BONNIE KANE & ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE – MYSTERIOUS PLANET (CD on Pax Recordings)
LOS BAYBAR BOYS – CIELITO AZUL (CD on Pax Recordings)
INU YAROH – THE NEXT DOOR WILL BE OPENED (CDR by Public Eyeshore)
DARK STAR – 3 SHADES OF BLUES (10″ by Dhyana Records)
YVES BEAUPRE – HUMEUR DE FACTEUR (CD by Empreintes Digitales)
JOHN YOUNG – LA LIMITE DU BRUIT (CD by Empreintes Digitalis)
ALEXEI BORISOV – BEFORE THE EVROREMONT (CD by NB Research Digest)
THE HATERS/MR. NATURAL/BASSIFONDI ORCHESTRA (CD by Gender Less Kibbutz)
STRAWBERRY GIRL – CASSETTECACOPHONY COLLECTION I (CDR by Enterruption)
STRAWBERRY GIRL – CASSETTECACOPHONY COLLECTION II (CDR by Enterruption)
STRAWBERRY GIRL – ILLIMITED COMMUNICATIONS (CDR by Enterruption)
YOUR FAVOURITE HORSE – I WOULD CLOSE MY EYES BUT ALL I SEE IS THE
MASSACRE (CDR by Piehead Records)
ANTON NIKKILA – WHITE NIGHTS (CD by N&B Research Digest)
DACM – SHOWROOM DUMMIES (CD by Mego)
BONNIE KANE & ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE – MYSTERIOUS PLANET (CD on Pax Recordings)
LOS BAYBAR BOYS – CIELITO AZUL (CD on Pax Recordings)
The West Coast of the US has a surprisingly lively scene of
improvised music. Just think of the Accretions label or the Pax
Recordings label. Pax has many releases with the very busy and
multi-talented Ernesto Diaz-Infante. He studied with Wadada Leo Smith
at the California Institute of the Arts. He composes chamber music
and loves to improvise on stage with numerous musicians as Bill
Horist, Donald Miller, Jack Wright a.o.
Diaz-Infante is present on both cds I want to introduce here. On
‘Mysterious Planet’ he plays some very noisy and freaky
improvisations. All recorded live in august 2000. Diaz-Infante plays
guitar, vocals and tape collage. Bonnie Kane plays sax, flute,
electronics. Andre Custodio guests on drums in one track. Probably
they had great fun together, but for me most of it is leading
nowhere. Los Baybar Boys is a trio by Christopher Dergarabedian on
bass, acoustic guitar, voice, tapes, maus. Ernesto Diaz-Infante
brings in field recordings, collage tapes, guitar and voice. Bob
Marsh plays cello. Here we have more concentrated improvisations.
Short pieces that take no more then two or three minutes (DM)
Address: <http://www.paxrecordings.com>
INU YAROH – THE NEXT DOOR WILL BE OPENED (CDR by Public Eyeshore)
Inu Yaroh is a Japanese band with a bass player, a drummer, a
saxophone player, a synth player and ‘shout’. Sometimes they are
assisted by other musicians. This CD with five long live cuts was
recorded in Japan, USA and Europe. In the USA line up they even use
two drummers. Their music like a wall sounds, hughly distorted, but
mostly in the low end part and less with high end stuff. The
saxophone plays wildly free figures, and the voices rumble and mumble
way back in the music. Inu Yaroh do not play, however, industrial
music on conventional instrumets. Much more, with their lenghty
guitar solos going through distortion boxes, they act much more like
a fucked up krautrock band. Although the ideas are not bad, I must
admit I found hearing five of those pieces a pretty tiring
experience. I wonder what they would sound like inside a studio and
when they structure their krauty experiments more… (FdW)
Address: www.sinkhole.net/pehome
DARK STAR – 3 SHADES OF BLUES (10″ by Dhyana Records)
It’s really not possible for me to tell whether the lengthy guitar
solo on side one is blues or not. From the various work I encountered
before by Dark Star, I found it hard to say what they are about.
Sometimes electronic, sometime with vocals and sometimes a plain rip
off The Legendary Pink Dots – as to say: I heard very little of
interest in their releases so far. I don’t know if a blues record is
up my alley. The 10 minute track on side A is a large guitar solo,
with USA voices being snipped in. At such lengthyness it easily leaps
into boredom. The first piece on side B is a nice electro-tronic tune
and the second a Nurse With Wound krauty riff that is very nice,
since it’s short and to the point. The third track on this side is
the longest and also the most boring one and sounds like they were in
an improvsational mood. With a score of 2 out of 4, and these two
being the shortest ones, it’s not a record I’d liked very much. (FdW)
Address: Dhyana – c/o Bernd Spring – Carl-Schurz Str. 29A – 86156 Augsburg
– Germany
YVES BEAUPRE – HUMEUR DE FACTEUR (CD by Empreintes Digitales)
JOHN YOUNG – LA LIMITE DU BRUIT (CD by Empreintes Digitalis)
‘The Maker’s Humour’ is the translation of the title, and in this
case the maker is Yves Beaupre. Not just the maker of this CD, but
he’s also a professional builder of harpsichords, spinets and
virginals. In the mid eighties Yves set up a small electronic studio,
partly to do research for his instrument building, but also to create
music. By using sounds from the instruments he builts, plus most
likely from the process of building these, Yves crafts together six
fine electro-acoustic pieces. From this side of the musical spectrum
we usually get all of these thumbling sounds which fall over
eachother, but Yves Beaupre treats his sounds in a rather fresh way.
By looping, filtering and pitch changing, he builts very interesting
collages of sound in the finest electro-acoustic tradition, that will
probably appeal also to Pieces blend into eachother and form one
large work, rather then six smaller parts.
>From New Zealand hails John Young, who studied composition with
Dennis Smalley and worked in the UK for a while. He uses acousmatic
sounds, ie environmental sounds and processes them. Unlike Beaupre he
stays more in the classical sense of processing, even when at times
the unprocessed field recordings shine through it. There scratches,
wind blowing in microphones, rain falling on roofs and high peeps of
metal scraped on glass. In general they are nice pieces, but at times
a bit too long and a more accurate mix could have been possible and
things would have hold their tension much better. (FdW)
Address: www.electrocd.com
ALEXEI BORISOV – BEFORE THE EVROREMONT (CD by NB Research Digest)
Borisov is a Russian musician who worked under the name of
F.R.U.I.T.S. and other projects and who has played a concert at the
Avanto Helsinki Media Art festival last year. This CD is a live
recording of his concert at that festival. ‘Evrorement’ in the title
means literally ‘euro-repairs’: people changing their Russian home
with a more European design. Apperentely during the concert pictures
were shown of Russian homes, interiors of public places and the
vanishing Soviet-era aesthetics of suburbs and back yards. Borisov
uses the computers, synths, low tech and home made electronics and
environmental sounds and voices. The music is best be described as
experimental music, with shortwave sounds, mumbling voices, obscured
noises. It takes a while before any form of rhythm is added and
before it really gets somewhere. Unfortunally Borisov presents a
loose of sounds that seem to be put together rather randomly. Some of
his sounds are nice, but as a whole it didn’t really convince me.
(FdW)
Address: www.nbresearchdigest.com
THE HATERS/MR. NATURAL/BASSIFONDI ORCHESTRA (CD by Gender Less Kibbutz)
As not seen on their recent European tour – at least not by me, which
is a great shame. It’s been a long long time ago since I saw the
Haters perform their work. The other I never heard of. This CD was
made for this tour, but is also available now. The Haters perform two
lenghty pieces of sheer noise. Just as they did so many nights ago,
but it’s ok. The Haters can easily be seen as one of the founding
fathers of noise. Behind Mr. Natural we find the man who also runs
the label who released this. It seems as if his name Mr. Natural is
well chosen. His rumbles with contact microphones over acoustic
elements (maybe leaves and branches) in addition with environmental
recordings (the ‘NDC10 Exposure’ piece sounds like a refrigerator)are
kinda like the work of Small Cruel Party or Hands To. About the
Bassifondi Orchestra I know nothing at all. They have the longest
portion on this CD, six tracks with a length of some 28 minutes. It’s
kinda hard to describe what the Bassifondi Orchestra do. They play a
kind of ambient music, which is drenched in a bath of reverb, with
external sounds (taped radio voices, incoming airplane) being faded
in and out of the mix. It’s a more experimental kind of ambient,
which is actually quite nice, albeit not really new. Think of anybody
playing with overtones and ringing sounds and you can sort of grasp
the idea. A strange package of three entirely different kinds of
experimental music. It must have a great night… (FdW)
Address: gender_less@hotmail.com
STRAWBERRY GIRL – CASSETTECACOPHONY COLLECTION I (CDR by Enterruption)
STRAWBERRY GIRL – CASSETTECACOPHONY COLLECTION II (CDR by Enterruption)
STRAWBERRY GIRL – ILLIMITED COMMUNICATIONS (CDR by Enterruption)
Strawberry Girl collect here a bunch of older cassette only releases.
The band existed since 1992 and do no longer exist (at least that’s
what I gather from the info). Strawberry Girl play noise music, but
noise of various kinds. The first volume collecting four different
short tapes mainly explore pre-recorded media and sound snippets
lifted from records, television and radio. In a hasty cut up style
they are presented and go from straight noise to chopped and fucked
drum & bass. In their second collection (strangely enough with their
first, 1992, recordings) they hark back to straight, Merzbowish noise
and though well executed (certainly if one has the time frame in
mind), it’s lesser interesting. In the last volume of their work,
they seem to have matured. Music is at times still quite noisy, but
seems to be dwelling more on what they generate themselves soundwise.
Drums, synths and guitars play an important role here and play psych
jams, but always short and to the point and not stretched out without
making any sense. This last one is by far the most interesting one in
terms of nice music. (FdW)
Address: www.enterruption.com
YOUR FAVOURITE HORSE – I WOULD CLOSE MY EYES BUT ALL I SEE IS THE
MASSACRE (CDR by Piehead Records)
Accelera Deck is no more, hurray for Your Favourite Horse. Why Chris
Jeely, the man behind both names, decided to get rid of the first
name is unclear, but his last 7″ (for Awkard Silence) hinted to a new
musical direction: strumming guitars and singing songs. Campfire
songs almost. Under his new monikker he continues this new direction,
but at the same time he explores the depths of experimental music.
Gone are the rhythmboxes and breakbeats, and welcomed are the sounds
of vinyl skipping and laptoppy sound processing. It makes a strange
mixture, maybe even a mixture that seems impossible, but much to my
surprise it works well. Maybe it does, because the sounds are placed
next to eachother and are not mixed through each other. The guitar
tunes are relatively simple, and the additional sounds are also kept
to a minimum. I can imagine that people who don’t like singing might
be put off by the voice (I must say I am not always to pleased by it)
and some of the used reverb is a bit annoying. But in general it’s a
nice album – the acoustic guitar album Fennesz has not made yet…
(FdW)
Address: www.pieheadrecords.com
ANTON NIKKILA – WHITE NIGHTS (CD by N&B Research Digest)
Not just one of the driving forces behind the Avanto Helsinki Media
Art festival, Nikkila is also a musician himself. This new CD is a
follow up to his 1998 release ‘Formalist’ (which was reviewed in
Vital Weekly 138) and blends together two fascinations from Nikkila:
classic muzak and the Soviet cult of technology. Tracks are held
together by strangely compiled rhythms, which do hint at techno but
which are most certainly not techno, because too slow and too weird.
These rhythms we may see as machines? Maybe. The music that goes
along with it are samples from the world of muzak. Orchestral loops
of a lighter nature. For most of the pieces it’s a strange
combination, that not necessiraly works well. In the last two pieces
it works well. The light string sounds with a muzak like rhythm and
the gabberesq rhythms and vocoded voices of ‘Cobol’ are coherent. The
eight other pieces are ok, but have a strange marriage. But after
some repeated listens things turn out more positive. Nice CD. (FdW)
Address: www.nbresearchdigest.com
DACM – SHOWROOM DUMMIES (CD by Mego)
Although this CD is credited to DACM, the music is by Peter Rehberg.
DACM is a dance company based in Grenoble who invited Peter Rehberg
to compose music for a dance piece. Also included was theatre,
puppets and fine arts. If you ever went to a concert by Rehberg or
bought one of his records, one might be surprised when hearing this.
Gone is the laptop mayhem, the noisy weirdness of plug ins running
amok. The eleven pieces are in fact quite rhythmical with orchestral
samples and of course the usual plug in stuff. However, Rehberg never
goes over the top and offers a side of his which we haven’t
encountered yet. I’m pretty sure that his previous work was composed
(but to many it never sounded like that), but these pieces are well
thought and stand very well by themselves, ie without seeing the
choreography which this was created for. An excellent, surprising
release. (FdW)
Address: www.mego.at