IRON HALO DEVICE – THE COLLAPSING VOID (CD by Malignant)
This marks the return for Stone Glass Steel, who surprised years ago with some excellent work on his own label. This first CD under their new name is partly recorded live (4 tracks and 4 tracks of studio material). Stone Glass Steel takes sampling to an extreme: harsh, percussive movements are the backbone of their music, and the icing are drones, synths and samples of orchestras and the like. Heavy music, filled with aggression (shouting, screams, pain and anger). If you have been reading these pages before, then you know it’s not really my cup of tea. But I am kind, some of the rhythms sound modern, like borrowed from techno music, and bring live into american industrial music. There are 4 long cuts from the first live show, and 4 shorter cuts, which are more orchestral, pathetic or, call it Laibachian, in tone. Likely to go down well with the dark looking masses… (FdW)
Address: <mlgnant@earthlink.net>
ETEREO EXPANDEUM CLUB – APHEER VIBE (CD by Noise Museum)
The reputation of Noise Museum is slowly but steadily growing. They have their tentancles in many different genres, all could loosely be described as ‘modern’… techno, drum & bass, and the experiment: all have a mark in their catalog. This is new group, two brothers (one being 17!). They present 10 tracks of ambient music, juiced every once in a while with elements from break beats, techno and drum & bass. The production is a bit weak here, and the text on the cover is a bit lame. But as for a debut it is well succeeded: a variety in offered musics, never a dull moment, shifting between textured passages and rhythmical bursts. Check out! (FdW)
Address: <noise.museum@wanadoo.fr>
DAVID KRISTIAN & SIAN (split CD by Alien8)
Five tracks by David Kristian (of recent ‘Cricklewood’ acclaim – same label) and one by Sian aka Shohei Iwasaki and Akifumi Nakajima himself aka Aube and something else).
David Kristian – these are very big Things Which Occur on a Microscopic Level when we ourselves are even smaller. Slow slipstreams from passing planets. Occasional danger sighs. The journey continues, without haste. Somehow we find ourselves separated in Sleepwood – turn both left and right after signs marked ‘Crickle’. Motes swim in sparse filtered sunshafts. The sound of murmuring trees. A hum descends. It feels like we are on the edge of something. A crater. A circulating rim. The air fills with sulphur. In Bathurst sound unfolds like the petals of a flower. The beasties lying in wait hoot and wail at each other, like slow hinges – their cries disturbing the rising mist. These are not territorial disputes, their common prayer is for common prey. The moment, unresolved is punctuated by falling drops of dew which roll down the face of the morning. The higher the sun climbs, the faster they fall. An analog moment in digital time. The best five tracks I’ve heard in a long time.
Sian – The edges curl up. (Sequential smears). Soft strata. A hint of impending flow. Then
suddenly we’re through. Freefall, with occasional snags. Backdrafts. The crunch of circuitry, the flapping of oscillators. Waves in a pool of magma. A languid uncoiling pyroclastic flow of sound. Fossilized breath is released and burrows up to the surface. Solidifying metals clad themselves in deep shimmers. Radio signals from Agharti. The breaking down-down of space.
Ansel Adams’ ghost lurks, partly blue, in the beautifully appropriate cover photos. (MP)
Address: <alien8@total.net>
MELBA COMES ALIVE by BROTHER RUSSELL (CD on Vinyl Communications)
Brother Russell is introduced by somebody else (‘…his IQ’s about 3. If that. He brain-dead…’) in Track 1 of this new release from the creator of ‘Radio Jihad’ (missed it – send me a copy please – my name is Mark), which one reviewer aptly summed up as an ‘inspired stream of absolute bullshit’. Crank (no, not crack) calls are placed to right-thinking religimous radio stations in the good ol’, recorded and then compiled on this excellent release. (If you like this sort of thing, that is.)
In fact, I suspect it could quite well be a close relative of ‘Savage Vigilance’ of some years back. Listen how a radio evangelist cracks (no, not cranks) hisself up praying for Joyce, ‘the woman who lives with’ our hero who, himself gagging on a particularly harsh bong hit, is undoubtably “fooling around with the holy ghost”.
‘What Teens Need’ relates the tale of a former drug addict, who after having resorted to prostitution to support his habit, is finally convinced of the Power and the Glory at a God Rally by a Christain girl who “talked the talk, walked the walk and gave phenomenal head”.
Melba does appear, first relating her experience at Disneyworld, Orlando on Gay Day, much to the unabashed glee and unconcealed curiosity of the Preach, who wants her to “tell me what you saw. I mean some of them you probably can’t describe on a family show”. Later she endorses violence in sports and ends the CD by joining in, together with joyful bugle accompaniment, on a prayer for her grandson who has contracted gonorrhea from his girlfriend, who is not a clean girl. “Urinating is like pins and needles. It’s horrible.” Melba gets completely carried away with himself here.
All of the taunted remain remarkably calm (much to their credit, I must say). This can probably be attributed to the fact that they are eternally confident that their tormentor will ending up answering awkward questions on the edge of the lake of fire, and that they themselves will endure complete with wings and everything.
Everybody knows god likes a good joke, for christs’ sake. (I thing heshe will dig this CD, too.) (MP)
VARIOUS ARTISTS – SOLAR 2 (CD on Soleilmoon)
(for a moment there, I thought the braille was real,
unless my fingers are too blind to feel )
The someone who once said,”Get a great idea, marry it and raise a family.” could almost have had Mr. Scanner in mind when coining this phrase. The person who said “Take away his scanner and what have you got ?”, had no doubts who he was referring to (thanks Wodge !). Divorced from his surveilance gear this Rimbaud is hard to tell apart. His track, which opens this CD and which sounds to be a reconstructed scan was commissioned by the National Centre of Choreography in France.
Freeform (as Simon Pyke) is a music I’ve never heard, not even on U2’s ‘Discotheque’ – a worldwide, number 1 chart single, smash hit (they sampled Simon). Stretches swoop, tones quiver, flutes cajole and bells caress.
Sound ecologist Michael Prime has contributed a track with very interesting origins. It’s based on recordings of the electrical activity of a clump (I always wondered what a lot of it was called) of Honey Fungus.A device called the Bio-Activity Translator converts the fluctuating voltage potentials produced by all living things into sound. He then juxtaposes these results onto a sound canvas comprised of a location recording which gives an audio-image of the surrounding environment. Very odd, this exqusite jewel. (Best of the lot, in fact !)
Dallas Simpson uses rather intricate and almost religious terminology to descibe a stroll round a willow tree, which it turns out, is really only the First Movement in ‘The Adoration Of The Willow’. This was designed primarily as a meditation piece, to be listened to in total silence, preferably through headphones, in a “where have all my chums gone?” kind of a way. Ever heard of Hearts of Space, Mr King ?
Eddy Sayer (founder member of the ground-breaking ‘Lights In a Fat City’), provides an amazingly long list of dignitaries he has performed for in an even longer list of architectural magnificences, which he accompanies with humming, crickets, a bit of bongos, some elk-bells and a sprinkling of delay.
Andrew Hulme supplied the links – Taj Mahal Interior and a Buddhist Prayer Ceremony in Bangkok. (LW)
Address: <soleilmoon@aol.com>
MATTHEW THOMAS – REMODULATION (CD on Dorobo/Staalplaat)
Broken machines? Faulty connections? Badly tuned radios? Song titles that are lists of numbers? Is there a clue here somewhere ?
Track 1 could be the audio documentation of some totally determined, slightly maimed mechanical thing dragging itself across the cellar floor towards the bound and gagged, not yet unwrappedvirgin Moulinex. Meanwhile, upstairs a one-hoofed thingy counts out time whilst preening a flame of butane. Distant relatives attempt to communicate via radio. Sounds of disturbance are looped and circulate around in a sound structure which becomes increasingly more fragile, as if it were an ancient spider’s web, breaking under the weight of the accumulating dust.
Track 4 starts with a healthy purring throat which slowly yawns open to let more frequencies escape, emitting a steady spray of grit and gravel.
Track 5 – The Return Of The Son Of Purr, with a friend, Bass Drone. Tiny fractured sounds, like eavesdropping on circuitry and overhearing the possibly perilous fluctuations it experiences while thinking aloud. The conversations between the creatures that live in the cracks in the porcelain insulators at the tops of telephone poles.
(One of the most unusual audio experiences I have had this year !). (MP)
Address: <mailorder@staalplaat.com>