INADE – THE CRACKLING OF THE ANONYMOUS (Cd by Loki)
SAMA – DER RAUM WIRD HIER ZUR ZEIT (CD-R)
MUSICA VENENO – NON STOP EROTIC KARAOKE (MINI CD-R)
M & D – M & D (CD-R)
ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO – PAPER MUSIC (CD-R)
TUE-TETE – ATTENDAIT (DOUBLE CD-R)
VARIOUS – HAZARDOUS AREA (COMPILATION CD-R)
(all by Hazard Records)
HATE YOU – (Compilation Cd by V/VM Test Records)
OHMIX (cd on OHM AVATAR)
GUY KLUCEVSEK – Free Range Accordion (CD on STARKLAND)
MASSIMO – HEY BABE, LET ME SEE YOUR USB, AND I’LL SHOW YOU MY
FIREWIRE (mCD by Mego)
NARC – INTERNAL USE ONLY (CDR by Deter)
AERO – PRETEND (CD by Apestaartje)
ANDEREGG – WHEN RECTANGLES ROLL UNDER CITIES (CD by Apestaartje)
ASON KAHN – PLURABELLES (CD by Cut)
TU M’ – 01 (CD by Cut)
STATIC – EJECT YOUR MIND (CD by City Center Offices)
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED (1999) (CD by Subsound)
BAKUNIN’S BUN – FIGHT TO WIN (CD by Ocap)
KOJI ASANO – SPIRIT OF THE WARDROBE (CD by Solstice)
INADE – THE CRACKLING OF THE ANONYMOUS (Cd by Loki)
Opening track on Inade’s “The crackling of the anonymous” reminds me
a lot of Lustmord’s “The place where the black stars hang” released
in 1994. Since Lustmord peaked his career with this 75+ minutes long
masterpiece of deep space dark ambient, that musical area has been an
almost forgotten world to me. But when I recently heard somebody
explaining his considerations in removing all cd’s on his shelves,
only to fill out the empty spaces with copies of this new Inade-album
together with another new-born masterpiece, “War within breath” from
Ex.Order, I had that strange impression of having missed something
important. And so I had! “The crackling of the anonymous” is the
follow-up to Inade’s “Aldebaran”, which was released in 1996 and
since then has been praised as one of the true milestones of the dark
ambient scene. In that sense I believe that it must have been some
challenge for the members, Rene Lehmann and Knut Enderlein, to come
up to such rather big expectations on their continued journey in the
successful Inade-space craft. But when listening to “The crackling of
the anonymous” it soon after becomes obvious that Inade is more like
a universe rather than “Aldebaran” was just a one-occasion
achievement. A universe so deep that it demands lots of continued
listenings to get just a little survey of the landscape that lies
within the territories of Inade as they sound on “The crackling of
the anonymous”. Not that it cannot be enjoyed right from first
playback, but the music seems so endlessly complex that new layers
continually occur as you return back to the album again and again.
First of all the production is extremely well, with a dark echoish
overall expression making it sound like the album had been recorded
in a giant cave. Inside that sonic cave a wide spectre of sounds and
noises penetrates and disappears. Whistling drones of subtle noise
make the atmosphere cold and sinister, only additionally intensified
by ghoulish satanic voices, creepy animal sounds and industrial
noises. Eerie choir and grandiose ambientscapes constitute some very
important bricks to create the overall melodious beauty that
generally permeates the album and that stand as a contrast to the
sonic darkness. I highly recommend this album to everyone interested
in dark ambient, or rather to everyone who has just a slight interest
in the ambient-scene as a whole. Lucky found! (NMP)
Address: www.loki-found.de
SAMA – DER RAUM WIRD HIER ZUR ZEIT (CD-R)
MUSICA VENENO – NON STOP EROTIC KARAOKE (MINI CD-R)
M & D – M & D (CD-R)
ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO – PAPER MUSIC (CD-R)
TUE-TETE – ATTENDAIT (DOUBLE CD-R)
VARIOUS – HAZARDOUS AREA (COMPILATION CD-R)
(all by Hazard Records)
Hazard records is based in Barcelona, Spain and their catalog already
shows for 23 releases. It would of course go to far to review all the
above records extensively, but I’ll do my very best to give each a
fair description. So there we go with the first one, Sama. Their CD
has the subtitle Elektro Pastische Musik, which gives rise to certain
thoughts…..electro-acoustic, electronic (as in techno) and so on.
And in fact all of these elements are present in the music. Concrete
sounds, synthesizers, electronic rhythms, you name it. A lot of the
sounds are drenched in FX, but some of the electronics are pretty
dry. Basically this collage music, of a darkish kind, but with a
definite twist.
Non Stop Erotic Karaoke by Musica Veneno features seven tracks of
eclectic electronic collage with a lot of humour and wit. Many
sources are used to create the independant tracks and it is a lot of
fun to listen to. And the cover is very nice as well.
M & D is a noisier project with distorted electronics and acoustics
and thirty seconds reverbs. Somewhat industrial at times with loops
and layers of sound that thicken into a wall of sound or a sorm of
hiss.
Paper Music by Alfredo Costa Monteiro was made entirely with paper
sounds, without adding FX. When listening to this record, I couldn’t
help but wonder how he managed to create the sounds on this disc. He
must have really extensively been working with paper for quite a
while in order to get all these sounds from the material. Pretty
amazing stuff and composed as well.
Tue-TÍte is a trio that resulted from the band Superelvis, after the
singer left. Attendait is an improvisation album, with the three
members playing violin, viola and ravanatta (I don’t know what this
one is). Scraping sounds, manipulated or not, are the main
ingredients of this double CD-R. Pretty interesting stuff, mind you,
but why two?
And last but not least, there is the label sampler that featurse so
many different kinds of music, that I will not even start to describe
it. Let it be enough to say that there is a very wide range of music
being played in Spain, ranging from jazz tto improv to noise to
electronics. For anyone interested in the current spanish music
scene, this is a label to check out. (MR)
Adress: www.hazardrecords.org
HATE YOU – (Compilation Cd by V/VM Test Records)
Hate You is more than just another album out on V/VM Test Records –
the American label who began its history in 1995 and since then has
released early works by artists such as Boards Of Canada, Autechre
and The Fall. To judge by the text on the CD-sleeve, the driving
force behind the compilation is the idea of working against the flow
of the commercially based music industry. Thus “Hate you” is the true
sonic manifestation of the label’s overall campaign against
commercialism. Consequently most artists on “Hate you” appears to be
less known on the electronic music scene. V/VM (the artist and the
owner of the label) opens and closes the orgy of hatred, with two
noisy pieces. First of all the excellent technoid opening track
titled Karl Cocks (who named Carl Cox…?) and the bit too long outro
titled “Hate you” – an extremely distorted and very badly treated
version of the classic Beatles song “Hey Jude”. In between these two
contributions from V/VM, come a lot of interesting moments most of
them pretty harsh. The Irish artist Skkatter has reconstructed hits
of Madonna into a guaranteed non-commercial sound blast. Also Remi
Moses outstands thanks to his abrasive noise assault conceived with a
little help from a broken hard drive. Whether you like or not, V/VM
Test Records manages to clearly express their attitude towards
mainstream on this provoking compilation of hateful themes. (NMP)
Address: www.brainwashed.com/vvm
OHMIX (cd on OHM AVATAR)
A ‘concept’ album with contributions of Ralf Wehowsky, Martin
TÈtreault, Christian Calon, Terre Thaemlitz, John Oswald, Diane
Labrosse, David Kristian and Alexandre St-Onge.
These eight composers were invited by Avatar to select freely music
from all OHM productions from 1993 tot 1998 and to use it as material
for new compositions. They used excerpts, full pieces, entire cds or
even the complete catalogue. Together they present nine (Oswald has
two pieces on the cd) different views on the Ohm catalogue. An
interesting variety of compositions all of good quality. Calon offers
a very subtle piece. TÈtreault gives a noisy treatment of (almost?)
the whole catalogue. Terre Thaemlitz delivers a repetitive piece of
loops, using just a few soundsources. Kristian experiments with a
minimalistic beat that slowly changes. Oswald puts the piano (of
Michael Snow?) central in one piece, a conversation between a man and
a woman in the other.
For me the ‘concept’ behind the cd does not matter. It’s just a
collection of interesting pieces that make a good compilation.
Probably the cd gets another dimension if you know the Ohm catalogue.
In that case one is able to trace and find out what manipulations are
exercised here. (DM)
Address: http://www.meduse.rg/
GUY KLUCEVSEK – Free Range Accordion (CD on STARKLAND)
Yesterday evening I was at a Klezmer festival in Antwerp. Two groups
were playing. One from Germany (Sukke) the other from France
(Bratsch). Both had accordions. In the case of Bratsch the accordion
was also an important solo-instrument played by the great Francois
Castiello. This shows were the accordion maybe expected. Nameley in
the context of folk and world music.
But this intrument also made it to the avantgarde. It must have been
somewhere in the mid 80s that I saw Guy Klucevsek and David Garland
at the Apollohuis in Eindhoven performing some of ‘control songs’ of
David. As far as I know Garland still works on his small (very
controlled!) oeuvre of control songs. Klucevsek on the other hand
became a well known musician in downtown New York through numerous
cooperations and cds.
Klucevsek and Garland are still friends, as Garland is a present in a
track on this album (‘The Blob’) ‘Free Range Accordion’ is the second
release of Klucevsek for Starkland. In 1999 ‘Transylvanian Softwear’
was released on this label.
His new one has compositions from a great diversity of composers. The
cd is closed with a very well known piece (Boeves Psalm) by that
other master of the accordion, namely Lars Hollmer from Sweden. A
piece that is deeply rooted into swedish folkmusic. Other
compositions are deliverd by Burt Bacharach, Lois V Vierk, Somei
Satoh (a well known composer from Japan), Stephen Montague, Jerome
Kitzke, Aaron Jay Kernis. “These are composers whose music I have
heard live, and to which I have a strong, emotional response”,
Klucevsek says, who signs for three pieces on this cd.
The slowly developping piece of Somei Satoh is very meditative and
reflective. This is also the case for the compositon by Lois V Vierk.
Other pieces like that of Kitzke, Hollmer, Bacharach are more
extravert and uptempo. You must be a great lover of the accordion to
listen to the cd entirely. In my case I need to do it piece by piece
(DM).
Address:<http://www.starkland.com>
MASSIMO – HEY BABE, LET ME SEE YOUR USB, AND I’LL SHOW YOU MY
FIREWIRE (mCD by Mego)
If you know Massimo’s previous releases or seen his concerts, you
know he’s our man of jokes. Staged behind two laptops, with
stroboscopes and smoke effects, he plays like he is gabber DJ, with
at least the same volume. The jokes continue with this great title,
and the cover (seeing is believing). Massimo continues on a laptop
were the eighties industrialists left off. The old boys collected
more and more electronic gear and there was no difference between say
Esplendor Geometrico and Vangelis. But our young friend Massimo, then
a small kid, uses software to create the same kind of beat driven
music. Not with pre built drumsoftware but by constructing small,
distorted loops out of frequencies (that is to say: if I am right and
the cover is wrong of course, because it says ‘this + 20db session
was done by Massimo with just one trumpet’…). Massimo plays around
with noisy loops that unmistakenly have a groove to them, and he adds
his own small bits of extra noise to it. This 20 minute work is
supposedely 10 tracks but it comes undivided as one track. That’s
about the only bad thing about this release, because it could have
worked maybe even nicer on shuffle mode (and it might have helped the
DJs a bit, I guess). If industrial music ever needed a future:
Massimo is it’s name. (FdW)
Address: <info@mego.at>
NARC – INTERNAL USE ONLY (CDR by Deter)
Narc is a Canadian ‘industrial outfit’ who releases with this CDR is
second full length album. The image on the CD looks like the
‘concentric circles of Burgess’, which I vaguely seem to remember
from geography class some centuries ago. It’s not very clear to me
how they relate to the music. Industrial is well-chosen tag here, as
the beat pumps on several tracks (and, I must add, in a more
industrial manner then in a techo manner!), like the Esplendor
Geometrico inspired ‘Diagramatic’ but there are more sub-dued moments
here too, like ‘Infraction’ which more ambient in approach. Most of
the ideas that Narc plays around with are nice, but not completely
worked out, with a certain fresh naive look on music. Maybe Narc sees
this release as to be used by other musicians, given this title, and
is it an attempt to put himself on the map… (FdW)
Address: <narc@industrial.org>
AERO – PRETEND (CD by Apestaartje)
ANDEREGG – WHEN RECTANGLES ROLL UNDER CITIES (CD by Apestaartje)
Two new releases on a small label called Apestaartje. After two
compilations, it’s now time to look more indepth to two of their
artists. I have no idea who are behind these bands, the information
is not very clear.
Aero offer just under 35 minutes, 5 tracks of ambience. Probably all
made with the extensive use of computer software, of which ‘ommorro’
and ‘v(area)tion’ are the longest, taking up 2/3 of the entire disc.
In these tracks things star floating in a light weight. It’s ambient
but of a rather static nature. Things unfold very slow here and it
appears one long drift, but gives away the smaller detail upon
repeated listening. Even when they are nice pieces, they could have
been using a bit more variations for my liking. The other three
tracks are more cut up collage, glick & gut style with high pierced
sounds and low end rumbles. They form a nice counterpart of the two
longer pieces and are cleverly located. Though not a bad disc, also
one that leaves no particular big impression, kinda like were one
thinks: hmm, ok, not bad.
Anderegg, probably the band behind the label, since they were present
on the two previous compilations, present us seven pieces in just
over 36 minutes. These seven pieces are to be understood as 2
seperate pieces. One is track one and the other one are the remaining
six tracks. The blurb says that Anderegg stretches his pop
sensibilities, but I found them less obvious then on the first
Apestaartje compilation. There are hints of melodies and rhythms for
sure, but to call this popmusic right away, is a bit far fetched.
Towards the end of the CD, track six and seven, they indeed move to
something that could be called popmusic. Seen a large thing, this is
indeed a collection of very nice pieces of looped buzzing, humming,
scratching, clicking and what have you got. Sort of like less serious
Roel Meelkop or a more active Bernard Gunter if you ask me, but with
nuf seriousness of their own to keep things interesting. Very nice
release indeed. (FdW)
Address: www.staartje.com
JASON KAHN – PLURABELLES (CD by Cut)
TU M’ – 01 (CD by Cut)
Jason Kahn moved to Europe in 1990, and since then he has become one
of the more active players of improvised music. Although originally a
drummer, he has moved to using live sampling his percussion using the
LiSa programm of the Steim studios. On this new CD we find Kahn all
by himself with his drums, metal objects and real time processing
software. It sounds more heavyweight then it in reality is. Kahn
manages to produce some very fine crackling music with very deep end
basses and looped sounds of more humms, ticks and claps. Everything
moves slowly here, with great care for the smaller detail. It’s kinda
hard to compare it with anything, because it is something of some
many: ambient, musique concrete, microsound, lowercase, but Kahn
blends it all together with apperentely great ease.
Tu m’ are a Sicilian trio of musicians who produce a steady stream of
music. Their laptops operate as blenders: they throw in any sort of
sound, be in jazz, rock, musique concrete and by playing these
through their filters, plug ins and live sampling programms, they
arrive at what is not yet called ‘plundertop’. Plunderphonic music
through the means of the laptop. Too deformed to recognize what it is
source wise, which makes it even nicer I guess. However the problem I
have with this is the free improv form in which this blender is
digested. Each piece is a lengthy one (six tracks – sixty four
minutes), which move from interesting moments to moments that are err
less interesting. Sometimes one waits and not much seems to happen
that is worth eating. Maybe the overall problem of improvisation
music, but presented from the far end of the laptop sound output it
is a bit sterile so to say. As said the good moments are in there
too, but overall this couldn’t satisfy me… (FdW)
Address: www.cut.fm
STATIC – EJECT YOUR MIND (CD by City Center Offices)
Static is just one of the names used by Hanno Leichtmann. He’s also
known as Paloma, Ich Schwitze Nie or DJ AttachÈ & The Beige
Oscillator. As Static he released a 12″ on Audio.NL and now this full
length CD. Static’s music is definetly popmusic inspired. With
laidback dubby rhythms, nice keys, more nice plug ins he creates fine
tracks, such ‘Crusing’, ‘Tsim Sha Tsui’ or ‘Northrop’. But with
popmusic you need voices… or at least that’s what Static thinks. So
he invited Ronald Lippock (of To Rococo Rot fame) and Justine Electra
to sing a couple of tracks and I must say I am not entirely convinced
it was such a good choice. It’s not that I don’t like singing, it
just seems a bit of an odd ball in Static’s music, but maybe it has
to do with the kind of singing, which is the sort of nasal singing I
don’t seem get along with very well (Justine’s vocals are bit better,
but still not something for me). Lucky for me there are only three
tracks which have this singing, so there is still six without.
Received with mixed feelings I guess. (FdW)
Address: www.city-centre-offices.de
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED (1999) (CD by Subsound)
Haven’t been reviewing many Lopez CD’s lately here myself, but the
man throws them still in great speed through many labels to his
audience. This one was released some time ago, to coincident with his
first Australian tour and marks also the beginning of a new
Australian label. Recentely the Lopez CD’s moved away from the one
piece per CD style and here too we get seven pieces. Some are in
typical Lopez fashion of silenceness. I assume one should cranck up
the volume to an extend that one hears something. But this means also
that the more audible tracks are super loud. Track six, the longest
here, for instance, with it’s high pitched insects sounds is one of
those very audible pieces. Playing these ‘loud’ pieces at a normal
volume means you can’t hear many of the others. Apperentely Senor
Lopez wants us to play around with our sound installation. Fine. I
copied the CD to my harddisc and boosted the sound in some sound
programm (for those who know: ‘normalize 100%) and found out these
silent tracks contain similar subdued drones of what could be wind
blowing or machine hum (or just the atmosphere of an empty – god
knows). Maybe it’s about time that I did the same with the Lopez
backcatalogue and start enjoying all again (mind you, and not ‘for
the first time’). From all of the current microsounders, Francisco
Lopez is probably the most puzzling, still. And for sure one of the
better. (FdW)
Address: www.subsound.com
BAKUNIN’S BUN – FIGHT TO WIN (CD by Ocap)
I remember the name Bakunin from high school when I wrote about
Anarchism for the history school paper. Bakunin was a Russian
anarchist from the 19th century, who tried starting revolutions his
entire life and wrote theorist books on anarchism. I was more
politically inspired then than now. Bakunin’s Bun is the
collaboration of 1 Speed Bike, also known as the drummer of Godspeed
You Black Emperor (and having a solo album to his name) and Norman
Nawrocki, who is also in Rhythm Activism and Da Zoque. Their lifes
are filled left wing politics and the two recorded two speeches from
Sean Brandt and Sue Collins from the OCAP, which stands for the
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. To these speeches Bakunin’s Bun
add rhythms and mainly string sounds, but also jew harp, glasses and
frying pan. That results in a very lively sort of music, in which the
voice gets at times annoying (certainly if you are, like me, not a
native speaker), but if you listen to it as another instrument, then
it is sort of alright. The only thing that is a real bother is the
entire length of the CD. It’s a whole sit through for the entire 67
minutes. 45 minutes would have been enough. But then again
politicians never know when to stop… (FdW)
Address: www.ocap.ca
KOJI ASANO – SPIRIT OF THE WARDROBE (CD by Solstice)
Hot on the still-warm heels of A Second Dam, which was reviewed a
few issues ago in Vital, comes this, the twenty-fourth release on
Asano’s own label. The bizarrely-titled work is another single
composition, 57’41 in length, complemented once more by some
captivating photographic work on the sleeve. Whilst any previous
compositions I’ve heard have been dense and often unforgiving, Spirit
is quite the opposite. This is one long blanket of silence covering
what appears to be a shifting electro-acoustic or musique
concrete piece. The conceptual framework here, however, is that the
sound is only allowed to break through the silence every few minutes
for mere seconds or fraction of a second at a time. What you ‘get’
therefore is probably less than one minute of actual sound material
in the space of almost an hour of tense silent listening: the effect
is akin to traversing a barren, placeless landscape, only to confront
sudden, frantic and utterly random volcanic activity every couple of
miles, spiralling through the surface of the ground when you least
expect it to. Needless to say at the right volume, which is really
not very high at all, the effect is startling. The listener forgets
the disc is playing, his guard is down and the individualised
punctuation points jolt him back to attention again. A very
interesting piece indeed, with the act of composition embracing
completely the notion of utmost restraint in the placement and
duration of sound. It would seem there’s no stopping this man. (BL)
Address: <http://www.solstice-europe.com>