Editorial: No celebration, just more words
SONGS – 1 & 2 (CD by Intonema) *
BADRUTT & BELORUKOV & KOCHER – ROTONDA (CD by Intonema) *
GUSH – THE MARCH (CD by Konvoj)
FRANS DE WAARD – COURRIÈRE (CD by Mystery Sea) *
MICHEL WINTSCH & CHRISTIAN WEBER & CHRISTIAN WOLFARTH – THIEVES THAT LEFT BEHIND (CD by Veto Records)
MICHAEL TROMMER – NIGHT SWIMMER (CD by Unfathomless) *
RADICALFASHION – GARCON (CD by Flau) *
STEFAN JOS – PRIMITIVES (CD by Flau) *
YUI ONODERA – SEMI LATTICE (CD by Baskaru) *
SIMON WHETHAM – WHAT MATTERS IS THAT IT MATTERS (CD by Baskaru) *
EMMANUEL MIEVILLE – ETHERS (CD by Baskaru) *
THOMAS BONVALET & JEAN-LUC GUIONNET – FUSEES (CD by Weighter Recordings) *
HENNIES & ODOM & O’NEILL – CLOTS (DVD by Weighter Recordings)
ERIKM – L’ART DE LA FUITE (LP by Sonoris)
BASS COMMUNION & FREIBAND (LP by Important Records) *
KRUBE – UNTITLED (7″ by Il Disci Del Barone)
MICHAEL MUENNICH & MICHAEL ESPOSITO/JOHN DUNCAN – CHALKBOARD DUST/STAY ALIVE (7″ flexi disc by Phantom Plastics/Geräuschmanufaktur)
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – CRASH VELVET APOCALYPSE (2CDR by The Termaninal Kaleidoscope) *
JOS SMOLDERS – MODULAR WORKS 2015Q1 (download from Cronica) *
CS² – DARK DWELLINGS (miniCDR by Core Shift) *
GONCALO ALMEIDA & RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – DOZE RUINAS (miniCDR by Cylinder Recordings) *
ZEBRA MU – CARDBOARD DOVE PIZZA (cassette by Poor Little Music)
ANTOINE PANACHE – J’AI UN AME SOLITAIRE (cassette by Barreuh Records) *
JASON KAHN & TIM OLIVE – FUKUOKA/OSAKA (cassette by Notice Recordings)
RYOKO AKAMA & BRUNO DUPLANT – IMMOBILITIE (cassette by Notice Recordings)
No celebration, just more words.
After I started doing Vital Weekly in 1995, when I was working for Staalplaat and having just acquired access to the Internet, I must have thought about Vital Weekly issue 1000. “Let me see, give or take, that will be in 2015; that is a lot of years from now”. Very much as number 2000 will be issued late 2035 or 2500 in 2045, by which time I will be 80 years old. In all those years I may have thought about this 1000th issue, and that it was unlikely I would celebrate it. Possibly my own musical career would rocket sky high and I would have no longer have the time for it, or maybe getting a proper paid job outside music would prevent me from going on. Neither has happened (unfortunately for some, me included). Every now and then I get the question: of all that you reviewed, what was really good? I am not one that easily answers impromptu questions, so I wouldn’t know. I hardly remember what was in last week’s issue.
So why are we doing all this stuff? Vital Weekly is not anything journalistic or having pretentions about great music writing. Since 1986, when I first published Vital as a fanzine on paper and since 1995 as Vital Weekly the aim is to review new, weird and wonderful music and let everyone know there is all of this out there via short and to the point reviews. It is very easy to access, it’s free for anyone to get. Pretty much all of the music that is received is reviewed, and in many cases it is the only place where you music is reviewed. Our focus has always been experimental music, whatever that may be. In some cases music is received that is really not up our street, but we mention it anyway, and inform the reader that this is nothing for us. I have never sent in information to any music industry handbook, just to avoid getting music that is not for my audience. It’s reviewed; there is a link to the label and a bit in the weekly podcast (in itself already over 500 issues).
The critique we deliver comes from people who have been involved in creating, publishing, selling, promoting and performing “this” kind of music for a long time themselves and we have an idea what we are writing about and we can place it in the wider history of experimental music. From some labels we have reviewed every single item they released and in return anyone can use our reviews on their website. The no-copyright tag that Vital, the fanzine in 1986 had, lingers on in Vital Weekly.
As someone said: Vital Weekly is a punk magazine. We are totally independent, having no advertisement for anyone; we are entirely free in writing about music what we want. There is no favouritism. We don’t interview musicians; labels, organisers and we don’t need to be kind to anyone to maintain a source of income.
Over the years there has been much criticism towards Vital Weekly; maybe now is the time and place to answer that (although a couple of years ago I wrote something about the nature of our reviewing; I put it up the website). The ‘on the go’ writing for instance, in which we are questioned if we/I really listen to music. That is something I can never go into, because what do you want to hear? That I played something ten times? Twenty times? Twice? Never? Sometimes it is easy to form an opinion and sometimes it isn’t. Every musician believes to have delivered a masterpiece that is worthy of 4000+ word essay, but that’s not how it works. Perhaps unfortunately. Over the years there have been bad reviews, surely, and no doubt sometimes the text is puzzling (and some readers even ramble about algorithms to generate these reviews). Many of the writers are not native English speakers and to order a corrector every week is something we simply cannot afford. Which brings me to another ‘hot’ topic. Our insistence on reviewing physical releases only, or as someone noted that I “play it once and write a review on-the-go before selling it at half-price on [removed]. So, help me here, this is your idea of supporting a community of experimental music publishers, right?” Well, yes, it is. If I offer something for sale and it’s never sold, I still did the work, i.e. the review is written and the makers can use it should they want to. Increasingly we live in a world in which everything is supposed to be free, as if free (i.e. at no cost) is a trademark of being ‘good’ (as in morally good). As much as people want, I simply don’t believe this. If I offer my time on reviewing and having no paid subscribers or paid advertising, I may have to look for another income to pay for my time (usually more than just a few hours every day for six days a week), the cost of forwarding promo’s to other writers, website hosting and such like, and this can be had through offering promotional copies for sale; Similarly that’s the reason why we don’t do download releases and to put it bluntly: there is nothing to sell. If in the future there will be no more physical releases to write about as some people predict over and over again, then we have the option to adjust to the new circumstances or to disappear. The new circumstances will be most likely to ask our subscribers to pay for our work (and with 4000+ subscribers, and everyone paying 15 euros a year, that would provide a neat income, and no longer I would be selling promo’s; I would donate them to a dedicated archive, such as ZKM – but in reality less than 200 euros a year is received in donations) or get advertising, but somehow I don’t think that is going to happen either. As said: many people believe we live in a free world.
That is the same reason why, over the years, I have declined many propositions to change Vital Weekly. It is not going to be neither an open discussion platform, nor a fancy website (which in reality is usually not a fancy website, just another wordpress template; so much for design). Offers in that direction usually came with the brief ‘I can do it for not too much money’, but for someone who has been doing this for 20 years for no money at all, this is a bridge too far. I firmly believe that Vital Weekly is unlikely to change at all over the next twenty years; it should stay outside the mainstream of anything; it should not be a hot, flashy website, not peppered with ads, banners and what have you, have paid journalists, editors, designers and such like, but devote all it’s time and energy to promote wonderfully weird and different music. If you continue to believe in what you do, and release beautiful, strange and exotic sounds on CD, USB, tape, vinyl, CDR, then I will devote my time and energy to write about it; open and fair minded. You would take the occasional mistakes for granted.
Frans de Waard
22-IX-2015
SONGS – 1 & 2 (CD by Intonema)
BADRUTT & BELORUKOV & KOCHER – ROTONDA (CD by Intonema)
From Berlin hails the quartet Songs – why not indeed that word for a band name! And the great thing is, the two pieces hardly sounds like songs in a traditional sense of the word. While on paper this seems to be a group of improvisers, the cover says that Rishin Singh not just plays the trombone but also gets the credit for composing. The other members are Lucio Capece (bass clarinet), Catherine Lamb (voice and viola) and Stine Sterne (voice). The music, recorded on two different occasions by Adam Asnan (who also mixed these pieces), is very carefully played by this quartet. ‘Six Scenes Of Boredom’ is fifteen minutes and ‘Three Lives’ is almost twenty-seven minutes. Both of these pieces are very minimal, with very few sounds. All of the instruments produce very low and long form sounds and Sterne’s voice sounds clearly on top of that playing. In the first song this is at it’s most minimal, sometimes with hardly any sound at all, but I must say that it is ‘Three Lives’ which I really enjoyed. Here the voice seems double tracked, or otherwise a bit of reverb has been added, with creates a refined richness to Sterne’s voice. The instruments guide her singing very well. It has a spooky, haunted quality. It is almost folk-like; the singing is not wordless but actual lyrics, which I didn’t easily follow, but then: I never do that. An excellent release.
The other new release by Intonema, from St-Petersburg, deals with a recording made in the Rotunda of the Mayakovsky Library in this town; a place they used before to do recordings (see Vital Weekly 946). The trio of musicians here is Gaudenz Badrutt (acoustic sound sources and live sampling), Ilia Belorukov (alto saxophone, objects) and Jonas Kocher (accordion). They toured in Russia about a year ago and the music they played is very quiet. Most of the times that is. These three players manage to do nothing for a bit of time and then play all together for some time. That can be ‘loud’, but it’s more the volume for a short period going up than them playing some actual noise. This is absolutely not ‘easy’ music to get into. One can’t do anything else than sit down and listen closely. Otherwise this silence versus outbreaks of some sound will be highly annoying – as I learned the first time I was playing this. But when I returned to it, sat down and listened than I noticed a very powerful interplay between the three players as well as the silence vs. the sound. It’s wonderful recording indeed (although I must admit I am not sure if I heard the actual space in these recordings) and not something one sticks on for sheer entertainment. Very refined. (FdW)
Address: http://www.intonema.org
GUSH – THE MARCH (CD by Konvoj)
I have several memories on my first hearings of a particular record. The solo record by Sten Sandell ‘Behind the Chords‘ (1998) is one of them. I was completely struck and fascinated by this player. Alas my meetings with Sandell’s music where rare since. So I’m happy with this new Gush album in my player and again very surprised by this set of captivating and overwhelming improvisations by his trio. This Swedish trio exists for about 15 years now. The unit has Sten Sandell on piano and voice, Mats Gustafsson playing tenor and soprano sax, plus drummer Raymond Strid (drums, cymbals, percussion). The name of Gustafsson may be the most familiar one. His collaborations are uncountable as well on the European as the American continent. But Sandell also is a very busy bee, but operates more within the Swedish borders. Same for Raymond Strid from Stockholm. A new name for me, but the oldest musician of the three..As a trio Gush started in 1988 and released a first album in 1990. ‘The March’ is their 8th release. Konvoj recorded one of their concerts during their 25th anniversary tour in 2013. Over the years they became an important cornerstone in the Swedish improv world, as this new release proves once more if you need any. Exuberant improvisations, full of drama. Their music can be very intimate, like the final part of the 30-minute ‘Barely an instant before the march’. But it is also very explosive and expressive. The playing by all three is delicious. The playing by Sandell is characterised by the classical touches he integrated in his playing. Gustafsson’s playing is so vivid and physical, like in the first part of ‘Barely an instant..’ where their interplay shows a fantastic concentration and takes you into a very powerful flow. A work of true improv masters. (DM)
Address: http://www.konvojrecords.com/
FRANS DE WAARD – COURRIÈRE (CD by Mystery Sea)
Considering the fact that you are currently reading Vital Weekly, odds are that Frans de Waard does not require any introduction at all, so I gladly leave it there – trusting that you are well-capable of finding the extensive account of the man’s immense oeuvre on discogs yourself, if necessary.
This album is a commissioned work for Mystery Sea; a series that requests artists to draw inspiration from the archetypical notion of water. This can lie for instance in the abyssal fear of the ocean – a realisation I find very inspirational myself – but also more positive interpretations, like the sense of ‘flow’, are something that fits with said objective.
This led De Waard to making field recordings during a canoe trip in the Belgian Ardennes, about which he recounts that he himself was too apprehensive to actually participate. The recordings form the basis of this album.
Apart from some notable changes in the overall dynamics, Courrière is an smooth work, tension-wise. There is a potent high+low end thrust of noise slowly commencing approximately 17 minutes in and another brusque layer suddenly cropping up at the end, but even these have a certain moderation to them. At no point does the album become too challenging, nor do the parts in which the pressure or tension are somewhat increased last too long, which I felt was a pleasant feature of the composition – it’s very well-tempered. If comparisons need to be drawn, particular aspects of the album – the use of certain timbres and the way sounds extend and an imminent noumenal tension reminded me of the work of Thomas Köner and Sleep Research Facility. Will play this one again! (PJN)
Address: https://mysterysea.wordpress.com/catalog/ms78-frans-de-waard/
MICHEL WINTSCH & CHRISTIAN WEBER & CHRISTIAN WOLFARTH – THIEVES THAT LEFT BEHIND (CD by Veto Records)
This Swiss trio operates already several years. Hatology, Monotype and Leo records released earlier works. For their latest one they could do business with Christoph Erb of Veto Records. On two days in February this year they recorded their new set in a studio in Geneva. We hear Michel Wintsch play synthesizers and electric piano, Christian Weber bass and Christian Wolfarth drums. As this new recording proves the chemistry between these three musicians still works very well. Intriguing, interactive well-shaped improvisations. There is strange, indefinable peace and balance inside this music where a lot is happening. All three players are fully engaged in their mysterious meetings. Especially through the synths played by Wintsch the improvisations have a fascinating sound spectrum. Sometimes there is a groove or a rhythm-based pattern. To be changed for very abstract improvisations, or melodic phrases occur. The playing is very together and focused. These musicians know each other very well and built some very engaging and unconventional structures. Fascinating stuff! (DM)
Address: http://www.veto-records.ch
MICHAEL TROMMER – NIGHT SWIMMER (CD by Unfathomless)
Unfathomless somehow always seems to be finding people that are involved in field recordings and who didn’t seem to made it to these pages. Work by Michael Trommer was released by Transmat, Wave, Ultra-red, and/OAR, Audiobulb (on a compilation which actually made it to these pages, see Vital Weekly 696), Audio Gourmet, Gruenrekorder, Impulsive Habitat, Stasisfield, Serein, Flaming Pines, 3Leaves and con-v, and yes, some of these labels send their work to Vital Weekly, but none of Trommer’s works. On this CD we find three pieces of music, which were recorded at Southern Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada, and uses sounds from the end of the day, when its fading into night. Sound wise an interesting time of the day: animals who live during the day get quieter, and nightlife animals start up. Trommer sits near the bay and records his sounds. That seems to be quite some water sounds in ‘Night Paddler’ and also one that has some human action to it – maybe I imagined this but it sounded like he lighted a cigarette. What exactly he recorded in ‘Night Swimmer’ and ‘Night Swimmer 2d’ is unclear. There is in the first one quite a bit of line hum, of amplified sounds that one usually gets rid off and in the other one there is some more water sounds also and with some help one could think Trommer himself is also part of this. All three of these pieces have some quite mysterious and it’s hard to point out what that is. Is it the supposedly human action near the water? It’s not a work that is a straight recording that much is clear; Trommer has his sounds edited into compositions, which are very quiet, yet also quite intense. Nothing that is suitable for casual listening, but rather something that one has to listen with some level of concentration in order to grasp the beauty of it. (FdW)
Address: http://www.unfathomless.net
RADICALFASHION – GARCON (CD by Flau)
STEFAN JOS – PRIMITIVES (CD by Flau)
These two new releases on Flau couldn’t be more apart I think. First we have from Kobe one Hirohito Ihara, who works as Radicalfashion and this is second album. The first one, ‘Odori’ was released eight years ago on Hefty, but I believe there is a couple more coming sooner than eight years. The main instrument is the piano here, which is for more releases by Flau an important instrument. It seems at the start of this rather short release (thirty-four minutes) that this is all about the piano and nothing much else, but as the album progress there is the addition of electronics; maybe they are electronic treatments of the piano, or just samples of other sounds and they add a fine crispy atmosphere to the already delicate piano music. None of the ten pieces is really very long or complex. Radicalfashion plays a bit piano, up-tempo, moody, atmospheric, minimal (such as in the Steve Reich-like ‘Drum’, which I particularly enjoyed), with the electronics being merely ornamental and supporting, never playing an all important role, except in such pieces as ‘A Ribbon Knot’ and ‘To “The September 13th”‘, which are all about electronics and no piano sounds. This is an album of nice contrasts and one that fits the early grey autumn day very well.
Something entirely different is the release by Montreal based Stefan Jos, whose real name is Devon Hansen, and sometimes works as D. Hansen and Lotide. Different as to the album by Radicalfashion, but it also seems an odd ball in the catalogue of Flau. The short opening piece ‘An Introduction To Entomology’ may lead you think this is an album of ‘modern electronics’, but as soon as you reach the second piece, ‘Trouble In The Common’ you know this is going to be a bit different. The eight tracks that follow the short opening are all in the genre of minimal techno/house. The label mentions as references such luminaries as Farben, Moritz von Oswald Trio, Sutekh, Herbert and Ricardo Villalobos, so you may get the picture. A minimal rhythm sets the piece in motion and trough dub inspired techniques sounds drop in and out. The tempo doesn’t seem to be very high here, but surely that has something to do with the dub-like nature of the music. I don’t see many people dancing to this music, but then again: I am not a DJ either. I quite enjoyed this and for very same reason as I did Radicalfashion: perfect music for a grey day but then to make you feel cheerful during such a grey day. (FdW)
Address: http://www.flau.jp
YUI ONODERA – SEMI LATTICE (CD by Baskaru)
SIMON WHETHAM – WHAT MATTERS IS THAT IT MATTERS (CD by Baskaru)
EMMANUEL MIEVILLE – ETHERS (CD by Baskaru)
A trio of new releases by French label Baskaru opens with the music of Yui Onodera, from Tokyo. It’s been quite while since I last heard his music, being back in Vital Weekly 812. The press text tells us that he was quiet for eight years on the side of solo releases, but has worked in between with the likes of The Beautiful Schizophonic (see Vital Weekly 812), Pjusk, Vadim Bondarenko, Mizkami Ryuta and Celer. But now, in 2015, he’s back and this is second solo CD this year, following ‘Sinkai’ on Arctic Tone. The music on ‘Semi Lattice’ was recorded between 2011 and 2013 and he uses piano, guitars, environmental sound and processing. It results in music that is highly drone based. Everything he plays is processed into long form sounds, and Onodera selects sounds to work together and, placed side by side, and over the course of a piece they work quite well. Sometimes we are allowed to recognize rain sounds, such as in ‘Semi Lattice 2’, with its vocoder synth sound at the core of it all, and sometimes the music grows in intensity during the piece, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all and everything stays on the same level. It is music that works pretty well, if you look for atmospheric, dark ambient created by computer technology. I must admit that even when I liked this, and I think Onodera has quite some variation in his choice of sounds, it is also something that is hardly new or different than pretty much a lot of other people who are active in this field of computer treated ambient music. That perhaps is a pity.
Simon Whetham is always pretty active when it comes to playing music around the globe, doing residencies and having releases on such labels as Cronica, Entr’acte, Helen Scarsdale Agency, Line and Monochrome Vision. Much of what he does deals with the use of field recordings, which are processed, and sometimes not at all. Sometimes he uses other devices and/or instruments, but sometimes leaves the listener in the dark what it is that he does. This new album is not tied into some specific place or residency, but rather six pieces in which he can combine sounds, textures and moods more freely together. In these pieces the mood is set to ‘dark’ and ‘atmospheric’. I would believe he uses extensively the computer to stretch out sounds and play around with them in a very minimal way. Occasionally there is some field recording, such as rain in the piece called ‘The Innocence Of Deceit’, which mixes nicely with the heavy rain outside. Thunder is cut down to a rhythm. Sometimes an instrument seems to be in play, such as (maybe!) a guitar in ‘You Can’t Escape The Past’ or orchestral sounds in ‘The Other Side Of The Border’. This album is all right but no standout for Whetham I think. It’s good but not great. For the die-hard fans I think.
The last time I heard something from Emmanuel Mieville was in Vital Weekly 803, and that was his previous album for Baskaru. Mieville, a trained composer from GRM uses a lot of field recordings in his music, which he treats into music. I am not sure how Mieville works in creating his music, but it could very well be that he has many treatments of the same sound source and which are later stuck together and crafted into a piece of music, with all the subtle changes possible, which Mieville can choose from when doing this. I might very well be entirely wrong of course. His music can be compared to that of Whetham (or vice versa, but that’s not the order I am hearing these releases): quite closed off blocks of sound, but somehow the work of Mieville sounds more coherent than Whetham on his new release. It also seems to be less closed off, with a bit more air in between the various treatments that he uses in his music. Whetham’s music seems hermetically closed. There is fine vibrancy in the pieces by Mieville, shifting back and forth, ignoring strict classical rules of composition. Excellent release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.baskaru.net
THOMAS BONVALET & JEAN-LUC GUIONNET – FUSEES (CD by Weighter Recordings)
HENNIES & ODOM & O’NEILL – CLOTS (DVD by Weighter Recordings)
Two new releases on Nick Hennies’ label Weighter Recordings and which come with a nice letterpress cover. The first is by Jean-Luc Guionnet, of whom I believe I haven’t heard in quite a while, and Thomas Bonvalet, of whom I heard very little (see Vital Weekly 668 and 939). The cover lines up all the instruments in French, which is a nice touch, but someone tiresome also. Guionnet plays two organs, three small harmoniums, contact microphones and objects, a small mobile trumpet speaker and soprano saxophone and Bonvalet plays ‘stringin’ it’, audio ducker, microphone, speakers, tambourine, six stringed banjo and other stuff, for which I was perhaps too lazy to look for a translation. The music is recorded at Instants Chavires (in concert? I am not sure) and spreads out over nine pieces. If the work of Hennies himself says ‘carefully constructed music’, then such is not the case here with these pieces. There is a nice upfront playing of their instruments and objects, which is played with some fine aggression to it. There is certain naivetés about these recordings, a certain post-punk feel to it I think. The strings are plucked, the organs drone away, and there is a great percussive rumble to be noted in here. Sometimes it is quite rhythmical as in ‘2 mer D_v3’ (I am not sure what these titles mean here), but it can also be chaotic as in ‘1 mer B_v6_oct’, in which the children’s keyboards are maltreated. Everything is of course improvised, but ‘careful’, a word that we often use in connection with improvisation, is not a word we need here necessarily. I thoroughly enjoyed this somewhat noisy, yet also somewhat acoustic, take on improvised music, which sounded at times very ‘song-like’. Excellent raw music.
Sometimes I have the idea that I have no clue at all. I am hearing something and I have no idea what I’m hearing. Or seeing. Such is the case with the DVD called ‘Clots’. The credits are “Nick Hennies percussion and concept, Clay Odom design and Sean O’Neill electronics and design. Visual documentation by Raphael Umscheid. Filmed during the Clots live performance in Austin, TX, March 23 & 30 2013.” That’s it, and the website has nothing else. We see flickering light, plastic sheets, lightbulb and so on for twenty or so minutes with what seems to be a very repeating sound, of some bells like sound sculpture slowly moving in the wind. Then the scenery changes and we see a bass drum, with perhaps a resonating surface. The next segment seems to be going back to the wind chime like sound, but there is more to it than just that. The images keep moving all the time, with the camera filming light sources and instruments. While we hear music and see instruments, we don’t see people playing these instruments, so we must assume this is all some automated action, or perhaps Hennies is somewhere else playing his instruments. While I have no clue what’s going on here in this performance, I must say it all sounds and looks rather fascinating. This is not a strict documentation of a concert with some movements in light, but a gesamtkunstwerk of light, music, action, automation and performance. Totally lost as to what the hell I just saw for about an hour, but I found it all highly captivating. (FdW)
Address: http://weighterrecordings.com
ERIKM – L’ART DE LA FUITE (LP by Sonoris)
Over the years there have been reviews of the work of erikM, as he likes to spell out his name, sometimes solo, but by my own estimation more in collaboration with other people. His main instruments are media products, such as vinyl and CDs, which is damages and then starts playing again, layering them together into new compositions. He has been doing so for more than twenty years. In 1995 he released his fourth cassette, in which he worked with vinyl more than CDs, using, if the postcards are any help, three turntables at the time, scratching records, carving grooves to create loops, cutting records in half and sticking them back together, making burn holes and such like. It’s not unlike the work of Milan Knizak, who coined the term ‘broken music’ already in the sixties and Christian Marclay. ErikM put this on a four-track cassette and created his own compositions with these sounds, and I must say I quite enjoyed this lot. If I’m honest I find the whole turntablist movement a bit tiring, but what erikM does here is very good. His pieces aren’t some scratch records being played, but by layering various sounds together he creates pieces of music, which are engaging to hear. Minimal at times, loop-wise of course, but erikM takes exactly the right sound of a record and fiddles around with it, so he slip in a melody of some kind, such as in the beautiful ‘Rose’. Occasionally of course there is noise, which seems hard to avoid if you do this, but they don’t seem to be around here a lot. All ten pieces are kept to a minimum in length, except perhaps for ‘Ich War Ein Armer Heidensohn’, which is almost nine minutes, in which erikM explores his material and plays a ‘song’, rather than presenting some experiments of an electro-acoustic nature. I must admit I didn’t hear any of the erikM cassettes in the nineties, but if the others were like this, then I’d say: bring it on. This is an excellent record; if you are into turntablism, good ol’ fashioned experimental music with a fine dash of noise sewn into this or just into overlooked obscurities: this is the place to be (this week that is). (FdW)
Address: http://www.sonoris.org
BASS COMMUNION & FREIBAND (LP by Important Records)
This collaborative venture between Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson and our own Frans de Waard is the recording of an exclusive live performance by the two gents at Extrapool (an art venue in Nijmegen, NL) in 2014. I was fortunate enough to witness the gig, which saves me the guesswork of establishing whether the recording does justice to the performance itself. I’ll tell you right away that it does, moreover, it renders the whole experience more intense, especially if played on headphones.
The record consists of two pieces with a running time of less than 30 minutes, which is somewhat short for an LP one might say. But then again the second piece in particular starts off with quite a load of audio pressure and though it does not exceed my maximum dosage, it is not as easy a listen as the other Frans de Waard release, reviewed in this issue elsewhere. Though a funny fact is that for this particular performance De Waard actually used material from the ‘Courrière’ CD (see elsewhere). During first play this became somewhat manifest on the first track, but only because I had read it in the sleeve notes. After the wall of noise in the beginning of the second track, there are some rhythmic elements that start to pierce through. In the low end at first, but then gradually there’s a snappy hit that takes the lead and guides us through swirling layers of noise, that, even though this is a live recording and I guess perhaps even improvised, seem quite well-dosed to me, which does benefit the dynamic structuring of the track enormously.
Another remark regarding the length of the record: I don’t see the point in adhering to some of industry-invoked duration standard – like a proper album should contain at least 35-40 minutes of music, or whatever is prevalent nowadays. Personally I feel a running time between 20 and 30 minutes really is the perfect duration for a lot of music. I don’t see why albums should still take up 40 minutes or more of our time. Some stories don’t require that much time to be told comprehensively and this record exemplifies that perfectly. (PJN)
Address: http://www.importantrecords.com/
KRUBE – UNTITLED (7″ by Il Disci Del Barone)
The name Krube so far popped on a compilation (maybe even two), but otherwise I have no idea. I learn from discogs that behind is Alexander Schneider, “Sound Artist, based in Berlin/Kreuzberg. Working under the Krube. Moniker since 1999″, which so far brought us two cassettes, one split LP, one split cassette and now this 7″, which me thinks is not a lot. Both of these pieces are untitled and the cover notes also ‘recording, cut, analog/digital by krube’. Both sides play 45 rpm. In an earlier review about a compilation I noted the acoustic noise for Krube, and that seems a strong interest for him. Here too we find him cracking acoustic objects, right in front of the microphone but also finds ways to manipulate these sounds through electronic and/or digital means. I am not sure if everything is played in real-time or if Krube applies loops. The b-side has quite a bit of field recordings. I thought all of this was quite good. It’s noise based for sure, but of the kind that is made with some effort and idea about composition, which is certainly a big plus for me. Krube’s sounds are great too: very dry, very up front and coupled with some obscure electronics it makes two wonderful compositions, which are albeit way too short, which is the only downside of this great 7”. (FdW)
Address: http://www.iddb.se/
MICHAEL MUENNICH & MICHAEL ESPOSITO/JOHN DUNCAN – CHALKBOARD DUST/STAY ALIVE (7″ flexi disc by Phantom Plastics/Geräuschmanufaktur)
Michael Esposito’s main interest in capturing sound material ‘from beyond’ and shares them with interested parties, who in return treat this material into new compositions. This has resulted in a fine series of flexi discs – Esposito loves them and so do we – which includes CM von Hauswolff, Leif Elggren, Scanner, Francisco Meirino and others. Here he teams up with Michael Muennich, whom we know from the Fragment Factory label. Their piece together works with loops of EVP, and something that resembles rain or white noise, with slowly the addition of more scary sounds (objects flapping in the wind, more rain and thunder) and it is some perfect haunted house music. Spooky!
On the other side we find John Duncan (long time no hear I was thinking) who repeats the phrase ‘Stay Alive’ over and over for exactly five minutes. It has a great mysterious tonal quality. It’s almost like sound poetry, but unlike others no sound effects, no computer, nothing, just his voice, repeating the phrase; what happens when it’s over, I wondered. Is one no longer ‘alive’ then? It’s great to spot the irregularities in this piece. Great double-sided flexi! (FdW)
Address: http://geraeuschmanufaktur.bandcamp.com
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – CRASH VELVET APOCALYPSE (2CDR by The Termaninal Kaleidoscope)
JOS SMOLDERS – MODULAR WORKS 2015Q1 (download from Cronica)
Although I wasn’t going to mention it in any of the reviews of this week, this is the 1000th issue of Vital Weekly. You know this, and elsewhere you can read that celebrating is not my cup of tea. Here’s two instances however where I like to mention something that goes way, way back to way before Vital Weekly. First of all there is The Legendary Pink Dots, whose career I have been following since 1983. In 1984 I published a small booklet with discographies of bands, and one of which was of the Dots, which earned me for a couple of years the reputation of a know-it-all when it came to Dots discographies. I even, later on, did a booklet on it’s own, by the short lived Vital Publishing House. If people would ask me what my favourite period of the Pink Dots is (and surely I wrote about this before, but hey browsing 1000 issues is a bit much, and I am known to repeat stuff), I’d easily say: that whole early cassette period, The Maria Dimension era later on and anything that is less stompy/krauty and more experimental. From the ‘Maria Dimension’ era there is now a double CDR release, of which I received a highly customized version to celebrate 1000 issues of this rag, with a 1990 concert recording from Freiburg in 1990 and one from Vienna one year later. On the first the emphasis is on ‘Crush Velvet Apocalypse’, then just released (I assume; that discographical knowledge is now gone) and the other one more has a focus towards the songs of ‘The Maria Dimension’. Aptly enough the first disc is recorded at the Crash Club, which gave this pack it’s title. Both of these recordings were recently unearthed on cassette and which includes some songs that were rarely played live. Here the Dots are a four piece, with the sadly deceased Bob Pistoor on guitar, Niels van Hoorn on wind instruments, besides core members Edward Ka-spel and The Silverman, on voice and keyboards and Hans Myer doing the live sound. There is a fine motorik drive to the songs, but with the addition of Pistoor’s guitar tinkling away and Van Hoorn blowing away from time to time in a rather contemplative mood there is some excellent live renditions to be enjoyed here of ‘Just A Lifetime’, ‘Princess Coldheart’, ‘Hellsville’, ‘Grain Kings’ and ‘Evolution’ and ‘Grain Kings/Hellsville’… and so many others. Maybe this is all fan-based material, but so be it. I must be one of them then.
I know I get into deep trouble doing what I am about to do now: review a download only release. It will spawn mails that scream ‘me mine me mine too’, or ‘what has Jos Smolders that I don’t?’ (let’s see how many got this last sentence, and immediately mailed me when they read the caption ‘download by Cronica’ and ask ‘I me mine download too now’ – I’ll mail this sentence back to you). Smolders has more than just great music. I first met Jos Smolders early 1987 when his band THU20 played at V2, and so was my troupe, Kapotte Muziek. Being slightly older, he came across like a teacher, and spoke those words which rang until this day: ‘all of this noise you people produce is interesting, but when on earth will you start composing music with all of this noise’. That was a most important lesson, and over the years I often sat next to Jos, discussing the nature of a musical composition we’d be working on (as IMCA, then THU20, Wasm, but countless others also). But Jos being Jos, being much more into the future of music business hardly believes in the future of music being distributed on physical formats and rather has 96-bit audio on a website than 16 bit on shiny silver disc or black platter and hence his music is hardly reviewed in these pages. That is a shame, as when in the mid-80s Vital was a concern on a piece of paper, Jos was very much involved in writing (and spoke those other immortal words: ‘great magazine, though hard to read the language; what is it, English?’ Improvements may take some time or simply never happen) and always was keenly interested in where Vital went next, certainly when it came to the digital domain. Following his career with reel-to-reel machines and later computer technology, Smolders these days occupies himself with modular synthesizers, which seems like the new laptop (‘have modular, will travel’)? I see them everywhere these days and a lot of the times I want to ask these players: ‘when will you actually start to compose music with these modules?’ The modular synthesizer seems very much a tool for some mindless improvisation; flick on and off switches for any amount of time. Since 2014 Smolders has quarterly releases of works he composed in the three months before, using his modular set-up and this continues in 2015. Cronica Electronica from Portugal released these four pieces, composed by Smolders when he was working on remastering old work by Pierre Henry (see Vital Weekly 975), who is someone which is major source of inspiration for Smolders, along with Robert Hampson of Main; in fact three titles refer to the latter. These pieces are heavily edited I’d say, and culled from various sessions of expert knob-twiddling, but the true beauty is in the fact that Smolders actually composes music with these materials, and not have some machines producing sounds. There is the addition of field recordings, a squeaky chair in ‘For RH (Light)’ for instance, in a most fitting tribute to Henry or the field recordings of ‘TomTomTomTom’; that piece may seem the least composed but oddly enough the one that sounded more like the ‘old’ Smolders (say the collaboration he did with Yiorgis Sakellariou from a few years ago). Not an overtly long release, but one of great beauty. (FdW)
Address: http://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com
Address: http://cronica.bandcamp.com/
FTARRI 3RD ANNIVERSARY VOL. 1-6 (6CDR by Ftarri)
You know compilations and me: not a perfect marriage. I have explained this on numerous occasions. And yet I feel a bit guilty if I would do my usual routine with these six CDRs celebrating three years of the Ftarri label (three years? I could swear they have been around for much longer). Six CDRs equals almost six hours of music, all recorded in various locations, not the just the Ftarri studio, but also other places and home studios. That’s one thing; the other being that I may have reviewed loads of Ftarri releases, or perhaps even all of them (who knows?) there are so many more names here that I haven’t heard of. It made me think: what the hell is Ftarri anyway, other than a label and a studio? Who are all these people and what is the connection between them and the label? I don’t know. I do know there is a wide variety of musical genres to be spotted here. The jazzy outing of Ffrond (which is the only trio on this entire set), the low electronics of Leo Dupleix free solo music by Hikaruy Yamada/Hayato Kurosawa as a duo (the only duo) and Yoko Ikeda solo on the viola (all on disc one). As of disc two everything is by solo artists and on disc two there are four of them: Daysuke Takaoka performs outside on a tuba in what seems a very minimalist piece of tuba as an object, Takuro Okada being likewise minimalist on electronics and Hiryuki Ura on drums playing very quiet on the first piece but wildly on the second one (both recorded in concert) and lastly Shinjiro Yamaguchi on guitar, electric metronome and sine wave, also quite minimal but somehow very upfront, as opposed to others on this disc. The third disc also has four solo improvisers. These are Masashi Takashima, recording at home, his piano, drums and G.I.T.M. whatever that is, but it’s not really good, which can be said of the solo guitar music of Yumiko Yoshimoto, a bit jazzy. One Tomoko Kageyama plays marimba, vibraphone, bowl, bells, vocal, voice, field recordings and lyrics and I like this mainly because it’s so different than much of the other stuff here. Dreamy, spacey and outsider popsongs. Takashi Masubuchi plays full hollow-body guitar, and has three improvisations recorded at home. Lots of silence in between sparse notes and sounds a bit like Taku Sugimoto (who is not present on this birthday batch, but he could have been). On disc four there is Yuji Ishihara on drums and percussion, which sound very interesting: you sense it’s live but there is some odd processed quality to the sound. Biki, using two microphones, mixer, computer and two motors counts in six tracks from 1 tot 501 and adds some crazy noise to it, and marks for the first time something different in this pack; entirely different. A bit noise like with some wild processed sounds off and on. Kyu Nakada, who plays a fourteen-minute piece on a bug synthesizer, whatever that is, going from near silence to sheer noise, follows this. Tetsuro Fujimaki plays sparse percussion in three pieces and Riuchi Daijo plays acoustic guitar, but uses way more notes than Takashi Masubuchi on the previous disc. Volume Four was quite a varied disc.
Volume 5 starts out with Sawako of whom I hadn’t heard in a long time, with a laptop piece of drone variations played through some max/msp piece. It sounds a bit distant, like Sawako is at the end of a room or tunnel. It’s also a short piece, sadly. Yuma Takeshita plays electro-bass recorded at the Cafe Flying Teapot (which reminded me of a record store in Arnhem with the same name, ages ago), and he uses a variety of electro-magnetic devices played through the pick-up to create an improvised recording of an electro-acoustic nature, but in which the bass is somehow still recognized as such, certainly towards the end. Tomoyoshi Date, who works as Opitope and with Federico Durand as Melodia, has the longest solo piece with him behind the piano, windows full open so the rain plays an important role in this piece. There might be very subtle processing, but I doubt that; it’s probably the weather conditions that make these small changes. It’s quite a bump going to ‘Entropy Study’ by Straytone played on modular synthesizer: an all dark journey and to stick withe the idea of a tunnel, as with Sawako, here too one has the idea one is sucked into a tunnel going at very slow speed down, into the depths way below the earth’s surface, until one reaches the inner-core, which might be a massive industrial installation. Volume six is the shortest release, clocking in at forty minutes. Yuhei Saito opens up with a piece for tape recorders, which provides for an excellent electro-acoustic rumble (a rarity as you we have heard). Tomoe Takizawa plays guitar but it’s a short piece that goes by with noting, and that something that happens to Yui Nakamira who plays ‘throat, room’, but what seems an otherwise very empty piece of music. Finally we arrive at Keitetsu Murai, who uses ‘four parallel- connected oscillators with photosensors, stabilized DC power supply, Japanese candle reduced in length to burn in about 15 minutes. A rather conceptual approach with the sound dying out over the course of these fifteen minutes. Six hours of music, mostly by people I never heard of; I’d probably compile a best of myself, but that surely should be more or less half the pieces anyway, so why bother? I could just play it again. Still the question remains: who or what is Ftarri? (FdW)
Address: http://www.ftarri.com
CS² – DARK DWELLINGS (miniCDR by Core Shift)
The number 2 should be in subscript; you can read it as Core Shift Square or whatever else you like to do. Core Shift, you may remember, is Mike Kramer’s project for all things ambient and techno (or techno and ambient which ever you think prevails in there). He has made a small number of great recordings (see Vital weekly 988 and 940 for instance). Time to do an offshoot and chance the menu a bit. Kramer himself writes: “CS² produces loud beats with layered repetitive sounds slowly altering creating an intense character, live resulting in a more ‘ritualistic’ experience” and this is surely the case here. The release opens with ‘Night Terror’, which takes up about half the release. It’s a very minimal piece of dark pounding rhythm and eerie synths that intertwine. Spooky? Yes, certainly. But not spooky enough for the entire amount of time. ‘The Forgotten’ is about six minutes and has more variation, as in ‘has more breaks’ and changeovers. The same eerie feel comes from the synthesizers, which reminded me of the mother ship project, but of course less ambient. In ‘Tension’ the title is created by the use of reverb and being the shortest piece the minimalism works quite well. I am not yet sure about CS²; maybe three pieces isn’t enough to form a well-balanced opinion about a new project. This might all be a bit too dark for my taste, but I guess the future will tell. (FdW)
Address: http://cs2music.bandcamp.com/
GONCALO ALMEIDA & RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – DOZE RUINAS (miniCDR by Cylinder Recordings)
On his journeys Rutger Zuydervelt bumps into a lot of people, which results in many collaborations. Here is one he did with one Goncalo Almeida, of whom I never heard (I think; I know must be careful using that phrase) who plays double bass. I assume that one afternoon Zuydervelt taped an improvisation from Almeida and between July and September 2015 he constructed twelve short pieces with this, and that’s indeed something else for a change. Normally Zuydervelt creates much longer pieces but in this case he picks out a few of Almeida’s strokes on the bass and adds maybe a handful sounds of his own and creates a sketch like piece. The longest is two minutes and thirty-six seconds and the shortest twenty-seven seconds. Even in this sketch-like proposition it is not always to find something new; it is sometimes more difficult to create a short piece than a longer one I think, but throughout Zuydervelt manages pretty well to create a variety of small miniature compositions, in which the double bass sounds pretty much like you would expect and Zuydervelt adds a fine blend of electronics and an appropriate brand of acoustic bricolage. Quite a lovely little gem this one. (FdW)
Address: http://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/
ZEBRA MU – CARDBOARD DOVE PIZZA (cassette by Poor Little Music)
It’s been quite a while since I reviewed music by Michael Ridge who works as Zebra Mu. The most ‘recent’ review was in Vital Weekly 736. I am sure he wasn’t quiet since then. One side is a live recording from May this year at the Dove Street Studios in Norwich while for the six pieces on the other side he uses a pizza box turntable, altered vinyl record and FX pedals, recorded a few weeks earlier. The live recording is quite soft, most of the times. Only towards the end the noise that we know Zebra Mu for pops up, however this might be due to the fact that the cassette seems to be copied at a low volume. Hard to say what Zebra Mu does in concert, but no doubt there is a guitar and some pedals, distortion among them, to produce this. The other side is remarkable louder than the A-side and here Zebra Mu plays around with what seems vinyl. Go back to the erikM review elsewhere and read what I said about turntablism. This might be an example of how not to do turntable music, but if you like a bit of old fashioned vinyl noise with a firm dash of delay on top, knock yourself out. I wish there was a bit more to it than what it is now. (FdW)
Address: http://poorlittlemusic.storenvy.com/
ANTOINE PANACHE – J’AI UN AME SOLITAIRE (cassette by Barreuh Records)
You could wonder if it is a smart move to pretend to be a man and do noise, as there are so many noise boys and so few noise girls. But Antoine Panache may do things different anyway. (s)He is a lonely soul anyway, as the title translates and is borrowed from Twin Peaks (episode 14 at 2.07, as the cover informs us), also on the suicide note of Brad Delp, the lead singer of Boston (what would reviewing music be without the help of Google; just in case you think I am closet Boston fan). The noise music Panache plays is not one of the sort that means switching on a bunch of distortion pedals and screaming down a microphone, but rather of the kind that calls for old equipment, near broken cables and stuff one can solder together from broken apparatus from the thrift store; And then play around with the noise these machines produce and see what happens; create something different, something exciting. Sure a piece like ‘Gnawing Desire’ owes to the world of power electronics, with it’s whispering vocals, deep bass synth sound and reverb on the contact microphones. At the same time it has an almost dance music quality to it. The title piece, the longest here, employs a bunch of tapeloops of slowed down sounds, and which has a fine ritualistic effect to it, which can also be said of the layered voices of ‘Bucharest’, once you get beyond the field recordings. Maybe it sounds a bit esoteric at the start, but it’s neatly done. In Both ‘Avagadena’ and ‘La Mariee Blanche’ there noise based loops and obscured voice material, which sounds like it is recorded from some distance (the bathroom maybe, adding a different kind of reverb?). All in all it is a damn varied tape with some excellent excursions into the area of noise music, but then with some more considerable thought. (FdW)
Address: http://barreuhrecords.bandcamp.com/
JASON KAHN & TIM OLIVE – FUKUOKA/OSAKA (cassette by Notice Recordings)
RYOKO AKAMA & BRUNO DUPLANT – IMMOBILITIE (cassette by Notice Recordings)
It seems to me that Jason Kahn is quite a lot in Japan and he plays with Tim Olive a lot. They already had a release of Japanese live recordings (see Vital Weekly 926), but around the time that was released they were on the Japanese road again, and this is where the two recordings were made that we find on this cassette. Unlike before the credit for Kahn is bit more detailed here, ascribing him ‘analog synthesizer, radio, mixing boards’, while, as before, Tim Olive plays ‘magnetic pickups’. There is one concert per side on this cassette. May 15 2014 in Osaka and May 18 in Fukuoka. Here they continue their improvisational style, which allows for a bit more than is usually the case; at least for Kahn, that is. But in the company of Olive however the music he/they play is a bit louder and grittier, with acoustic debris of objects falling, shrieks and peeps, along with hiss, static and a radio dropping in and out of the mix. Of the two pieces ‘Fukuoka’ plays with more abrasive sounds, throwing around in perhaps a bit blunt way and ‘Osaka’ sees the noise in the more controlled area. It’s less bouncy, less a thrown-around of sounds and more working with a few frequency fields and put together with less as an improvisation and more as a composition. Of the two sides, I preferred the dense controlled aggression of ‘Osaka’, but ‘Fukuoka’ was not bad either.
The other is a collaborative effort too, but the website suggests that they don’t meet in person: “Although living in separate European countries, Akama (electronics) and Duplant (organ, electronics) have forged a strong musical bond on a handful of collaborative releases”. Bruno Duplant, who, something that is also suggested, wrote a minimal score and who refuses to be called a Wandelweiser composer, composed the two pieces here. I am not sure how this was then performed. Maybe Ryoko Akama recorded her part at home and then Duplant added his and did the mix? Maybe that was it? I can imagine however that it would be great for two people to sit down and perform this kind of music together. There is an excellent drone like quality to the music but there is also a very fine ‘live’ element to the music. The instruments, whatever ‘electronics’ exactly might be, are not being recorded by using a line-in input on a device of some kind, but rather picked up by a microphone in the space, recording the instrument, the amplification (which hoovers close to feedback from time to time) and the space. This adds a great vibrancy to the music. The A-side ‘L’Immobilité (n’existe pas)’ is an all-electronic drone-like excursion while on ‘Même Place’ there is some sort of acoustic sound, which comes in like tidal waves and sometimes it seems as if we hear a clock ticking amidst of these sine wave like sounds. Both pieces however have that same ‘live’-like quality. I prefer the first to the second, but both were actually very good, making this into a damn fine release. (FdW)
Address: https://noticerecordings.bandcamp.com