Week 24

BIG CITY ORCHESTRA – ANGUILLIFORM (CD by EE Tapes/Tribe Tapes) *
SCANNER & NEIL LEONARD – THE BERKLEE SESSIONS (CD by Alltagsmusik) *
KJELL BJØRGEENGEN & KEITH ROWE & JOHN TILBURY – FLICKER, SCRATCH AND IVORY (CD by True Blanking)CD by True Blanking) *
KJELL BJØRGEENGEN & KEITH ROWE – A THOUGHT FOR TWO (CD by True Blanking) *
JÉRÔME LORICHON & EMMANUELLE PARRENIN & QUENTIN ROLLET – NOSFERATU (CD by Bisou Records) *
LAURENT PERNICE – ANTIGONE (CD by ADN Records) *
CHRISTOF MIGONE – AUDITORIUM (CHAOS, QUIET, FAIL (CD by The Dim Coast) *
TRISTAN DA CUNHA – HIDDEN SEA (CD by Dissipatio) *
DEVID CIAMPALINI – ETERNA (CD by Dissipatio) *
PIOTR DĄBROWSKI – GIACOMO SALIS – PAOLO SANNA – AHINSA (cassette by Dissipatio) *
OPTIMAL – ROLLING STOCK (CDR by Rope Worm) *
SPACIAL ABSENCE – CLEAR THE AIRWAVES (CDR by Love Earth Music) *
BISON SQUAD – PRODIGAL NOTHINGNESS (CDR by Love Earth Music) *
PEACE & LOVE – NEW AMERICAN EXTREMIST (CDR by Love Earth Music) *
CERNICHOV – NON-OBJECTIVE LISTENING (CDR by Asonu) *
PAOLO CALABRESE – NO. 16 (CDR by Asonu) *
COMMODE MINSTRELS IN BULLFACE – DEMONION ABYSS BROADCAST (DVDR by Love Earth Music)
DIKKE ELLENDE (compilation cassette, private)
ANDRÁS WAHORN MEETS ABSTRACT HOUSEHOLD WARFARE – M​É​HLEGELŐ (cassette by Unsigned)
AKLENA / CLOCHES SOUS PRESSION – ALC​Ô​VE 09 (cassette by Alc​ô​ve)
STEFAN CHRISTOFF – INNER LANDS (cassette by Samizdat) *
STEFAN CHRISTOFF – DECLARATIONS (cassette by Cuchabata Records) *
OISHI – DISCOISHI (cassette by Artsy Records) *
JOCELYN ROBERT – UN JARDIN D’OMBRES (USB by Merles Records) *

BIG CITY ORCHESTRA – ANGUILLIFORM (CD by EE Tapes/Tribe Tapes)

Actually, the cover spells the bandname as Beeg Ceety Orchestra and Biugg Cietee Orchesktra, but it’s one of those things that Big City Orchestra does in the last 40 or so years, spelling the name in odd ways. Another thing, and something I just remembered, is that following the regular tracks, there is also the sound effects library on a CD release. Short bits and pieces from a handful of seconds (mostly) to a few minutes (rarely). This CD is a reissue of the same Belgium label’s old cassette from 1996. BCO is a group with a rotating cast and one central point of attention, dAS. Because this is a 30-year-old release, another long-serving member, Robo, is still present, along with Fe, Kerri Pidnow and Mona Coots. There is no particular sound or genre one can latch upon the group. Undoubtedly, electronic music could be a catch-all phrase, but there are lots of variations. On ‘Anguilliform’, the group draws heavily from the world of noise, and I am the first to admit I don’t know all the group’s output; I couldn’t offhand mention any other title from them that works with a similar truckload of noise-based sounds. It’s perhaps the involvement of Tribe Tapes in this reissue that is a clue to the noise work at hand. There is considerable feedback and distortion in the six main tracks of ‘Anguilliform’, along with found voices from flight control or something about sex in ‘Eerquay’, which somehow eluded me. It’s also less of a noise fest, just like ‘Eekbraile’, but then, these are also shorter pieces. The longer pieces are about distortion and feedback, massively amplifying acoustic sounds and tape-loops, with the longest, ‘Eelbox’, being a milder variation. These pieces are minimal in construction, lingering on for some time. That, too, is what this group does. The ‘Sound Effects Library’ is always a nice thing, this being the 22nd so far, and I always think I should put them to use and never do; I wonder if there ever was a project for musicians to use these. I know much of the group’s current core duo, dAS and Ninah, focus on doing two-hour-long ambient videos on Vimeo (check out https://vimeo.com/ubuibi), which certainly takes their time away from releasing music, which is a pity. Luckily, there is the occasional reissue, like this noisy beauty. (FdW)
––– Address: https://eetapes.bandcamp.com/

SCANNER & NEIL LEONARD – THE BERKLEE SESSIONS (CD by Alltagsmusik)

Scanner is the nom de plume of Robin Rimbaud and was named after using cell phones and police scanners in live performances, according to the page dedicated to Robin Rimbaud on Wikipedia. Especially the first few releases are heavy on the captured conversations. Fast forward to 1999. He releases ‘Lauwarm Instrumentals’, which might be a misspelling of the Dutch word lauwwarm meaning lukewarm. Here, we find him using full-blown drum and bass beats. Lithia water could be taken right off the soundtrack of ‘Lost Highway’, David Lynch’s film from 1997. Especially ‘I’m Deranged’ by David Bowie, taken from 1995’s 1.Outside. Anyway. Fast forward to 2014. March 9 to be exact. Robin Rimbaud (electronics, shortwave radio, keyboards), Neil Leonard (soprano and alto saxophones, bass clarinet, and live electronics), David Tronzo (electric (slide) guitar), Mike Rivard (bass) and Dean Johnston (drums) are recording one day in the studio. Material written by Rimbaud is extended and improvised by all musicians. It’s a follow-up of the 1999 record but now with live musicians instead of using samples.
The musicians he has gathered are all veteran musicians. David has worked with artists like David Sanborn, John Cale, The Lounge Lizards, Sex Mob, and Wayne Horvitz. Mike has played with Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa, the unsung band called Morphine, and Jon Brion. Dean Johnston is the drummer of Superhoney and Club d’Elf, the latter a who’s who of improvising musicians John Medeski, Marco Benevento, David Fiuczynski (Screaming Headless Torsos !), David Tronzo (yes, the one and only), Reeves Gabrels, Ed Mann, Dana Colley, Duke Levine, and Randy Roos. Ed Mann played mallets on many records by Frank Zappa (including live recordings). And Neil Leonard? He works globally, is a professor at Berklee, and probably asked Rimbaud for the residency. This was recorded during Rimbaud’s residency at Berklee. Fast forward to 2024. Ten years later these recordings are finally mixed and mastered and ready to be heard. It’s in the best jazz tradition: waiting a few years to release a cut. On to the music: it’s a mixed bag of styles, the word mixed used neutrally. Time Code, the opener, is 10 minutes of pure bliss, looking back to the genuine trance-inducing fusion of the seventies. The third track takes us back to the nineties with Roni Size. For example, after a gentle introduction breakbeat mixed with live instruments takes over. However, it’s watered down, in this case, drumwise. It’s a backdrop in tandem with the bassline to provide the foundation for the improvising guitar and electronics. Rimbaud took his time mixing and mastering this, the record I mean. And he did a great job. Neil Leonard is mentioned in the liner notes for guidance on the production. Listen to this on good headphones or a full blast with open windows. Hey, you might even want to dance to this! (MDS)
––– Address: https://scanner.bandcamp.com/album/

KJELL BJØRGEENGEN & KEITH ROWE & JOHN TILBURY – FLICKER, SCRATCH AND IVORY (CD by True Blanking)CD by True Blanking)
KJELL BJØRGEENGEN & KEITH ROWE – A THOUGHT FOR TWO (CD by True Blanking)

In Vital Weekly 1129, I reviewed ‘Sissel’ by John Tilbury, Keith Rowe and Kjell Bjørgeengen. The latter worked with the two (former) members of AMM before, but that was in the role of a video artist. On ‘Sissel’, he also played electronics. As a trio, they performed live at Cafe Oto in 2018, so perhaps round about the release of ‘Sissel’, maybe a live presentation of that album. Tilbury is on the piano, Rowe on guitar and electronics, and Bjørgeengen on the Dave Jones Synthesiser (whatever that is), so that explains the title here. It’s easy to compare to AMM’s work, the quiet, spacious improvisation group where Tilbury plays a vital role with his sparse, airy piano notes (next to Keith Rowe’s drums). Keith Rowe’s explorations on the table-top guitar are also very easy to recognise if one knows the many works he did with AMM and with a ton of other people. Still, within this particular setting, he maintains a similar sparse approach as Rowe. The synthesiser is almost identical to the electronics played by Rowe, only occasionally discernable. There is much room for quietness, or near quietness, in which we hear a single piano note, some scratching of objects or some faint continuous sound. Just in a few instances, the music rises up and becomes much louder. If you try to listen to this release while living on a busy street, you may have a hard time unless adding street sounds is something you welcome. Maybe that’s the whole idea here: the presence of sound versus the absence and letting it mix with whatever happens simultaneously. None of the ‘other’ sounds are captured on this recording, but playing the delicacy without interference from outside sounds is not easy—immersive listening in the absence of sound.
The recording by Keith Rowe and Kjell Bjørgeengen on ‘A Thought For Two’ is even older, from 2010 and recorded at Experimental Intermedia in New York. That place was founded by Phill Niblock, to whom this CD is dedicated (even when the cover mentions the wrong year of birth, 1923). For this concert, Kjell Bjørgeengen made a video “produced by audio oscillators given video reference sync signals to the audio into video. It is not a representation of amplitude and frequency, but a direct identity between sound and image”. Rowe “would pick the debris of the magnetic field surrounding the cathode ray tube used as a monitor and use it as an input for his music”. There is more tech talk in the press release about the Dave Jones Synthesiser, but that eludes me as much as what I just typed. The music here is vastly different then the trio disc by the two. It’s not as if Tilbury dictates the quietness or because this is an older work; it’s louder because of that, but it’s pretty piercing sometimes. The guitar is no longer a guitar here, as everything bursts and cracks—lots of static, crackles and deep rumbling of bass sounds. There is a minimalist streak in this music, yet it never becomes static as things keep moving around. It’s certainly loud if you are easily offended by highly abstract music that sounds like TV static/noise. The two move elegantly between the cracks of their respective systems, working with resonating sounds, big spaces and small textures. (FdW)
––– Address: https://trueblanking.bandcamp.com/

JÉRÔME LORICHON & EMMANUELLE PARRENIN & QUENTIN ROLLET – NOSFERATU (CD by Bisou Records)

Much to eternal shame, I never watched the 1922 movie Nosferatu. But that’s nonsense. I suppose there is nothing to be ashamed of, as there is only so much time one has to hear music, read books, and watch movies, so I am sure I miss out on many more classics. The original film has no music; since then, various musicians have recorded a soundtrack. The one I am discussing today is by Jérôme Lorichon (Buchla, electronics, trumpet, percussion), Emmanuelle Parrenin (hurdy-gurdy, voice, electronics) and Quentin Rollet (alto & sopranino saxophones, electronics) and composed for the DVD/Blue Ray, “but ultimately they weren’t allowed to alter the soundtrack”. By whom isn’t mentioned; wikipedia says this film is in the public domain. I am not among the world’s most significant lovers of wind instruments, but this trio of musicians do a fascinating job here. They have ten tracks in almost an hour, and the electronics used create an effect of soundscaping. Everything hoovers around in sustain, sometimes big, and sometimes small. Whatever else happens with the wind instruments, it’s all part of the big picture, embedded in a hotbed of electronics, drones and atmospheres. I am bound to say ‘spooky’, given the subject of ‘Nosferatu’, but it’s not spooky then. Some of the music is downright dreamy and spacious, maybe dark, but that’s not how I perceive this music. Sometimes sad, sometimes joyous, sometimes sparse and also big. When the music relies too much on the saxophone, such as “L’apparition’, it’s less interesting to me. Otherwise, I found this a most enjoyable release.
Instead of a DVD, this comes with a comic book in which four French artists, Marie-Pierre Brunel, Foolz, Caroline Sury and Alexios Tjoyas, give their vision on ‘Nosferatu’ and in line with the movie; this booklet is in black and white and tops off an excellent release. (FdW)
––– Address: https://bisourecords.bandcamp.com/album/nosferatu

LAURENT PERNICE – ANTIGONE (CD by ADN Records)

Somehow I always thought Laurent Pernice was a composer of electronic muisc, first industrial music, then techno, ambient and something altogether more abstract. In his recent work he uses a lot of ‘real’ instruments, which he loops and proceses. On this new CD he plays bass, double bass, zither, harp and electronic treatments, and in various pieces there is the viola, played by Violaine Sultan. Sylvie Debrun contributes voice to one track. Maybe I expected more text, as this is music for a play, ‘Antigone’ by the Greek author Sophocles, which I never saw or read (my bad). Hence, I don’t know if the music fits the play; on the other hand, the question could also be: does it work as a standalone release, away from the play? Looked at like this, we have an album of twenty relatively short pieces, between two and four minutes. It’s a collection of modern classical sounding pieces, but with a melodic touch. There’s a bit of ‘world’ music influence here, a bit of melancholia and some more abstract electronics, but Pernice remains the polite musician he is. Nothing here is loud or offensive, strange or alienating. Sometimes a piece has a rather abrupt ending, perhaps because this works better in the play. I don’t know. It’s fine collection even when not all of these appeal to me, Pernice has an excellent amount of variation and yet also created a very coherent album. (FdW)
––– Address: https://adnrecords.com/

CHRISTOF MIGONE – AUDITORIUM (CHAOS, QUIET, FAIL (CD by The Dim Coast)

Releases by Canada’s Christof Migone are packed with ideas and concepts; summarising them in the space of a review is a sheer impossible task. Here’s what I got from this; I am sure I fail at my job. It’s all about a piece he started in 2002, “to present speaking at its degree zero – a kind of rendition of Cage’s famous quip, ‘I have nothing to say, and I am saying it'”, but it never finished to his satisfaction, and somehow Migone thought he failed. In 2005, he set up a recording session for a few people to hear this piece, along with beer and snacks; in 2006 another version with a smaller group and instructed them to be quiet. On this CD are recordings of both listening sessions and two reworked pieces from 2022 and 2023, plus the original. That one is at the end of the CD. Each one is about fifteen minutes long and is a strange CD altogether. The failed original is a piece for computer processing, and I gather he processes voice material (I got this from the extended text). One of the remixes is very, very quiet, as if Migone tries to remove all frequencies and events from the original, while the other rework is a very lively one, almost very musical for his standards, with repeating bass-like sounds, but also with randomised elements. The ‘Chaos’ version starts with fairly regular sounds but quickly erupts in a party atmosphere, with people laughing and burping. The quiet version of this piece is indeed what it is, quiet but not without the presence of sound, such as these things go. Five quite different pieces of music, and should one not have read the booklet, one would have difficulty hearing the connection between these pieces. That is the downside of such conceptual approaches, even when the results are pretty interesting. At the same time I also admit I wouldn’t return to such a thing very soon. The point is clear (more or less). (FdW)
––– Address: https://christofmigone.bandcamp.com/

TRISTAN DA CUNHA – HIDDEN SEA (CD by Dissipatio)
DEVID CIAMPALINI – ETERNA (CD by Dissipatio)
PIOTR DĄBROWSKI – GIACOMO SALIS – PAOLO SANNA – AHINSA (cassette by Dissipatio)

Italy’s Dissipatio label releases are always on the edges of improvisation and a firm addition of all things atmospheric. This is, for instance, the case with a duo called Tristan de Cunha, Francesco Vara (guitar, sampler, laptop) and Luca Scotti (drums, cymbals, ocean drum). They recorded their music about a year ago; spoiler, it’s only 30 minutes long. At the core of the music there might be improvisation, but right from the start, this duo offers a much more atmospheric tune than what is expected in this world. It evolves around sustaining tones, looped or bowed, with extensive digital treatments and reverb. The pieces are short, and I had this feeling they could have stretched it a bit more in all six. Maybe not much more, but each piece has fine potential for massive drone-like improvisation. There is a majestically slow pace in these pieces, a hefty undercurrent, yet it never becomes too slow or mechanic; these pieces have a strong human touch. Music to be played in near darkness, which is a different situation from a sun-soaked summer Saturday in The Netherlands. Music for a different occasion and something to return when the nights are dark and long. Hopefully, their next release will be longer!
The other new CD by this label is by Devid Ciampalini, of whom I had not heard before. His album is an excellent old concept album; “set in the year 3388 on the planet Eterna to craft a metaphysical chronicle exploring sci-fi themes in the surreal style of authors such as Roland Topor, Frank Herbert, Moebius and Panos Cosmatos. Images of ‘void assemblies’, ‘meta-human faculties’, ‘synods’ and ‘masters of expression’ help visualize a stratified universe of power plays, arcane arts and cryptic technologies.” This is what it says on the cover, not something I would have figured by listening to the music. Unlike Jeff Wayne’s ‘War Of The Worlds’, there is no narrative here. Ciampalini uses “FM synthesis, tapes and software instrumentation”, resulting in music I can only describe as musique concrète in the classical sense of the word. Maybe there’s also a connection to the current craze with modular electronics. The most straightforward comparison would be the old ‘Planets Of The Apes’ soundtrack, a classic in this field and a science fiction-themed work. I mentioned the link with improvisation, but that seems absent on this release as Ciampalini composes with the sound material he generated with his instruments, something sometimes forgotten by modules. Ten of the 11 pieces are relatively short, between two and five minutes (albeit more two than five), and the final piece is almost twelve minutes. The briefness of the pieces creates a swift progress of pieces and gives the album a sort of soundtrack-like feeling. I often complain about the soundtrack album and its brief tracks, and in this case, there is no film (as far as I know), so maybe it’s a conceptual approach to the whole soundtrack album. It’s a delightful album with an all-around classic feeling. A mystery of its own!
On the final release, the balance swings back to the improvisational modus. A trio of musicians, one from Warsaw, Piotr Dabrowski (Primitive lyre, Voice) and two from San Sperate, Italy, Giacomo Salis (Objects, Caxixì, Radio, Frequency sound generator) and Paolo Sanna (African bells (Apitua set.) Tubophone set, Cicada, African seed rattles). I understand Dabrowski recorded his part in Warsaw and the other two in Giancomo’s studio, so this becomes an improvisation by mail, which may seem a little unusual. Two pieces, 25 minutes, precisely what you may expect from improvised music: wordless singing, shaking of objects and rattling of sounds. What sets it apart, maybe, is that it all sounds a bit like a ritual, even when I have no idea what kind of ritual this could be. The point is clear after some minutes, and there is very little change after 25 minutes. I didn’t mind hearing this once, with my attention span floating about while doing other things, but not something I would play again soon. In that respect, it was all a bit too much on improvisation music, which is not my cup of tea. (FdW)
––– Address: https://dissipatio.bandcamp.com/

OPTIMAL – ROLLING STOCK (CDR by Rope Worm)

Paweł Starzec is behind Optimal. You may also know his work as Centralia and Industry Standard or being a part of Mazut and Mazutti and Positive Regression label/project. I only heard of Mazut, which, if remembered correctly, was something a bit technosih but too long. In 2023 and 2024 he released a bunch of digital only EPs on Bandcamp, which are a homage to the Digital Hardcore Recordings label, which I admit, isn’t where my musical ever was. The totally over the top drum ‘n bass, breakcore and noise is a bit too much for me. To say if Optimal’s homage is great, original or a straight one on one copy of the original isn’t for me to say. There are 13 pieces of this kind of thing here, sometimes launching straight into full-on beat thing, sometimes with a bit of ambient intro, as these things go. ‘Please Let Me Sleep’ and ‘Wasteland’ are two pieces with no rhythm, of dirty, rotten electronics; the inards of the drum machines eaten away kind of thing. Recently some young people told me drum ‘n bass are all the rage again, selling it as a ‘new thing’, so I heard a bit of that already, and as with the first time I heard this kind of music, I wasn’t too impressed. The hardcore variant I like somewhat better, maybe because noise is a long-term interest. Still, it’s not the kind of thing I like to hear a lot. Once for now and the next few months is enough. (FdW)
––– Address: https://ropeworm.bandcamp.com/

SPACIAL ABSENCE – CLEAR THE AIRWAVES (CDR by Love Earth Music)

With “Miasmic Detritus” opening this album, the first thing I did was open my browser. A) English is not my native tongue, so I googled the meaning of the poetic title “Miasmic Detritus”, and well, it’s definitely way more poetic than ‘Smelly Garbage’. But with the browser open I started some research on Spacial Absence. And I couldn’t find anything except for a liner note on another release stating, ‘very excited to celebrate Cador’s solo work outside of their prolific noise project Aether’. With 14 projects called Aether on Discogs and none mentioning a Cador, This is what you get on background info from me. About five releases can be found but when I can’t even find a name, there are way more releases that are kept secretive for the world. But why … THIS IS GREAT NOISE! Get it out there, fill in the catalogue and share some info.
Spacial Absence has found a crossover between harsh noise and harsh noise walls. There are moments when not enough is happening, and you’re feeling the droney atmosphere you usually see in HNW, and suddenly, the whole composition is turned over. You’re in a cacophony of sounds, and you all forgot that you had to throw out the garbage. Six tracks take longer than an hour, so you get value for your money, as you always get when ordering from Steve LEM directly. As said, the album opens with “Miasmic Detritus” followed by “Oratorio” Part 1 and 2. Why it is cut into two pieces, I don’t know. It could have to do with the same setup used in 2 sessions or specific sound sources. Great work here, too, though a preference towards the 2nd part, where the massiveness comes out a bit better.
Third on the album is “Cold Mechanical Death Love” which knows some extreme dynamics. When you make noise, and you cut out your sources a lot of time, you get a considerable feedback attack, so even the negative space in harsh noise is difficult to find. But not in this track; Spacial Absence uses that silence as a form of negative space in its composition. “Jitterfck” again shows all the different layers of frequency heaven, and the closing track “Despondent Transmission” is probably gonna be my new favourite track in nihilistic anthems. It’s cut into a few parts, opening with the feeling of nothingness and through different states of sonic emotions, stating that nihilists have feelings, too. There is no use denying it because despair and disgust or just as many basic emotions as love and happiness. I want more. (BW)
––– Address: http://www.loveearthmusic.com/

BISON SQUAD – PRODIGAL NOTHINGNESS (CDR by Love Earth Music)

Bison Squad is a collective from Harrisburg, PA, with members Professor A and Stab Master Slash. Their slogan, “The Bison Cometh … Everyone Dies”, on Ascots, makes me remember the Three Mile Island accident. When the meltdown didn’t succeed, these guys took over and their relentless noise will kick you in places where it really hurts. Yes, BW likes another release from one of his favourite parts of the US (the northeast). The bisons have been releasing stuff since 2019 not only on their own Wood Room Collective label, but also on Mutual Aid, Orb Tapes and the all-mighty Fusty Cunt.
The music by Bison Squad is a mixture of drones, noise and power electronics and even though this is – again – a pretty short release, it is so much worth it. The album starts with three short tracks covering about 15 minutes and finishes with a longer track of about the same length. The sound is heavy and throbbing, and in the third track, accompanied by spoken word recordings and piercing feedback sounds. I can’t help thinking that “Day After Day After” should be much longer! Amazing work there!
The epic “Obsidian (Geeked Up At The Goth Club)” might be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a gothic lifestyle. After all, how black can things get? Obsidian mirrors are one, which may be why Vantablack got its name. Looking in a black mirror, even ‘vanity’ isn’t reflected there. I have no clue where the Bison Squad get their inspiration from. No doubt I’ll get an email or message telling me I was completely wrong, or I might have been on the right track there. But the 14 minutes are well spent.
In “Obsidian”, a bass sound opens the track, and you can see it as what could become a death industrial rhythmic structure. But nope, noise gets in the way and stays in the way. All spectrum bands are used, and from structured to chaotic, it all passes the Bison Squad All Night Revue. Contact mics and feedback, noise makers and knob twisting; you’re in for a wild ride here. And when you think you’ve arrived, think again, it ain’t over till the amp is silent. For me a brilliant new exposure. (BW)
––– Address: http://www.loveearthmusic.com/

PEACE & LOVE – NEW AMERICAN EXTREMIST (CDR by Love Earth Music)

In Vital Weekly 1385, I reviewed the previous album by Peace & Love, a noise improvisation band consisting of Jay Jolly (drums) and Slater Clampitt (voice & electronics). At that moment, the style of noise they made was relatively new to me, and 13 months later, there was this one, “New American Extremist”. I would lie if I said I played that previous one each week. With my job as a reviewer, making music myself and having an elaborate collection I haven’t played since. At first, I thought it was the same album because the layout, graphics, fonts and everything are very in sync with each other and only the words Nihilist and Extremist are (very) different.
“New American Extremist” counts 12 tracks with a total playtime of 33 minutes. The shortest one is the opening “Rejecting Guitars” of 25 seconds. But those are some intrusive seconds to open an album. The longest track is “Dissolving The Nuclear Family”, with a starring role for Slater’s vocals, which is 5 seconds short of 5 minutes. The music on the album is made of drums and noise, with the noise and vocals pushing boundaries and the improv drums as a layer in all the tracks. And yes, improv is less ‘my thing’ because of my background. My mind sees drums as a constant pattern – preferably with some complexity- so there is no four-to-the-floor silliness. And I do miss a bit of that stability. Which doesn’t make it wrong; it’s just far away from my comfort zone.
The titles are filled with sexual connotations like “Return The Womb Tenant”, “Cock Experience”, “More Than Sex” and “Fuck You” (in four parts). Maybe it’s part of the extremist theme, but I don’t think these tracks need the sexual innuendo to be considered extreme. The music itself has all the extremity it can handle to be considered an extremist.
It’s hard (no pun intended) to mention a favourite track, but if I had to choose, it would be the “Fuck You” quadrilogy; The four tracks flow into each other, and the resulting 12 minutes have a bit of that continuous flow. I was looking for. (BW)
––– Address: http://www.loveearthmusic.com/

CERNICHOV – NON-OBJECTIVE LISTENING (CDR by Asonu)
PAOLO CALABRESE – NO. 16 (CDR by Asonu)

Let’s start with a bit of a spoiler: because of the heat, I sometimes use a ventilator, and the release by Cernichov ended on a low hum, and it was only after considerable time I noticed the release. It may have to do with the intention of the release, “an exploration of the ambivalent nature of the 1000 Hz frequency. Indeed, on one side 1000 Hz is a recognized frequency with a brain-healing effect; the exposure to it helps the release of endorphins, and these are beneficial for meditative and for healing-regenerative purposes at a cerebral level.” I had not heard of Cernichov before, which is a duo “based between Brussel and Milan”, Marco Mazzucchelli (Sampling, Noise, Synths) and David Gutman (Guitar, Synths). The latter has a background in dark ambient, with projects such as Tropic of Coldness and Drawing Virtual Gardens. Nothing is said about Mazzucchelli. They named themselves after “Soviet constructivist architect Jakov Cernichov, known for “exploring the most secret regions of invention and imagination, discovering unknown treasures of unseen images”, another new name for me. Their piece is 37 minutes of slowly developing ambient drones, guitar explorations, atmospheric reverb layers, occasional picked-up voices, crackles, and static textures, blending to a spacious drift, going from dark to darker. Dark ambient, it indeed is, but also entirely organic, not unlike Tristan de Cunha’s release elsewhere. Cernichov adds more reverb, which adds a slightly more metallic ring to the music, making it more ambient and industrial. The whole thing about 1000Hz is a bit lost on me; let’s safely say I hardly don’t care about or even know about such things as Hz. I hear music, not frequencies. This duo has an excellent sense of spacing their music, knowing how long to do something and when to change the tune.
Likewise, I haven’t heard of Paolo Calabrese, an Italian sound artist. His main focus is on sound capacities: unconventional tunings, exploration of psychoacoustic properties, and perceptions phenomena, whose pieces of work deal with topics such as deep listening, sonic awareness, silence, reductionism, and timbre research. Calabrese has releases on such labels as Here Free Press, Hxagrm, Subsist, Exprecords, and Corpus Black, again, all of which are new to me. This 47-minute work is “an immersive composition for various binaural waveform tones”. I don’t know what those are, and judging the music I assumed it was a guitar and a bunch of effects, all set to play some infinite layers of drone music. The piece builds up to a mighty crescendo around the 22-minute mark, which had that distinctly guitary feeling. Following the mighty crescendo, there is a short silent bit; after that, we start on a high volume. It stays there for a considerable amount of time, again in that sort of half-distorted, crumbled, noisy guitar thing, which starts in a descent in the last ten minutes. The piece ends with the same quietness as it began but shorter. The quiet intro lasts about five minutes, and I assume this is so we are inclined to turn up the volume, and when the music is really ‘on’, the effect of immersion is very noticeable. It is a wonderful piece of music, done with great care of detail. Perhaps not something you haven’t heard before, but who cares when it sounds good? (FdW)
––– Address: https://asonu.bandcamp.com/

COMMODE MINSTRELS IN BULLFACE – DEMONION ABYSS BROADCAST (DVDR by Love Earth Music)

Whatever is on the cover of this release is very hard to read, and the label doesn’t have a website to store this kind of information in a more readable form. This band has a few releases on Discogs, all from a long time and I assume they are still the same band. Discogs lists three active members: Chris Cooper, Grux, and Jess Goddard. Let’s start with the visual side, as the 90 minutes of music is graced by images in the old 3:4 ratio (as it is called) of fantasy and horror elements. Lots of blood, warriors, skulls, animals and haunted houses. In this 90-minute visual fest, everything blurs from one thing into the next. It has that typical fantasy visual look, and even when not something I find particularly beautiful, I find it fascinating to watch, from a technical perspective. How was this made, and what work must it have been, assuming it takes time? Whatever music goes along, it sometimes works and sometimes not at all. Images and music weren’t created together, not necessarily to fit. I have no idea how this music was made. It is noisy but without the traditional stompboxes, feedback and distortion. Like the images, the music sounds like a stream of consciousness, an endless blurred barrage of manipulated sounds from reel-to-reel machines, synthsisers, found sounds and maybe instruments, but unclear which. Maybe it’s the flickering of the images that say ‘surrealist’, and perhaps something I also hear in the music is that endless and continuous change. Sometimes, it sounds like good ol’ industrial music, but nothing overtly all too harsh. It’s all rather spaced out, which could be a bother with a standalone music release, but it works well with the cascading horror images here. Very nice! (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.loveearthmusic.com/

DIKKE ELLENDE (compilation cassette, private)

This is a home-made release, not on a label, and each artist is granted about ten minutes to show their talents in noise music. This is done with some excellent variation. Dennis V.G., a member of NEE! and Kuttekop, compiled the whole thing. His background is more in grind and noisecore. He opens the cassette as Chaos V.G. It’s the first time I’ve heard his music. I believe he uses turntable noise, voice and distortion and apparently, his piece consists of three pieces, which I didn’t detect. Armenia from Ecuador represents the power electronics side of noise music on this compilation and does a great job. Along similar lines but more bass-like and darker is Kryptogen Rundfunk, our man formerly from St. Petersburg, these days residing in Amstelveen—a very dynamic piece of low and high-end frequencies and equally densely structured.
The other side of the cassette opens with Odal & DMDN recently had their cassette release (Vital Weekly 1427), and ‘Breinrot 5’ is a further extension of that cassette, with fast pulsating bass pulses along with distortion and feedback and, perhaps, voices in the background. These older statesmen of Dutch noise rock hard here. Zyrtax from ‘s-Hertogenbosch is the same man as the one behind Dead Mind Records and he too works with a rhythm, but a different kind. He feeds his minimalist rhythm/loop/sample through a bunch of sound effects until it all disappears, and some very lo-fi noise remains, which isn’t loud but very creepy. Javert Nihil is the person behind Leucodistrofia and another introduction. ‘Sounds, noises and vomit’ is how this is described, and this is not as noisy as some of the others here, but very densely layered and, again, some highly creepy sounds.
Despite the home-made letters cut from a magazine cover, it is printed on quality paper, making this a quality compilation of great noise music. (FdW)
––– Address: d.geldrop@upcmail.nl

ANDRÁS WAHORN MEETS ABSTRACT HOUSEHOLD WARFARE – M​É​HLEGELŐ (cassette by Unsigned)

This cassette is my first encounter with saxophone player András Wahron, who invited some players to his barn; these include the electronics of Rovar17 and Xpldnglke, plus the guitar and vocals, Tim Holehouse on one track. Wahorn also plays electronics. That’s about all we know, next to some mastering and artwork credits. The music is a curious mix of quite experimental electronics, not all too loud or noisy, creating dense atmospheres on top of that muted saxophone sound from the world of doom jazz. There is some reverb used to suggest more space than we knew was necessary to get the point across, and it’s a bit too much. That whole doom jazz/film noir sound is not something for me. I find this a well-worn cliche, and if it weren’t part of this swamp-like electronics, muddy, without details, suppressed noise, I would probably dismiss the whole thing. Still, it’s these electronics that save the day. If the idea of doom jazz is to play something unnerving and spooky, then this tape is the place to be, but in general, there is the electronic side. The saxophone is often put towards the back, but all music here sounds muffled. Maybe it’s the barn/shed setting where they recorded the music, a more lo-fi studio type. The pieces are long and could have benefitted from some editing. On the other hand, it is also a documentation of a work in progress, which is perfect for this medium. (FdW)
––– Address: https://havizaj.bandcamp.com/album/m-hlegel

AKLENA / CLOCHES SOUS PRESSION – ALC​Ô​VE 09 (cassette by Alc​ô​ve)

Maybe I am mistaken, but it seems that the French Alcôve label releases split cassettes, with one side by the founding members, in various guises of music production. Aklena is a duo of Ahtoh and n.hir, also known as Antoine Gilloire and Tanguy Clerc. On their side, there is no information on the cover or Bandcamp. As before (Vital Weekly 1269 and 1298), they work with laptop technology, a rather out-of-fashion production these days, and their music is on the ambient side of that whole scene; think Stephan Mathieu (I wonder if, as a reference, that still works, seeing he doesn’t release much music these days). They transform whatever input is elegantly yet not without some rough edges into lush soundscapes without falling into new age trappings.
On the other side, we find Charles Dubois and François Dufeil, who go by Cloches Sous Pression. Their four pieces were recorded in concert at art centres in France. “From a selection of snippets, the Alcôve team produced a hybrid composition showcasing the sound sculptures of François Dufeil”, it says on Bandcamp, so maybe its installation music moulded into four compositions. Based on what I hear, I couldn’t say what the installations do, what their sound consists of, or what they look like. My best guess is they include objects of a percussive nature, put in motion by wind, movement or motors; as said, I don’t know. The four cuts from these concerts are (possibly) layered events of these percussive bits, which hold the middle ground between a Carillion and wind chimes. It all sounds pretty good, even (or maybe because of) the mystery of the instruments. I am mostly reminded of Limpe Fuchs here, especially when the rhythms become complex and remain minimal simultaneously. Very nice music, very relaxing. (FdW)
––– Address: https://labelalcove.bandcamp.com/

STEFAN CHRISTOFF – INNER LANDS (cassette by Samizdat)
STEFAN CHRISTOFF – DECLARATIONS (cassette by Cuchabata Records)

Music by Stefan Christoff was reviewed before, as recently as Vital Weekly 1427, a cassette he recorded with Joseph Sannicandro. I know him to play the guitars, organ and piano, but on this new solo release, perhaps the first solo release I hear from him, he does something else. The opening piece, ‘Sounding Worlds 1’, is a synthesiser piece recorded by his brother Jordan, and Stefan adds field recordings from the Sooke River in British Columbia. It has a beautiful, peaceful ambient quality to it, and the river sounds from time to time more akin to white noise. This is followed by a piano piece, which experiments with “digital keyboard interfaces on random websites”. I need to learn how to do that. It’s a weird, slightly chaotic and lovely tune. While much of Christoff’s work comes from a more improvised angle, ‘In Burgas’ uses a rhythm machine and a keyboard accompaniment, inspired by a visit to Bulgaria, and he says the Balkan and West Asia inspire the rhythm and tone, not something I heard. Along the lines of the first piece is ‘Chalga Remixed’, in which he plunders Balkan popular music via concise samples, none of which one can easily recognise. Like the long opening piece, there is an ambient quality to the music, but more from a shoegazing point of view (or, maybe, Vaporwave, as the text indicates, but not a genre I’m all too familiar with). A regular piano is used on ‘Haunted Land’, showing more of his political side: “I was thinking while playing about colonial ghosts in the present in the context of North America as clearly it is all the stolen Indigenous lands of Turtle Island”, but as always, not something one hears in the music—an excellent release, with a wonderful variety of musical interests.
The other new cassette contains five pieces for guitar, three of which he recorded while living in Griffintown in 2000/2001. and two from 2015-2016. It is a rather short cassette without a similar amount of variation. Christoff sits down to play the electric guitar, going through an amplifier and using some natural reverb to create an atmosphere. I am reminded of Loren MazzaCane Connos, who has a similar desolate playing style. I always think of this kind of music as blues, but perhaps an experimental kind of blues. Music that goes straight into your soul or comes straight out of the soul. The reverb is a knife to cut emotions, dark and big. The five pieces are similar, which makes for some effective chill-out music – I fell asleep, but it could also have been the lateness of the hour. I don’t know what else I can say about this one other than I also liked this one, albeit not as much as the other one. (FdW)
––– Address: https://samizdatrecords.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://cuchabatarecords.bandcamp.com/

OISHI – DISCOISHI (cassette by Artsy Records)

Here, we have a duo of Ren Shang (vocal, cassette player, iPad) and Zheng Hao (bass guitar, electronics, laptop). The first is a studio recording, and the second is a live one. That one sees Hao dropping the bass and only playing electronics and keyboard. There are no individual pieces on this release, just two sides of the strangest mash-up of sounds and music. Think turntablism, chaos, plunderphonics and the occasional song-based bit of techno. The latter is less on the live recording, which is also more single-minded. Here, the duo improvises a lot more, and the voice makes it all more like sound poetry. This does not blow me away. It’s too freaky for me. The chaos of their studio recording sounds more convincing, mainly because some organisation is going on, especially in their more song-oriented material. The music here has more depth and more style. They sample left and right, and it all makes a great impression. I have no idea if their studio is impossible to recreate on stage; with the technology they are using, it should very well be possible. Their live recording is from earlier than the studio recording, with Oishi trying to find a sound of their own. I have no answer to all these questions, and I hope that future releases will be along the lines of their studio work. (FdW)
––– Address: https://artsyrecords.bandcamp.com/

JOCELYN ROBERT – UN JARDIN D’OMBRES (USB by Merles Records)

I reviewed music by Jocelyn Robert before, usually to my liking and only sometimes to my understanding. There is a modern classical edge that I may only partially ‘get’. This new release made me frown. Robert explores field recordings and music, and composition and AI software. My experiences with music AI are sparse and I didn’t find it very interesting. He also uses software tools by Metacreation Lab, Audiometaphore and Calliope, each doing something that doesn’t mean much (but feel free to explore!). The result contains 11 pieces of music that sound very modern classical, but at the same time also like notes thrown together (which for some might be the very definition of modern classical music), and sometimes there are field recordings. However, none of this matches very well in purely musical terms. I like the field recordings, children, street, kitchen, that kind of thing, but the music did little for me. It remained very distant. I wonder if that’s the AI component, which, if I understand the text well, is something Robert rearranged but still sounded distant and alien. It’s interesting to generate music through AI and rearrange that, but these results didn’t satisfy me. One of the reasons being, undoubtelyy, me not being the biggest lover of pure modern classical music. (FdW)
––– Address: https://jocelynrobert.bandcamp.com/