NEGRU VODA/THIRD EYE
HOLLOW EARTH – DOG DAYS OF THE HOLOCAUST
(both CD’s by Crowd Control Activities)MOONLANDING (7″ compilation by
Helicopter)
KAPOTTE MUZIEK – 1000HZ
FREAK VS. MAN – MONOTONOS
RADBOUD MENS – ALR100N8
(All of these CDr’s by Bake Records)
BRANDON LABELLE – MAPS OF TENDERNESS (CD by Selektion)
NEGRU VODA/THIRD EYE
HOLLOW EARTH – DOG DAYS OF THE HOLOCAUST
(both CD’s by Crowd Control Activities)
I might not be the right person to discuss these two CD’s, as it is hard
for me to ignore the covers and titles and then still sound objective.
Negru Voda and Third Eye (not to be confused with a band with similar name,
adding ‘Foundation’ to it) are both Swedish and follow roads set out by
Cold Meat Industry and known bands as In Slaughter Natives, Deutsch Nepal
and Morthound. There is an overall banging machine like darkness, film
snippets and samples of orchestra’s. Not necessiraly my cup of tea, but in
their genre not the worst thing I’ve heard.
Under the distasteful title ‘Dog Days Of The Holocaust’, Hollow Earth
presents a dark ambient work for over an hour. Kinda like when you slow
down a reel to reel tape of spoken word and add a little bit of electronic
juice. Hollow Earth hark back, both in music and in content, to the days of
MB and it’s not the worst imitation I heard.
Address: <crowded@ezlink.com>
MOONLANDING (7″ compilation by Helicopter)
This sort of thing stand in a long long tradition – five bands cramned
together on one side of a 7″ – everybody gets the odd 1 minute or more and
then there is the title that might or might not be programmatic. Here are
four USA noise band, The Haters, Zipper Spy (that’s Miss Lessard for you),
J. Wiese & C. Ronnau and Spastic Colon and japanese Aube. Tracks are over
before you know something new started. This may all seem negative, but it’s
not. I enjoy it – the format, the noise and the vagueness: it all appeals
to me very much. Very nice. (FdW)
Address: 24846 Walnut St. No. 205 – CA Newhall 91321 – USA
KAPOTTE MUZIEK – 1000HZ
FREAK VS. MAN – MONOTONOS
RADBOUD MENS – ALR100N8
(All of these CDr’s by Bake Records)
Bake Records is a new sub-label which was started at the end of 1998 by
(and exclusively distributed by) Staalplaat. This small experimental,
in-house label will showcase new minimal music in very limited quantities.
Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to hear all of the releases,
but have selected these three to briefly discuss this week.
Kapotte Muziek is a long-standing collective of some or all of Frans de
Waard, Peter Duimelinks and Roel Meelkop. They have achieved more than
their fair share of notoriety around the world with their highly individual
approach to making music most often with found objects. They’ve toured
extensively and have each added their own unique contributions to the
experimental music scene. This particular studio recording titled ‘1000
Herz’ was done by Frans de Waard and consists of two tracks constructed
from a 1kHz Test Tone processed by a Korg MS20 Synthesizer and Effects. It
is of course, extremely minimal… the signal creeps out of the speakers
and is slowly twisted into a shimmering harmonic spire ever so slightly
feeding back on itself. Gradually it fills the corners of the room,
becoming more insistent; it drops slightly in altitude for a moment before
rising up again and then it gently recedes back into the cones. Space has
shifted though, and a ghost of the sound lingers for a while like faint
smears of cloud in an otherwise untrammeled sky.
‘Monotonos’ is the debut release by a young composer based in Holland. Like
the Kapotte Muziek CD, it is a short, powerful audio statement and well
worth getting hold of. It consists of four tracks, although I perceive of
them as all being parts of one piece – a bit like electronic chamber music
– as there is a definite link there somewhere. The sounds were all
generated by keyboards (I think) and the tracks range in length from just
under a minute ‘Years Past’ to almost nineteen of them ‘Far Yet Close’.
Sometimes I thinkfeel the long track is perhaps a little too long,
considering it’s content, although I may just be an impatient sod. Played
softly it hovers like a swarm of gentle insects with wings of silk. Very,
very good indeed – and for the moment, my favourite of these three CD’s.
Radboud Mens is no stranger to experimental music. He’s worked as one half
of Hyware and has several releases of his own as Technoise – a noise
project in which he produced full force frequency walls in strange and
unusual ways. This being said, his latest release reveals another facet of
his musical explorations. ‘ALR00N8’ is constructed from a long loop which
repeats itself several and a half times over the space of an hour. The
original sound source was human voice, processed through a filterbank
which accentuated and resonated bell-like harmonics lurking within it.
Again, played softly this composition subtly insinuates via hammer, stirrup
and anvil into the deeper recesses, where dreams float, waiting for the key
to turn and the door to creak open, so that they may slide free and wait to
be perceived. (MP)
BRANDON LABELLE – MAPS OF TENDERNESS (CD by Selektion)
So Selektion has made a good start this year with three new releases. The
last one to be reviewed is this one and maybe it is the most difficult one,
because it is definitely a charming CD, with charming lo-fi recordings of
the sound-making activities of Brandon LaBelle. Even the liner notes
(almost 50(!) pages) can be called charming. So why is this a charming
release, you ask. I will tell you: LaBelle means so well. His work is not
that impressive; the sounds are average, the compositions not very
interesting and the ample use of a single delay splicing the channels is
sometimes even downright annoying. Nevertheless, this CD has another
quality: stop listening to it and just let it flow from your speakers into
your space and let it be there with you. Then it does its job pretty well.
Different sound drift in and out of focus and sometimes it is just like
sitting next to a campfire, gazing into the flames. Yes, this is trance
music. Reading the booklet makes it unmistakably clear: a lot of words are
necessay to explain that making sound (or music) is something very nice and
important: it makes Mr. LaBelle feel part of the world. You will have to
read the last page of the booklet yourself in order to understand why this
has to be recorded and released on CD. (MR)
Address: fax: + 49 69 74 10073
Bryn Jones
Bryn Jones, the man behind Muslimgauze, passed away last Thursday.
Muslimgauze was one of the most prolific artists discussed in the pages of
Vital Weekly. His amazing output, and of record companies willing to keep
up with his energy, was often remarked and discussed. Unlike others,
Muslimgauze, in his almost 20 years in the music scene, changed his style a
lot. He went from laidback ambient into digital distorted rhythms and back
again. When he was asked to a do remix, he not made just 1 track, but often
presented an hour long DAT, filled with finished tracks, sitting next to
ideas and sketches. His constant presence with new releases, next to his
controversial ideas about the Middle East (or at least controversial to
some), and his apparent shyness, made him a somewhat mysterious figure,
remote from the outside world. His passion was ours: good music. This
creative individual has moved on, but his music (which undoubtedly includes
more – posthumous – releases in the future) will most certainly survive.
Our best wishes and support go out to his family.
Frans de Waard