ELASTIC SOCIETY – GOD BLESS ELECTRONIC MUSIC (CD by Minus Habens)
SCIENCE FORCE – CONFUSION (CD by Minus Habens)
VISION OF EXCESS – SENSITIVE DISRUPTION (CD by Minus Habens)
AIDAN BAKER/MATT BORGHI – UNDERCURRENTS (CD by Zenapolae)
JOE COLLEY – PSYCHIC STRESS SOUNDTRACKS (CD by Antifrost)
TAXONOMY – A GLOBAL TAXONOMICAL MACHINE (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
OFF THE SKY – GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM (CD by Databloem)
TOM HEASLEY – DESERT TRIPTICH (CD by Farfield Records)
STEVE RODEN – TRANSMISSIONS (VOICES OF OBJECTS AND SKIES) (CD by Fresnomet)
STEVE RODEN – EAR(TH) (CD by Alyce De Roulet Williamson Gallery)
JEFFREY RODEN – SEEDS OF HAPPINESS PART 1 (CD by The Big Tree Music)
BENJAMIN BRUNN – MUSIC UNDER PIN (LP by Bine Music)
FLUCHTWACHT – MINDFLOOD (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
DARK VIBES/CAMILLA’S NIGHTMARE – WHITE NOISE OF DARKNESS (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
FOUTREDIEU!!! – LEAVING OFF A DEAD BOAT (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
ARTURAS BUMSTEINAS – LIVE@RIXC (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
SEAN OG – THE GARBLED MESSAGE (CDR by Humbug)
CRAZY RIVER – SOUNDS LIKE A MELON TO ME (CDR by Humbug)
MECHA/ORGA – A MAN BEHIND THE DOOR (CDR by Echo Music)
NOKALYPSE – AXIAC INFINITY (CDR by Echo Music)
THE ORGANISATION OF SOUND – OFFICE MUSIC (CDR by Yousns)
DERFLA/MANIAC MANSION – AMY OF A THOUSAND MOONS (CDR, private)
@C – 48 (3″CD by Grain Of Sound/Ristretto)
ELASTIC SOCIETY – GOD BLESS ELECTRONIC MUSIC (CD by Minus Habens)
SCIENCE FORCE – CONFUSION (CD by Minus Habens)
VISION OF EXCESS – SENSITIVE DISRUPTION (CD by Minus Habens)
Italy’s Minus Habens label exist already since 1987 and there was a time that I heard pretty much every new release by them, but not in the past recent years. Some of the releases are perhaps a bit older, but worth mentioning. In all those years that Minus Habens exist, they have released electronic music with a strong rhythmic edge: industrialized at its inception, later on to be techno. So I must admit I am not really surprised to find hip hop rhythms and rap on the new release by Elastic Society. The raps however do not come to us in ‘real life’ but in a sampled form, like in trip hop (but here with a higher tempo) and at least some of the time. Horny sighing is also an integral part of many of the tracks, making this, I think, the product of a white man wanting to be a black R&B producer: golden chains, chicks and cars, but somehow they miss out the real thing. Elastic Society is at their best when they do something I don’t like: singing real raps over a set of rather uptempo beats, such as in ‘Key Paradise’. It’s music that I don’t like very much, but here at least something sparks.
Partly along similar lines move Science Force, also a band/project I know nothing about. Science Force uses sampled raps too, but to a much lesser extent, and dwell more on rhythm and samples (trumpets, voices (sometimes Bjork like, but sung by Valentina Grande), guitars). The rhythms are part techno, part break-beat and part hip hop, but throughout a very ‘full’ sound – in every inch there some sound smeared. As you can probably imagine I am much more pleased with Science Force than Elastic Society, since I am not no lover of too many vocals in music. I can imagine Science Force’s being played in a club were dancing is no necessity, but were one could also easily chill out and relax. With the sun shining down hard on these headquarters, this is the perfect soundtrack for relaxing and a cold cocktail.
An older release worth mentioning is Vision Of Excess, aka Paul Browse, who was once part of Clock DVA, but also worked as System 01, Effective Force and 030, who teams up with Nirto Karsten Fischer. Together they produced an album of hybryd techno, drum & bass and breakbeat. In a couple of tracks they use the voice of Robert Anton Wilson, but that sounds like a skam to sell a few extra copies to my cynical mind. At times the material is pretty dark, doom and gloom, but somehow there is also room a spark of light. Certainly not the most accessible material, and one could wonder if the dancefloor would all go crazy of this, but throughout quite nice, with it’s length as the only thing working against it. (FdW)
Address: http://www.minushabens.com
AIDAN BAKER/MATT BORGHI – UNDERCURRENTS (CD by Zenapolae)
This album is totally in the nice tradition of ambient music, totally calm and peaceful. Nothing harsh happens and the intensity is kept on the lowest level. The main sounds are the atmospheric ones and also the classic piano tones which drop in occasionally. Something that sounds like field recordings also appears, but quite blurry and only with an aim of creating an atmosphere, not to surprise or shock, but just gently surrounding you with sound. It’s in the best traditions of some of the greatest space ambient composers, as Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana and Robert Rich. Nice and calm, surrounding you with an atmosphere of peace. (BR)
Address: http://www.zenapolae.com
JOE COLLEY – PSYCHIC STRESS SOUNDTRACKS (CD by Antifrost)
‘For those who gave up too soon’, it says on the cover, and I wonder who they are, as Joe Colley doesn’t tell us. Over the years, Colley came from a background in industrial music under the banner of Crawl Unit and his own Povertech label, but since more recent times, he solely uses his own name. Maybe those who gave up too soon as those who couldn’t stand his ‘Psychic Stress Soundtracks’? Music made to work on the senses aren’t a new thing since John Duncan’s ‘Stress Chamber’ or Mark Bain’s similar container. But on a CD one might be a bit lost as to the psychic effects. Colley offers five pieces of extreme sound frequencies, with very high end and low end sounds, chopped up into small rhythms and argumented with larger chunks of more ongoing sounds and crackles of toys being smashed with a contactmicrophone. It’s a very physical soundtrack, as the music goes from soft to quite loud all the time. Maybe Colley’s soundtrack is meant to be used at Guatanamo Bay (which, as I recently saw on TV uses ‘Subhuman’ by Throbbing Gristle in their training program – that wouldn’t crack me)? Played through headphones on a loud volume and on repeat for a couple of hours, this would maybe crack the faint at heart. Maybe Colley makes a comment on that? His music is definitely the missing link between die-hard noise and a much more intelligent approach to sound and that alone makes this into a well-enjoyable release. Excellent noise – especially when not played under duress. (FdW)
Address: http://www.antifrost.gr
TAXONOMY – A GLOBAL TAXONOMICAL MACHINE (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
Taxonomy is a project by self taught musician and composer Elio Martusciello. Electro-acoustic music has his main interest, but he also likes to be involved in live improvisation. His collaborations are many. As Schismophonia he forms a duo with guitarist Mike Cooper. He released albums together with his brother Maurizio. And of course we should not forget to mention Ossatura, his trio with Fabrizio Spera and Luca Venitucci. His newest project is also of a trio format. Taxonomy is Graziano Lella (computer), Roberto Fega (sampling and signal processing) and Martusciello himself on guitar and electronics.
Fega is originally a sax and clarinet player who started his career in the avant-garde rock group Dura Figura. The same for bass player and sax-player Lella . Both discovered through workshops by Tim Hodgkinson a.o. new territories. And now with Taxonomy they enter the world of electro-acoustic and musique concrete.
In 9 pieces they give a demonstration of their craftsmanship. According to the liner notes all tracks are composed by the three musicians, but I suppose improvisation played a role in the composing process. In most pieces they make use of a wide dynamic range. Noisy and loud sections disappear in long silent parts. Sound or prerecorded music coming from acoustical instruments is followed by and mixed up with electronic soundsources. All tracks are built up in their own way and are colored by specific sounds. A track like ‘Behind Me’ is the outsider on this album. Its a long and silent track. Not much happening here, where as in most pieces it is an ongoing busyness of all kinds of sounds. The album is very well produced. The music sounds very clear, and so its impossible to miss any detail. (DM)
Address: http://www.actuellecd.com/
OFF THE SKY – GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM (CD by Databloem)
Following hot on the heels of those other new releases by Databloem (see Vital Weekly 479) follows a CD by Off The Sky, the project of Jason Corder and a name chosen by misunderstanding a line from Trainspotting. Jason Corder lives in Kentucky and he likes Monolake, Gas and Fennesz – the latter’s influence on Off The Sky may be limited, but the other two names can be well spotted. Rhythm and ambient music have a successful marriage here. A nice laid-back, dubby bass-line and a wall of synthesizers, either analogue or derived from the computer, fill in every empty space under the sky. Just very occasionally he uses elements from glitch music such as the ending crackles of ‘Floating Point’. Like before and probably long after this, ambient music, wether or not in combination with rhythm, be it techno or ethnic (and Off The Sky uses both ends of this spectrum), is a well-explored path, and as such there is nothing new under the sun, but altogether this is very nice music – a pleasant ride in the sky, or just to flow gentle down the stream. Mood music that some people just don’t get enough of. (FdW)
Address: http://www.databloem.com
TOM HEASLEY – DESERT TRIPTICH (CD by Farfield Records)
The first time I heard Tom Heasley’s music was on his CD ‘On The Sensations Of Tone’, where he played tuba, throat singing and electronica and had woven a very fine pattern of ambient music (see Vital Weekly 332). The tuba is left at home on this new release and replaced by the didjeridu – an instrument that is more likely to be connected with ambient music. The three desert pieces are all recorded in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – certainly not a desert place at all. Both the voice and electronics are still in place and since this is a live recording, didjeridu and voice not at the same time. Heasley adds a long line of sound effects (echo, reverb and what have you) to these primary sounds and quite naturally a web of spacious music emerges from this. Like noted with the release from Off The Sky (see elsewhere) ambient music is a bit of a dead end, and whereas Off The Sky adds rhythm to his palette, Heasley stays very close to the original ambient music, with just a few sound sources, electronics and certainly no rhythm. Well done, hovering closely on the edge of new age, but not crossing that border this is a more than excellent ambient disc, that yet again won’t disappoint the die-hard fans of the genre. (FdW)
Address: http://www.ambientmusic.co.uk
STEVE RODEN – TRANSMISSIONS (VOICES OF OBJECTS AND SKIES) (CD by Fresnomet)
STEVE RODEN – EAR(TH) (CD by Alyce De Roulet Williamson Gallery)
JEFFREY RODEN – SEEDS OF HAPPINESS PART 1 (CD by The Big Tree Music)
Things have been quiet for Steve Roden, well on the side of releasing CDs as no doubt he’s busy with sound installations and paintings. These two new CDs deal with those installations. ‘Transmissions’ (Voices Of Objects And Skies)’ is about John Glenn’s first transmission from space, as well as Arthur Rimbaud’s poem ‘Vowels’. The installation consists of tin cans, 102 in total. 64 had small audio speakers and the other 4 watt colored light-bulbs. On the 64 speakers an eight-channel sound piece was heard, reduced to a stereo mix on this CD. The source material are ‘recordings of satellites by amateur astronomers from the 1960s through the 1980s’. In the usual Steve Roden fashion he treats those sounds very carefully, by cutting them into loops and have them on repeat, but he creates an illusion, as they are not fully on similar repeat, as the work grows denser over the course of time as slighter similar sounds move in and out. Similar loops of a varying length make that this work is never the same throughout and constantly changing and makes this into a highly captivating sound-work, along his recent CDs on Bottrop-boy.
Something more to look at is the catalogue of ‘Ear(th)’, which has photographs of the installation and a lot of text. The installation uses 80 glockenspiel bars and robot arms to strike them, using a score made related ‘of the earth’s movement during an earthquake’. The piece on the CD is the unaltered field recording of the installation recorded in the exhibition space. Here too, but then twice as long as the other CD, the work is of an entire minimalism and without any drama or movements. Designed to be played at a low volume this work, it resembles Christina Kubisch’ CDs on Semishigure. Very minimal, almost meditative in approach, this is an even more minimal work than ‘Transmissions’, and like Kubisch, this works best when played at a soft volume for a day or two – that is if you have the time.
Jeffrey Roden is a not a typo – it’s Steve Roden’s uncle. While his music is totally unrelated to that of Steve, I take this opportunity to review it alongside Steve’s. Jeffrey plays solo bass music on a ‘1961 fender precision bass with the inclusion of a lindsey fralin jazz bass pickup, with lakland “joe osborn” strings and an ampeg rocket bass amplifier’. All twelve pieces were recorded live and last between 1:46 and 3:33. Although Jeffrey uses overdubs, no loops or any sort of electronics are used. Although also minimal in approach, this is much more ‘music’ than Steve does, but the solo bass is perhaps not an instrument to play solo. Roden plays it quite ‘normal’, straightforward. Although the idea is pretty much alright, it’s not music that made a big impression on me, rather more an exercise of good skill than something to grab the listener. Well made, but for whom? (FdW)
Address: http://www.fresnomet.org
Address: http://www.inbetweennoise.com
Address: http://www.thebigtreemusic.com
BENJAMIN BRUNN – MUSIC UNDER PIN (LP by Bine Music)
A good idea: present four track by the unknown Benjamin Brunn on one side and offer four remixes by some well-known chums on the other and there might be some stir. Brunn composes all his music using one Nord modular patch (a machine also frequently used by Frank Bretschneider), except ‘Echlaid-backoes Of BCN’, which uses solely sounds from the streets of Barcelona. In the three Nord tracks, Brunn proofs to be a good listener to the work of Bretschneider, SND and a whole bunch of other micro-beat composers. Music with a downbeat groove, dubby and overall minimalist. With the barest minimum of sound information, Brunn tries to achieve the maximum, and he succeeds quite well. Of course the material is not overtly new or innovative, but it passes the test. The short Barcelona is a different affair, and it would be good to have this longer – maybe a new direction. On the b-side a remix by Move D (well-known from his releases on Fax, Source and Warp), who doesn’t add much else to the mix, save maybe for some extra synth-lines. Scanner’s remix is more full of sound and presents a rather ‘busy’ mix. Thomas Touzimsky stays also close to the original music but seems a bit lighter in approach. Only the mix by Alexander Wendt takes the material into more ambient areas. Despite these various reservations, this turned out to be a nice record, nothing demanding on a hot day like this. (FdW)
Address: http://www.binemusic.de
FLUCHTWACHT – MINDFLOOD (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
DARK VIBES/CAMILLA’S NIGHTMARE – WHITE NOISE OF DARKNESS (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
FOUTREDIEU!!! – LEAVING OFF A DEAD BOAT (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
ARTURAS BUMSTEINAS – LIVE@RIXC (CDR by Organic Pipeline)
Slowly the Organic Pipeline is expanding and these four new releases show their interest in noise, although there are exceptions. Not with Fluchtwacht, aka D. Simon from Germany. His previous releases were on Apocalyptic Radio and Verato Project (see Vital Weekly 453 and 460), with the latter being the highlight so far. On ‘Mindflood’ he continues the mechanical, industrialized rhythms fed through a bunch of distortion pedals and in the end-process of mastering this release, he added a few DBs. This makes this release into a particular loud affair, along the lines of very early Esplendor Geometrico, but Fluchtwacht manages to excercise control over the piece and thus manages to make another landmark. For die-hard industrialists that is.
Also on the noise side of things is the split release between Dark Vibes and Camilla’s Nightmare, both from Danmark. Dark Vibes had a track on the ‘Noise Decay And Such From Denmark’ compilation (see Vital Weekly 449), but weren’t mentioned in the review because they probably made no big impression. Likewise they still fail to do so here. Their noise consists of feedback, distortion and screams. There is some banging on the table, but the aggression doesn’t work. Camilla’s Nightmare (probably Prince Charles?) are new and downright from the grunting of ‘Welcome To Slavery’, we know this a fifth rate copy at work. No real aggression, no real distortion – let’s forget this.
The previous Foutredieu!!! release I encountered was a split release with Iversen (see Vital Weekly 441) and he seemed to have an interest in combining more introspective dark music with some noise outbursts. This is a style that Martin Sasseville, aka Foutredieu!!! continues here in this manner, and like before then noise side of his music doesn’t appeal to me very much, but the darker ambient pieces are quite alright, although not great. It’s the sort of material that has been done before, and in many cases much better.
The final release is by Arturas Bumsteinas, whose ‘This Uniform’ was very well received at this office – see Vital Weekly 473. This release shows Organic Pipeline’s interest in other music than just noise. As the title suggests, this is a live recording, made in the media center Rixc in Riga, in 2004. As said, no noise here, just a deep ambient drone piece that is entirely made of very deep, ambient sounds that sounds like the hum of a washing machine being processed through a bunch of hungry DSP plug ins. Although this is quite a nice work, it’s a bit too long and unfortunately the lesser one, compared to ‘This Uniform’. That was full of joy and original approaches, which this work somehow lacks. A sort of too standard micro-sounding release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.organicpipeline.com
SEAN OG – THE GARBLED MESSAGE (CDR by Humbug)
CRAZY RIVER – SOUNDS LIKE A MELON TO ME (CDR by Humbug)
On the first release by Sean Og, ‘Very Little Is Weightless’, he played rumpophone, glockenspiel, tenor and soprano saxophones, autoharp, synthesizers, guitar, percussion, no-input-desk, piano and flute (see Vital Weekly 464), but on ‘The Garbled Message’ he limits himself to woodwinds and prepared piano (although on one track there is extra percussion and on another extra percussion, trumpet and tenor sax). Whereas the previous showed traces of folk music, but it had a jazzy track too. It seems like Sean Og expanded on that track to work on some more jazzy tunes. On this CDR one can find pure jazzy tunes, such as ‘Clover’ and ‘Clover Solo’, but also pure solo prepared piano pieces and a combination of the two. This makes this into a well-varied CD, with moody jazz pieces, electro-acoustic experimentation and a wonderful mixture thereof. Very pleasant indeed.
Crazy River is Per Galaen from Trondheim and it’s a new name for me. The eleven tracks try everything to confuse the listener: it got elements of noise, singer/songwriter stuff, drone elements, lofi popmusic. It seems almost like Crazy River doesn’t want any two tracks to be similar. One would think this would lead to a very incoherent release but it doesn’t. The lo-fi character of all the pieces make this sounding very coherent album of outsider music. Some of the piece might be a bit long for what they have to offer, but that’s, I believe, part of the deal Someone who is perhaps schizophrenic as to what he would like to do with his music and which way to turn, but someone who rightfully stays firm on the whatever he chooses to do. I think we could call that ‘total freedom’. (FdW)
Address: http://www.tibprod.com/humbug.htm
MECHA/ORGA – A MAN BEHIND THE DOOR (CDR by Echo Music)
NOKALYPSE – AXIAC INFINITY (CDR by Echo Music)
One morning, last winter Yiorgis Sekellariou went to a friends house and recorded some improvisations on the piano onto his laptop. As Mecha/Orga he now presents the result on his second CDR release, following ‘Float’ (see Vital Weekly 466). The fact that the works was recorded onto a laptop is quite important to realize. Not a minidisc, a cassette or a DAT machine, but recorded straight into the heart of a machine that can transform the sounds, even when the first couple of pieces on ‘A Man Behind The Door’ sounds like a piano improvisation and nothing much else. But as the release progresses, computer processing start playing at first a small role and than, gradually, more and more, until it reaches the twelfth track which consists entirely of computer processed piano sounds. Most of the playing is done traditionally on the keys, but also, along similar lines as the building up of the computer sounds, the inside of the piano is also played. This is quite a break away from the ‘Float’ release, but it is a strong leap forwards. Some truly captivating stuff on here.
On Sekellariou’s own Echo Music is also a release by Nokalypse, aka Themis Pantelopoulos, of whom I never heard before. ‘Eleven short and long music pieces simulating the order and disorder of infinity’ it says on the note that goes with the release, and Nokalypse stays firmly inside the field of electro-acoustic music: acoustic sounds being processed beyond belief inside the computer. He opts for a louder sound than many others in the field of this kind of lowercase and microsound. His processes of sound are loud and minimal, and the minimal thing is the also the thing that is the weakness here. His pieces set out to do one or two courses and than the piece evolves around those one or two parameters, but nothing more seems to happen. Given the length of some of these pieces being a bit too long, this would have benefitted from some more editing. But the sounds and sources are in itself quite nice, so a promise for the future. (FdW)
Address: <echomusic@mailbox.gr>
THE ORGANISATION OF SOUND – OFFICE MUSIC (CDR by Yousns)
DERFLA/MANIAC MANSION – AMY OF A THOUSAND MOONS (CDR, private)
Somewhere vaguely I do recall hearing the music of Christian H. Sötemann, from Germany. I remember it being slow, ambient guitar music that was along the lines of Main. But he disappeared out of my sight again, until this release pops up by the unknown Yousns label, under a new moniker The Organisation Of Sound. Sötemann plays again the guitar, but the minimal ambient aspect is by and large gone. Playing guitar quite regularly, feeding it through a line of sound effects and other electronic gadgets, this is just occasionally playing the deep moods through the use of an e-bow, but just as occasionally things are distorted. Limping on two feet, which is a pity. Maybe it’s a better if Sötemann explored one aspect further, like say the ambient or the noise side, but now it seems as if he can’t make up his mind. But there are some pretty alright piece included in this limited (thirty copies) package.
From the same source comes a no less than 160
minute release by Derfla and Maniac Mansion, the latter having previous releases on Yousns. Forty four tracks of two guys singing and playing keyboards and guitar, being Derfla doing the words and Maniac Mansion, aka Ben Teeter, doing all instruments and it comes across like a less weird version of Jad Fair, but probably with the same productivity. Sometimes tracks sound quite similar, and at this length boredom will leap in, at least for someone like me. This is what I liked at LPs, at tirthy-five minutes, people like Derfla and Maniac Mansion would have chosen their 8-10 best tracks and be a bit more critical, but at a CDR, or even two of them, the whole idea of being critical is gone and the listener is dully invited to make his own selection. You can see as something positive too, but maybe I prefer to be lazy and have the selection made for me. Some tracks are no doubt quite nice. (FdW)
Address: http://www.yousns.com
@C – 48 (3″CD by Grain Of Sound/Ristretto)
The members of the Portugese group @C, once a trio now a duo (Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais), are also responsible for the Cronica Electronica label, and if you are a bit familiar with their releases, so you know what to expect from @C (I’m freely assuming here that their own musical efforts are along similar lines here and not diametrical different). @C’s music is based on ‘algorithmic composition, concrete sounds and improvisation”. The recordings are perhaps made during several of their concerts, and later chopped, reorganized or re-plugged inside the duo’s laptops. In the past the music was more noise and rhythm, along the lines of Pan Sonic and Mego, but these twenty minutes show a step forward, something more quiet and calm, something more thought out and worked out. Maybe the improvisational element still doesn’t convince me very much, but the static crackles, hiss colliding with hasty disappearing drones sound pretty decent and decisively lowercase by all means. A good progression is noted. (FdW)
Address: http://www.grainofsound.com/ristretto