TROUM – TJUKURRPA PART TWO: DRONES (CD by Transgredient)
JAKE RIVERA – LOCATIONS (CDR)
FOR FRIENDS (CD by Tomlab + Audio Dregs)
CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE – POCKET SYMPHONIES FOR LONESOME
SUBWAY CARS (CD by Tomlab)
FREIBAND – MICROBES (CD by Ritornell)
MARINA ROSENFELD – THE SHEER FROST ORCHESTRA – DROP, HOP, DRONE,
SCRATCH, SLIDE AND A FOR ANYTHING (CD by Charhizma)
DISCO DISCO VOLUME 1 (CDR compilation by Post Industry)
PROPULSIVE (CDR compilation by Burning Emptiness)
ROCK OUT – SOUND CHECK (miniCD by Ideal Recordings)
KHAN/GAMMON – STITCHES (CD by Eigentone)
TROUM – TJUKURRPA PART TWO: DRONES (CD by Transgredient)
Troum arrived from the ashes of Maeror Tri, but slowly get fame by
themselves. They set themselves to record three CD’s under the title
‘Tjukurrpa’, which is an aboriginal word for ‘Dreamtime’ – something
fits the name Troum (old german for ‘dream’) very well, and also the
subsonic sounds they produce. The first volume delt with harmonies
and the third one, to come later, deals with pulsations. The second
volume is all about drones. Five lengthy pieces – of course lengthy,
because that’s when this music works best – of droning sounds. They
are built around loops of metal sounds, percussion, mouth organ,
choirs, guitars and effects. Effectively Troum play a lo-fi ambient
sound. Partly due to their primitive state of recording, everything
is a bit blurry, but at the same time this is the great power of
Troum. If it was recorded well, with a high state of the art
technology, it would probably loose much of it’s charm. Now much of
the detail gets lost and it becomes one dense and dark cloud of
sounds. Highly minimal in approach, but these boys know very well
what they are doing, so they play around with the various sound
effects and equalization, without leaping into boredom. Years and
years ago the term ambient industrial was coined for this music, as
it was too industrial to be ambient, and to ambient to be industrial,
and these darkened paths in even darker woods are best walked by
Troum. Just like Maeror Tri, Troum seem to have mastered this area of
subconscious music best. (FdW)
Address: <dronetroum@aol.com>
JAKE RIVERA – LOCATIONS (CDR)
I don’t know much about Jake Rivera other then that he made the
recordings that form the basis of this CD in 1994 and 1997, but only
recentely reworked them into this release. Both pieces uses sounds of
the other, so there are similarities. One location is a parking lot
in Los Angeles and the other is a Machine shop in San Francisco. Good
that he tells us, because I wasn’t able to tell. The two resulting
pieces are very nice, but unfortunally a too short release (lasting
25 minutes). Jake probably uses computer technology to take the
sounds apart and put the seperate elements again into a narrative
piece of music. At times, mainly in the second piece, it goes to
almost inaudible sound, and then building a crescendo to more noisy
parts. As said, there isn’t a single sound to be recognized in here,
but the collaged pieces sound excellent. Put together with great care
of detail. If you need those obvious name droppings, Jake Rivera can
be placed along the lines of Toy Bizarre, Roel Meelkop or Marc
Behrens. This short release makes me curious to hear more of his
work. Although self-released, it comes with a neat design too. (FdW)
Address: <jake@jakerivera.net>
FOR FRIENDS (CD by Tomlab + Audio Dregs)
CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE – POCKET SYMPHONIES FOR LONESOME
SUBWAY CARS (CD by Tomlab)
Years ago Tomlab did a series of self burned CDR releases by which
they presented christmas songs by their artists and send out to
friends. Later it grew into a real CD, and is now expanded to a
collaborative effort with Audio Dregs, the US label, who releases
similar music. Electronic popmusic of the more daring sort… Take
for instance the opening piece by Alejandra & Aeron which is steady
tone experiment without any pop reference. But that’s a rare example
on this CD. Most of the bands play electronic songs, mostly
instrumental and mostly, though not exclusive electronic. Most these
bands play joyful and naive small tunes on the simple sets of
electronics, sometimes with the addition of guitars or real drums. I
have been playing this compilation for some days now, and everything
I had a pleasent time, but also everytime I thought there was no
outstanding piece in there. Artists included are Carpet Musics,
Inkblot, Ekiti Son, Grace Period, E*Rock, F.S.Blumm, Lineland, Adlib,
E*Vax, Zammuto, Dim Dim and many more.
>From one of the artists on the compilation, Tomlab just released a
full length CD. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone releases his
second CD with 16 relatively short songs – all around 2-3 minutes.
Casiotone, aka Owen Ashworth, sings and plays a minimal electronic
set up: rhythmbox, synth and sometimes drums and cello (played by
Jason Queuer). At times Casiotone is quite noisy, but throughout he
has a popmusic sensibility. Apperentely most of this album’s lyrics
deal with public transportation… Probably songs about leaving the
loved one(s). It was kinda hard to decipher the lyrics, but that
might also be due to the fact that I am not a trained listener to
lyrics. Sixteen songs of a rather intimate character (and to add,
maybe a bit overdone, the handwriting texts on the cover) which are
pleasent to hear. A lo-fi synthi pop album of and for broken hearts.
(FdW)
Address: www.tomlab.de
FREIBAND – MICROBES (CD by Ritornell)
A new band name but no stranger to this particular world, Freiband
(Frans de Waard) has created a world of stretched time, where the
sounds between sounds achieve a familiar but always exciting
grittiness because of the endless variation of possible nuances. Even
after listening to it a few times, the opening sounds continue to
remind me of the very start of Morton Subotnick’s fucking amazing
‘The Wild Bull’ created in 1968 (that’s before you were born, buddy)
on one of the severalmany generations of Don Buchla’s Electric Music
Boxes (that’s Voltage Controlled Synthesiser to you, buddy). Like
Subotnick’s piece,
12-track Microbes opens with a low, sonorous, mournful sound
suspended in a physical space. Naturally, following on from the
Morton analogy, another favourite analogy arose: the Minotaur and his
labyrinth (and I have to be careful here – an avid Vital reader once
rapped my misuse of this in a different review). Since then, of
course, I have listened to this as a field recording made in the
labyrinth with the Minotaur going about the various chores and
tortures he has invented for himself to whittle away the time he has
to spend in the dark endless corridors and rooms. These are possibly
the more pleasurable (for us at least) of his miserable moments
though; I do not hear the bones of his sacrificial victims being
scrunched and gnashed, or his desperate charging from room to room
searching for leaking sunlight, or his anger, which must have been
immense^ I mean, can you imagine^
It’s anybodies guess now what we hear. I could list suggestions. But
I won’t. The music is suggestive of so much subterranean: danky
darkness, moisture, mysteries around corners, paranoia, lassitude,
tectonic groans, echoes that do not repeat what you shouted, smells
never smelt, noises never seen^
Still, listening to it again as I write I suddenly had the feeling
that this could have been one long evolving composition, not separate
tracks: all the tracks (sections) are unified by their similar sound
structure and the space they move around in, and I suspect it could
have been more subversive had this happened. Another quality romp
through another weird field. (MP)
MARINA ROSENFELD – THE SHEER FROST ORCHESTRA – DROP, HOP, DRONE,
SCRATCH, SLIDE AND A FOR ANYTHING (CD by Charhizma)
Marina Rosenfeld is one of the names I off and on see around, but
have nothing heard of musically. Until now. The story behind this CD
is very long… it’s about Marina teaching people, er I mean women,
to improvise music. They got guitars and were instructed how to play
them, for instance with a nail polish bottle. At one point a group of
women playing laptops were dregged into the orchestra, who were
processing the sounds produced on the guitars. Personally the
feminist aspects here is something that I’m not very fond of. Marina
Rosenfeld is listed as composer, but the piece is performed by The
Sheer Frost Orchestra (which ranks Kaffe Matthews, ikue Mori, Keiko
Uenishi as some of the names I recognized) There are many short
pieces on this CD and especially in the first half, things are not
easy. There is a lot of improvisation going on for sure, but I found
it not very interesting to hear. They strum the guitars with their
objects, but I must say it didn’t strike me as a master piece.
Somewhere in the second half, the laptops seem to be playing a bigger
role, but here too, I thought it was not very good either.
Improvisation that is nice for those who perform it, but maybe not
for those who have to listen to it… This one was received with
mixed feelings here. (FdW)
Address: www.charhizma.com
DISCO DISCO VOLUME 1 (CDR compilation by Post Industry)
This is how we once liked them: a simple black and white cover for a
compilation CDR (that format was once a cassette) covering knowns and
unknowns. The overall impression one gets from hearing this, is that
the compiler likes lengthy ambient industrial music, with at times
noisy roots and at others ritual/tribal influenced. Featured here are
Vidna Obmana (whom I am really suprised to find in this collection),
Koji Asano (proving that a short and noisy piece can be ok, and
should not always be extended to a whole CD), PBK (where on earth was
he all the time?), Tetsuo Furudate (with a very orchestral piece,
rather then a more noisy work), Julien Ottavi (from Formanex, with a
study into frequencies). These names all appear on the second half of
the release, whereas the first half is filled with people I never
heard of: Mark Bromwich, Geoff Nossiter, Information, Gary Nutman,
Palsecam and Arthur Lason. These all appear in the more quiet,
subdued and above all lo-fi ambient industrial feel, and give an
almost continous feel to the pieces, which is quite nice. Quite
unlike the old cassette compilations, it’s now much easier to search
for a track one likes or skip one that one doesn’t like. And that’s
something I didn’t do much here. (FdW)
Address: www.postindustry.org
PROPULSIVE (CDR compilation by Burning Emptiness)
A similar kind of compilation as ‘Disco Disco Vol.1’… lo-fi
graphics again, xeroxed form. But that’s about where things end.
Musicwise this compilation goes deep down the gutters of rhythm and
noise, but also with some exceptions. The noise stuff comes from
bands like Adolf Stalin, Viodre, rotten piece, Robert Warner,
Golemgross, Inhalant, Robot vs Rabbit. We also find a more a fucked
kind of techno by people like Contra, Gale Grand,
Konstruct/deKonstruct, Mind Confusion, Flint Glass and a crossover
between noise and techno in Ickoo, Tin.RP. The odd balls in this
collection are the ambient industrial outings of Wilt and John Dalton
and the very nice retro electro song by Sueno De Luna. None of these
(except Tin.RP) ment much to me, and I’m pretty sure there are some I
never have to hear again. But just because it’s not my cup of coffee,
it is not said that this doesn’t serve any potential out there. (FdW)
Address: www.burningemptiness.fr
ROCK OUT – SOUND CHECK (miniCD by Ideal Recordings)
Ideal Recordings have faith in this. The first edition is a 1000
copies in a digipack. Rock Out are a duo, a drummer (Niklas Korsell,
who is also The Plan and Apan) and a turntablist (Henry Moore Selder,
who is an ex-member of Mazarine Street and now in Puppet Masters and
Chihuahua). Together they form a trio with Mats Gustafsson
(DJustable) and have recorded a bad (the labels words) session with
Jim O’Rourke. So on this, their debut, they play eleven pieces in
just under 21 minutes. Short powerful, and above all crazy drumming
(I am reminded of the drummer Animal on The Muppet Show), mixed with
totally crazy tunes from old to very old vinyl. Normally I don’t care
much about DJs, or their hipper then hip version The Turntablists,
but here they have a good vibe going on, and everything seems to fall
in it’s place. Freeform music that is much more punk rock then
anything holding a guitar, bass and drums. This bears the same
aggression, but in a much more fresher state of mind. A fresh kick in
the ass of improv music. (FdW)
Address: www.idealrecordings.com
KHAN/GAMMON – STITCHES (CD by Eigentone)
This is the soundtrack to a film about a community in Alabama, who
are telling tales and then stitch those tales into a quilt. It’s a
film about a generation and it’s lifestyle. Though the film was shot
on super 8 and digital video and deals with a rather ancient skill
(quilting and sewing), the music is top modern. The well-known Khan
(Can Oral Khan, aka 4E, aka Gizz TV aka Bizz OD, aka El Turco Loco)
wrote the title piece, which is nicely creepy sung piece with one
male and one female voice. The main part of the soundtrack is written
by Gammon, who is one third of Austrian’s Thilges3 project. Gammon
plays accordion on each track, which is set against a driving rhythm
track, one of those rhythmtracks that bang on. I was reminded of some
old Cabaret Voltaire pieces (I think ‘Johnny Yes/No’, but maybe
because that’s a film too?). It’s a pity that most of the tracks by
Gammon seem variations on a theme (accordion cum rhythms), which no
doubt work well in the film, but maybe is too less to hold by itself
on CD. ‘Cover Up’ is an almost ambient piece and ‘Speed’ almost a
joyfull dub piece and are positive exceptions. Backed by two lovely
version of Khan title piece, this is a nice CD, which could have been
great with two pieces less. (FdW)
Address: www.eigentone.com