 number 1216
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week 3 ---------------------
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ORGANUM - ELECTRONICS (CD by Siren Records) * YIORGIS SAEKLLARIOU - NYMPHOLEPSY (CD by Noise Below) * CATEHDRA - TIMES WAS AWAY 1992-1997 (2CD by Zoharum) * LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM - A SHERPA'S SLEEP IS MORE MILK MUSIC (CD by Zoharum) * STARGAZER'S ASSISTANT - MIRRORS & TIDES, SHIVERS & VOIDS (CD by Zoharum) * ANGST 78 - 78 ANGST (CD by Zoharum) * ANNA HÖSTMANN & CHERYL DUVALL – HARBOUR (CD by Redshift Records) PHILIP ZOUBEK & IVANN CRUZ & MARCIN WITKOWSKI – RADIUM (CD by Circum Disc) * KLAUS JANEK – PROSPECTING (LP by Almenrauschen) KLAUS JANEK – RECIPROCUM (LP by Almenrauschen) DAVE PHILLIPS - SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION (LP by Total Black) * DIVIDED STATE - SPURIOUS EMISSIONS (CDR by Edgetone Records) * TL0741 - REFRACTORY (CDR by HC3 Music) * MICHAEL DUANE FERRELL - HEX (CDR by Glistening Examples) * LUCA FORCUCCI - BODYSCAPE (CDR by Glistening Examples) * TOPIAS TIHEÄSALO & NIKO-MATTI AHTI - FOUR LETTERS - LIFE (CDR by Glistening Examples) * ERELL LATIMIER - L'IMPATIENCE DIRECTE DES CORPS (CDR by Glistening Examples) * CHLORINE - BLUME (cassette by Invisible Cities) * NICHOLAS MALONEY - SOMBUSE (cassette by Invisible Cities) * DUNNING & BROSAMER - GLOCKEN (cassette by Invisible Cities) * ORGANUM - ELECTRONICS (CD by Siren Records) David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more. Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement. In the case of the flatly titled “Electronics”, the music is as evocative and singular as anything Jackman has produced. The three 15-minute untitled pieces are monoliths of surging drone bathed in mammoth reverberation. The title says everything you need to know and nothing at all. Same with the cover art, merely the title and name in a black print cross pattern on white background. The design is nearly (or perhaps exactly?) identical to Jackman’s relatively more active and mellow “Herbstsonne” album; is there an implied relationship between the two? I’ve given both albums some deep listen and I cannot tell what the relationship could be. And so again, the sound is all one gets. “Electronics” is dense and huge; a roiling swamp of electric din that would appeal to fans of Jackman’s early collaborations with The New Blockaders (“Salute” and “Wrack”), though this is more atmospheric than aggressive. It’s a slow boil of fierce control, not a chaotic attack. Few actual events happen, and there isn’t much difference between the three tracks… it’s almost as if Jackman set some sounds in motion, then stepped back and allowed the pieces to generate themselves. It’s relentless and heavy, uniform in mood across all 45 minutes. No build-up, no denouement, just a steady mysterious churn to get lost inside of. (HS) ––– Address: sirenrec@ybb.ne.jp YIORGIS SAEKLLARIOU - NYMPHOLEPSY (CD by Noise Below) To start with the bad news; this CD is only twenty-three minutes long and that is a great pity. Yiorgis Sakellariou hails from Greece, though now living in Coventry (I believe) and his homeland is not far away. This new CD is about the "Ancient Messene," which "is a local community of the municipal unit Ithomi, of the municipality of Messini within the regional unit of Messenia in the region of Peloponnese, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided". The composition is a "dialogue between the ethereal (sound) and the material (the ancient ruins)" and he uses field recordings from the place along with the voice of Savina Yannatou. Sakellariou is one of the remaining composers to work with laptop technology, who didn't make the changeover to the world of modular electronics (as far as I know). Quite rightly so, as he is nothing less than an expert on manipulating recordings inside the world of ones and zeroes and he creates an excellent collage of sound. It owes to the world of musique concrete, but Sakellariou is not one to use easy granular synthesis to create his work. He creates a complex web of sounds, sometimes very dry, sometimes beyond recognition, moving back and forth in a place and while highly abstract, he paints a picture of the location. He does that with voice recordings that sound like car horns, by sticking his microphone in the dirt and capturing human activities. Like a wind that captures the sounds from thousands of years ago and dumps it into this piece of music. I ranked his previous major work, 'In Aulis' to the best of his works (Vital Weekly 1121), but I'd like to add this one as well to that list. However, I wouldn't have minded this to go for some more time. I had it on repeat for a couple of times and found something new in there every time. So maybe it is long enough? (FdW) ––– Address: http://noise-below.bandcamp.com CATEHDRA - TIMES WAS AWAY 1992-1997 (2CD by Zoharum) LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM - A SHERPA'S SLEEP IS MORE MILK MUSIC (CD by Zoharum) STARGAZER'S ASSISTANT - MIRRORS & TIDES, SHIVERS & VOIDS (CD by Zoharum) ANGST 78 - 78 ANGST (CD by Zoharum) While I was going to write: I only heard of Lunar Abyss Deus Organum, my eye caught the sheet with information and I recognized the name Mark Crumby. Back in the day, I used to be in contact with him, buying and trading music he released on his label Jara Discs. I sort of half-half forgot he did his music, as Cathedra back in the ’90s and these days as Codex Empire and antechamber. I am also informed he is one half of Konstruktivits, Mitra Mitra and Oppenheimer MKII. I am sure I heard some of Catehdra's music back in the day, but I didn't remember any of it. After studying all the information on these four new Zoharum releases, I decided Cathedra would be the best place to start. The twenty-nine tracks on this release were recorded, as the title already indicates, between 1992 and 1997 and released on cassette by Jara Discs, Ant-Zen, Obuh, and on CDR and 7" by Jara Discs. Crumby decided to go for a best-of disc and not for a chronological overview, or a complete representation of his work. I am sure it would exceed two compact discs. The cover has no information as to instruments used, so there is something to guess about here. In the early nineties, technology become quickly better and cheaper and I would think that Cathedra was a man of sampling; sampling whatever he heard and liked. Put that on a four-track machine and add some effects in the mix for good measure. The pieces here see Cathedra neatly bounce all over the place. It's a mysterious place, full of moods. Sometimes you believe to be in a church, then in the Kasbah (Crumby also released some music from Muslimgauze and there is clearly some influence there) and up next, the rainforest. It is moody and spacious, lengthy sustaining sounds upon synthesized tones, next to sparse (and not so sparse) percussive sections. It moves through the whole bunch of different versions of what we would have called back then 'ambient industrial'. Sometimes a bit more ambient, or a bit more industrial, even when the latter is not present a lot. The second disc seems to have a focus on a more modern classical field, with lots of sampled violins, choirs and other orchestral bits; perhaps for me a bit too gothic/dramatic. It all deals with mood and there is plenty of that going on. It's over two hours of wonderful music, excellently produced. Lunar Abyss Deus Organum is no stranger to these pages. Many of their releases are on Russian labels, where they hail from. I may not have heard all of their releases, but surely four or five by now and they do whatever do and they continue to deliver some great mood music. There is something ritualistic about this music. They use singing bowls, bells, synthesizers and tons of sound effects, or at least, that what I like to think and create their ominous music. They also seem to expand here on their sound; in 'Kanikuly' there is a strange loop that sounds like a bit of muzak, that comes to us quietly humming; it is suddenly there in the middle of the piece and it stays there until the end, along with some very gentle electronics. 'Dadada' takes the invocations of a newborn into something of a dark bass thump. This all seems like an odd sound for them, given their usual dark tones. Maybe they added a bunch of new sounds to the arsenal and slowly expand further afield with their ambient music and that's a great thing. They trot on new paths in their music and that is, at least as how I see these sort of things, a good thing. There are probably as many releases you can do of one thing (well, maybe on cassette on could do endlessly the same thing) and then it's time for one or two new elements in the music, and Lunar Abyss Deus Organum manages to do that pretty well. It is an album with all the familiar signs, the lengthy, ominous drones, the tribalistic percussive drums, the vague chanting, spiced up with strange new elements, expanding the musical horizon. Die-hard fans won't be scared off, I should think, as the changes aren't that big, so all in all, it is a clever move. Something completely different is the music by David J. Smith, who goes by the name of The Stargazer's Assistant. This is a solo project for him, next to him being the leader and drummer of "avant-garde rock group Guape". This solo project he started in 2007 and grew into what is now a trio, including David J. Knight, of whom is said here is connected to Danielle Dax and Lydia Lunch but for me is one of the members of the long-forgotten (sadly not re-issued either) Five Or Six and Michael J. York (Coil, Cyclobe, Teleplasmiste). That is a lot of 'J' for a middle name, come to think of it. The music is sometimes used as a soundtrack. Utech Records previously released this CD as a double 10” in 2013, when it was still mainly a solo project. Smith plays the piano, synths, harmonium, acoustic guitar, percussion, tapes, samples, water bowl, fridge, chain, front door, matchbox and voice and various people as guests on vocals, keyboards, 'bowed thunderboard', violin and bassoon. While this is something that we could easily file under 'heavily alternative rock music', I found it all pretty interesting music. There is certainly a cinematographic element to the music here, and that's not just because of several of the sounds that he used, such as gunshots in 'Night Soil'. With quite some effective use of reverb, Smith paints a vast space that would do well on the big screen. It is melancholic, it is dramatic, it's spacious; it could serve many different types of movies I would think. The element of rock music is kept to a minimum, which for me is fine; just occasionally the whole percussion kit and singer- songwriter modus is put on ('Shivers & Voids'), which actually for me breaks with the idea of a soundtrack album, but I can imagine the artist thought of this in terms of bringing in variation. Throughout a most excellent album. Zoharum calls the Angst 78 album 'a conceptual compilation', but it's a compilation in the sense that it collects music by Patryk Gegniewicz (also known as Revisq; I may not have heard of him before) and Lukasz Szalankiewicz (Zenial), which they composed between 2013 and 2019 in a variety of places. There are also three remixes here, by Fisherboyz, Ursus Sykot and Dawid Chrapla). I had not heard Angst 78 before, but these thirteen tracks span the whole eighty minutes of the disc, so there is plenty to dive into. The band name is inspired by the movie 'Angst' by Gerald Kargl and 78 is the year both composers were born. Rhythm is the all-important element in the mix here; it is present in almost all of the pieces, save for a track such as 'Children Of The Corn', which is an all-ambient outing. The rhythm is usually minimal and techno-based, with fine washes synthesizers to help set the mood. Some of these pieces sound close to the work of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas (including titles that sound like Gas, such as 'Frost' and 'Im Wald'), but when the beats are tad more complicated and there is a few more complex synth moves it all becomes a bit more interesting (not being a particularly big fan of the Gas works here). It all seems aimed at the dance floor, which is, perhaps, an oddity for Zoharum, but the somewhat darker keys pressed here make this also a rather fitting release for the label. (FdW) ––– Address: https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/ ANNA HÖSTMANN & CHERYL DUVALL – HARBOUR (CD by Redshift Records) If I’m not mistaken, this is the first full-length CD with works by Anna Höstman. She is a Canadian composer who did her studies at the University of Toronto (Gordon Mumma, Christopher Butterfield, a.o.). She composes for large and small ensembles, solo compositions, vocal music and music for installations. Her works have been performed in Europe, the US, China, etc. The Canadian string quartet Quator Bozzini is just one of the ensemble she worked with (2011). Earlier trumpeter Amy Horvey recorded a composition of her (‘Interview’, 2009). My knowledge and overview of modern composed music are surely limited. But listening to Höstmann’s sober and gentle piano compositions on ‘Harbour’, I was reminded of the work of Morton Feldmann from time to time. Accessible music, and of a reflective and meditative nature. But in no way connected with the overtly neo-classical piano music that is so dominant in the last few years. For this, her music is too complex and modern. It is not about big changes in dynamics or contrasting movements, nor striving towards culminating peaks. Far more her works move on forward in a more or less same pace. Often dissonant movements and patterns are used but in a modest way. Integrating melodic elements in an open less-is-more style. ‘Harbour’ is one of six compositions that are featured on this disc, all composed between 2010 and 2019. This composition is the exception to what I wrote above. Here she makes use different dynamics and in a sense, this work has more drama than the other ones. For all compositions counts that they a strong and personal identity. Very mature compositions that I started to like and more after repeated listening, also due to the excellent performance by Cheryl Duvall, a Toronto-based pianist and a prominent performer of contemporary music in Canada. (DM) ––– Address: https://redshiftrecords.org/ PHILIP ZOUBEK & IVANN CRUZ & MARCIN WITKOWSKI – RADIUM (CD by Circum Disc) ‘Radium’ is the debut release by a trio of Philip Zoubek (prepared piano, analogue synth), Ivann Cruz (electric guitar, electronics) and Marcin Witkowski (prepared drums, electronics). A trio that exists already for some years. A bit on their backgrounds: Austrian musician Zoubek worked with Paul Lytton, Frank Gratkowski, Wilbert de Joode, Thomas Lehn, etc. Cruz and Witkowski worked earlier in a Polish-French quartet with Peter Orins and Mateusz Rybicki that came about from the ‘Lille meets Wroclaw’ project. Percussionist and drummer Witkowski is mainly focused on exploring new electro-acoustic possibilities and co-founder of ensembles like Jiva, Program, Room on Moon. Cruz comes more from a jazz background and participated in many Lille-based ensembles (La Pieuvre, le Grand Orchestre de Muzzix, Circum Grand Orchestra, Feldspath, TOC). As a trio, they are engaged in a really exciting musical adventure. The album offers some very radical improvised music, focused on integrating loud and harsh noise with jazz-inspired improvisation. Resulting in what sounds like an intriguing electro-acoustic sound world. This implies that the sounds of piano, guitar and drums are often deconstructed and changed beyond recognition if not accompanied by electronic sound sources. Each improvisation is a richly textured world on its own, originating from different ideas and angles. The lengthy improvisation ‘Tungsten’ may be the most extreme one. A very heavy treat of thick layers of noise. The dark and moody soundscape ‘Silenium’ is at the other end of the spectrum. Ethereal sounds effectively combined crackling noises ‘Astatine’ is the very captivating opening track with fine interactions between the three. In ‘Thallium’ we hear a prepared piano in a very percussive role. ‘Xenon’ is a very elegant and communicative piece, where they stay most close to their original instruments of guitar, prepared piano and drums. Each of the nine improvisations underlines this was a fruitful and inspired collaboration. A more than an excellent album of very exciting and suspenseful music! (DM) ––– Address: https://www.circum-disc.com/ KLAUS JANEK – PROSPECTING (LP by Almenrauschen) KLAUS JANEK – RECIPROCUM (LP by Almenrauschen) In 2019 Klaus Janek, a Berlin-based composer, contrabassist and researcher released a set of 5 albums of his solo and collaborative work. First three albums (‘Caspar’, ‘Three Seasons’ and ‘Infinite Bang’) we reviewed here earlier. Now we are focusing on the two other albums that complete this special edition called ‘Almenrauschen’, namely ‘Prospecting’ and ‘Reciprocum’. Compared with the earlier reviewed albums from this edition, these albums show Janek not so much as an accomplished double bass player, but far more his activity in the field of electro- acoustic music. The album ‘Prospecting’ contains duo works by Janek with Milena Kipfmüller as Sounding Situations. Kipfmüller is a sound artist, producer, theatre dramaturge, interested in developing new forms of ‘performative and live radio play’. ‘Violeiros Revisitados’ is built from recordings of traditional Brazilian vocal music by the Violeiros, dating from the 70s and looped sounds. Janek adds nice solo lines on contrabass. Through processing, this is finished in a warm sound work of deep sounds. Similar for ‘Recorded Recorders’ that starts with a fine solo by Janek, accompanied with deep and low sounds that evolve along with cyclic procedures. The work develops along with a deep echoing cadence, centred around a hypnotizing pattern. Again the sound material is of imaginative quality. Both are very intensive and moving works. On the B- side, we find ‘Echolot-Montreal/Sao Paolo’. Echolot is a performance installation by Kipfmüller and Janek, presented in Montreal (2016) and Sao Paolo (2017). Non-musical material of spoken word (French and German) is the main ingredient in this work that can be situated between audio play and music. Again a truly absorbing sound work where they successfully investigate into the musical qualities of the spoken word. The album ‘Reciprocum’ contains one giant work in two parts. The first part is based on recording sessions by Janek with Heiner Reinhard, Willi Kellers, Andy Graydon, Nils Ostendorf, Biliana Voutchkova, Mark Weaver and Christian Pincock that are reworked and assembled by Janek into one work. The second part is based on recordings sessions of Janek and Nicolas Wiese, William Bilwa Costa, Luca Marini, among others, processed by Milena Kipfmüller. Both Janek and Kipfmüller manage to integrate these recordings into one organic (meta-)musical work. Sometimes the original recordings are treated beyond recognition, sometimes not. Also, the length of the outtakes is very different. There is a very long one with fantastic violin playing by Voutchkova. It is impressive how Janek and Kipfmüller take up these improvised sections in a new musical context. For sure we are dealing here with multi-layered and multidimensional works by two artists who have a strong musical vision of what they aiming at. Music that fascinates from start to finish! (DM) ––– Address: http://www.klaus-janek.de/ DAVE PHILLIPS - SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION (LP by Total Black) The work of Dave Phillips is never about the music itself, as the man has a message for the world. He's, by all means, an activist, fighting some good causes, such as caring about the environment. Although I am pretty sure I didn't see all of his releases, I would think this is the first time there is an extensive text delivered with this release, addressing the way we humans treated the earth, the extinction of insects, for instance, and the fact that we are very careless with earth, so life itself might be extinct in the future. There is so much text here that one isn't able to read it while playing the LP. This is the most 'punk' record by Phillips so far, in terms of explaining a point. Some of this is written by Professor Jem Bendell, but also from newspapers, encyclopaedia and online sources. The music on this LP contains two sidelong pieces of music. On the first side we find 'Things Falling Apart', a stereophonic piece that was originally a six-channel piece played over three PA's and on the second side there is the studio version of 'Radical Hope', "triggered by a broken heart, it’s a critical analysis of subjective behaviourisms, self-reflections, self-criticisms and conclusions thereof. the subsequent translation of derived intentions into ritualised actions include purging, activating learning and healing processes, self-betterment, empowerment and hair-burning. has since morphed into a piece about the relationship of the human as a species with planet earth as a cherished entity, such as a loved one, a friend, a partner, a companion, a parent or a family member, a home or an origin." Both of these pieces are tour de forces for Phillips. He has a very distinct sound. It is a highly personal approach to, for the lack of better, 'noise' music. Phillips plays loud music but seems not to be interested in loads and loads of distortion, but everything is recorded very loud and it never distorts. That is already an interesting achievement. On the input side there are acoustic sounds, dogs barking and air escaping balloons for instance, along with Phillips' voice, screaming/shouting but only very occasionally. There might also be some form of electronics, providing 'drones', airy and nothing 'fat', for the sake of playing some 'nice; drones; I am sure playing 'nice drones' doesn't appear in his vocabulary. And there are very short punctures of sound. A crack, a balloon burst, the slamming of doors, the breaking of wood, a bang on metal. All of these elements are combined and put together in one long frightening collage. Or two, of course, such as on this LP. 'Radical Hope' provides a more continuous sound but here too elements fly in and out of the mix, growing in power and strength until it cuts out and the final minutes are reserved for a slow bang on a gong and whispering. 'Things Falling Apart' is more a collage piece, with rapid changes of sceneries, via bangs and thumbs, like opening doors to new realities all the time, and the voice of Phillips as a guide, even if we don't understand him all the time. This is powerful stuff, all around; the sort of thing that made you think and it's about time. (FdW) ––– Address: https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/ DIVIDED STATE - SPURIOUS EMISSIONS (CDR by Edgetone Records) Usually releases by the US label Edgetone Records go to Dolf Mulder, due to the improvised nature of the music, but after checking this one out I thought this to be more up my street. Divided State is a duo of André Custodio (manipulated sampling, synthesizers, percussion) and Leroy Clark (field recording, synthesizers, sampling, mixing). I had not heard of either man. The cover tells us that the music is made of 'spontaneous improvised textural atmospheres realized with field recordings, manipulated samples and synthetic magnification of the unknowable". That works out to six pieces of music, spanning sixty-five minutes of music; long tracks, all-around ten to thirteen minutes and all of them in a rather drone/atmosphere approach. None of this is presented as a collage of sound but in a pretty straightforward, linear fashion. Every piece starts with a few sounds and from thereon there is an exploration of these sounds in combination with each other, in combination with effects and throughout with the addition of other sounds. Field recordings are no longer recognizable, heavily changed as they are through the extensive re- sampling and, percussion also seems sparse, and a lot of it deals with synthesizer sounds, sizzling and droning away; all of this rather in an abstract and ambient way, without being in any cosmic or melodic. This is all quite solid music, I should think and something that could appeal to all those in favour of some of those lo-fi drone explorations that are around a lot. Divided State is along similar lines with their grainy, droney, greyish sound paintings; they do a great job here, arriving from a somewhat surprising corner of the musical world. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.edgetonerecords.bandcamp.com TL0741 - REFRACTORY (CDR by HC3 Music) The intervals used by Pat Gillis, also known as TL0741, to release music are quite extended. The last time we heard something from was two CDR releases, reviewed in Vital Weekly 964. As before Gillis is credited with "synths, effects, mixing and editing" and come to think of it, I would think that he's an early adapter of what we know called 'modular synth' music. When I saw him play in 2007 (I think), it might have been one of the first times I saw a modular set-up being played. I have no idea what Gillis working methods are. I can imagine this being all recorded live (at home), at the moment; finding the right sounds and then hit 'record' and do an improvisation over a set of sounds. Likewise, I can also imagine that Gillis records a lot of stuff in real-time and then sits down does multi-tracked version, by mixing various parts. Listening to 'Refractory', I could think it can go either way. Some of this, such as the title piece, is surely a more improvised piece of music, but for others, I am not always sure. As before (also), TL0741 uses quite some force in his music, but throughout it is quite heavy at times. TL0741 covers a vast field of dynamics; powerful meets the introspective and that's a great thing here. There is in these nine pieces quite some variation to be noted. Even a bit of rhythm is not far, such as in 'Raise Your Glass'. As before in all of these pieces there is some fine sense of psychedelic music to be noted; the rough end of cosmic music if you will. Yet it is never too long and outstaying it's welcome. These pieces are like cosmic explosions, coming and going rather quickly. If you play this all a bit quieter than a more subdued ambient mood comes from this and in a louder realm, it becomes immersive. Take your pick there, I'd say, or try it in various ways. For me, either way, worked quite well. (FdW) ––– Address: http://www.hc3music.com MICHAEL DUANE FERRELL - HEX (CDR by Glistening Examples) LUCA FORCUCCI - BODYSCAPE (CDR by Glistening Examples) TOPIAS TIHEÄSALO & NIKO-MATTI AHTI - FOUR LETTERS - LIFE (CDR by Glistening Examples) ERELL LATIMIER - L'IMPATIENCE DIRECTE DES CORPS (CDR by Glistening Examples) Four new releases by Jason Lescalleet's Glistening Examples label, proving you can still do a great looking release and have it on CDR. As such this label is one of the better houses for this. Also, Lescalleet has a great talent for spotting interesting new artists; I have not heard of most of these. For Michael Duane Ferrell I could find any information; not on the label's Bandcamp or anywhere else. I was wondering if the title of his release is inspired by the Dutch novel of the same name, and liked by Stephen King, about a witch surviving for hundreds of years and terrorizing a small village (the original village very close to the Vital hometown; the US version of the book is set in the US); or perhaps any other sort of hexes. The titles don't give away much in that respect, but it all sounds a bit grim; 'Human Thirst For Meaning', 'Bring Him Back', 'Fearful Light' and so on. Perhaps the music sets me off in a dark place as well. I have no idea what Ferrell uses to create music. I am not even able to guess it. It could be modular synthesizers, it could be laptop music, and it could heavily processed guitar music or field recordings. It could be a combination of any of this. Whatever. It all sounds pretty decent and ticks all the right boxes; it's minimal, it's moody, it's dark, it's lo-fi, it's noisy and it's quiet. In each of the ten pieces, Ferrell explores a certain theme and works it all out, chops it down and when it's all said and done he moves on. Usually, that happens between three and seven minutes; none of this is either too short or too long. Likewise, it is never too loud or too quiet, but maintaining a fine balance between both ends. There is a subtle variation in all of this, which makes up for a rock-solid fine album. I was reminded of Richard Francis, but just as well, anyone could fill in a name like that. That's perhaps somewhat of a downside to it; it may not stand out too much of what one already heard before in this musical field. Along similar lines, perhaps only acoustically, I found the release by Luca Forcucci. He's the one person I heard about, and who had a CD on Sub Rosa (Vital Weekly 883) and a cassette on Cronica Electronica (Vital Weekly 971). His work is rooted in the world of digital processing; Forcucci studied at GRM in Paris. On 'Bodyscape' he uses the body of a dancer as a sound source." The information is taken via biosensors and microphones, which record movements and events generated by the body. In this ecosystem, the dancer produces sounds, mainly inaudible, which are then amplified and send back to the performance space, where the dancer interact with them as biofeedback". To this, he added field recordings made at the "border of Botswana and South Africa. L’épidemie virale en Afrique du Sud, a text from the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, informed the journey. The text describes a virus transforming white persons into black persons. A text about privileges." I am not sure what the relationship is between the two unless the dance is also inspired by the text? Forcucci takes credit for live electronics, the dance is Crystal Sepúlveda and Cheryl E. Leonard plays "natural object instruments". I say it is acoustically connected to the music of Ferrell in that it is all rather mysterious and despite the live-electronics, it sounds rather natural. Maybe these are the field recordings, even in a looped form, or perhaps the physical shaping of the actual music. It is also minimal but now in longer pieces; three here in total and all together thirty-seven minutes. Forcucci takes his time to explore the sounds he is working with and does that in a great way. It is all quite drone-based, but one can hear the granulations working overtime here also. It's mysterious and very immersive. There is a great sense of movement here within in the music; this is a great release! Then we move to Finland and meet Tiheäsalo & Ahti, also known as Topias Tiheäsalo and Niko-Matti Ahti from Turku. They are known from bands they played in, such as Jooklo Quartet, Avarus, Kemialliset Ystävät. Together this is their first album, and the "work touches on the very basic issues of the human condition, life and death, and the preparedness for something impossible to be prepared for." There is Finnish dialogue on the CD and translation into English on the cover. Ahti plays objects, field recordings and feedback and Tiheäsalo guitar, harmonium and field recordings. I am not sure who is responsible for the voice, nor if this some accidental taping or something intended. It could be one of the musicians taping his grandparents somewhere in a remote area. There is a great sense of tranquillity here. The instruments used do not play a big part of the music; or at least they seem on an equal footing with the field recordings, walking around the countryside and bumping into people in a cold climate who recount about that. It is like a documentary in audio-only; the crackling of leaves on an icy road, some talking and a no doubt grey sky. There is not a lot of difference when I look out my window on one of the early days of the New Year. Grey sky and cold (no ice, luckily). Sometimes they are inside and there is a bit of music; harmonious guitar doodling (in 'Part III') or some faraway drones in 'Part I'. It is all rather intriguing music and mysterious. And then we move back to the area of musique concrete with a work by one Erell Latimier from France. This is her debut CD, I believe. She uses texts she wrote and she recites them along Camille Belohradsky and Will Guthrie. These texts are parts of a thing that is called ‘La Béatitude des Hordes’, which translates as 'The Beatitude of the Hordes'. There are also "brut sounds, saturated melodies, drones", all of this in collage form that is in the best musique concrete tradition. This is poetic, hard to understand and personal. What it all means is hard to say, even when it would have been in English (you know me and text, I hope). The voices are close by, especially (I assume) the one of Latimier, and it reminded of Cortex (the old Insane Music project) and Dominique Petitgand. Especially with the latter, she shares a similar approach of text/voice that sound it is recorded in the living room and with household recordings but Latmier also takes them from further afield. Not sure where, but from a bigger space, perhaps an old factory. It has that cavernous quality. Like Tiheäsalo & Ahti release this is all quite intriguing and mysterious, but whereas that one is more like a radio documentary, this is rather more like a poetic trip through the outside; through a forest in the title piece and then ending up in a big empty building. All of the concrete sounds support this trip, sparse as they are most of the times. This is also a rather fine disc; most delicate, just like the one by Tiheäsalo & Ahti. (FdW) ––– Address: https://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com/ CHLORINE - BLUME (cassette by Invisible Cities) NICHOLAS MALONEY - SOMBUSE (cassette by Invisible Cities) DUNNING & BROSAMER - GLOCKEN (cassette by Invisible Cities) Behind Chlorine is one Graeme; no last name required. I am not sure if the translation of 'Blume' would be 'flowers' as it would in German. Do not expect some hippie-dippie peace music here. Only the title track is something that could be labelled as 'quieter', with looped feedback slowed down and some percussion. There are also some field recordings to be detected here. I understand from the usual short description on Bandcamp there are field recordings on all of five pieces. That is not something that one can easily hear. The title track is the final track of the album, and the four preceding pieces are what the label classifies as "daily meandering in the red". The level of transformations applied here are to such an extent that none of the field recordings can be recognized. It's distorted to an extreme level. In 'Exhume' and 'Fortune' going towards power electronics, in 'Consume' to a more subdued level and we might recognize the sound of a train, which, come to think of it, might be the source for some of the other pieces as well. This is one heavy set of music, an ear-cleansing experience. You'll never be safe on a train again. Also, a new name for me is Nicolas Maloney, from Jackson, Mississippi and who works in the "areas of drone, ambient, musique concrète, and electroacoustic music [...] He is interested in the interaction among texture, sound, and space". He has had some releases out on Warm Milk Recordings (his label), Green Field Recordings, Somewherecold Records and Humanhood Recordings. He also works as Blanket Swimming and Sleep Silver Lightning, and as a "guitarist/ vocalist for experimental/post-rock band, The Empty Handed Painters as well as the guitarist/ vocalist for experimental/lo-fi/garage-rock/noise rock trio, The Villetown Mountain Army Brigade". The work he releases under his name deals with field recordings, found sounds and the manipulation of both. Following the blast just delivered by Chlorine, this is a wealth of calm sounds. Much of it deals with a very quiet approach and things can be near-silent for a longer time. Here one has no idea what the field recordings originally sounded like, such as the level of processing here as well. But unlike Chlorine things aren't blown out of proportions, but it also sounds very subdued. Like it has been covered with a blanket, muffled away and occasionally this blanket is so thick there is hardly any sound. In 'Persune' Maloney uses the form of start/stop collage to produce this before going into a droney field. "Balline' and 'Solast' are straightforward pieces of drone music, slowly fading in and out, sounding like a massive storm approaching and leaving. In 'Quiete' the wind blows also but in quicker curves. I very much enjoyed the subdued character of all of this and Maloney's daring move to include quite a bit of silence. I could repeat what I say elsewhere about turntablist, but I won't, as I think Graham Dunning does wonderful stuff with turntables, creating constructions that actually work as an instrument. Here is a duo recording with one Sascha Brosamer, of whom I never heard. Together they use "gramophone, turntable, modified records, cast 78s, retextured disks by Lisa Schlenker, mobile devices using Grainfield by CoSiMa / IRCAM, synths and FX", and the six pieces were recorded between 9 and 17 June 2019 in Switzerland. This time Dunning is doing a bit more traditional moves on the turntable, creating loops of found sound, looped scratches but cobbled together with the electronic sounds from Brosamer it becomes something that is altogether most enjoyable. The element of repetition is never far away (my main objection, I guess, against turntablism) and sometimes is to plain of an element in the music here, but when it is embedded deeper within the electronic sounds, perhaps real-time transformations the same turntable such as 'S'cool Boy (Live with Lisa Schlenkler)', it becomes a brooding song, mysterious and exciting. The title piece is also of similar quality, even with the more obvious scratches. 'Metronome' is a fine drone inspired collage of sounds. Altogether this was quite good, though perhaps not as exciting as some of Dunning's solo work in this field. (FdW) ––– Address: https://invisiblecityrecords.bandcamp.com/ |