JOHN DUNCAN (Book + CD by Errant Bodies Press)
The downside of reviewing is of course that within the small piece of text an artists has to be introduced and that doesn’t always justify the artist’s work. Take for instance John Duncan. Whenever he releases a new work, in such a few lines his whole body of work has to described, but if you are active in the world of experimental music, performance art and installations, and this for over thirty years, it doesn’t nearly justify it. This book doesn’t paint the complete picture either, but it gets close. His early performances were quite controversial, his work with pornography much rumored and as a musician of the more radical noise music, he was always way ahead of his time. In this book you’ll find photo’s, text and explanations of his work that will shed more light on his work, than this simple review could do. Apart from texts by various long time close relatives of Duncan, such as C.M. von Hauswolff, Brandon Labelle, Paul McCarthy, Giuliana Stefani also drawings by Leif Elggren and Tom Recchion.
On the CD five pieces, two from the early days, two from the nineties and one from the more recent years. It’s interesting to see how the shortwave sounds, Duncan’s prime instrument, had developed over the years. In ‘Creed’, it forms the backbone as well as a radio taped conversation between Duncan and talkshow host Dr. Toni Grant, to the more crude ‘Riot’ and the refined pieces of later date. Better microphones and means of storage, plus the addition of field recordings make these perhaps to a lesser ‘extent’ noise, certainly in ‘Crucible’, but it’s certainly nice to hear this development, and which no doubt will continue to develop. Duncan is still a remarkable and still a highly controversial artist, who is one of the big shots in the ‘scene’. You could wonder why it took so long to get this book? The only serious omission is that a complete list of work, or discography is not included in this book. (FdW)
Address: http://www.errantbodies.org
CM VON HAUSWOLFF – THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF MALE INTUITION (CD by Oral)
Probably the name Carl Micheal von Hauswolff doesn’t need much introduction. His conceptually edged releases on labels as Sub Rosa, Touch and Raster Noton deal with such subjects as architecture and voices from beyond. Here ‘The Wonderful World Of Male Intuition’ is the subject. To shed some light on it, he uses sine wave oscillators, field recordings (sea, land, outer space) but also the voices of persons important as ‘positive energies in a world that obviously is feasting on itself without knowing how to go to the toilet’, being the Dalai Lama, Willem de Ridder, Gregory Bateson, Alvin Lucier, John C. Lilly, Albert Hofmann, Friedrich Jürgenon and Brion Gysin. Many of these voices are processed through the use of the sine waves, in some way or another, which makes the voices hard to understand, but of course that is not the intent anyway. Throughout the forty some minutes, I learned nothing much about the male intuition (if that exists at all), but purely as a work of sine waves and field recordings I must say that this is a particular strong work by Hauswolff. Not too overtly minimal, leaning on his sine waves, but it’s the combination of all three components works quite well, the sine waves, field recordings and voices. It might perhaps even the best Hauswolff I ever heard (despite not having heard all, he admitted straight away). (FdW)
Address: http://www.oral.qc.ca,
FIRE IN THE HEAD – MEDITATE/MUTILATE (CD by Eibon Records)
For one reason or another, unclear however to me, Fire In The Head, aka Micheal Page, got Nicholas Blinko to sing on one of the songs. Blinko, for those not old enough or from a different planet, was/is the singer of Rudimentary Peni, a UK punkband from years and years ago. Page himself has been Fire In The Head for some time, following his membership of Slogun, and of his output so far I only heard ‘Be My Enemy’ (see Vital Weekly 505). ‘Meditate/Mutilate’ is not the album in which ambient industrial and noise are fighting battles. Fire In The Head still works much more in the realms of noise, than anything quiet or relaxing. As soon as the distortion pedal is down and something more ‘quiet’ may start, Fire In The Head is quickly there to make things dark and unpleasant. This is not something for the weak of heart, both musically and lyrically. But I must say that Fire In The Head’s noise music is not bad at all, really. Throughout these pieces there is enough variation, and not the usual half hour of howling feedback and crashing of metal sheets. His pieces might be raw, but he has put things together with great care. (FdW)
Address: http://www.eibronrecords.com
DANIELLE LEMAIRE – CONVERSATIONS (CD by Inner Landscapes)
Inside the world of music, and not just in The Netherlands, the music of Danielle Lemaire is an odd one. Many of her projects are related to art presentations, although she also contributes to the world of improvised music. Her solo work could be classified as ‘singer-songwriter’, but in a strange way. Lemaire sings and plays keyboards, although sometimes it’s more speaking than singing. Her keyboard sometimes sound like Nico’s, but Lemaire doesn’t have a similar voice. This twenty-one track collection has a lot of these tracks, but there is also strange casio tunes, and several spoken word/found sound tracks, the conversations mentioned in the title. This is highly intimate, outsider music. It doesn’t refer to any scene or musical style, Danielle Lemaire does exactly what she wants, without caring about technique or production. Song writing skills are not that important, this is about getting something personal across. At that, Lemaire succeeds pretty well. The booklet continues the intimate style, with pictures of friends (of which some can be recognized, at least here at Vital HQ: hello Jos, Dennis and Peter!). Pleasantly personal. (FdW)
Address: http://www.iae.nl/users/jada
MONOTON – BLAU – MONOTONPRODUKT 02 26Y++ (CD by Oral)
A couple of years ago, The Wire has a list (they love them) of ‘100 Records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)’ and the double Monoton LP (‘Monotonprodukt 07’) from 1982 was one of them. I remember that LP with it’s striking minimal cover well from my early days, browsing through the weirdo section of the local record store, but never having the cash to buy it. In the words of The Wire this record ‘is so alive with the pulses that triggered many Electronicas to come, from Techno through Trance to Mego’s creeping music’ and with it’s monotone sequencers, synths and alien voices (plus the sparse use of violin, saxophone and even steeldrum), this is indeed a more than welcome re-issue. The re-issue from 2002 is not at discuss here, but we do mention that another pressing has become available (thank god), but today we have ‘Blau’ (meaning ‘blue’) a record from 1980 that is now released, along with three unreleased tracks from the archive. The tracks here see a continuation of ‘Monotonprodukt 07’, even when it predates that record. The rhythms are slow, much slower than any early techno this is said to influence, feeding through a simple delay and somewhere in the background there is a minimal throb of the sequencer, or scratch on the violin. ‘Blau’ is an even more raw diamond than ‘Monotonprodukt 07’, with more minimalism in the tracks. Usually a simple, single idea per track, which is worked over it’s course. My favorite pieces are those that are based on a sequencer rather than a rhythm machine, reminding me of the urgency of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft or Liason Dangereux, but in a less pop related way, and more in classical minimal music manner. Both Monoton records bridge gaps between pop and classical music, and as such they were indeed way ahead of their time, whereas today they still sound as fresh as then. (FdW)
Address: http://www.oral.qc.ca
ALARMEN – THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOAN (CD by Audiophob)
ZERO DEGREE – ZERO DEGREE (CD by Audiophob)
German label Audiophob makes a pretty good comparison to describe the expression of fifth and latest release from the label: Equally to the information chaos, that surrounds us in the age of Internet, the listener of debut release from german artist Carsten Stiller will be flooded by sonic overload as the album is characterized by complexity and spectral extremity. All of the tracks are alternately confrontational. Even though “There is no place like hoan” first of all floats in territories of ambient with only a limited use of rhythm texture, it never falls into the state of pure tranquillity. Deep rumbling drones lie underneath soundscapes of waving ambient reminiscent of the early days of Warp Records meanwhile masses of noise, wash into the sonic picture as small bits of distorted noises and concrete sounds. Droning keyboards playing out over some heavy crumbling helps building a spooky feeling on the album. Final track on the album bearing the humorous title “Thomas Edison didn’t have time for it” separates from the previous tracks with its minimalist expression exclusively based on icy drones swirling around pulsating repetitive rhythms that grows from discreet levels to more upfront as the tracks develops in the best Pan(a)Sonic-manner. This closing track remains the darkest and most threatening moment on the album. “Darkness” is also the word to describe Canadian artist Nihil’s debut album under the project Zero Degree. With a past in the world of power electronics, under the artistic name Painslut, Nihil definitely knows how to create “not so friendly” atmospheres. Even though Zero Degree expressively is far away from the aggressive sounds of Painslut, the atmosphere on certain tracks on this self-titled album is gloomy and grim. On quite a few tracks the recipe of expression is reminiscent of Alarmen with its starting point taken in drone-based ambient spiced with rhythmic elements. Though the IDM-based rhythms gets more space in the world of Zero Degree. When listening to “Zero degree” it is pretty obvious that Nihil has his musical background in the Industrial sound-spheres, even though impressions of dark electro also seems quite dominating especially on tracks like “Fluid ice”, “Irie” as well as the title track. Favorite moment is the 10-minute piece of minimalism, “Pitch black”, that combines unsettling ambient-scapes with repetitive ritual rhythmic sounds of Power Noise. After this breathtaking adrenaline rush, the album closes beautifully with a track bearing the significant title “Into the light”, – a title that perfectly symbolizes the way out of the gloomy darkness saturating the overall album. With two very interesting and quite emotional albums, Audiophob underlines the fact that this young label definitely is worth keeping an eye on. (NMP)
Address: http://www.audiophob.de
DOMENICO SCIANJO & RALF WEHOWSKY – GELBE TUPFEN (CD by Bowindo Recordings)
VALERIO TRICOLI – METAPROGRAMMING FROM WITHIN THE EYE OF THE STORM (CD by Bowindo Recordings)
A work is never finished. Last week we noted that the ‘self-remix’ by Norbert Möslang that is an act that is hardly done these days, but that Ralf Wehowsky makes this stock trade and takes matters always further. This new CD with Domenico Scianjo is another aspect of life started with the release of his Christmas 7″ for Meeuw (which is dutch and not belgium, as its wrongly noted on the cover) and that was recently continued with a CD on Sirr-ecords. On that CD, various composers take their hands on the original 7″ (which was composed by Christoph Schmid in 1794 and sun by Wehowsky’s daughter) material, but perhaps the piece that Domineco Scianjo was either too long or it arrived too late? His piece is thirty-four minutes and is entirely made with self-made Max/msp patches, which transform the original sounds into a big electro-acoustic cloud of sound. None of the original is to be recognized here. Scianjo recommends headphones here and normally I wouldn’t bother with that, but I must admit that the stereo field is wide apart, which, played with headphones adds a rather hallucinatory effect to the piece. It moves away from Scianjo’s previous noise related works into the world of serious, almost academic sounding pieces. As such it’s one of the best pieces I heard from him.
Wehowsky of course is also present here with another piece, ‘based on sound fragments from I.Dk.Sk, a recording of my myself sitting in the studio and working on the piece, plus some new transformations of Sonja’s original take’. This piece is shorter and focusses more on RLW’s recent interest of drone like material, that is of course RLW’s private version of drone music. Sounds are clustered together until they form densely patterns, of sound blocks that glide together until the collide onto eachother and they start moving in separate directions. It’s drone music that is based on collage methods, but that form a homogeneity through the piece. A captivating piece with a funny coda at the end.
Scianjo is one of the two label-bosses of Bowindo Records, the other is Valerio Tricoli, who is also a member of 3/4Hadbeeneliminated and ‘Metaprogramming From Within The Eye Of The Storm’ is his second solo CD, following ‘Did They? Did I?’ (see Vital Weekly 390), which was alright but nothing spectacular. The text that came along with this CD didn’t make much sense – again. What also stayed is the extensive use of field recordings and the electronic processing thereof. He received ‘additional sound carriers’ from four different people, and me thinks that is the field recordings that have been supplied, which are processed by Tricoli. The work is very much along the lines of the works of Bernard Günter, Roel Meelkop and Richard Chartier, sometimes staying on the quiet side of things but also at other times quite loud and ‘present’. It’s a fine, solid work, that holds not much new insight in the world of microsound, but apart from that, I must say this is a more than excellent work. (FdW)
Address: http://www.bowindorecordings.com/
ALVA NOTO – FOR (CD by Line)
RICHARD CHARTIER & TAYLOR DEUPREE – SPECIFICATION.FIFTEEN (CD by Line)
There was a time that the arrival of a new Alva Noto CD was a big thing, to me. But over the years, it became harder and harder to keep with some of his releases, especially those made for special occasions. Perhaps he just did too many thing to keep it in control, at least for an average listener. This is now, partly, made easy with the release of ‘For’. All of the nine tracks were created in the last four years and each of them is dedicated to someone (‘specifically for someone or for a project that for one reason or another remainded open ended’), ranging from Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, to John Cage, to Jhonn Balance, TV Pow and even Bert and Ernie. Now that I hear this collection I realize that is has been indeed a long time since I last heard his music. Over the last few years it has matured from the cold and clinical beeps and sine waves, into a more richer pattern of sound. The sine wave sounds, the deep bass sound: it’s still a present feature in the music of Alva Noto, but he adds at times samples of acoustic instrumentation, such as the piano in ‘Alva Noto.z1’. It’s still a bit away from his work with Ryuichi Sakamoto, but it’s half way there somewhere. The pieces are in general slow and solemnly played, highly digitally made but always warm and gentle. It’s very good to be reacquainted.
Of course we never lost track of Taylor Deupree and Richard Chartier. Both artists are as prolific as Alva Noto, but usually find their way in Vital Weekly much more easily. It has been seven years since they played together on a release, ‘Spec.’ on 12K. Recently they were asked to play a piece ‘inspired by the Seascape series of renowned Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto’, whose photographic output looks like a score of the work of Deupree or Chartier: silent, quiet, still. That is not what we get here, at least not in its purest form. Since we are dealing here with a live recording, things are a bit more rougher edged. It seems as though sea or water like sounds formed the starting point for both, certainly at the start of the CD, but as the piece develops, things become more abstract, through the extensive opening of all sorts of audio filters and whatever current fashion in software wizardness. The final minutes are reserved for even a ‘kind of’ rhythmic piece, slow and peaceful of course, once more, the final coda, of a sea washing ashore. Less refined that some of their studio work, but another happy return. (FdW)
Address: http://www.12k.com
ROBERT HAMSPON & STEVEN HESS (CDEP by Crouton Records)
It’s been a while since we last heard anything new from Robert Hampson. Our man of Loop, who has been working as Main, defining ‘isolationist’ music, but whose work in more recent years is better described as musique concrete. Here he works together with Steven Hess, who is a US percussion player and who has played with Pan American, Fessenden, On and Haptic. It’s hard to say wether these two were actually in the studio, or that Hampson received the playing of Hess and added his own blend of electronics, and processing the received results. Perhaps the sat together. Either way, the end result is what matters and that is absolutely great. The drums/percussion are there in the middle of an electrical storm, waiting for it’s elevation. More like hurricane, in which the drums will twist and spin with a 100 mile plus per hour rate, until drums and electronics dissolve. Electronics become drums, and vice versa. Strongly rhythmical forces are thrown together, but hardly the sort of drums you can tap your feet or nod your head too. The four pieces, which might be enjoyed as one piece actually as well, form a vivid web of sounds, a highly dynamic force. Great electro-acoustic music. More more more, please. (FdW)
Address: http://www.croutonmusic.com
FEAR FALLS BURNING – THE AMPLIFIER DRONE (LP by Tone Float)
Personally I am always quite fond of people who limit themselves: what can I do with the sound of a tree? Explore it and then move on. But some people are productive minds and their self-limitation might become a burden for them. One such person is Dirk Serries, aka Fear Falls Burning (aka previously Vidna Obmana). Fear Falls Burning is all about electric guitars and sound effects and everything is recorded directly to tape. He already has a number of releases out, and we could wonder how many more variations are there to theme. ‘The Amplifier’s Drone’ is his second limited LP (white vinyl this time) for the Dutch Tone Float label, and if something is different, then it must be the fact that this is duet for two guitars (still played direct to tape), between Fear Falls Burning and one Paul van den Berg. Armed with an amount of various amplifiers (Crate, Behringer), Marshall, Peavey and Laney), the two pay homage to the amplifiers, but putting up a large massive field of drones. Sounds are looped at times staying in the mix for a while and move out when no longer needed. More than his previous works, this new one is less based on one developing drone, but the extended guitar solo’s makes this rather ‘old fashioned’ than sparkling new. It’s fine to see Fear Falls Burning exploring new territory within the limited concept chosen, but this is perhaps not how I would expected it to be. It’s still of good quality, but not all the way my cup of tea. (FdW)
Address: http://www.tonefloat.com
N.STRAHL.N – EINGANG (CDR by Tosom)
On one of the nicer German CDR labels comes N.Strahl.N, of whom we know nothing. On ‘Eingang’, his first release which translates as ‘entrance’, good choice for title, four tracks, that are longer than the average miniCD but shorter than a full length, clocking in at twenty-nine minutes. The music is built of electronic devices, such as rhythm machines, reverb units and perhaps a synth here and there. Also some kind of field recordings can be detected, but it’s hard to tell what it captured. In the end N.Strahl.N depicts an aural bleak, industrialized wasteland for us. Empty, desolated, while the wind sings through rusty metal doors, and water runs through likewise rusty pipes. Though it’s all a bit too harsh to be ambient, it’s certainly also not industrial. A fine combination of musique concrete, ambient and industrial, and as such perhaps nothing new under the sun, it’s however finely made. (FdW)
Address: http://www.tosom.de
ELECTRICITY IS YOUR FRIEND (CDR compilation by Three Pin Recordings)
The website from Three Pin Recordings doesn’t have much to tell us, but their first (?) release is a compilation of a highly varied bunch of weirdness. There is rock weirdness and there is electronic weirdness, but also more serious avant-garde electronic pieces. Bands arrive usually from England, but there is also Sara Ayers from Toronto (with a nice piece), CJ Pizarro from Los Angeles and Terms None from Washington. Some of the names are familiar like Jliat (who does a nice take on ‘Strawberry Fields’), Daniel Padden, Jowonio (with a lengthy rhythmic piece, Mark Vernon’s radio play like piece. Terms None play hip hop. The weirdo’s are Dragon Or Emperor and CJ Pizarro. But it also misses the point at times, such as John Cake or folky piece by Dead Western. Also three films can be found on the extra part of this release. Two of them are really short, but quite funny and add a little extra to the work. Throughout it’s a pretty fine compilation, with no particular stand out pieces, but the nicely varied bunch is quite alright. (FdW)
Address: http://www.3pinrecordings.com
JAUNA MUZIKA 2006 (CDR)
ZAN HOFFMAN & GINTAS K – GENTLE KNIFING (MP3 by Mixthemixthemix)
EL JI – BERGENSONGS (MP3 by Mixthemixthemix)
AD_OS – MSH ROOM REMIX (MP3 by Mixthemixthemix)
Let us make some complaints first: why print a nice booklet, but then make the CD a CDR? And why is the track info only printed on the CDR itself? ‘Jauna Muzika’ means ‘New Music’ in Lithuanian and their 13th edition was held in April of this year. Studying the booklet carefully we notice that there is much serious music played here, serious modern classical music. We find them also on the CDR, which are the pieces by Marius Baranauskas and Egidjia Medeksaite for singers and violins. They form quite a contrast to the other more electronic pieces. Vyautas V. Jurgutis has a nervous hectic piece for chopped sine waves and Ramunas Motiekaitis a strong and vivid sound collage. Antanas Jasenka’s pieces deal with more continuos sounds. It’s an interesting and varied compilation that sheds some light on what is available in Lithuania.
As an off shoot to activities of this festival, Mixthemixthemix was launched. It started life as a remix project for the CD ‘Loop Catalogue’ by Antanas Kucinskas (see Vital Weekly 473), when several Lithuanian artists remixed this as part of the festival ‘Jauna Muzika’. These days it serves as an online platform for collaborative audio/visual works.
Zan Hoffman is a legendary activist in the world of cassettes (rumored to have over 900 releases!), who uses the internte these days to work on new collaborations. Here he teams up with perhaps the best known representative of the Lithuanian laptop scene, Gintas K. I must admit that despite the 900+ recordings by Hoffman I don’t have a clear picture of what he does, but he seems responsible here for the works electronic sides of skipping CDs and field recordings to which Gintas K adds his ‘usual’ blend of sine waves and stomping rhythms. Over the course of thirty minutes things built up in a pretty strong and heavy way, heading for a full crash towards the end. Quite a nice piece this.
One El Ji produced a work that has similar length, consisting of manipulated ‘field recordings done with the use of small radio receiver and video camera in the Autumn of 2005 in Bergen, Norway’. It seems hardly manipulated to me, rather than heavily chopped up, but as a sound collage it doesn’t take the listener anywhere, doesn’t tell a story, nor is it humorous. Very hard to understand this.
Also from ad_OS I never heard. The motivation, in particular, is ‘sound transformations of pure elemental architecture in unreal time – post / post factum’ and is some kind of remix of a work by Grybai, called ‘Mushrooms’. I don’t know that work, so I just have to go by the remix, which is fine work bridging noise and microsound, as placed next to eachother. Things could fall right to the level of inaudibility but rise up like a big beast from the wasteland. All neatly arranged with a fair amount of computer treatments and probably nothing else. Nothing spectacular, but it’s good to see such sound opposites working together. (FdW)
Address: http://www.lks.lt
Address: http://www.mixthemixthemix.com
WE’RE NOT IN FOR THE MONEY (MP3 by Rallehond Records/WM Recordings)
It’s always good to hear something new from my own soil, and this time it’s even two labels: WM Recordings from Heerlen and Rallehond Records from Dordrecht/Breda, all three cities wide apart in The Netherlands, actually. They see it as their as their task to present ‘musicians in a professional way’. These musicians play a variety of music: none of these labels operate in one specific style. In most of these fourteen pieces, none by anyone I ever heard of, can be classified as ‘influenced by popmusic’, but some drift far apart. Sometimes pretty straight forward rock/dance influenced as with Happy Elf or DIT, acoustic guitars and vocals by Kinley Caliper and CobsOn, electro pop by Flexor, Anton Oosterwijk, and Nambavan. The weirder pieces are by the ambient guitars by Century Of Aeroplanes (who sound like Radiohead on a lot of drugs) or the downright ambient music of Lee Rosevere and Sid Peacock and the classical piano composition by Romme Bliger or TROY’s chamber music piece, to end with the weirdest of all Stefan van den Hout whistling in his living room. Like said, none of these names may mean anything, but all tracks are free to download, so perhaps there is something in there for everyone. (FdW)
Address: http://www.wmrecordings.com http://www.rallehond.nl