MUZIK – ULMER BILE
Four sides of vinyl on a single CD. An amazing 70 minutes of sound for
slightly more than a grin. Highly individualistic and extremely angular
music from Mickey Paradinas, who like his equally loopy chum, Aphex Twin
Dick Jim, has fallen under the voodoo spell of a big, throbby Drum & Bass
mutation. Not necessarily dance music, but you could probably accumulate a
haggle of hernias trying. First track starts, stops, starts like an
Egyptian car; eventually it gets all pistons firing and splutters off in
the direction of Track 2, which is introduced with and later augmented by a
high wild sample from Ornette Coleman. Somehow it manages to work woven
between the strangled synthesisers and alka seltzer beatfroth. Then there’s
the introspective M5Saabtone followed by the eminently twistable Fine
Tuning. Track 5 starts with the introduction of surgically separated blips
and tweaks which smatter about until glued together by the drums, the drums
they don’t stop. Hip007 has moments which sound like a DJ mixing up two
versions of the same song at different speeds. Penultimate piece is Hornet
which could be a wasp – great track this. One more, and then it’s over. The
end. (MP)
VARIOUS ARTISTS – ANTIPHONY (2CD on Ash International)
A whole bunch of remixes incorporating sounds sucked out of the lowest
reaches of the radio spectrum by Joe Banks, aka Disinformation. Currently
one of my favourite artists on Ash, Joe Banks has now three releases out on
this label, two on vinyl and another as a full-length CD. I am quite
smitten by the latter mostly because my body perceives it as dense
information which, if tuned right, I might be able to decode. Especially
good for those large-pupilled late nights and dream excursions. The
packaging echoes that of the earlier Mesmer and Fault In The Nothing
collections, and duplicates some of the information included with the
original Disinformation releases. Once again, it reads like surrealists on
ketamine.
It seems right from the start that many of the remixers who contributed to
this CD were taken by the weird glock-type melody included as part of the
last track on the R + D CD, which itself was sourced form an unidentified
HF broadcast.
Ralf Wehowsky opens this set with a mostly sedate track which closes with
disturbing banshee screams. Succint Bruce Gilbert contributes two brief
tracks – the first an angry robohornet, trapped and circling in a narrow
space. The second is a more granular excursion. Kapotte Muziek manipulate
existing work(as they always do) in a surprisingly brief track which
leapfrogs about but lurks mostly in the low. Big steel doors thunder, they
don’t rattle. People Like Us stagger two sides of the same thing in a
rather pointless track and are followed by Chris & Cosey. Their
contribution, ‘Stargate’ sounds like slowly unfurling slipstreams of a
long-past event. They wind up then they wind down. Slow and soothing in the
midst of all this. Prolific German Atom Heart is subtle too. John Duncan is
not. And at last, my two favourites on Disc 1:
LOSD provide a track which develops into a long stretched out conversation
between two or three primordial subterraliens, which are often to be found
hiding somewhere in the music these guys produce. Last track on Disc 1 is
by Mark Van Hoen…and it may even be the weirdest of the lot. Strange
juxtapositions in Radio Land. Haunting, demanding, totally…
Disc two kicks off with a decent dark deep drone provided by SETI,
gradually being taken over by a more high end drone and likewise high
peeps. Somebody who wishes to remain anonymous provides us with an apply
entitled ‘Untitled’ piece in which the Sakahashi piece and truly ambient
music beneath. There is kitschy touch to this, but it stays on the good
side. A short spoken word piece is followed by Mr. Disinformation himself,
followed by the ‘soundcheck of Disobey performance’ (is there an analogue
thing to Merzbow’s track on ‘A Fault In The Nothing’, also recordedat a
soundcheck?). A noisy beast this one, and the question remains: how was the
concert itself? Karkowski and Lyon got their kicks out of sampling kicks, a
nice stereo spectrum opens up, but as more kicks and keyboards drop in,
they are lost in their piece. Far too long this piece. Marc Behrens is
doing his collage thing (whereas he could have been doing his techno thing
too). Slowly building, by carefully placing each new sound on top of the
other. Mark Poysden stretches the Disinformation sounds in his sampler and
the random filter play their piece.
Taking all the good tracks from both CD’s would still deliver two CD’s of
music, as the weak are in minority on this set. (MP + FdW)
Address: <touch@touch.demon.co.uk>
BLOWHOLE – STUMBLING SOUTHWARD (LP by Ten Bobs Swerver)
The anarchistic freejazznoise outfit hit again. The A-side is a must!
Recorded by Blowhole as a quartett at some Californian radio station and
comes off most of the time as an acoustic noise piece. Whereas Blowhole
usually sound noisy and feedback like, this side (which is an act I hadn’t
heard them doing before) all the instruments sound what they are (although
I still haven’t found out what how a ‘bowed microphone stand’ sounds like).
The b-side opens with feedback drones which sound deliberatly bad (it was
recorded with a Radio Shack stereo handheld tape-recorder and two tie-clip
mics, one of which was broken), and then somewhere nervous violin playing
drops in. If there was ever a thing called lo-fi free jazz, then Blowhole’s
music would be the example clarifying the term. And as I do like this
record, I keep asking myelf, why these boys so unbeloved in Europe? Shame!
(FdW)
Address: 3 East St., Newton Hill, Wakefield, WF1 2PY, England
HALANA NUMBER 2 (MAGAZINE + CD)
This magazine is devoted in some way to music that has is made in
athoughtful, maybe even spiritual way. Quite indepth interviews with Tony
Conrad, Patty Waters, William Parker, Pauline Oliveros, Keiji Haino and
Alan Lamb, plus a small review section. The good thing is that this issue
comes with a CD (which of course every magazine should have of course)
which exemplifies of what is written. Tony Conrad loops two violins and a
cello (similar to his Slapping Phytagoras CD). Alan Lamb plays around with
the wind playing telegraph wires and is a truely ambient piece of
controlled environmental sounds. William Parker’s piece is solo bass played
with a bow – rather dull kind of improvisation. Keiji Haino’s hurdy gurdy
sound starts out droningly good, but why does this man sing? I could dig it
better without. Pauline Oliveros uses bird whistles in addition with a
growing amount of computer sounds and accordion playing hide and seek. A
nice piece that is just a bit too long. Needles to say that this is a
rather interesting CD, and likewise magazine, providing an intelligent
insight in some of the more interesting minimal and new music. (FdW)
Address: <halanazine@aol.com>