number 1047
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week 36 ---------------------
Vital Weekly, the webcast: we offering a weekly webcast,
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WRANGLER — WHITE GLUE (CD by MemeTune Recordings) * LEGIAC — THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT (CD by Dronarivm) * JASON SHARP — A BOAT UPON ITS BLOOD (CD by Constellation Records) * OFF WORLD — 1 (CD by Constellation Records) * AUTOMATISME — MOMENTFORM ACCUMULATIONS (CD by Constellation Records) * STAR TURBINE — NOTHING SHOULD MOVE UNLESS YOU WANY IT TO (CD by Frozen Light) * GINTAS K — DIMENSIONS (CD by Frozen Light) * IOS & SOPHUS — LOVE OF ONE (CD by Frozen Light) * EE ES EM — BYLONEBYLIRYBANARUBY (CD by Napalmed) * RLW & PAAK — ZUR ARBEIT 1 (LP by Attenuation Circuit) THE UNMEDIATED MEDIATION (LP by Onomatopee) GREAT WAITRESS — HUE (LP by Another Dark Age) JONAS OLESEN — OBJEKT #3 (vinyl object by Bin) NIKLAS ADAM — A3&B (12"" by Bin) DUKE ST WORKSHOP — SCURO ESTIVO (7" by Static Caravan) * ALESSANDRO SERAVALLE — MORFOCREAZONI I-V (CDR by Setola Di Maiale) * ATARAXIC ATAXIA — SHADOW SEA (CDR by No Part Of It) * BLOOD RHYTHMS — SKIN FLINT (CDR by No Part Of It/Ka Rey Eye Tapes) * MEINEIN/N(48) (split CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * KONKETE ANTI-WULST — DIE GESPENSTISCHE MISTHAUFEN-KONSERVE (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * SKREI — CÖRENGRÄTÖ (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * ALTESA — SENSAZIONI (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * BELLEROPHONE — STRAW DOG (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * LE SCRAMBLED DEBUTANTE - SAPPHIRE IN THE PANCREAS (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * MODELBAU — LIFEBOAT (cassette by No Rent Records) * DRUUNA JAGUAR & PHANTASM NOCTURNES — SPECULATIVE REALISM (cassette by Cruel Nature Records) DRUUNA JAGUAR / HEIDYYOUKO — SPLIT (cassette, no label) WRANGLER — WHITE GLUE (CD by MemeTune Recordings) These days one can witness Cabaret Voltaire in full action again, and I understand one either hates or likes it; I have yet to speak someone who holds the middle ground. Which I guess is a good thing. But CV these days is just Richard H. Kirk, as Stephen Mallinder left the band in the mid-90s to pursue other musical interests, such as Sassi and Loco, the Ku-Ling Bros and Hey Rube, while getting a PhD in music and popular culture (you can find his thesis online somewhere) and these days has a new trio called Wrangler ('White Glue' is their second release, following 'LA Spark', from 2014), along with Phil Winter (of Tunng) and Benge, who we know as modular synth enthusiast since before the days everybody started to use them and who is these days also a driving force behind John Foxx & The Maths. No doubt the three members of Wrangler see things different, but it's of course Mallinder who is stage centre grabbing the attention, but I must say that's also because his voice sounds very recognizable, no matter how many vocoder treatments it gets. A while back I played everything that I could from Cabaret Voltaire, physical and otherwise, and decided that for me the early period, up to the mid 80s where their best period, and their nod to house and techno didn't cut it for me. Much of what Kirk did after I enjoyed, especially the first Sandoz release, but I never kept up with Mallinder after his exit from the band. I think it is safe to say that much of what makes Wrangler is directly influenced by the sound of Cabaret Voltaire, perhaps more than what goes under that name these days, judging by the clips that pop up every now and then. 'Dirty' with its guitar chops and stop/start rhythm, and a funky bass sequencer could be mid 80s CV. And much of that has to do with the vocals of Mallinder, that much is sure. The other two members handle their warm and old analogue synthesizers with great care and up the tempo a bit more compared to the old days, and create a beautiful album of synth based music, with lots and lots of rhythm; either from connecting all the modulars together or maybe out of a box — who cares, I would think. The nine pieces are a pleasantly varied bunch, some of the songs in a fine up-tempo beat and others a bit slower. But nevertheless all of this makes up for some great pop music; I spun this at least six times in two days and never had enough. Excellent release. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.memetune.net LEGIAC — THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT (CD by Dronarivm) Behind Legiac we find the duo of Roel Funcken and Cor Bolten. The first is perhaps best known as one half of Funckarma, with his brother Don and Bolten was a member of Dutch post-punk legends Mecano. Somewhere in 2002/2003 they met up as part of a project called Dif:use, in which a whole bunch of laptop musicians, played together for a couple of night. I didn't like it very much; lots of reverb and echo to create an ambient sound and 'spiced' up with a couple of beats. The CD that was subsequently released was reviewed in Vital Weekly 600 and not received favourably. I have no idea if the two men worked together in between, although there has been an album as Legiac in 2007 and one last year, by Tympanik Audio. This new album takes the Voyncuh manuscript as it inspiration. This 15th century manuscript is by an unknown author (and named after the person who obtained it in 1912) and is a complete mystery still as to what it means; language that doesn't make any sense, along with images of plants, of biological nature and stars. Well, that is perhaps, as it is still waiting to be decrypted. It looks great, and all along listening to the ambient music of Legiac I watched the online version of it and reading about this fascinating mystery. The music itself is perhaps less of a mystery. There is an extensive use of field recordings (thanks to Taavi Tulev), synthesizers and sound treatments, creating a fine piece of cosmic music. Of course there is quite some use of reverb, but whatever rhythm these men use, it no longer belongs to the world of dance music, as it did with their other project. This music is hardly a surprise if one looks at fifty years of ambient music, going from the classic Brian Eno records and seventies cosmic music, all the way via 90s releases on Fax Records, up to post 2000 ambient glitch and computer processed sounds. But of course originality and innovation is not something one always needs, I would think. The eleven pieces on 'The Voynich Manuscript' are short, around three to five minutes in general, and to the point. Legiac doesn't expand too much on a theme by staying somewhere very long and that is perhaps something others could take their cue from. Keep it concise; make it beautiful; that is something that Legiac does wonderfully well. (FdW) ––– Address: http://dronarivm.com/ JASON SHARP — A BOAT UPON ITS BLOOD (CD by Constellation Records) OFF WORLD — 1 (CD by Constellation Records) AUTOMATISME — MOMENTFORM ACCUMULATIONS (CD by Constellation Records) There was a time when every new release by Constellation Records was welcomed and that was even our small avant-garde shop realized that Godspeed You Black Emperor delivered such great music and everybody else knew this already. But post-shop, post-label and writing only, the label moved out of sight and I had no idea they were still a going concern. But lo and behold here we have three new releases, with catalogue numbers above 100, so a quick look at their site proves they were very active in all these years. None of these three names meant much to me, so I started with Jason Sharp. Most curious it lists 'amplified heart' as one of the instruments he plays, along with feedback, synthesizers and bass saxophone, along with Joe Grass on pedal steel guitar and Joshua Zubot on violin. ‘The Heart’, a poem by Robert Creeley, inspires the music. Sharp is from Montreal where he plays with jazz musicians, improvised music and contemporary ensemble. On his solo album his heart beat and breath are translated via custom-built equipment electronics and form the basis of these seven pieces. It starts out with the first part of the title piece and that sounds quite electronic; perhaps not something I would expect on Constellation that easily. It's a beautiful piece of layered electronics, drone like and pulsating in the background, with the emphasis on the atmosphere rather than the rhythm. But then in the next piece the other instruments are added and it all moves towards a more rock oriented drone; Jesse Zubot adds a drum machine and synthesizer to two pieces and a group named Architek Percussion add microphone and mini amp.It moves from the louder end of drones in 'A Blast At Best' to more introspective and moody textures in 'Still I Sit, With You Inside Me', of which the second part is all the more post rocky. In the third part of the title piece a drum machine sound alike pops up, imitating the sound of a train. The heartbeat like sound is the core of each track, but in some of these it seems to be less present than in others. All in all this is a highly varied release and a most enjoyable one. Sharp offers variation but also presents some very coherent music, using different angles for his music. Something different is the music of Off World, a new group around Polmo Polpo boss Sandro Perri, who also worked under his own with 'tropicalia, jazz, prog-influenced vocal music. He also recorded throughout all of this music that works with acoustic and electronic instruments, with 'pointillist aleatory composition techniques', and starting with '1' there will three volumes with pieces he recorded in the past years. Perri is the boss in the studio, playing electronics, guitar, harpsichord and piano and there is a bunch of musicians adding electronics, drum machine, banjo, viola and violin, whereas more than one musician adds electronics. Much of what ended up on '1' was recorded over a two-day period in London, when Perri met with Drew Brown (Lower Dens, Blonde Redhead, Beck) and together with the other musicians such as Susumu Mukai and MJ Silver) they laid down the foundation of these pieces with old synthesizers (EMS Synthi, Syntochestra, Prophet 5), later on adding the other instruments. This is not music that one could easily define as one thing or another. There is certainly an element of jazz music in here, even when it sounds all quite electronic most the times. There is an element of abstraction in these pieces but at the same time it all sounds quite melodic also, most of the times. It may sound improvised, but then using studio technology means there is also more organisation in these pieces. Curiouser and curiouser; this is the kind of music that is not easily pinned down to being one thing or another. That is great, but then so is the music, as I thought this is an excellent release. Something entirely different (again!) is the music from William Jourdain who works as Automatisme. He is from Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec and works since 2013 releasing albums and tracks, in which he takes 'site-specific field recordings' as a starting point, which he then feeds into synthesizers to transform them into music that both owes to the world of drones and that of beats. He takes his cue from Pan Sonic, Pole and Carsten Nicolai, all from their early work (1995-2002). Constellation says that even then, when the label seemed more about rock and punk, they were big fans of the genre, so for them it is a logical thing to release this kind of electronic music. 'Momentform Accululations' is the first physical album by Automatisme and it is a most enjoyable one. I couldn't say what kind of field recordings went into his machines; for all I know, there might be no field recordings at all, as whatever Automatisme does, it sounds all purely electronic. His aim is not directly at the dance market, I would think. I am not even sure if his music would do well in such a place. He uses quite a bit of beats, but very single-minded focussing on the bass drum at times; it's not some crushing 4/4 beat pattern luring people who dance on to the stage. Automatisme's compositions are dark and atmospheric, such as the high pitched drones versus low pitched drones and beats of 'Simultanéité 1' (there are three pieces titled 'Simultanéité') which is all the more about listening and experiencing, but perhaps this is Automatisme at it's most abstract. Drones play an important role in all of this, but in the other two parts the rhythm is more complex. In the three pieces that are called 'Transport' the rhythm is more upfront and present, and one can see Automatisme is inspired by the minimalism of the 90s, and I'd like to add Basic Channel and Chain Reaction to the list of possible inspirations. I thought this was a most enjoyable release of music that seemed out of place on this label, but then because of that, it also made totally sense. (FdW) ––– Address: http://cstrecords.com/ STAR TURBINE — NOTHING SHOULD MOVE UNLESS YOU WANY IT TO (CD by Frozen Light) GINTAS K — DIMENSIONS (CD by Frozen Light) IOS & SOPHUS — LOVE OF ONE (CD by Frozen Light) By now Russia's Frozen Light looks further afield and so they now release the very first CD by Star Turbine, following a string of previous CDR and cassette releases by this duo. Behind Star Turbine we find Claus Poulsen from Denmark, who is also a member of Small Things On Sundays and Sindre Bjerga, best known for his solo work, his duo with Iversen and a whole bunch of other names, such Tech Riders. While I saw various other incarnations of mister Bjerga, I never saw a concert by Star Turbine, but judging by the five live recordings presented here, I have some idea. Whatever Bjerga does solo, contact microphones, steel object, wires, walkmans, he brings to the table of whoever he is working with, and perhaps so does the other partner. In Poulsen's case this is a bunch of electronics of whatever kind (analogue, laptop) and mixed media sources (walkman, radio and such like). Both men contribute to the sound, which is dark, atmospheric and drone like and yet never looses its experimental edge. Movements within the piece is quite minimal, perhaps along the guidelines provided by the title, but it is not a complete thing of no change. Star Turbine creates fields of sounds, moving without changing, but it is Bjerga I think who makes all the small moves here, his Walkman manipulations, as shown by the sixth track, which is Poulsen remix of Bjerga source material, which moves gentle around drones being slightly more upfront. A fine document of what they do in concert, I'd say. Gintas K has been around for quite some time now, and he works these days within the realm of serious computer music. The thirty-five minute title piece was presented during the 21st International Symposium On Electronic Art in Vancouver and 'created/ played using Plogue Bidule software and various VST plugins. Plugins were assigned and controlled by midi keyboard and midi controllers. All the elements were played live', as it says on the cover. Maybe whatever the computer does is all purely electronic, like constant filtering and treatment of it's own sound, but maybe there is something that goes into the machine, like field recordings. I doubt that, as what I hear sounds very digital and quite distorted at that. This is some serious radical computer music that requires quite a bit of strength from the listener. The first twelve or so minutes are pretty hardcore and quite demanding on the listener. Not because it is loud per se, but quite gritty, abstract and without much logical sequence. In other parts of this piece that is repeated and while there are also lengthy passages that are quieter, this is music that remains quite demanding, well, perhaps because it has parts that very quiet. As a sort of coda there is also 'Antras Galas', which stays on the same level for the entire six minutes and comes across as a very chaotic piece of computer sounds, that come in a multitude and they are all demanding your immediate attention. Much of what I heard here, I heard before, which was a pity, as I sometimes hope for a new direction. [S] is the mysterious man behind many projects such as Exit In Grey, Five Elements Music, Radioson, Redhouse, Black Deal With Snow, Candyman And Evil Flowers and Sister Loolomie, but now he adds Ion & Sophus to that list and I must confess I lost track of the differences between all these names. I believe some were to be a bit more on the experimental side, but when I am listening to the two pieces on 'Love Of One' I don't seem to hear much difference with some of his other output. Here we have two pieces made with the use of field recordings on the Black Sea and these sea waves are transformed into two pieces of ambient music/drone/atmospherics of the highest order. In the first part these waves sound suddenly very synthesizer like, which hoovers closely to the world of new age. The second part on the other hand shows that the roots of [S] lie firmly within the world of dark drones and the sombre atmosphere surely reflect the name of the sea. I was thinking in terms of day and night here. The first is light and it is the daytime, whereas the second is the nighttime version of the piece. The first has majestic waves but in the night version it is all rather a bit staler and we must be careful our vessel doesn't hit upon objects floating in the water. Pleasantly dark and hardly a surprise in musical development. (fdW) ––– Address: http://www.frzl.ru EE ES EM — BYLONEBYLIRYBANARUBY (CD by Napalmed) While this is a CD release in an edition of 300 copies, the cover is just a black and white Xerox folded around the CD and sealed with a plastic fish. That calls for improvement I'd say. The press text is a bit cryptic as to what I am hear, but here's the deal (I think!); two pieces recorded live at a club called Rybanaruby on June 23 2016, which together lasts about thirty-five minutes. Then there is also a studio session of thirty-six minutes, divided into 97 pieces on the CD for your random shuffle pleasure (I didn't know people cared about that these days). eE eS eM, as is the preferred spelling, is a three piece improvisation group, with Radek on '3pisynthesizer' and effects, Honza on effects and vocals and tenor saxophone on one piece, and Zdenek on vocals and effects, while on the studio pieces that changes to Zdenda ('souchirekorder', effects), Ienda (tenor saxophone, effects) and Radeg, the same as before, except that he spells his name different. Phew. That is all quite complicated, I would think. The music is pretty minimal and yet very noisy. Not exactly noise in the meaning of harsh noise wall, but a rather concentrated effort on doing the same set of sounds over and over. The vocals are here to produce throat noises rather than scream or shout. Comparing the studio and live versions of this band, I prefer the studio variation over the live version. Simply because there is a lot more happening in here and there is more depth in the material. Surely the element of playing this in a random/shuffle mode surely helped, even when you skip manually the two live recordings every now and then. Quite a blast this one, but a most enjoyable one. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.discogs.com/label/14185-Napalmed RLW & PAAK — ZUR ARBEIT 1 (LP by Attenuation Circuit) You could easily forget that among the vast amount of CDR and cassette releases by Attenuation Circuit (see also elsewhere) they also release CDs and LPs, and here's one of the latter variety. RLW I should hope, despite releasing a lot less these days, is the well-known brainchild of Ralf Wehowsky, who in the early 80s was the main force behind P16.D4 and the Selektion label. Paak is perhaps less known, but Peter Kästner hails from Hamburg, Germany, and works quite a bit with TBC (see Vital Weekly 987). I assume this record is the result of exchanging sound materials back and forth. Paak gets credit for microphone, voice and noise and RLW for playing the harpsichord, mellotron, rhythm machine, and transformations, while also mixing the side long piece that is 'Schnaps' and 'Gerberei' on the flip, while Paak created the 'Kantine' piece. There seems to be a political theme throughout this record, which is about 'work', and the situation workers are in today. Those seem to be the basics of this release. I must say that I didn't hear much difference between the two pieces mixed by RLW and the one by Paak, which I guess is a good thing, even Paak seems to be using a lot less of the instrument recordings. Like many of the records by RLW, solo and otherwise, it is all about the balance between non-instruments, noise, objects and such like on one hand and instruments on the other. To hear the mellotron and harpsichord is perhaps quite odd as they surely add a more musical dimension to the release. Sometimes the two are set apart, with a block of 'instruments', followed by a block of 'noise', but sometimes they also are overlaying each other. Especially the harpsichord is a really weird instrument I would think. It is full of history, like baroque music, but it sounds wacky, funny, silly or simply bizarre, when it pops up in these electro-acoustic compositions. It's not easy to make up my mind regarding 'Schnaps', the piece in which these instruments sound most; I think I preferred the second side better. Here the pieces were stricter in composition, tighter if you will, reminding the listener of P16.D4 at times (well, this listener anyway), and there was a fine amount of tension right under the surface, which made me listen over and over again. No work was done, but that's okay. We live in a different age I guess. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.attenuationcircuit.de/ THE UNMEDIATED MEDIATION (LP by Onomatopee) Now here's something quite curious; an exhibition catalogue, and that perhaps is not something unusual in these pages. Here it is the exhibition 'Not Making Sense As Something Else', organised by P/////AKT in Amsterdam and curated by Freek Lomme, whom you could know as the driving force behind Onomatopee from Eindhoven, releasing books (mostly), art objects and records, but who is also a poet. In many of his works, Lomme is quite the conceptual artist and this is not different. Here the exhibition and the catalogue reflect upon 'the way the various exhibitions come about, as unmediated mediation typical to the production and presentation of artist-run projects'. The exhibition consisted of works by Bram de Jonghe, Dan Walwin, Bas Van Den Hurk & Hans Demeulenaere, Claudia Pagès & Ulijona Odišarija, Roderick Hietbrink and Kasper Bosmans and in the booklet there are small pictures of the artworks made, but for each artist there is also a list of materials brought to the exhibition. Carved into the vinyl we find Lomme's words in which he describes the works, just as he saw the works. Very descriptive and not very much like a review of the works, nor explaining context or history. Part of this is in English and part in Dutch, and as far as I can tell, the English is the translation of the original Dutch. Lomme calls these poems and while he whispers much of the text (remember: silence in the gallery!) and it has a strange captive feel to it. Lomme recites his texts very dry and without much emotion, so it seems at least most of the time, but his delivery makes you want to listen on. I am not sure if this is the kind of record you would want to play a lot of times or if this is something to shock your friends with; 'this is some crazy shit art record'. I guess it could go either way. I quite enjoyed this oddity. (FdW) ––– Address: http://onomatopee.net/ GREAT WAITRESS — HUE (LP by Another Dark Age) With the first release by Great Waitress I got band name and title mixed up, but now, with their third release (the second went by not reviewed) I do a better job (I hope). Great Waitress is a trio Monika Brooks on accordion and Laura Altman on clarinet, and both are from Australia, who team up with Berlin based Magda Mayas (piano). The two sidelong pieces were recorded in 2014 in Sydney and while the labels states that the vinyl format is what this group always deserved, I am not so sure about that. Partly because the music that these ladies play is quite soft and quite spaced out. It makes that one hears the surface of the record and scratches pretty early on, and that I think is a pity. The instruments played always remain sounding like a piano, accordion and clarinet, and as whatever else can happen if you use objects. Great Waitress likes to keep it very restricted to the actual instruments themselves, but clarinet and accordion produce sustaining tones, with lots of gestures moving to and from the microphone. The piano might be bowed with a bow at times, or plucked on the inside, and perhaps as such is a bit of an oddball in here. Despite the fact that the music is very quiet, it is very intense. Sounds move very slow and interact in a great way together. The three players listen closely to what the others are doing and act correspondingly; or don't act at all, which is of course the best thing about excellent improvised music; the ability to not do anything at all when that is required. That calls for a high level of concentration on behalf of the players, but also from the listener. Only if you are prepared to fully immerse yourself in this dark forest of carefully played sounds, a great and unique sound world will unfold right before your ears. (FdW) ––– Address: http://anotherdarkage.bigcartel.com JONAS OLESEN — OBJEKT #3 (vinyl object by Bin) NIKLAS ADAM — A3&B (12"" by Bin) As much as I would love to do so, reviewing anything else than music is really a hard task. That 'else' includes video art, literature, poetry, sculptures or art-objects, such as Jonas Olesen's 'Objekt #3', which is a 7" (black vinyl), stuck on a 10" (white vinyl), stuck on a 12" (black again). Now I thought this was the thing, an object of records stuck together, but upon inspecting the website, I read this: 'several vinyl sizes are glued together, forming an audible staircase and, at the same time, a visual object. Where a new vinyl size begins, the pickup arm will stop and begin to loop, and thus requires an action from the listener to advance to the next track.' It is with some hesitation that I played this staircase of records, as it looks like something that could potentially damage your styles. I am not sure, seeing this is an edition of 25 copies, if all of these records were made for this project, or perhaps if they are available somewhere else, in a different form. The music by Olesen is made with electronics, sine waves, clicks, cuts and what could be the crackle of vinyl (unless that stylus damage is something that just happened). It is the kind of glitch music from yesteryear but it still sounds great I think. Olesen deals with minimalism, as probably the genre wants it to be, but it is quite fascinating. The 12" has click loops, the 7" some continuous sine-drone and the 10" holds the middle ground between both ends. The record by Niklas Adam was previously released in 2010, and now there is a repress, in an edition of just 80 copies. The music was recorded in 2009 in East Jutland and on one side he plays baritone and alto saxophone along with Danielle Dahl and on the other side he gets help from Benjamin Lesak, and together with Adam he plays the harmonium. These pieces are from his earliest work as a sound artist when he was focussing on 'near-static and reductionist acoustic music', which surely it is on the first side, which is called 'A3'. One has to crank up the volume quite a bit and unlike the Great Waitress record reviewed elsewhere, hiss and crackles are necessary components of the music. Lots of room sound from where they made the recording and very little in terms of saxophones. Just the odd tone here and there. Take down the volume a bit when flipping this record over for the other side is 'louder', but works along similar principles of playing sound in a room and capturing that sound from a bit further away, allowing more 'room' in these recordings and the two harmoniums play at first a more drone like piece, which is all dark and mysterious, but towards the end it sounds more like we just hear the lungs of the harmonium, treated as electro-acoustic objects, which ooze great obscure atmosphere. A most curious record, and perhaps the first side is not the easiest music to hear, but it sounds all highly captivating. (FdW) ––– Address: http://totem.menneske.dk/ DUKE ST WORKSHOP — SCURO ESTIVO (7" by Static Caravan) Perhaps this has to go here, as a 7", but since I got this on CDR, with a text that says it was released as lathe cut (size not specified). Seeing both tracks are just over three minutes it is fair to say it is a 7". Following their LP with Laurence R Harvey telling tales by H.P. Lovecraft (see Vital Weekly 1017) and a string previous releases, they are now on their own again, and apparently the focus on these two new pieces is less on the warm, analogue synthesizers and more on other, not specified, instruments, but I imagine these might flute, drums, piano, Hammond organ and such like. With the first part of the title track they opt for a vaguely exotic sound, mainly through the use of percussion, but it's a very laidback song, and a great one at that. On the flip the second part starts out with the piano, but soon drums and synthesizers take over and there is even a bunch of humming voices to be noted in this song, but it has a similar nostalgia feel to it. That is something that remains then for Duke St Workshop: nostalgia for old film tunes, 60's science fiction and playing the musical mood card par excellence. Why is this on lathe cut, I wondered? A bigger audience should hear this. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.staticcaravan.org ALESSANDRO SERAVALLE — MORFOCREAZONI I-V (CDR by Setola Di Maiale) The name of guitarist Alessandro Seravalle came up in a review of a release by Schwingungen 77 Entertainment, back in Vital Weekly 945. This time he has a solo release, the first under his own name. He is also a member of the band Garden wall, with whom he recorded eight records so far, but none of which I heard. Other projects in which he also appears are James Frederik Willet, Agrapha Dogmata, Tzim Tzim, Bonsoir Trio and SeTe, while Genoma was an earlier solo project. His musical range lies within improvised music, ambient and experiment. As such we can also regard this new solo album, which is inspired by a neologism coined by Henri Michaux in the 50s, called 'morphocreations', and for Sevaralle it is based upon improvisation and a dialogue with himself 'on the basis of the emerging of auditory forms, often unforeseen and yet always related to an idea or a basic mood', to keep a close relationship within the ghosts within himself and such like. His text is longer and hard to summarize in a few words; perhaps also because I may not entirely understand what he is about. The five pieces are listed with all the sources they use, such as in the first one 'for jack wire, live electronics, hollow body electric guitar, samples and post-treatments' or the last one 'for freezed-and-not voices'. How does that work, you may wonder. In each of these pieces there seems to be a frame work, sounds that are continuously present; not necessarily long form drones or short repeating sounds, but something on a long sustaining level, and on top of these sounds, Sevaralle freely improvises with his guitar sounds, either in real time or sampled and layered, as with the voices in the final piece, in which guitars also seem to be absent and which is therefore also a but different in approach than the other four pieces, but all of this sounds pretty I must say. There is very fine combination of improvised music and more atmospheric patterns of sound manipulation, which is not something that hasn't been explored before, but it is something that is done very well in the capable hands of Seravalle. (FdW) ––– Address: http://setoladimaiale.net/ ATARAXIC ATAXIA — SHADOW SEA (CDR by No Part Of It) BLOOD RHYTHMS — SKIN FLINT (CDR by No Part Of It/ Ka Rey Eye Tapes) For one reason or another I thought I heard the heard Ataraxic Ataxia before but it seems I am mistaken. I only found one release for this duo of electronics and violin, as produced by Dominick Dufner and Nicole Pizzato, who hail from Columbia, Missouri, and that release is 'Shadow Sea'. According to Discogs previously available as a digital release, but the cover also mentions a release in an edition of 23 copies by Side Of The Sun Recordings (No Part Of it mentions they also had a bunch of other, very limited releases). So you could easily believe there is some interest in this material. I am not sure why, other perhaps than that this is unavailable at the moment. There are six pieces of music on this release, and all of them seem to me to be the result of improvisation. One of the pieces is recorded in concert and that's the moment when the music is really loud and noisy. I prefer the other five pieces, in which we find the violin to be pleasantly played against a backdrop of more noise oriented electronics, but whoever is responsible keeps it under control; most of the time that is. In 'Shotguns, Phrenology And A Steady Hand', the noise prevails and there is some serious string abuse, but it followed by the great subdued tones of 'If It Happens Once, It May As Well Have Never Happened'. Ataraxic Ataxia walks the fine line between industrial noise patterns and improvised violin and they do a pretty neat job. Sometimes a bit long as is to be expected, but pretty decent noise anyway. Blood Rhythms' 'Heuristics' were already reviewed a few weeks back (Vital Weekly 1042) and here they return with another release. On 'Skin Flint' the band consists of core member Arvo Zylo, this joined by Wyatt Howland. Three pieces here, of which the first one is the title piece and at twenty-two minutes also the longest. It was assembled from a sixty-two minute improvisation and consists of very harsh noise; just that and nothing else. What was there to assembly, I wondered. I don't mind a bit of harsh noise, but I prefer if there is a bit more thought went into it. That doesn't happen here. 'Melt Compartment' starts out way softer with some mild, low resolution samples but by slowly adding sound effects the piece becomes another industrial affair, which can also be said of 'Zippers With Eyes', but then with a sample that is a bit more rhythmical. The music is very much as it was recorded, in all it's full glory, without any kind of editing. I must admit I though this was all a bit too much for me. I love a bit of noise, but I also love a bit of thought put into the noise, and that's something I missed in this particular release. (FdW) ––– Address: http://nopartofit.blogspot.com MEINEIN/N(48) (split CDR by Attenuation Circuit) KONKETE ANTI-WULST — DIE GESPENSTISCHE MISTHAUFEN- KONSERVE (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) SKREI — CÖRENGRÄTÖ (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) ALTESA — SENSAZIONI (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) BELLEROPHONE — STRAW DOG (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) LE SCRAMBLED DEBUTANTE - SAPPHIRE IN THE PANCREAS (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) First of all, let me share some disappointment with you. This is maybe the first of two long reviews devoted to no less than thirteen new releases by Attenuation Circuit. Now, in the past I complained if a label send me more than three, which I think is really enough, but 13 sets a new record (and that's no invitation to top that). But what I also find a bit disappointing is the fact there is no information save for the LP on this one; I will review that one elsewhere. I was used to getting information on every release, but in their successful attempt to overproduce, the label no longer seems to care about additional information, and with some of the releases having rather cryptic covers, it is not easy to something worthwhile. I'm sorry about that. The first one I pulled out of this bunch is a split of Meinein and N(48), which includes a track by each plus a collaborative piece. I have no idea who Meinein is and behind N(48) we find Hellmut Neidhart; well, actually the band name is N and the number is consecutive number of pieces he made so far. Much of his music is from the world of ambient, drones and such like, all done with guitars and effects. Meinein surely comes from a similar background, using samples and electronics, but once I got to the piece by N(48), a most powerful piece of drone music, Meinein seemed a faded memory. It didn't make much impression, unlike the N(48) blast; organ like drones, mildly distorted, a drone heavy weight. Their piece together is the longest on the disc and combines both ends. The guitar of N is still quite loud, but not as loud as on his own and Meinein delivers a fine tapestry of changing motifs on his sampler to go along. The second half of the piece is much darker and it ends with the usual 'let's all go ape-shit loud now' — a steady fixture for improvisers in the realm of the electronic, yet an unnecessary one, I would think. I continued my trip into the great unknown with one Holger Bischoff, who works as Konkete Anti-Wulst, which, despite many years studying the German language in school, I can't translate, and it goes also for the title. When they were a duo, I reviewed their 'Unsichtbare Zwilinge' (Vital Weekly 946). The cover looks a bit like an old HNAS record, and seeing 'tapes, korg and glocken' mentioned (the latter meaning 'bells', I knew that), I hoped for a fine manipulation of bell sounds with a reel-to-reel tape machine; the rough edge of musique concrete. That is not the case, and just like the last time I got it wrong. The forty-eight minute piece is quite loud, and seems to me some kind of 'direct-to-tape' action piece. Surely 'rough' is the right word here. Somewhere between minute mark 12 and 17 the volume drops a bit, but otherwise it is on the same level and that is loud. It's the kind of power electronics/industrial music that was once popular, and luckily this comes without the obligatory imagery of porn and swastikas. I can imagine listening to this factory floor (the bells! the bells! where are they?), is surely great to do, on that spot, in that time frame, but is it also for an external listener? I am not sure here. Skrei is Giuseppe Capriglione, and of him I didn't hear before. Apparently he uses one tape loop as a sound source, which is then processed and reworked using a multi-tracker tape recorder. Here too we have the impression of a (semi-) live recording, the immediate action of recording an idea, rather than meticulously performed composition that is the result of editing. It is not as not noise based as the release I just heard, but the industrial element is never far away. Here too one easily has the impression of being locked down in a factory, and the workers aren't out for lunch break. It is also a bit unformed, not entirely finished or simply the result of improvising with a bunch of tapes. Having said that, I found more musical pleasure in these thirty-one minutes than in the Konkete Anti-Wulst release. One could think of this as some kind of unnerving ambient music. If you want! A little bit shorter (twenty-nine minutes) but a little bit louder is the release by Altese. The cover says that the music is composed and arranged by Alessandro Quintavalle, but Luca Canciello mixed it, so I am not sure how and why that is. Obviously there is no mention of any instruments, or any of that ilk, so my best guess is some collision of synthesizers, sound effects, stomp boxes or digital, and maybe some kind of sampler or drum machine. You never know these days, do you? I assume Altesa hails from Italy, a country with a lively harsh noise scene (I never figured out why, come to think of it), but I can easily see Mauthausen Orchestra, MB or LXSS being the main inspiration for this unrelentless industrial noise. There is that word again. What's wrong with me today? In all the 'tags' Atenuation Circuit use on their bandcamp page, this is the one they don't use, oddly enough so it seems to me. I like good slab of old school industrial noise; a bit of distortion, a bit of feedback, even a bit of rhythm from time to time, minimal as they are, some fucked radio transmissions, and ending in a good all white noise out. Not for daily consumption however, this one. Bellerophone then is also something I had not encountered before. Here we have one piece that lasts thirty-one minutes (which seems a standard thing, right?) and a quote from Tao Te Ching on the cover. No instruments are mentioned; no… ah… you know the drill by now. Music wise we are finally allowed some place of rest here. Finally the tag 'drone' actually means something, I would think, even when the drone doesn't have the form of a cigar (quick fade in, and staying on the same volume level for the rest of the piece), but an active, lively piece of slowly enveloping minimal electronic sound. I would think this is all the work of electronics, mainly synthesizers making curves and waves, rather than being set to sustain on the same tone for an endless amount of time. As said minimalism rules in this piece and for the main part it is all quite low in volume, going from mid-range to low-range, on an active course of change, ending on a more fierce note towards the end, without it getting the all-noise treatment we got from Meinein & N(48). Delicate is the word I was looking for, but this rough and ready ambience was well received. And finally, for this week that is, music by Le Scrambled Debutante, the only name of this lot of six that I actually recognized at once, and that's because Attenuation Circuit released more of their music in the past. This is perhaps also the one in this lot that is actually a band, consisting of five members, centred on the person of Sir Bear Trapper. On New Year's Eve 2014 the group recorded this work and like before I have this vaguely romantic notion that they gather around a reel-to-reel tape machine and consume the right kind of spiritualia and do this all group musical weirdness using electronics, records, and what have you. As such this new work isn't much different than many of the other works I heard from LSD; there is a serious pile-up of sound debris on their machines (analogue or otherwise) and someone is blindfolded when doing the mix of this, moving through the various sections they recorded, but stays all one piece of music. Some of these sections are a bit long I would think and some rigorous editing could be in place to make it all a bit more surrealist and/or Nurse With Wound (take your pick), but my suggestion is to use a similar amount of psychotropia and bob's y'r uncle. It has to wait until night falls and bottles are opened. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.attenuationcircuit.de/ MODELBAU — LIFEBOAT (cassette by No Rent Records) Another Modelbau release and I'm looking forward to scrutinising it as I enjoyed the previous album on Moving Furniture records a lot. Modelbau is of course no one other than Frans de Waard and this is the project's 10th release already. As opposed to recent album "Four Squared Wheel", the tracks on this album are quite obviously layered. The a-side does start with your straightforward garden-variety low end drone, but it quickly mutates into something more complex plagued by digital synth squelches into something that I can only describe as an abstract tropical fever. This fever then introduces a hypnotically looped woodwind/brass/synth solo (hard to be sure), picked up in the jungle somewhere along the way, upon which the track becomes — dare I say it — even a bit psychedelic. After a while our body seems to recover from the infection and the drone dies out, only to be resurrected at night as a hazy dream of the crispy maladie it once was. It pleasantly reminded me of something of Denis Frajerman's (Palo Alto) solo records from way back. Then: A pulsating mid range drone with seasick timbre shifting opens the b-side and what seems like an eerie, distorted vocal loop looms up in the distance. Swarming sinusoidal sweeps together with the rising volume build up the tension until the point where some of the layers get stuck in a panicky loop and a razor sharp synth pad sound subdues the culminating tension. Slowly the situation cools down, though it does not get resolved completely. I'm a sucker for vocal synths, formant synthesis and virtually anything that gives synthetic sounds something human. This track explores that territory in a fascinating way and this is easily my favourite Modelbau release up to date. (PJN) ––– Address: http://www.norentrecords.com/ DRUUNA JAGUAR & PHANTASM NOCTURNES — SPECULATIVE REALISM (cassette by Cruel Nature Records) DRUUNA JAGUAR / HEIDYYOUKO — SPLIT (cassette, no label) Being ostensibly Vital's go-to goth guy, it's probably not much of a surprise these two tapes found their way into my deck. I was not familiar with the work of enigmatic noise artist Druuna Jaguar, whose primary weapon of choice seems to be the guitar and country of origin is Portugal. "Speculative Realism" on Northumbrian label Cruel Nature Records is a collaboration between Druuna Jaguar and the prolific North American dark ambient artist Phantasm Nocturnes. We're talking power electronics here and to a lesser extent post-industrial, but with a powerfully ominous, atmospheric backdrop. So yes Cold Meat territory; Brighter Dead Now, Genocide Organ, stuff like that. Some pieces seemed less obviously structured than anything you'd find on "Leichenlinie" and a few of them feature bits of crunchy guitar slur, which was a welcome addition to the usual spectrum of abrasive mechanical sounds. Talking about the latter; whereas most of the tracks are quite balanced regarding their dosage of harsh noise exposure, closer upper "Black Seas of Infinity" is that 10 minute full-on blast you might have been waiting for. Some parts lingered a bit too 'infinitely' for my taste, but overall I found it a colourful and appetising. The Druuna track on the split release, named "pornologie vs. capitalisme" starts with 2 minutes of Japanese twaddle until a harsh drone drops in that is somewhat reminiscent of the older work of Esplendor Geométrico, though again perhaps less structured. Then there's another bit of chitty chat again and another intensive drone that seems largely improvised. Though it is definitely not bad within its genre, I really loved the dark ambience on the other tape. It provided Druuna's drones with a background that allowed for a wider dynamic range. On the b-side we find "mambo guitar" by the Japanese HeidyYouko, which is a lengthy exercise in profound dadaism — think an out- take of an alcohol-fueled collaborative recording session between the Residents and Le Club des Chats, at the point where nobody understands each other any longer. There's some random guitar plucking, the stammer of a mental drum machine, a lot of layered murmuring voices and some processing. Well, this goes on for quite a while, which is partly hilarious, but mostly not the kind of late night entertainment I had hoped for. (PJN) ––– Address: http://cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/ • |