IN BE TWEEN NOISE – SPLINT (3″ CD by New Plastic Music)
Announced as the first in a series of three, all using ‘modernist design
object’ as a soundsource. In this case a ‘molded plywood leg splint’,
designed by Charles Eames in 1943. I have no idea what to picture reading
this (o.k. I must be stupid, but I don’t get the drawing!). Steve Roden
(for it is he), the man behind In Be Tween Noise, uses this thing to
produce sound, either by rubbing, bowing, plucking etc. According to the
info he provided ‘some of the sounds were manipulated and processed
electronically’. In the first part, it seems this applies to all the
sounds. I am reminded of Small Cruel Party’s sound processing techniques,
in which the original sound gradually fades away into electronics. Except
that Roden stays on the nice edge of sound processing. The high end tones
on ‘A Head Of Bees’ come across like strings being bowed. Curious to hear
the next sound design object being investigated. (FdW)
Address <sroden@deltanet.com>
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – STAINED GLASS SOMA FOUNTAINS (2CD by Soleilmoon
Recordings)
The third set of historical recordings from a band kicking around for
almost 2 decades now. Many of these recordings were released on cassette
only and are hard to find. If at all, and if your wallet allows it. And
even if you have those tapes, then you need this anyway: of the 22 pieces
about 6 are previously unreleased. In case you haven’t got a clue what to
expect: The Legendary Pink Dots may have risen alongside the flourishing
industrial cassette network, in the early 80s. Their sound was undeniably
psychedelic, with drums, guitar solos, violins and the always recognizable
v oice of Edward Ka-spel. Fans all around the world will be as happy as I
am with this new set of oldies and are all waiting of their new studio CD.
Sing While May! (FdW)
Address: <soleilmoon@aol.com>
p.s. normally we don’t mention webpages, but for all die-hards: check out
the most complete LPD discography on:
http:www.spg.wau.nl/bosb/stud/pp/vdheijden
GOEM – STUD STIM (CD on Rastermusic)
This is the seventh release on Rastermusic, all music on it composed by
Franky de Waard and Roel Meelkop, two out of three of the legendary
recyclers Kapotte Muziek, who combine the best of both their talents to
produce a surprisingly buoyant bunch of tracks. Both of these gents have
long lists of accomplishments – stay tuned as they regularly appear in this
screensheet.
The bandname ‘goem’ is taken from the Russian and; it was the name given to
those stores where only communist party members were allowed to shop for
their Gucci paraphenalia. The rabble had to fist through the rubble for
their designer shite. And the CD name comes from the piece of equipment
which formed the inspiration for this music…basically a sort of primitive
brain machine which could be used as a STIMulatory device for studying
STUDents. Y’know, the old alpha, beta and gamma waves…synchronised brain
hemispheres makes concentration easier etc,etc…speak to the man you buy
your incense from if you really want to know more. Otherwise buy this CD
and acquaint yourself with a different form of stimulation…’listening
music with steady beats’, as it is called in the press blurb.
So here’s the idea: dial in a frequency on the STUD STIM, mash it up a bit,
bung it through some unusual effects and stir in a dollop of good old Korg
MS20. Sound easy ? Well, it ain’t. The skill required to make this kind of
music is knowing when to stop…otherwise you might end up with another
messy attempt at minimal techno. The members of ‘goem’ paid close attention
to the lessons of minimal ubermeisters Panasonic, surely the most
influential group fiddling about in this genre, if indeed they were not the
inventors of it.
The music is stripped of unneccesary frills, the most exotic icing is
squeezed out of the effects units and delicately smeared around the pulsing
throb in a variety of fine patterns. Slight enhancement as textural
counterpoint. The bulk of this beast bounces about and major dynamics
between the tracks ensure greater rewards for the careful listener.
An effective combination of talent make this one of the most interesting
forays in their multifaceted careers (MP)
Address: <100522.3536@compuserve.com>
BRAD TAYLOR – FROM THE MOON TO THE FISH (CD by Trente Oiseaux)
O.k. so I am hasty reviewing things. I only have the CD, no cover, thus
being not able to say the relevant things, other than NEW artist, on
Bernard Gunter’s label. Don’t repeat my mistake of cranking up the volume,
just because it’s on Trente Oiseaux. The disc contains two pieces, one of
around 40 minutes and one of 20 minutes. By playing these pieces, you will
discover that each of them consists of many small pieces. Apperentely using
a computer with a sound card, Taylor composes small pieces of
electro-acoustic music. These small pieces bear no apparent relation to
each other, so why not indexed as seperate tracks. There are excursions
into plain feedback, sound processing of acoustic sounds but it stays on
the ‘normal’ side of things. It seems rather unfocussed, not going in any
particular direction. Sounds come in, go out and that is it. Not a great
challenge to listen to, but still containing interesting passages (for
instance at 34 minutes in track 1 with crackling sounds). The weakest on
Trente Oiseaux so far… (FdW)
Address:
ILLUSION OF SAFETY – OF & THE (2CD by Soleilmoon Recordings)
At last a new IOS studio CD. After a couple of limited vinyl outings,
(reworked-) live CD’s here is a work that was completed in 1995 (and then
being 3 years in the making) and scheduled for release on various labels.
Having Thomas Dimuzio’s double CD stuck in my mind (from a few weeks back),
you simply can’t ignore the similarity between the two. The CD called ‘Of’
has some beautiful drony ambient works. Slow evolving pieces… instruments
being strummed every now and then, nicely processed in long flowing tracks.
This is true music of ambience – the word ‘ambient’ implies two meanings:
take the ambient/environmental sounds and enhance it in the studio to
produce a new atmopshere. Just as nature has a frightening character, the
music from IOS is at times disturbing too. For instance ‘Erosion’ conveys
deep tension. ‘P.O.E.’ envisions an approaching thunder storm, which you
can almost feel, but towards the end it is just the wind eroding the land.
‘Lilt’ starts out with an orchestra tuning, people in waiting for the
concert to start, but that doesn’t happen. The wind blows in the microphone
and rain drops fall. More orchestral, microtonal processing take shape on
the first piece of the ‘The’ CD and sounds rather majestic. In many ways
the second CD is a continuation of the first one, and for some people may
be too much, but I think it is just beautiful. It could have been a 5 CD
set… Just perfect. (FdW)
Address: <soleilmoon@aol.com>
REMORA – THE CLOCKWORK AMMONITE SHELLS (CD by A Worry)
The way this CD starts reminded me of very old Throbbing Gristle guitar
playing – vey friendly. Synthie bleeps drop in with echoes on top. Some old
school industrial going on, but in a low fi manner. Apparentely all
improvised (each track has the date of recording as title). Not bad at all,
so if you are in grief over Throbbing Gristle’s split up some time ago,
then you may find new heroes here. (FdW)
Address: 17 Fishers Green – Bridge Of Allan – Stirlingshire, Scotland – FK9 4PU
INVISIBLE SKRATCH PIKLZ VS. DA KLAMZ UV DETH (12″ by Asphodel)
Rap never appealed to me at all. I’ve said it. They are all trying to say
as many dirty words in one line as possible, or something that some people
will call ‘social’ or ‘politically’ inspired. Musicwise the stuttering of
the vocalizations is mirrored in the music, with stuttering rhythms and
scratchings and samples. How awfully boring! (FdW)
Address: P.O.Box 280092 – San Francisco, CA 94128-0092 – USA
:SPYBEY:THERIAULT: (CD by Ichor Recordings)
Mark Spybey is a busy bee. Formerly in Zoviet France, now in Download, and
working as Dead Voices On Air and Propeller as solo outings. He just
started doing a series of collaborations, of which this is the first one.
Jean-Yves Theriault was a founding member of Voivod and Holy Body Tattoo –
but I must admit not hearing any of that. According to the press-blurb the
two tried to combine techno with isolationist with fourth world chanting.
Let’s see if they succeeded. Most of the 8 pieces swirl around a beat of a
kind (which is absolutely not the same as house or techno beat), a steady
sound going on. In a way the backbone of most tracks (like for instance
‘Sima’) borrow from the zoviet france heritage but added in again Sima is
definite dance music sample (with a huge hallucinatory stereo effect!).
‘Bise’ has percussive sounds and synths. The fourth world component is
rather low, but the other two points of reference are definitely there.
There is a trance like capacity to be found on this CD, which is truely
captivating. Great stuff. (FdW)
TOY BIZARRE – KDI DCTB 02 (CD by Duebel)
Toy Bizarre is on the new wave of sound collagists – people running around
with microphones and DAT machine taping every day, and presenting it back
to us in a collage form. Each track on this CD gets comments of the sounds
involved – too many to mention here. Just like Aphasia (to mention a
collegue of Toy Bizarre). The opening track is brilliant: dark drony bass,
short interruptions, nicely building to a crescendo. The second part of
this track is fiercely unsettling noise. And thus every track tells a story
of its own. The use of sound processing is kept to a minimum. Ten years
this would have been a hissy cassette release, but thanks to digital
formats, we can listen to a clean recording and music like this benefits
from that. If Brume, Etant Donnes and Illusion Of Safety are up your alley,
then this needs a spinning on your CD player too.
Address: fax: + 00 49 (0) 94-124840
KRANIOKLAST – CAN I TALK OR S… (7″ by Sonoria)
Another return! Hurray! One of the strangest, cryptic bands ever now
release a brand new 7″ in Poland (of all places). Side A is domanated by a
rhythm, blurping synth and a bee-like sound coming in and out. The
flip-side is made from exotic oriental strings over an ethnic rhythm and
barking dogs. Strange stuff and quite accessible compared to their previous
work.
The cover is of course in the (un)usual Kranioklast style… (FdW)Address:
Thomas Szumski – Ul. Cicha 9 – 09-130 Baboszewo – Poland
DAVID SHEA – SATYRICON (CD on Sub Rosa)
Despite my earlier reservations, successive listenings have proven this to
be a mostly good record – however, like the bulk of Dave’s work since ‘The
Tower Of Mirrors’ (also on Rub Sosa), it lacks a lot of the freshness and
novelty which was captured and conveyed by this earlier CD, released in
1995. Sub Rosa then embarked on a series of live documents, which
fortunately were limited to only 1600 copies each, and which included works
by Mr Shea. His solo work on these was by far the better of the bunch, but
sadly could not rescue the other contributions or indeed, the entire
collection from the box marked ‘blandhype’.
The story of Satyricon was written by Petronius in about 50 AD, and has now
been re-interpreted by Shea with his sampler, synthesisers and assorted
musicians, who attempt to present a work somewhere between the original
story and the cinematic interpretation by Federico Fellini.
Most of the sounds and arrangements are by Shea, who hardly plundered at
all (apparently). The music spans a multitude of moods, therefor styles,
which enable us to appreciate Shea’s structures and timbres for their own
sake. Clever bloke – check out the third track ‘Q’, a monstrous arrangement
of piano sequences reminiscent of Ligeti’s ‘Etudes Pour Piano’, which were
themselves inspired by the mathematical madness by ‘another great Italian,
Conlon Nancarrow, ladies and gentlemen’.
The ensemble pieces are finely balanced pluckstroke constructions which
tiptoe frail and light between the electronic pieces. Weird mashed-up
voices infiltrate the analogue squeaks and squirts.
Most annoying track is actually the one which has the bulk of the samples,
including some brief vocal loops from them Mysterious Bulgarian Voices,
which have simply been over-used, goddamit, and which could possibly have
been replaced by some other bodies…a far too familiar sound amongst all
these surprises.
Won’t be long now and Mr Shea may follow Graeme Revell into the world of
film sound, unless he prefers the lack of visual accompaniment. (MP)
Address: Sub Rosa – P.O.Box 808 – CM 1000 Brussels – Belgium
VAINQUEUR – ELEVATIONS (CD on Chain Reaction)
Well, this is an odd one – and I’m still not quite sure what to think of
it. It’s minimal, it’s lush, it’s stereo. A few good ideas repeated a lot.
Yea verily, there are filters. It’s almost like these tracks were all
elements of greater things, but the main ingredients were discarded leaving
this (possible) augmentation as the final result.
Listening to it now I recall how effective it was a few days ago, when
extremely tired, I played it while sitting close to the speakers in a
semi-doze. Wide stereo panning exerts additional power in these push me –
pull me compositions, which helped my wings grow and made me hover.
Hypnotic stuff, if you’re tuned right.
An unusual record, not one to covet, but certainly a refreshing angle. Good
stuff. (MP)
DISSECTING TABLE – WHY (7″ by Suggestion Records)
This is a real killer – 7″ with two tracks of the typical styled fast and
metallic sounding rhythm’n’drones and kind of ‘death metal’ – singing by
Ichiro Tsuji from Tokyo, better known as DISSECTING TABLE. If you already
know some of his CD’s, you can guess how this sounds: totally the same as
on the CD’s. The B-Side is even featured (in another version though) on the
’94 CD “Ultimate psychological description II” on Dark Vinyl. DISSECTING
TABLE has developed a very own style of his own, and I really like the 7″
as it’s short and harsh (for a 7″ it works quiet well), but on the other
hand we have to ask if D.T. will ever develop into something different or
continue to do the same music until he dies (or stops doing music)… (BAR)
Address: Suggestion Records – P.O.Box 1403 – 58285 Gevelsberg – Germany
SCENIC – SAGE (7″ by Independent Project Records)
This clear 7″ is not totally new but it may be of interest for anybody who
remembers SAVAGE REPUBLIC, who became quite well known in the
‘Independent’-scene in the 80’s, also for their label Independent Project
Records, who managed it to do all the covers for their releases on their
own, using an old printing-technique called ‘letter-press’ (which really
looks nice and is a kind of “handmade-pressing”). SCENIC is the
non-official follower of SAVAGE REPUBLIC (with two members of the original
S.R. line-up), and it really seems as they continue the style S.R. ended up
with. This is instrumental rock-music, which is melodic and quiet minimal
at the same time, and which seems to contain a certain kind of purity and
clearness inside, maybe caused by the unconventional use of the guitar
(which always plays high single tones, no chords). You may call this
desert-rock. The 7″ has been released around one year ago and is limited to
1500 copies. (BAR)
Contact: <ipr@sedona.net>