WOODWORKING – VARIOUS ARTISTS (CD on Alien8 Recordings)
SOUNDS! (CD compilation by Charm Of Sound)
ADAM BOHMAN – MUSIC AND WORDS BY (CD by Paradigm)
EM – MOTOR SESSIONS E.P. (CDR/7″ by The Foundry)
GIUSEPPE IELASI/RENATO RINALDI/DOMENICA SCIAJNO/GINO ROBAIR – MAY 16TH
PHIL DURRANT/THOMAS LEHN/RADU MALFATTI – BEINHALTUNG
(Both CD’s by Fringes)
ASMUS TIETCHENS – WAS BLEIBT (7″ by Bad Alchemy)
WOODWORKING – VARIOUS ARTISTS (CD on Alien8 Recordings)
‘The wood is full of shining eyes,
The wood is full of creeping feet,
The wood is full of tiny cries:
You must not go to the wood at night !’
These words from the poem ‘The Magic Wood’ by Henry Treece captured the
feelings that the CD ‘Cricklewood’ by David Kristian aroused in me when I
first heard it. ‘Cricklewood’ was released on Alien8 in 1998 and contains a
collection of compositions for analogue synthesisers that twist out of the
speakers with reptilian stealth, sticks underfoot hiss like summer snakes,
songs in backwards words become dances for the Kings from under the hills.
Undergrowth towers above our heads. The slow musing of insects is
unbearable loud.
Such a wealth of unusual sonic material invited further exploration of new
possibilities in this scarcely charted terrain. And so it was that the idea
of ‘Woodworking’ was born. In many ways I was reminded of two remix
compilations released by Staalplaat a while ago. The first was the
reasonably successful ‘Occupied Territories’ a double CD set of Muslimgauze
remixes, and the second was the (grossly, I think) underrated Dub Zap CD
which featured remixes of material prepared by Ios Smolders. The wide
variation in approaches to the source material on both of these is echoed
here on ‘Woodworking’, which opens with those energetic Twins of Digihurt,
Messrs. Rehberg & Bauer taking the whistling wood for a walk through LISA.
They are closely followed by Farmers Manual who do not leave a stump or
clod unturned in their frenetic burrowing and sonic mastication. Not even
new growth will restore this wood to equilibrium, now. Well and truly bent
out of shape our reconnoitre through this somnambulist’s outback continues.
We pass Aube, prone and unable to answer a field telephone, while all
around him CrickleBugs force their way from under the surface into the
fuzzy light.
Their dance begins with the anagrammatic track ‘Ciowderlock’ by Solvent
that purrs quietly like a poised and confident cat. They’re followed by
Phonecia, and then Kid606 who lowers limbs into a wood-chipper. Dutch group
Goem hover at the edge of the dance – their track is a boundary between
activity and stasis. Beyond is ‘Woodwind’, a cubist track by Mark Poysden,
which is the third piece in a suite of remixes that culminated in
‘Snakebird’ (for Bass Communion, reviewed in VITAL Weekly No. 183).
Uncertainty follows in Half Moon Dragster’s ‘I Have a Titanium Plated
Cookie’. Justin K. Broadrick stretches his cookie dough thin and tight like
burnt skin. The air starts to swell, but then subsides. Inchoate provide
one of the best and roughest pieces on this compilation, also called
‘Cookie’. Lowfish swoop in with breakbeats and hovering feedback, and David
Kristian (for it is he !), the man who started all of this brings the CD to
a close with ‘Hiwatt’, a strange, hollow track that sounds like a slowing
heart.
(www.alien8recordings.com)
SOUNDS! (CD compilation by Charm Of Sound)
A whole bunch of finnish musicians are to be found here and not really one rings a bell here.The connection between them is that they all create electronic music (no Pan Sonic enclosed! no Vladislav Delay enclosed! shame!). As you can expect with these things the quality is varying. Some pieces are utter bores (yes, really) and others are quite good. There are dashes of techno, drum & bass, serious academica and good ol’ noise. There was no particular stand-out I must say and it all went by too easily to catch my ears. Oh well. (FdW)
Address: <charm_of_sound@yaahoo.com>
ADAM BOHMAN – MUSIC AND WORDS BY (CD by Paradigm)
Adam Bohman is the violinist of Morphogenesis, the much underrated group of electro-acoustic musicians. Here he presents his second solo CD, and to put it bluntly: what the fuck is it about? It starts out alright, with two scraping improvised table top violin pieces – like it is promised from the cover photography. But they don’t last very long, and then the difficulty starts. Rambling private letters on cassette, intercepted by ‘pause-play’ button toys. This is the rest of the CD. Maybe someone wants to call it soundpoetry, or a look into somebody’s life? I just call it drunk-man’s talk and a CD that should not have been made… (FdW)
Address: <paradigm@gn.apc.org>
EM – MOTOR SESSIONS E.P. (CDR/7″ by The Foundry)
Music by EM was reviewed before in these pages but here he comes with some puzzling special. A box with texts, 7″ and CD-R, all dedicated to motorized sounds. Among the texts I findthree inserts with titles. The CD-R and 7″ are also for sale seperate. The music is inspired by Pan Sonic (this sort of thing is mentioned on the insert, in case you think I make this up), but also musique concrete and white noise. Possibly maybe, but it stays very much on the sweet side. The explosive power of say Pan Sonic is lacking and it gets nowhere near techno. Having said this, is not at all a bad release: solid nice electronic music. (FdW)
Address: <m@foundrysite.com>
GIUSEPPE IELASI/RENATO RINALDI/DOMENICA SCIAJNO/GINO ROBAIR – MAY 16TH
PHIL DURRANT/THOMAS LEHN/RADU MALFATTI – BEINHALTUNG
(Both CD’s by Fringes)
Two releases out of the improv world from Italy. The first one is a quartet of players from Italy who go wild over a lot of stringed instruments, harmonium and drums. There is a lot of tension in all the scraping that is going on and it seems that these people have played together quite often. A good, yet even ‘normal’ improv music.
The trio CD with Lehn, Durrant and Malfatti is more strange. Even when it’s improvised, it’s barely audible. It humms and buzzes ‘somewhere’, as silently as majestically. Hard to believe it’s ‘just’ a violin, analogue synthesizer and trombone… it sounds less and, strangely enough, like much more at the same time. This is not a CD to put on while working, since then everything present on this disc will be lost. Towards the end there is an uproar in sound, and the first to rise out above the otherwise very low end disc. However this is not a disturbance andaltogether this is an excellent CD. (FdW)
Address: <giielasi@tin.it>
ASMUS TIETCHENS – WAS BLEIBT (7″ by Bad Alchemy)
If you have been a keen follower of the work of Asmus Tietchens, and why not?, then you may have noticed that almost all of his cover sleeves have quotes from the French philosopher EM Cioran. He was, despite all his negativ ramblings, a man of hope. With his writings against humans and pro-suicide, he may have given people a reason to life. So black, that it becomes white.
Even when recordings exist of Cioran speaking (most notably used by Thomas/Ester Brinkmann on the two CD’s he/she released), Asmus choose to read some texts himself and process the sound very little. There is an occasional slow down, or tape-warp like effect, in which one may recognize some words, but the logical meaning is gone. Tietchens succeeds to surprise s again, with his own, strictly personal soundpoetry.
Ths 7″ comes as part of the excellent German magazine Bad Alchemy, but is also for sale seperately. A small, unique record. (FdW)