BEAT SYSTEM (CD by E:MT)
For me it took a long long tim, but at last I’m very excited for a new
release on E:MT. Beatsystem were on a couple of compilations by E:MT
before, but I forgot their input. Beatsystem is one Derek Pierce who works
apperentely with a lot of computer-generated sounds (as in ‘samples’?).
This is by no means techno or ambient, but leans towards more ‘serious
academic composing’. Derek takes relatively sound sources, such as the
human voice, to compose pieces which are all broken and spliced together,
but in a digital way. ‘For Pierre’ is dedicated to Pierre Schaeffer,
founding father of Musique Concrete’ and is basically a computer version of
his piece for a ‘door and a sigh’, a hugh wall of sound with much more
processing then the original. My favourite piece however is the ‘No Jumping
Up And Down’, which starts out with the voice of John Cage and treats the
voice like Cage would do himself, but, unlike Cage, the is more a
composition then a free run of sounds. The only thing I don’t get is the
name ‘Beat System’ as there aren’t many beats to be found here. This is the
sort of ambient that is a lot more demanding (so for the right ambient) and
not much diaree here. Let’s hope E:MT are on their way back with this more
of this stuff. (FdW)Address: <emit@msn.com>
DMDN – SLING TRIP 2 (CD by Supreme Tools Supplies)
This new DMDN (Dva Met Dva Nichts) should be regarded as the brother of
‘Sling Trip’ which came out last year on Pure (the RRRecords noise impint).
Both of these are historical works by the one guy Dutch band, who also
plays in the loud rock group Lewd and is a member of the ‘modern musique
concrete band’ THU20 (who are on stage in Paris next month after 5 years of
silence – but that’s a different story). DMDN makes noise music, no more
and no less. There are interesting shifts in tones, feedback is processed
all the time and there are shimmering dark textures underneath. Partly
alike the old (and much better) Ramleh and length wise MB stuff. Certainly
this is produced with much more skill (hey my humble opinion) then much of
today’s noise dropping at my doorstep. So if ‘Sling Trip 1’ was up your
alley, then this is a must have too. (FdW)
Address: <jhjac@worldaccess.nl>
PAULINE OLIVEROS – ALIEN BOG/BEAUTIFUL SOOP (CD by Pogus)
PAULINE OLIVEROS – ELECTRONIC MUSIC (CD by Paradigm)
Coincidence exists! One the same I received two CD’s by Pauline Oliveros,
composer since long time, and both are archive discs, dating back to the
mid-sixties. The Pogus one contains two pieces, from 1966 and 1967, of
which one is previously unreleased. Here Pauline works with the Bucla Box
100 synths and her own tape delay system. Rich textured sounds fly by, take
a shape and disappear. Ambient music from the time the word was
non-existent. Close the curtains and turn off the light, and put this
medium volume: it’s like stars falling on end. ‘Beautiful Soop’, the second
piece on this CD, has a narration and comes across to me as Randy Greif’s
interpretation of ‘Alice In Wonderland’. More a piece to be listened
closely in one wants to follow the text.
The other CD starts out with a noisy composition of what sounds like
processed feedback, using real time processing. Really dense at time with
drony undertones. ‘Big Mother Is Watching You’ is like processing of
sounds, but more primitive (this doesn’t mean bad). ‘Bye Bye Butterfly’ is
also a piece made in real time, according to a studio set up.
Both of these discs contains vintage works of electronic music from the
days no one could afford a home studio. Historical works and one can be
glad it has to come digital now. Essential if you are interested in the
historical perspectives of electronic music. (FdW)
Address: <pogal@ix.netcom.com>
Address: fax: + 44 171 609 1754
ANEMONE TUBE – Forget Heaven (Cassette by Bawler Productions)
This is an unknown cassette-project for me, on a label that originally came
from the Grindcore/ Death Metal which has slowly evolved into the more
experimental & ambient side of things (so far released nice 7″es by Aube &
Alchemy Of The 20th Century; as well as some tapes). Anemone Tube come from
Tettnang, which is near the Bodensee in Germany, they create a quite
droning mixture of deep rhythms, harsh noises and some very dense parts.
The whole sounds rather dark and depressed, as the titles of the tracks
suggest, too. Some extracts reminded me of AUBE. I think this is a good
noisework, as it combines different elements and atmospheres (6 tracks as a
whole, of which the longest one is the harshest). A good start for Anemone
Tube (guess it’s their first tape), which makes one look forward to listen
to their further development. Bawler Prod have very good prices and run a
small mail-order with some experimental & grindcore stuff. The tape is
nicely packed in an oversized cover with full-colour artwork . [BAR]
Contact: Bawler Prod – Thomas Gith, Von-Hess-Weg 13, 20535 Hamburg, Germany
ULTRA MILKMAIDS – Nadine (Cassette by Rendevous Radikal)
One of my favourite “ambient” groups with a new cassette, on a brandnew
label from Berlin. It’s good to see that the U.M. don’t stay on the same
line, they manage it to develop gradually from each release to the next.
The tape begin with their usual nice melancholic guitar-ambient, but with
the second track they get more electronically influenced (as they already
showed on the great ‘Borray’ 12″ on Noise Museum), and mix field recordings
of birds with strange electronic sounds, later added by rhythms, again
quiet wonderful guitars, and long haunting drones. I love the overall
melancholic atmosphere and can only recommend this highly for all those
space-heads around! The tape is nicely packed in white cardboard, with a
b/w-photo on it, and limited to 88 copies. [BAR]
Address: Rendevous Radikal – Juergen Eckloff – Ursula Goetze Strasse 13 –
10318 Berlin – Fax: X49-30-50898538
AUBE – RUMINANT (CASSETTE BY Sound Probe)
I’m going to tell you a true story, which is unusual for me, so listen up:
I was listening to this two days ago, pretty damn loud, if you wanna know
the truth, when I heard a pounding at my door and a guy with unmistakable
panic in his voice shouting “Hello? Hello?” I ran to the door and saw that
it was the mailman. He said “Is everything alright in there? I heard your
alarm going off, and didn’t know if everything was all right in there, or
what! Did you leave your kettle on, or something, are you okay?” I was
puzzled at first, then realized that he was hearing my new Aube tape. “No,
no, I’m fine, everything’s fine, I’m just listening to a tape”. This didn’t
seem to satisfy him, he still looked worried, but saw that the converstaion
was over, he handed me my mail and left.
Quite amused, I soon forgot about that. Today, the mailman came again, and
I greeted him at the door (y’see the guy every day, practically, you have
to be friendly) and he immediatley said “Well, damn, you’re not listening
to yr record. I can’t say I understand why you was listening to that,
scared hell out of me, or something, damn…” and muttered and walked off.
Good to know the postal service is concerned, I thought.
So, here’s what the poor guy was subjected to, which apparantly had a
lasting effect on him. A tape limited to 125 copies with a BEAUTIFUL
package, a sort of rubber pocket with drip designs on it, real impressive
package. The source is one oscillator. Four tracks, each one quite
different from each other.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am super-quick to slag Aube, mostly
because I know how dear his fans hold him, so it’s fun. But I’m going to be
fair: this is pretty damned interesting. The first track, the one the
postman heard, consists of what does sound like a car alarm. But close
listening reveals many layers of conflicting rhythms, so that what
initially appeared to be one tone shatters into tons of tiny pieces. I like
that. The other tracks are less abrasive, dark whooshing that doesn’t stick
around long enough to become wallpaper, which is nice. There aren’t the
typical obvious effect-pedals (you know “Flood-Gate” is only as long as it
because Akimfumi couldn’t get over his DoD ‘phaser’) or loops that mar
other Aube recordings, either. A good, solid album. (HS)
COLUMN ONE – KRIEGSSCHAUPLAETZE (LP by L.O.K.I.Foundation)
Here’s another release from this interesting group from Berlin, who are
standing somewhere between the old Industrial-approach and newer
Techno-influences, and so far they seem to sound different on each release
they do. This LP is a document of a Festival about the theme ‘war Theatre’
that took place in Potsdam in January 1994 for a whole week, an exhibtion
with films by (for example) Genesis P.Orridge, Paul Viebeg and concerts by
Netzach, Rongwrong, Hafler Trio, Contrastate, Za Siodma Gora; E. Ka-Spel
and Column One. The LP contains recordings of two concerts by Column One.
The LP begins with voice-samples, accompanied by background-noises, which
slowly shifts into other atmospheres by using a violin which plays a
melancholic tune, and the whole thing sounds then like an improvised
soundtrack with lots of differents effects, samples, rhythms, etc… The
large booklet with lots of dark collaged images (maybe from one of the
films?) gives some background-information and has a small text from
Stanislav Lem in it (about self-torturing in order to achieve endless lust
while dying), and a philosophical quote from Column One, where they try to
explain why human beings are interested in war: because they search for
experiencing the NEW at any time (“the unknown causes the hope”). The text
is written all in German, unfortunately, an english translation would have
been nice. This is a quite ambitious release, not only the music, also the
artwork and texts fit together well. The LP is pressed in clear vinyl and
limited to 320 copies only. (BAR)
Address: L.O.K.I. : Fax: 49-3771-554494
DAVID SHEA – THE POEM DE NUESTRA SIGNORA (CD on More Music)
David Shea has recently done a bunch of recycling of his own samples of
other people’s music, mostly producing milder and milder dilutions of what
atrted out as a great idea. This particular CD represents new work, most of
which is made without Shea, but who’s presence in the studio during the
sessions was of apparent tantamount importance. This project was
coordinated by ‘organizational genius’ Tullio Angelini, who is partly
responsible for a series of traditional and avant garde music concerts
which occur in Italy each year. The idea for this CD was to record Shea in
a series of improvisations with folk musicians from Sardinia. There is a
profusion of traditional instrumentation here – all instruments are listed
in each track and the music retains a rough edge; there are constant
medieval references and many of the tunes are variations of traditional
pieces. Much of Shea’s contributions seem to be samples of the original
instruments which he then works, rather unspectacularly, into the
arrangements. The last track is Shea and solo sampler, and it is an
ineffective end to what many might consider to be an unusual attempt at
documentation. I’m still waiting for some new work from Shea which comes
close to the excellence of the till now unsurpassed ‘Tower Of Mirrors’ (Sub
Rosa). It may never happen… (MP)
DAVID CUNNINGHAM – EXT. NIGHT (CD by Piano)
Here’s a piece of music recorded in London in 1992. It’s David on his own,
playing a guitar through a couple of effects units. And released on his own
label too ! The motif is uncomplicated, a few notes are patiently plucked
and allowed to hover in space until they almost disintegrate only to be
reanimated by more of the same. ‘Ambient’ is a sorely abused word; once it
was adopted by the dance/rave scene it was subjected to all the rules of
forced music. I still perceive Eno’s early experiments as definitive of
this categorisation, and of course there have been others who have created
‘ambient’ music, often without even being aware of the label. This soft,
seductive work by Mr Cunningham is an amazing addition to a short list of
music, and it floats out of the speakers, non-intrusive yet there when the
ears require it. A therapy of sorts (MP)
NEGATIVLAND – Pisspied (CD on Seeland)
More new work from the undisputed masters of the cut-up, and instigators of
the first true (and extremely well-documented on their own ‘Helter Stupid’
CD/LP) media virus in the States. More famous in some circles for their
bold forays into the domain of copyright and ownership, this latest release
msut have been yet another legal nightmare. They claim immunity by
asserting that ‘All of the cola commercials that were appropriated,
transformed and re-used in this recording attempted to assault us in our
homes without our permission. An interesting point and one which could no
doubt lead to years of wrangling between those who make the rules and those
who challenge them. I am certain the Negativlads would be supported by the
majority of thinking people who have similar reservations with regard to
this issue. Still, as the united advertisers occasionally inform us,
entertainment is by and large supported by advertising… what would happen
to the quality of our spare time if all revenues derived from this often
very unsubtle tool were to disappear. A long debate and not one I’m going
to get into in too much detail here. Provided with the CD is ‘A Proposal To
Coke And Pepsi’ from an organisation called One World Advertising, which
has a few succint observations and some obvious suggestions to make to
their advertising departments.
The CD itself contains the usual Negativland mix of appropriated and
recontextualised speech and vocals; their sources are listed inside the
booklet and range from the familiar motivational marketing tapes made by
marketing executives to Bryan Ferry. Product endorsement by the famous
comes under scrutiny as do the dangers attached thereto. Child molesters do
not a product sell. That is until the image of the personality is cleansed
by effective repetition in the media of the good things they may have done.
Early on in the CD we are told that it is quite possible to replace an idea
in someone’s head by twisting the original message around to suit the new
requirement. Which is just what Negland are up to themselves ! Or not ? I
am a fan of their work and greatly appreciate the amount of time they must
spend creating a social commentary like this one. Don Joyce must be
recording all the time, constantly busy with a myriad of projects
simultaneously. Zappa frequently spoke about conceptual continuity in his
work, if there ever was a group more absorbed by the idea than he, it must
be Negativland. Intelligent, multi-layered and demanding. Entertainment,
definitely, but of the best kind. Not for passive people who wait with open
orifi (?) for their daily dose of media barrage. (MP)