MACIUNAS ENSEMBLE – THE ARCHIVES PART 1 1968-1980 (11CD box by Het Apollohuis) *
SOUND ART @ HET APOLLO HUIS (2CD by Wergo)
MURMER – FRAMEWORK 1-4 (2CD by Herbal International) *
SKY BURIAL – THERE I SAW THE GREY WOLF GAPING (CD by Small Doses) *
CRAIG PADILLA & ZERO OHMS – WHEN THE EARTH IS FAR AWAY (CD by Lotuspike) *
DARSHAN AMBIENT – FALLING LIGHT (CD by Lotuspike) *
BONUS SKORT (CD by Static Caravan) *
RUTH FEATURING MUSHY – FAR FROM PARADISE (CD by Three:Four)
INCH-TIME – MYTH & IMPERMANENCE (CD by Mystery Plays Records) *
MARCO DOUMA & ROEL MEELKOP & RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – PIERDRIE (DVD by Machinefabriek)
JIM O’ROURKE – OLD NEWS #8 (2LP by Old News)
V4W.ENKO & D’INCISE – AM.P.E.REM.EC (LP by Everest Records)
RICHARD FRANCIS & MATTIN – LISA SAYS (LP by Auf Abwegen)
MOE – LEFT TO SWALLOW (LP by Conrad Sound)
BLUEFACED PEOPLE (7″ by Conrad Sound)
SULT – BARK (CDR by Conrad Sound) *
SKASET (cassette by Conrad Sound)
ANNE-JAMES CHATON & ANDY MOOR – TRANSFER/4 INBOUND/OUTBOUND (7″ by Unsounds)
THE PITCHSHIFTERS – SOUND SOURCE COMPOUND (7″ by Pax Records)
MYSTIFIED – STILL DREAMING (CDR by SP Recordings) *
KING RIB/ANDREW PERRY (CDR by Wggfdtb) *
SINDRE BJERGA – SONGS OF FAILURE (CDR by Wggfdtb) *
DEAD WOOD – FOREST (CDR by Wggfdtb) *
DEAD EDITS – SOFT ONES, FOR OPRHANS (CDR by Cip) *
LOOPOOL AS DIONYSIS (3″ CDR by Records As Nauseam)
DEVELOPER (cassette by Copy for Your Records)
RUEZ – BRISE SOLEIL (cassette by Copy for Your Records)
GINTAS K (cassette by Copy for Your Records)
GNAWED/RXAXPXE (split cassette by Industrial Culture)
MACIUNAS ENSEMBLE – THE ARCHIVES PART 1 1968-1980 (11CD box by Het Apollohuis)
SOUND ART @ HET APOLLO HUIS (2CD by Wergo)
Whenever the name Paul Panhuysen comes up, two activities with his involvement are usually mentioned, and they are related. Panhuysen was the director for many years of Het Apollohuis, an venue in Eindhoven for modern music of a more serious nature and the Maciunas Ensemble. Usually not a lot is said about the latter, perhaps because we don’t always know. The Maciunas Ensemble was founded in 1968 by Paul Panhuysen, Remko Scha (now there is someone whose name hardly pops here in Vital Weekly, but certainly is a man of many talents) and Jan van Riet, who took as a guiding principle a score by George Maciunas – godfather of the Fluxus movement – that anyone can play music and that anything is music. Thus the ensemble had its name and then gathered together every week to play music and listen to the efforts of the previous week. This box contains eleven CDs, all of which have about sixty to seventy minutes of music, which are the best moments from the period 1968 to 1980, carefully selected from those weekly tapes by Panhuysen and Mark van der Voort. This must have been a herculean task. I got this box, disconnected my phone/computer/internet, but otherwise just went on what I would normally do. Sit down, listen, perhaps read a bit, look outside at passing autumn clouds, thinking about the music, and yes, taking an afternoon nap, but that’s because I always take one. Van der Voort warned me that this might be not my usual cup of tea, and it was not to be compared with the highly minimal ‘Music For Everyman 861’ LP from 1968 – the only work I ever heard properly. I just went down a crazy river of free music, and what a ride it was. This is some of the most radical music I heard in quite some time, and the word radical is often used for things loud, quiet, violent, or extremely minimal. Perhaps of these, the latter applies here, as some of these works are very minimal. But then not minimal in the sense of American minimalism (Reich, Glass), but a quite disciplined and yet very free. It’s like this group has a microphone in the middle, and everybody picks an instrument he/she is bound not to have played before, and then just start playing. Playing a new tones and then keep repeating that phrase over and over again. Each year has more or less a CD here, and as the seventies progress this is certainly the case, whereas in the earlier years it’s slightly more chaotic. There is a total lack of electronics, (I think, perhaps save for some music played from a reel-to-reel at a slower speed), so violence and negativity that we associate with noise is totally absent here. Yet, it also doesn’t seem to be some hippie meeting of people jamming – also save for some occasions where there is some use of voice material, which I don’t seem to dig very well. But I must admit I have been listening with true devotion, and fine admiration and was highly amazed by this. Mark van der Voort said during our last meeting this box set by not be too much of my liking, too much free jazz I think were his words, but he’s all wrong. This total free music sounds like free music, not just in a jazz way, but free of anything else too. At some later works I was reminded of No Neck Blues Band, but the rock agenda was always far away it seems. This is surely one of the strangest boxes of music ever landing on this desk.
And just in the week after I got this heavy box of Maciunas Ensemble music, I visited the ZKM in Karlsruhe to drop off an archive of a friend of mine, and fell into the ‘Soundart’ exhibition – still running and highly recommended – and learned that Het Apollohuis dropped of their archive too there. Running from 1980 to 1995, Paul and Helene Panhuysen programmed a wide variety of artists and to celebrate their archive being kept in a fine location, the ZKM compiled a lovely double CD of live recordings from 1980-1995 with many of the excellent names from the world of serious sound art, classical avant-garde and more ‘pop’ like. We have Z’EV, Max Eastley, Jaap Blonk, Thomas Koner, Phill Niblock, Rolf Julius, Alvin Lucier, Hugh Davies, Shelley Hirsch and Paul Panhuysen himself, but strangely enough not the Maciunas Ensemble. Maybe they just never played live? Or perhaps a form of being shy? Complete with an extensive booklet in German and English about all of the artists, this is an excellent document. (FdW)
Address: http://www.paulpanhuysen.com/news.htm
Address: http://www.zkm.de/musik
MURMER – FRAMEWORK 1-4 (2CD by Herbal International)
Patrick McGinley, also known as Murmer, has built since the mid 90s a body work of that deals with field recordings and electronics – in that order. Some of these works are based on pure field recordings, and these are gathered on ‘Framework 1-4’, a double disc with a good solid two hours of his work. Pure field recordings however doesn’t mean that we have four long pieces of one sound event that goes on for an infinite amount of time. In some cases, for instance in ‘Framework 2’ and ‘Framework 3’ various events are layered so there is indeed a composition of some kind and in ‘Framework 1’ various events are placed in short fragments, one after another. We have the four pieces that make up ‘Framework’ as well as four interludes, the most recent of the four main pieces. Pure sound scaping is perhaps not really my kind of music, I was thinking recently, and perhaps I like some ‘adjustment’ taking place, some interference or perhaps better: some kind of composition. It’s perhaps as such that I like this Murmer quite a lot. It’s not overtly composed in the strict sense of composing, but there have been adjustments. Especially when McGinley is layering various sound events together, such as in ‘Framework 3 [Swarm]’. Then these sound events become music in my ears, they start singing, buzzing, and occasionally making a jump move and change the scenery. I prefer that over the more straight forward documenting of single sound events. A very fine work here, maybe a bit long altogether. (FdW)
Address: http://www.herbalinternational.tk
SKY BURIAL – THERE I SAW THE GREY WOLF GAPING (CD by Small Doses)
Michael Page’s side project Sky Burial is, next to his other project Fire In The Head, getting more and more a main project and here we have a CD of collaborative works. On four of the eight pieces Page is joined by others, such as Jarboe, Troum, Annie Hogan, Johann Eiriksson, Craig McFarlane, Bridget Wishart and Xiphoid Dementia. Two pieces are just by Page and two more are by Danny hyde, which we are perhaps to understand as a remix of Sky Burial. If you have been following the career of Page, you know that with Fire In The Head he reaches for the noise, and with Sky Burial for something that is altogether more atmospheric, which shows well on this release. It’s quite a varied disc also. There is ‘Beyond The Veldt’ with a slow drum computer and the vocals of Bridget Wishart, and a break away from many other Sky Burial pieces. The two remixes by Danny Hyde are attempts at some sort of ‘pop’/’techno’ music and seem to me quite out of place, but length-wise they are, luckily not very long in duration. The other five pieces are the sort of excursions into drone land we know and cherish from Sky Burial. The fact that more people are playing on some of these tracks is something that, frankly, I couldn’t tell. It’s not something that I would think is very important, save perhaps for the fans of those bands, as it doesn’t drastically the music of Sky Burial. Highly atmospheric, dark ambient, with small bits of rhythm carefully placed all over the scene, effective use of reverb, makes this yet again a particular strong album, not the next new move, but a further exploration of his music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.small-doses.com
CRAIG PADILLA & ZERO OHMS – WHEN THE EARTH IS FAR AWAY (CD by Lotuspike)
DARSHAN AMBIENT – FALLING LIGHT (CD by Lotuspike)
When I rip a CD for my podcast, I open it up in Itunes, and you know, well, perhaps, that Itunes (or rather Gracenote, the database behind it) gives us ‘genres’ to identify what you are playing. ‘New Age’ it says for the CD by Craig Padilla and Zero Ohms. It’s also a term I used in reviewing ‘The Heart Of The Soul’, Padilla’s previous solo record (see Vital Weekly 830), so perhaps there is some truth in the fact that Padilla’s interest are in the new age. I wouldn’t know why you would want to label something you do as new age, as I would think it’s not a very positive way to describe music, almost like proudly declaring ‘I play muzak’. Here we have Padilla’s third collaboration with Zero Ohms, and (obviously) I haven’t heard his previous two and now there is this album of deep space music. And new age. Maybe I am guided by the Itunes tag, but it’s hard not to see this in terms of new age music, especially when Zero Ohms plays his Anasazi flute, the Hawaiian nose flute and the tinwhistle, over a bed of warm synthesizers, and with a total lack of arpeggio’s, sequencers and rhythm machines. Now I am not sure how Tangerine Dream evolved over a forty year period, but no doubt they trapped/tapped into this new age business too, and that’s all nice and well. Do I like this? That’s difficult to say. I look outside, see grey autumn weather. Inside there is coffee, a good book at hand (actually Jules Verne’s trip to the moon book, but that’s merely a coincidence) and this music is alright actually. It’s tacky, cliche, moody and perhaps a well sugared cake, but having said, I actually enjoyed this.
Behind Darshan Ambient we find Michael Allison, and ‘Falling Light’ is already his fifth album for Lotuspike and the blurb refers to ‘a delicate musical line between ambient and jazz’. Allison also played with/for Nona Hendryx & Zero Cool, China Shop, Richard Hell & The Voidoids and his own band Empty House. He is, one could say, a muli-instrumentalist, playing piano, guitar, synths and perhaps drums or drum machines. There is indeed a jazzy feel on this release, but for the non-jazz lover, which I consider myself to be, this is actually quite do-able. Here too the sky is the unlimit, and we look far and beyond – metaphorically speaking that is, since it’s still a grey day, looking like it’s gonna rain. When Allison takes out his lapsteel, things have a sort of vaguely americana/blues feel to it, and the sky is not above but horizontal: we see a big hot desert. I am hardly surprised to read this man provides music for commercials and films, and in his own music there is surely a distinctly commercial feel to be noticed. Music for the adult listener in a modern home, luxurious living room room. It may seem that I think this is negative, but it’s not. Here’s somehow who creates music for a wider audience, should they know how to find him (I have no idea here how that works). Both of these album are well made, excellently produced, but perhaps also removed it’s sharper edges, a certain roughness and that’s perhaps also that doesn’t make me play this very often. Unless I’d be captain of a spaceship one day: I’d like to try all this cosmic music up in the infinite skies. (FdW)
Address: http://www.lotuspike.com
BONUS SKORT (CD by Static Caravan)
Back in Vital Weekly 808 I was pleasantly surprised by ‘The Hangman Tree’, a CD by Laura J Martin, which reminded me of Kate Bush and Hannah Peel. Back then she played everything herself, but here she teams up with one Mike Lindsay, somewhere over a shoe shop in Reykjavik called ‘Bonus Skor’, which is now also the title of her CD with Lindsay. The duties are thus divided that Martin plays flute, piano, mandolin, recorder, piccolo, synth and clarinet and taking the main lead in vocals, while Linday plays guitar, synths and bass and a bit of vocals. Unfortunately a short CD, with only four pieces, clocking at just eighteen minutes – boohoo and weep. This is more excellent folk/pop music, with a similar uplifting character and a touch of experimentalism that we also found on her debut CD. Benge had a hand in producing this, and perhaps this hand was present in creating some of the releases more lively synth sounds and some of the rhythm programming? I am not sure, but this is a great release by all accounts. Just pop enough to fit these pages of experimental music, but also with enough experiment inside the idiom of pop so you know this will never be mainstream. Bonus Skor uses loops of those stations, field recordings from Iceland, and all with that excellent twist of pop sensibility. Four excellent pieces – and in need much more like this. Please. (FdW)
Address: http://www.staticcaravan.org
RUTH FEATURING MUSHY – FAR FROM PARADISE (CD by Three:Four)
To be honest, I had no clue who Ruth was when I received this album for review. When pointed to the name Thierry Müller, the penny dropped. Müller is probably better known for this work in the late 70s/early 80s as Ilitch. Under this name he released two albums (Periodik Mindtrouble in 1978 and 10 Suicides in 1980), which were great combinations of synthesizer/new wave pop with an experimental twist. And very French. In the mid-80s the first Ruth album was released (Polaroid/Roman/Photo) but, when the LP bombed commercially, things went quiet. However, with the advent of the noughties, both Ilitch and Ruth were dusted off by Müller. Booking a studio to work with singer Mushy (a rather unfortunate name), over nine hours of material was recorded, which, after some extreme editing, evolved into Far From Paradise. I’m not quite sure if the results are that suited for Vital Weekly. The press statement described this album as “dark and wistful atmosphere with a hint of eroticism meet with more electric and spontaneous moments”, but rather unfortunately that is wishful thinking. Ruth sounds a bit like a technically superior but musically less adventurous Ilitch. The songs, mostly based on sequences, often feature a dance beat and lots of keyboard on top. Mushy’s vocals are limited to only a few songs. There are a few good tracks like Une Notte A Roma (where the album was recorded), Rubixbrain and the punky and oddly out of place sounding title track, but as a whole the album just doesn’t gel. Clocking in at nearly one hour, perhaps Far From Paradise would have been better had it been edited to a shorter length. (FK)
Address: http://www.three-four.net
INCH-TIME – MYTH & IMPERMANENCE (CD by Mystery Plays Records)
It’s one of those small time problems of life of a reviewer. How do I start the day? What will be the first thing to play? A minor problem no doubt, as there are way more important problems to care about, but the bigger idea is of course ‘for what time is this music suited’, as I think not everything is suited for the any moment of the day. So I can choose to start the day with Sindre Bjerga, Sky Burial or say Inch-time – with all four I have a faint idea what I will get, I choose for something more light hearted, Inch-time, Stefan Panczak’s work. ‘Myth & Impermanence’ is the follow up to ‘The Floating World’ (see Vital Weekly 750), and recorded over a ten month period. Panczak’s music is on the move here. Before it was all electronic, mellow, ambient but set along nice, easy, chopped up beats and something that would fit along works on Static Caravan and Expanding Records, but here the course is set towards a more jazz like feel. While Panczak still plays guitar, keyboards, vibes, percussion and electronics, he gets help from hired guns to play trumpet, bass, drums and fender rhodes piano. Not on all tracks, but this makes the album even more real jazz than one where everything is sampled together. Sometimes I am reminded of Tortoise, especially their later work, and sometimes of Four Tet and it altogether makes a very pleasant album for a grey sunday morning. The perfect ‘day after’ music, lounge-like, chill out, sunday morning, relaxing place before another day starts of more serious listening. However, while I was playing this, I also realized that this might be the perfect smokey, dingy, jazz club vibe, for just a fine session of head-nodding during the early hours of the night. Music for every moment of the day perhaps. While not necessarily the biggest lover of jazz, this I thought was pretty awesome. (FdW)
Address: http://www.mysteryplaysrecords.com
MARCO DOUMA & ROEL MEELKOP & RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – PIERDRIE (DVD by Machinefabriek)
All three artists here are from the city of Rotterdam, best known (other than these artists of course) for having one of the world’s largest harbors. It’s here we find Roel Meelkop and Rutger Zuydervelt, both armed with a hard disc recorder and microphones and Marco Douma armed with a video camera to tape sounds and images from this busy harbor for their ‘Pierdrie’ work, as screened on three monitors and four speakers and which has epic proportions. It starts and ends with water, we climb up the quay, with odd signs on metal like walls, highly abstract, but moving towards the less abstract shots of the entire harbor. Little by little it gets darker and darker, night falls, and lights can be seen, and the color of the water gets slowly lighter and lighter: it’s day again, and the DVD, which lasts eighteen minutes, starts, automatically again. Epic indeed, the constant, busy harbor, a 24 hour economy. The music by Meelkop and Machinefabriek is a fine work of sizzling tones, and metallic scraping, of machinery in the harbor, but subdued, rather than ‘industrial’. A peaceful harmony between the endless stream of water and the life around it. A dreamy, poetic picture of the harbor of Rotterdam, a beautiful stream of image and sound. Maybe the DVD with one monitor is a poor excuse, but at least it allows us to watch a bit of it, and everywhere we want. (FdW)
Address: http://www.machinefabriek.nu
JIM O’ROURKE – OLD NEWS #8 (2LP by Old News)
From my unfinished/forthcoming/unpublished memoir of life at Staalplaat: “I guess it was Christoph Heemann who called me one day, before I working for Staalplaat, that one Jim O’Rourke was staying with him in Aachen and wether I could perhaps set up a concert for him. I knew who he was, perhaps due to his involvement with Illusion Of Safety, his solo cassette releases, and perhaps his LP on Entenpfuhl was already released. I agreed to set up a concert for this young man at Extrapool, which was just about to start up. Jim turned out to be so nervous that he talked about American TV all night. Some people showed up and we made 70 guilders on the door. Jim went over to Christoph to ask how much was needed for the petrol, said it was 35, and was so happy when we gave them the entire amount. Maybe I read this wrong later on, but this might have been on of Jim’s early solo concerts. My interest was in the fact that I wanted a Jim O’Rourke LP on my label, and perhaps we talked about it that night, maybe a LP which he was working with Michael Prime, maybe something else, and I got some tapes to that end. But then I did my Arcane Device CD, started at Staalplaat and low and behold, Geert-Jan was talking about a CD with Jim too, with also a demo of sorts present. It was decided that we should do a double CD, which at the time (1992) was a risk, since O’Rourke wasn’t the best known artist. It can be reconstructed who got what, but there were two works: ‘A Young Person’s Guide To Drowning’ and ‘Mere’. I check my tapes, and I think ‘Mere’ was the one he send to Korm Plastics. Over the years ‘the 2CD ‘Disengage’ proofed to be a steady point of sales and got us more than once out of trouble. Jim came over to Amsterdam, being shit scared for getting any drugs – which weren’t around day time at Staalplaat – to talk about the cover, and to play Steim with Illusion Of Safety, causing alarm for the high volume of the concert and Jim fearing he was no longer welcome there. There was talk (and even a demo) of a work Jim was doing with John Duncan, who lived almost around the Staalcorner, and in those we saw him a lot. He played with Brise Glace at Paradiso (which included Duncan on shortwave that night), and backstage introduced me to Steve Albini, as Shellac was also playing. I am not sure, but I don’t think I was too impressed. I loved Brise Glace that night. It might have been the last time I saw Jim – this being around 1996 – as I always kept missing those Sonic Youth concerts later on. Thurston and Lee came to our store, weren’t the least interested in talking business, but rather relieve us from those rare records gathering dust. But that’s a different story”. If you would have told me ‘Mere’ would be on a 2LP set in 2012, I would have been very surprised in 1992. But come to think of it: it took a long time. It comes with a great bonus piece ‘Merely’, from around the same period, and which the three part suite of ‘Mere’ pretty well. (FdW)
Address: http://editionsmego.com/
V4W.ENKO & D’INCISE – AM.P.E.REM.EC (LP by Everest Records)
Entirely created with the use of internet, this LP between Kyiv (Ukraine) based musician Evgeniy Vaschenko, also known as V4w.enko and D’Incise, of whom we never caught his real name, from Switzerland. Both of them have been around these pages, although D’Incise a bit more. He produces music that is based on computers and sampling, from the point of modern musique concrete composing. V4w.enko is perhaps someone who is more along lines of computers and everything that is a bit more rhythmical, to avoid such words as ‘techno’. I have no idea how duties were divided on this records, in terms of who did what in which stage of the process. Like processing sounds, mixing end results etc. But, and maybe I am entirely wrong here, I wouldn’t be surprised that final duties for side A lie with V4w.enko and with D’Incise for the other side. But as said, I might be wrong, and my instinct has left me. This record is a busy one, with lots of action happening all over the place. Glitch music throughout all of this, with broken and slightly distorted sounds working around as loops or single events, but there are many of them, along with a lot of other sound events, loops, single shots. The two longer tracks on the a-side seem to have these glitch like sounds more up-front, and on the other side they seem to be more in balance with whatever other sounds they also have used in this – and hence me thinking about different duties in mixing these pieces. It’s quite a nervous record, as there is so much happening here all of the time, on all sorts of levels. Far away, close by, somewhere in the middle, on the right, on the left, and perhaps in corners we don’t know. I am glad I didn’t play this using headphones, as it could easily be a nerve wrecking experience. It’s a record that I like, but perhaps also one that sounds already a bit dated – going back to the early parts of this century with such labels as Ritornell, Meme or ERS. That says nothing about the high quality of this LP however, as these boys cut and pasted an excellent ride together. (FdW)
Address: http://everestrecords.ch/
RICHARD FRANCIS & MATTIN – LISA SAYS (LP by Auf Abwegen)
A project in two parts, one the actual music, as recorded on July 3 2008 in Berlin and one the conversation as a piece of text from August 31 2011 in which Richard Francis and Mattin talk about the recording from three years before, about their methods of working together but also with others. A fascination they have in common is about white and pink noise, and sustaining those sounds. It’s an interesting text to read, as it clears up some interesting things but it’s not entirely necessary to read the text to like the music I should think. The buzzing, cracking and sustaining sound, which sometimes hoovers closely above the threshold of hearing, reminds the listener of your ventilator or heater buzzing, or the faint noises from afar late at night. If I understand right, this record is for Francis an end to the way he working and for Mattin the start of a new working method, a more conceptual approach if you will. This record contains some very minimal music, with very few sound elements, but are fascinating to hear. Crackles of vinyl (not from the pressing), field recordings very remotely humming and the white/pink noise slowly washing ashore and moving away. All of this in a very quiet and contemplating way. If you think Mattin is all about noise then you should surely try this record for a change. Maybe this is more what you would expect from somebody like Richard Francis, but this is a great improvised electronic record. Excellent head space music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.aufabwegen.com
MOE – LEFT TO SWALLOW (LP by Conrad Sound)
BLUEFACED PEOPLE (7″ by Conrad Sound)
SULT – BARK (CDR by Conrad Sound)
SKASET (cassette by Conrad Sound)
Four (?) items from a label from Norway of which I never heard, Conrad Sound, and spread out over four different kinds of sound carriers. On a transparent one sided LP we find a trio called Moe, around Guru Skummes Moe, who plays bass and vocals, and with Havard Skaset on electric guitar and Jacob Felix Heule on drums and modular synthesizer. It’s one piece, but spaced out in various sections of slow and low banging drumming, buzzing sounds and with outbursts on vocals and guitar, in very slow build up/take down. Moe’s voice is at the top of her lungs and it makes this into a dense record of aggressive, paranoid noise rock. It’s actually a great record, with some excellent production, taking great care of the buzzing sound when things go down in volume yet maintaining an excellent level when things get really loud.
On a 7″ we find the Bluefaced People, which is again Moe on bass and Skaset on guitar, but doing something different here. No singing, no drums, lots of chaos. The label cites Arto Lindsay and Glenn Branca as inspiration and especially with the first I can agree. It has a total free play on the strings – all ten of them – feeding through sound effects for that total no wave effect. Not the best cutting of vinyl going here (edition of 100 copies, so a pre-calculated collectors item, although I am afraid we find out in ten years from now), but perhaps that’s the sort of thing that belongs to this kind of music. A great loosely orchestrated no wave punk attitude which I totally fall for.
Add to this duo Heule again on percussion and Tony Dryer on contrabass and call them Sult and we have a CDR here of them playing acoustic music, as Moe plays contrabass too and Skaset plays acoustic guitar. This is again something entirely different from the other two. Improvised music obviously, with that vague notion of being free jazz. The emphasis here lies on the interaction, more than on the other two releases. Lots of silence between the cracks here, with extended scraping of the surfaces of each instrument, but with each instrument recognizable as such. The instruments are not used as resonating boards which happen to create sound, but rather as what they are build for, and it seems to extract crazy sounds of them, but still within the range of a normal instrument. Perhaps the percussion is the one that is a bit different here, or perhaps it’s not a regular percussion kit we’re dealing here with. This release was pretty much alright. Nothing we haven’t heard elsewhere, but that’s not a problem.
The last release is just by Skaset with three pieces from 2008, but which are now only released, as part of the ‘green triology’. Here plays electric guitar and a variety of stomp boxes in which the distortion pedal has the biggest role. This is all quite noisy. Actually too noisy for my taste. It’s quite singular around not a lot of input, source wise but with a piercing output. Grinding at the beginning of side A, then sine wave like and the most guitar based part is on side B. Here it sounds slowed down, with the beating of strings and less big role for the stompers – it’s this side which made me listen all the way through. I guess it’s alright if you are up for this sort of improvised noise music, but I pass on. (FdW)
Address: http://www.conradsound.com
ANNE-JAMES CHATON & ANDY MOOR – TRANSFER/4 INBOUND/OUTBOUND (7″ by Unsounds)
Sadly Vital Weekly missed out on the third installment in this transport series by sound poet Anne-James Chaton and guitarist Andy Moor (of The Ex fame, still my private favorite Dutch punk heroes) – see also Vital Weekly 773 and 782. This series is all about transport, and this is about the metro and the train. On the a-side names of metro stations are being read by Dj/Rupture (New York), John Edward (London) and Alva Noto (Berlin). The b-side has a list of Agatha Christies suspected murderers from her novel ‘Murder On The Orient Express’, in a piece ‘Not Guilty’ (and if you want to know why it’s called ‘Not Guilty’, then you should read more). Both pieces are held together by an interesting amount of rhythm, which one might even classify as ‘dub’ like on side a and the extra electronics on the b-side certainly classify as sinister, which I guess fits on either side the subject. The cascading pulse of metro bouncing through the big city with music you could easily encounter on such a journey, and the sinister, spookiness of the Christie story. Excellent final installment, and sad to say I didn’t hear the third one. Maybe something for a CD re-issue? Comes with a poster sized cover – hey that’s very Crass like! You’ll always be a punk rocker. (FdW)
Address: http://www.unsounds.com
THE PITCHSHIFTERS – SOUND SOURCE COMPOUND (7″ by Pax Records)
The third 7″ I encounter by The Pitchshifters, with the first two being on one of the 7″ labels I love most, Meeuw Muzak (see also Vital Weekly 594 and 793). It’s the solo project of Hideto Aso from Tokyo and like with the first 7″, we are dealing here with recordings from 2p03/2004, albeit live recordings. On those early recordings (and thus live I should think), we find lo-fi keyboards and electronics and here too. It’s hard to say that these are ‘live’ recordings, as it could have been ‘studio’ as well. Simple ticking beats, and chaotic not rushed playing on the keyboards. It still surrounded with a lot of mystery, if that equals ‘no information easily available’. For instance: why these tracks, and why now? Why not something new? Do The Pitchshifters still exist, or perhaps no longer and only every once in a while somebody decides to release something on a 7″ from one of the four old CD/CDR releases? Clueless here, but then, who cares anyway? This is surely nice, odd, weird, freaky music with a fine pop sensibility. (FdW)
Address: http://www.paxrecord.com/
MYSTIFIED – STILL DREAMING (CDR by SP Recordings)
The more noise related releases on this label I left for inspection with Jliat, but Mystified couldn’t play a noise release if he wanted too. I guess. Maybe he could. But he never does. He’s a man with a sampler and some sound effects, and while I have no clue as to with what kind of intentions Thomas Park plays his music, I am sure ‘bringing something new’ is not his cup of tea, as he does what he always is doing. Play music with a highly atmospheric character, through a set of repeating loops which create pseudo ethnic rhythms. Added (or is that aided) with the use of delay and reverb machines, this is something that is very much along the lines of Rapoon and to a lesser extent Nocturnal Emissions. But especially the work of Rapoon springs to mind here. Maybe one of the intentions of Park is to create a catalogue of many releases on as many labels? I don’t know. Although I quite like his music, especially because it’s simply nice and rather undemanding, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t rush out to buy each and every new release. It’s perhaps all a bit too interchangeable in the end, and that’s what I think is not really a good thing. I for one am somebody who likes to get something new, something I may not have heard before, or an artist searching different paths. So, perhaps I should have bit of doubt about Mystified. (FdW)
Address: http://sprecordings.com
KING RIB/ANDREW PERRY (CDR by Wggfdtb)
SINDRE BJERGA – SONGS OF FAILURE (CDR by Wggfdtb)
DEAD WOOD – FOREST (CDR by Wggfdtb)
Quite a puzzle here, but the label Wggfdtb stands for ‘were gonna get fucking drunk tonight boys’, and the there is hardly any information – irrelevant or otherwise – on the three covers. Not that ample search the website had to offer more. We start with the split of label boss Andrew Perry (not literally of course) with one King Rib, of whom I never heard. His titles may suggest something noisy (‘Cancer Kitten Spin Off’, ‘An End Even So’), but I believe we are dealing here with some nice manipulations of guitar and sound effects, which brings us a fine cross-over from the world of ambient and industrial music. Quite good and quite atmospheric. Nice! Label boss Perry has just one long piece ‘That Ain’t Oil, That’s Blood’ to offer, which lasts twenty minutes, but could easily been chopped up to a whole bunch of pieces. It seems to me that he doesn’t know how to make up his mind as what he wants. Extremely loud bits are spliced with very ambient bits, not doing that nice cross-over but rather is about that contradiction soft versus loud. Here too the guitar seems to be main instrument to play all this gentle mayhem. It’s fine for the more subdued moments, but the louder bits not really up my alley.
More guitars are to be found on the release by Dead Wood, the musical project of Adam Baker, who runs his own label Dirty Demos (although we haven’t seen a new release in some time). His musical output is scattered all over the musical scenery, but here it’s all about electric guitar, feedback, sound effects and improvisation, and some of this in a noise related manner. This is not exactly easy listening music by any standard, but fine sturdy experimental/improvised music for guitar and electronics. Not something we haven’t heard before, but quite nice after all.
Somebody who has had a lot of releases, but also someone who plays a lot of concerts is Norwegian Sindre Bjerga. Here he has here two pieces of almost equal length and while there is no information on the cover, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these recordings are made during one of his many concerts (or actually two concerts). Bjerga works with small amplified acoustic sounds (say one or two metal plates), a radio, one or two sound effects and a small mixer. The sort of set up which fits easily in a bag and ‘have bag will travel’ does the rest. This results in these two pieces of darker electronic drone material, the acoustic rumble and a slow build up and let sounds play their role, while lulling the audience to their comfort zone, into a state of shimmering sleep, or just about to wake up. Something like that. Bjerga takes his time and that works well. He demands and gets a quiet audience and like a zen monk takes control. Here’s somebody you should see when he’s in your town. (FdW)
Address: http://weregonnagetfuckingdrunktonightboys.wordpress.com/
DEAD EDITS – SOFT ONES, FOR OPRHANS (CDR by Cip)
The common ground here is James Joyce, the decay, creation and obfuscation of language and new methods of using old/dying technology to generate audio is what Eric Lunde and Blake Edwards shared to start a new project called Dead Edits. Perhaps as a spoiler, but at seventy-eight minutes you could wonder where the edits died, and with thirteen tracks, and some being ten to thirteen minutes this is perhaps all a bit long. It contains all those elements we know from both these active composers. Cassette decay, dictaphones, Lunde’s transformed voice, turntable bits and Edward’s love for the deep end drone. All of this composed into a heavily layered cake of music. Which I quite like, but of which I also think it’s quite long in duration. Now I know I had a discussion recently about playing ‘pieces’ from a CD, rather than the whole CD (which someone said was a ‘pop music attitude’), but here the pieces have no title, so I should think it’s rather the idea that they are played together, right? I wondered why they felt the need to put all of this on one release, as it’s not always easy to find the variation in here. i think with some more edits (a lively edit perhaps), this would have been a great release, but also one that would have lasted perhaps forty minutes. Hell, maybe one could have made two thirty-five minutes out of this and one could have taken both albums separately and have two independent strong albums. Now it’s a bit of a search for the best pieces. (FdW)
Address: http://www.cipsite.net
LOOPOOL AS DIONYSIS (3″ CDR by Records As Nauseam)
Jean-Paul Garnier is active. He creates a lot of music and releases it mostly at his own label and many others. For now Loopool as Dionysis. Three tracks at a mini CDR. “Twice Born” is a nice track with flute and ongoing electronic sounds. “Bacchanalia” is a beautiful track with delayed voices and the party is getting wilder and wilder. A creative interpretation of how a party will go crazy when you drink too much. The last song “Dionysian Hangover” is really nice and suitable for the day after. The strength of the releases is that it is clear where it is all about and nothing more. That is what I like about this small piece of music. Jean-Paul Garnier makes a musical interpretation of making party and getting drunk and succeed really in this. (JKH)
Address: http://www.loopool.org
DEVELOPER (cassette by Copy for Your Records)
RUEZ – BRISE SOLEIL (cassette by Copy for Your Records)
GINTAS K (cassette by Copy for Your Records)
More material from cfyr, however little initially in the way of detailed information, the work of Richard Kamerman’s curatorship which encompasses material of the collage “glitch” ‘experimental’ genre of electronica. Ruez – is Eric Laska and the piece here focuses on indeterminacy of manipulations of micro electronics and silences, ‘abstract electronics’. For my part I think a simplistic aesthetic would be inappropriate here and thus my criticism is that we do have insufficient supporting material. I’m not sure why cassette tape was used against CD or CDR as given the piece is it seems originated by the use of digital means? Which is how it could be dismissed, for I think this kind of work benefits or would benefit from more conceptual support- not an explaining away, but often I’m faced with having to put people right who dismiss work that isn’t just an aesthetics, not that there is anything wrong with that. But I can think of one very notable occasion of having to explain to a Bach scholar of some renown that so called ‘modern music’ has more to it than its sonical presence. And the discussion then was productive, for even – no – especially ‘classical’ music can and should be both listened to and understood. This ‘study’ doesn’t in anyway diminish the music, far from it, even a basic examination and analysis of ‘classical’ scores reveals the subtleness and inner workings of works of great precision. And this work – above – is not so different? Electronica lacks such scores yet without them or an alternative- they are left in a world of “Noise” (sic) where these works might be easily passed by. Which would be a pity as one suspects that below or above the ‘sound’ is more ‘going on’. So these would lend themselves to a greater exegesis than the cassette format,
I’m thinking of the CD/Book releases sometime ago from unknown public. Gintas K is Gintas Kraptavicius from Lithuania, and here again we have a ‘minimalist’ approach manipulating electronic sound artefacts within a post-fluxus context…. Developer is the most dense of the three tapes and
one I was unable to find much in the way of information. OK – why should such pieces need ‘explanation’ simply put is that any work which doesn’t work on a pure sensational level needs, demands, some kind of intellectualisation, even in the case of The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-Time- Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you
would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
However my detective skills are not up to the great Holmes – so I do feel I’m missing something here Richard. Even the opportunity of debating the need for something to which the ears are either side of which, is in numerous and subtle ways responsible for ‘THIS’ So – yes – please more – but more more! (Jliat)
Address: http://cfyre.co/rds/
GNAWED/RXAXPXE (split cassette by Industrial Culture)
Well given the title and label you would expect crashing noises swathed in digital reverb giving it a quality which is more obvious than a melting watch to a surrealist on acid. Obviously I need to say more, given this is a split – but no identification on the “black”! cassette I’m unable to say who makes one side of rumblings and voices which cant be made sense of with gurgling synths, layered under echo and reverb, and another side which is more a static rumbling – industrial machinery sans voice bit still with echo and reverb. Comment on society or the ease and cheapness of effects processors these days. I guess its just a bunch of guys having fun, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you like these kind of sonic textures then you no doubt will enjoy this split. (Jliat)
Address: http://industrial-culture.com/