Editorial news: we have decided to stop reviewing MP3 releases. Please do not send any discs with MP3 releases. Just send me an e-mail with a link and a short description, so people can download it. The amount of releases pile up every week and I can no longer devote time to MP3s. Whatever you see coming in the next few weeks are the last ones. Please do not send anymore. Also: releases that do not contain the original artwork will most likely be no longer reviewed. The real thing is necessary for a real judgment. If you wish to send us not the real thing, please contact us first. <vital@vitalweekly.net>
BIOSPHERE – WIRELESS – LIVE AT THE ARNOLFINI, BRISTOL (CD by Touch) *
GINTAS K – LOVELY BANALITIES (CD by Cronica Electronica) *
NATE YOUNG – REGRESSION (CD by Ideal Recordings) *
LIONEL MARCHETTI – KNUD UN NOM DE SERPENT (CD by Intransitive Recordings)
JIM HAYNES – SEVER (CD by Intransitive Recordings)
KOMMISSAR HJULER & MAMA BAR – ASYLUM LUNATICUM (CD by Intransitive Recordings)
MATT SCHOEMAKER – EROSION OF THE ANALOGOUS EYE (CD by The Helen Scarsdale Agency)
ANTONI MAIOVVI – SHADOW OF THE BLOOD STAINED KISS (CD by Seed Records) *
YUI ONODERA & THE BEAUTIFUL SCHIZOPHONIC – RADIANCE (CD by Basses Frequences) *
NICOLAS SZCZEPANIK – THE CHIASMUS (CD by Basses Frequences) *
ELEMENTAURAL RESEARCH PROJECT – ELEMENTALITY (CD by Basses Frequences) *
ASMUS TIETCHENS – FLACHEN MIT FIGUREN (CD by Non Visual Objects) *
HERIBERT FRIEDL – RECHERCHE_00 (CD by Non Visual Objects) *
RICHARD CHARTIER – UNTITLED (ANGLE.1) (CD by Non Visual Objects) *
TOMASZ BEDNARCZYK – LET’S MAKE BETTER MISTAKES TOMORROW (CD by 12K) *
TU M’ – MONOCHROMES VOL. 1 (CD by Line) *
AQUA DORSA – CLOUDLANDS (CD by Glacial Movements) *
NICOLA RATTI – ODE (CD by Preservation) *
GARETH DAVIS & STEVEN R. SMITH – WESTERING (LP by Important Records)
MARTIN STIG ANDERSEN & GARETH DAVIS – RABBIT AT THE AIRPORT III (LP by Usagi Records)
SPOELSTRA – I GOT ISSUES THE SHAPE OF ITALY ( 10″ by Narrominded)
BOUTROS BUBBA – NATIONAL ANTHEMS (CD by Narrominded)
STEFANIE RESSIN/ASMUS TIETCHENS – 3 WISHES (7″ by Meeuw)
TEHO TEARDO – VOYAGE AU BOUT DE LA NUIT (7″ by Japanapart)
PARANOID ENTITY – 4CLOSURE (CDR by Paranoid Foundation)
MICHEL HENRITZI – SHINJUKI BLUES & WHISPERING SHADOWS (CDR by Dyin’ Ghost Records) *
COEN OSCAR POLACK & HERMAN WILKEN – THE LANGUAGE OF MOUNTAINS IS RAIN (CDR by Narrowminded) *
COEN OSCAR POLACK – GELUIDEN UIT DE BLAUWE KAMER (CDR by Narrowminded)
COEN OSCAR POLACK – THE SKIPPING MONK (CDR by Narrowminded)
New MP3 releases
Announcements
BIOSPHERE – WIRELESS – LIVE AT THE ARNOLFINI, BRISTOL (CD by Touch)
No matter how hard I tried, but I can’t remember seeing the last Biosphere studio record, it must have been a while. Come to think of it, we didn’t review ‘Dropsonde’. What we do know is that ‘Wireless’ is the first live album by Biosphere, one of the master minds of ambient music. Starting out in ambient techno (releasing a classic with ‘Patashnik’ in 1994), and then moving out of the techno, deeper into the land of ambient music, leaving off any pulses at some point. On ‘Wireless’ he returns to use pulses and rhythms: minimal but not in a click n cut sense. Warm, fourth world alike. which guide the soft synths, field recordings and, for the first time around the trumpet of Anders Karlskas. As such this live album is not a distinct break with the ‘old’ Biosphere, the one calm sound tapestries on ‘Substrata’ for instance, but it seems to have come to a full circle now. The more simple, rhythmic samples refer to what I can call Biosphere ‘mark 1’, but not as dance oriented, more trance inducing, lay down, sit back music, whereas the deep atmospheric textures of before are still part of it, that has become a trademark of Biosphere. Changes in the sound of Biosphere are small, but crucial. ‘Wireless’ is once again a refined ambient from one of the true masters of the genre. (FdW)
Address: http://www.touchmusic.org.uk
GINTAS K – LOVELY BANALITIES (CD by Cronica Electronica)
Following many MP3 releases and a double CD on Cronica Electronica before, Gintas K from Lithuania now returns to Cronica with a strange album called ‘Lovely Banalities’. Not that we shouldn’t take this seriously, but ‘banalities’ may sound a bit odd. One windy summer Sunday afternoon, Gintas K went out to do field recordings in the city where he lives, Marijampole, which he then transformed into fourteen little sketch like sound pieces. Whatever those field recordings were is hard to say, but they are surely sketch like. Often employing a few sounds per track, set to ‘loop’, he creates a very light album – which is were the ‘banalities’ come in I guess. I wouldn’t say that Gintas K isn’t serious about what he does, I am pretty sure he is serious. But for this occasion he set out to do some nice microsound work which hasn’t have that ultimate serious approach, but nice tinkling cracks ‘n cuts and it’s a rather refined album. Nothing perhaps that we haven’t heard before, but not often in such light hearted way. (FdW)
Address: http://www.cronicaelectronica.org
NATE YOUNG – REGRESSION (CD by Ideal Recordings)
Its always fun to see a picture on CD of the musician at work. Nate Young. Best known as the founding father of Wolf Eyes, starting it out as a solo project, but occasionally doing solo under his own name these days. We see him sit in a room, with a huge amplifier, some keyboards, one tom, a bass guitar and that’s about it (as far as I can tell of course). Then you play the music and think ‘oh he’s using the bass guitar here, or some keyboard effects’ – but perhaps that is not the case at all. Much of what I hear is built around loops of sound material. If you expect something noise based then you are knocking on the wrong door here. Things are noisy – that’s for sure – loud perhaps, even, but he’s not aiming for the feedback ‘n distortion pedal thing. The seven tracks are hark as easy back to musique concrete (loops of various objects banging together), seventies synth music (hip these days) and slow industrial rhythms in ‘Untitled’, but Young wants to construct music that is listenable, enjoyable as well as experimental. Whereas the noise of Wolf Eyes never attracted me very much, I think his solo work is very, very good. This is the kind of noise that a former noise head likes. (FdW)
Address: http://www.idealrecordings.com
LIONEL MARCHETTI – KNUD UN NOM DE SERPENT (CD by Intransitive Recordings)
JIM HAYNES – SEVER (CD by Intransitive Recordings)
KOMMISSAR HJULER & MAMA BAR – ASYLUM LUNATICUM (CD by Intransitive Recordings)
Of these three, the CD by Lionel Marchetti is a re-issue. Back in Vital Weekly 287 Roel Meelkop wrote: “Having seen Marchetti perform live with Jerome Noetinger, this CD comes as somewhat of a surprise. Starting with African music, followed by part of a French chanson and parts of spoken word, this work obviously needs a different approach. After reading the press release, things become clearer: Marchetti has a strong interest in shamanism and tries ‘to make the listener live with my mythology, more aware of the world’s potential forces’. Collage seems to be the method to achieve this goal. All tracks consist of numerous citations from music from all over the world and all over the times. The result is a work that one can listen to over and over again, because of the richness of its ingredients. Others can probably not stand the complexity…
Jim Haynes we know from his label The Helen Scarsdale Agency where he released his own music. His music stands along the breed of composers working with field recordings and bring out new drone like textures through computer processing. People like Irr. App (ext.) or Tarab (see last week) or Matt Schoemaker (see elsewhere). He takes the earthly rumble and debris to the computer and crafts together eerie long pieces, in which we recognize faint metallic sounds, bells, water, wind and such like. Music that is quite dark, very dense and highly atmospheric. Low end rumble of radio waves, which form small rhythm sections, like regular rain falling on metallic plates. These small rhythmic additions make this a somewhat different release than his previous work which seemed to be exclusively covered in the world of drone music. Another damn fine release.
The career of Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Bär has so far been covered with a blanket. Only those in ‘the know’ knew about this group from Germany, who have released a whole bunch of CDRs, lathe cut vinyl, acetates and cassettes. Usually limited to a handful copies (7 to 28 for the pieces here), but perhaps that will change now. The seven pieces selected by Intransitive are from those rare releases and may shed a light on what they do. Maybe its incorrect to refer to them as a band as four pieces are by Hjuler and three by Mama Bär. Its not easy to say how this music sounds, but its all heavily based on voices and tape manipulation. Quite incorrect too to say that this is noise, even when parts of it are quite loud, but then ‘Meine Erste Zeitmaschine’ is very, very soft. Long pieces also here at work. I think its fair to say that Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Bär are outsiders. They don’t belong to any school or genre of music, but create a sort of sound poetry of their own. Poetry as voice, speaking or singing (on a bicycle), is the thing around which things are centered. Henri Chopin like in ‘HJCVGrimmelshausen’ or simply not of this world in ‘Meine Erste Zeitmaschine’. My problem would be that this is all a bit too long, but I can see the potential of getting this out on a regular CD. For many probably a fine first introduction. (FdW)
Address: http://www.intransitiverecordings.com
MATT SCHOEMAKER – EROSION OF THE ANALOGOUS EYE (CD by The Helen Scarsdale Agency)
As said in the review of the new CD by Jim Haynes there is a small school of drone musicians, mainly from the USA who deliver some of the more darker outing in the scene. There are of course minor differences to be spotted. According to the cover of Schoemaker’s new CD ‘environmental phenomena’ where recorded in Indonesia, Cambodia and USA, but its hard to spot these on the actual music, as he feeds them through a whole bunch of analogue synthesizers, guitar stomp boxes, reverb and such like. Only in the last piece ‘The Analogous Eye’ bird calls and wind sounds rise out of the mass, but even here things seems electrified. This makes that Schoemaker’s music is altogether more ‘electronic’ in nature than that of Haynes or Irr.App.(ext.) and also a bit more ‘louder’, industrial perhaps. In his music he depicts empty industrial sites of long sustaining, rusty sounds of rusty object on even more rusty surfaces. The two parts of ‘Erosion’ are highly minimalist affairs of long sustained sounds. Not to be confused with the current wave of ‘cosmic’ sound artists, this goes further and deeper. An excellent work, sadly perhaps limited to 300 copies only. (FdW)
Address: http://www.helenscarsdale.com
ANTONI MAIOVVI – SHADOW OF THE BLOOD STAINED KISS (CD by Seed Records)
When I started playing this, I didn’t immediately think of the same Antoni Maiovvi who released that fine 70s inspired Italo techno CDR ‘Electro Muscle Cult’, as the opening piece is a down right boring piece. But in the third track ‘The Return’ its the Maiovvi we learned to love so much. His new album is a kind of concept album about a non existing science fiction movie, which is not strange to link with this kind of music. ‘Space Invaders Smoking Grass’ by I-F is probably the classic example of this, but also Giorgio Morodor connected his spacey dance music in ‘From Here To Eternity’. So you bet Maiovvi is in good company. Still dirty, analogue, fat synthesizers drive the melody, and his drum computer sounds nice and dry, always with a great drive. Party music, apart from the two tracks at the beginning. One could easily state nothing has changed since his previous record, and while that is true, the uplifting mood sheers me up a lot. That is sometimes better than an innovation. Sometimes. (FdW)
Address: http://www.seedrecords.co.uk
YUI ONODERA & THE BEAUTIFUL SCHIZOPHONIC – RADIANCE (CD by Basses Frequences)
NICOLAS SZCZEPANIK – THE CHIASMUS (CD by Basses Frequences)
ELEMENTAURAL RESEARCH PROJECT – ELEMENTALITY (CD by Basses Frequences)
Its been a while since we last heard of Jorge Mantas, also known as The Beautiful Schizophonic, who plays ‘sentimental laptop, paper, metal, glass, pink balloons and melancholic field recordings’ and is one of the few to play bittersweet microsound music, which he does quite nice. Here he teams up with man who I wouldn’t call melancholic, but perhaps he is, Yui Onodera (laptop, environmental sound, electronics, piano, guitar, voice and found objects). That’s seems an awefull lot of instruments and sound generators for what we hear in the five tracks they recorded no doubt through e-mail. But I guess it takes the best of both ends. The still-minimalism approach of Onodera is present here of course, but the soft melancholy is brought in by Mantas, and leads to a highly refined album of minimal ambient music, such as we find recently in the works of Celer. A great combination of all directions, electronics, field recordings and real instruments. Nothing new, but very nice.
One of the reasons for not announcing names verbally in our podcast is that some names would be very difficult to pronounce and we’d be getting e-mails ‘oh you say my name all wrong’, so as would no doubt be the case with Nicolas Szczepanik. We mostly know him as the owner of Sentient Recognition Archive label, who produce some professionally packed CDRs of the moody, textured drone music around. I think this is the first time I hear his music. Its hardly a surprise that he creates such music himself. Drone music with a big D. Szczepanik seems to be drawing inspiration from all over the place. Through calm and atmospheres, he isn’t too shy about breaking away from that and offer a louder end of his excursions. Things buzz and drone and sometimes bite your ear. Think a louder Organum meeting the softest Machinefabriek. The softer moments are the best, I think, but the louder bits (a minority here) provide a great counter point. Maybe a bit long, but very nice.
I have never heard of Anders Peterson (I think), but apparently he has worked with Rapoon and Merzbow under the guise of RelaphschO, but now he opts for the Elementaural Research Project where he plays around with guitars, bass, female voices, as well as recordings of fire, water, earth and wind. Here too, you may have guessed it, ambient music at work, but again of a slightly different nature. Whereas the two previous releases deal with pretty monolithic blocks of sounds, Peterson goes all over the place, but in each track he employs a multitude of sounds and sometimes in a slightly chaotic manner. It sounds, at times at least, that he is improvising the mix on the spot. This doesn’t exactly do right to the music, or the compositions. Seeing the amount of time he takes here, over seventy minutes, I also think it would have been better if he was a bit more critical to his output. Make a more stronger selection, weeding out some of the weaker brothers would have benefitted the album. I’d say start with this one and then move on up to the other two as the evening progresses, ending with the delicacy of Onodera and Mantas.
If you hurry up ordering any of these new releases, the label gives you a free CDR with previews of previous releases, but in the month of june. If drone is your tone, then you know where to get value for money! (FdW)
Address: http://www.bassesfrequences.org
ASMUS TIETCHENS – FLACHEN MIT FIGUREN (CD by Non Visual Objects)
HERIBERT FRIEDL – RECHERCHE_00 (CD by Non Visual Objects)
RICHARD CHARTIER – UNTITLED (ANGLE.1) (CD by Non Visual Objects)
Its of course not easy to decide what to play first if a parcel like this arrives, and I won’t say who got second and third, but you can rest assured Asmus Tietchens was the first on the player. Simply because I know an appreciate Asmus’ music for such a long period, and he always experiments with new sound material and new techniques. I recently saw him perform live in Cologne and before hand he explained something about what he was doing, and if I understood correctly this concert was more or less a preview from this CD, ‘Flächen Mit Figuren’, which means surfaces with images. Although not really the right translation, but what Tietchens means is that there is a surface in one color and on top a few geometric lines. Not like op-art, but certainly a few geometric constructions. This is how Tietchens approaches his music. He has a surface – say the background sound – and some figures that go on top. These don’t develop very much, but aren’t static either. Some of the figures are short, others are longer, and sometimes they cross at points, but not always the same points. That’s what makes this quite an interesting release. This sees Tietchens continuing what he started on his Ritornell/Line CDs, the microsound approach. Dark, soft rumbles, high end crackles, hiss like textures. Built from treatments of acoustic objects (no doubt from his already vast archive of such materials, or recycling the old sounds again). This is yet another top fine Tietchens work. No disappointment, but then, I didn’t expect one.
The concept which Heribert Friedl (labelowner of Non Visual Objects) applied is not very clear to me. He uses the analogue synthesizer Yamaha CS-40M, of which he first looked to found sounds that represent the soul, then abstracted these sounds without losing its character. He got an unconventional click sounds to which he added field recordings ‘that supported that original sound and put it into new and different contexts’. In the third step he analyzed the total information and composed these three pieces on ‘Recherche_00’. So a bit complex, perhaps (for me at least), but the music is actually quite nice. It works not too differently from the work just reviewed by Tietchens. Clicks, drones and (processed?) field recordings make an interesting interplay. ‘Phase 2’ is perhaps the fullest of the three pieces, whereas the two pieces around it are more sparse in character. Its intended for soft playback and it surely will make a great environment listening.
Which is exactly what Richard Chartier does on his ‘Untitled (Angle.1)’ release. Its a stereo mix down of an eight channel installation piece, of walls meeting in an enfolding chevron, which acts as a sound chamber and drawing surface. I am not sure how the sound is related to the visual component, but they loop in and out and are mixed together in a beautiful thirty-seven minute piece. Very soft in approach, with sounds going in and out, but on the surface it seems there is always some sound going on. Maybe its just a sound from outside? Maybe that’s the intention to think that? Its a fine work by Chartier, but perhaps also a bit unsurprising for him. Its something you just may expect him to do. With such a vast output as Chartier’s this might be the downside of it. Maybe this is just for the die hard fans only. I am not one, but then I don’t think I have everything by him, so for me the occasional ear is fine enough. (FdW)
Address: http://www.nonvisualobjects.com
TOMASZ BEDNARCZYK – LET’S MAKE BETTER MISTAKES TOMORROW (CD by 12K)
TU M’ – MONOCHROMES VOL. 1 (CD by Line)
This is the third album by Tomasz Bednarczyk, following ‘Summer Feelings’ (see Vital Weekly 563) and ‘Painting Sky Together’ (see Vital Weekly 664) and still the piano, but also the guitar are his main chooses of instruments to process. Play and process, play and process. The feeling that I already had with ‘Painting Sky Together’ is the same feeling I have here. This is surely great music, very moody, very textured, crisp and clear from the world of microsound, but but but, it sounds so similar to the previous releases, and also to lots of other works in that direction. So that makes this release nice, but I wonder: for whom?
You can’t say, not anymore at least, that Tu M’ are overproductive. In their early years they had a whole bunch releases (on labels as Headz, Fallt, ERS and Phthalo) but its been a while since I last heard their music. I am not sure how they arrived from the last point to this new point, but the four pieces – ranging from seven to thirty minutes) are fine examples of monochrome sounds. Highly atmospheric, deep, ambient, a bit hissy. Just a simple set of loops set forward to play music. Not unlike the recent Celer or the elsewhere reviewed Yui Onodera & The Beautiful Schizophonic, but Tu M’ seems to play even longer and more stretched. Ambient music with the big A of course. If Brian Eno has artistic children then their names are Tu M’. Here too, nothing new under the sun, but its great late night music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.12k.com
AQUA DORSA – CLOUDLANDS (CD by Glacial Movements)
This is a new name, well at least to me it is. Behind Aqua Dorsa we find Italy’s well-known master of all thing very ambient Oophoi and a new name, Enrico Coniglio. The latter gets credit for guitars, synthesizers, programming and sampling, while Oophoi takes control of synthesizers, piano, percussion, waterphone, chimes, singing bowls, theremin, programming and sampling. Seeing this being released by Glacial Movements, a label who announce themselves as ‘ambient’ and ‘isolationist’, and taken Oophoi’s previous output in account, you know which direction this. This is ambient music but then with a little bit more, and no doubt Coniglio is the man responsible for that extra bite. Not simply satisfied with ‘just’ ambient synthesizer textures, there is an addition from the world of microsound to this. Underneath the warm tapestries are woven of synthesizers playing sustained textured sounds, but the icing (pun intended) on the cake comes from the crackles, buzz and hiss that are on top of this. That makes that this music moves out of the usual ambient field, and blends together ambient and microsound, while, because its not entirely generated in the digital realm, its not entirely ambient glitch either. A marriage that works wonderfully well, I’d say. Deep atmospheric textures, icy glitches on top. Maybe the album as a whole is a bit long. One long track could have easily been skipped to make the album even a bit stronger, where it now is a bit too much of the same here and there. But its a fine altogether. (FdW)
Address: http://www.glacialmovements.com
NICOLA RATTI – ODE (CD by Preservation)
The name Nicola Ratti is a new one for me. He used to be in a ‘math-jazz-rock trio’ called Pin Pin Sugar (which I also never heard of but then math, jazz and rock is not my cup I guess), but since that band no longer exists, he started to work on his own. He plays guitar (his primary instrument), piano, double bass, percussion, field recording and sometimes voice, which are all combined into music that defies description. Its surely improvised when it was recorded, but in the mix he composes with the material. That makes that this music doesn’t sound too improvised. Its not jazz like, nor rock, nor noise. Maybe the closest it gets is towards popmusic. Singer songwriter like stuff, but without the emphasis on singing, although it happens here and there. Quiet, easy, soft, harmonic, yet also experimental enough to fit these pages. A curious release that could have easily fitted on a label like Staubgold, as it seems to have resemblances to the work of Dean Roberts. Personal music, beyond genres and styles. A great work of melancholic moods and textures, played with real instruments. (FdW)
Address: http://www.preservation.com.au
GARETH DAVIS & STEVEN R. SMITH – WESTERING (LP by Important Records)
MARTIN STIG ANDERSEN & GARETH DAVIS – RABBIT AT THE AIRPORT III (LP by Usagi Records)
Following his collaboration with Rutger Zuydervelt, reviewed last week, I received another two album involving Gareth Davis, who lives in Amsterdam, so I found out. Both albums are again collaborations and both don’t have that much information, but at least ‘Westering’ says something. Davis plays here bass clarinet, and one Steven R. Smith plays electric guitar & extras. Recorded May last year at Worstward Studios (which are in Los Angeles). Ok, not a lot of information. It seems to me that this is a work of two people playing together along the methods of improvisation. However the improvisations are not traditional, let alone free jazz or very silent – the two popular sides of the genre. Smith and Davis intend to play ‘moody’ tunes, with means ambient like guitars which however don’t sound like say Bass Communion or Fear Falls Burning. More straight up, maybe even a bit noise based at times, yet always minimal, trying to set forward an ambience in which Davis plays his sustained tunes. I guess the bass clarinet is an instrument par excellence to create such moody textures. Not free whistle wind instrument stuff here, but carefully constructed tunes and, as said, this is not the kind of very ‘silent’ improvisation, but a niche they carved out themselves. Nice one indeed.
The second is much more obscure. On the sleeve it says we should visit http://www.rabbitattheairport.com and on the label it says ‘composed, recorded and produced by Martin Stig Andersen’, whereas Gareth Davis gets credit for bass clarinet and there is mentioning of a co-composer, Eyvind Gulbrandsen. If you go to the website you get a nice film to see, but what exactly the relation is with the record is a bit unclear. The label’s website however reveals this is the third part of this series, all three including Davis, and the first also including Scanner’s Robin Rimbaud. All records are also released as a box now. The underlying story, I’m told, is about some inventor being lost at an airport and hunted by a large rabbit, but that story is just a vehicle to create the music. Davis tells me that he played the bass clarinet and then Andersen transformed the recordings into the music, including some areoplane sounds. The mood here is also textured, but it arrives from a totally different perspective. This work, in three parts, is more like a musique concrete symphony meeting the minimalism of Phil Niblock in a bleak landscape. Desolated, dark (why are airports never dark?) atmospheric music, with a nasty, creepy and spooky undercurrent. Soundtrack like music indeed, with or without a very concrete story behind it. Of the two I think I like this one just a little bit better, because its a more composed and worked out, but ‘Westering’ is very fine too. (FdW)
Address: http://www.importantrecords.com
Address: http://www.usagirecords.com
SPOELSTRA – I GOT ISSUES THE SHAPE OF ITALY ( 10″ by Narrominded)
BOUTROS BUBBA – NATIONAL ANTHEMS (CD by Narrominded)
Dutch music label Narrominded releases records and mp3’s since 2000. Their releases cover electronics, electro-acoustic music, improvisation, indie and noiserock. With the releases by Boutras Bubba and Spoelstra we are in the noiserock and indie section. Boutros Bubba is a band consisting of musicians that have formerly played in Gone Bald, Petrified Host, Quarles van Ufford, SGP and Crowd Surfers Must Die, with Spoelstra as one of them. A tight trio of bass, guitar and drums plus vocals. They do their job very disciplined. They play a rough and straight kind of rockmusic with some interesting twists every now and then. Like the cleverly constructed
“Intelligent Designer Pussy” that starts with a Naked City-like outburst of energy. It is in contrast with tracks like ‘Actor/Director’ that show rock from their dullest side. Anyway, from this music that incorporates influences from hardrock and hardcore, you should not expect too much new musical adventures. It is the performance that counts and make this music ‘new’, albeit in another sense. From that point of view Boutros Bubba’s is very up to date, enjoyable and very alive. Their ‘National Anthems’ is released in cooperation with Whosbrain Records and MOMI Recordings in a extremely limited edition of 50 pieces Narrominded released the solorecord ‘I got Issues The Shape of Italy’ by Spoelstra. It contains 6 tracks that have Spoelstra playing guitars, drums, sampler and effects. The first piece ‘I Breathe Country’ starts with a waltz, making you think that we are dealing here with country music. But quickly enough the music completely deranges. ‘How to run an Empire’ is not only the funniest title on this record, it is also the most satisfying piece. It is a convincingly constructed piece with unusual rhythmical twists and breaks. Like on the record by Boutros Bubba, Spoelstra sells rock built from comparable ideas. In the closing track ‘The South East Disneyland Separist Party’ – a Chadbourne-like title – Spoeltra effectively de-escalates his country trip with his slowing down manoeuvres.
I guess I’m too old for the rock that is contained on these two releases. The freshness of the recordings do not win from my dominating feeling that says I have heard it all so many times before. So these are for the young ones. (DM)
Address: http://www.narrominded.com/
STEFANIE RESSIN/ASMUS TIETCHENS – 3 WISHES (7″ by Meeuw)
Its been a while since we last heard from Meeuw Muzak, having not released another Christmas 7inch last year. I have never heard of Stefanie Ressin, who sings her song ‘3 Wishes’ here, although it says ‘(Dalglish, Elliot, Sierra)’ on the cover, so they are the composers, right? Quite nice, a bit pathetic singing opera voice over an electro inspired rhythm from the sequencer. Almost like an obscure 80s synth pop record, which is no doubt the quality that attracted mister Meeuw. On the other side we find a remix treatment of the song by Asmus Tietchens, who reverses the vocals, feeds the rhythm through a gated reverb and in the finest style of one hit wonders produces a superfluous b-side, but one that is quite nice. A fine pop 7″! Meeuw always amazes me. (FdW)
Address: http://www.meeuw.net
TEHO TEARDO – VOYAGE AU BOUT DE LA NUIT (7″ by Japanapart)
As an old punk who used to buy lots of 7″s, I am still quite fond of the format, but with changed musical appetite, I wonder why some music is released on this format. Mauro Teho Teardo, starting out with an album with musical help of Nurse With Wound and Ramleh, and over the years working with Mick Harris and Lydia Lunch, but also composing music using pen and paper. On this 7″, which lifts its title from the best known book of L.F. Celine, two short pieces of chamber music, played by four celli, two violins, violin, double bass and Teardo himself on guitars, rhodes and electronics. It almost seems like these are excerpts of longer tracks. Its a bit that the proceedings are over before you are aware of it. “Prix de Rome” works like a crescendo and seems a bit simple, but ‘Plans’ is a nice, short short, minimal slab of strings pulled together. Nice packaging! (FdW)
Address: http://www.japanapart.com
PARANOID ENTITY – 4CLOSURE (CDR by Paranoid Foundation)
Somewhere in February a bunch of boys, Cris, Mat, Will, Jon, Eve were bored and decided to ‘do a bit of musical improvisation’. Mat and Will were ‘capable’ guitarists, there were some lyrics, a synth, a ‘bit’ of bass. Everything was recorded onto a dictaphone, and that’s perhaps the thing that turned out to be good about this release. Whatever was done with the recording afterwards, it sounds pretty good, from a sound quality perspective. The music, a 26 minute piece around the theme of unconscious. I hear mumbling voices with lots of delay on the voices, simplistic guitar doodling with too many effects and a dreamy (?) synth bubbling in the background. I understand boredom and the necessity to do something against being bored, but I am not entirely convinced the results of such an evening should be released. The three pieces aren’t bad, most likely if you were one of the players, but not entirely convincing either. (FdW)
Address: http://www.paranoidfoundation.com
MICHEL HENRITZI – SHINJUKI BLUES & WHISPERING SHADOWS (CDR by Dyin’ Ghost Records)
Strange man, our Michel Henritzi, blues guitarist of the more dirty kind (his playing that is).
From the three CDRs he mailed, I leave two with
Jliat, as they contain noise improvisations with our people, mainly from what seems to be his second home land Japan, but then this disc is altogether something different. Here plays solo guitar and sings on one track – out of no less than eighteen tracks. Desolate music of blues and amplifier, which sometimes produces the lowest and grittiest sound around, sometimes provides a howl of feedback and then sometimes sheer silence, with sparse notes resting along waves of nothing, the buzz of the amplifier. Refined, pain music. Very elaborate. But what I don’t understand why this has to be so much at once? Why eighteen tracks, spanning more than seventy minutes? Why not the good old thirty-five (old LP length) with say nine of the best? A certain fatigue got into me when hearing this. Unless that’s of course the idea… (FdW)
Address: none given
COEN OSCAR POLACK & HERMAN WILKEN – THE LANGUAGE OF MOUNTAINS IS RAIN (CDR by Narrowminded)
COEN OSCAR POLACK – GELUIDEN UIT DE BLAUWE KAMER (CDR by Narrowminded)
COEN OSCAR POLACK – THE SKIPPING MONK (CDR by Narrowminded)
Its not a big mystery why Narrominded would want to release three works by Coen Oscar Polack: he is one of the four people behind the label. Polack used to be a member of Psychon Troopers (later called Psychon), and together with co-label boss owner Lars Meijer, one half of Living Ornaments. All three releases here deal with environmental recordings and the process thereof. The first release here is the only non-solo work, which he recorded with Herman Wilken, whom we know as one half of Hydrus. What kind of field recordings they use here (rain I thought in the beginning of the title piece), I don’t know, it can’t be heard. It is however fed through a bunch of custom built software modules and in two long pieces, which act as mirrors of each other. Where the first starts in a deep ambient texture, the second ends with it. In both there are some louder parts, with the software seemingly going out of control, but they keep things together quite well. The musical texture overall is very ambient, which is quite nice, without many surprises.
The Blue Room is the translation of De Blauwe Kamer, so its sounds from the blue room, a piece of nature in Utrecht, a watery part of The Netherlands. Here Polack went to do some field recording, which was used in an installation piece for the visitors centre of that nature reserve. Unlike many of his peers would do, taking a piece of sound from the environment and process it for the duration, or mix several of those recordings together, Polack chooses to create loops of sounds of water, birds and perhaps insects and he creates a minimal piece of repeating sounds. Here I am not entirely convinced of the result. The sounds are nice, but the sheer repetitive effect is something that didn’t interest me very much. Somehow it seemed to simple for me. Its not that these loops go on for too long: there are certain shifts in the material to keep things interesting, but the loop effect works in the end against the material. Perhaps the ‘easy’ (?) route would have been better.
No processing on ‘The Skipping Monk’. Polack spent six weeks in India in October and November 2008 and on this release the raw sound material he recorded over there. Not a place I visited, but it sounds great. Ambient sounds of electrical sounds, shortwave radio, monks performing rituals but also sounds from cities like Kolkata and Mumbai are part of this. It makes an excellent sound diary of what was surely an interesting trip, and no doubt delivered sound material for future use. Hopefully also for others?
All three are available as a downloads, but I recommend getting them on CDR. Narrominded has some nice packaging for them, and of course they sound as intended. (FdW)
Address: http://www.narrominded.com
New MP3 releases
From: wobbly@detritus.net
Thomas Dimuzio & Wobbly – Passed Aside (Art Bears Remixes)
http://www.detritus.net/wobbly/mp3s/PassedAside/
It is an album constructed from the multitracks of Art Bears songs, edited
from concerts performed around the time of our submissions to Chris
Cutler’s Art Bears remix project.
2. From: miguel carvalhais <carvalhais@cronicaelectronica.org>
“Compilation Works 1996-2005”, the first ever authorized online album release by Marc Behrens, features 19 tracks, previously scattered over compilations and reinterpretation projects (by artists like Disinformation, Ralf Wehowsky, John Hudak, Ilios, and others) from a 10 year period.
Most of the works were short one-off conceptual pieces, but, listened to in this new sequence, they reveal common strategies, mainly because many of them feature characteristics from Behrens’ album works, carried out over a sometimes extremely short duration.
The personal shifts in technology, the state of sound research and of processing techniques occurred during the period in which the works were realized turn this release into a good opportunity to explore how Marc Behrens’ work kept a unique consistency under varying conditions and while exploring different concepts.
All works have been carefully remastered and can be considered as definite version
http://cronicaelectronica.org/?p=041
Announcements
1. From: deeez@antenna.nl
De Werkplaats : Spiegelingen
Exhibition of various artists and a live-performance of Puin+Hoop
Time:
21 June 2009 at 14.00 uur
Address:
De Werkplaats
Valkestraat 6
3811 KD Amersfoort
Information:
http://dewerkplaats.blogspot.com