WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE HAIRCUT – A TRIBUTE TO NICK KERSHAW (Compilation LP by Dhyana)
HARALD “SACK” ZIEGLER & FRANK SCHULTGE “BLUMM” – DIE FUNFTE DENGELPHONIE
(7″ by Dhyana)
DEEP/HYGIENICA (Split LP by Dhyana)
WAY OUT VOLUME 2 (CD compilation by Ananana)
FROG POCKET – YOU’RE THE ONE FOR ME (CDR by Mouthmoth)
RLW – EARLY RLW ONE: IN SEARCH OF C.R. (LP by Swill Radio)
LOOKAHEAD (CD by Lunhare)
THE GHOST ORCHID (CD by ASH International [R.I.P])
ANTITRADE (CD only by ASH International [R.I.P.])
SURGE – LANDSLIDE
RICHARD CHARTIER – POST-FABRICATED
(Both CD-R’s by Microwave Recordings)
plus an update to last week’s Vital and announcements
WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE HAIRCUT – A TRIBUTE TO NICK KERSHAW (Compilation LP
by Dhyana)
HARALD “SACK” ZIEGLER & FRANK SCHULTGE “BLUMM” – DIE FUNFTE DENGELPHONIE
(7″ by Dhyana)
DEEP/HYGIENICA (Split LP by Dhyana)
Nick who? I’m sorry but I cou;dn’t sing any song by him before playing this
record – nor that I can’t afterwards, but that’s a smaller problem. When I
looked at the titles, a vague deja vu feeling got to me. ‘Don’t let the sun
go down on me’… aha. With a sense of humour that only Germans seem to
have (think Der Plan, Sack, Andreas Dorau), a whole bunch of this kind of
weirdos take their pun upon Nick Kershaw. Do they do a good job? Am I
telling a surprise that I may the last person to judge about it? Since I
don’t know the originals, I can’t judge the covers. The music ranges from
funny unserious to funny serious and beyond. Pit Przygodda’s Elektrztpft
(and yes, that is a band name) try to really do their best, Jean Bach’s
over the top techno might doing his right thing, but is a little bit off
the mark. Yacopsae offer a heavy rock thing, but sounds like it’s recorded
in their best basement. To my favourites belong Inox Kapell, with their
electronic popsong and very funny German dialect and the long Column One
track, who are probably toying around with structures and samples from
Nick, but in a very weird way. Much more concept then we could know. But in
all a varied record, with weirdness nd seriousness hand in hand.
Harald “Sack” Ziegler is one of the better known crazy Germans, who sings
simple songs about his grandmother, plants or lovers leaving. He has some
status because of his connections with Mouse On Mars. Here is toys around
with Frank Schultge “Blumm” (now whoever he is?). The two pieces on this 7″
are all about sampled children’s toys and sound very uptempo, warm, yet
funny, with minimal structures but with nough happening to keep it
interesting for both sides.
If you think Dhyana only releases fun music, then the split LP between Deep
and Hygienca puts you back on earth. I have no clue who Hygienca are but
their side of the record shows a warm interest in deep & dark at the dugeon
of ambient. Every track rumbles nicely using dark synth lines and the
other, usual ingredients. Nothing special though, but nothing bad. Deep is
a duo involving mister labelmanager himself. The first 3 tracks are dubby
ambient excursions – quite nice, aswell as quite dark. The fourth track by
them was way too normal rocky, and didn’t do me anything. (FdW)
Address: <bernd.spring@weltbild.de>
WAY OUT VOLUME 2 (CD compilation by Ananana)
El label mucho sympathetico from Portugal release another taster of the
lively Portugese experimental music scene. One of my lover boys is present
(David Maranha) and one sadly not (Rafael Toral). Maranha has the potential
of being the exotic version of Jim O’Rourke meeting Steve Reich. He opens,
of course I’d say, with a beautiful four violin piece and is one of the
highlights. Others that positively gotten in my ears are Manuel Mota, the
improv guitarist, Discmen, Portugal’s answer to Oval, Pedro Leal, with
bowed metal percussion.
Some of the lesser interesting ones include Electro Fan whose improv sounds
recorded in their bedroom, Kubik’s sampling of dadaesq voices and strangely
I didn’t get Osso Exotico’s piece (a band with David Maranha), which was
like a gothic piece played on acoustic instruments.
This compilation is styistcally all over the place, which proof that the
Portugese music scene is alive and breathing
Many of these artists have their own releases on Ananana, a label which is
sadly not well sold outside Portugal, so send them an e-mail and buy their
CD’s – start with this guide!
Address: www.ananana.pt
FROG POCKET – YOU’RE THE ONE FOR ME (CDR by Mouthmoth)
Are the CDRs for techno what cassettes were for industrial music? Last week
we reviewed the CDR from The Infant Cycle, with crude and underground
techo, here comes what could be it’s counterpart. Frog Pocket operates in a
likewise crude techno vein, and is likewise apreciated by me. What more can
I add? Very nice, Aphex Twin inspired bumping, with bleeps at irregular
intervals and sparse melodies.
Even more obscure is a tape by Dyr Unit. No info on the cover, just the
label’s e-mail address and that is the second release on the label. It
starts out with a good portion of ambient doodlings, but it turns out to be
more interesting with more experimental (read: noisy) tracks and some
tracks that could be a bit more technoish. Nice work, although I’m missing
why this isn’t a CDR too… (FdW)
Address: <9607151@student.gla.ac.uk>
RLW – EARLY RLW ONE: IN SEARCH OF C.R. (LP by Swill Radio)
Recentely I was listening to many old cassette only releases, and I was
thinking it would be nice to have some of those in digital format. With the
arrival of Pro-Tools on every computer, a good soundcard and a CD burner,
this is no longer future music, but reality. But then: who would listen to
it? I haven’t gotten to the box that is labelled ‘non-originals’ yet,
otherwise I would have heard this before. RLW once was the founding father
of PD and P16.D4, before turning into a real composer with high-digital
means. P16.D4 belong to my favourite
‘electro-acoustic-improv-industrial-concrete-noise’ groups and they we’re
in fact an off-shoot of a free jazz/tape collage ensemble PD. The music to
be found on this LP was once released on cassette by Wahrnehmungen (which
is the first name Selektion had) and is mostly improv/free music. Keep in
mind that this almost 20 years old, and also keep in mind that it bears no
resemblance to what RLW sounds today or P16.D4 ten years ago. It doesn’t
stay inside the lo-fi jazz thing: ‘Fuer NOE’ has reel-to-reel speed
manipulations and rhythmboxes. There is a certain amateurish glow over
these recordings, but one that is certainly charming. I am told that this
is the first in a series, and surely we can only applaud. More things to
cherish are to come! (FdW)
Address: <swill@crocker.com>
LOOKAHEAD (CD by Lunhare)
This compilation is all about recycling old records. Not an entirely new
concept but hey who says we can’t recycle an old but good idea? Everything
is here, from noise (Hyware damages the old 78’s) to collage like
experiments, like Artificial Memory Trace to even techno inspired music
(Metal Slime). A real surprise is the track from Macronympha’s frontman
Joseph Roemer. Not the usual power electronics, but a blend of hand-spun
Wagner records and electronics. Other contributions include Steev Hise,
Nomuzic, Tim Maloney, Maisie, Spiral and Kapotte Muziek. Old and new names
meet.
The cover bytheway is an outstanding rip-off of KLF’s Chill Out with added
elements. The recyclers recycled. (FdW)
Address: <maxgatti@inc.it>
Succulent fruit still hangs heavy on the branches of the tree whose roots
grow in the mouth of the ASH corpse, it seems. Many things linger in the
realms of shadows, beyond my ken and comprehension, and now one more
mystery is added to their ranks – how can something declared dead continue
to manifest so many signs that suggest it is still alive. Help me
somebody…as someone in the Bush of Ghosts was once heard to plead. Not
that I am complaining of course, because ASH remains possibly my favourite
label with the consistent and unnervingly high quality of the sound
material and cover art which it gently and graciously makes available. Two
CD’s have been released in the last four of five weeks which I will
consider here. I am slightly late reviewing one of them and perhaps a
little premature with the other, but I have been more than slightly
distracted editing a large tome on 12th Century Buddhism for a publishing
house for the past five weeks, which is why I have not had time to spew my
usual torrent of effluvia across your monitors in medium to high resolution.
THE GHOST ORCHID (CD by ASH International [R.I.P])
‘As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away’
(Hugo Mearns)
The recordings on this CD concern a subject I first heard about more than
several years ago, but which I paid little attention to. Examples of
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) recordings have been included in
recordings by (apparently) The Corpsefucker, (possibly) The Hafler Trio and
(maybe) Zbiggy Karkowski, amongst others. This release is the first digital
audio document of the strange phenomenon which interestingly enough was
predicted by Thomas Edison, who once suggested that the spirit world would
respond to the discovery of radio by using it as a means to communicate
with the living.
Electronic Voice Phenomena are weird and mysterious, apparently paranormal
events of unknown origin which can often be heard on various types of
electronic apparati and which are frequently assumed to be simple forms of
radio interference. Intensive research and investigation which began in the
fifties (when assumptions that they were enemy propaganda were nullified by
the Allied victory) has revealed that this is quite possibly an actual,
recurring system of interdimensional communication. Comprehensive
cataloging was started in the Sixties by a Dr. Konstantin Raudive, who also
made some of these recordings available on a 7″ record together with a book
titled ‘Breakthrough’ in 1971. (These tracks are included on this CD, by
the way.) Indeed, Dr. Raudive was so absorbed by the phenomena that he
started to communicate with investigators after his own death.
Some suggest that the voices have a satanic or demonic origin (like my
current fave rave Britney Spears, I suppose!), others postulate that they
are extraterrestrial attempts at communication, or that they may in fact be
projections from within the researcher hermself. Additional information may
be gleaned from the website produced by the Spiricom organisation which can
be checked out @ http://www.metascience.com .
The voices take on diverse forms; they may appear to be speaking in tongues
(polyglot), singing or making public service announcements, they interrupt
standard (human) radio broadcasts, can call on by name, and speak directly
to, researchers (and most likely people to busy to notice they are being
addressed by the voice of weirdness). They may make themselves heard over
telephones, probably during television broadcasts and as anomalous
interference on tape recordings. Some of them seem to enjoy engaging in
dialogue, answering questions or willingly supply secret, or very specific
personal information, no doubt as an indication of their greater sight.
Of course, as with all paranormal ‘sciences’ there are those investigators
(or ‘investigators’), who are so keen on finding evidence to support the
validity of their chosen field that they will impose meaning on what might
otherwise be a mere cloud, albeit oddly shaped. Some of the interpretations
of the recordings here do seem to probe a little too deeply into the bowels
of FAR to my liking, but the fact that they are included makes this a more
balanced document.
Joe Banks, AKA Disinformation, who contributed one of the several excellent
expositions included in the CD booklet, notes this human inclination to
‘project’ meaning onto otherwise innocent phenomena, in an attempt to
either simplify them even further, or to make them appear (more) mysterious
than they may already (appear to) be. The human imagination will try to
impose meaning on configurations of sounds, in this case, and of course
each individual will usually use his/her own language as the basis for
interpretation. If no sense can be made of what we perceive, then some form
of auxiliary hypothesis will be (invented and/or) introduced to support the
eventual conclusion. The wilder the territory that unfolds before us, the
stranger the language that we use to attempt to describe it becomes. Even
conventional, stuffy science has been reduced to poetic terminology to
articulate the infinitesimal and abstract worlds within worlds that it
seems to unearth.
Undoubtedly, the hero of this release is Raymond Cass, who has devoted a
great deal of his time to researching this phenomena. He first became
interested in EVP when a male voice suddenly called his name over a
primitive radio which was switched off at the time. An investigation of his
genealogy revealed that he had psychic ancestors, one of whom was
persecuted for her paranormal abilities in 1773, and another who could
levitate a table with three men sitting on top it.
Raymond Cass seems to favour the ET scenario, suggesting that fragmented
communications might be being directed at selected individuals over a long
period of time, possibly from extraterrestrial monitoring and relay
stations positioned somewhere in our solar system. The fragmented nature of
these messages keep the recipients finely tuned and simultaneously ensure
that they conduct their own research in order to corroborate their
observations and conclusions. He also suggests, however, that ‘the voices
may be a mutant development of the subconscious mind, or a transient
byproduct of the electromagnetic pollution which now rings our planet’.
Cass was one of the first to record examples of the disputed polyglot
voices, which construct phrases and sentences from several different
languages, examples and interpretations of which occur on this CD. One of
the problems pointed out by Joe Banks with regard to this particular aspect
of the phenomenon of EVP is that ‘we are asked to accept that the entities
have the intellect to acquire a grasp of many languages, while having lost
the ability to speak grammatically or confine themselves to proper words’.
Additionally, he observes that it is conventional when compiling EVP
demonstration tapes to reinforce the process of projection by first having
the narrator announce the meanings before playing the examples.
The human mind HAS to fill in the blanks, or else it would, to put it
plainly, go completely bonkers and the mysterious voices which we might
hear through our radios or telephones will start to resound inside our own
craniums, and there are quite simply not enough lamp posts around for us
all to have one to talk to.
It remains to be said that the phenomenon has been considered serious
enough to have not only been assessed by various paranormal groups, but
also to have come under scrutiny by Defense Ministeries on both sides of
the Atlantic and no doubt by their counterparts in the (former) East bloc
too.
I welcome the release of this CD, it is amazingly informative, containing
79 tracks in all (with ringmaster Leif Elggren unravelling the thread as we
proceed) plus, as I mentioned earlier some highly intelligent essays on the
subject. It is most certainly a valuable addition to this field of research,
and, dare I say it without appearing to be flippant, a source of some of
the most beautiful textural samples I have heard for a long time. I cannot
make up my own mind about the phenomenon of EVP itself, but I know that
this audio document will be a thing to treasure and listen to from time to
time, just to tantalize and encourage my human desire for the all-too
sweet, and eternally uncharted terra incognita which may possibly be
waiting just beyond the gate. (MP)
ANTITRADE (CD only by ASH International [R.I.P.])
A shuffle-play, 20 track, 42 minute, international compilation which I
received earlier this week and have not yet taken out of the player. Brief
spurts of radio distortion, speech loops and silence lace the edges of
longer tracks by composers like Leif Elggren, one of the (now several)
Kings Of Elgaland – Vargaland, Benny Nilsen, Andrew Lagowski, Joe Banks,
AER, Bruce Gilbert and label sleeve designer Jon Wozencroft.
His Majesty’s contribution to this set titled ‘Mother !!?’ is constructed
from a beautifully processed recording of the Swedish talking clock, which
like most talking clocks has to be phoned again after a minute or two. I
first heard this track sometime last year and was totally captivated by the
sheer intimacy captured within the familiarity of the sound experience.
After all, who hasn’t asked the phone the time. Elggren’s pristine
processing of the recording somehow gives it a Terry Gilliam/Brazil type of
atmosphere and shrouded it in a sinister cloak much like the one worn by
The Conet Project (Quadruple CD, Irdial Discs, 1997).
Benny Nilsen, once Morthond, now Hazard released a brilliant CD ‘North’
under this name on ASH earlier this year. His track on this compilation
‘Peenemunde’ is of similar ilk, less cold than his music on ‘North’ – which
certainly iced my goolies, more like skin straining as it is slowly
stretched across unyielding bone.
Andrew Lagowski is perhaps better known as S.E.T.I., and regulars will by
now be bored by the deluge of adjectives I manage to unearth in order to
express my admiration of his music. The timelessness of his previous works,
like ‘Knowledge’ and the recent ‘Above Black’ is reiterated in ‘Aurora’,
which is included here as a preview of his forthcoming album ‘POD’, also
destined for release on this same (dead) label. This track opens with a
voice describing the propulsion system of an experimental ‘black project’
triangular-shaped flying machine designed as part of the Aurora Project,
about which I have heard, and which prompted me to conduct an AltaVista
search, sadly to no avail. I ended up at Bob Lazar’s rather glossy homepage
(blush). The usual creepy corridors of Lagowski drones uncurl like computer
generated landscapes. Occasional dental whines and distant falling
civilisations colour the horizons with uncertain fog and swirling dust.
Joe Banks, AKA Disinformation provides yet another of his twisted, buckling
recordings of VLF radio anomalies, which stutters and stumbles like a
ketamine god blindly seeking an exit. This is followed by a beautiful
location recording by AER – Alpha Echo Romeo – which was made in the
gardens at a shrine in Tokyo. A beautiful sonic counterpoint to the
previous piece. Bruce Gilbert’s track
‘The Book’ was constructed from source material provided by Daniel Menche –
it’s another exercise in dynamics which ends almost as soon as it starts –
clever timing. It’s left to superb photographer/ designer Jon Wozencroft to
close this chapter with his delightful recording of a fireworks display,
aptly titled
‘A Happy Belgrade’, replete with all the approving ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of a
Guy Fawkes crowd in London in 1997. (Or maybe it’s the G8 overlords and
their kin jissing over missile video footage while they pour boiling oil
over writhing monkeys’ brains, and wait with bad, bated breath for that
particular odor of seared evolution to waft nose wards as a sign that it’s
spoon-dipping time ?)
Is there anymore room in the ASH International cap for yet another feather,
I wonder ? (MP)
Address: www.touch.demon.co.uk/ashrip.htm
SURGE – LANDSLIDE
RICHARD CHARTIER – POST-FABRICATED
(Both CD-R’s by Microwave Recordings)
Yet another CD by a still fairly unknown duo of youngsters from the low
countries. And as low as these countries are, as minimal is this music. A
CD with 9 tracks made exclusively by triggering 1 Korg MS20 (it can be
done!). Basically all tracks are rhythmical, but I don’t think they will
fill the ol’ dance floor. This stuff is more suitable for those dj’s that
like to give a twist to their set and stay away from safe conduct. Still,
it’s amazing what these guys get out of their synth (I believe they use
only one track at a time here). The problem with this stuff is I don’t
really know how to approach it: it’s not dance music and it’s not really
music to listen to. So what’s left? In a way it reminds me of Eno’s music
(I have the same problem with that), with the exception that this stuff
gets more into the foreground of auditory perception. So maybe I should
just look at it the way dj’s seem to look at all music: as a tool.
The CD by Richard Chartier is of a somewhat more subtle nature. The 23
tracks have a lot of rhythmical elements, but it is always clear that this
is not dance. This is microwave in its purest form: crackles, bleeps and
hisses are used to build simple, but ever so delicate structures, that fade
in & out of consciousness. This is real head phones’ stuff and again this
is all very good for sampling and remixing. I wonder what would happen if
Chartier himself would remix this stuff?
One note about the volume though: it should have been louder I think. I
know I can adjust my stereo, but this seems to be meant for low volume
listening and I don’t agree. (MR)
Address: <mailorder@staalplaat.com>
A small update to last week’s reviews of the Diskono stuff:
The compilation 7″ reviewed is called “I’m So Bored With The USA volume 2”
and the other 7″ is Aerospace Soundwise who did the Carter/Reger 7″.