DEAD VOICES ON AIR – PISS FROND (2CD by Invisible)
Another new CD by Mark Spybey who plays around with Download, but being on his own is a totally different area. The previous two CD’s I heard from him had all short tracks, which went by in an organic flow. Playing on small objects, adding delighful echo and reverb, Dead Voices On Air produces some nice flowing ambient industrial isolationist music (you don’t need to call…). Therefore this double set of recordings comes as somewhat of of a surprise, but I have to discuss it back to front. The second disc takes off were the previous ones stopped, tracks are longer and darker in tone. Occasionally something takes the shape of a rhythm. According to the linear notes, this second CD is really Mark solo. CD one is a different cup of tea. Here he is helped by a whole bunch of musicians, including our own loverbody Ryan Moore (Legendary Twilight Circus Dot) – I’m sure the other ones are more famous, just no bells start ringing here… In strange ways DVOA tries to do… I don’t know but maybe it should be defined as popmusic all together. Most of these pieces employ rhythm (drums), guitars and in some vocals, which partly whisper, partly sing straight. But It’s hard for me to get overtly enthusiastic by this switch. Only the last three tracks are in more known, yet partly different, DVOA territory (adding for instance bits of drum & bass rhythms in ‘Castered Carts’). Overall: 2/3 of this double set is well enjoyable, and 1/3 received with mixed feelings. (FdW)
Address: http://www.invisiblerecords.com
VOICE CRACK – BELOW BEYOND ABOVE (CD byUhlang)
One of the most impressive noise concerts I ever saw was, next to Borbetomagus, Voice Crack. Two not really young men bend over a large table with cracked everyday electronics. Since then I have been keeping my ears open for their work on CD. Sometimes I thought it didn’t came through very well on CD (and that’s maybe again like Borbetomagus), and the harshness didn’t work out. This new CD doesn’t just emphase on harsh, obnoxious sounds, but points a microscopic look below: the small and sometimes inaudible sounds, the crackles inbetween. Voice Crack even hints, in ‘With A Hint Of Yellow’ towards Panasonic like pulses. This is quite a short CD (42 minutes), but altogether it comes across very concentrated, and played with great care with love for the detail. One of the better productions by them. (FdW)
JLIAT – MAY (LP by Jliat)
And then what? That may be the question James/Jliat raised for himself, after releasing four superb CD’s of drone music, quite in a soft mood. Each CD had like 1 piece that lasted roughly one hour. Small changes occured, but for the not so conscious listener a long strecthed ocean like flow went by. But maybe there was something that made these four in a way similar, or interchangable for each other. Heard one, heard all. I purely guessing here obviously, but there are two facts to proof my point that Jliat found change necessary. This new release is on vinyl, and it’s is much more heavy music record then before. Apperentely he is playing guitar in similar vein to his previous CD’s, i.e. stretched out tones (I’m pretty sure no accord is played here), but harsher (without being aggressive). The adventourous DJs can do good use with this record. And I wonder what his next move will be. (FdW)
Address: <james@jliat.demon.co.uk>
JEFF GREINKE – PLACES OF MOTILITY (CD by Hypnos)
To describe Jeff Greinke as fourth world ambient, might be very much true. To describe this CD in similar terms, is absolutely wrong. This most wellcomed reissue of an early LP (the last one to be re-issed), released in 1987, sees Greinke experimenting with synths, rhythms and tapes. Plus the usual instrumentation of piano, wood flutes and voices. This is not the early nineties ambient blurr, but takes it way beyond: more experimental, but with great care for the various moods. It carries some trademarks which makes it a bit dated (partly in some of keyboards being played), but the good thing is that the tracks are relatively short and to the point (and that’s something that is most welcome nowadays). (FdW)
Address: <mgriffin@hypnos.com>
CHRIS WATSON – OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE OF FIRE (CD on Touch)
Well, prepare yourself for a series of very intimate aural encounters which can only have been recorded by someone with the patience of a Zennist. A couple of representative tracks appeared on the last Touch sampler, and compared to these recordings were just scant clues to what was to follow.
I was completely absorbed by the quality and closeness of the sounds documented here – I suspect that it is impossible for humans to hear many of these sounds without first having shapeshifted.
When I was a younger child, I had the opportunity of getting very close to a group of semi-domesticated cheetahs on the estate of the Hulett family, sugar-magnates who lived amongst their cane in Natal, South Africa. I’ll never forget the sign on the gate which must have kept any potential burglars well and truly at bay: ‘Warning ! Cheetahs !’. Simple. but highly effective. Even the baboons, not known for their literary skills, dared to trespass here. Something else that made an indelible impression beside this sign and the smell of these magnificent creatures, was the sounds they made. The first track on this CD throbs out of the loudspeakers – it’s a satisfied cheetah purring in the noon sun – and it sounds as if it is laying on top of you, secure in the knowledge that dinner can be served anytime it chooses.
One of the longer tracks on this CD is of a male capercallie display in a Caledonian pine forest. The liner notes draw attention to the infrasonic content of the bird’s wing flutters. In yer face.
There are chortling hippopotami, swarming knot conferring before winging off on migration, chattering spider monkeys and the rhythmic scrapes of male corncrakes advertising their availability – complex arrangements are produced by their desire to outshout each other.
Then there’s the ‘macro’ recording made from within the carcass of a zebra (no, hand-held mics were not used !) which is a document of the thoughts of errant flies, the faint and fleeting memories of rotting meat and the antagonistic, possessive skirl of descending vultures.
Watson take natural surveillance to obsessive extremes, using microphone triangulation to localise a nightjar in the darkness and record it. Kittiwakes scold and chastise each other from their nests on a cliff face. The wings of a wood-pigeon chop the air into fat waves. Sleeping elephants, their heavy breathing reassuring in the squeaking moonlight.
Deathwatch beetles run up and down the rafters in an English cottage bedroom. An owl calls outside, this lonely sound hovers in an otherwise almost silent night. Similarly the isolated sound of a hyena calling out co-ordinates to it’s hunting companions invokes similar feeling of loneliness, and perhaps, genetic memories within us all. (MP)
Address: <touch@touch.demon.co.uk>
ALAN LAMB – ORIGINAL MASTERS – NIGHT PASSAGE (CD by Dorobo)
Alan Lamb recently set a new format and standard with his CD ‘Primal Image’ (Dorobo 008), which contained almost unmanipulated recordings of long (telephone) wires. Again this is a pursuit which requires an inordinate amount of patience and concentration, and which teaches us new ways of listening, and so of perceiving our surroundings.
This was followed by demixes of the original ‘Night Passage’ recordings by Ikeda, Koner, Lustmord/Haslinger and gunter (Dorobo 011). Exquisite interpretations of sound material now made available on this release. Mr Lamb took original recordings of The Faraway Wind Organ and composed the title track. It is the most dynamic piece on this CD and, like the Watson CD is representative of a moment in time, which can never be repeated, most especially because the half mile of abandoned telegraph wires has been destroyed by natural forces. The wires are played by the wind, and while their fundamental is very low, they produce swathes of indiscreet harmonics which fade in and out of each other with gradual grace.
The second track ‘Last Anzac’ was distilled from 6 days of recordings of the same ‘instrument’ – it starts with a percussive slash which can almost be seen, and is a quieter and more meditative piece. The third and final piece was recorded off a wind organ constructed by Lamb and some of his associates in the mountains behind Kobe in Japan. Lamb himself plays the ‘Great Bow’, which is a two-metre long string attached from the wire to the ground. He uses a piece of the same nylon, of the same length and tuned to the same note connected to a bamboo bow, to produce a piece strongly reminiscent of Tibetan temple ceremonies. The crackles which punctuate this droning piece are themselves produced by water drying in the acoustic transducers. A wonderful release, which compliments the other two Lamb CD’s. I hope there’s more – who knows, perhaps they will be re-released one day as a set, with photographic material. For now, though, I am content with what will remain a marvelous document of yet more mysterious – and mostly unheard – audio phenomena. (MP)
Address: <dorobo@projekt.com>