Summer schedule! There will be no Vital Weekly in week 29 (12 to 20 july) and week 34 (18 to 24 august)
ANDREW COX – PAST IMPERFECT (CD by Forced Nostalgia) *
THE INTERNATIONAL NOTHING – THE DARK SIDE OF SUCCESS (CD by Ftarri) *
M.B. & DEDALI – ELEKTRO TONES (CD by Noctovision) *
LOREN CHASSE – CHARACTERS AT THE WATER MARGIN (CD by Unfathomless) *
GRISHA SHAKHNES – DISTANCE AND DECAY (CD by Organized Music From Thessaloniki) *
SETH COOKE – SIGHSEER (3″CDR by Organized Music From Thessaloniki) *
SOUVENIRS VAN DE WOESTE GROND (CDR by Esc.rec)
ALESSANDRA NOVAGA – LA CHAMBRE DES JEUX SONORES (CDR by Setola di Maiale) *
XU – BUTTERFLY MEETS MOUNTAIN (CDR by Eilean Records) *
D.RHÖNE – III (EXODE) (CDR by Subterranean Tide) *
TOY BIZARRE – KDI DCTB 071 (CDR by Kaon) *
KEIN – IN BLOOM (CDR by Audiobulb) *
ANDY JARVIS/FILTHY TURD (CDR by Anguro Sakuson)
BBBLOOD -NO RELIGION AT THE SALAD BAR (CDR by Anguro Sakuson)
PANELAK – HEIMAT (CDR by Anguro Sakuson)
MATCHING COLORS/ESCAPE HATCH (CDR by Midnight Circles)
ESCAPE HATCH – AM TRAIN (CDR by Midnight Circles) *
AARON YABROV – SILENT TRANSMISSION (CDR by Midnight Circles) *
ORPHAX – ONISCUS ASELLUS (CDR by Moving Furniture Records) *
TVO – DILEAB CHOLBHASACH (3″CDR by Moving Furniture Records) *
MATTIA COLLETI & OWN ROAD – POWERDOVE (cassette by Old Bicycle Records)
SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON – I SAY TO YOU (cassette by Some) *
CICCIOLINA HOLOCAUST – MOHIM (cassette by Forced Nostalgia)
ANDREW COLTRANE & LUKE HOLLAND (cassette by Trapdoor)
AUTOMATING – REPRESSURED (cassette by Patient Sounds)
ANDREW COX – PAST IMPERFECT (CD by Forced Nostalgia)
A few years ago, in blogland, all these fine blogs popped up demanding our attention for all those long forgotten records and tapes, ripped to mp3, and making this whole rich history of musical underground available again. That seemed to have disappeared again, so perhaps I can’t check the next statement I making as much as I would want to, but even in that revival of classical recordings, I think I missed downloading the releases by YHR, which stood for Yorkshire House Recordings – and it had nothing to do with house music. Maybe that label was just truly forgotten? David Elliott, who also published a fanzine/magazine called Neumusik, founded this label. I don’t think I ever saw a copy of that magazine, but somehow I always assumed that had something to do with the missing link between industrial music and what came before, the German synth music of the early seventies. Maybe the name was misleading. The label released Maurizio Bianchi, Cluster & Farnbauer (live in Vienna), Conrad Schnitzler, and Asmus Tietchens, among those who aren’t forgotten but also music by Elliott’s own band MFH, which later on became Pump, Paul Nagle, Peter Schafer and Andrew Cox. The latter was a member of both MFH and Pump and he sadly died in 2009. He had a bunch of solo cassettes on the label, which he created using piano, guitar, recorders, reed organ, ‘an obscure synthesizer’, pedals and ‘other effects units’. The Belgium label Forced Nostalgia, in voluntary exile in Asia, took it upon to release various works connected to the YHR label, of which ‘Past Imperfect’ is one. This is not a complete re-issue of one of Cox’s cassettes, but a compilation of pieces from all four releases and a compilation track and three unreleased pieces, from 2000 and 2001. The pieces are presented in chronological order, which is interesting as it opens with a pretty noisy and chaotic piece of wild electronics, but already in the second piece we see a love for the more acoustic end of drone music. Think perhaps old Organum, or New 7th Music (another one of those forgotten bands), forecasting the later work of Andrew Chalk and Mirror. Electronics do play a role in this music, such as in ‘Dresden’ (from 1983), which sounds as dark and ambient as Maurizio Bianchi in the same period, but then much shorter. Towards the end of the release Cox seemed to be experimenting with computer electronics. A highly varied and rich release of a sadly forgotten musician. A fine anthology of his work, which hopefully renews interest in his work, and others to release a more complete body of work of his. (FdW)
Address: http://forcednostalgia.com/
THE INTERNATIONAL NOTHING – THE DARK SIDE OF SUCCESS (CD by Ftarri)
Already (?) the third album by The International Nothing, a duo of Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet, composition) and Michael Thieke (clarinet, composition). They are both part of the Berlin scene called Echtzeitmusik – real time music – a group of improvisers and composers who play new music. Both are very active, here, as improvisers and as members of other groups and collaborations. You could think that just two clarinets is not a lot to go by, but when played by these two musicians you are surely never sure if it’s one clarinet or two, or even clarinets at all. Sometimes they manage to make them sound like sine waves, humming away, picked up in a room with somebody moving around with microphone and yes, sometimes it sounds like a duet for two clarinets. Their music is most of the times very quiet, leaving space open, sometimes it’s wide open even, but also at times very closed off, nearby and intimate. You could approach this with ease: just play it and listen when you want, or ignore if you want. But it’s better I think to sit down and listen closely. That will require quite some effort, I think, but it’s surely worth it. You can detect all these dialogues that are part of the music, a great interaction between these two musicians and revealing all sorts of hidden doors in their pieces. You will surely be tired at the end of these forty-seven minutes, but rest assured it was worth your while. A great reward is what you get: excellent quiet music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.ftarri.com
M.B. & DEDALI – ELEKTRO TONES (CD by Noctovision)
More music from Maurizio Bianchi, who seems to be as productive as Merzbow, but who probably does also more collaborations than his old Japanese noise mate (and less box sets, come to think of it) with a new release on Noctovision. If you would have asked me last week if Noctovision still exists, I would have laughed and said: well, probably one of those long forgotten labels; great yet small catalogue. But lo and behold, they have another release. Bianchi here works with Alessandro Bosello, also known as Dedali (and the man behind Menstrual Recordings), who has released a CDR/DVDR with Disruptor before (see Vital Weekly 885), and whose work one could say is along a similar trail as Bianchi’s. Chilling electronic music painting the post apocalyptic landscape. Bianchi gets the credit for ‘elektrophobic piano’ and tonewaves and Dedali for elektronics, antique tapes and neurological effects, as it all spelled out on the cover. Not of all that you can buy in a regular music store I think. They spend four years creating this release, and no matter how much I like it, I don’t think I can hear that. It could also be done in less time with an equally great effect. Sometimes it sounds like they are processing environmental sounds picked up in a shopping mall (in ‘I’) but some sort of piano may sound in ‘II’, which gives it this piece an oddly musical form. It doesn’t sound like much M.B. I thought, but it makes perhaps sense. The piano is iced down, isolated, and looked upon through electrical means, in this cold world. More coldness in ‘III’, another fine chilling amorphous piece of electronics, with a heavy ending. ‘IV” is not unlike ‘II’ a more musical piece, as short also, and shimmering melodies down the line, more piano’s are frozen down here. It’s not a very long CD, clocking in at only thirty-four minutes, but it’s another fine addition to vast imperium of great releases. Not M.B.’s best, nor Dedali (although I might not be the right person to judge about that, as I don’t know all of it), but it’s certainly among the better ones. (FdW)
Address: http://noctovision.net
LOREN CHASSE – CHARACTERS AT THE WATER MARGIN (CD by Unfathomless)
Now here’s a name I haven’t heard in quite a while, Loren Chasse. His last work before this one ‘The Footpath’ on Naturestrip, which didn’t make it to these pages, I think. That was in 2008. What Chasse was up to in the meantime I don’t know. Maybe other, non-musical activities required his attention. Here he has a work of nine pieces of sounds he recorded at the ‘edge of Washington state’s Olympic Rainforest where the Hoh River meets the Pacific Ocean’. This point is called oil City, but the oil industry never took off. I must admit I have no idea what I am hearing here. Yes, there might be the sound of water, maybe birds, but what else? That is hard to say. It sounds like Chasse has been rumbling through the woods, shuffling logs, pushing stones and such like. Likewise I have no idea to what extent there is something done after these sounds are recorded. Is there anything done post-recording? Some kind of sound processing? Digital and/or analogue? Hard to say. Very few moments I thought it was, and then perhaps not at all. Nowhere, never. All of these things I was thinking about while playing this release. Lots of questions, but altogether it make up for some truly fascinating music. It’s partly like an audio diary, of someone exploring an area full of lumber, small creeks, birds and searching for a hide out, to spend the night. Setting up camp, listening to wildlife somewhere, nocturnal humming and crafting a boat. I might be all wrong actually. It makes up quite a fascinating release altogether. Quite intense, quite unsettling even, but also quite beautiful. Great stuff. (FdW)
Address: http://www.unfathomless.net
GRISHA SHAKHNES – DISTANCE AND DECAY (CD by Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
SETH COOKE – SIGHSEER (3″CDR by Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
Following ‘Leave/Trace’, a LP released by Jason Lescalleet’s imprint Glistening Examples (see Vital Weekly 880), ‘Distance And Decay’ is Grisha Shakhnes second solo release. Before he worked as Mites (see also Vital Weekly 802 and 843). Shakhnes is from Tel Aviv and creates some highly curious and crude music. No doubt derived from the use of field recordings, but presented in a way you don’t hear all the sound sources that were at the beginning of the chain. Refining his tunes is not what Shakhnes is about, so it seems. Apparently he records his field recordings using cassette tapes and mixes a lot of them together and all of that, I would think without much interference of electronics. He does that via three long pieces, twenty minutes or more, and one of nine minutes. That’s a bit long, I was thinking, even when Shakhnes knows how to mix an interesting piece of music together. The variations that he brings here lie in the detail; not the microscopic ones but as the piece plays things move gradually somewhere, using a few sources that he keeps on playing, while others move out and get replaced. Sometimes a whole new piece seems to get started within a piece, and through the use of field recordings of a more musical nature, a new kind of musicality is introduced, such as in ‘Air’. Lots of hiss, machine rumble and other unwanted noises are left in, as an aesthetical move. I guess I think that some of these pieces are a bit too long, but I can see what he wants with this.
I don’t think I heard of Seth Cooke before. He runs a label called Every Contact Leaves A Trace, and co-founded with Clive Henry as Bang The Bore, as Place Of Safety with Henry Collins and Several 2nds. As an improviser he plays percussion (playing with Defibrillators, Hunting Lodge and Ultra Humanitarian), but he is also active as a field recorder. He is from Bristol and according to the label he has ‘no-input field recording & stereophony, impressions & obliviations, appropriations & trespasses, bleed & starve’ or as it says on the cover ‘no recording, recording, field recording and no-input field recording’. It’s all semantics I guess and who cares. You hear something, so there must have been recorded something. I would think these recordings here are culled straight from the machine and onto the release. As is as it were. Found sound perhaps, with Cooke happening to be available to capture these sounds. He puts these in an order of nine pieces, spanning twenty-two minutes and the beauty lies in the selection of these sounds and putting them in the right order. That is a form of composing too. It makes up a release of some very interesting found sounds, cut exactly to the right length and some fine sonic textures. Great stuff. (FdW)
Address: http://thesorg.noise-below.org
SOUVENIRS VAN DE WOESTE GROND (CDR by Esc.rec)
In a very nice hand crafted and printed digipack we find this project curated by Harco Rutgers, the man behind Esc.rec. It all has to do with countryside he lives in, the surroundings of Deventer – go get a map – and that happens to be one my favourite Dutch surroundings. Open space, wood, small rivers, farms and all that. Oh, by the time I am old and rich… From various locations in that area stories were captured and if you go there you can hear them – I assume in some arty setting? One of these souvenirs, as they are called, is this project by Rutgers, for which he invited six composers to take one location/story and build a musical piece around it. In the booklet we find parts of that, but they can be found online too: www.souvenirsvandewoestegrond.nl – all in Dutch. But in the international language of music, we have here some great music. All quite moody and dark, maybe reflecting the ‘wild earth’ of the title (I am not sure), but there are also some variations. There is a nicely obscured piece by Reinier van Houdt, normally a piano player for the serious modern music, with a processed piano towards the end, Weerthof’s sampled pop music (closing down the proceedings on a melancholic but musical note) and Gluid, opening here, with a piece that vaguely owes to the world of IDM. The four pieces in between are the more abstract ones. Gareth Davis for instance with his bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, piano and tape spans in fifteen minutes lots of silence and some very moody wind instruments, shimmering like wind, and Machinefabriek does the same using whatever he always uses; or so it seems. Maybe for his doing an easy piece? Wouter van Veldhoven surprises me with a piece of guitar playing, eroded by low magnetic impulses, and corroded voices. Almost like a singer song writer I thought. Very nice. I usually don’t like compilations, but this one is great! (FdW)
Address: http://www.escrec.com
ALESSANDRA NOVAGA – LA CHAMBRE DES JEUX SONORES (CDR by Setola di Maiale)
From Italy hails Alessandra Novaga who plays classical and electrical guitar. She plays contemporary and new music (isn’t new also contemporary?) by composers such as Sandro Mussido, Paula Matthusen, Vittorio Zago, Francesco Gagliardi and Travis Just – which opens another world of new names for me. All five of them supplied Novaga with a score and she plays them. Unfortunately there isn’t a data portion on this disc with a handy pdf to show these scores. The CDR is released by Setola di Maiale, a label known for its improvised music. I believe all of these scores are graphic scores, so the interpretation is highly subjective. But nevertheless the way they look, it’s about how they sound. Novaga plays her guitar in such a way that we still hear it’s a guitar and even when she applies sound effects such as delay and reverb, the sound remains that of the guitar, and not some sounding board for other objects – it’s not the prepared guitar. She plays it with great care, although she doesn’t manage (intent? accident?) to sound it very differently in interpreting these five pieces. Only in the fifth piece, composed by Gagliardi, the guitar starts droning away and it sounds different than much of the other four pieces. I quite enjoyed these pieces, whether they were composed or improvised (I couldn’t care either way), but her playing is great. Full of gestures, full of silence when needed, full of drama if it comes handy, full of introspection as a counterpoint. There isn’t a particular favourite but if I have to choose it would be Mussida’s ‘In Memoria’ piece, which is quite dramatic as well as melancholic. Very nice release altogether. (FdW)
Address: http://www.setoladimaiale.net
XU – BUTTERFLY MEETS MOUNTAIN (CDR by Eilean Records)
D.RHÖNE – III (EXODE) (CDR by Subterranean Tide)
Another release by Eilean Records, who recently brought us music by Holykindof (see Vital Weekly 934), which I liked. Here’s another introduction to a new name, XU, which is Nicola Fornassi, who is, I assume, from Italy. His music is recorded using piano, guitar, sine wave generator, piezo-amplified objects, fx and looper pedals and korg monotron. Eight pieces here, spanning fifty minutes. It would not be strange to compare the music produced by Xu with that of Machinefabriek. Maybe Xu uses occasionally more musical elements, such as the piano being played in ‘Ghost Boy’, but in using the looping devices and sound effects he creates something very similar to Machinefabriek drone/ambient light versus darkness. Elegant music, slow in development, minimal in execution, its all here. Sometimes the instruments are played very regularly, as said, in a more or less informal way, which is quite nice. That makes that this sounds a bit different than the ‘others’, and even a bit heavy in ‘Invisible Solid’ and to a lesser extent ‘(Re)turn’ – maybe he should find a balance between that louder side of his and the quieter side, and find even more his own voice in this. Now the market for such ambient loop doodling is a bit crowded, but Xu might have a way out.
Labelboss Mathias van Eecloo works as D.rhöne, and Subterranean Tide releases his album. The cover is quite dark, but the website provides the same information, so it’s here I learn that he uses “acoustic guitar, amplified objects, bow, clarinet, concertina, breathe(s) on tape(s), effects devices, electric guitar, field recordings, gamelan, gongs (cambodia), harmonium(s), indonesian flute, kanun loopers, music box(es), pedals devices, piano, samplers, strings, voice(s), xylophone, zither(s)” – that is a lot. Five pieces here last exactly ten minutes and one second, while the opening lasts five minutes and five seconds and the closing piece five minutes and fifty-one second. Odd indeed. Does time dictate the music I wonder? This works in pretty much the same territory as Xu, but D.rhöne spaces his music more out, takes more time and does a little bit less. Whereas Xu wants to work within the realms of a song structure, D.rhöne works more with notion of a ‘piece’. Maybe a semantic difference, but a valid one. You could as easily see the seven untitled pieces as one long piece, with just a bunch of silence thrown in – sometimes at the beginning. D.rhöne is also, at very few times, a bit more noise oriented, or improvised, such as in the fourth part. While this had some excellent music I think I preferred Xu to this one. Xu sounded more organized and coherent, while D.rhöne has the tendency to wander about a bit too much for my taste. But nevertheless not a bad release either. (FdW)
Address: http://www.eilean-records.com/
Address: http://www.subterraneantide.com/
TOY BIZARRE – KDI DCTB 071 (CDR by Kaon)
Although this CDR is copied onto a 5″CDR, and comes in rather nice printed, professional CD package, the music is just under twenty minutes. Here Ceydric Peyronnet, also known as Toy Bizarre, plays Guido Hübner, also known as Das Synthestische Mischgewebe. The cover says that this is designed for headphone listening, which I didn’t do. Headphones are for pop music on your bicycle, I think. The material by Hübner is already a bit older, from 1997-1998, and it’s quite loud. Not in a noise sense of the word, but just recorded very loud. Lots of crackling, clicking sound, perhaps from the granular synthesizes applied to the original source material. This is all from the noisy end of the musique concrete. A loud form of sound processing, a bit crude even, and it seems to lack a bit of tension that one perhaps associates with Toy Bizarre. I couldn’t help thinking it was all a more or less randomized event, with various bits stuck together and aiming for the more noisy strategy in this field. Now that is a great thing, in itself, and while I am not entirely convinced, this certainly has great potential. (FdW)
Address: http://www.kaon.org
KEIN – IN BLOOM (CDR by Audiobulb)
From Italy hails Kein and his release ‘In Bloom’ has nothing to do with the Nirvana song of the same name. At least, that’s what I think. He has had releases on Helvet Underground, Nuhar Records, Cinoci Records and others, mostly online labels. Audiobulb seems to have moved, over the years, to a more abstract form of electronic music, but with this one, it’s back to the Intelligent Dance Music of what I do recall as it’s earliest period. Seven pieces, all about three to four minutes, making this an Extended Play of some sort, and, according to the information, he uses an ‘endless series of editing, “cutting and sewing”, with the massive use of selected plug-ins’, leaving in glitches and errors, although, to be honest, I didn’t hear any. Maybe my ears are used to hearing glitches, I wondered, so they don’t sound like glitches? Kein plays his material very nicely. Lots of melodies, chopped up rhythm blocks, bouncing all over the place. It’s hard to dance to – I didn’t try – I would think, and it’s more armchair techno than dance floor ditties. It didn’t strike me as very original music, but it sounded all right. I was sweeping the floor, cleaning up a bit, and all those chores seem to take less time while playing this. That’s o.k. to, I thought. (FdW)
Address: http://www.audiobulb.com
ANDY JARVIS/FILTHY TURD (CDR by Anguro Sakuson)
BBBLOOD -NO RELIGION AT THE SALAD BAR (CDR by Anguro Sakuson)
PANELAK – HEIMAT (CDR by Anguro Sakuson)
There is a deep irony within the core of post-modernism’s ideology of the context, and non-context in which its icon, the fountain, a urinal presented as a work of sculpture signed R.Mutt, doesn’t exist. What does exist – is not a ready made, the original being lost, and subsequent examples individually crafted works by fine art potters. Which gives us an obvious link – given our sanitary and scatological aesthetics to one Filthy Turd…here with Andy Jarvis, but this is no simple coincidence, for if Duchamp’s hand crafted low art turned high attains the rarity of museums, urinals by the million originate not from Burslem itself but from the historic area of the six towns. Much piss has been poured on its products and FTs catalogue of malignancy deserves the continuation of this practice. And no more so in this splendid collaboration which no doubt will not match the $1.7 million of M.D.s piss pot… one almost blushes to dare to equate noise with piss and shit and unwanted and worthless waste… as if we were not actually fabricated from shit – heavy elements, from carbon to the very heaviest, byproducts (shit) from stellar nucleosynthesis …. And sounds of
feedback and pluming both mechanical and biological are typical of a genre from one of plumbing’s Meccas… together with found sound detritus. Bbblood produces an equally scatological aesthetic, though this time not so much static, a poor description, but improvisation with deep fat fryer?
Scaffolding and espresso machine = track 1, whereas the second track explores the idea of just how bad a recording of mechanical nonsense and feedback can be. Excellent stuff this especially with a nice kebab… And finally moving to Pascal Ansell, no relation to the old Brewery unfortunately. Supposedly ‘pure digital experimentation’, but that’s a lie. Someone is messing with samples, but another person is killing some stringed instrument, and a radio… as well as flute and guitar… but then one should never inquire into the actual details of what constitutes a kebab in places like Burslem, picking a place at random, or the actual contents of this genre of noise. (jliat)
Address: <pascalansell@gmail.com>
MATCHING COLORS/ESCAPE HATCH (CDR by Midnight Circles)
ESCAPE HATCH – AM TRAIN (CDR by Midnight Circles)
AARON YABROV – SILENT TRANSMISSION (CDR by Midnight Circles)
All around new names. The label, the artists. Each of these releases is packed in a sheet of thicker paper with an image and no text. Inside we find a CDR with a stamp that says ‘mc’ (midnight circles) and a small card with stamped info on the release, but not extending beyond artist and title. Label owner Thomas says he wants to focus on ‘tape manipulations/synth/field recordings etc.’ On the first one we find a split release with Matching Colors and Escape Hatch, each doing a ten-minute piece. These two pieces are a fine start of this label. Both of them employ quite some hiss as an additional sound source, no doubt working with tape manipulations I thought, with some more electronics working busily in the background. The variations in the piece by Matching Coors appealed more to me than the more single-minded processed percussion sounds of Escape Hatch. Yes, you can manipulate and store such recordings on a reel-to-reel tape; now start to compose with it. Or simply extend it to an hour and call it ambient?
Escape Hatch is also responsible for the next release, which has two pieces of exactly twenty-three minutes and thirty-six seconds each; curious coincidence or conceptual play? I am not sure. It could be, it could be. Here no percussion in the title piece, but maybe something that could be, loosely, described as ‘synth’ and some sort of tape manipulation. There is, to some extend, some distortion available, making this is a somewhat more noisy release than the previous release I just heard. It’s not bad at all, as the noise bursts are kept to a minimum and only occur when necessary. ‘Pitch Control’ – another programmatic title? – seems to be another synth piece, working with the various possibilities of what the various filters can do. This seems to me a bit too simplistic in approach. Have synth, will try? Especially the latter one seems to be in need for a compositional model.
I suspect a conspiracy here, but Aaron Yabrov also has two pieces of exactly the same length. I also don’t know anything about him. His work is definitely ‘synth’, as I don’t see/hear any field recordings being used around here. Here is a case of the best being saved until last. Literally, as the first piece is already a nice bit of synth/drone/ambient piece, the second, title piece, is even better. Very light in tone, delicately played, it sounds like an organ. Minimal, drone like, moving for some time into a dark forest before returning into the land of nice organ drones. The first piece is perhaps less impressive, but it is also a fine work of droning synth sounds. A bit darker throughout, he plays things with a similar love of minimalism and elegance. Who is this guy? (FdW)
Address: http://midnightcircles.bandcamp.com
ORPHAX – ONISCUS ASELLUS (CDR by Moving Furniture Records)
TVO – DILEAB CHOLBHASACH (3″CDR by Moving Furniture Records)
Sietse van Erve, man behind Moving Furniture Records and Oprhax, is an active bee. Here he has two new releases on his label of which the first, with his own music, was previously released in 2003 as a MP3, but now, eleven years later, it has been remastered and is no doubt available also on the net, but make sure to download the right quality. With lots of this kind of music it is a pity that you could, ten years, ago only download compressed versions. Music like this, with a lot of dynamic range, needs to be heard in the best possible quality. This is Orphax in its early days. His first releases were from 2002 (also internet only, so who knows? More re-issues) and it’s already dark, it is also partly inspired by the humming of machines; despite the title being about insects and such like. Maybe you can imagine a population of crawling insects when you hear this, or perhaps not. It’s densely orchestrated music, no doubt already in those early days already all about computer treatments, but does not yet have the refinement of the latter day Orphax. Maybe it’s the use of reverb that is an obvious point of atmospheric sound? It’s not bad at all, actually, especially from a historical point of view. Nice one indeed.
Did I ever of TVO before? I am not sure. It’s not easy to find using the search function on the computer. I have no idea. Here we have a twenty-two minute piece of music, which can serve as the soundtrack to the book of the same name written by the composers’ mother, Morag Law. Its published in Gaelic and English and “is both an edited selection of my grandmother, Barbara Satchel’s, writings, and also a brief biography of her life” says TVO. If you download the thing through bandcamp you’ll get also a bonus piece and a six-piece PDF booklet. The book is, I understand, ‘a meditation on memory, the past, threads of creativity and inspiration and an attempt to hold moments of time in audio’. For his piece here (and a longer bonus piece found on the bandcamp release of this), TVO had access to family archive recordings, his mother speaking, himself singing when he was six years old and such like. These sounds are processed using max/msp through Ableton Live and performed twice. The PDF tells us how these performances went. The second concert is the bonus here, and the first is, I believe, the CDR itself. This is all quite nicely processed field recordings, including singing and such, which provide a nice choir like sound at times. TVO mixes in spoken word, which act as voices, rather than as texts one should fully understand. Both pieces end rather abruptly, which is a pity. TVO takes the listener on a fine walk through hillsides, coastal lines, crackling of leaves, seaside sounds and all of that processed into the mild microsounding music of a general quiet and easy world, in which time seems to be moving slower than usual. No real big surprises here, but throughout an excellent execution of a fine piece. (FdW)
Address: http://movingfurniturerecords.com
MATTIA COLLETI & OWN ROAD – POWERDOVE (cassette by Old Bicycle Records)
One of my favorite tapelabels is Old Bicycle Records from Swiss, because you are always assured of good adventurous music. Mattia Coletti and Own Road recorded the track Flower Names in Mads studio in Copenhaghen in Denmark. The duo Mattia Coletti from Italy on guitars, field-recordings and Simon Skjodt Jensen (Own Road) from Denmark on voices, guitars and microphone is a nice mix of folk-music, drones and field-recordings. The track is a psychedelic trip created by looping stations, rumbling weird sounds alternated by realistic moments created by folk moments, singer-songwriter structures and nice riffs. It is like you are walking in a hot desert in the USA, just focussed to survive and moments of flashbacks of some goods moments at a fresh terrace are passing by. Wonderful collaboration between these two European musicians. Powerdove consists of Annie Lewandowski with voice and accordion, Thomas Bonvalet on “stringin’it” (whatever that may be), audio ducker, six string banjo and amp, microphones, feet tapping and hand clapping and John Dieterich on electric and acoustic guitars and dobro. The trio started with a abstract electronic sounds, completed with some guitarlines and sad song. I really like the melancholic atmosphere in this song and it reminds me to naive songs of the early The Velvet Underground. The second track is like a real singer-songwriter song, very basic and not more than that. The third song “Under Awnings” is recorded live at Cornell Cinema in Ithaca, New York in 2013. The several layers in this composition is really interesting by hand-clapping, raw rhythms, a beautiful soft voice and just some guitar lines. Great track. But than there is silence and the tape has more space for some more and really? I am interested in more stuff of this experimental trio from the States. (JKH)
Address: http://oldbicyclerecords.blogspot.com
SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON – I SAY TO YOU (cassette by Some)
And then there was the third release by Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson in a very short time – see also Vital Weekly 933 and 935, and yet another cassette. This one was recorded ‘one hot summer afternoon in Ghent 07/06/2014, using voice, guitar amplifier and tape recorders’, and comes with another extensive booklet of drawings. This is indeed something else from Sigmarsson. Although it’s atmospherical, it’s also clearly voice stuff. Sigmarsson hums and chants, without words, but with some reverb and maybe some other type of sound effect, to thicken the voice and make it a bit choir like. Maybe he has hooked up some tape recorders with loops so he hums along with his voice, a kind like Frippertronics system? This makes a rather unusual release for him. It’s atmospheric, it’s even got drone like qualities, but with that recognizable voice it probably owes more to a crossover between a singer songwriter and sound poetry. I was reminded of that wordless chant release by Elisa Faires, a few issues back, but whereas she had several pieces that sounded alike, Sigmarsson however knows how to create a longer piece, going to various motions and emotions and create a densely layered web of sing-song music. It’s something I am not entirely used to, but it’s perhaps the promising start of something entirely new. (FdW)
Address: <stilluppsteypa@gmail.com>
CICCIOLINA HOLOCAUST – MOHIM (cassette by Forced Nostalgia)
Another archival find by Forced Nostalgia, see also elsewhere, is this duo from Italy. Florim Prishtina and Rezart Veseli from Firenze, active in the late 70s to mid 80s, until Veseli moved to Greece. Their cassette releases were mainly handed out to friends, so that’s why, perhaps, I never heard of them until now. They use guitar, Korg Poly 61, Korg KPR 77, cornet, Tascam portastudio, effect pedals, tapes and stuff they build themselves. It’s not easy to recognize much of these in the two pieces on this tape. On side A we have a thirty-one minute excursion into a land which sees a slowed down Esplendor Geometrico rhythm and Maurizio Bianchi’s ominous ambient noir excursions. Everything moves with a very slow speed, but here, in ‘Shaving A Snail’ there is some variation to be detected. Thirty-one minute of paranoid schizophrenia. Quite nice. ‘Splinters Of Blood’ – they have a way with titles, don’t they? Didn’t we all have back then? – is only twelve minutes, on side B, and is repeated. Here we find them in a more power electronics mood, more Ramleh like, or Mauthausen Orchestra. Though not bad, I think I prefer Ramleh. The label has more from them available, just in case you are on a shopping spree for some really ancient noise stuff. (FdW)
Address: http://forcednostalgia.com/
ANDREW COLTRANE & LUKE HOLLAND (cassette by Trapdoor)
Now here’s a 80s set back: the cover is just Xeroxed on a thin piece of paper, black and white. Even by 80s standards low fashion, but as far as the music goes it quite fits the scheme. Maybe it’s called ‘Fire Musick’ (another 80s reminder) or maybe it’s a definition of style. The cover says ‘Fire Musick’ recorded 2013-2014′ and not much else, besides catalogue number and label name. The music is short, followed by lengthy silence until the tape runs out. If you switch over to the other side once the music is done, then there is another short piece. Good ol’ fashioned noise is what Andrew Coltrane and Luke Holland have to offer you. Noisy, dirty, electronics, but not without a slight rhythmical aspect to the proceedings, that forceful machine drive found in the earliest Esplendor Geometrico work. It certainly has it’s charm I would say, even when I found a few things rather puzzling here – the short pieces, the hardly-no-info cover, the long silence. Why not a bit a more music for instance? There was certainly room for it, and common, also some need here. (FdW)
Address: <trapdoortapes@hotmail.com>
AUTOMATING – REPRESSURED (cassette by Patient Sounds)
Work by Australia’s Automating has been well received here (see Vital Weekly 930, 862, 843 and 841) and here Sasha Margolis offers a rather short tape of two new pieces of music. Loops seem to be the primary interesting here, still, which sound as rusty as they could be. Or should be rustic? While ‘Cloud Burst’ is more electronic, ‘Third Eye’ seems to have more recordings from the farmland, with the sound of water running down pipes and a shifting microphone. Mistakes are left in. Sometimes things swell up to with processed sounds, all dark, all ambient, and what I noted before seems still valid here: Automating owes to the music of The Hafler Trio, but surely has more to say. Again, on ‘Third Eye’, it slowly develops into a musical song of sorts, with a decaying rhythm and a surprisingly musical ending. ‘Cloud Burst’ starts out with shorter, Reichean looped sounds, which, as the piece evolves, slow down and space out, before entirely disappearing and just some sounds stick around, humming on end, making vague orchestral gestures. Twenty-some minutes of more great music! Another excellent Automating release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.patient-sounds.com/