Week 14
MERZBOW & AGENCEMENT – RILIEVO (CD by Pico)
HALI PALOMBO – WOBBLEMENT (CD by Artsy Records)
TZESNE – RECEPTORES (CD by SYM/Drone Records)
N (118) & BU.D.D.A. – 13 (CD by SYM/Drone Records)
MASSIMO AMATO & FABIO ORSI – DESERT SMELL (CD by 13)
GIUSEPPE CAPRIOLI – FANS FOR FANS (CD by 13)
FONOGRAFIE PRAGMA – ARCHIVIO II (CD by 13/Standa)
DEISON & CRANIOCLAST – COLD STAR: A NOISE INC (CD by 13)
YOKO ONO/THE GREAT LEARNING ORCHESTRA – SELECTED RECORDINGS FROM ‘GRAPEFRUIT’ (2CD by Karl Records)
PAWEŁ SZAMBURSKI – DŁUGO, DŁUGO NIC, A POTEM WSZYSTKO (CD by Rope Worm)
MARTYN WARE & CHARLES STOOKE & GABRIEL WARE – IT’S ALWAYS OURSELVES WE FIND IN THE SEA (CD by Cold Spring)
ANDERS FILIPSEN TRIO – ALDEBAR NIGHTS OF MANGOS (CD by Ilk Music)
S.Q.E. – BIRD AND TRUCK COLLISION (LP, private)
MARCUS SCHWINDT – SAME (CDR by Attenuation Circuit)
EXTRA – IMPERIAL/SIEVING (CDR by And So On)
EXTRA – HARD/RAINBOW (CDR by And So On)
MARK CAUVIN – MARINER AT SEA FOR DOUBLE BASS AND ELECTRONICS (CDR, private)
MARK CAUVIN – HOOLSCRAWLS (CDR, private)
ANDREAS LUTZ – AURA TRANS (SD card by Kasuga Records)
DAVID BREMER & 82 – FRAGMENT (cassette by Qvastlafve)
EX! EDITION 2 (magazine)
MERZBOW & AGENCEMENT – RILIEVO (CD by Pico)
For many years, I collected every new Merzbow release. I stopped when I realised I couldn’t keep up with playing them; some were still in their shrinkwrap after a year. I didn’t keep up with Merzbow’s output in the last 15 years and only heard what I was sent. I had no idea what a collaboration between Merzbow’s Masami Akita and Agencement’s Hideaki Shimada would be like. The latter is a violin player whose first two LPs from the late 1980s are classics with hectic playing and might include some tape manipulation. Shimada returned in recent years with slightly more traditional improvised music, so how would that work with Merzbow’s stream-of-noise approach? Would he drown all violin sounds and electronics rule over instruments? I was in for a surprise. I don’t know how this album was, together in one studio, separately recorded at home (the cover indicates the latter). Still, the violin is recognised as a violin, and there’s no wall of electronics approach by Akita here. If anything, I’d say Merzbow mastered max/MSP and delivered a live sampling of the violin, transforming these sounds in the computer and playing them in the mix. There is a lot of granular pitching, all very short and just as improvised as Agencement’s violin. We often forget Masami’s start in music was playing improvised percussion. On a few occasions, it seems Masami uses a bit of the old effects, and in a few instances, one might think it’s all going to explode in traditional Merzbowian noise. Yet, it only happens briefly and returns to the heavily processed acoustic side. That said, the music has a noise aspect, especially how it was recorded. It has that direct, close-to-the-microphone approach, scratching and rubbing strings loudly and forcefully. It is a great release of noisy improvisation and a surprise for Merzbow fans (unless I missed something in the last 15 years in Merzbow’s development). (FdW)
––– Address: https://sites.google.com/site/hsppico/ hsppico@gmail.com
HALI PALOMBO – WOBBLEMENT (CD by Artsy Records)
So far, I have reviewed some releases by Hali Palombo, a composer and multimedia from the American Midwest. As recent as Vital Weekly 1472, when I reviewed her ‘Kuddelmuddel’ release. I immensely enjoy her work in which she works with found audio and field recordings. Sometimes, there is an overarching theme, and sometimes, not. The latter, perhaps (unless I missed something), on this new CD, with another invited (and possibly connected word) title, ‘Wobblement’. Maybe it has to do with the instability of the tape. I can read too much in this. According to the information, Palombo uses “heavily distorted voice, electric guitar, piano, sounds from the Warner Brothers sound library, and various field recordings taken at Midwestern points of interest”. The guitar is best heard in the strong opening piece, ‘Fudd’, along with many wobbly voices. That’s not a continuum on this disc, though. Palombo knows how to pull back and use a limited set of sounds to create intense sound collages. I mentioned radiophonic, cinema for the ears before, and that’s the case here too. She likes her drones, but not exclusively. There is always some kind of manipulation, objects falling to the floor, rusty chains and fences (at Midwestern points of no interest?), and humour is an essential aspect of her music. In that respect, her work stands out from chin-stroking, serious musique concrète composers with their field recordings and modular synthesisers. I attribute that to the use of sounds from cartoons, which seem to have a more significant part of the music here than on her previous releases. What could easily be a gimmick turns out not to be. She uses snippets of cars chasing and gunshots very effectively as part of the music, in which so much more happens. The humour doesn’t always translate to her titles: ‘Christ On A Cracker’ contains some excellent music but could use a better title. Of course, just my random opinion. Nevertheless, a great release! (FdW)
––– Address: https://artsyrecords.bandcamp.com/
TZESNE – RECEPTORES (CD by SYM/Drone Records)
N (118) & BU.D.D.A. – 13 (CD by SYM/Drone Records)
Germany’s Drone Records has been a long-standing powerhouse for all forms of drone music. First through 100 7″ releases, and these days via various series: Substantia Innominata (10″ records), the ‘Drone-Mind/Mind-Drone’ LP compilations series, featuring four musicians on each record and the latest enterprise, the SYM CD series. For Drone Records, ‘SYM’ is “a placeholder for different notions and inner processes (such as Symmetrization, Symbiosis, Symbolization, forming an epistemological circle of inter-relations) – associated with perceiving and understanding sound on a substantial level”. Here, we have releases number seven and eight.
Number seven is by Tzesne, a musician from the Basque country. It’s been a while since I last heard his name, even when he was part of the Taalem 24 3″CDR box set (Vital Weekly 1465). Before that, we must return to Vital Weekly 644 to review work with Bazterrak or Vital Weekly 595 for a solo release. It seems there’s been a period of inactivity for reasons I am unaware of. His interest is within the area of unwanted and usually unheard sounds. Maybe the title is an indication to have receptors and feelers out to make those sounds audible and use these in musical compositions. The origin of these sounds is not revealed, but they could be short-wave radio signals, electric interference, or field recordings of what happens beyond walls and below surfaces. Tzesne creates long-form compositions with a few elements that are extensively used. The content might be minimal, but the output is maximum. Unwanted sounds don’t mean sounds you can’t hear. Tzesne isn’t interested in microsound, or perhaps he is as source material, but his output is certainly to hear. Sometimes oddly musical, such as what seems to be a guitar loop at the start of ‘_Ghostpulse’, which slowly fades into noisy drones of whirring radio signals and has an early Hafler Trio feeling. I heard heavily processed field recording morphing into a mighty drone in more pieces of this CD. It’s dark and atmospheric but also unsettling and dystophic. It’s more noise than ambient, but it’s never noise for the sake of pure distortion and nihilism. It’s the love of working with sound, and Tzesne does an excellent job.
The other new release is by German/Swiss duo BU.D.D.A. (which stands for “Bund des dritten Auges” = League of the Third Eye), being B*Tong (no amps, guitar, vocals, synthesiser) and EMERGE (violin, samples, voice), who team with Hellmut Neidhardt, who works as N, and the number that follows, 118 in this case, indicating how many works preceded this. Neidhardt is also a member of Multer, and he plays pre- and power amps and guitar. He has many works to his name, whereas BU.D.D.A. is a relatively new act with some excellent releases (see Vital Weekly 1203, 1347 and 1413). The number 13 in the title isn’t about the unlucky number or Fridays but about the Apollo 13 mission from April 1970. I suggest you visit the Wikipedia page about this mission or watch the movie. “Houston, we got a problem” is from this mission (and, incidentally, it is “Houston, we have had a problem”. Space is the place, and space and ambient going very well together is something we have known since Brian Eno’s ‘Apollo, Atmospheres & Soundtracks’. I know Neidhardt’s music quite a bit, and it seems he’s holding back a bit; his guitar doesn’t sound like a wall-of-drone instrument, as in some of his other works. The spacious character of the music works very well in these five pieces. In the opening piece, ‘As Into Space It Vents’, the guitar is plucked gently against a massive backdrop of cascading drones. That open guitar appears only like this in this piece and is a gentle reminder of the Eno album, but the drones are darker here. Bass-heavy darkness is a recurring theme in the music on this album, with shards of guitar and violin sparking off with quite a bit of reverb. Whatever samples they use (courtesy of Dead Voices in Air), it’s hard to say what these are. It’s quite a surprise the music was recorded during three concerts, something I only saw after having played the album a couple of times. It is spacious music, as dark and as heavy as space itself. The only strange thing is that the cover lists four pieces, and the album has five pieces of music. I’m sure that is the only fault on an otherwise flawless release. (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.dronerecords.de/
MASSIMO AMATO & FABIO ORSI – DESERT SMELL (CD by 13)
GIUSEPPE CAPRIOLI – FANS FOR FANS (CD by 13)
FONOGRAFIE PRAGMA – ARCHIVIO II (CD by 13/Standa)
DEISON & CRANIOCLAST – COLD STAR: A NOISE INC (CD by 13)
I played these four releases on a Sunday and then decided upon the reviewing order. I was tempted by the ones I anticipated most and then worked my way through them, but that’s not the approach I took. Second on my original list was to be the CD by Massimo Amato and Fabio Orsi, and that’s because I heard a fair bit of Orsi’s music, and you can’t go wrong. Amato is a new name for me, and he plays synths, piano and bulbul tarang, a string instrument. Orsi takes credit for sequences and synths. The first two pieces are exactly what I would expect from Orsi with a guest: lots of spacious synth work, a bit of a cosmic drift, and the soft tinkling of string instruments. With some sequencers in ‘Tail Of A Horse’ and a drum machine, the music has a dance-like atmosphere. The third piece is the title piece, using the voice of Alessandra Guttagliere, first speaking, later singing words and longer sustaining ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’, and maybe you can see this as a form of dream pop. Still, it’s not something I particularly enjoyed. The final piece is ‘Khamsin’, and Giuli Aldinucci plays granular synth; maybe that sounds like a flute from a seventies prog-rock record, adding quite the hippish element to the music. These two tracks I am not to sure of, to be honest. The title track didn’t cut it for me, and the last one was okay, whereas the first two were the usual high-standard Orsi pieces.
I don’t think I heard of Giuseppe Caprioli before, whose ‘Fans For Fans’ is announced as “a ‘monolithic’ experiment in extremely minimal non-music constructed in two long parts.” Forgive me if I quote a more extended bit of the information because I will surely lose some of the information when I have to summarise this. “If the first part is dominated by a background based on a single sound rich in harmonics that oscillates on its own wave-like vibrations, resting on a substrate of what can be at the same time a synthetic pink noise or the real ‘capture’ of a natural quasi-silence, in the second part a few sounds of a more overtly electric/electronic matrix, a tangle of faint high-pitched looped elements added to a single, more static sound, overwhelmed by a continuum of creaks probably derived from recording vinyl tracks, lead to another half-hour of sound content without substantial surprises or variations on the theme.” It is a conceptual work of static waves and occasional passing sounds. Maybe some kind of ventilation system near a road because cars are passing, and a dog is barking. Otherwise, unlike the continuous drone, not much happens in this piece, but it has a nice surrounding quality; ambient music, indeed, perhaps somewhat too minimal. In the second part, close to 30 minutes, the drone is not as overtly present and a second layer of mild and remote bleeps is added along with the static crackle of vinyl. It’s a bold move for this label, known for high-quality dark atmospheric music, to release such a conceptual work, but somehow, it works pretty well, even when it remains a mystery.
Also, something new is a musical project called Fonografia Pragma, a musical project of TeZ, also known as Maurizio Martinucci—an electronic composer working with Scanner, Kim Cascone, Domenico Sciajno and many others. I may have missed the first volume of ‘Archivio’, released last year. This new compilation has five pieces previously available on Silent Records compilations, plus six previously unreleased pieces covering the 2018-2020 period. I admit I am not too well informed about Martinucci’s output to say what the difference is with his other work, but these 11 pieces show an excellent variety of electronic pieces. I understand Martinucci uses analogue and digital sources, and the music goes from vaguely ambient textures to something more industrial rhythmic and sidesteps to the world of techno music. It works in his more abstract approach, having the music meander about, drifting slowly, creating waves and ripples, along with some ghostly voices from above and beyond. The pieces with more rhythm and sequences are great, too, as they bring the variation in motion. Maybe there is too much variation at times, and one could mistake this album for a compilation. But I enjoyed this variation, maybe consumed by various other activities I was doing, moving and shaking around the house. And yes, some of the voices used were pretty scary! My favourite piece is ‘Gunung Marah’, with what sounded like the processed sound of a bicycle wheel, maybe a homage to TeZ’s hometown of Amsterdam (if I am not mistaken).
The last one is the CD I originally wanted to start with, as, spoiler alert, this is the best one. I was surprised to see a collaboration involving Cranioclast, as that’s not something likely to happen. Between 2019 and 2024, they worked with Deison, Italy’s noise composer of dark, brooding electronic textures. Deison “recorded, collected and manipulated at 1st Floor Studio” then went to “Soltan Karik with the virtual succour by Sankt Klario”, as it is, mysterious as ever, called. There’s help from Kallabris, who works in the same sphere as Canioclast, completing the circle. More mystery ahead: “Tracks are segmented as circular encyclicas and the notorious use of anagrams is adopted for each title.” I never figured out how Cranioclast works as a band, their instruments, and their technology and from Deison, I know he loves electronics, collage, turntables and noise, which, comes to think of it, might also be something you could say of Cranioclast, and going by the music on this CD, they’re having a good time with the sound material. As always with Cranioclast and perhaps to some extent also with Deison, there is a ritualistic aspect to the music. Whether it is the dragging of metal rods across the concrete in ‘Nico Closed Sinatra’ or the various slow thuds of percussive sound, the call to service or prayer (it can be a pagan call if you like this), the music is a complex myriad of sounds and textures, drones, hushed voices, processed field recordings and a delight to hear. Rich textures, quite ambient but full of rough edges, deep bass end, mildly high rattling of cages and chains. An album full of mysterious sounds and mysteries in general, and throughout an excellent record. Let’s hope this is the beginning of many more great collaborations between these two musical projects. (FdW)
––– Address: http://store.silentes.it/
YOKO ONO/THE GREAT LEARNING ORCHESTRA – SELECTED RECORDINGS FROM ‘GRAPEFRUIT’ (2CD by Karl Records)
Spoiler Alert: Yoko Ono doesn’t play on this release if that’s something you’d hope for. In 1964, Ono published a booklet, ‘Grapefruit’, with texts, scores and drawings as part of her Fluxus involvement—short bits of text with instructions for performance. The opening piece on this CD reads like this: “Decide on one note you want to play. Play it with the following accompaniment: The woods from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. in summer”, plus what note to play. The kind of thing you can read as poetry and something not always possible to perform: conceptual pieces of music. The Great Learning Orchestra are from Stockholm with a floating membership and members perform the pieces here. Robin McGinley is the coordinator here and made a selection of pieces. The first time I played this CD, I left the booklet on my desk and fell asleep at one point (very John Cage), which meant I missed a lot of things. This release is one to keep the booklet at hand, so you know what the action is you’re hearing. There’s a piece where the orchestra rides bikes in the concert hall, reading, talking, clocks ticking, and wood being hit in various ways. And there’s music, from rubbing/touching/tearing of instruments, and some of this is quite musical, which happens when you invite skilled musicians to interpret these scores. Some of this sounds very field recordings-like (which may account for me falling asleep, mistakingly thinking the CD was over and hearing sounds from outside the house). Each score is mentioned or reproduced (from Ono’s archive), and each is an invitation to do it yourself. It’s a very consistent project! (FdW)
––– Address: https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/
PAWEŁ SZAMBURSKI – DŁUGO, DŁUGO NIC, A POTEM WSZYSTKO (CD by Rope Worm)
The title means “Nothing for a long time and then everything”. It is an “original, seven-part composition written by Paweł Szamburski for clarinet and AUKSO—Chamber Orchestra of the City Tychy.” The seven pieces were recorded live on 6 October 2023. Szamburski is a clarinettist and composer “with close to the Lado ABC music scene”. As it goes with the Rope Worm releases, I don’t get what it is about. The music here sounds Slavonic, and, mind you, this comes from someone who doesn’t know anything about more than the superficial. There are sweet melodic lines mixed with contemporary plucking and scratching, and the clarinet sounds almost like a new-age instrument in the opening piece. The strings in the piece, which translates as ‘farewell’, play a neo-classic piece and a bit kitsch. With this label, I am never sure if there is a bigger conceptual joke I don’t get or if this is something more serious. I think it’s all very serious in this case, and I am sure it’s not my cup of tea. (FdW)
––– Address: https://ropeworm.bandcamp.com
MARTYN WARE & CHARLES STOOKE & GABRIEL WARE – IT’S ALWAYS OURSELVES WE FIND IN THE SEA (CD by Cold Spring)
Let me start with a bit of a side note. I will write about this, but I won’t give you a verdict or opinion. Why? Because this is way more than ‘just’ a CD, and at the moment, I am incapable of going through the whole experience. “It’s Always Ourselves We Find In The Sea” is an art installation that can be experienced at The Piece Hall in Halifax between the 4th of April and the 4th of May 2025. This CD, in my opinion, comes as a little document you can ‘take him’ and relive through the installation. Sure, it’s a proper CD, and it sounds well, but … It’s not the experience.
The CD has two pieces, forming a whole together. “Part One – A Call To Water” has some heavy industrial sounds exchanged for field recordings. Because of the repetitive voices it becomes kind of tribal, something you might not expect in the English environment it grew from. The promo sheet explains it better: “Throughout the history of our species and all across the globe, humankind has petitioned the deities of the sky and sea deities for the benediction of rain and deliverance from natural disasters.”
“Part Two – The Water Circle” is way more fluent, with lots of washes and sounds of water in all its aspects. As a thunderstorm, a stream in between rocks, turning into a river, then the sea … As a source of life. In 20 minutes this piece is ‘just’ a beautiful depiction of water being the meaning of life, the source of all life. It’s what brings us together as well as what divides us.
As a whole, the CD has a way to short playtime of only 30 minutes. It could/should be longer to be interesting. But in combination with the whole art installation, I think it’s a nice document. Check the links at the bottom to get a bit of the atmosphere, and if you can, be sure to support the project and visit the installation. (BW)
––– Address: https://www.thepiecehall.co.uk/event/its-always-ourselves-we-find-in-the-sea
––– Address: https://alwaysourselves.com
––– Address: https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/
ANDERS FILIPSEN TRIO – ALDEBAR NIGHTS OF MANGOS (CD by Ilk Music)
Here at Vital Weekly, we don’t usually review relatively mainstream jazz. That’s because if we open that door there will be many more promos to be reviewed. But once in a while, one slips through the fingers of our gatekeeper. This is one of them. It’s the debut recording of the Anders Filipsen Trio, based in Copenhagen. Filipsen has a master’s from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Denmark’s only conservatory specialising in contemporary music training programmes. He also composes electro-acoustic music. He’s also involved with a plethora of other groups: the Kresten Osgood Trio, Lima Lima, LoFi (Lohr/filipin), Mesmer, The Black Nothing, The Firebirds, The White Nothing (the previous name for the Black Nothing), Travelling Tribes and Busk. Since this is a piano trio and piano trios are mostly named after the piano player, Anders Filipsen plays the piano. The other two members are Casper Nyvang Rask on double bass and Rune Lohse on drums. Rask plays in the following bands (taken from Discogs, so this might be incomplete): Casper Nyvang Rask’s “Slow Evolution Ensemble”, Henrik Pultz Melbye Trio, Living Things, Soren Skov Orbit and CLT. Lohse plays in Dødens Garderobe, HobbyMor, Horse Orchestra, Klimaforandringer, Soren Skov Orbit and The Hum. As you can see, the rhythm section met up in more than one group. Since Rune also studied at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, I’m extrapolating that Rask also studied there, where they met. A check on his Facebook page confirms this. On to the music: eleven pieces in 42 minutes. The longest is also the slowest: closer Am the Boat Rockin’. This is delightful music with great synergy between the three players. I started with the term mainstream jazz because it’s primarily consonant music, pleasing to the ear, but not cocktail jazz. It’s also an excellent record to play when driving long distances. But that is and shouldn’t be a criterion to buy this record. The music reminds me of the piano trio of the late Dutch Glenn Corneille. Accessible music without too much focus on long-winded solos is in line with a regular pop song with an ABA structure. That being said, the arrangements are excellent. Sometimes, the bass holds off and enters at the right moment to add the exact amount of lower notes into the groove and melody. There are ballads (Obrigado, for example), there are pieces akin to rock ‘n roll music (In a Ring) and the uplifting Oh My Moon. It’s featured in the mixtape for this issue of Vital Weekly. And that’s what this music is about. To touch the listener’s heart and the joy of playing music. And boy (girl), they can play ! Next week, there’ll be more relatively mainstream jazz and a review of a compilation of gargantuan proportions of Evan Parker’s solo music on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. It’s music that is the opposite of mainstream jazz, but maybe mainstream in the free improvisation world. Stay tuned. (MDS)
––– Address: https://www.ilkmusic.com/
S.Q.E. – BIRD AND TRUCK COLLISION (LP, private)
The LP cover isn’t forthcoming with information, and the download code went to something that seemed a bit older, but the LP says copyright 2024… I mailed for additional details and learned that S.E.Q. was originally a trio of musicians: JP Greco, Ure Thrall, and Paul Locasta. Of these names, I only recognised Ure Thrall as someone from the 1980s cassette scene, but whose work strangely always escaped me. A big scene and such things happen. They recorded a couple of late-night improvised electro-acoustic jams, resulting in an album, ‘Bird And Truck Collision’. These days, S.E.Q. is the solo vehicle of Greco, with occasional help from Thrall and Locasta, but also from Kris Force of Amber Asylum, Tony Wakeford, Alan Trench and Tracy Jeffrey of Orchis. If you read the title, this album is a kind of reunion of the three original members, doing their original work of late-night jamming, resulting in this new LP. I played this a couple of times before even considering a review as I did other things around the room (spring clean-up). That’s not because I didn’t care about the music, but rather because the trippy psychedelia of the music lent itself very much to such a thing. I know, maybe psychedelia lends itself better for sitting down, smoking a big one (should I still smoke) or sipping alcoholic beverages and spacing out, but I also saw quite some energy in this. Music without a beginning or end, even when there are five on the album and seven in the download, so there is a start and a finish. However, once the ball gets rolling, the music is off like a rocket, and on a bunch of ancient synthesisers and sequencers, plus a drum machine, they spin their LSD-laced music around, oscillating and bubbling, knob-twiddling, and they do a great job. It is sometimes on the industrial side, yet never loses that cosmic edge. This spaceship is full of life and on an adventurous course through the celestial skies. Maybe there is a retro-futuristic element here, space music as we once saw it. The music doesn’t feel dated by 2025, 2011 or late 1970s standards. It’s one heavy, cosmic trip and is such a beauty! I wished there was a bit more information, though. (FdW)
––– Address: https://sqemusic.bandcamp.com/
MARCUS SCHWINDT – SAME (CDR by Attenuation Circuit)
Recently we had several releases sent to us by Marcus from Aachen. And a big surprise last week or so when another project by him dropped on the doormat. Until now, I knew him as Dazzling Malicious and Persons Unknown and as a member of Me & Bukowski and The Dunning- Kruger Effect. So I was surprised to hear yet another version of him, this release under his name – which he rarely uses about music. I’ve double-checked with him, and this is indeed his real name. And this release has a reason to be but to the market.
In four tracks, just over 45 minutes, we get an insight into the personal life of Marcus. “I Smoke In The Rain”, “Watch The Drops Fall”, “In The Clouds Of Smoke”, and “It Calms Me Down” are all very melancholic. A picture of Marcus on the CD standing in the rain, holding an umbrella some gazillion years ago, emphasises this melancholic feeling. It’s the soundtrack of a ‘coming of age’-story. Going back to who you were before you became who you’ve become.
The four compositions are ambient, with loads of pads generating a tapestry over which minuscule sounds are placed carefully so as not to disturb the peace. It’s a self-portrait in sounds painted some 38 years after the moment. Compared to all his other projects, this is the most personal; you will see Marcus. He’s not angry, not malicious, not ‘unknown’, he’s Marcus. A great guy whose heart is in the right spot and who has many faces, of which this is just one.
In Mai (the 10th, to be exact), you are welcome to come down to Aachen and see Marcus perform for the first time as Marcus, together with, amongst others, Darkrad, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, The [Law-Rah] Collective and Praying For Oblivion. Marcus organises the event as he is still a very active member of the Aachener noise, drone and industrial scene. See you there! (BW)
––– Address: https://emerge.bandcamp.com/
EXTRA – IMPERIAL/SIEVING (CDR by And So On)
EXTRA – HARD/RAINBOW (CDR by And So On)
Howard Stelzer and Brian Grainger released a new work, ‘Imperial/Sieving’, on their And So On imprint. They also used this imprint for ‘Hard/Rainbow’ from 2023, which I didn’t review, so let’s make up for that now. This new work is connected to ‘Sieving/Other’, which will be released on the Rural Isolation Project label later this year. Despite the title being two words separated by /, there’s only one piece of music on this CDR; the same goes for ‘Hard/Rainbow’. Every release so far has such a double title, and I am unaware of why this is. Maybe both Stelzer and Grainger choose a word that they think fits the piece and make the two words the release’s title. In their music, Extra shows what each brings to the table. From his extensive career as an ambient music composer, Grainger brings in the long-form sustaining drones, opening up this piece here. Maybe these drones are derived from Stelzer’s cassette manipulations, which are otherwise also heard as separate sounds in the music. Sounds from around the house rumble and ravage, adding a class of mystery to the immersive drones. At one point, the music has a long fade to something quieter, and the second part starts. Here, I think we have more Stelzer at work, with cassette loops of house-bound sounds and drones at an equal level, volume-wise. It’s an excellent piece of moody music.
‘Hard/Rainbow’ starts with Stelzer cassette manipulations set against drones, and it seems this work contains more of that compared to ‘Imperial/Sieving’, in which mainly the first half is about a lot of immersive droning. In ‘Hard/Rainbow’ we find many more of Stelzer’s transformations, without these being all changed. At the same, this work has that beautiful ambient quality that I have come to love from these two men. It’s all about big-time atmospheric music, darkish (but not exclusively) and with a lot of spooky, smaller sounds, like a ghostly presence lurking in the shadows. (FdW)
––– Address: https://textslashtext.bandcamp.com/
MARK CAUVIN – MARINER AT SEA FOR DOUBLE BASS AND ELECTRONICS (CDR, private)
MARK CAUVIN – HOOLSCRAWLS (CDR, private)
I discussed the previous release by Australia’s double bass player Mark Cauvin in Vital Weekly 1384. He also plays electronics. The last release mentioned the scope of his work in the title, ‘Compositions, Interpretations And Improvisations’. On these two new releases, one mentions double bass and electronics (‘Mariner At Sea’), but why there’s no mention of electronics on ‘Hoolscrawls’, I don’t know. Bandcamp mentions Cauvin using “reel tape machines, double bass, amplified silent bass, HP pulse generator, B&K Beat Frequency Oscillator, Effect boxes, LOM microphones, various prepared double bass bows.” There are other differences, too. ‘Mariner At Sea’ is a quieter release, whereas ‘Hoolscrawls’ seems noisier and chaotic. ‘Hoolscrawls’ he named after the small town in New South Wales where he lives/, and bird calls and farm animals inspire the music. The other release is inspired by century-old photos from his grandfather, rocking back and forth the islands and mainlands around Mauritius. Please don’t think that quieter means more ambient in this case; it isn’t. The most on ‘Mariner At Sea’ has a most reflective element, with quieter, sustaining parts of dark bowing next to small bursts of a pluck here and some hiss there. Perhaps the ocean is calm and violent – except the violence here is controlled.
As said, ‘Hoolscrawls’ is a slightly more chaotic affair, more dwelling on free improvisation, and the long opening track ‘Hopper the One Legged Magpie’ reminded me of early P16.D4, which is, of course, a good thing. There is an excellent brutalist attack on the double bass, and electronics are used effectively. Cauvin doesn’t take the material to another level; in that respect, it’s not like P16.D4. If you get my drift, the music is electro-acoustic but not musique concrète. The music also reminds me of Kasper T. Toeplitz, another bass player using electronics, who is never shy of some noisy music. Sometimes, the double bass disappears in the electronics, covered by a noisy layer of dust and rust. Quite the difference with the other one. I have no preference for one or the other. I think it’s a wise decision to separate both musical interests in two different releases. (FdW)
––– Address: https://markcauvin.bandcamp.com/
ANDREAS LUTZ – AURA TRANS (SD card by Kasuga Records)
It’s been a while since I last saw a release by Kasuga Records, which seems to be their favourite format. Much of their music is in that glitchy clicks ‘n cuts style. I was thinking about this format and the music, which, oddly enough, are both a bit old by now. My SD card reader no longer seemed to work, my new computer had no SD card slot, and I had to access the music through my field recording device. However, the music may be computer-based, it seems, but this time, it is less about the rhythmic side and more about the ambient quality of the music. Language is the starting point: “Voice samples of all spoken human languages were first collected from publicly available sources and selected samples transformed into their spectrographic counterparts to decouple them from their wave-based origin. After visually manipulating the time bases and spectrum ranges, this edited material was resynthesised, creating an algorithmically rebuilt version of the original: a new machine-created original or trans-version.” I only vaguely understand what that means, and I would have never guessed it based on hearing these pieces, as whatever voice and language have disappeared from this. There are 16 pieces on this SD card (in various formats), ranging from 16 seconds to just over five minutes. It has that retro-futurist shine of granular synthesis and time-stretching, the digital residue of ambient music; it’s never all too warm yet most pleasant to hear. It is not too mellow, as there are moments of mild distortion (such as in ‘trans=’, for instance), and there is quite a bit of variation in these pieces. Somehow, it all seems like music of older days, turn-of-the-century digital ambient, which I haven’t heard in quite a while. Very nice. (FdW)
––– Address: https://kasugarecords.bandcamp.com/
DAVID BREMER & 82 – FRAGMENT (cassette by Qvastlafve)
Much is coming together in this release that isn’t my cup of tea. David Bremer is an avant-garde turntablist, and 82 is an underground rapper. If you read enough Vital Weeklies, you know I have very little knowledge or appreciation of words in music, lyrics, poetry, storytelling, and that kind of thing. In the real world, I may play pop music with vocals, and I never care what they are about. Rap is wholly lost on me; I don’t care. But even if I would like rap, this cassette would still be lost on me: 82 raps in Swedish. Turntablism is also something I am not blown away by. Granted, I enjoyed Christian Marclay in concert in 1986, but beyond that… I may have seen a few in concert I enjoyed (Jason Talbot springs to mind). Still, on disc (tape, CD, vinyl), it always revolves around objects spinning round and round, however experimental. All of this happens on this cassette and I played it with interest. In some of Bremer’s approaches, the turntable sounds much less like a turntable, which is quite interesting as a sort of crude musique concrète, but the lyrical remains lost on me. I appreciate the promo, and I understand the need for promotion, but Swedish rap to a Dutch guy writing in English? I am not sure here. (FdW)
––– Address: https://qvastlafve.bandcamp.com/
EX! EDITION 2 (magazine)
As I often write, I love to read! Books, obviously, but also old and new magazines and fanzines. I received a copy of EX!, a magazine for experimental art. This is not a typical fanzine, as it is full-colour, bound and has close to 100 A5 pages, not with small print but with a strong focal point on music. There are interviews with Gudrun Gut of Malaria! fame and Monika Enterprises labe, Richard Chartier about his music and label activities, Veronica ‘Vern’ Avola, Korf ar Son, a piece about Poeji at the Jazztage in Leipzig, Inner Demons Records (we reviewed a lot of their releases), and that indeed shows the broad scope of interest this label has. There are also photos of artworks and it’s all very professionally made. Also noteworthy: it’s made in Germany, but the content is all in English, so they aim high.
––– Address: https://www.adventurousmusic.com/ex/