number 1058
---------------------
week 47 ---------------------
Vital Weekly, the webcast: we offering a weekly webcast,
freely to download. This can be regarded as the audio-supplement to
Vital Weekly. Presented as a radioprogramm with excerpts of just some
of the CDs (no vinyl or MP3) reviewed. It will remain on the site for a
limited period (most likely 2-4 weeks). Download the file to
your MP3 player and enjoy! Listen to the podcast on Mixcloud! before submitting material please read this carefully: http://www.vitalweekly.net/fga.html Submitting material means you read this and approve of this.
MASASHI TAKASHIMA/TOMOKO KAGEYAMA./TETSU NAGASAWA/TOSHIHIRO KOIKE - ASTROCYTE (CD by Ftarri) * SUIDOBASHI CHAMBER ENSEMBLE (CD by Ftarri) * BRUSSEL - DELTA (CD by 33Revpermi) * JEFFREY RODEN - THREADS OF A PRAYER VOLUME 2 (2CD by Solaire Records) * JAMES O'CALLAGHAN - ES[ACES TAUTOLOGIQUES (CD by Empreintes Digitales) * ANTOINE CHESSEX, APARTMENT HOUSE & JEROME NOETINGER (CD by Bocian Records) * IDEA FIRE COMPANY - THE SYNTHETIC ELEMENTS (LP by Tastey) * HEDDY BOUBAKER & ALEXANDRE KITTEL - MERCI MERCI (LP by Un Reve Nu) DYANE DONCK - SOUNDS THAT SURROUND ME (LP, private) DAVID MARANHA ENSEMBLE - SALT, ASHES, GOAT SKIN (LP by Roaratorio) * TEXT-SOUND COMPOSITIONS 9 (compilation LP by Fylkingen Records) TEXT-SOUND COMPOSITIONS 10 (compilation LP by Fylkingen Records) TEXT-SOUND COMPOSITIONS 11 (compilation LP by Fylkingen Records) E.M.I.R.S. - DOMUS (10" by BK) NOISESCULTPOR - SOLAP ARE (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * GHOST FLUTE & DICE - LIVE AT ECHOKAMMER (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * LE SCRAMBLED DEBUTANTE - THE EGG THAT MOVES ITSELF AND BRUNS! (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) * PATRICK KAVANAGH - THE BEGINNING OF BEGINNINGS (CDR by Killer's Car Records) * ATTRITION - SECOND ONSLAUGHT (cassette by Maneki Neko Tapes) SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON & BJ NILSEN - ABSTRACT ART AUTOMAT ( cassette by Some) MASASHI TAKASHIMA/TOMOKO KAGEYAMA./TETSU NAGASAWA/TOSHIHIRO KOIKE - ASTROCYTE (CD by Ftarri) SUIDOBASHI CHAMBER ENSEMBLE (CD by Ftarri) As I was playing the first piece of the 'Astrocyte' CD, called 'attractor', the first thing I was thinking that it sounded a bit more jazzy than I am used from Ftarri. Lots of brushes on the snare drum and vibraphone; that sort of thing. But then suddenly there was this high-end sine wave sound; it was time to study the cover and the website to see what this is all about. The main player here is Masashi Takashima, from Fukushima City, who composed this piece and who is a drummer and plays an electronic set-up he called G.I.T.M., no doubt responsible for those high end sounds. Kageyama plays vibraphone and percussion, while Nagasawa plays drums on that piece. The cover mentions Takashima as the composer of the piece, where the second piece is listed as an improvisation and sees the addition of Toshihiro Koike on trombone. 'Attractor' has that free jazz feeling of a laidback Sunday afternoon, but with that alien factor thrown with these sine wave like sounds, giving this piece quite a sense of unrest. The second piece, almost twice the length of the first, is a piece of total free improvisation, but I was less pleased about it than about the first one. It is just a wild improvisation and each of the instruments sounds you like you know them, especially the trombone. This is the kind of improvised music that makes me just nervous I guess. It is perhaps not bad, but then when witnessed in the surrounding of a concert space, and at home, on a disc, perhaps doesn't seem to have an equal power anymore. I might be wrong of course. It's a bit unclear if the other release is by Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, or credited to the five players (as iTunes does) Wakana Ikeda (flute), Yoko Ikeda (viola), Aya Naito (bassoon), Masahiko Okura (clarinet, bass clarinet) and Taku Sugimoto (guitar). They perform five compositions here, by composers from the Wandelweiser group, being Jürg Frey, Michael Pisaro (three pieces) and Antoine Beuger. Each piece is for a few instruments and only in one piece, by Pisaro, they all play together; it is also the longest piece. Perhaps as an exception there is quite a bit to read about this release on the Ftarri website (also in the booklet that comes along with the CD), and I like to use this extensive quote from Taku Sugimoto: "When you are at home, usually nothing special happens, so you feel comfortable. When listening to the music of Wandelweiser in concert, you may notice that there are lots of spaces between musical tones and this kind of musical emptiness, the silence, is the same kind in terms of sound as what you can hear at home. It is often said that to concentrate on listening to music, which contains long silences makes the listener tired. But it is not always necessary to concentrate. You are at home. Why not feel comfortable?" I am at home, sitting, reading and listening, but even on a quiet Monday afternoon in a street that has very little traffic, I hear noises from outside, other people in the house also, which I could find comfortable, but somehow it isn't the same time with a vague bass booming from somewhere. And boy do these five Japanese musicians use a bit of silence; lots of them in fact, which I think is then all about mood music. One has to be in the right mood, I guess, to fully enjoy this. Listening with headphones, I guess, is not really something I enjoy at home, nor for this kind of music. I simply had to wait for a better moment to arrive and only then I felt comfortable to enjoy all of this. There is lots of space on this release, and sometimes very little by way of instruments, but once I felt comfortable enough to take it all in, I noted that I very much enjoyed all of this. Sparse beauty. This is music that is like a watercolour painting. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.ftarri.com/ BRUSSEL - DELTA (CD by 33Revpermi) You don't find a band like Brussel in our archives easily, as it might get confused with the city of the same name; I guess very much so for the band that calls themselves Rotterdam. Behind the band is Bruno Fleurence, who plays Surpeti (couldn't find a translation for that), guitar and organ and Hugo Roussel on guitar. I believe they are from France. 'Delta' is their third release and it's music that is beyond categorization. There is in all of these six pieces an element of drone music, played on a shruti box (maybe that's what the Surpeti is), but non-mechanical, not from machines but with human intervention. There is also an element of improvisation going on, as all of these pieces are somewhat loosely structured and sometimes sounds drop in and out of the mix; some of the guitar playing happens to be on acoustic guitars, with and without objects, and the playing is sometimes blues like and on other occasions totally abstract. And finally one can find in here influences from the world of ambient post-rock, but this too is on a more abstract level. It moves cleverly between bigger, maybe electronic sounds and more intimate acoustic sounds (guitars, objects, harmonium, accordion or some such). It is not easy to guess how some of these 'electronic' sounds were made but one could think of whatever happens acoustic being processed to quite some extent. Some of this is very intense music, with a lot of sonic information at the lower end of the spectrum, but just as equally it can open up and in comes some sunshine. This is quite an odd album, and one that grew more and more, every time I played it. (FdW) ––– Address: http://33revpermi.free.fr/ JEFFREY RODEN - THREADS OF A PRAYER VOLUME 2 (2CD by Solaire Records) With close to two-and half hours of music this is only the first half of the complete 'Threads Of A Prayer'. I only heard once before the music of Jeffrey Roden (and yes he is related to Steve Roden; he is his uncle), back in Vital Weekly 481, when I reviewed his 'Seeds Of Happiness Part 1', which was a solo bass release, quite musical but that didn't do much for me. On his new release, Roden is no longer performer but composer. The whole first disc, seventy-two minutes, is filled with Sandro Ivo Bartoli on the piano, playing 'Twelve Prayers', 'Untitled 10 Pieces' and 'The Passing Of A King', and these pieces are quite silent. Slow, majestic, thoughtful, and easy to see them linked to say Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt or even older composers like Satie or Debussy, but everything remains in the same subtle way of playing the keys. It seems to me that 'Untitled 10 Pieces' is even quieter than the 'Twelve Prayers', which are actual prayers; all of these prayers are in the booklet and show a spiritual background. That too is probably another link to Pärt. On the second disc there are four pieces, 'The Many Latitudes Of Grief' (octet for string quintet, piano, timpani and trombone), 'Untitled Quintet #2', 'Untitled Quintet #3' (both of which are rather short) and 'Leaves', all three of which are quintets, and they are performed by Bennewitz Quartet, as well as Szymon Marciniak (double bass), Bartoli (piano), Wolfgang Fischer (timpani) and Johannes Kronfeld (trombone). Here we may have more instruments per pieces and hitherto more sounds, certainly in the two short quintets, the overall mood is still very much about it all being quiet and introvert. Again this has very much to do with Pärt and Feldman way of composing music; there are no dissonant notes, very quiet, and there is much room for silence, even, when perhaps less in the ensemble pieces than in the piano pieces. One could say 'music for rainy Sunday afternoon', but it's Friday afternoon, and not rainy; clouds wave by and every now and then they is ray of sunlight. Somehow that seemed more appropriate for this kind of music. It is, should one believe in such things, like the clouds are moving along an almighty conductor, which some call God, and not some tormentor who makes it rain all day. If you get my drift. Beautiful stylish design by Rutger Zuydervelt and it comes with a highly informative booklet and all prayers. This is a beautiful release indeed. (FdW) ––– Address: http://solairerecords.com JAMES O'CALLAGHAN - ESPACES TAUTOLOGIQUES (CD by Empreintes Digitales) From Montreal, Canada, hails the composer James O'Callaghan, whose works deals with chamber music, orchestral music, live electronic and acousmatic idioms, audio installations, and site specific performances; he received a bunch of prizes (how many are there for this kind of music, I wondered looking at this list). In his acousmatic music he uses field recordings, amplified found objects, computer-assisted transcription of environmental sounds and 'unique performance conditions'. On this CD he presents four compositions, each based on one or more instruments. There is piano, acoustic guitar and toy piano, string quartet and orchestra. Not that it is always possible to recognize the sounds in the music; perhaps only because you read the liner notes that mentions this, rather than you hearing them. Three of the four pieces are a trilogy that imagines the sounding bodies of instruments as resonant spaces. The treatments applied are not really mentioned, but somehow I don't think it's some good old splicing tape and an ancient reel-to-reel machine; in stead much of this takes place inside the computer, and the countless possibilities that this offers. Much of the work by O'Callaghan is produced by GRM in France, and they have some excellent tools for the production of computer-based music. Years ago I complained that I found many of the releases by Empreintes Digitales interchangeable and while some of the music of O'Callaghan sounds pretty interesting I couldn't help but thinking that some of this I already heard on a lot of previous releases by this label, by other composers. There is, so it seems from the outside, very much a template within this genre and as such I think the work delivered by O'Callaghan is not bad, but perhaps also not the most original in it's kind. (FdW) ––– Address: http://electrocd.com ANTOINE CHESSEX, APARTMENT HOUSE & JEROME NOETINGER (CD by Bocian Records) Yeah, I know, Bocian Records; right. Didn't they quit releasing new stuff, already twice before? Somehow they continue all the time, which is actually fine, since they have released some great music. Here we have a live recording made at Cafe Oto in London in February 2014 and April 2015 and while it lists Antoine Chessex on the front cover, he is not among the performers; he is however responsible for the two compositions that are being performed here by Jerome Noetinger, who plays reel-to-reel recorder and electronics and an ensemble called Apartment House, which on both nights had a different line-up, with Anton Lukoszevieze on cello being part of both nights but then he is also the founder of Apartment House. Instruments played are violin, clarinet, trombone and cello. Chessex is responsible for the mix of both pieces. Both of these pieces are quite dense with lots of microtonal gestures, and apparently use a conventional score for instruments, along with free role for the tape machine and it makes up from pretty strong mixture of modern classical music (all the instruments) and musique concrete (Noetinger); the line between both ends becomes a bit unclear, especially when one has the idea that Noetinger is picking up the sound by the players and feeding them back into the mix. If there is any room for improvisation, and I believe there is, then it is happening on exactly that crossroad between the official score and what Noetinger adds, ad lib, to the performance of that score. Of both pieces I liked 'Accumulation' over 'Plastic Concrete', simply because it was a little more paced out, and allowed for longer moments of quiet development of a single instrument and few movements on behalf of Noetinger. It is, all in all, music that is performed with a considerable amount of force and one could say it's pretty heavy weight. I am sure the performance must have been explosive, but also on disc it breaks and cracks under its weight. One to play a piece a day, I'd say. (FdW) ––– Address: http://bocianrecords.com IDEA FIRE COMPANY - THE SYNTHETIC ELEMENTS (LP by Tastey) This might be the sixteenth album (according to Discogs) by US' Idea Fire Company, which is close to thirty years of existence is not much, it follows closely on the heals of last year's 'Lost At Sea' (see Vital Weekly 1005), which was shorter than the gap between that and 'Music For The Impossible Salon' (Vital Weekly 889), so either the band goes in over production mode or finally, yes finally, there is some proper recognition for this truly great band. I am biased, in case you are wondering. It's no secret I love Scott Foust and Karla Borecky, the two main members of the company and sometimes they are with other musicians; I was one of them, some time ago, and it was great to work with them and to travel around. Whenever something is released, I drag out all the old ones, and play as many as time will allow me. The two recent albums had a more acoustic character, with piano, trumpet or trombones, but on this album they, still a duo, return to using synthesizer on almost all pieces, except 'The Happiness Hunters', which features just piano and radio. The piano can also be heard in three other pieces and there is a guitar. Each side of the record begins and ends with a part of the title piece, book end pieces if you want of a more looped character, something we haven't seen for a while Idea Fire Company. It means that the piano plays a big role on four main pieces and Borecky plays it with a slow, majestic force; strumming that big minor chord which gives the music quite a portentous character, like there is big doom lurking over us. Foust on synth, radio and guitar follows a similar trajectory, such as in the jarring 'The Sinking Ship', with its distress synth signal and bang on a guitar. In other pieces the emphasis is more on the small chamber music version, but more than the other recent works it also allows for some more experiment in sound. Do I think this is a great record? Hell, yeah, you bet it is. I really believe that Idea Fire Company is one of the most underrated underground groups of the USA; many others with less talent got a bigger name and fame, so there is some truly injustice in this world. But, ever the optimist; with two records in a year things might be looking up a bit for them! (FdW) ––– Address: http://tasteofcrisis.blogspot.com/ HEDDY BOUBAKER & ALEXANDRE KITTEL - MERCI MERCI (LP by Un Reve Nu) Back in Vital Weekly 1015 I reviewed the split LP by Vortex and J-Kristoff Camps, and I noticed back then that Boubaker moved from playing the saxophone to a modular synth set-up, but maybe I thought this was only for his work in Vortex (not to be confused with the band of the same name, reviewed last week), but now, with this duo record with Alexandre Kittel, he still plays it, so perhaps we are dealing with a more permanent change, away from the horn? Kittle here plays 'table cymbals and electronics', and I assume 'table cymbals' are those cymbals that lie on a table. Much like the Vortex side of that split record, things aren't particular careful here, even when it's also not straight away harsh noise music. This is the kind of free form 'noise' music that I enjoy very much. The music is very much freely improvised by these players, rattles about from time to time, it peeps and bursts but it has a very fine free improvisation/free jazz energy that is on a constant shift. Both players aren't isolated on their own island, as they keep interacting and changing the scene throughout, responding to each other and leaving room to the other when necessary. Backwards as well as forward, this I thought was a most pleasant record, of not a bit short. The good news is that at the same time there are two more pieces, even a few minutes longer at that, available from the bandcamp side of the label. So in fact it's double release, and perhaps a double set of vinyl would have been great, but this too is an excellent solution. One has in the end little over an hour of some excellent music. (FdW) ––– Address: http://unrevenu.bandcamp.com http://unrevenu.free.fr/label/urn004 DYANE DONCK - SOUNDS THAT SURROUND ME (LP, private) Following the split LP that Dyane Donck did with Daisy Bell (a band of which she is also a member, along with Strange Attractor and Phallus Dei member Richard van Kruysdijk), which was reviewed in Vital Weekly 855, she now has her first solo LP out. She lives in the Dutch city of Breda, in a neighbourhood with lots of people from other countries and she asked them what kind of music they are listening to. Donck then investigated the names she got and was inspired by it, sometimes sampling them, which she merged with field recordings from her own area (train station, street sounds, people talking). She works this into the three songs per side and the two sides of the record are indeed quite different from each other. The first side has songs that deal with rhythm and on the other side is the atmospheric, drone version of it. It might just be me, of course, that I enjoy that second side better than the rhythmical one; that one uses samples from non-western music quite a bit, rhythmical as well as instrumental, and comes across as a bit of collage of sounds that not necessarily always fit together very well. Also on this side I wasn't too sure about those recordings that apparently surround Donck; they are either processed to a great anonymity, or I fail to recognize them as from her surrounding. Donck does what she does well, and the music is made with fine ear for production, with some great depth, but somehow this side fails to impress me that much. Sometimes it seems too much like an attempt at techno/drum 'n bass, such as in 'Zirkoon', and perhaps that didn't help for me either. The pieces on the other side use drones to wider extent and here it seems also that we hear more of her surrounding; cars passing and a door closing for instance. She builds that into some great, intense sound scape or ringing and sustaining sounds, and it seems almost that these three pieces flow right into each other, almost to make a trio of soundscapes, with 'Azimut' a slowed down rhythm and some reversed vocals, almost like returning to the other side. There is much mood in these pieces and it makes up for some great spooky soundtrack music; that happens a lot when you reverse voices, I guess. I enjoyed this side of the record a lot, and wished both sounded like this; the nervous system of the big city exposed via some excellent soundscapes. That she should do more, I think. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.dyanedonck.com/ DAVID MARANHA ENSEMBLE - SALT, ASHES, GOAT SKIN (LP by Roaratorio) Maybe I have a different notion with the word 'ensemble', but sure three persons are an ensemble too. David Maranha Ensemble consists of himself on organ and violin, Filipe Felizardo on electric guitar and Diana Combo on drums. I have been following the music of David Maranha for a long time, ever since I first heard his group Osso Exotico slowly expanding into classical music, and in his solo works exploring drone music, which, as the years progressed became more and more inspired by sixties drone/rock music, and that is something that has been going on for some time now, regardless, it seems with whom he works. Maybe that is a pity, as one could be working with different people for achieving different results. But all right, with your own ensemble you can of course do what you want to do, and so Maranha continues with his exploration of slow heavy sixties drone music; this time with some more emphasis on the guitar, which is quite distorted and rock like, while Combo's drums just like sledgehammer pounds the rhythm down, while Maranha himself also seems to have added a fine portion of distortion to his organ and violin. Maybe as such it is a bit less of Velvet Underground/Nico/La Monte Young axis and more about such heaviness of the Swans, surely with the size of distortion and slowness of the drums coupled with the minimalist development of the pieces. There are four pieces here and the music works in two pieces clocking over ten minutes. Then it all shines brightly what they want. You could head bang to this music, I guess, if you would want to. A most enjoyable record, this one, not for the weak of heart. (FdW) ––– Address: http://roaratorio.com/ TEXT-SOUND COMPOSITIONS 9 (compilation LP by Fylkingen Records) TEXT-SOUND COMPOSITIONS 10 (compilation LP by Fylkingen Records) TEXT-SOUND COMPOSITIONS 11 (compilation LP by Fylkingen Records) Only a few weeks ago I reviewed 'Text-Sound Compositions 8' and already announced there would be three more volumes in this series, and now they arrived, all at once. To repeat from the earlier review, these releases contain 'recordings made between 1968 and 1970, when there was an annual festival of the same name' and should have been released at that time, but that didn't happen. These LPs have some names that are quite well known while it also serves as an introduction to others. And some of these people are on more than one volume, like Bob Cobbing and Herman Damen (both appear also on 'Text-Sound Compositions 8', see Vital Weekly 1053). Volume 9 opens with Christer Grewin with a beautiful piece of voices and electronics, in which it seems that the voice is transformed by synthesizers; cut-up voices, collaged together, with a few beautiful layers this is a most intense piece of music. The cover tells us that this is the first time his work is released (the composer died in 1999) and I hope Fylkingen would release some more of it. Bob Cobbing's piece this time is a taped from a performance and partly improvised and sound like a shamanistic performance, including some percussion instruments, but comes across too much as a tribal hippie freak out, that is not well spend on me. On the other side we find Maud Reuterswärd and Bengt Nyquist with a piece that is about the massacre in Son My, Vietnam. A political piece of voices and some screaming but all together it is a bit too distant to be really scary. Oyvind Falhström is quite a well-known composer of sound poetry works, with what now seems like a fairly traditional piece of multi-layered voices. Two short compositions by Charles Amirkhanian conclude volume 9 and the first is a four-channel piece of poetry narration and the other is cut-up text about nutrition from promotional announcement, which then becomes quite alien and disturbing. Both sound also like more regular sound poetry pieces. In that respect the tenth volume opens with something quite different, which is a piece by Tamas Ungvary, and it is a mostly an electronic piece with some occasional computer voice; it all sounds rather primitive, but I think that it's the beautiful charm of it. Also Herman Damen's piece is to some extent more electronic, as well as rather primitive again with the use of those electronic sounds and voice treatment. Here too however it sounded quite all right, if not a bit long in the case of Damen. It has most certainly a theatrical aspect, which is sadly lacking on the record. The other side is all taken up by a piece by Lars-Gunner Bodin, of which an excerpt was released before, but now comes in its entire form. Here too electronics seem to be playing a bigger role than voices, but the piece, already recorded in 1965, also has this very nice primitive electronic feel to it. This LP is a very coherent one, when it comes to combining electronic music and voices/poetry/vocals. Volume 11 opens with another piece by Grewin, which again is a beautiful intense piece, even when 'Ord Som…' is pretty quiet and introspective. This is another stunning piece of music. Bring on that CD with his complete works, please! Lars Hallnäs has a piece that uses a German voice and radio waves 'paying close attention to wave fluctuations caused by solar flares' and is a slightly confusing and short piece of spoken word and cut up electronics, and in a way sounds quite removed from traditional electronic music in that respect. Roberta Settels was born in the USA but lived in Sweden for a long time; her composition is 'P4'. Not much in the way of voice material it seems, but some very intense music here. Almost noise like with those static radio sounds moving around. Jon Appleton on the other side has an eight-year old boy read the story of Little Red Riding Hood, to which he adds sounds from the Bucla synthesizer. It is perhaps a strange combination but somehow it works rather well. Eugeniusz Rudik from Poland has had some retrospective releases in recent years by Bolt Records and his short 'Wokale' uses singing as well as electronic sounds in an almost gospel like manner. The eleventh volume closes with a piece by Rune Lindblad, which seems quite appropriate, as he is the grand old pioneer from Swedish electronic music, with a piece about old age, which, seeing in the historical light of these LPs, is also very appropriate. It is a very powerful piece of electronic sounds, old voices and sounds of coughing (it seems). There is nothing subtle about this, and it has a great- untamed power. Excellent ending! (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.fylkingen.se/ E.M.I.R.S. - DOMUS (10" by BK) Now, I happen to be reviewing this, obviously as one landed on my desk and while it did not contain that unnecessary note 'will you review this' (I never understand why such notes are added to what is clearly a promo; what else should I do with it?), the problem here lies in the availability of it. There are only 8 copies made of this record, carved, I assume, as dub plates in London. It contains the work of E.M.I.R.S., the artist formerly known as Belchsingersonggrinder, and officially as Quinten Dierick, whose first concert under his new guise was witnessed by me and which I thought was great; it moved away from the pure noise of his earlier work and was very thoughtful with cassette hiss, small synthesizers and supported by a reel-to-reel machine. Since then I saw him on a few more occasions with a varying degree of intensity, but working around with field recordings a lot more these days. On 'Domus' he documents a residency in Athens, where he recorded street sounds, people talking, construction sites but also played concerts. The music was composed on the spot, but finished at home, where he imitated voice- wise, some of the sounds and added then some more sounds and electronic processes. In a way this is quite a heavy piece of music, or in fact all four of them, even when they seem to be flowing right into each other. I mean with heavy that the sounds are recorded with quite some sonic overload and all of it is very close together. Not like the first concert I saw, which was quite mellow, but more like the music I heard after that (Vital Weekly 1017, 1010) where E.M.I.R.S. explore the more intelligent end of noise music, along with rougher end of musique concrete and field recordings into his own brand of noise, for the lack of a better word. I thought this was a great record, but who will know? Maybe not enough people. The cover comes with a stone lithography cover and looks very much like the highly limited art item it is. (FdW) ––– Address: http://belchkitchen.tumblr.com NOISESCULTPOR - SOLAP ARE (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) GHOST FLUTE & DICE - LIVE AT ECHOKAMMER (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) LE SCRAMBLED DEBUTANTE - THE EGG THAT MOVES ITSELF AND BRUNS! (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) Not so long ago I got 13 releases from Attenuation Circuit, which I thought was a bit much at once, so since then they send me three releases a week, neat and clean, and probably, seeing their furious release schedule they will keep this up for a while. The first of the three new releases is by NoisesculptoR (as he spells it himself), which is one Robert Sipos from Eggenfelden, Germany. He has a bunch of releases on Craneal Fracture Records and Unsigned, but I don't believe I heard much of his music before, except for something on a split with the Royal Hungarian Noisemakers. Based on that work I must admit I had no idea what to expect. He has six pieces here (no titles on the cover), which last in total some fifty minutes, which means each track is quite long. Hard to say what he uses in terms of instruments, but I think it is easy to think there is a fair amount of electronics and reverb at work here, working overtime to get the most out of it when it comes to playing forceful, moody and dark tunes. There might be field recordings on the input side of things, and they might easily be taped inside a factory; and if that is not the case that perhaps this music tries to emulate the sounds of the factory. While the music is not noise per-se, this is also not particular anything else, let alone ambient. Industrial with a dash of ambient, that surely could be the case here, bordering occasionally closer to the first than to the latter, especially in the fifth piece, and in the bass overload of the sixth piece. Sculptures? Yes, perhaps they are so indeed, carved out of heavy rock with a big hammer, that is. But then Ghost Flute & Dice, who is behind that then? Another review on the label's website suggests one Mikkel Almholt, of whom I also never heard. He has here two pieces, which were recorded at the Ganze Bäckerei, Augsburg, which for the night has been renamed to Echokammer. Ghost Flute & Dice, as a name, suggests collaboration and maybe that is the case. One person to play the piano and someone else to do real-time treatments. Although that is to say that the piano untreated doesn't seem to sound out loud in this piece, so it might very well be one person who plays piano samples back from a computer and then feeds them to various computer treatments (more so than analogue treatments, I suspect) and it works wonderfully well. Maybe because one sometimes wrongly assumes that Attenuation Circuit deals with the noisy end of the musical world, it is perhaps not easy to believe it as easily work out into something that is perhaps more from a modern classical music background, even when Ghost Flute & Dice use from time to time, quite a bit of loops, which is not what they don in the world of serious composing; I believe so. Especially the second part is a massive hammering of sounds, looping around perfectly and in and out of sync with each other. Not exactly the kind of minimal music one could learn from the likes of Reich & Glass, and occasionally a bit too noisy, this is rather like the demented son of Asmus Tietchens exploring some other dots on the map of the studio, in which sonic overload is very much allowed. Not for the weak of heart. Le Scrambled Debutante is by now a group who is a firm fixture in the ranks of Attenuation Circuit and this time around consists of Exodus Z.-Polenta (aka Sir Bear Trapper), Ms. La-Dee-Dada & Her Pet Eye Ov Tomato, David Abner and Thee Weenie Ov Tahini; surely there are some pseudonyms in there, I'd say. The previous review I wrote (in Vital Weekly 1047) is listed on the bandcamp page with this release and perhaps that has to do with the constant flow of releases in Circuit land, but maybe we are to believe that some of this is also a bit interchangeable? It is an impression that at least stuck with me. Le Scrambled Debutante is one of those 'bands', 'projects' if you will, which release quite a bit of music, and one doesn't have a proper clue as to how it was created, so one has to guess; when a lot of music sounds quite the same, and perhaps that previous already explained it all: "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." In that sense this one is more of the same thing; still no bottles are open here, or joints are rolled, so perhaps it all sinks in a bit later? (FdW) ––– Address: http://emerge.bandcamp.com/ PATRICK KAVANAGH - THE BEGINNING OF BEGINNINGS (CDR by Killer's Car Records) The one time before we hear of Patrick Kavanagh was in Vital Weekly 968, when JKH reviewed a release of his with Anastasia Mano under the name of Subterranean Death Trap. In the press text for his latest solo release, he writes he was also a member of Spiney Fleshpot (along with the recently deceased Peter Read) and that he plays around with drummer Louis Burdett. Before that he was a member of Jaundiced Eye (with John Murphy, also deceased), Dweller On The Threshold, Box The Jesuit and Madroom. His earliest bands were Moist, Leather Moustache and Smack Of Jellyfish. None of the somewhat silly band names mean much to me. His main instruments in his solo work are the piano and a synthesizer, and he has three very long pieces, and two that clock at nine minutes, so perhaps also a bit long already. This album is a bit of a mixed bag, I think. The first three pieces are explorations of the ambient music template, but not so much in the Eno/Budd style. Kavanagh plays freely and without that much reverb added to the mix. He adds something else, and that's a field recording in a strong collage like manner. People talking, street sounds and a bit of percussion are thrown in and it is all perhaps less ambient and more radiophonic/modern classic, especially the more solemn 'The Leaves Danced For Wanda'. The best piece was 'Emergence From The Chrysalis', in which the piano is pushed back in favour of electronic sounds. And what about the other two, you may ask? 'Plough' and 'Grow' are pieces for hammered piano sounds, the fast and the furious; maybe Kavanagh calls this is his minimalist composer interest, but I found both pieces very weak and out of place on this album. He could have left both out and have much a more excellent record that spans fifty minutes, and not half good but full length. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.killerscar.com ATTRITION - SECOND ONSLAUGHT (cassette by Maneki Neko Tapes) Back in the day I was quite a big fan of Attrition, the musical trio of Martin Bowes, Julia Niblock and Ashley Niblock. On compilations I found them always great and their early cassettes, 'Death House' and 'Onslaught' were warmly greeted. Their first LP I remember as one that was pretty good, but after that I lost interest, even when I occasionally came across a new release from them in the years following that; I am no longer sure why I lost interest. I can't remember when I last heard 'Onslaught', their 1983 cassette for Third Mind Records; surely it was ages ago. When I played this remastered version on cassette I only had a vague recollection of how it sounded back then. For whatever unclear reason it didn't stick in my mind that much I guess. Just the early version 'Shrinkwrap' sounded truly familiar. This cassette has on side the original, thirty-minute, version of 'Onslaught and on the other side four pieces from compilation cassettes from same years. This is Attrition in its earliest phase and perhaps at their most experimental. In later years the band had a fixed form with synthesizers and drum machines along with the dual male and female voices. In this early works there is not yet the male voice (except on 'Shrinkwrap', which was already then their most completely formed song) and the songs have a much freer form. There is a synth or two; the drum machine goes through various patterns but not necessarily in a very traditional form. There is a certain 'start/stop' form they are using and at times songs are more atmospheric excursions, in which everything and everybody expand on their own, which may be a bit freaky, such as in 'First Onslaught'. There is a fine combination of experimental electronics, voices, poetry, atmospheres and a lose structure. I totally forgot about this, but most enjoyable. I immediately dug out the other two early works I had by them and had lovely trip down memory lane. (FdW) ––– Address: http://vuzrecords.de SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON & BJ NILSEN - ABSTRACT ART AUTOMAT (cassette by Some) These two kind gentlemen, one from Sweden and one from Iceland, have been working together so much that one could wonder why they didn't choose a band/project name. They worked as Stillupsteypa (which is Sigtryggur Berg Simarsson and Helgi Thorsson) or under his own and BJ Nilsen. This one is from the latter category and released by Some, Simarsson's own label. There have also been records on Ultra Eczema, Editions Mego and Helen Scarsdale Agency. I am not sure if they also work face to face, or if there is also work done via the use of file sharing. The handwritten (and hand drawn!) information/package lists per side a bunch of titles, thirteen in total, but I couldn't say if there are as many pieces on the tape; for all I know and hear it might be very well a side-long sound collage, which occasionally breaks up and down via abrupt moves, following by another extensive process of layered field recordings. Much of what they do, and in that respect this tape is not different, is a lot based on drones, generated by the manipulation of field recordings, assorted samples from media sources (some of it sounded like an old 78 rpm record) and maybe some of their own voices. It doesn't mean that this is all an ominous long drone. By applying cut-up methods, short loops, drones and abrupt changes they create a rather rich layered music, and some of this reminded me very much of The Hafler Trio is the earliest period, around 'The Sea Org' or 'Brain Song', which is something that I particularly enjoyed. Somewhere on the first side it sounded very much alike 'The Sea Org' that I had to play the original and see what the differences actually are. This I think is a great tape, probably one of the best works by them I heard so far and while it looks great with Sigmarsson's drawing and handmade cover, I really think this should be re-issued on LP straight away. (FdW) ––– Address: <stilluppsteypa@gmail.com> |