Week 36

ASSOCIATED SINE TONE SERVICES (CD by Flag Day Recordings) *
MACHINEFABRIEK – OMVAL (CD by Flag Day Recordings) *
RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – CURVE (CD by Machinefabriek) *
MERZBOW & JOHN WIESE – EKA VARNA (CD by Helicopter/Troniks) *
K2 & JOHN WIESE – MULTIPLE DENSITY (CD by Helicopter/Troniks) *
T. MIKAWA & JOHN WIESE – LIVE AT 落合 SOUP (CD by Helicopter/Troniks) *
THE CHERRY POINT – DAWN OF THE BLOODY TAPES (CD by Helicopter/Troniks) *
MONOFONIC ORCHESTRA – STARLESS VARIATIONS (CD by Tib Prod) *
THE PAIN FACTORY (4DVD by Spastik Visuals)
ORGAN OF CORTI – USHER/TRAUMA (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
ORGAN OF CORTI – INCUS/MALLEUS (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
SMALL CRUEL PARTY / INGEOS – PHÉNOMÈNE PASSAGER DE LA VOLONTÉ/KDI DCTB 340 (Sanhàs) (7″ by Kaon)
COPPICE/# INGEOS ~ TOY.BIZARRE # – STRAT​É​GIES OBLIQUES II (LP by Ferns Recordings) *
ERIC LUNDE – EMPTINESS OF EMPTINESS (triple 7″ by Ballast/Kanshiketsu!)
DEAD EDITS – EVERYBODY, THIS HAS BEEN ONE OF THE GREATEST TOURS OF OUR LIFE. WE REALLY, FIRST, I’D LIKE TO THANK THE BAND. I’D LIKE TO THANK OUR ROAD CREW. AND I’D LIKE TO THANK OUR LIGHTING PEOPLE. OF ALL THE SHOWS ON THIS TOUR, THIS PARTICULAR SHOW WILL REMAIN WITH US THE LONGEST, BECAUSE NOT ONLY IS IT THE LAST SHOW OF THE TOUR, BUT IT’S THE LAST SHOW THAT WE’LL EVER DO. THANK YOU.” (7″ by Ballast) *
VERTONEN – IRREVERSIBILITY (2CDR by Ballast) *
FCKNBSTRDS – FUCKZINATION (CDR by Bizarreshampoo) *
UNTITLED ISSUE 08 (magazine)
FRANS DE WAARD – AMERICA’S GREATEST NOISE! (book by Korm Plastics)

ASSOCIATED SINE TONE SERVICES (CD by Flag Day Recordings)
MACHINEFABRIEK – OMVAL (CD by Flag Day Recordings)
RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – CURVE (CD by Machinefabriek)

Here, we have three times Rutger Zuydervelt; two are evident if you know he’s the man behind Machinefabriek (and after reviewing a lot of his work, not something you missed). In the first guise, Zuydervelt is a member of a trio called Associated Sine Tone Services, along with Jeremy Young and Nicolas Bernier. The latter two are based in Montreal and Zuydervelt in Schiedam, The Netherlands. They share a prime interest in using “sine wave oscillators and an array of electronic filters, stacks, and processing” – a proper old-school type of electronic music. It has a great cover, looking like an old box containing a reel to reel tape. The idea was not to play very abstract, long-form pieces of sine wave drones but instead go for a more “pop-melodic approach”, so most tracks are between two and four minutes and with 12 pieces and a playing time of 36 minutes; sadly, not a very long album. The music fills me with great joy, mainly because there is a notion of melody, a trace of rhythm, and none of this sterile sine wave approach. Young was an instigator here, following a dream he had in which he performed with precisely these two musicians and upon waking up, he went to work on a bunch of oscillator loops and invited the others to work on this. No single musician controls the mix, and it’s a collective thing, even with the geographical distance. The music sounds surprisingly coherent, best described as the sum of each musician’s solo work. Carefully placed sines, clicks and cuts, with the added electronic giving the music a different shade of sine wave and, at times, an excellent, distant sound (in ‘000100’), for instance, but overall, there is a beautiful warmth in these pieces. It’s not exactly pop music, but with hints at that.
Following a concert by Zuydervelt with serpent player Berlinde Deman, he was all fired up to play some more music, and back home, he set up his gear and tried to recreate the evening’s atmosphere. With different results, these various jams were used to create the 32-minute collage, ‘ Omval’ (which means fall over, but I am unsure what it means to Zuydervelt). Go over to the Bandcamp page if you want to know what he uses here; instrument-wise, it’s quite a lot, and some of this is hocus pocus to me. The result is an excellent piece of something as ‘typical Machiefabriek’ music; highly atmospheric, going from massive drone-like meanderings to minimal sounds, and, as always, he takes his time to let things develop. There are three distinct sections here, each building from a handful of sounds, going full force in terms of drone and atmospherics, and doing that for a while. When things wind down, it’s time to launch the next section. A fine piece indeed, but perhaps not the one standing out the most in his vast catalogue; it’s also an impossible thing by now.
‘Curve’ is the shortest release, 20 minutes, and the stereo mix of an eight-channel installation by Cocky Eek and Schweigman& (odd name, I know). The installation “is a two-part inflatable tube, with a diameter of 2.5 meters, positioned as two interlocking spirals. One enters the Curve, walks through it, uninterrupted, with the rhythm of the music indicating the pace. At the end of the first tube, in the middle of the installation, there’s an open space. Still slowly walking, the visitor enters the second tube, which spirals outwards and leads towards the exit.” The experience takes about 20 minutes, and the music is on a loop and presented in Friesland and Vlieland, all up north in The Netherlands (just a bit too far away for a quick visit). With eight channels versus two, it’s not easy to suggest a similar spaciousness, but I admit that Zuydervelt does a great job. Of course, a lot (if not all) of his music is atmospheric, which is not different, but there is a certain spaciousness here that is a bit of a new album. At times the music has an almost new age-like texture to it. There are two distinct parts here, with the first having that new age-like atmosphere. In the second, there is a repeating click among the clouds and drones that distributes the piece’s gentleness for me. Maybe it fits the installation; I can’t tell. It’s a fine piece, again, but perhaps not the one standing out the most in his vast catalogue; it’s also an impossible thing by now. (FdW)
––– Address: https://flagdayrecordings.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/

MERZBOW & JOHN WIESE – EKA VARNA (CD by Helicopter/Troniks)
K2 & JOHN WIESE – MULTIPLE DENSITY (CD by Helicopter/Troniks)
T. MIKAWA & JOHN WIESE – LIVE AT 落合 SOUP (CD by Helicopter/Troniks)
THE CHERRY POINT – DAWN OF THE BLOODY TAPES (CD by Helicopter/Troniks)

The eye-catching thing about these four new releases by Troniks is the presence of John Wiese on three of them. He could be a superstar now, with everybody waiting in line for a collaboration, or, more likely, just a coincidence, and a happy one as his fans can buy three of them at once. It could be because all four a co-released by Wiese’s Helicopter label. I had no preference to play them in any specific order, so I started with the 51-minute recording Wiese did on December 1st, 2023, at Bushbash, Tokyo, with Masami Akita, also known as Merzbow. The credit reads ‘electronics’ for both. I haven’t followed either’s recent career to understand what these electronics might be. A long time ago, I was a dedicated fan of Merzbow until I realised I had many CDs unopened because I couldn’t keep up. I believe Merzbow is no longer in his laptop phase and uses a synthi A on stage, perhaps with his collection of guitar pedals. Wiese was once a ‘have laptop-will travel’, but nowadays? Based on the music on this CD, it would be no surprise if both are heavily into using modular electronics. Their noise is one of many small synth sounds bubbling under a cascade of noises, full of distortion and feedback. Not your typical wall of noise but chaotic and energetic, this vitalising music, even when played at home, where one can control the volume; in my case, if I’m honest, not too loud (I may need my ears in the future), but enough to experience the noise and hear the details. It was a long but satisfying start to a noisy tournament.
‘Electronics’ is also what Kimihide Kusafaka plays, just like Wiese on the two pieces of ‘Multiple Density’. They have an almost equal length, seven seconds difference. We also had a live recording one week before Wiese played with Merzbow at Freaky Show, Shizuoka, in Japan. Of course, we know Kusafaka as K2 and a man who loves to crush metallic plates and feed that sound through effects, and if he does the same here, it’s hard to tell. Just with Merzbow, Wiese keeps his electronics on a similar chaos level, but the uber-noise seems a bit different. It’s noise, so for the outsider, it all sounds like unlistenable noise music, and it’s always challenging to tell the difference. In this case the music seems a tad more chaotic, a bit more energetic but also a bit tiring to play all the way through, when the total album is just under 40 minutes. Oddly, there is also a sense of things being more minimal, like chaotic, but on a similar level. The uber noise seems louder and more vicious than with Merzbow, surprising as this may sound. It’s not a judgment nor a competition. It is what it is, and it’s my ears, so maybe I’m wrong. Excellent music, heavy-weight noise music.
One day before hitting the stage with Merzbow, Wiese was on stage at 落合 Soup, Tokyo, with T. Mikawa of Hijokaidan and Incapacitants fame and much more Japanoise fame. I now realise I could have reviewed these days in order of recording dates. It’s also the shortest of the three with Wiese. The concert recording here is almost 26 minutes (and that’s not to say they played for 26 minutes; there may have been edits of some kind), and there is an additional piece called ‘Rehearsal’, which takes seven minutes. The same disclaimer there: they may have rehearsed a bit longer. By now, Wiese’s input is quite clear; the bubbling (and I don’t mean this in an aquatic way) synthesiser sound may be his, while his changing partner sustains the noise. Whereas with K2, the ubernoise was very loud, Mikawa is more like Merzbow, with a slightly similar chaotic noise drone approach, changing repeatedly and moving all over the place. Perhaps, so I thought, this is even the most chaotic of the Wiese trio and has a curious musique concrète approach, with a lot of sounds speeding high up, like the amplification of a reel-to-reel rewinding, times ten in volume and picked up with a bunch of feedback. I like the concise approach here, showing mastery in the reduction. I don’t know what the unspoken rules of noise music are (the longer, the better seems to be a prevailing thing), but this shorter approach suited well.
And lastly, we turn to The Cherry Point’s ‘Dawn Of The Bloody Tapes’, and damn, there it is, in the fine print: mixed by John Wiese. All Electronics by Phil Blankenship, the man behind The Cherry Point, made me consider the nature of this noise music and its creators. If you record it, why aren’t you mixing it? Why let someone else handle that side of your music? Obviously, a probable reason is somewhere, but I have to learn about this. In ye olden days music by The Cherry Point and the likes, The Rita or Vomir, were handled by the esteemed and now retired Jliat. I have none of his knowledge, nay wisdom (or wit) to twist and turn a review into a piece of noise, being all down to earth and descriptive. Again, I profusely apologise for the lack of knowledge in what makes something noise: industrial music, power electronics, any musical genre with the word death latched to it, or a harsh noise wall. My best guess is The Cherry Point belong to the harsh noise wall scene, even when applying minutiae-changing elements in the music. For all I know, maybe despite the no-change approach of harsh noise wall music, there is some development. It’s that, The Cherry Point belongs to some other sub-sub category of noise music. Two pieces, each around 18 minutes to severely minimalist noise music, no hostages held, all gates open, damn vicious music. There was no chaos, no jumping around, and a different musical energy level. I liked this sort of minimalist and more brutalist as the end of a noise tour; I went for a walk! (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.iheartnoise.com/

MONOFONIC ORCHESTRA – STARLESS VARIATIONS (CD by Tib Prod)

To review this, I first had to download King Crimson’s 1974 album ‘Red’ (sorry, Fripp), as the Monofonic Orchestra plays two versions of the song ‘Starless’ of said album. I admit prog rock started and ended with one LP, ‘In The Court Of Crimson King’, the 1969 debut album by King Crimson; I borrowed it from the music library a lot, and still a record I like. However, with post-punk and electronic music lurking at my bedroom door in 1980, my love for prog rock ended. I never heard any other King Crimson record until today when I heard ‘Red’. I read the liner notes by the Monofonic Orchestra, and I admit I fail to see why this is such an essential piece of music (“enshrines “the end” of a way to understand rock and to be musicians”). The orchestra is a duo, Maurizio Marsico on the grand piano and Massimo Mascheroni on electronics. On 16 April 2023, they played their piece in Milan, and you’ll find it on this disc, along with label boss Jan-M. Iversen doing a remix of that. Both contain samples of the original, along with ‘O Que Sera’ and Beethoven’s ‘Sechs Bagatellen’. I played the original, a piece of rock music, and I didn’t particular liking or dislike it; just not my thing and then I went to the CD in question. The piano is very melodic, but I am not a musician to tell you if the notes compare to the original. The electronics consist of white noise, a bit of talking and that’s about it. Modern classical music meets electronics, but not in a very engaging way. I liked Iversen’s rework a lot better, speeding up the piano a bit, adding some more interesting electronics, creating an exciting balance between piano and electronics, also by processing some of the piano.
It’s possible I am missing the bigger conceptual picture behind all of this. Maybe I need to know more about King Crimson, and my understanding of modern music (as in contemporary composed music) also eludes me. Until I know more: not for me. (FdW)
––– Address: https://tibprod.bandcamp.com/

THE PAIN FACTORY (4DVD by Spastik Visuals)

Public Access TV is something unknown in many parts of the world, but in America well-known; [wiki}: “Public-access television (sometimes called community-access television) is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable television speciality channels.” Basically YouTube from the analogue days. I can only wonder what to do if such a thing existed locally here in those days. In San Francisco, in the mid-1990s, Michael Contreras, almost by accident, had the opportunity to do an hour to fill up an open slot and had the idea for The Pain Factory, a show about noise. He produced 13 of these shows, 12 of which are on these four DVDs. The eighth show is missing, because they showed a film which is more accessible (according to the liner notes) to find these days, and they couldn’t get permission to use it. The show had guests playing concerts in the studio and sometimes showed videos sent in from further afield. As this is all almost 30 years ago, we see some very young people who are still around: Joe Colley, The Haters, Big City Orchestra, Macronympha, Taint, and there are a lot of people I have never heard of, such as Seethe, Flat Tire, Frank Moore (who indeed loves a bit of nudity), Rotten Jesus, The Amputease, Glass Crash and much more. Each show easily is over an hour long, so you know these four discs are one hell of sit through. The ‘clips’ are sometimes quite long and, especially in the early shows, had no introduction cards, so I’m not always sure what the hell I’m watching.
There is no presenter for the first seven shows; in shows 9 and 10, Jeff Gunn is the presenter, and it becomes more of a traditional TV show, but with a tremendous charming naivety; phone-ins that don’t go smoothly, Gunn looks at the wrong camera, that kind of thing, but now at least what we’re watching. It’s also with these episodes that Gunn presents us with his political views, swear words and all included. Maybe Contreras realised it was regular TV-like and decided to quit this?
Harsh noise plays a signifcant role in the early shows, but it’s still the mid-1990s, so it’s never too harsh, maybe also depending on how these performances were taped. It’s interesting to see people their music which I only heard on cassette or CD in those days, like Yau. That’s how they do it, I noted on more than one occassion. Here too things don’t always run smoothly, and that too adds to the fun of the shows In later shows, bands with synths, guitars, and drummers play spacey rock music or something closer to the world of techno or pop music (say, the commercial side of Cabaret Voltaire, for instance, with Sirvix). This shows a rare, diverse approach that one would see less these days. I would be lying if I said I saw it all (but at least 2/3 I did see). For the purposes of a review, this might not be necessary, but as time goes on, this is undoubtedly something to return to and explore even more, whenever time allows (when’s the next holiday?) (FdW)
––– Address: https://thepainfactory.info/

ORGAN OF CORTI – USHER/TRAUMA (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
ORGAN OF CORTI – INCUS/MALLEUS (7″ by Dead Mind Records)

I have seen the name of Organ Of Corti a few times without hearing the music. This trio consists of Joachim Nordwall (iDeal Recordings), Dan Johansson (Sewer Election, Neutral, etc.) and Matthias Gustafsson (Altar Of Flies, etc.). I always wonder if they named their group after the label Cortical Foundation, which released several albums by Terry Riley, Hermann Nitsch, InterSystems, and Charlemagne Palestine, until the label owner, Gary Todd, had an accident, preventing him from continuing his work (he passed away in 2022). This group may be in honour of his job digging up old minimalists. And is the 7″ format an excellent format for long-form minimalist composition? Should they play such? They don’t play ‘that’ kind of minimalist music, but something with more force and building around loops of obscured sounds, along with keeping an eye on the minimalist side of the music. Seeing these men and their history in noise music, but of the more severe variety, it’s no surprise this is along those lines. ‘Incus/Malleus’ is from two years ago and sounds a bit more primitive than ‘Usher/Trauma’ from earlier this year, but maybe I am hearing that ‘progress’ (if you will call it) into the music. All four pieces fit the 7″ format quite well. Unlike many (even when we don’t see many 7″s these days), others that reach our shores don’t sound like outtakes of more significant works but rounded-off pieces created for the format. Rolling loops, brutish synths, delicate drones and some tape manipulation work wonders. These four pieces made me curious to hear the longer works by them. (FdW)
––– Address: https://dead-mind.bandcamp.com/

SMALL CRUEL PARTY / INGEOS – PHÉNOMÈNE PASSAGER DE LA VOLONTÉ/KDI DCTB 340 (Sanhàs) (7″ by Kaon)
COPPICE/# INGEOS ~ TOY.BIZARRE # – STRAT​É​GIES OBLIQUES II (LP by Ferns Recordings)

You may be surprised to see several reviews of 7″ records in one Vital Weekly, but truth be told: I saved them up. Especially in this case and the Eric Lunde, they are around on my desk for some time, waiting for inspiration to arrive, plus a willingness to do the dance with the turntable, going back and forth, flipping records, writing a few words. For both Lunde and this one, I wrote everything there is to know before playing the records. Small Cruel Party and Ingeos, also known as Cedric Peyronnet, better known as Toy Bizarre, decided to compose a new piece every month and do this for five months, releasing the results on a lathe cut 7″, edition of 40 each. They strated in April, but I received only the June edition. I wonder why Peyronnet changed to Ingeos and at the same time kept his titles the same; KDI DCTB with a number to follow the previous is something he did before.
The 7″ spins at 45 rpm, and on the first side, we find Small Cruel Party, of whom we can now say he’s definitely back on track. In much of his work, many loops, longer and shorter, are generated from rubbing a few acoustic objects together and feeding the resulting signals through a line of sound processing devices. By minimally changing the parameters of these effects, Small Cruel Party creates a straightforward feeling, almost like a live recording. This certainly is the case with ‘Phénomène Passager De La Volonté’, which translates as ‘Transient Phenomenon of Will’, which has the trademark Small Cruel Party approach. As always, you may wonder if the 7″ format does the music of Small Cruel Party justice. You feel there’s more to it, perhaps a bit longer, but it’s not to be.
On the other side is music by Ingeos, Cedric Peyronnet’s musical project; as I said, I have yet to learn the difference between Toy Bizarre and Ingeos. In this piece (I also assume at 45 rpm), we also find acoustic sounds, but linear, and the processing sounds entirely different. The acoustic rumble (or field recordings, take your pick) quickly morph into a much more electronic sound, and all the acoustics are rendered abstract. It’s like a vanishing act, also because it moves towards being inaudible. I thought it all could have been a bit longer, say seven or eight minutes. I returned to doing something I did in the early 1980s and played both sides at 33 rpm, which brought equally beautiful results.
Had these 7″s not been lying around for some time, I would have written different words about the split LP by Coppice and # ingeos ~ toy.bizarre #, as it’s called now. Believe it or not, this LP arrived in the afternoon. I completed the 7″ review, which brings me into a pickle. Do I rewrite that one, pretending both are done simultaneously, or do I continue, albeit a few days later, and continue the story about Peyronnet? I like it to be known I am a lazy man, never wanting to throw away work, so I indeed opted for the latter. Following a split LP by the two brothers Toniutti, also called ‘Strat​é​gies Obliques’, like this one, so maybe Ferns is doing a series of these? Great news, and for the second split LP, we find Chicago-based duo Coppice doing a new piece. They are Joseph Kramer and Noé Cuéllar, and the few works heard by them I enjoyed a lot. For a while, it seemed all quiet, but in Vital Weekly 1376, I reviewed a triple CD, also released by Ferns Recordings. I thought that was fine, if not easy, to digest and release. In that respect, their ‘Bridge to Oblique Landscape (Distance in the Unison with Crosscutting Triangles)’ is a more accessible piece. My eye keeps sticking to the word triangle, and the opening of the piece has the sound of a triangle, I think. After a few strikes, the music seems to be locked inside a swirl of processed triangle sounds, feedback gentle back and forth, and sometimes a few more bell-like sounds. With some pitching and bending, the music has an old-school electronic music feeling, with some excellent dynamic approaches. A fantastic piece of music.
On the other side, we find the most curiously titled, ‘[a] [Water / Reverse / You Can Only Make One Dot At A Time / Use Filters / Do We Need Holes? / Remove Ambiguities And Convert To Specifics / Put In Earplugs / Overtly Resist Change / What Mistakes Did You Make Last Time? / Mute And Continue]’ by the likewise curiously called # ingeos ~ toy.bizarre #. What Peyronnet does here with these names is a mild mystery to me. He numbers his composition, which is Kdi Dctb 346, and the one the 7″ is Kdi Dctb 340, so maybe (and I am wildly guessing here) there’s a shift back to using the name Toy Bizarre. I tried to read into the music and see if there are many various parts there, and there are, but it’s also a continious collage, so it isn’t easy to tell the various sections apart. My best guess about the music and how it was made is, again, Peyronnet processing objects, banging them around and feeding them through his favourite tools for sound processing. Twenty years ago, I would have used the words laptop and software, but these days? Maybe he’s also part of the world of modulism, and I am not your man to tell. The music indeed has that old musique concrète approach, and unlike the 7″, the original roughness of the acoustic objects is a recurring element in the music, sitting along their processed parts all along. Peyronnet’s music maintains a beautiful, playful character. (FdW)
––– Address: https://toybizarre.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://www.discogs.com/seller/fernsrec/profile

ERIC LUNDE – EMPTINESS OF EMPTINESS (triple 7″ by Ballast/Kanshiketsu!)

Many of Eric Lunde’s works have a conceptual edge and are not always the clearest, but here’s one that is obvious. The first record in the parcel is a blank lathe cut one (or is that a lathe uncut?) on the first side, and the second side is “pure lathe cut no sound, no audio but the lathe track itself”; the second disc contains on side 1 “audio recording of lathe cut being played” plus “recording of th lathe cut”, which repeats with more permutations on the second side, tripling and quadrupling. The third disc has on the first side a recording of the last track of the second disc cut into the disc, and the second is empty. There’s a fourth sleeve with printed matter, all with white silk screen ink. Of course, the whole process of re-recording ad infinitum fits the Lunde aesthetic ever since he started as a solo artist in the late 1980s. Unlike regular vinyl productions, lathe cuts usually have no messages scratched, so what are sides one and two? With blank sides, it’s easier. I heard the music and found this quite interesting, even when I may have played it in the wrong order. The one record with two sides of music is the best, showing us two very different sides of sound processing and noise. It’s interesting and entertaining but, perhaps, on a more conceptual level and not an entertainment level. This is not the kind of thing you play for fun; at least, I don’t. I am unsure what else I could write this package, unless a very long essay about silence, nothingness, John Cage and what have you, but that’s what has been well covered in the canon of modern music. Lunde gives us his take on it and does a fine job. I wouldn’t expect something different. (FdW)
––– Address: http://ballastnvp.blogspot.com

DEAD EDITS – EVERYBODY, THIS HAS BEEN ONE OF THE GREATEST TOURS OF OUR LIFE. WE REALLY, FIRST, I’D LIKE TO THANK THE BAND. I’D LIKE TO THANK OUR ROAD CREW. AND I’D LIKE TO THANK OUR LIGHTING PEOPLE. OF ALL THE SHOWS ON THIS TOUR, THIS PARTICULAR SHOW WILL REMAIN WITH US THE LONGEST, BECAUSE NOT ONLY IS IT THE LAST SHOW OF THE TOUR, BUT IT’S THE LAST SHOW THAT WE’LL EVER DO. THANK YOU.” (7″ by Ballast)
VERTONEN – IRREVERSIBILITY (2CDR by Ballast)

The Dead Edits latest lathe cut 7″ (square!) has (probably) the longest title I ever reviewed. I am allowed to truncate, but hey that’s a lot of words easily written. If you are a fan of David Bowie, you may recognise the title because it’s the farewell speech he gave at the end of the Spiders From Mars tour at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973, and of course, he continued playing live. Dead Edits, the duo of Blake Edwards and Eric Lunde, found this speech “utterly impeccable” and set to work, using the speech and via what they call “reduplicative strategies” to alter Bowie’s voice. These strategies are playback upon playback, like Alvin Lucier’s ‘I’m Sitting In A Room’, but with much cheaper equipment and much cruder results. You could wonder why exactly this bit; not being a Bowie fan, I wouldn’t know, but these transformations are quite radical. I assume these aren’t the only steps in the process, but rather steps 1, 10, 250 and 4000, but maybe I am wrong. I like the consistency of the degradation. Bowie, sort of, continues on the other side with ‘Rock And Roll Suicide’, taken from the same concert as the farewell speech, sprayed with Dead Edits magic, although slightly different than on the first side, more like with additional phasing and layering and taking a loop and singing along. I’m not sure of the latter, merely judging the music—great conceptual fun and an exemplary record.
“Responses to death, of course, are situationally variable. Irreversibility is, for me, one such response”, writes Blake Edwards, solo working as Vertonen. I fail to see what that’s got to do with the music. About the first disc, he writes these are “layered, raw, or processed “small” sounds mixed with field recordings and various electronic disturbances” and the second “primarily from tonal sine wave manipulation: I’d consider the 1977 electronic music album Pythagoron as an influence lurking in the background for the second disc.” It’s not a record I had heard of, but upon checking sounded pretty interesting, a somewhat cruder take on atmospheric music, given the date it was released. To see a relation with Vertonen’s two parts here, both 61 minutes, is easy. As you may know by now, Vertonen’s music is quite atmospheric but not confined to a single style of approach. Sometimes smooth and delicate, sometimes also more experimental. The two parts of ‘Irreversibility’ certainly have that slightly experimental edge but are still quite atmospheric. Small rhythm components are sometimes part of the music, with some refined phase-shifting, bringing out great minimalism. The majority is the sustaining drones, of which I never know if Vertonen does this analogue or digitally. He takes his time developing a piece; an excerpt in the podcast doesn’t do this release much justice. It’s all about the length of a piece, and Vertonen is a master at knowing how long a piece should be or how long a sound should continue. These are two powerful works, and because they are again a bit different than some of his works, this is another excellent addition to his vast catalogue. (FdW)
––– Address: http://ballastnvp.blogspot.com

FCKNBSTRDS – FUCKZINATION (CDR by Bizarreshampoo)

You could think of The Netherlands being a small country where everybody’s connected, and me being a (former) noisehead, I know all about the Fcknbstrds, or whatever the preferred spelling is. I don’t. I may have seen them twice in concert, opening up for Whitehouse in May 2006 and 2015, and I found quite the spectacle in both concerts. They employed a lot of theatrics and put on a decent amount of noise. They aren’t the sort of noise group that is one continuous blur of distortion but also have a streak of outsider music. Also, I thought this group did not exist, but there’s a new CDR, and without much information, I can only assume this is all new stuff. I got it through Peter Zincken, also known as Odal and Dr. Bibber, so I think he’s still a member of this group. Two pieces, totalling some 77 minutes of music, and it’s a continuous roll of noise patterns, drunken shouting, stabs on a keyboard, acoustic object and contact microphone abuse and full-on distorted bits. I could be convinced it’s all one live concert, but there are various bits stuck together, maybe from concerts but just as well rehearsals. This prompted me to think, does a band like the Fcknbstrds rehearse? Probably not, but I believe they get together, switch all their gear on and create some more noise; a fine line between concert and jamming, with or without audience, doesn’t matter. There is quite a bit of ‘voice’ material, but none with any lyrical connect, but the voice is another instrument, a different generator of noise sounds. As with many noise releases, there are moments dragging on too long, but you probably don’t know or mind if you are in the zone (either as a musician or listener). I like this bouncing back and forth between old school industrial music, power electronics, sheer amateurism and rants, drunken or insane or otherwise, the music never being the same noise throughout, but rather a set of different noise approaches makes a long but pleasurable trip. (FdW)
––– Address: https://bizarresdigitalantientertainment.bandcamp.com/

UNTITLED ISSUE 08 (magazine)

Sadly, only a few fanzines arrive, but here’s classic fanzine material, ‘Untitled’ from Canada. It’s a bit bigger than A5 and smaller than A4, 52 pages, all black and white, with a four-page colour section in the middle. The interest is within the subtitle, ‘sounds and aesthetics’. There is much to learn here, as a few names are new to me. Some of these are interviews, such as with Jazzhand, Pain Chain, Jeph Jerman, and Met Glas, Francesco Tignola (Elisha Morningstar). In contrast, others deliver pieces about their work or interests, such as Aaron Scholz, alonewithlabor, Jack Davidson, or Veikko Rajanen presented visual art. The editor of Vital Weekly rambles about his early days doing fanzines. Solid stuff that made me explore some of these musicians in more detail, which is what any print about music should do. (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.instagram.com/untitledzine/

FRANS DE WAARD – AMERICA’S GREATEST NOISE! (book by Korm Plastics)

Frans wrote a book about Ron. Ron who? Ron Lessard. ??? RRRon? Ah, you mean Emil Beaulieau, wasn’t he the mayor of… No – well, yes and no. Now you’ve got me confused. OK, let’s start again.
Frans wrote a book about America’s Greatest Noise Artist, Ron Lessard. For some reason, it is only called ‘America’s Greatest Noise!’ – which is fine because, as you will understand when reading the book, Ron is not necessarily the most narcissistic person in the world. To get back to the ‘confusing’ bit, the book is written in the first person from the point of view of RRRon. But is it just Frans typing out conversations they had with Ron? Is it Frans impersonating Ron? It could be all of this, and it does not matter. All that matters is delivering the goods. And this is what the book does.
If you remember the Staalplaat book Frans wrote a few years back, that was organised not as a continuous narrative in time, like a history book or biography – or even Kinkelaar’s Legendary Pink Dots book – but centred around topics. You had to make up the timeline, but details around specific topics were better collected in one place. Adding a few ‘old’ interviews, some facsimile flyers, letters, and catalogue pages make the book look a bit like a scrapbook, like the recent D-Generation zine (did that ever have a second edition?). But far from. This is a thorough reflection on RRRecords, Emil Beaulieau, Due Process, and the many activities, releases, impersonations,
Reading led me back to my formative years – now long ago – seeing that Ron is my age. I used to buy direct from him when I started my mail order. Business was always straightforward, though it seemed a bit quirky at times. Who would start issuing a series of CDs with near-identical covers sticking to a price far lower than CDs fetched at the time without ever changing the price? Ron would. Now, things get set in more context. A lot of stuff I assumed or pieced together is contextualised in the book, but also new aspects. Ron is a general-purpose record store owner and has made his income off that, not performing and releasing noise music, giving him much freedom to artistically be as adventurous as he pleases. So we get the stories behind Emile Beaulieu, the real mayor of Manchester, NH, how the Pure sub-label got started, how the anti-records idea developed, how Ron got to be more interested in live music than recordings and started extensively touring as Emil Beauliau (something I was not aware of), and who and what Minutoli is whom one of the Emil Pure CDs is dedicated to. And many other stories about collaborations, artist friends, performances, and releases.
If you know Uli Rehberg of Unterm Durchschnitt record shop in Hamburg, Werkbund, and more, impersonating Dr Ditterich von Donnersberg, you will see lots of parallels. There is the disdain for commercially issuing music, the humour, the pranks, the artistic recklessness, and the absolute focus on the artistry (music and performance) that ‘has it’, as opposed to the many acolytes and copyists.
The book is a fantastic read and monument to individualism, artistic freedom, cracking good jokes not everyone gets, determinedness – and the importance of work-life balance. On the last pages of the central part of the book, Ron confesses that he wound up his label when he realised he was thinking more of the commercial side of releasing records than the quality of recordings. He retired as Emil long ago by accident, only then realising that he could live well without the extra hassle of touring life. Twenty years ago he told a friend that he envisaged working in his shop, cleaning used records at his counter up into his 60ies and 70ies. And that is where he is now, as he says, ‘living his dream’. And that – of course – is tongue-in-cheek but also has an element of truth. He says, ‘been there, done it, had enough, moved on’.
The first 1000 copies of the book have an anti-flexi accompanying them. So hurry to get your copy. It will unquestionably brighten your life. (RSW)
––– Address: https://www.kormplastics.nl/