JACOB KIRKEGAARD – ELDFJALL (CD by Touch)
FROZEN RABBIT – 26,000 (CD by Dehausset Records)
CONNECT_ICUT – MOSS (CD by Dehausset Records)
ROCCHETTI, FHIEVEL, SIGURTA – POCKET PROGRESSIVE (CD by Creative Sources Recordings)
THIGHPAULSANDRA – DOUBLE VULGAR 2 (CD by Beta Lactam Ring Records)
COLIN ANDREW SHEFFIELD – FIRST THUS (CD by Elevator Bath)
ILYA MONOSOV – ARCHITECTURES ON AIR AND OTHER WORKS (CD by Elevator Bath)
ADAM PACIONE – HEAT (CDREP by Primary Records)
THOLLEM MCDONAS & RICK RIVERA – EVERYTHING’S GOING EVERYWHERE (CD by Edgetone Records)
ALL SPEC KIT – BUSY TOPIC (CD by Komplott)
PAMELA Z – A DELAY IS BETTER (CD by Starkland)
BURN LIKE NERO – CITIES AND STARS (CDR by Silver Plastic Records)
EH FACTOR – PURE SYNTH FOR SYNTHETIC PEOPLE (CDR by Silver Plastic Records)
CHEAPMACHINES – DRONE WORKS #8 (CDREP by Twenty Hertz)
COLIN POTTER/PAUL BRADLEY – LIVE (CDR by Twenty Hertz)
MICHEAL RENKEL/LUCA VENITUCCI – STILL (CDR by L’innomable)
CRIA CUERVOS – LEITFOSSILIEN (CDR by Mystery Sea)
ZONE GRISE 00 (CDR compilation by Zone Grise/Monochrome)
POLYCHROME (2×3″CDR by Zone Grise/Monochrome)
HIDDE VAN SCHIE – THE QUIET RIDE HOME: LUNGS FULL OF MIST (MP3 by Esc.Rec)
JACOB KIRKEGAARD – ELDFJALL (CD by Touch)
Maybe the term ‘Geothermal Recordings’ don’t mean much to you, but roughly speaking it’s sticking a microphone in the ground and record the earth’s vibrations. Kirkegaard has done this in the area of Krisuvik, Geysir and Myvatn in Iceland, using of course not a simple radio shack microphone, but accelerometers, which are vibration sensor microphones. They pick up the sonic aspects of volcanic activity at the surface of the earth. The liner notes aren’t very clear as to what Kirkegaard has done with those recordings, ie somesort of processing afterwards. Or maybe these are straight forward recordings? That could also be possible, upon playing these nine tracks it is hard to tell. Whereas as his previous solo CD ‘01.02’ (see Vital Weekly 355) was mostly a pleasent, ambientesque journey through modern life, this ‘Eldfjall’ is a rather dark environmental walk. Less pleasent by all means, these unearthy rumbles are closer to ‘industrial’ (I’m sure many find this an out of place word here) music than to ambient. Not that Kirkegaard plays harsh music but it’s all quite dark and alienated. It’s a fascinating journey however of quite uneasy sounds. Captivating! (FdW)
Address: http://www.touchmusic.org.uk
FROZEN RABBIT – 26,000 (CD by Dehausset Records)
CONNECT_ICUT – MOSS (CD by Dehausset Records)
It’s most likely not wrong to say that I never liked Skinny Puppy that much, but that the various off-shoots, such as Plateau, were more spend on me. Phil Western was a member of Skinny Puppy, Download and Plateau and in Frozen Rabbit he teams up with one Tim Hill of Living With Mould Orchestra, of whom I never heard. They have worked together before, and I am told that was dancefloor-ready techno. But on ‘26,000’ all the beats are gone and they move into the world of ambient music. Ambient music of a somewhat different kind, with darker edges. Although I played this CD a couple of times, and each spin I thought this is an alright CD, it’s also not really a surprising one. Good ambient background music, to do all the necessary things in life, and the music floats by without noting it too much. Nice enough, but within the well-known genre not great.
Also on the same label (which is an off-shoot of vinyl specialists Flesh Eating Ants Records) the debut of the nicely named Connect_icut, which is Sam Macklin from Vancouver. He is also a member of ‘outside pop group Interim Lovers, freefolk ensemble The Bastion News, retro-rock orchestra The Countless Jibes and improvising electronics duo North Shore Academy Of Dance’ – for every style a band, and in this way Connect_icut should be seen. In this solo project he dabbles around in a variety of electronic musics: from the deep ambient end of ‘Omsk-F’ to a poppy version of noise in ‘Blood On The Beach’. In between Oval influences can be spotted, glitchy guitar processing or even progressive rock synth lines (in ‘Galadriel’). It seems that Connect_icut wants to show off his all his talents in producing electronic music and I must say that, even when nothing is truly original in this lot, he gets away with this variety of musics. It’s quite entertaining to hear. Tracks are never too long and hold enough variation in each track and throughout the album to make it a promising debut. (FdW)
Address: http://www.flesheatingants.com
ROCCHETTI, FHIEVEL, SIGURTA – POCKET PROGRESSIVE (CD by Creative Sources Recordings)
This is my first contact with music from this label and it is a good start. The three musicians above recorded this CD in two days and needed two days more for editing and mastering. That is quick, but lucky for us, it is apparently enough time to to produce a good CD. The disc contains two tracks, the first one 22:36 minutes and the second 11:37 minutes. It is quite obviously an improvisation that we hear, but of course only the good parts are left, forming strong sets of quiet sounds from field recordings, electronics and different objects. It actually reminded me in more than one way of live performances by Kapotte Muziek. The ingredients are practically the same and so is the way things are built up. Of course Rocchetti, Fhievel and Sigurta have their distinctly own signature and this makes it all the more fun to listen to (for me anyway). They give each other ample time and space for parts to develop and sounds to become embedded in the whole atmosphere. There are some odd things going on here and there, but they are exactly the ones needed to give everything a certain edge now and then. It takes time for this music to sink in and also it needs a certain quietness around the listener, but if these conditions are more or less met, the reward will be yours. (MR)
Address: http://www.creativesourcesrec.com
THIGHPAULSANDRA – DOUBLE VULGAR 2 (CD by Beta Lactam Ring Records)
Believe it or not, I was never a big Coil fan, so I just knew Thighpaulsandra is an occassional member of Coil (or should that be ‘was’?) and has recorded with Julian Cope in the past. I didn’t know that Cope and Thighpaulsandra did a CD together under the banner of Anal, ‘Zero Beats Per Minute’ (see Vital Weekly 65!). Thighpaulsandra likes his things to be progressive – which is, I think, a term to indicate that the music is not so progressive, but rather retro seventies krautrock. ‘Double Vulgar 2’ is my first encounter with his solo music. Thighpaulsandra is all over the musical place, from heavy long guitar solos, loads of drums, trumpets blerring, vocals in exctasy and much more. Maybe it’s because the use of psychedelic substances is never well spend on me, that I fail to really get sucked into this music. Occassionally I mumble to myself: alright quite nice bit, but especially with the longer instrumental jams I have a bit of trouble. Spanning almost eighty minutes (on three LPs, in case you are a vinyl freak), this is a lenghty and spacey affair, a true kaleidoscopic affair. My favourite bits however is not entirely the full eighty minutes, but erm say a quarter of that. (FdW)
Address: http://www.blrrecords.com
COLIN ANDREW SHEFFIELD – FIRST THUS (CD by Elevator Bath)
ILYA MONOSOV – ARCHITECTURES ON AIR AND OTHER WORKS (CD by Elevator Bath)
ADAM PACIONE – HEAT (CDREP by Primary Records)
The man behind the Elevator Bath label is one Colin Andrew Sheffield, and ‘First Thus’ is his first solo CD (which I couldn’t believe, but I’m sure he’s right there). First thus is a term from the world of books, meaning not the first edition, but the first printing of a new version of the book. Translated to his CD, Sheffield uses soundsources from commercially available recordings, but processes them to a wide extent. The first time in a new setting, so to speak. Three lenghty (and one short) slabs of ambient music is the result. Via computer means it’s of course possible to treat anything beyond recognition and create a warm, atmospheric bed for anything, and Sheffield’s work is no different. Nice works for sure, but somehow a bit without his own touch, his own trademark. Now it’s a bit of faceless work in the already crowded bin of ambient music. It would have been nice to know what he sampled though.
Ilya Monosov has released a couple of works on Elevator Bath, Bremstrahlung and Eclipse, but here too, this is his first solo work. Six pieces, of which three are solo and two in collaboration with Civyiu Kkliu and one with Larry Polansky. Monosov can be regarded as a conceptual composer: he thinks out an idea before he is recording something and then sets on to produce the piece. It would be too indepth to describe what he does (extended liner notes are on the cover), but the results are quite nice. From the high pitched droney opening of ‘Music For Electronics And Hurdy Gurdy (2)’ to the closing collage of ‘Architectures On Air’, this release moves quite nicely in the realms of serious composed music, including heavy weight drone, musique concrete and conceptual noise (such as ‘Performance 1’ with Kkliu). In case you didn’t pick up on his work before, this is a good place to start.
Also on Elevator Bath, but then on the subdivision Primary Records, a CDREP by one Adam Pacione. As a photographer he spent years ‘trying to capture emotion in silver’, and now he tries to do that in sound. The five pieces here, spanning twenty-one minutes flow into eachother and are ‘inspired by the lasting effects of heat on the mind and body’. As soundsources he uses field recordings, found sounds, samples and keyboards. Despite the heavy weight theme, this is quite a relaxing piece of ambient music, in which all the original sounds are blurred and slowly cooked into a boiling swirl of sound (excuse the metaphors). The third movement reminded me of William Basinski’s slow moving works and throughout the five pieces lots of ambient masters are paid tribute. Pacione’s work may not be that original, but nevertheless most enjoyable. (FdW)
Address: http://www.elevatorbath.com
THOLLEM MCDONAS & RICK RIVERA – EVERYTHING’S GOING EVERYWHERE (CD by Edgetone Records)
If everything goes everywhere, does this not imply that in the end nothing goes anywhere…? Sorry for this semi-philosopichal intro that probably leads to nowhere, but I’m a little infected by the mysterious title of the new cd Thollem McDonas and Rick Rivera. A title that belongs to the same category of maximizing assertions as the title of their first cd, released a few months ago: ” I’ll meet you half way out in the middle of it all”. I think it does reveal something of McDonas’ worldview, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions now.
McDonas and Rivera are both musicians from the bay area. Allthough both are involved in numerous projects, their names didn’t cross the ocean untill very recently. They started an impressive cd-offensive. Their first one had Thollem playing piano and singing, and Rivera on drums (see for review: Vital 460). Their new one, “Evererything’s going Everywhere”, is an instrumental cd just for piano and trap set. A third CD is already announced through Pax Recordings and will contain solo recordings by Thollem McDonas. So we are witnessing here a true outburst of creativity, that hopefully will put this duo on the map.
Like the first cd it is clear that McDonas likes to integrate a great diversity of musical influences. Constantly I find myself decoding and guessing, trying to identify the specific theme, style or whatever. This may suggest that his music is nothing more than an entertaining puzzle, but that is far from the truth. I feel it is of much more importance to let you know that we have an artist here with a strong musical identity and voice of it’s own. Using a rich vocabular and a great technique McDonas tells the story he wants to tell. I’ll take the risk for sounding pathetic here, but McDonas is in touch with life and the world we live in. It’s the music we need. Music with great purity. And don’t be afraid, McDonas make his statements with humour and with a wink. In the middle of everything going everywhere McDonas knows where he has his place and the path he wants to follow. And as a dutch listener I can’t help but compare his music with that of pianoplayers/composers like Guus Jansen and Michel Braam who also use a wide spectrum of idioms treated with irony and humour.
What I like in McDonas’ pianoplaying is that even in his more serious and complex compositions, he is able to preserve a fresh and lively touch, that gives his incredible technique a very human splendour. A wide range of moods and temper pass by. Some of them politically inspired like “War is terror, terror is war”(with lyrics also on their fist CD) or “Prisons are Neither prevention nor the cure”.
The album closes with three live recorded bonustracks. The first one “Kuumba free” catches McDonas and Rivera in a live improvisation, as most other pieces on the cd are composed.
To conclude, again it’s a very rich cd these two musicians deliver, not to be missed by those interested in new music and new jazz and everybody else. Convincing and delicate music (DM).
Address: http://www.edgetonerecords.com/
ALL SPEC KIT – BUSY TOPIC (CD by Komplott)
The man behind All Spec Kit is one Andreas Kurtsson from Sweden and active in ‘experimental electronica since the mid 90s’, playing many concerts and sound installations in Sweden. I never heard of him, but that might be just my ignorance. From the sketchy drawings on the front cover I understand that Andreas uses two mini discs, two CD players and two turntables plus a whole bunch of sound effects to create his music. Whatever is on all of these pre-recorded material, it is not entirely clear. In Kurtsson’s own words he likes sounds ‘to play together, but remain deaf to each other’. These sounds collide together in a rather ungroovy yet rhythmic manner. It’s a kind of ungroovyness that makes the whole thing quite groovy. By using short samples, both on the turntable and the minidisc, this baby becomes a rhythmic affair. Kurtsson calls it popmusic, but that seems to me a bridge too far. But I must agree there is a captivating element in this music. Distorted and processed house-hold appliances, static hiss and environmental sounds, they are all used in these skecthes of music. I was reminded a bit of Paul Wirkus’ ‘Inteletto D’Amore’ or Freiband’s ‘Microbes’, though both made from a slightly different angle, the same (uneasy) groovy being present. Quite nice stuff here indeed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.komplott.com
PAMELA Z – A DELAY IS BETTER (CD by Starkland)
My problem with a lot of the serious composed music is that it almost always sounds nice, conceptually interesting, well executed but it never really seems to grab me. Pamela Z is mainly a voice artist and the twelve pieces on this CD probably display the possibilities of her voice very well, aswell that it probably also displays her skills on using technology to alter her voice. That is probably the best thing about her works: electronic processing is kept to a minimum, and only applied when necessary. That’s is an absolute fine thing about this CD. Another nice thing is the fact that Pamela Z has some humour: in ‘Geekspeak’ we hear some computer experts talking about computers and defining the difference bewteen ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’. That is funny indeed, but maybe not for the entire seven minutes. And that’s my problem with most of these pieces: in essence nice ideas, well executed but always a bit too long to hold my attention for the entire duration of the piece, let alone grab me and fascinate me. Therefore it’s all too distant for me. But on the other hand, this is not a bad CD at all, and again, an excellent introduction to the music of Pamela Z. Mixed feelings here. (FdW)
Address: http://www.starkland.com
BURN LIKE NERO – CITIES AND STARS (CDR by Silver Plastic Records)
EH FACTOR – PURE SYNTH FOR SYNTHETIC PEOPLE (CDR by Silver Plastic Records)
Yesterday I played ‘Get Ready’, the last New Order record (new one out soon), on my walkman and still being impressed by that powerful piece of popmusic, so you can imagine that I was surpised to get these CDs with references to Gary Numan and New Order. Will Burn Like Nero or eH Factor surpass their masters? Burn Like Nero is Ed Hecht and David Anderson, guided by a bunch of synthesizers, software and their own voice. ‘Thank you Gary Numan for inspiring love of the synthetic keys’. Maybe it’s because I stopped listening to Numan after ‘Telekon’ (look that up when that was), but the music of Burn Like Nero is a weak image of that of Numan, or that of New Order, for that matter. Whoever sings with Burn Like Nero liked Bernard Albrecht’s flat voice, but whereas Bernie tries to put emotion in his voice, this is not tried at Burn Like Nero. I used to have to many cassettes in the eighties like this: rhythmboxes, synthesizers and sequencers and likewise weak voices. Then it sounded ok, I guess, so it does now. But eleven of those songs is a bit long.
eH Factor is Ed Hecht of Burn Like Nero solo. He too is inspired by Gary Numan and New Order (as noted on the cover). I am not sure if he is also the vocalist for Burn Like Nero, but if he is, it sounds very different here. His solo music sounds very worked out, more produced, more upfront and his vocals more like the old Human League. The synthlines are bigger and fatter, the rhythms more complicated and the vocals less weak. The eight pieces here are much more varied and here the retro sound is no nuissance at all. It’s getting close to the robotic music of Lowfish or Solvent and I could imagine some of these pieces ending up on one of the compilations of Suction Records. This is the way it should be done. Still a far cry from say Numan or New Order, but nice enough. (FdW)
Address: http://www.silverplasticrecords.com
CHEAPMACHINES – DRONE WORKS #8 (CDREP by Twenty Hertz)
COLIN POTTER/PAUL BRADLEY – LIVE (CDR by Twenty Hertz)
There was a time when Cheapmachines frequented these pages a lot, but that was maybe a year ago or so. Since some time things are all quiet, up until this new release, the eighth one in the ‘Drone Works’ series by Twenty Hertz, so besides bandname and title, no other info. In their past work, Cheapmachines showed a big love for the noisy field recordings, which were processed into even more noisy but nevertheless intelligent pieces of musique concrete, here Cheapmachines, basically the solo project of Phil Julian of Authorized Version label, arrive at something totally alien to his previous work, but something that fits the series quite well: a twenty some minute piece of slowly evolving drone music, in which the original sources are entirely clouded, but perfectely fits the drone tradition. Cheapmachines proofs not only to make intelligent noise, but also most appropiate drone music. Nice one indeed.
On the same label, but in co-release with ICR, two labelbosses meet up: Paul Bradley (of Twenty Hertz) and Colin Potter (of ICR). They have two lengthy recordings from 2004 of their version of drone music. Bradley plays laptop and Potter is a wizzard on the use of soundeffects. At least that’s what I think. Bradley feeds his sounds into the machines of Potter and together they wave a fine pattern of dark and atmospheric sounds, in which the second piece is a little bit more hectic and slightly more disorganised, but nevertheless is still a fine piece of drone music. With these two guys being at the forefront of this kind of music in the UK, one could hardly go wrong. It is however interesting to see that they are capable of producing this kind of music with the same high standard in a live situation. They can indeed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.twentyhertz.co.uk
MICHEAL RENKEL/LUCA VENITUCCI – STILL (CDR by L’innomable)
L’Innomable is a new label from Slovenia and so far released CDRs by Matt Davies and Joel Stern and Margarida Garcia and Mattin. Works of improvised music. For the third release they found one Micheal Renkel on acoustic guitar, zither and preparations and Luca Venitucci on accordion, flight case and objects. Their three pieces were already recorded in 2002, in Berlin and are a pretty varied bunch. From frentic playing on both the guitar and the accordion, they move sometimes in a large crescendo, arriving at some more high pitched sustained sounds, that works like a nasty drone at times. The result is improvised music of the better kind, in which traditional playing is as important as new techniques of playing the instrument as object. There is no hierarchy in these instruments, although guitar and accordion play the biggest role in all three pieces. Tradition meets innovation, and that’s quite nice. (FdW)
Address: http://www.linnomable.com
CRIA CUERVOS – LEITFOSSILIEN (CDR by Mystery Sea)
I am not sure if the demo I referred too when I reviewed Cria Cuervos ‘Immanence’ in Vital Weekly 423, found it’s way to Mystery Sea, but it might very well be. Cria Cuervos returns to that first release with this new work ‘Leitfossilien’: that of deep ambient music. In one, thirty-three minute track, he depicts an obscure cloud of sound that moves throughout the piece from dark to light. It’s like a stroke of paint: filled with paint at the beginning and slowly, when putting the paint on paper, the paint disappears. Something similar happens with this music. It starts out in total darkness and ends in total light. Not that it is all that minimal of course, things move in and out, there is even a slight touch of rhythm here and there. It’s hard to tell what Cuervos is using here, soundwise, but I am sure it’s a whole bunch of software synthesizers and time stretching on probably the simplest of sounds. Not that it really matters of course, the result is what counts, at least to me. And that is fine enough! (FdW)
Address: http://www.mysterysea.net
ZONE GRISE 00 (CDR compilation by Zone Grise/Monochrome)
POLYCHROME (2×3″CDR by Zone Grise/Monochrome)
The Monochrome label recentely released a CD by David Kristian, but they are foremost a CDR label. Their Zone Grise compilation is, as far as I understand, a compilation based around the works of eight members of the Zone Grise collective, who each plays around with field recordings, synthesized sounds and other sound synthesis and granulations based upon the use of the laptop. Many of the works evolve around one specific theme, such as the railway station announcements, concrete sounds or radio waves. They are nice though not really surprising tracks, some are noisy and some are more along the lines of microsound. Throughout its a most enjoyable CD. A pity though that the credits are in the wrong and in French. Participating artists include Patrice Coulombe, Samuel St-Aubin, Hugo Cantin, Charles-Alexander Gregoire, Sylvain Aube, Francois Blouin, Benjamin Proux and Vera Ronkos.
Along similar lines is the double 3″CDR by Polychrome, which is a collaboration between Charles-Alexander Gregoire, aka Polysemique and Sylvain Aube aka Monochrome. Their joint work include field recordings, computers and concrete sounds. Like with the compilation, this is all done in a microsounding matter, carefull crackles, fireworks and people talking, plug ins and outs. Nice again, but also again: not the greatest thing. (FdW)
Address: http://www.zonegrise.monochrome.ca
HIDDE VAN SCHIE – THE QUIET RIDE HOME: LUNGS FULL OF MIST (MP3 by Esc.Rec)
Originally Hidde van Schie is a visual artist, but these six tracks are the first result of himself as a musician. The guitar plays the leading part in these tracks, save for some computer processing and on ‘First Time’ there are bell-like sounds. But it’s mostly the guitar that tinkles away in these recordings. It’s hard to avoid, but post-rock is the thing that springs to mind here, but it’s a very raw form of post-rock. The recording quality is not all to great, but it adds to the some raw and intimate atmosphere. Like the titles suggest, this is a melancholical release. Water, mist and quiet train rides are the subject of this release. As a first attempt it’s nice but not great. But it surely can grow from here. (FdW)
Address: http://www.escrec.com/
correction: the website address for FDH is http://fdh.atspace.com (see Vital Weekly 463). Lee Kwang Goh lets us know that he doesn’t play turntables (or samplers), but just a DJ mixer. Lau Mun Leng plays a 60s Jupiter 4 keyboard and no turntable either; this in addition to the reviews in Vital Weekly 465)