Italian fundamentalist extremist Christian ‘group’/person who espouses anti Islamic sentiments wrapped in a very fragmented static noise. Once again proving the incoherence of noise, and that this incoherence is nonsensical, then the pro Nazi, anti Nazi, pro Islam anti Islam ‘artists’ working with this genre are either deluded idiots or ironic wannabe hipsters. I always suspect the latter out my benevolent feelings for humanity rather than any actual evidence. I suppose the recent IS stuff fuels this attempt at being something other than just another noise act. Of course the whole thing is mistaken, Islam is not opposed to Christianity, far from it, Jesus is second only to Mohamed as a prophet of God. Furthermore one of the fundamental themes within Islam is charity and tolerance. Add to this that nothing occurs unless God/Allah makes it occur and one can easily think that what is going on in these extreme atrocities is nothing more than confusion. How much does such confusion work to certain power bases I can explore here, as I don’t think anyone important or powerful in the political sphere reads Vital Weekly, but you never know. Wahhabism is the origin of the extreme sects of Islam from which the forces of the west recruit a parasitic counter culture. I did some shooting years ago and a .45 ACP cartridge cost about 25 pence back then, so a round of 7 was setting you back £1.75, checking out with Lucky Gunner (I joke not) its now 80 cents a round- or bang. That makes warfare probably more expensive than ocean yacht racing, which is, as someone told me – ‘equivalent to standing in a cold shower ripping up £20.00 notes’… Maybe if all sides took up sailing? However its obvious that this is no way a serious practical solution, why is there so much fighting in the middle east is because there is no water for the alternative of yacht racing, so firing expensive ammo at each other has to do instead. It is also far less skilful, and you are not cold and wet. So it has absolutely nothing to do with religion or noise. I can and have now not only upset members of both religious cults and arms manufacturers but also it seems the so called politically aware left-wing culture industry who proclaim that making a joke of all this is in bad taste. I’d say killing people is bad taste, making jokes of those that think it cool to do so I reckon is a good thing. Of course the other alternative is to not just follow the media frenzy but start asking questions, such as where is all the money for these wars and fundamentalist groups coming from, and even given the cash, where do they shop for their AK47s and RPGs, checking out my local Tesco’s they seem not to stock them, or can I find anything on eBay other than BB guns… I mean there must be factories making this stuff, warehouses full of it and shipments by the boatload… maybe I’m naïve but it seems daft to wait for all this hardware to start being indiscriminately used before doing anything. Rather than using drones to bomb all and sundry surly we could just stop their cheques? An answer is it suits capitalism to have wars, and I think it’s true, GBS would no doubt agree? But at a “DEEPER” level I think its because its cool. Uniforms, the guns, the mechanics, homo erotic antics, its just much more cool than most other things- cool and easy – like noise? The whole paraphernalia of war is cool, from the long bow and knight in shining armour to the cruise missile and shining laser guided bomb, the gear, the stuff is cool, like the gear the noisier wants to have – but doesn’t need, the racks of modular synths and electronics, the ranting bare-chested ski masked performers – KRISS Super V System (KSVS) machine gun, the “Gen4” by Glock … its all just cool stuff, without any content at all…. You might not like any of this, find it thoroughly unpleasant, you, we, might want everything to be fundamentally nice, but its not- proof – give a violin to a beginner – fundamentally its horrible… and the whole of humanity mastering the violin is unlikely but a far more easy exercise than making everything nice… so the first step of any realism is to realize that the Universe IS very very unpleasant, a trip to Venus or Mars is not to be undertaken lightly without protective clothing… and we live in a fairly benign part of the cosmos… How do we survive given the meaningless chaos (AKA NOISE) in which we find ourselves, well keep your head down? But that’s so boring… doh! (jliat)
Address: http://staticsoundrex.bandcamp.com/album/west-will-never-be-a-muslims-land
SOCRATES MARTINIS – NORTH (3″ CDR and booklet by More Mars)
Socrates Martinis is a self taught artist from Athens – Greece. He writes texts, draws minimalistic paintings and creates sounds by field-recordings, found sounds and objects. “North” is based on the performance “The Wedding and the Negative.” The release is a mix of sound, texts and graphics. The CD-r starts with a big bang and flows into the quiet track “The Wedding” with some subtle noise and minimal changes. Great piece of minimal noise. The last track “Sign and afterword” has more diversity and starts very intense and harsh and ends in silence. In between the sounds change into other noisy sounds and flows into a more silent ongoing repeating drone. The booklet is like a classical poembook and consists poems and drawings of Martinis. The poems are in Greece and English and describes the nature, old myths or about the memory. The poems written between 2009 and 2013. This release gives a good insight of the artistic world of Socrates Martinis. The combination of poetry, drawings and sound has been well done and it is nice that the release is small (the booklet has size A6) what gives a intimate and personal touch to this release. (JKH)
Address: http://www.moremars.org
VISITORS – HELLO WORLD (cassette by Barreuh Records)
If this cassette had shown up in the post, I would have surely thrown it away. It says ‘bar-cas-13’ and shows an image of a robot on the front. No further information. And as you can read on below “Some people think it’s perhaps ‘cool’, ‘fun’, ‘art’ or otherwise to send something to Vital Weekly that has no information. Don’t bother doing this: anything that is too hard to decipher will be thrown away”. But the composer, Bertin, handed me this when he was performing as Visitors last Friday. “There is no information on it”, he said, but I noted that already. I have high regards for Bertin (who wrote the timeless classic ‘Videorecorder’, which for me is right up there with The Normal’s ‘TV OD’) and his project, and sure, the titles are on discogs anyway. Nine songs here of Visitors robotic pop music. This is retro-futurist music. Bertin sings with a vocoder voice, the rhythm machine ticks away and with the help of a Korg MS20 and some small casio keyboards he crafts great pop music. Songs about robots, time travel, brave new world and rocket science. ‘Interior’ wasn’t a song I liked too much, otherwise these part sad, part fun songs made a great impression on me. Bertin cool performance mode is a great one: why isn’t up there with the stars, like Felix Kubin I wondered and enjoys vinyl releases of his work, or video clips going viral? There is hardly any justice in the world! (FdW)
Address: https://www.facebook.com/barreuh
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All written by Frans de Waard (FdW), Dolf Mulder (DM) <dolf.mulder@hetnet.nl>, Niels Mark (NM), Jliat (Jliat), Freek Kinkelaar (FK), Jan-Kees Helms (JKH), Michael Tau (MT) and others on a less regular basis.
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The editor can shorten announcements. Please do NOT send any attachments/jpg’s, we will trash them without viewing.
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Some people think it’s perhaps ‘cool’, ‘fun’, ‘art’ or otherwise to send something to Vital Weekly that has no information. Don’t bother doing this: anything that is too hard to decipher will be thrown away. Also we have set this new policy: Vital Weekly only concerns itself with new releases. We usually act quickly, so sending us something new means probably the first review you will see. If we start reviewing older material we will not be able to maintain this. Please do not send any thing that is older than six months. Anything older will not be reviewed. In both cases: you can save your money and spend it otherwise.
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