SEPTEMBER PLATEAU – OCCASIONAL LIGHT
SUBARACHNOID SPACE & WALKIG TIMEBOMBS – THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED #91 (CD by Edition…)
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED #90 (CD by Pre-Feed)
SHIRT TRAX – GOOD NEWS ABOUT SAPCE (CD by OR)
KOHN – 2 (CD by Kraak)
SEPTEMBER PLATEAU – OCCASIONAL LIGHT
SUBARACHNOID SPACE & WALKIG TIMEBOMBS – THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
(CD’s by Elsie & Jack Recordings)
Elsie & Jack Recordings are getting slowly the new Thrill Jockey – more and more guitars invade their catalogue (besides odd balls as Aube and Brume) and these two new releases might be a break through.
Behind September Plateau we find one C. Jeely, who is also Acceleradeck (and has releases on Enraptured and Rocket Racer – but I’m afraid this is all abacadabra for me). He plays guitars, maybe even samples them and adds a fair dose of rhythm to it. Lately I played some old music on Factory Records and Les Disques Du Crepuscule again, and it’s good to see I’m not the only one. C. Jeely is well aware of the Durutti Column, especially the Column’s first LP. ‘Occasional Light’ has the same open character of chords strung, open strings and vivid drums. The only difference is that Vini Reilly got 40 minutes for 11 tracks, and Jeely twice as much time for 10 tracks. September Plateau might, in that respect, a bit more psychedelic then the good ol’ Columns. Nevertheless a fine CD.
From a totally different planet of six strings is the improvised set
that Subarachnoid Space deliver with Walking Timebombs (a solo project from Scott Ayers from Pain Teens). Definetely file this under psychedelica: long tracks of fuzzy guitars, machine like drums create intense and dense music. Improvised krautrock pur sang. Very nice indeed, but hey, I was converted to Subarachnoid Space before. (FdW)
Address: <info@elsieandjack.com>
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED #91 (CD by Edition…)
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED #90 (CD by Pre-Feed)
Senor Lopez’ work belongs to the most radical I heard in some time. Especially “Untitled #91” is a strange work – well, maybe a usual work for Lopez. It’s almost an hour long and hoovers like a thunderous storm. It starts out by gaps of silence and then the storm, silence, storm. Slowly a drone is added. Slowly the storm passes and the drone remains. Every chance to be found takes his own time – very slow (almost as time doesn’t exist). Lopez probaly wants to you to fiddle around with your bass and treble buttons, because everything is at his usual low volume. This is ambient music for sure – if fills your space without being present all the time.
“Untitled #90” is a shorter work (45 minutes) and might go as a ‘La Selva’ off-shoot work. ‘La Selva’ was a study in tropical rainforests and uses the sounds. Even for those who don’t seem to like Lopez’ inaudibility, ‘La Selva’ is his best work. This new work is almost like an enlargement of certain sounds from ‘La Selva’ – the shirping of insects (well or birds – how do I tell the difference livig in a city?) which are looped… but the true power of this work (and in fact of all great minimal music) lies in the fact that by the time you think it’s the same sound, a slght chance happens, which changes the piece. Largely an audible work – and beautiful!
One thing I don’t understand about the work of Lopez is his cover artwork. Sometimes those slim CD single boxes, sometimes full colour with descriptions and sometimes (like Untitled #90) a regular CD box with nevertheless very uninformative printwork. Seeing these works are all untitled and the fact there is some consistency going on, it fails on the covers…
Address: <fenton@stonehenge.ohr.gatech.edu>
Address: <mantein@tin.it>
SHIRT TRAX – GOOD NEWS ABOUT SAPCE (CD by OR)
The future of dance music has already started – we’ve been reporting on this before. We call it Microwave, because of all the microscopic beats, minimal changes et all. The entrepeneurs behind OR do not refer to this… Shirt Trax are among the microwavers. It’s one half of SND and one DJ. Their first CD is very long – the entire length is used. That is a pity, because it’s a strong album, but there are two lengthy tracks which could have used a cut. Then a shorter CD of 50 minutes of very strong material would have remained. This is were industrial and dance meet. Chopped up beats, pasted with cracks, pops, hiss and noise, vividly mixed with electronica and sampled – crashed down on a laptop no doubt – if you were not in Mego’s alley already, then it’s the next corner. If SND was too normal for you (hey, that can be!), and you are looking for something more wild, Shirt Trax is there for you. (FdW)
Address: <or@touch.demon.co.u>
KOHN – 2 (CD by Kraak)
Again in this issue we note the merge of industrial, ambient and techno – but there is also the merge of techno, ambient and rock music. The Belgium one man band Kohn is an example. His second CD is a step forward from his not bad, but not coherent, first CD. That one had nice ideas, but dwelled too much on Oval, guitars and noise. Here the twelve tracks really seem to belong together. Kohn uses the sampler to a great extent. He tapes beats, pulses, guitars and effectively adds electronics. Even though it is remarked that this is a more coherent release, it’s not said that there is no variety (sometimes people confuse these). There is a lot of variety, from wild and noisy bits to the beautiful long track (which I don’t recall as I’m typing somewhere else) which is a sort of feedback loop that slowly builds into more noise fields. Everything seems well-conceived and sort of sums up a lot of the things we speak about in these pages. Hence not an album to be missed. (FdW)
Address: <kraak@skynet.be>