CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF – TO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN IN THE BUNKER VIA THE
MICRO WAY (CD by Fire Inc.)
>From the nice Icelandic people who are now temporarily residing around the
corner, I got this new CD of a composer who is a conceptualist in the
purest sense of the word. Hausswolff’s titles are poetic, yet accurate
descriptions of the material you are hearing. In most cases he just
amplifies electrical events, machine hum, motor hum etc. ‘Spirit Folio Lite
Detector’ could have been Rioji Ikeda remixing Panasonic and is strong
pulsating track. This track is remixed on this CD, but is then called ‘A
Quite Faster Spirit – indeed a faster version. Much of Hausswolff’s music
is very minimal – and that’s were it gets its power from. Minimal changes
which require close hearing (or you better play this at a low volume) are
the creaming on top of this. (FdW)
Address: <sfs@isholf.is>
BRUNO MOREIGNE – BRUITS, SONS, PAROLES ET SILENCES DE LA FORET (CD by Kaon)
Bruno is one of those ‘sound-hunters’ (now that’s a word not comonly used
and dates back to the days when Philips brought cheap reel to reel
tapedecks). This particular work of Bruno Moreigne deals with all noise and
sound coming from the forest: ranging from wood to stones to the
inhabitants of the forest, birds and insects. Each track amplifies a
specific field of sound. All the animal sounds can be found in ‘Animal’ and
man’s activities in the woods can be heard in ‘Gestes’ (including ritual
sounds). By placing these various sounds into seperate tracks (rather then
putting it together in a long collage form), Bruno creates an original view
on the material. If you are into sound scaping without the addition of
sound effects, then you may find this of special interest. (FdW)
Address: 5 Impasse des Moineaux – 87100 Limoges – France
ROBERT HENKE – FLOATING POINT (CD by Imbalance)
At long last the fourth CD on Imbalance (a label closely connected to many
of Berlin techno labels such as Chain Reaction and Basic Channel). Like the
three previous releases, this has nothing to do with techno music. Or? You
can regard this CD as one long, floating, piece of computerized pulses and
washes of synth as a serious academic work. But like in ‘Cyrus Canyon’
there is low end droning bass who could be mistaken for a slowed down beat.
In general this is a particular strong ambient work which is more daring
then many others and goes beyond the ordinary.
Address: <imbalance@berlin.snafu.de>
MERZBOW/LADYBIRD – BALANCE (CD by Human Wreckords)
Many many years ago I bought a nice overpriced record by John Duncan and
Chris & Cosey. I was struck by the simple yet genious concept: one artist
was on the left channel and the other on the right channel. This ment that
by playing the record stereo you would hear both at the same time, and they
fitted well together. I still cherish that record. I wonder if I will do
the same with this CD with exactely the same concept. No doubt true Merzbow
devotees (and I am one!) will want this, but they will, just like me, be
confused (to avoid the word irritated) by this band Ladybird. I am not sure
what their sense of humour is, but their wacky pop music is not really of
interest for me. I played this once stereo, but I think I will turn off the
right channel as of now. I have no clue why these 2 are on the same CD.
(FdW)
Address:
PRODUKT – STRETCH (CD by Rastermusic)
Rastermusic is rapidely expanding into armchair techno listening. They
mostly release CD’s, rather then vinyl, and this makes home listening much
easier. Rastermusic deals with two labels, each of with a distinct quality
in music and consistent packaging. One is the ‘clear’ series with releases
by ø, Noto and Goem and the other is the standard packaging series. This
new CD by Produkt, aka Frank Bretschneider. The first track is a jam with
the other people of the label, and is just a great slow going techno piece.
Minimal changes, but with a bass line that sticks into your mind. After
each track there are short pieces, announced as >1, >2 etc which fade over
into the next ‘real’ track. Musically Produkt stays close to armchair techo
listening with it’s usual ingredients. If this was on Warp you would have
known about it already, but now we have to pray that you will know about
it. And why not? It’s a great CD! (FdW)
Address: <100522.3536@compuserve.com>
Compilation “Aube, Katsumi, Kosakai, Monde Bruits” (CD byJapan Overseas)
It’s a damn shame that so many musicians think “ambient” is synonomous with
“long and uneventful”. When the only idea a musician has is playing
quietly, it shouldn’t be surprising that he produces music which meanders
around that one idea for a very long time. The concept behind this disc is
noise guys doing “ambient” (just quoting the back of the spine-card here),
and it really highlights the limitations and compositional ability of the
artists involved.
Aube’s track is first. He uses brainwaves as his source material, which
means he has three basically unaffected loops which he plays simultaneously
for ten minutes, then turns them off. Uneventful is not ambient. Maybe Aube
was trying for a Steve Reich-ish effect, waiting for the loops to go out of
phase, but they never really doing anything other than hang around for too
long.
Katsumi Sugahara is the most successful. The liner notes credit him as a
new member of Solmania, but here he delivers an almost new-age mantra,
complete with pretty melody (shock!), actual chord changes (horror!), even
direction and apparant structure (lawdy!).
The biggest dissapointment is Fumio Kosakai’s track. As a member of one of
my favorite bands, Incapacitants, he always delivers the goods. Here, he
has three samples (analogue-synth whoosh, metal ploink, and, er, another
analogue-synth whoosh) which he plays over and over for fifteen minutes
through lots of delay (in order to sound “spacey”, I guess). I get the
feeling that, like Aube, if given a full 70 minutes, he would use them all.
Monde Bruits’ track is, thankfully, short, only 6 1/2 minutes. He lets some
sparse synth bloops play off of each other, with effective use of silence
to create a real tension, the one element lacking from the tracks before
this. Still, the whole disc can’t escape sounding contrived, and there is
no hint of passion or inspiration. (Stelzer)
Augst&Beck – Sprech-Einsatz (12″ by Multi.Trudi 0.001)
Augst and Beck are two noise-musicians from Frankfurt. They both play in a
‘never practice’ – ‘no agreements’ live band called: “Freundschaft”.
Together they also have done a great number of live radio-shows all over
Europe. They always use a lot of vocals; text recitation, and noise.
This new 12 inch is very good. On side one a noisy techno track of 9 mins;
the club-version as the label says. Distorted beats building up to an
excellent climax. Side two beholds a 20 mins. remix. They themselves call
this side ‘the vocal only mix’ but it is very noisy! For all over Europe
Also soon; Freundschaft: Bazaar CD
contact: +49(0)69-7410210 or www.thing.de/multitrudi.