KÄRMA BURG/COLUMN ONE – DIE VERSUCHE DES NAUM KOTIK/MÄDCHEN IN SCHMUTZIGEN SCHÜRZEN (DVD Blue Ray/CD by Fragment Factory/90% Wasser) *
RUDOLF EB.ER’S RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTØCK – OBSESSIVE CONVULSIONS WITH RINA & GINA (CD by Om Kult Osaka) *
CAPTURING THE WIND (CD compilation by Dada Drumming)
ALLEMANO/OBERG/BAUER/FISHERLEHNER – SOG (CD by Creative Sources Recordings) *
NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS – STONEFACE (LP by Ferns Recordings) *
CLAUDIO ROCCHETTI – DECAY MUSIC N.5: LABIRINTO VERTICALE (LP by Die Schachtel) *
MATT WESTON – EMBRACE THIS TWILIGHT (2LP by 7272music) *
SMALL CRUEL PARTY – ANCIEN DES JOURS (7″ by Ferns Recordings) *
JON WATKINS – THE BOOK OF ANTI-MELODIES (3″ CDR by Inner Demons Records) *
CONURE – INTRUSIVE (3″ CDR by Inner Demons Records) *
DPR – FUTURE UNKNOWN (3″ CDR by Inner Demons Recordings) *
MOLD OMEN – WORSE FOR THE WHERE (cassette by Spleen Coffin) *
PATRICK LOMBE (cassette by Spleen Coffin) *
MICHAEL TAU – EXTREME MUSIC (book by Feral House)
RICHARD JOHNSON – LOST IN ROOM (book by Fourth Dimension)
EMVOES (fanzine by Noise Below)
SVEN SCHLIJPER-KARSSENBERG – A WORK BY LEIF ELGGREN A DAY (book by Firework Edition)
CLAUDIO MIALNO’S END FRIENDS (LA BOBINA DI TESLA) – MANIFESTAZIONI LIVE 2011-2023 (2CDR by Music Force)
DEAR – DEAR ME! (CDR by Music Force)
LONGHAND – PLAYS LONG (CD by Drip Audio)
KÄRMA BURG/COLUMN ONE – DIE VERSUCHE DES NAUM KOTIK/MÄDCHEN IN SCHMUTZIGEN SCHÜRZEN (DVD Blue Ray/CD by Fragment Factory/90% Wasser)
This has been on my desk for too long, but I kept delaying to work on the review. Not owning a blue ray player, which is the prefered format for the DVD here, didn’t help, but also because I hardly consider myself a music reviewer (more an enthusiast who tells you about new releases), let alone that I know anything about film (or, for that matter, literature, choreography, sculpting, video art, performance; you name it and I am sure I couldn’t write a review). Granted, I do go to the cinema, and I have a subscription for several years now, so I go up to three times a week (sometimes, not every week), but that makes me more of an enthusiast. We discuss what we saw with friends and if we enjoyed it, but that hardly qualifies me as a film critic.
I also faced this dilemma: first, see the movie or play the CD? To watch the DVD, I need to be in the right mood (hence some of the delay explained), so in the end, I first played the CD but found it hard to get my head around it. Now that I have seen the DVD, the music makes more sense. Which is, perhaps, odd, as I am sure I didn’t understand all of the movie. Kärma Burg made a film slash documentary about the Russian neurologist Naum Kotik (1876-1920), who was interested in transference, telepathy and psycho-physical energy. His grandson explored this further and made a script and film, ‘ Mädchen In Schmutzigen Schürzen’, girls in dirty aprons. The grandson is being interviewed, and the subtitles are presented rather peculiarly, which doesn’t enhance the understanding here. So far, so good, but the thought that can move objects? Lots of the movie (and I mean the aprons thing, which is in two versions, I think, as I’m unsure) is stop motion. The editing is great, and it works really with the music, for which the credits to Robert Schalinski. He’s one of the three members of Column One.
The CD can be understood as ‘the soundtrack to the movie’, and if you play it straight after seeing the movie, you’ll notice some overlap, but like the movie, it is all a strange surrealist affair. The CD is more like a radio play, which stands alone very well by itself, but it is also a vital feature in the movie. The sound is as important as what you see and makes quite the hallucinating experience. Just exactly what it is about, or how it works? Maybe this is real or a mockumentary (and no, I won’t spoil the ending)? How old is this grandson if his granddad died in 1920? Just one of those questions that came up. I have no idea. I admit I gave up at one point and just enjoyed it as a non-narrative. Someone explained something (in Russian? or Swedish? I don’t know), but there are also lengthy passages in which we see some animated action and hear these, mainly acoustic sounds. Lots of scratching and scraping of objects, which further elaborated the radio play drama, but then made visual. Strange or weird doesn’t even capture what I saw and heard. But even with my total lack of understanding, I very much enjoyed this for its aesthetic qualities. (FdW)
––– Address: https://fragmentfactory.bandcamp.com/
RUDOLF EB.ER’S RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTØCK – OBSESSIVE CONVULSIONS WITH RINA & GINA (CD by Om Kult Osaka)
When we first heard from Rudolf Eb.er, it was under the name of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck, somewhere in the late 80s. He’s been more active under his name for a longer time, but I must say that the original name still has that magic ring. I was a big fan of his rapid-fire cut-up sound approach, which also involved performance work; the latter I never saw back then (or later, come to think of it). Lots of gurgling, spitting, shouting and other bodily actions. Action in which blood was spilt, as shown on the cover here, which we are assured is real. Maybe not seeing any of these performances added to the mystery. Rudolf Eb.er presents here recordings from 1991 and 1993, inspired by Günter Brus, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Arnold Schönberg, as well as memories of “Sunday lunches with his South-Austrian parents, the thick nearly rare beefsteaks accompanied by heavy red wine and uplifting Humpa and Schuhplattler music”. Recordings from back then were edited thirty years after the fact into a thirteen-piece, one-hour album. The result is a trip down memory lane. One of the things that I, perhaps, also noted back then was the lack of electronics. It all sounds very acoustic, whatever you hear. There are musical instruments, a clock, objects, the human body, voices and bits of music, of which I straight away admit I have no idea where they come from (” Humpa and Schuhplattler music” aren’t part of my musical world). Much of the time, these sounds are cut short, but Eb.er also uses loops, short and longer ones and thus makes a fascinating collage of sound. Thirteen pieces, but just as well, you could think of this as one long or many more short ones. Within each track, Eb.er explores a few sounds (and, at times, quite a bit of silence), but through a hard cut, he may change the scenery radically, and it sounds like something entirely different. Maybe some of that locked-at-home Sunday feeling is audible here; slowed-down conversations, the recording of meat cooking, etc. This sounds like a musique concrète record, but strictly in an acoustic sense. The microphone’s placement is essential. The recording is often straightforward in your face, cut short, but sometimes it’s from a distance, and there is a tremendous dynamic action in that far away/nearby way. An excellent release, with some great sound collage and highly obscured activity; the mystery is still in place. (FdW)
––– Address: https://rudolfeber.bandcamp.com/
CAPTURING THE WIND (CD compilation by Dada Drumming)
The full title of this collection is “Capturing The Wind, A Japanese Noise Compilation”, and is released by the label DaDa Drumming from Fort Worth, Texas, which I had never heard before. The label, that is, not Fort Worth or Texas. Because Texas is, of course, home ground to some of the harshest noise we know (Richard Ramirez, TEF, Taint, to name but a few), and it is of no surprise that in the back catalogue of DaDa Drumming, we see a few of those names come up too. And it’s a small step from Texan Harsh to the Japanese variant, so it is also no surprise to see many of the names featured on “Capturing The Wind” also being members of the DaDa roster.
As said more often in Vital Weekly, it’s pretty difficult to review noise. Especially when you like to stay original and not always say the same thing over and over. It makes it easier if there are other subjects related to the sounds about which there is something to tell. But when it comes to samplers, it isn’t easy again. Should I write stuff on all 14 (!) projects? It would be a Vital with one review, so no. The artwork? It’s beautiful, Minimal, and complex at the same time. But there is a thing. All tracks are between 3 and 4 minutes in length. And I can’t tell you why. Surely it is a conceptual choice, but that’s all I can say about it.
The line-up mixes older and better-known projects and a few newcomers. Government Alpha, Astro, Thirdorgan and K2 do not need any introduction. New names, or at least names I hadn’t heard about, are P.O.V. (powerful digital harsh) and Hiroyuki Chiba (erratic, jumpy analogue sounding cutup), who haven’t been active for that long. A special mention is going to the album’s ‘least harsh’ track, the closing track by Kazumoto Endo featuring Kaori Komura. “Live At Niigata Woody Nov 27, 2022” is a live recording, and probably that is why the quality is less intrusive than the rest of the album. Why the special mention? Kaori was also one of the founding members and the original drummer of G.I.S.M. back in 1981, and here she manipulates Korean traditional instruments. Kaori and Kazumoto already recorded two full albums in this setting, so yeah… A lovely addition.
The final words, however, are taken straight from the website because I found them perfectly chosen for this album: “Sparse in presentation, enormous in sound. As it should be.” (BW)
––– Address: https://dadadrumming.org/
ALLEMANO/OBERG/BAUER/FISHERLEHNER – SOG (CD by Creative Sources Recordings)
This release captures Lina Allemano (trumpet), Uwe Oberg (piano), Matthias Bauer (double bass) and Rudi Fisherlehner (drums & percussion) 2 days after they played at Kühlspot. It’s the third time they played together, at least according to Bauer’s website. But it doesn’t show. They sound like a working band with a strong rapport between all the players. By that, I mean that the interaction and responses to what each musician hears are excellent. All titles relate to nature’s way of dealing with water: whirlpool or maelstrom (from the Dutch maalstroom).
Damn, my reviews are relatively short, but I lack the words for this one. The longest track is just short of half an hour. The shortest is just under two minutes long. The other two are seventeen and ten minutes long—and never a dull moment. The musicians create a maelstrom, or sometimes a trickle of water but always controlled and relatively tonal. Alleman whips up beautiful long lines or short fanfarelike intervals of fourths. I’m really impressed by this release. Maybe the best word to describe this music is chamber music jazz. Delicate, restless at times and in other instances calm as dead water, but only for a moment, and bristling with ideas, however fleeting they may be. Be distracted, and it’s gone. What I mean is that you have to listen intently to catch the tiniest details and hear the musicians respond to each other. Kudos to the recording engineer Tito Knapp, Fisherlehner, who did the mixing and Olaf Rupp for the mastering. It all sounds crisp and lively. All the details can be heard distinctly. Get this one immediately! (MDS)
––– Address: https://www.creativesourcesrec.com/
NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS – STONEFACE (LP by Ferns Recordings)
The 1980s were particularly fruitful for The Nocturnal Emissions, later dropping ‘the’. Starting in the early second wave of industrial music, they quickly began experimenting with different styles. Electronic pop, for lack of a better or the industrial electro breakbeats of ‘Viral Shedding’ (a personal favourite of mine) and then, for a somewhat more extended period, coming ambient soundscapes with the residue of industrial cling clang. Around this time, 1986, the group, now effectively a solo project of Nigel Ayers (and in 2023 still going strong), the interest in magick, stone circles, techno–shamanism, neo-paganism, animism and Fortean research (I am quoting Wiki here) was added to the situationist interests. ‘Stoneface’ is from 1989, when the style was developed at its best, and the Emissions did some of their best work in this direction (along with ‘Spiritflesh’ and ‘Invocation Of The Beast Gods’). However, it’s all a bit in the no-longer-distant past. I wish I could say I play all of these records once a year; I don’t, although ‘Viral Shedding’ is on my phone, so those tracks I hear on every random play the thing is on.
As I played these nine pieces, I realized that what attracted me at the time and still does is the relatively straightforward approach to technology. I remember seeing Nocturnal Emissions a couple of times in those years. If I’m not mistaken, there were a couple of those early sampling devices, the Casio SK1 or SK5, with a 1,2 (or so) second memory, but when played through a bunch of stomp boxes, you could do a lot with relatively easy sounds. I always suspected Ayers to have altered his machines, but I am unsure. His sound palette includes animal sounds, kitchen utensils, voices, and whatever makes noise. I guess Ayers had access to some decent multi-track machine, and using many tracks gives these lo-fi samples some great depth. There are some great drones, some rusty percussion, some good use of reverb and excellent quality around here. Some phase shifting (play similar loops with minor intervals, so they never overlap in the same way) is used to significant effect here so that most of the time, you have no idea you hear only short loops. Yet, there is always movement, thanks to those very same loops being brief and to the point. An excellent record that has aged quite well and is a fine reminder to play some of the old ones again. Time is what I want, more time! (FdW)
––– Address: https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/
CLAUDIO ROCCHETTI – DECAY MUSIC N.5: LABIRINTO VERTICALE (LP by Die Schachtel)
According to the information it has been six years since we last had a new release by Berlin-based composer Claudio Rocchetti. I believe the last time I wrote about him was in Vital Weekly 830, a collaborative release with Luca Sigurta. I don’t think I heard many of releases. This new record is part of Die Schachtel’s Decay Music series and the resut of working with the Parma-based Fondazione Lenz, “a contemporary theatre research collective/organization”. What this organisation does, is not entirely clear, but I gather that Rocchetti uses sounds from whatever it is they do and composes muisc. In the two longest pieces, of which the title piece fills the entire B-side, we hear a lot of voices, picked up from some distance and from what I gather being treated in some way Rocchetti, so it is a choir of ghostly voices. There is certainly also an element of modern classical music, especially in the title piece. I was think of Cardew’s ‘The Great Learning’, but not as massive and more angel-like. On the first side there are also four shorter pieces, from one to three minutes and it is only after repeated listening that I recognized voices in these pieces. These pieces seemed to be using more electronic and, perhaps, some reel-to-reel tape machine sounds. The slowing down of tapes and the sort of sounds that occur in the process seem to be part of the music. It makes that these four pieces sound quite different than the other two. Granted, once you start to listen closer, all six pieces may use voices, but the two longer ones in more obvious ways. I thought of the record as a reverse decay; starting with the most abstract transformation of voices,the pieces slowly unfold more and more voices, which was an interesting idea that worked well. (FdW)
––– Address: https://dieschachtelrecords.bandcamp.com/
MATT WESTON – EMBRACE THIS TWILIGHT (2LP by 7272music)
Glossing over the press quotes in the information, you could all too easily assume that Matt Weston is a free jazz musician, and maybe he is. Free Jazz and I is a troubled marriage (friendship might be a better word or acquaintance). Weston is a drummer, and the sound of the drums is part of this record, but it is part of something much bigger. There are no drum rolls, no hectic bashing on toms and cymbals, but to my best knowledge, Weston tapes his drum sounds, objects over skins, vibrating skins, or steady and fast beating, and sits behind the computer to create lengthy collages of sound. Rather than calling this free jazz or improvised music, I’d say this is musique concrète. As such, ‘Embrace The Twilight’ is where he left us with ‘Four Lies In The Eavesdrop Business’ (Vital Weekly 1235), which was also a double LP. This time he has one long piece per side, and each piece is a strong composition. ‘Every Day You Will See The Dust’ has a loop of drums (or, who knows, maybe played in real-time), with some insistent buzzing of electronics, as if Weston sits in an electronic jungle. From there on, he works with loose sounds, acoustic scraping and scratching, but with a similar amount of layering the sound. I don’t think Weston plays his music in a live set-up, but all results from carefully layering, editing and mixing. Maybe some of these sounds are from many hours of improvisation; I think that is very well possible. The rhythm aspect is far from important here. In ‘Halfway To Smearing’, a dark drone and mangled voices are on top. Zero beats per minute. Each of the four pieces consists of smaller sections, which can brutally be different, going from something quiet and reflective to wild and intense, from drones created with drum sounds to loops of what could be wind instruments, such as in ‘The Drunken Dance With The Telegrapher’. The most rhythmic piece, also allowing for a bit of chaos, is ‘The Sky Over Pterograd’, and here too, he applies many sounds that order the chaos (I know, it may sound like a contradiction). If I thought the previous one was good, this new one is even better. Maybe because Weston has more extended and more complex pieces, more sounds, and even more composition, this is another tour de force. Four sides of sheer brilliance. (FdW)
––– Address: https://mattweston.bandcamp.com/
SMALL CRUEL PARTY – ANCIEN DES JOURS (7″ by Ferns Recordings)
When Small Cruel Party was active in the early 90s (before going on a long hiatus), there were several 7″ releases, a format William Ransone seemed to enjoyed for his somehwat conceptual releases. Now there is a new 7″ and in both pieces he uses sounds from a radio. First there is ‘Qui se poursuit dans le vide et substitue à son accomplissement une horrible exaspération’ (meaning ‘Which continues in the void and substitutes for its accomplishment a horrible exasperation’), which was recorded for a WFMU fund raiser (download only), and is a close to six minute piece of strange sounds, in which I found it hard to recognize the radio. There was a sort of cut-up sound, mildly bouncing through sound effects, but also loops of what sounded like a violin. Strange but very effective. Google translate couldn’t come up with a sensible translation of ‘Ka jengbarsi wolinje’, clocking at 06:49. The source material was already recorded in 1988 and reworked and edited in spring of 2022, in France (the home country of Small Cruel Party since many years). There is less of a stutter here, and, instead, more loops that shift around a bit, creating a denser pattern. Maybe some piano music lifted from the radio along with a loop and all grows minimally and organically into an even tighter mass of sound. The music sounds very much like the work from his early days. I have a slight preference for the second side, but I enjoyed both a lot, even when reviewing 7″ releases is not something I like. (FdW)
––– Address: https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/
INNER DEMONS RECORDS
On more than one occasion, I have declared my love for the 3″ format in these writings. So I am in luck that there are still several people running labels where this format forms a base for them. And the reason why I love 3″s is the same way I love 10″ vinyl (original Spectre Records, Substantia Innominata, Delikatessen) because … In a way, they’re awkward for having such a short length, but in the same sense, if an artist can interest you in the 20 minutes that are best for vinyl or maximum (CD/CDr), then it is a good release. And if not, no harm is done either because it’s only 20 minutes.
The Florida-based Inner Demons Records is among the labels that still hold the 3″ format to a high standard. Label owner Dan Fox (who several of you may know from his projects Loss, TIWIHWYT (This Is What I Hear When You Talk), FFI Digital, If and even a few more) is a long-time friend, and we’ve shared many stages. We somehow got this love for the format together at the turn of the century. The first sound of him I ever heard was actually a 3″.
About Inner Demons, there are a few things that should be said. Everything on there when it comes to art, production, and releases is done by Dan. Most releases, if not all, are limited to 42 copies, and the label has a strong anti-fascist, anti-rightwing, no-hate policy, which is asked of the artists to support before being considered for release. For the rest, the whole label has solid DIY ethics, as seen in the artwork and hand-stamped discs.
Each so many months (read: if there are enough excellent releases on the stack to have a few intense days of copying and cutting everything), a new batch is released with anything from 5 to 20 new titles, and earlier this month, a new batch saw the light of day. This time with an online sampler with some material from each of the 20 releases of this batch. You can find this at https://innerdemonsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/batch-2023a-sampler, and please note it’s only listenable online. But it will get you a taste of the ones you want to investigate further. So far, for the introduction, Let’s review a few … More in the coming weeks. (BW)
JON WATKINS – THE BOOK OF ANTI-MELODIES (3″ CDR by Inner Demons Records)
A name most people will have never heard of before. John Watkins is advertised on Discogs with “The Ghost of/that is Jon Watkins is a Composer/Guitarist in a small room but a big world from the land of Montreal, Canada”. Poetic and minimalistic yet explorative words, and that kinda fits with his music. “The Book of Anti-Melodies” is – after the 5″ “You Can’t Go Home Anymore” – the second release and this time a 3″ CDr. It contains a guitar with a few vocal sounds. And before you get to me because of my words: I did NOT say vocals. You just read that.
Avant-Gardistic playing with loads of effects and a few additional sounds creates something which is too intrusive to be labelled ambient but way too relaxed to be labelled music in the absolute sense of the word (rhythm, melody, etc.). Through the enormous reverb and delay, it has an intense swampy feeling which I remember from a few soundscape-like tracks I know from Hugo Race. And I must say, I like this one, even if it does not form a steady base in my collection. Music to listen to when it’s hot and humid, and you don’t want to do anything besides sweat and drink on the porch. When ventilators don’t have anything to add any more, and the airco is broken. Press *replay, please, darling, and could I get a homemade lemonade? (BW)
CONURE – INTRUSIVE (3″ CDR by Inner Demons Records)
Mark Wilson, aka Conure aka (member of) 15 Degrees Below Zero aka (member of) Imperial Floral Assault Unit aka (member of) Rings Of Smoke Through The Trees is someone whose name is mentioned in Vital Weekly more often. Conure has always been the side of Mark where influences around him become audible. Never afraid to experiment, never afraid to research the edges of possibilities, never afraid to be loud and always sincere to the emotional feedback of sounds. With this emotional feedback, I mean improvising on an emotional level to the sounds he is creating at that moment. Therefore his output can be close to HNW at moments but also restricted towards minimal frequency feedback loops.
“Intrusive” is another 3″ CDR, and it contains 18 minutes of something which I’d label as a noisescape. It goes deep, but it’s got too much variation to be labelled drone. It is really descriptive, but it’s too noisy to be called a soundscape. So it has all the elements we like, and Mark just bends it into one beautiful thing. As for the title, that might be the recurring feedback frequencies that are in the composition. Here and there, there is a little sound I don’t get, but it might well be the result of this being an improvisational piece or one-take recording. Very well done. (BW)
DPR – FUTURE UNKNOWN (3″ CDR by Inner Demons Recordings)
dpr is Dave Oleksy from Oakland, California, and this is his fourth release on Inner Demons. The first three are all equally brilliant 5U modular compositions, and we have to read the liner notes to see why Dave chose to release these two tracks under another name. “DPR was born out of a cancer diagnosis and my desire to present my emotions in a musical form in a timely manner. Unlike the experimental live improvisation of prd, this project will be more straight-forward DAW-produced (dark)ambient.” < little moment of silence inserted > What the hell … To put this kind of personal information out in the open, to share it with the world, that is something impressive. And it gives a proper musical direction where we can expect this release to go, and yep. This is some really heavy and emotional work. But it’s so fucking amazing… As if he read the letter / spoke to the MD, felt everything falling apart and tried to capture this implosion of the world. His world.
This release has two 10-minute tracks, so it’s almost maxing out the 3″ format. “Metastatic Squamous Cell Carcinoma, P16-Positive” is the opener track with a beautiful minimal dark ambience. You can hear that Dave is not restricted to DAW-only productions because, listening to the sounds he creates, you can hear he absolutely knows what he’s doing. The layering is superb, and even though it’s heavily reverbed and filled with pads, the production is done, so it’s still very open. The title track, “Future Unknown”, has a slow beat and what seems to be a guitar as a melodic instrument. The way screams an inevitable loneliness, which might be the first emotion when you get that diagnosis. But you’ll never be alone for long when you make music like this.
Another release that will score high in my 2023 list and one of the more emotional I’ve heard recently. (BW)
––– Address: https://innerdemonsrecords.bandcamp.com/
MOLD OMEN – WORSE FOR THE WHERE (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
PATRICK LOMBE (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
Two new cassettes by Spleen Coffin, and twice it is an introduction. First, there is the Baltimore duo of Mold Omen. They have been around for a decade and have had releases on imprints such as House Of Alchemy, Egyptian Tea, Power Moves Library, Cavern Brew Records, Perspex Icon, Lurker Bias, Sava Church Records and USR Records (I only mentioned labels I never heard of, just because I could). Discogs shows a picture of someone behind a keyboard and another behind a laptop, which is not something I thought of when I first heard the music. I believe I have listened to a saxophone, electronics, sounds from acoustic sources, drum machines and such; the information mentions “saturated sax, guitars, and keys”. The result is six lengthy pieces of murky industrial soundscaping. Sometimes it all leans toward a more noisy edge, but in ‘Medusa USA’, the music has a great, mellow ambient industrial touch. While it is not mentioned, I would be surprised if the music wasn’t recorded in a concert situation. The reason for this is that the music sounds recorded with a microphone some distance from the speakers, creating some additional reverb but also clouding the sound somewhat. Because I haven’t heard any of their other work, I don’t know if that is part of their overall sound, but it makes that the music is, indeed, quite saturated and occasionally a bit tiring to hear. Nevertheless, I’d be interested in their other work.
From Marseille hails musician and visual artist Patrick Lombe. He has a CDR on the Le Dernier Cri label (which I associate with comics) and three on [tan process]. He’s also a member of Lambris, Placenta Popeye, and Η Μάνα Σου Είναι Ο Πατέρας Σου. Here too, it remains some mystery concerning the instruments used. Vocals play a significant role, but also electronics, modular perhaps, loops, glitches, and drones. Lombe has fourteen pieces of music, ranging from just under a minute to close to nine minutes. Maybe a spoiler but the longer the pieces become, the least interesting they are. It all is a bit too much about repeating sounds and ideas in these pieces, which doesn’t work well in the longer (as in: over four minutes). Classifying Lombe’s music as one thing or another is not easy. It is all over the place, from glitchy electronics to sound poetry, outsider spoken word, or what have you. I found it hard to get my head around this release. I enjoyed some of the pieces, but the overall thing I thought was too varied, scattered too far and wide for my taste, and some of the lengthier pieces that weren’t that interesting. Maybe I am missing the point here altogether. (FdW)
––– Address: https://spleencoffin.com/
MICHAEL TAU – EXTREME MUSIC (book by Feral House)
RICHARD JOHNSON – LOST IN ROOM (book by Fourth Dimension)
EMVOES (fanzine by Noise Below)
SVEN SCHLIJPER-KARSSENBERG – A WORK BY LEIF ELGGREN A DAY (book by Firework Edition)
Usually, towards the end of the year, I review a couple of books, but reading books is not limited to the end of the year. I love books, especially when they are about music. Or fanzines, for that matter. Here’s what I read in the first six months that is worthy of mentioning in Vital Weekly.
The most comprehensive book in size is Michael Tau’s ‘Extreme Music’. Quite some time ago, Tau was a reviewer for Vital Weekly but just stopped and seemingly disappeared. Now we know what he was doing, researching this book. It’s not about noise but rather about extremes in music, in the music itself or in the packaging. In the first section, he deals with extremely loud and extremely quiet music, speaking noise, drone, new age, ambient, and so but also about blood and guts (about bands with insane long names based on diseases), pornogrind, and a subsection is about superfast music, with all its sub-sub genres, such as speedcore, splittercore, extra tone and flash core. That’s about 100 pages of the book, which has 350 pages in total. Then it goes on about records with weird shapes and materials, hardly used formats, such as floppy disks, microcassettes, 8-tracks, and cylinders and how these are packed. RRRecords’ Anti Records are discussed, and there is a whole section about music in the digital age. Everything Tau discusses comes with tons of names and quotes from the creators. With almost any music available on YouTube these days, there is much to explore. Lots of this was news to me and a pleasure to read. Tau has a pleasant style and does his homework very well. It is not only about niches in extreme music, as Tau mentions many historical predecessors, for instance, when talking about non-traditional vinyl sizes. You could argue that the book is perhaps too much of the Guinness Book of World Records in Extreme Music. Still, many of these musicians don’t do what they do because they want to be extreme for the sake of being extreme, but, as far as I can judge, they genuinely believe it is worthwhile to do so. And for some of these people, it is a temporary thing. Something from the past that is still worth talking about. Not everything is mentioned, as Tau prefers to use examples and has lengthier discussions with one musician or label boss. What’s next for Tau, I wondered. I’m sure he has more stories to share from the world of the bizarre.
When I grew up and heard about punk, it was just as the second wave of punk bands started to sweep the lowlands. Bands such as Rondos and The Ex, and for maybe a year or so, I bought many independently released records. Then Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle took over. Did I ever come across Alternative TV and Mark Perry, the leading man from the group? I don’t recall reading anything about him in the bigger Dutch music magazine OOR or, the more alternative Vinyl. Because my punk interest was Dutch, I never heard much punk music from other countries, except for the more obvious Sex Pistols, The Stranglers or The Clash (and let’s save the discussion ‘what is punk’ for a rainy day). It wasn’t until much later, when downloading became so much easier (I have to be honest here), and music enthusiasts shared rips of old records, that I heard Alternative TV. Later on, more recent releases were even discussed on these pages (Vital Weekly 1190 and 1208). Richard Johnson, also responsible for some of the recent releases, wrote an interview book about the band, concentrating on the first four years, 1977 to 1981. Little over 300 pages, which might be a lot. There are three sections; the first is more general about the records, the musicians, and the scene. The second part, it’s about the songs and lyrical themes and the third (the shortest) is about whatever else was talked about and deemed of interest. I think the first part is the most interesting for the casually interested listener. We learn about Mark’s first encounters with punk music, working with Miles Copeland on releasing records and knowing The Police and all other players in the field. Sniffin Glue, Mark’s fanzine, the first in the early punk days, gets a mention but only sideways. It is the thing that always gets mentioned, quite rightfully, but in the interview, he lets on that he is not as well remembered for his music. With his band, Perry strived for total freedom concerning musical decisions. Never the entire punky thing, but also more pop and, more importantly, something very experimental. Enter ‘Vibing Up The Senile Man’, from 1979, a very experimental record, collage-like improvisation, modern composition, random sounds and weird instruments. Perry argues that this is the first ‘post-punk’ record and not the ones people always talk about, the first Public Image LP. In his words, you can read some of the disappointment he has for not being recognized as such (even when his album is on the famous NWW list), which he blames on being from a lower class than some label bosses such as Daniel Miller (Mute) and Geoff Travis (Rough Trade). This class thing is a recurring topic and important for Perry, but certainly, in the second half of the book, it is too much. I know this by now. There was more repetition in the second half, which is also, at times, challenging to follow. Knowing the songs really helps, and I simply don’t know all these songs by heart (in my defence, also not even from my favourite bands). But also in this section, Perry’s opinions shine through, and he has some great ones (well, supporting Brexit is not one), such as seeing Sleaford Mods as sellouts, not liking Coil, Killing Joke or Magick. As with Johnson’s previous book about Ramleh (Vital Weekly 1256), his opinions shine through the questions, and one also learns a bit about his background. As with all books I read about music, the important thing is: do I want to hear the music? Does it make me curious about the music? In this case, it very much did that job. Reading this book during the recent heatwave while playing Alternative TV and The Good Missionaries (at one point, Perry had another band going for more difficult music, something he later regretted) was a perfect combination. And sometimes, it makes me laugh, which is another great thing about this book.
A good old-fashioned fanzine after these massive amounts of words. ‘Emvoes’, but then in Greek lettering, means tinnitus in Greek and is a publication from Nicolas Malevitsis. From 1996 to 2010, he had a fanzine called Absurd (and a label of the same name), mainly in Greek. In 2019 he moved from Athens to Thessaloniki and began thinking about a new magazine, but now in English, to mark the change in his life. Printed on fine paper, ‘Emvoes’ has 48 pages, slightly bigger than A5 and has interviews with the cassette label Falt, online label Superpang, saxophone player Colin Webster, noise musician Alice Kemp, a short piece on neda Mehrjoo, a long piece by Anthony Milton’s trip into the Bolivian rainforest for his record ‘San Miguel Del Bala’ and a story from a Greek musician Mizi about the difficulties he encountered in getting his music released; it was on a Russian label in recent times so that explains it a bit. Apart from the Superpang label, all labels and musicians I know and I reviewed, so fanzine with great purpose, at least for me. With every article having the necessary links to explore the music in depth, this is hopefully the start of more issues.
The last book is actually a set of four. They have been in our advertisement section for quite some time now, as they are by our esteemed colleague Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg. From all this recent reading material, these books are the ones that need linear reading. Two small books contain the images of the releases by Leif Elggren, as discussed, one per day, 300 in total. However, Schlijper-Karssenberg doesn’t review them in the same manner as he does in Vital Weekly. He takes poetic freedom to describe the works, making connections to other artists (not only musicians) or historical persons and events, or he makes situations up. I believe one needs to have some kind of connection to Leif Elggren and his work to understand more about it, but not each individual work (even if you could have it all). As I said, this is not necessarily something you must read linearly. That’s not how I approached this. Sometimes I read a few ‘days’, sometimes nothing for a week. Sometimes I open it up on a random place and read whatever day there is. Because I reviewed quite a bit of his work over the years, many of these releases are familiar, and on some occasions, I even compared what Schlijper-Karssenberg wrote with my humble reviews. On more than one occasion, I wrote that I don’t always understand what the work of Elggren is about, and going through the books, the mystery might be more significant, not smaller. Also, I’d like to point out that of the publications I reviewed, this is the one that I haven’t finished. Given these books’ nature, it might take another year to finish them. (FdW)
––– Address: https://feralhouse.com/
––– Address: https://fourthdimensionrecords.bigcartel.com/
––– Address: https://noise-below.bandcamp.com/merch/emvoes-the-return-of
––– Address: https://fireworkeditionrecords.se/
CLAUDIO MIALNO’S END FRIENDS (LA BOBINA DI TESLA) – MANIFESTAZIONI LIVE 2011-2023 (2CDR by Music Force)
DEAR – DEAR ME! (CDR by Music Force)
LONGHAND – PLAYS LONG (CD by Drip Audio)
And we end this Vital Weekly with three cases of mistaken identity, two releases from Italy’s Music Force and from Canada’s Drip Audio.
First is DeaR, which is plain and simple pop music. Not bad, but as to the world of pop music, what do we know? Nothing. That’s right, say it again. I wish I could quote some lines from the press text, but there’s no text available. The second is a double CDR by Claudio Milano’s End Friends (La Bobina Di Tesla), a vocal researcher, composer, music therapist, actor, and performer with many live pieces from 2011 to 2023. He works with the world’s top musicians in the fields of classical, rock, jazz, ethnic, avant-garde and pop. Suffice to say that his music is in that field also, usually with a voice from the opera world. Again, nothing here for Vital Weekly.
Canada’s Longhand is described as “experimental free jazz rock”, and sure I can see the element of free jazz in some of these pieces, but sadly also the rock thing. Don’t get me wrong, rock music is great, and millions of fans can’t be wrong, but Vital Weekly is not the place for rock music. It is like sending a Merzbow CD to a magazine dedicated to country and western. Some of this rock rocks hard, some sounds like seventies prog rock, and others more. I realize that in all cases here, you are none the wiser, but, maybe someone is ready for a new experience? Maybe there are some to find in this corner of Vital Weekly. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.musicforce.it
––– Address: http://www.dripaudio.com