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PHILIPP QUEHENBERGER – PHANTOM IN PARADISE (CD by Editions Mego) *
PURE SOUND – SUBMARINE (CD by Euphonium Records) *
COLLEEN – LES ONDES SILENCIEUSES (CD by Leaf)
EFTERKLANG – UNDER GIANT TRES (CD by Leaf)
PJUSK – SART (CD by 12K) *
CARL MICHEAL VON HAUSWOLFF – TOPOPHONIC MODELS (CD by Feld Records)
MERZBOW – COMA BERENICES (CD by Vivo Records) *
ANDREY KIRITCHENKO – MORT AUX VACHES (CD by Staalplaat) *
NEBRIS – BLEAK ANGELS (CD by Dystonia EK) *
TOM NUNN – IDENTITY (CD by Edgetone Records)
JIM DENLEY – THROUGH FIRE, CREVICE + THE HIDDEN VALLEY (CD by Split Records)
JAMES SAUNDERS – #(UNASSIGNED) (2CD by Confront) *
HANNA HARTMAN – AILANTHUS (CD by Komplott) *
TULSA DRONE – SONGS FROM A MEAN SEASON (CD by Dry Country Records)
CLUB MORAL – LONELY WEEKENDS/GUN (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
ZYRTAX (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
NEST & TIM COSTER (CDR by Gest)
HÜZÜN (CDR by The Seedy R)
ANTI-DELUSION MECHANISM – INFINIT KOLISION (2xCDR by Holispolis) *
CHEAPMACHINES – LOWLANDS (CDR by Authorized Version) *
ID M THEFT ABLE – AND I PULLED THE WORD ‘AND’ FROM MY BEARD (CDR by 8mm Records) *
PULSE EMITTER – DEADLY SPACE MISSIONS (CDR by 8mm Records)
HARSHCORE – THE SYBIAN SORORITY (CDR by Rudimentale)
YEK KOO – A PLEA FOR A NIGHT DESERT BLUE MOON STORM (CDR by Seymour Records) *
DANIA SHAPES – SOUNDSYSTEM PASTORAL (CDR by Naiv Super)
CHRISTOPHE BAILLEAU – LA LUDE/LA SONDE (CDR by Naiv Super) *
JLIAT – NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL NOISE VOL. 3 (CDR by Larks Council Of England)
JANNE HANHISUANTO – PADMOSPHERES (CDR/MP3 by Dharmasound)
VLADIMIR NESSI – SOSULKA (CDR by Arterija)
THE ERIC MOUSSAMBANI MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA – CIVIL NOISE MOVEMENTS (3″ CDR by Heilskabaal)
MACHINEFABRIEK – HUIS (3″CDR by Machinefabriek)
NEUMATICA – LIMIAR (OGG by Desetxea)
ANTOINE CHESSEX – DEMO DEMOLITION (OGG by Desetxea)
DEMAND/HEENAN/VORFELD/WIENERT – JANUS (OGG by Desetxea)
HOCHHERZ/BLECHMANN/MATTIN – POST LACK TRACK (OGG by Desetxea)
PHILIPP QUEHENBERGER – PHANTOM IN PARADISE (CD by Editions Mego)
It was quite a memorable evening, somewhere in March 2004 at the Dutch Earational festival. At their night at the rock oriented club a guy played that me, perhaps an insider of sorts, never heard of: Philipp Quehenberger. He had just one 12″ to his credit, for Cheap Records, from 2002. He banged away on his keyboards and sang his songs. Added with a stage dance, by a small girl with a big knife (perhaps remembered here in ‘Wives With knives’?). It looked and sounded great. Still Quehenberger never released anything beyond that 12″, but now here is finally his debut CD. I am playing this and thinking about that great evening. But the CD isn’t as convincing. Quehenberger loves a loud, gritty sound, up tempo electro/techno rhythms and his own voice. Although the latter not as much as he should do. His music works best as a cross-over between Suicide, Mister Quintron (both on the vocal side of the music) and Pan Sonic (in terms of rhythm and noise), and it works even better when he is singing. A slight cynical voice with lyrics that aren’t easy to decipher. If Quehenberger goes instrumental he’s best in bringing uptempo nasty, almost rock song like structured techno, but which not always work best when played at home. It’s more like underground club music and at a much louder volume, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, this should go down rather well. Throughout a great CD. (FdW)
Address: http://www.editionsmego.com
PURE SOUND – SUBMARINE (CD by Euphonium Records)
It seemed only a few weeks ago that I reviewed ‘Yukon’ by a UK band Pure Sound, but it’s a little bit longer ago (Vital Weekly 552). The band so far was Vince Hunt (bass, tapes, vocals), Simon Price (drill) and Harry Stafford (vocals) and now with Boz Hayward on guitar. In general ‘Submarine’ continues the sound of ‘Yukon’: a rock band that incorporates field recordings, along side vocals, even when it’s hardly singing, but more speaking voices. They no longer use the tags as ‘industrial rhythms’ or ‘colossal bass lines’, but refer to their music as ambient, which it surely fits the whole thing much better. When there are voices/vocals used, they tell a small story, such as the title piece about the sinking of the Lusitania. The field recordings and instruments strongly stand aside of each other. Both play their own role. Guitars are being strummed, playing repeating motifs and the field recordings made a background ambient hiss. The cover lists the lyrics as well as (some of) the sound sources used. With twelve tracks at some twenty-eight minutes you can imagine that some of these pieces are bit short. And at that: too short. Some of the shorter pieces have the potential to be a larger piece, with more action happening or making a more complex piece. There is more in it, than what now comes out of it. The longer pieces here, such as the title piece or ‘Breathe Deep, My Love’ (with actually a banging rhythm) or ‘Get My Cutting Head Down’ show this. Maybe ‘Submarine’ was made a bit too hasty in order to have a quick follow up. But it still contains some fine music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.euphoniumrecords.com
COLLEEN – LES ONDES SILENCIEUSES (CD by Leaf)
Colleen’s (Cecile Schott) first two albums (Everybody Alive Wants Answers and The Golden Morning Breaks) showed great promise with their perfect mix of loops, samples and hushed vocals, making great low-fi pop music listening. However, all these elements were thrown overboard for her third album (Les Boites A Musique), which featured mechanical music boxes – and little else. On Les Ondes Silencieuses (the silent waves) Colleen plays viola da gamba (the ancestor of the cello), spinet, guitar and clarinet. Loosely based on the life of 17th century composer Marin Marais, Colleen creates semi-classical songs that somehow lack a significant spark of life. Songs like Sun Against My Eyes or Sea Of Tranquillity are a cut above the emotionless material featured here, but, ultimately, Les Ondes Silencieuse is a long and, dare I say it, slightly boring listen. You cannot and should not criticize an artist for changing her style, but it appears Colleen has definitely turned her back on pop music, which is a great loss. (FK)
Address: http://www.theleaflabel.com
EFTERKLANG – UNDER GIANT TRES (CD by Leaf)
Ah, wonderful wonderful Copenhagen! What is it in the Scandinavian air that makes alt-folk electronic pop groups like Efterklang flourish so well over there? In this hugely popular scene Efterklang are no exception to the rule. Their music, described as evocative and panoramic (whatever that may mean) is certainly remarkable. Conceived during a recent tour, the five songs of Under Giant Trees are a great listen. Ranging from the thick layered sound of Falling Horses to the Oval-like CD skipping of Himmelbjerget, their songs are laid-back and interesting enough to warrant repeated listening. Even though there is no sign of the 33 guest musicians of the first album (including a Greenlandic choir!), Efterklang’s five core members are assisted here by two members of the Icelandic string quartet Amiina. Packed in a wonderful foldout digipack with four postcard inserts, this album is full of ideas and promises for the future. It is to be hoped that Efterklang will survive the competition of other groups who are active in this genre in Scandinavia. If they are able to develop their sound and grow, Efterklang could be big. (FK)
Address: http://www.theleaflabel.com
PJUSK – SART (CD by 12K)
From our end of the telescope Norway may seem a
land of noise, but perhaps we are at the wrong end. Pjusk are a duo from Norway (Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik and Rune Sagevik) and being on 12K is still far away from noise. They started out in the techno scene about a decade ago and now turned into more contemplative music, as shown here. They were first introduced on the ‘Blueprints’ compilation (see Vital Weekly 550), where didn’t leave the big impression. Their debut CD ‘Sart’ does similar. Pjusk built their pieces around ‘electronics, dub, rhythm, found sounds’, but that can apply to a lot these days. Pjusk to me are very much into the world microsound and glitch me thinks, and even when they occasionally hop into a rhythm, loaded with reverb and delay to guarantee that sense of ‘dub and rhythm’, it’s all of the usual carefulness and intimate sound knitting. Warm like the mid-winter campfire. It’s certainly not a bad CD, though perhaps a bit long for the amount of ideas that are thrown around. Thirteen pieces at some fifty-five minutes, is perhaps five pieces and fifteen minutes too long. Under the sun of 12K Pjusk isn’t the big turn around, the paradigm of music, but it’s a star that shines equally bright as so many others. (FdW)
Address: http://www.12k.com
CARL MICHEAL VON HAUSWOLFF – TOPOPHONIC MODELS (CD by Feld Records)
More and more Carl Micheal von Hauswolff is a man of drone music. Well, perhaps he always was? Whereas before he at times used rhythms to achieve his drone like result, on his new one, he turned purely to heavily layered drones. All of the pieces describe ‘dystopical and distant contemporary geocivilian sites, such as an airfield, an oil field etc’. Not that it uses any field recordings. Hauswolff limits himself to using sine wave generators ‘and other organic sources’. I even thought to recognize a heavily layered flute sound. In general Hauswolff knows how to create the dense drone piece, and they sound best as an organ in ‘Delta Overview’ or the flute like ‘Distant Skyline’. Perhaps the resemblance of a real instrument makes it easier to connect to this. The more abstract (although all is abstract here to the untrained ear) sine wave generator pieces are to distant to feel closely related. All six pieces have similar lengths, around seven minutes. In that sense Hauswolff is close to the work of Niblock: not only in his choice of material and execution of his pieces, but also in choosing a similar length for all his pieces. But whereas Niblock creates moving images in his music, the one from Hauswolff remains more static, and less easy to access. (FdW)
Address: http://www.feld-records.com
MERZBOW – COMA BERENICES (CD by Vivo Records)
Since I gave up collecting Merzbow (couldn’t get a second mortgage on my house) I must say I enjoy it better than before. Perhaps just because the obsessive need of collecting, blurring my mind as to what is what and not finding it possible to hear much twice or three times, the occasional Merzbow just suits me better. Like ever, it’s pretty hard to know what an album is about, if there are no references to saving animals that is. ‘Coma Berenices’ is such an album. Five pieces of improvised noise – that is what Merzbow does and he does best. It seems as if he picked up a guitar in ‘Earth Worms’, feeding it to the many colored boxes one can get from the same guy who sells guitars. It’s not an over the top noise piece – perhaps that is a change? ‘Dark Stars’ is more like the old Merzbow, heavy deconstructed noise. ‘Alishan’ is what follows and here it’s mostly EMS synthi-A stuff, but do we detect also a small melody in there? Hard to believe, but true. The final two pieces (all clocking in at over ten minutes) are again more a like ‘Dark Stars’, with a dominant EMS on ‘Revenge On Humanity’. Quite a varied CD in terms of what Merzbow usually does. It suits him well however. (FdW)
Address: http://www.vivo.pl
ANDREY KIRITCHENKO – MORT AUX VACHES (CD by Staalplaat)
Things have been quite for Staalplaat and their Mort Aux Vaches series. It seems as Staalplaat moved to another building in Berlin and things are up and running again. Celebrated with a new release in the Mort Aux Vaches series, an ongoing series of CDs recorded at VPRO radio in Amsterdam, and by now with some fifty or more releases – a small encyclopedia of modern music. And oh: an encyclopedia of CD design. This new one comes with a sort of bathroom curtain plastic cover, that is partly transparent, but also makes a hallucignetic thing. The music is by Andrey Kiritchenko, our man on the laptop (and more!) from the Ukraine. Around when this was recorded I also saw him play a concert and besides a laptop, I believe he used an autoharp and a guitar. The laptop contains the ‘usual’ crackles, hiss, and processed field recordings, but Kiritchenko plays some rather nice warm ambient glitch music. Half way somewhere Fennesz and microsound, not yet really pop like, and cut in to one long piece, Kiritchenko plays rather moody, atmospheric music. Fortunately not too abstract with his ploinks on the guitars, or his drones from the autoharp. I remember back when attending the concert that Kiritchenko’s music is quite nice, but perhaps better enjoyable at home then in a concert space with people standing around and talking (like the one I saw). Now that it is on CD, I can only applaud the fact: yes, it works much better. Another great addition to the series. (FdW)
Address: http://www.staalplaat.com
NEBRIS – BLEAK ANGELS (CD by Dystonia EK)
Dystonia EK is a label from Montreal and already exists since 1989. For ten years they released cassettes and a few CDRs, but with the release of the Nebris CD they start up their activities again. Before being Nebris, they (he? she?) were called Column, with various releases as Dystonia EK and ‘Bleak Angels’ is the second release as Nebris, following ‘Krone’ from 1999. They use ‘amplified organic materials (bones, gut strings) and minerals (fossils, meteorite fragments, stones)’ and produce three lengthy tracks. First I thought they were spinning empty grooves of a record, extremely amplified, alongside long wave recordings, but knowing what they do make it all sound even more fascinating. There is a backdrop in all three pieces of rotating sounds, crackles, highly processed and multi-layered voices, especially in ‘V’ this latter feature, and it sounded very much like Tibetan Red. Probably they throw in lots of electronics to get this swirling mass of sound. Bleak indeed. There is a great sense of desolation around this music, the usual ambient industrial post nuclear emptiness. The empty industrial lot at night. For those who love Tibetan Red, old zoviet*france, or the more softer edges of releases on Old Europa Cafe and Cold Meat Industry will surely find this quite interesting. Executed with great care and skill, with a keen eye for details and variation, this is an excellent work in the genre. (FdW)
Address: http://www.dystoniaek.org
TOM NUNN – IDENTITY (CD by Edgetone Records)
Sometimes you wish something was a DVD and not a CD. I could repeat what Tom Nunn writes in his liner notes about his self-built instruments, called exotically Hybryd Mothics, The Octatonic T-Rodimba and The Crustacean, how they look, I don’t really know. Tom, who has been active as an improviser since 1978 in the Bay Are, recorded his instruments as pure as possible. Just microphones and contact microphones, no electronic processing and no editing. You wish you could see him play this, as what one is hearing is already quite captivating. From the percussive opening piece (the t-rodimba played with mallets) to the mothic plays with combs, things are scratched, bowed, plucked and hit and surely sounds captivating. Sometimes the pieces are a bit long, and a bit too minimal in execution, but Nunn always does something inside a piece that one makes the raise an eyebrow and think: wow that’s a nice gesture. My favorite pieces are the more percussive ones. Highly minimal with a nice ethnic touch to it, such as ‘Cross Rods/6’, but the more scratchy pieces make this into a somewhat more varied CD, that would be with just percussive pieces, be a bit too similar. A surely captivating release. A highly varied and highly original. (FdW)
Address: http://www.edgetonerecords.com
JIM DENLEY – THROUGH FIRE, CREVICE + THE HIDDEN VALLEY (CD by Split Records)
A few weeks ago I wrote about Benjamin Bondonneau and Fabrice Charles who seemed to have taken their instruments outside and made their recordings. Jim Denley, a saxophone player from Australia and improviser pur sang, took his instrument, camera, audio recorders, food and a solar charger in the Budawang Mountains on the east coast of Australia. This rough area inspired him to play music outside, whilst recording also birds, insects, wind and a helicopter. Captured on two devices they were later on synched together. Denley is a highly accomplished player of the saxophone, one who make the sound of the instrument sound like anything but a saxophone. Being on his own, in many ways, this leads to music that captures the loneliness quite well. Sustained tones, crackles, a buzzing insect: there is much going on, but perhaps Denley tries to beat the fact that he is alone, playing this music. To drive out the demons? This is a highly original approach to playing improvised music: the combination of techniques used, but also the recording technique itself. It all makes this into a great CD of improvised music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.splitrec.com
JAMES SAUNDERS – #(UNASSIGNED) (2CD by Confront)
Perhaps reviewing this 2CD package is something that can be done without listening to it. To describe the idea is probably sufficient. One CD has a sixty some tracks of clarinet sounds and the other CD thirty some tracks of cello playing. Any combination of playing these two CDs, at random or through thorough planning makes up a new composition. An idea that goes back to the dawn of recorded history (the electric history that is). Cage did this in all sorts of variations. But of course why not re-create an idea. Saunders composed small notes for both instruments, very much in an onkyo style – much silence throughout on these CDs – with high peeps and small, isolated notes. Nice work that gains from the possibility of combining the two, which might be a lot of work for some, but the more adventurous listeners, with spare time on their hands (needless to say: and a set up to do so), can create their own nice pieces. Whether or not this sort of action has been composed or improvised before. (FdW)
Address: http://www.confront.info
HANNA HARTMAN – AILANTHUS (CD by Komplott)
Following her ‘Longtitude/Cratere’ work on Komplott (see Vital Weekly 498) here is now her second CD for the same label. Hanna Hartman is a composer – full stop. Whereas the first CD was a work about sailing and a work about the volcano Etna, this new one has four separate pieces and it’s a bit harder to tell what they are about. Hartman goes out with a tape recorder and a microphone and records sound. But unlike many of her peers recording natural events (birds, wind, rain), Hartman focusses on human activity. Sounds of the mouth in ‘Wespen Vesper’ – imitating a wasp, alongside other animal sounds, which are thoroughly edited in the studio. Hartman is a pure concrete composer. She hardly uses electronic sound processing, but almost entirely on focussing on concrete sound collages to craft her pieces of music. All around the world she has captured sounds of human doing something. Like a fence being strummed, voices, eating, but of course also birds in the harbor. Unlike some of the older garde in the musique concrete scene, she uses repetition to quite some extent, which connects her music to the world of ‘pop’ music, but the actual result has nothing to do with it. No doubt many hours of editing went into these four pieces, which are very soundtrack like. Perhaps a bit of short release, but the four pieces are great. Very impressive stuff here, once again. (FdW)
Address: http://www.komplott.com
TULSA DRONE – SONGS FROM A MEAN SEASON (CD by Dry Country Records)
There is always an odd ball in Vital Weekly: music that is a bit outside what we normally review and the simple fact that we get it is enough to be reviewed. Tulsa Drone is a five piece rock band with a conventional line up but with one member playing dulcimers and harmonica, which makes the band a bit less ordinary. The various band members have played on records by Labradford, Pan-American, Bio Ritmo, Alter-Natives and Hex Machine – well perhaps some of that is Vital Weekly material. ‘Songs From A Mean Season’ is their second album and it’s largely instrumental. Tulsa Drone don’t play drone music per se, as much of it can lumped in with space rock/post rock. They hammer away their lengthy songs in a sturdy krautrock fashion and although the pieces are forceful, they are also open enough to get that empty desert feeling that some of this music has. Sometimes the whole thing was a bit too rocky for my taste, but once a week something like this is quite alright. (FdW)
Address: http://www.drycountry.net
CLUB MORAL – LONELY WEEKENDS/GUN (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
ZYRTAX (7″ by Dead Mind Records)
For about twenty-five years Club Moral existed, around the nucleus of DDV on electronics and vocals and AMVK on electronics. Their industrial music was rhythm based, vocal based around the personal lyrical obsession of DDV and they remained underground, never attempting fame. They reformed recently as Bum Collar (note the anagram I’d say). This 7″, perhaps a farewell one, has two pieces, from 1981 and one from 2003, in two different line ups. ‘Lonely Weekends’, recorded live in 1981, with the addition of Etat Brut on electronics, has a staccato, machine like rhythm and undecipherable DDV lyrics. It seems like a happy song, but of course in Club Moral world there is no such thing as a happy song. ‘Gun’ from 2003 with also Dylan on turntables and Mauro Pawlowski on guitar, sees the vocals being extremely filtered and a bumpy rhythm, with all sorts of electronics sturdy humming in the background. Quite frightening stuff, if not a bit long.
Zyrtax before released a CD with Contagious Orgasm (see Vital Weekly 476) and one with Government Alpha and both were collaborations. Here this is continued with four new pieces, all in collaboration with others: Dave Philips, G.X. Jupitter-Larsen, Odal and Sudden Infant. Like with their work with Contagious Orgasm, rhythm plays an important role in all four pieces. It seems that Zyrtax takes out one loops and starts playing around with it, and adds additional noise from the same material. Less Pan Sonic here, but highly minimal in approach. In the case of Odal we get the full noise treatment, but in the Sudden Infant case, the track is quite empty, even when the rhythm itself seems to be recorded and played back at a level of pain. Together with the rather spooky track with Dave Phillips, this is the best track, whereas the two others are pretty much more standard noise thing. (FdW)
Address: http://www.blutistzeit.nl
NEST & TIM COSTER (CDR by Gest)
HÜZÜN (CDR by The Seedy R)
Both of these releases are connected through the musicians. One release is Tim Coster (who plays computer and modified tape machine) improvising with Nest, which is a duo of Nigel Wright (laptop) and Andrew Scott (guitar), the other is by Hüzün, a duo of Coster and Scott. It shows the scope of the New Zealand music scene. Everybody plays with everybody and new bands occur all the time. The Nest/Tim Coster recording was made at the Wine Cellar (like the previous Nest & MHFS (see Vital Weekly 560) and is quite a hissy affair of mainly guitar like sounds, but with the presence of two computer, no doubt the sound has been picked up and modified, altered and processed inside the world of ones and zeroes. Slowly moving around, high in the field of lo-fi drones, this is a most enjoyable release of experimental drone music, still like they do best in New Zealand.
As Hüzün the balance seems to be more equally divided between the guitar and the computer or rather their input. The guitar produces stretched out drones that go towards the use of feedback, but never cross the line thereof, whilst the computer knits a beautiful carpet, densely woven pattern of sustaining sounds and field recordings (activities from a building site, birds). Throughout these thirty-five something minutes things work alongside each other in a a great way. At times it’s hard to tell which instrument is doing what here, as they operate quite closely to each other, certainly towards the end of the piece. Perhaps the fact that this is a combination of a live and studio recording has something to do with this. Whereas Nest & Tim Coster is a good release, the one by Hüzün is a great one. (FdW)
Address: http://nest.or.gest.googlepages.com
Address: http://www.pseudoarcana.com
ANTI-DELUSION MECHANISM – INFINIT KOLISION (2xCDR by Holispolis)
Much of what Amsterdam based trio Anti-Delusion Mechanism does is generated through improvisation. So far they released two CDs of their work, ‘Songs Of Maldoror’ (Vital Weekly 477) and ‘Eugenix’ (Vital Weekly 553), in which the improvised music was edited out. It seems to me a more than logical step to release improvisations on CDR, the unedited version as to say. The group is Yann Keller (selfmade instruments, electronics, double bass), Dead Fish Fuck (electronics) and Vilbjørg Skrot (vocals). On the package they just send one CDR reflects recordings made in January 2007 and one from February 2007. On the January 2007 the electronics are quite heavy, and they even allow rhythm in there: a rhythm machine set to a high BPM, crushing away heavy gabber beats. It’s perhaps sometimes the use of the voice of Skrot that reminds us that we are listening to Anti-Delusion Mechanism, especially of course in the more quiet moments. On the February part this seems to be a bit less, and the music seems to be more fixed around the quiet moments, with lesser loud and long outbursts. This makes both CDRs quite different from each other and give a good insight how this group works. (FdW)
Address: http://www.antidelusionmechanism.org/
CHEAPMACHINES – LOWLANDS (CDR by Authorized Version)
It’s not easy to surpass a master work, and in the case of Cheapmachines, also known as Phil Julian, the masterwork was ‘Fugue Cycle’ (see Vital Weekly 563). Perhaps it will come. ‘Lowlands’ is a work that was recorded in 2004 and remastered by Bernard Günter for current release. ‘Tracks were mainly recorded specifically for radio broadcast using short and longwave radio transmissions as the original sound source’. In the past years we have learned (and loved) as a noise band, but whose best works were outside of the sure confinement of noise. The drones of ‘Fugue Cycle’ or some of the earlier musique concrete works. In ‘Fugue Cycle’ shows us something of the current Cheapmachines sound, then perhaps ‘Lowlands’ should be seen as a work of change. Noise is not entirely gone, but drones have not arrived fully either. None of the long or shortwave sounds are there to be recognized as such, as everything is mangled inside the computer. Sometimes the usual loudness but, and more interesting, also with a forecast of some more quiet moments. It’s here that I think Cheapmachines is really good, carefully constructing music out of hiss and static crackles. Obviously not far away from the microsound crowd, but with a strong voice of his own. Nice one, glad to see it released. (FdW)
Address: http://www.a-version.co.uk
ID M THEFT ABLE – AND I PULLED THE WORD ‘AND’ FROM MY BEARD (CDR by 8mm Records)
PULSE EMITTER – DEADLY SPACE MISSIONS (CDR by 8mm Records)
It’s been a long time since I reviewed something by ID M Theft Able, a.k.a. Skott Spear: ‘Cl Amo/Ang Or/Er Use/E Etc’ in Vital Weekly 415. I have no clue what he has been doing since, perhaps working on this new, again curious titled release ‘And I Pulled The Word ‘And’ From My Beard’. When before they (back then it seemed a duo to me) they played an highly amplified form of musique concrete, here it seems to be more microphone and turntable abuse. Spear takes up the microphone and multi-layers his mouth making sounds very close to the microphone while spinning records of a rather unidentifiable nature on the turntable. Quite a release of chaos, but one of a highly captivating nature. Still quite noise related, as before, but this time I thought it was better to digest (maybe I have a more lucid moment right now?). It’s all quite lo-fi, but it’s also quite poetic, of a rather personal nature. The nine tracks that span again some fifty five minutes is of a rather exhausting nature, but it’s worth hearing in it’s entirety.
Pulse Emitter’s daryl Groetsch is a busy man. He has released a great bunch of CDRs, some of which made it into these pages in recent weeks. If I’m right, much of his released material is generated through live improvisation on his modular synthesizer (take a look at www.synthnoise.com for some pictures). On ‘Deadly Space Missions’ there are two pieces recorded live, from may 2006 and one from september 2005. Before I found his work in the areas of noise being intelligent, but these two pieces are indeed as ‘space’ as you can get. The synthesizers bubble around, bend over and down, up again, and it’s sounds like a soundtrack to a science fiction movie – more space invaders and body snatchers than a space odysee. The second, roughly of similar length, is a more introspective drone affair, with sustaining synthesizer sounds that reminded me a bit of old Organum: it had a similar ‘rusty’ character. This is the best Pulse Emitter I heard so far. (FdW)
Address: http://www.8mmrecs.com
HARSHCORE – THE SYBIAN SORORITY (CDR by Rudimentale)
Despite their name, Harshcore is not really harsh. This Italian duo of Luca Sigurtà and Tommaso Clerico play around on “analogic and poor electronics, bass, tape loops and other junks”. On ‘The Sybian Sorotity’ they have seven tracks to offer and indeed it’s a poor sound – but not in a negative way. Poor as in ‘povera’ – like arte povera. The recording quality is not really top, but their simple loops of rhythm and bass/guitar improvisations make things up. Many things spin through my head. ‘The Amputee’ sounds like zoviet*france in their early days, ‘Jordan’ carried some influence of Throbbing Gristle later days, but there are also traces of post rock to be found around here, stripped to the bone, based around a simple click rhythm. It’s not altogether quite new what is heard here (if that should be a criteria at all), but Harshcore plays an interesting mixture of old styles that surprisingly work quite well. Nice one indeed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.rudimentale.com
YEK KOO – A PLEA FOR A NIGHT DESERT BLUE MOON STORM (CDR by Seymour Records)
Music by Helga Fassonaki was reviewed before, either solo or with Metal Rouge, her band with Andrew Scott. As Yek Koo she also plays solo, although I am not entirely sure why diverse from her own to a pseudonym. She plays santur (being some string instrument), drums, tabla, computer loop, voice and tape recorder. In her apartment she plays repetitive music on these instruments (sometimes a bit too loud for her landlord’s taste as we hear on the first piece), strumming away ad infinitum. Drums and or tabla are not really to be heard. Fassonaki’s recording techniques are a bit crude, covering mainly the high end of the spectrum, which is a pity. It makes the music rather without much depth. That’s a pity since it could gain a bit from a better recording and be closer to traditional raga music. Lo-fi might be a good statement to make, but if it can be better why not. Otherwise for those who love the New Zealand music scene this is another one not to be missed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.helagfassonaki.net
DANIA SHAPES – SOUNDSYSTEM PASTORAL (CDR by Naiv Super)
CHRISTOPHE BAILLEAU – LA LUDE/LA SONDE (CDR by Naiv Super)
Daniel Lopatin, the man behind Dania Shapes is someone new to me. He learned to play the piano, destroyed the presets of his father synthesizer, studied aesthetic philosophy and experimental music and plays music ‘celebrating the potential of amateurishness, decadence and romance in the realm of digital arts’ – wow. ‘Soundsystem Pastoral’ was already recorded in the winter of 2004, but recently remixed and released. Even by 2004 standards it sounds pretty dated. Lopatin likes glitch music, especially he shows to be a good student of the works of professor doctor C. Fennesz, lecturer of glitch music from the University of Vienna. The eight pieces uses small, repeating clicks and processed hum and bum in the background. At a neat thirty-two minutes, this is a most enjoyable release actually, if not really surprising at all. Oval, Fennesz and the other 5000 microsound artists proof all to be an inspiration, and Dania Shapes is just one of them.
Lopatin will soon work with Christophe Bailleau, who is an old friend. In Vital Weekly 67 he was already present with his Glyth project, later turning into La Chiesa and later on under his own name. His experience in many different music styles pays off here. The music on ‘La Lude/La Sonde’ was composed for a performance by Martine Vale. Bailleau is a man who likes acoustic sounds – they dominate this release, certainly in the first half. It’s mainly guitar but also concrete sounds and everything that happens in terms of digital processing happens in the background. The second half is more a trip into ambient glitch land, but here too Bailleau has a much stronger voice of his own than Dania Shapes. Combining real instruments and digital processing thereof is of course not something new, but Bailleau does a really great job at it. Not the most original one – that is perhaps an illusion – but nevertheless a great job. (FdW)
Address: http://www.naivsuper.de
JLIAT – NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL NOISE VOL. 3 (CDR by Larks Council Of England)
records abince Jliat is on board of the review of tth for a popshe noise posse, we feel a bit relieved. Noiseenre is for me a dead end, even when occasionally I play a bit of noise and n e a bit of eekly: many are followers and few are chosen as trendsetters. Which is no big d websiteal, it’s like real life. Where Jliat as a mus badly an fits in? Tht is ncil Of England he releases a purposedesigneR with a rip off cover of ‘Abbea good, but simple safter that he sta q. He has produced a grter to record it on. It rded me of some of the older Merzbow work, but a bit more in lo-fi territory. Not ebut here in the context of noise. I ueight tracks of exactly three minutes anse is whd thirty nine secoweeks have peard volume one of this series, and it’s about time for numbr Sofning amok, some thenes, as opposed to the soft ones) and things explode, eight times. And audgment of volume two, it doesn’t differ from volume one very much. (FdW)
Address: http://www.jliat.com
JANNE HANHISUANTO – PADMOSPHERES (CDR/MP3 by Dharmasound)
Inspired by the four seasons (in nature, not the band), one Janne Hanhisuanto from Finland plays ambient with the big A. According to the Dharma website he is a big admirer of 80s synth music, he ‘tries to create images with sound’. The big synthesizer thing on his release is rather 70s than 80s me thinks. Three big washes of cosmic synthesizer tapestries and one piece that is a sort of kitschy orchestral (as in Midi) piece. I have not much idea about the weather conditions in Finland throughout a whole year, but it seems to me they are pretty much all the same. It’s all a bit too cliche, almost new age like for me. Very predictable music. I pass on. (FdW)
Address: http://www.dharmasound.com
VLADIMIR NESSI – SOSULKA (CDR by Arterija)
Sometimes highly obscure things land here. The CDR I have here is not what it should look like according to the website, but if you decide to get you get the real thing. Or just download it. The music is by one Vladimir Nessi, who was discovered by the Cardiowave label a couple of years back, while ‘he was singing romances in trams’ in Odessa, Ukraine. ‘Sosulka’ is very much a single, in four different versions, a classic, electronic, romance and a radio version. As a sort of added bonus there is also ‘noise without monologue’. ‘Sosulka’ means ‘icicle’ and Nessi plays it on his guitar, while he sings with a lot of reverb. There is a version with some added electronics that don’t do much either. There is a version with strings that doesn’t add much either. There is a noise piece, which was great, but way too long. And there is a song called ‘Vesna’. Again a man and his guitar. Nothing much for Vital Weekly really. But perhaps I missing a point entirely. (FdW)
Address: http://www.arterija.org/artoo7.htm
THE ERIC MOUSSAMBANI MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA – CIVIL NOISE MOVEMENTS (3″ CDR by Heilskabaal)
Since I am not into sports at all, I had no clue who Eric Moussambani was. He was swimmer who took part in the Summer Olympics in 2000 and who was twice as slow as the winner (the Dutch Pieter van den Hoogenband) on the 100 meters and even slower than the 200m world record. A bit like good ol’ Eddie The Eagle in the winter olympics a few years before. I had to do some more searching, since the track titles of this CDR are all named after tracks by a band McLusky, of whom I also didn’t hear. So it goes, and upon hearing the music, I could go on wondering what this has to with Eric or McLusky. The orchestra plays five pieces of highly cut-up sounds, which they (he?) culled from various media sources and fucked it up inside a computer or perhaps analogue equipment. The five pieces are occasionally noise induced, but there is enough solid variation to make things quite interesting. Collage like, noise, quiet hum, static crackles: all the finer ingredients to make a good release. And with a nice poster of Eric for your bedroom. (FdW)
Address: http://www.heilskabaal.net
MACHINEFABRIEK – HUIS (3″CDR by Machinefabriek)
By now I must count Rutger Zuydervelt’s Machinefabriek to be uncatchable. Just when I thought I could lump him in with the drone folk, he comes with ‘Huis’ (‘home’), ten tracks spanning twenty minutes. He did the short piece approach before, but here he gets help from people playing such instruments as balalaika, cello, piano, voice, violin and a saw. In some pieces this leads to introspective singer song writer music, mostly however of an instrumental nature and in ‘Droog Water’ some of the Machinefabriek like sounds come in: careful crackles, hiss. Guitar plays a big role, not distorted, but plain strumming. Of course the pieces are short, what else would you expect from ten tracks in twenty minutes, and one has the idea that some of the pieces are sketches rather than completed songs. That is a pity since these pieces are easily to built into complete pieces, such as ‘Schaduw’ can be. But then, the new sound approach of Machinefabriek shows that he is still not finished searching his own sound and as such he constantly re-invents what he is doing, and that’s something not many people can say. (FdW)
Address: http://www.machinefabriek.nu
NEUMATICA – LIMIAR (OGG by Desetxea)
ANTOINE CHESSEX – DEMO DEMOLITION (OGG by Desetxea)
DEMAND/HEENAN/VORFELD/WIENERT – JANUS (OGG by Desetxea)
HOCHHERZ/BLECHMANN/MATTIN – POST LACK TRACK (OGG by Desetxea)
Most, if not all, releases from Mattin’s label w.m.o./r have been reviewed in Vital Weekly, but, if I’m not mistaken, the music released on his netlabel Desetxea has never made it into these pages. To fill this gap I chose some examples from the quickly growing back catalogue of this label, all released between January and April 2007.
First up is Neumatica, a duo of Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Pablo Rega. The latter name doesn’t ring a bell with me (although that is most likely my own fault), but Costa Monteiro is one half of Cremaster and has several releases under his own name, improvising in various constellations. Using electronic devices (Rega) and turntable (Costa Monteiro) they create an intense piece of finely nuanced electro acoustic noise, based on waves of flickering feedback and the rich scraping sounds of objects placed on the rotating turntable. The music combines loudness and density with a fine sense for structure and variation and is a great example of intelligent noise improvisation.
Antoine Chessex’ piece is devoid of similar subtleties and there is absolutely no need for them. Berlin-based Chessex plays high energy ‘doom noise’. He feeds his saxophone through guitars amps and effect boxes to distort it beyond recognition and augments this massive blast with voice and maybe some electronics. Noise mayhem as it should be, and despite the connotation of ‘doom’ and Antoine screaming furiously there is also an ecstatic side to the music. By the way it should be remarked that Antoine also plays very impressive all-acoustic live sets, in which he fills the whole room with rich minimal circular-breathing drones.
Next is a quartet of Sascha Demand, Chris Heenan, Michael Vorfeld and Hannes Wienert, recorded live in Hamburg in 2006. They play guitar, percussion and various wind instruments and move along the lines of ‘classic’ free improvisation, sketching out fragmented hatchings, interspersed with slowly sprawling drone passages and going from quiet to loud and back again. No doubt the music was executed with great care and holds enough tension and variation throughout, but still, although it might be a bit unfair to compare these, it lacks the extra amount of intensity that marks the two releases reviewed above.
My final choice is a release that features Mattin together with Olaf Hochherz and Tim Blechmann. Their piece starts out all silent and hovers just above the threshold of audibility most of the time, before it recedes into silence again towards the end. If you crank up the volume you hear the ambience of a quiet room during the silent parts, sparse and very soft creaks of chairs and some birds singing outside. A few minutes into the piece a static drone with some highly obscure mechanic rumbling underneath sets in, and gradually and barely perceptible develops over the course of the next about 12 minutes. It is extremely minimal, yet gains an almost visual quality, as it evokes the image of a continuously unfolding thin and heavily blurred dark grey line. Just as this drone mixes with the ambience of the room it was recorded in, it gently diffuses into the listener’s surrounding – subliminal and highly effective reductionism. (MSS)
Address: http://www.mattin.org/desetxea.html