ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI/KASPER TOEPLITZ – LE DEPEUPLEUR (Cd by Cross Fade OVIL
BIANCA – GRAVITY = LOVE (CD by Kraak)
DE PORTABLES – ROSEGARDEN (CD by Kraak)
DAVID JACKMAN – VERHALTE DICH RUHIG (CD by Die Stadt)
KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE – 1: BREMEN LAGERHAUS 17.12.1999 (CD by Die Stadt)
MANUAL – UNTIL TOMORROW (CD by Morr Music)
RANDOM INC – JERUSALEM (CD by Ritornell)
AKIRA RABELAIS – EISOPTROPHOBIA (CD by Ritornell)
ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI/KASPER TOEPLITZ – LE DEPEUPLEUR (Cd by Cross Fade
Entertainment)
Le Depeupleur is the offspring of a joint venture between two very
interesting Polish sound-artists. Zbigniew Karkowski is first of all known
as sensor-conductor of experimental trio Sensorband and for his close
collaborations with Masami Akita (a.k.a. Merzbow) and other prominent
artists of the Japanese noise-scene. Experimental bassist Kasper Toeplitz
is both founder of French guitar-orchestra Sleaze Art, and a contributing
composer to the French experimental music-centre IRCAM. Le Depeupleur is a
seventy-four minutes long work of hissing aching electronics built up
around high frequency sounds and masses of thick noisy buzz-drones.
Sounding like Bernhard Günter meets Alp (a.k.a. Roger Horberry), Le
Depeupleur is quite some listening challenge. None the less a pretty good
album. (NMP)
Address: www.cfet.com
OVIL BIANCA – GRAVITY = LOVE (CD by Kraak)
DE PORTABLES – ROSEGARDEN (CD by Kraak)
On the ever more active, and ever more lovely label Kraak two new releases
which are opposites of each other, and thus displays the character of the
label very well. Releases on Kraak range from introvert guitar music to the
more avant-garde releases (plus, if you do care to contact them, they have
a great selection in mailorder).
Ovil Bianca owns one cheap guitar and a minidisc. So he went out to dabble
his music on various locations around the world, but mainly in Belgium, on
various computer, using Cool Edit Pro. The ten tracks show us the naively
world of Kraak music(which I believe is a keyword for Kraak) which can be a
hit or miss. Take for instance “Gravity” which is based around some loop,
filtering and effects – simply but effective, but it is preceded by “Full
Endeavor”, which is next to being just a plain orgy of sounds messed about.
A track like “Casioland” is nice, but then maybe too simple. Plug ins run
amok on a arpeggio casio sound. Nevertheless Ovil Bianca has made a CD with
ten different tracks and doesn’t stick to one idea. One thing he does
better and the other is a terrain that is yet to be discovered.
De Portables is something different. Mainly a rock band, with drums, bass,
guitar, synth and such oddities as playstation and walky talky. They play
mostly long tracks of rock tunes, with those mumbling voices that I usually
don’t like, but they remain on a minimal side. Kinda post rock thing from
Belgium which I liked (apart from those vocal bits), with no particular
favorite to mention.
If you think that this is all interesting, but you wish to investigate
further, then I’d recommend getting the Kraak labelsampler, which has
tracks by both bands, as well as twelve others (Janek Schaeffer, Pimmon,
Wio, Kohn, Vote Robot, Shifts and many more who have released their music
on this label). It should sell for a low price. (FdW)
Address: www.kraak.net
DAVID JACKMAN – VERHALTE DICH RUHIG (CD by Die Stadt)
David Jackman’s work falls into separate categories. There is of course the
David Jackman who is Organum, there is the David Jackman who dabbles with
noise and machine guns and there is the David Jackman who loops the
orchestra. This CD culminates various of his works, which were so far
released as 7″s and expensively short CDR releases. By those standards this
is a fairly long releases, but just under 30 minutes is short for a full
length CD by my standards. David takes old orchestral recordings, loops
parts of them and mixes those loops into his own music. The recordings are
not by high brow classical music, but dance hall music of the 30s or 40s.
If you think that this will end in a mere chaos, you are wrong. This is
very pleasant music that brings forth images of black white movies, people
sophisticate dancing. The war is over and after this the Andrew Sisters
will song too. Now how does that relate to the cover (gothic writing on a
factory wall), we don’t know. Maybe the music is meant to keep you calm,
under the circumstances of war? Jackman’s general theme, running through
all his work, is leaving you puzzled. (FdW)
Address: <jschwarz@diestadtmusik.de>
KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE – 1: BREMEN LAGERHAUS 17.12.1999 (CD by Die Stadt)
This is not the first time Asmus Tietchens and Thomas Koner collaborate.
The first time was when Thomas did a workshop at The Netherlands CEM studio
with Asmus. Thomas was the only participant and a small portion ended up on
the CD ‘Sinkende Swimmer’. That was in 1988. A decade later they are equal
partners and they call themselves ‘Kontakt Der Junglinge’, which is of
course poking fun at the other famous German composer, Karl-Heinz
Stockhausen. Rumors are going around for some time that Asmus and Thomas
were working together, but that it would be a series of live CDs is quite a
surprise. Thomas plays live with his powerbooks we know, but Asmus usually
plays a DAT only (which, I should say in his defense, is always specially
made for the occasion). I wasn’t there at the Lagerhaus, late 1999, when
this was recorded, so I am clueless. But here’s my guess. Asmus brought in
a DAT of his water sounds, slightly processed but not too much, and Thomas
runs it through his powerbook et voila. One piece at 45 minutes of water
like sounds, like a journey (crickets ashore welcome you at the end), which
fits nicely next to Asmus’ Hydrophonie pieces. Sorry for Thomas, but this
sounds much more like Asmus Tietchens, with his always more present sound
and lesser then Thomas’ ambient pieces which are more inaudible. Great
stuff and there is more to come. Can’t wait. (FdW)
Address: <jschwarz@diestadtmusik.de>
MANUAL – UNTIL TOMORROW (CD by Morr Music)
Behind Manual, we find a Danish musician called Jonas Munk Jensen, who
before had a release on Hobby Industries. With his second release, for Morr
Music, he puts his boots more firmly in downtempo electronic music. Jensen,
who has a background in post rock music, plays wonderful melancholic tunes
on the guitar and the piano, set against a background of drones and
crackles. Nine wonderful pieces announcing that spring is coming (even when
it snows today), and the sun will return. Music that is perfect for the
time of year. What else can I say? Great stuff. (FdW)
Address: <info@morrmusic.com>
RANDOM INC – JERUSALEM (CD by Ritornell)
AKIRA RABELAIS – EISOPTROPHOBIA (CD by Ritornell)
Ritornell is back on track. Thank god for that. There were plans to stop
this division of Mille Plateaux, because of the costs involved in producing
the package. Now the standard package is gone, we are served with two
totally different packages, two different musics and concepts.
The first in line of the new series is by Random Inc. aka Sebastian
Meissner. Meissner was originally part of Autopoieses, but after leaving
that, he works as Random Inc. As far as I understand this album started out
as a CD by Autopoieses, but the raw material is entirely reworked and
brought to a new conceptual phase. Jerusalem is city with two groups of
people who life next to each other, which is sometimes problematic as we
all know from reading the newspaper. Meissner takes recordings from Jewish
and Arabic archives and put it through his powerbook production. The result
is blender like. He mixes both and it’s hard to recognize what is Jewish
and what is Arabic. On the CD they can live together… I was reminded of
zoviet*france and Muslimgauze at times for the ethno part of some of the
sounds. There are 28 tracks which are kept, mostly, short, dealing with one
idea or one sound per track. The result is very nice, a middle eastern
journey.
Akira Rabelais is a Californian who is by day a programmer for Silicon
Valley and by night a musician. His new CD has twenty pieces of piano music
from the twentieth century, by three composers, Eric Satie, Bela Bartok and
one V. Carte. I haven’t heard from that one before. I fail to see the point
between Satie and Bartok, but the press text raves about ‘the most
important piano music from our time’, but why not Debussy, Rachmaninov or
John Cage? Unfortunately the great Bartok connoisseur in my family died
almost two years ago, but I wonder what he had to say about the digital
interpretations of Rabelais. What he does, is take the original piece
(played by himself? The cover is not clear about this) and feeds it through
the world digital plug ins and powerbooks and presents it back. Sometimes
you are able to hear which piece is playing, like in the various Satie
pieces (by which I am more familiar then the rest), but they all get their
twist. It’s an entertaining CD, music for a Sunday morning in the new
millennium. It’s hard for me to review this an interesting concept. There
is a straight line from Emerson Lake & Palmer, Wendy Carlos to Curd Duca to
Rabelais. Means have changed, ideas remain.
Address: www.mille-plateaux.com