WIEMAN PLAYS GOEM (CD by Kvitnu) *
MATHIAS JOSEFSON — ATT SLUTA EN CIRKEL (CD by Schhh)
ANTASTEN – SONGS INTEGRAL (CD by Loewenhertz)
JOHN RUSSELL & STEVE BERESFORD & JOHN EDWARDS & LIAVIK SOLBERG – WILL IT FLOAT (CD by Vafongool)
ATHANA & WERNER CEE – TOXIC SKIES ORCHESTRA NO:DE (2CD by West Audio Productions) *
JEFF ÖZDEMIR & FRIENDS (CD by Karaoke Kalk)
PHILIPPE FOCH – TAARANG (CD by Radio France) *
SEETYCA – NEMETON (CD by Winter-Light) *
PHANTOM SHIP – SPHERES (CDR by Winter-Light) *
EMERGE – FROWN (CD by Attenuation Circuit) *
HOLZKOPF & EMERGE – VRAFT (CD by Attenuation Circuit) *
TINCTURE OF JAPANOISE (CD compilation by Attenuation Circuit)
K2/ALLAN ZANE (LP by Attenuation Circuit)
BEN LAWLESS/SQUINCHY – FRIDAY NIGHT 4 LYFE/ASSORTED NUTS (split LP by Old Gold)
DAVID MARANHA & GERARD LEBIK – ANIME PEZZENTELLE (LP by Bocian Records)
JLIAT & DYECAP – THE JURASSIC (CDR by Pre-arlophone Records) *
BUILD BUILDINGS – A GENERATION OF BOOKS (CDR by Audiobulb Records) *
WEGRZYN – TANZMUSIK (CDR by Eta Label) *
GUTTER SOUND (cassette by Cautious Horses)
WIEMAN PLAYS GOEM (CD by Kvitnu)
An on-going pulsing sound comes into my head. It is penetrating my brains and my head starts to bang, slowly but continuously. Some open sounds are passing through, but after a while high-pitched sounds restart the penetration. The beat is getting lower and the high sounds continue. Some minimal big beats are joining in and the atmosphere moves into dark moments. Fuzzy sound waves take over the rhythmical part of this track and after a while some on-going tones create a meditative moment. At the background noises disturb the meditative ambient sound. And there is again a penetrating sound. This minimal sound is really strong and it getting stronger and stronger. More sounds are added and develops into a more complex composition. This is great reconstruction of old Goem material. Goem was a musical project of Frans de Waard, Roel Meelkop and Peter Duimelinks. The material is reconstructed by Wieman, the current project of Frans de Waard and Roel Meelkop. The material on the CD is recorded at Geluidswerkplaats Extrapool in preparation for a concert at Studio Trenkel with images of Marco Douma. The album is released by Kvitnu, which is a label based in the Ukraine. Kateryna Zavoloka creates the beautiful cover with golden characters with pictures of Marco Douma. This album is highly recommended for the lovers of minimal electronic music. (JKH)
Address: http://kvitnu.com/
MATHIAS JOSEFSON — ATT SLUTA EN CIRKEL (CD by Schhh)
Schhh is a new label from Sweden and the label releases music of musicians who want to break musical and artistic boundaries to refine and rebuilt their work. The CD “Att Sluta en Cirkel” (To Complete a Circle) is created by Mathias Josefson. He is artist and musician and creates movies and installations. The movie San Soleil of Chris Marker inspired Mathias Josefson and he cut and mixed also sounds of the soundtrack of this movie. He was also inspired by the words of Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author.” The album starts with a quiet on-going sound and voices are passing by and becomes like a rubbish talk. The second track “Resedagbok” has a complete atmosphere as the other tracks. It is more noisy and industrial with repeating metallic alike sounds created by a fiddlestick, which is touching a metallic blade. Also some sounds at the background makes this track to an adventurous piece of music, which becomes more and more darker. The third track “Författarens död” The author’s death) starts massive with an on-going drone and soon some other sound layers are added to the intensive sound. After a while there is some more space and sounds are developing in a subtle way. Has the musician Mathias Josefson been killed and can explore his music on our own way? The last track starts with a sound like an organ and the drone is getting bigger and bigger and develops into a massive classical sound. “Att Sluta en Cirkel” is a beautiful drony album, very intense by the use of the sounds of the movie. The reconstruction of these sounds is well done and Mathias Josefson created a new soundtrack for a circular movie. (JKH)
Address: http://www.schhh.se/
ANTASTEN – SONGS INTEGRAL (CD by Loewenhertz)
Hannes Loeschel from Vienna I first met through his releases ‘Im Wirthaus’ and ‘Herz.Bruch.Stück’, where he pays tributes to Schubert and the traditional music of Vienna. Fine works. But this is only one side of Loeschel’s musical universe. As a pianist, composer, arranger and leader he made his mark in very different areas. Remember ‘Spin’ a suite for string ensemble, turntables and electronics. Also with Antasten he is engaged in far more modern and experimental music. With Novotny and Thomas Lehn, Loeschel released two albums as Antasten in 2001, ‘Echos an Kegelrändern’ and ‘Excentriques’. ‘Songs Integral’ is a new step after a long break. Again a collaboration with fellow Austrian Josef Novotny, and with vocalist Eden McNutt from Pittsburgh (Braxton, Syrinx ensemble). At the base are piano and electronics, this time with the vocal acrobatics of McNutt are added. All tracks move between one and four minutes, the traditional length of songs. To call these pieces songs however requires some fantasy. The pieces are built from fragments, from bits and pieces. Strange audioplays, sound collages, highly abstract improvised textures. Difficult to describe of categorize. But despite the highly abstract and experimental level of their musical constructions, most tracks offer an emotionally engaging experience. And that is a compliment. An interesting album. (DM)
Address: http://www.loewenhertz.at
JOHN RUSSELL & STEVE BERESFORD & JOHN EDWARDS & LIAVIK SOLBERG – WILL IT FLOAT (CD by Vafongool)
There was a time when the name of Steve Beresford was almost on every record I bought, way back in the 80s and 90s (49 Americans, Nato and On U releases, Alterations, etc.). Nowadays I meet him only rarely on record. The quartet we have here came about from an initiative by Norwegian improviser Solberg. I could not trace much about this artist. You may know him from S/S Motsol, an all-Norvegian improv ensemble that has an album out on Creative Sources. Besides he was part of another quartet, with Lonberg-Holm, Gjerstrad and Motland as companions. After a successful collaboration with John Russell he decided to invite Beresford and Edwards, and a new quartet was born. A good choice as this release proves. All three English players are of course veterans of the UK-improv scene and played in innumerable combinations and contexts. In connexion with this young musician from Norway, new and fresh music came into being. They produce some very entertaining improvisations, with funny twists and colouring. As ever Beresford uses a wide range of objects, toy pianos, etc. The playing by all four is enthusiastic and open. The four really meet and do tell a story. One feels the strong logic and interaction of their conversations. So a very enjoyable and satisfying record of free improvised music. (DM)
Address: http://www.vafongool.no
ATHANA & WERNER CEE – TOXIC SKIES ORCHESTRA NO:DE (2CD by West Audio Productions)
To be very honest: I never know what to make of the music of Athana, the musical project of Norway’s Alf Terja Hana, who plays guitar, electronics (loop stations no doubt as he calls his guitar the ‘1000 guitar sound’), kalimba, native drum and synth. Sometimes I quite enjoy his somewhat ambient take on psychedelic music, with some jazzy, post rock influences, but sometimes it annoys the hell out of me, and seemingly there is no end to this doodling. Sometimes I leave them to Dolf Mulder, but here’s one I played myself again, after some time, and we see Hana working with Werner Cee, from Germany. Maybe I was attracted to the fact that he does a lot of radio drama works, but also plays the ‘electroacoustic ch’in, a pentatonicallly tuned seven-stringed solid body zither, adapted from the chine qchin’. On the first CD there is also Torgeir Nes (electronics, real-time sampling) and Øyvind Grong on bass, voice and valve trombone and some vocals, while on the second CD there is just Hana and Cee. Running through all of this a thematic approach of environmental and climate changes. Both discs stem from the same recording, but Hana mixed disc and the other mixed by Cee. That is an interesting approach. Hana arrives at eleven separate pieces in which the sounds are coming to you rather loosely, flowing from one point to the next, but also moving stylistically over the place: from ambient to electroacoustic sound-manipulation and even exploring a bit of noise in ‘Toxic Alien’, going into ‘Toxic Overture’ (the tenth piece however!) with some drum machines and spacious guitars. Quite a trip, meandering wide and afar in musical directions, but surely nice enough.
Cee does a somewhat shorter mix, clocking at forty-seven minutes. Cee keeps things more in one place, the ambient place to be precise. The same material but then leading up to something else quite entirely, so you could wonder what happened to the material afterwards. Cee spreads out the music over a vast empty plain and brings us various isolated elements here and there and spins a web of sounds underneath from those looped guitar and e’chin but altogether stays quite open in his approach. I was less taken by the spoken words (by Freddie Wadling) on some of these tracks, as they seemed to break away from the more atmospheric route taken by Cee. Aside from the talking, quite a nice piece too. (FdW)
Address: http://www.westaudio.no
JEFF ÖZDEMIR & FRIENDS (CD by Karaoke Kalk)
Ah, two things I am not particular fond about, which is compilations and remixes, although perhaps this is not either really. It’s basically songs by Jeff Özdemir, from Berlin where he runs the ’33rpm Store’ and who is a multi-instrumalist, composer and producer. On this album he plays his songs with friends from Berlin, and perhaps there is some pure remixes in here. It’s not easy to tell. So, let’s treat it as an album by Özdemir, made by him and a whole bunch of friends. I never heard his music before. There are many misconceptions about Vital Weekly and what we do and don’t, and one of that is that we don’t like pop music. We, well I, do. A lot actually. But, having said that, it’s not something I know a lot about. I do like a lot of the releases on Static Caravan, and also music released Karaoke Kalk gets my thumb up, even when I most of the times am a blind as to what it is that I’m reviewing. Özdemir and his friends play quite smooth pop music, a bit funky, a bit dramatic, a bit world music inspired, disco and jazz. Lyrics are in English and German. When it comes to remixes there’s the usual techno and house music. I wasn’t blow away by some of the more jazzy pieces, of the smooth variety, which I really don’t like, but otherwise this highly varied bunch of music worked really well. Close to eighty minutes of music, which sounds like tuning into an alternative radio channel playing some great alternative music. (FdW)
Address: http://karaokekalk.de
PHILIPPE FOCH – TAARANG (CD by Radio France)
There is always a bit of complaining about the nature of the stuff we write about, that we don’t investigate enough for instance. We are reviewers, not journalists; And sometimes we have something to complain about too. Not just about the aesthetic nature of this release, which is one simple card and one of those really cheap plastic cases (like the ones you get when buy CDRs in plastic cases), but also the fact that there is press text nor a website. Long live google, I guess. Philippe Foch plays the taarang, a set of 15 tablas (that at least is mentioned on the cover), and he plays that, along with electronic treatments and on eight of the eleven tracks, with guests. Among these guests I recognized the names of Mathias Delplanque and Eryck Abecassis, both of them credited with electronic treatemnts. Others play prepared piano, cornemuse, percussion and lithophone. This is varied release, but not one that could hold my attention throughout. When the mood is mellow and atmospheric, such as in title piece, then I’m all for it. But a wilder, exotic piece like ‘Presque Noir’ seemed to be dragging on without end. Sometimes the music is very ambient and considered and sometimes not at all. It seems to me that the ambient side prevails here, which is nice, but I was thinking that the tabla might not be one of my favourite instruments; maybe I heard too much music by Muslimgauze in my life? I didn’t think this was a bad release, and it surely had some nice pieces, but it’s not likely something I would easily return too. (FdW)
Address: none given
SEETYCA – NEMETON (CD by Winter-Light)
PHANTOM SHIP – SPHERES (CDR by Winter-Light)
My first encounter with Seetyca was when he released a triple CD compilation of field recording pieces called ‘Nekton Falls’ (see Vital Weekly 549) and since then I heard some of his solo music (Vital Weekly 800 and 801) and with Mystified (Vital Weekly 847). Here he has new music, from 2012, on a Dutch label, which is new to me, Winter-Light (is that the light of winter time, or not so heavy winter, the Dutch variety, I wondered). ‘Nemeton’ is a sacred, Celtic space ‘primarily situated in natural areas, often-sacred groves of trees’. Like before he plays ‘e-maschinen and samplers’, by which I gather he means synthesizers, electronics, anything with keys and samplers to sample any sort of field recordings and/or real instruments. Bells and flutes were to be found on his earlier releases. Like the dark cover already shows us, this some very dark music indeed. Dark ambient, dark atmospherics or some such description. There is, however, a bit more to this and that’s the use of ‘strange sounds’, which sort of break away from the usual dark fields of atmospheric sounds; the rumble and rummage of contact microphones, the field recordings perhaps, clean and uncut or something like that. I am not exactly sure what it is, but it adds something to this release, which makes it much of him than copying some other dark drone master – say Steve Roach or Robert Rich. In ‘Als Licht Geh’ Ich Vor Dich Hin’ for instance we have a clear example of this. Maybe it’s a field recording of some oil fields, or the cracking of wood during a storm, but it works well with the floating mass of drone sounds underneath, which is of course part and parcel of such music anyway. Eighty minutes, best suited for a late evening listening session and preferable in complete darkness. Great release.
From Italy arrives Phantom Ship, also known as Roberto Faloci, and ‘Spheres’ is his third album, following two earlier private releases. Here too we have some dark ambient music but of a somewhat different kind than Seetyca; whereas the latter explores vast masses of amorphous sounds, Phantom Ship is more about real instruments, carefully played melodies and, in general, a more open sound. About this release he says “‘Spheres’ is inspired by the eternal dialogue between the inner and the outer sphere of the human psyche”, also quoting Heraclitus Of Ephesus: “The hidden harmony is better than the visible”; this is music to be listened to in solitude I guess and not be interfered by the talk of others. Go inside (the house, but also inside oneself) and listen closely. Phantom Ship uses wide open spaces which he created artificial, through the extended use of reverb, using sounds from ’empty’ places (churches, backyard, courts) which he gives a bit more reverb and along with the sound of piano, heavily processed guitar, some voice material melts down to quite spacious music. Quite computer minded, I would think, tearing sounds further and further apart, time stretching beyond recognition. The titles hint towards an interest in all things cosmic and space (‘Warp 7’, ‘Cygnus’) and there is also a bit of NASA flight control voice material in here, which was perhaps an all too obvious give away, I thought, but luckily it’s only in one place. It’s not something that I hadn’t heard before, just like Seetyca wasn’t the biggest surprise either, but it was something that actually worked well, on an early winter’s evening. (FdW)
Address: http://www.winter-light.nl/
EMERGE – FROWN (CD by Attenuation Circuit)
HOLZKOPF & EMERGE – VRAFT (CD by Attenuation Circuit)
TINCTURE OF JAPANOISE (CD compilation by Attenuation Circuit)
K2/ALLAN ZANE (LP by Attenuation Circuit)
Attentuation Circuit goes for the next step up; they already released LPs before, but now they are also releasing ‘real’, factory produced CDs. Obviously the first to open up here is the label boss himself who goes by the name of Emerge. He has released plenty of his own works. Much of his work takes place inside the computer and he doesn’t use synthesized sounds. He has three long pieces here, somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes each and Emerge’s music can be found in that place we call musique concrete, drone, microsound and such. The information mentions Asmus Tietchens, and surely that seems to be a strong influence here, especially the post 2000 works by Tietchens. Emerge takes a sound, and then expands heavily on it’s theme. Except for a drumloop by Elektrojudas in ‘Frown 2’, we are left in the dark what those sounds might be. It’s not that Emerge wants to sound exactly the same as Tietchens. In ‘Frown 3’ he uses quite some noise elements, covered in a fair amount of reverb and with a shimmering melodic line somewhere, this might be more to do with the world of ambient noise than anything else, and sounds perhaps least Tietchens like. That is perhaps what Emerge does best: create dense fields of ambient industrial sounds, which is ‘Frown 1’ appears to be more on the quiet side, with remote objects falling on the floor in a cavernous space. It’s also the way ‘Frown 2’ starts, but the drum sounds are occasionally easy to recognize, and gives this a more electro-acoustic feel. In general the three pieces were quite varied, which I thought was a good thing, but perhaps the pieces could have been a bit shorter: it doesn’t always seem to have enough variation to be interesting for the entire length. But so far it’s his most refined work to date.
Also on the next CD Emerge is present, but then in collaboration with Canada’s Holzkopf, who sometimes works inside the area of drum ‘n bass, but also takes on as easily noise and ambient. Also on the plate here are sound samples by Y-Ton-G treated by Emerge. Two long pieces here, each around thirty minutes, and maybe the titles give away something, ‘Masonry’ and ‘Metallurgy’, which one might conclude this deals with some sort of metallic ringing and singing. There is a loose structure in order here, in which these sounds seem to be improvised and everything arrives in a playful mood/mode. I am not sure how this was made; by mail or Internet I would assume, but it sounds like they have been together and improvised these two pieces on the spot. Feeding it through a variety of boxes and laptops, with (obviously) moments that could be weeded out by more rigorous editing, but it’s a free flow of sounds that has its appeal. It’s perhaps the kind of thing that you would find on a cassette release, but why not a CD? Why not! Indeed!
The final CD release for now is an eight-track compilation dedicated to the world Japanese noise music. As the label says, Merzbow plays museums and ‘noise becomes increasingly canonised in ‘high culture’, somebody has to look out for the real underground. This compilation digs deep into the underground, I guess, as none of the eight names mean anything to me. We have the abstract mess/mash-up collage by Abisyeikah, which bounces all over the place, while Ludwig Van’s Fifth opens the piece by Zr3a, and throughout he uses more bits of classical music, which I didn’t recognize, but like a good droog Alex as he probably he is, he places a bit of ultra-violence in large granite blocks on the road. Naoki Nomoto seems to be much more serious with a piece for analogue synthesizer or computer glitches and operates in a more traditional (?) academic electronic music way, but taking 50+ years of electronic music to a noisy top-floor. Ememe is the first more traditional noisemaker, in the best Merzbow tradition, not bad, but we do have Merzbow already, which actually might also be said about Elma. Free improvisation arrives from Hedoromeruhen, and perhaps, sometimes, also a bit on the soft side. It’s also the first time we hear the rattling of a drumkit here. Zpore Zpawn is also about the more traditional Merzbow, but then era of ‘SCUM’, cutting through a whole bunch of blocks of feedback and heavily treated drum sounds – and remember: Merzbow too was a drummer very early on. Jah Excretion might be an all to effective destruction of dub music. This is an interesting and fine introduction to a whole bunch of new names.
And then we turn to vinyl for the final new release, a split album by Japanese K2, also known as Kimihide Kusafuka, and Allan Zane, the latter sometimes works as Le Scrambled Debutante. K2 has by now a 20+ year career of playing japnoise at it’s very best, using ‘junk electronics’ and, these days, the Roland TR 808, which he doesn’t use to produce beats but rather uses as a generator sounds which he feeds through his junk electronics, which of course I have no idea what it is. Unlike say Merzbow, K2’s music isn’t a wall of noise but rather a vivisection of sounds in which everything is dissected and thrown around in a vivid and vibrant manner. A most tiring piece, and I mean that in the most positive way. Allen Zane on the other side of the platter dedicates his eighteen minutes to The Haters’ GX Jupitter-Larsen (although wrongly spelled on the insert) and Richard Rupenus of The New Blockaders. He uses ‘various metallic objects, various power tools, various effects processors and Cool Edit Pr 2.1’ and it’s all about the destruction of music. Unlike K2, but like many other noisemakers he storms ahead with one massive slab of on-going noise, in the tradition of Harsh Noise Wall, but not as harsh, although it is actually quite noisy. It has very little to do with Le Scrambled Debutante, I guess, and is quite psychedelic in its own way. (FdW)
Address: http://www.attenuationcircuit.de
BEN LAWLESS/SQUINCHY – FRIDAY NIGHT 4 LYFE/ASSORTED NUTS (split LP by Old Gold)
It’s been a while since I last saw a new release by Old Gold, but here’s a split album by Ben Lawless and Squinchy. Lawless played with Prefuse 73 and Yximalloo, and behind Squinchy is Dave Abel, who was a member of Autobody and bassist for Fly Ashtray. Both sides deal with home recording, with both of them playing all the instruments. For Ben Lawless side it’s hard to make out what it is all about as the cover is a great chaotic mess: it’s a collage of text and in the middle a picture – maybe Lawless looking like Zappa? Maybe Lawless got his inspiration from Frankie? It might very well, as in this fucked up rock music there are lots of guitar solos, homespun tape treatments of that same rock sound, and no vocals (unlike Frankie perhaps). It’s a totally crazy sound; sometimes very fast, like at break neck speed, but no doubt it’s all made using the same four tracks. All possibilities are explored and it all works rather well. There are no musical laws for Lawless; obviously. Great weirdo rock music.
Abel’s singing is compared with that of Stan Ridgeway (which is someone who I happen to like a lot) but with Captain Beefheart ‘style angular song blasts’. His side of the cover isn’t as chaotic or informative (or not) as the other side, and that reflects also in this music. Abel plays more structured songs than Lawless, and also largely but not exclusively instrumental, which have a pleasant feel. Not as in light weighted, but one can hear the pleasure both of these musicians had when they were recording this. Perhaps not exactly the kind of music that fills these pages but I very much enjoyed this. It celebrates twenty years of the Old Gold label, but oddly enough I couldn’t find a website for the label, and hopefully this e-mail addy works, because you may want to check out this packed musical weirdness. (FdW)
Address: <oldagolda@hotmail.com>
DAVID MARANHA & GERARD LEBIK – ANIME PEZZENTELLE (LP by Bocian Records)
The revived Bocian Records seems truly revived! Hurrah! And to support this they just released a LP by David Maranha, one of my favourite organ players and Gerard Lebik. The only thing I seem to know about him is that he is one half of the duo VeNN Circles (see Vital Weekly 896). Here he plays ‘Pure Data and Objects’. Pure Data is a software package to create your own musical devices, not unlike max/msp, but then for PC I believe. In January last year they spend two days working on these pieces, which fill up seventeen minutes of each side. I am a massive fan of David Maranha, following his work ever since he started out with Osso Exotico, later on solo and with others, and much of his work has him playing in an excellent psychedelic minimalist way – Steve Reich as a member of the Velvet Underground. This record seems to be a bit different, I think. Here his organ sounds more melted down, buried even, in the confinement of the software. Is the software picking up the signal and transforming it on the spot? Hard to say. It could very well be the case, but maybe this is a duet in the ‘classical’ way: two guys at their instruments hammering away? This is quite a noise based record, perhaps not something you’d easily expect from Maranha… not like this perhaps: it’s an all open/frequency assault of some highly nasty tonal material, with big clusters appearing everywhere, overlapping each other and working overtime. This is one of those records that one needs to play ‘loud’, in order to get all the details. There is quite an amount of sonic richness in here, although perhaps it is not easy to detect. On the loud fringes of drone music, is perhaps the thing to say here. If you like the more powerful drones of someone like Kevin Drumm, then this is surely something to inspect; obviously if you are a keen follower of the releases on this label you can’t go wrong either. Excellent release! (FdW)
Address: http://www.bocianrecords.com
JLIAT & DYECAP – THE JURASSIC (CDR by Pre-arlophone Records)
Back in Vital Weekly 963 I reviewed the first collaboration between Jliat, being James Whitehead and Dyecap, of which we know now is one Darren Pacey, who recorded the basic sound material as ‘he prepared fossils and meteorites which he makes for sale in various shops, galleries and museums. For this release he was sawing through fossilized sauropod bones, ‘possibly diplodoci or iguanodon’. Apparently the kind of stuff you find on the topsoil in the UK. Another sixty-six minutes of harsh noise. This is against Bishop Berkeley (17th century) who said ‘to be is to be perceived’, by which he means that ‘from which the idea that a tree falling in a forest when no one is there to perceive it cannot make a sound’, but of course these animals from way long ages ago did make a sound, so it’s against that that idea of Berkeley. One massive carved block of sound, but unlike so many harsh noise walls there is actually activity in here. Jliat feeds these sounds through all sorts of effects, which gives the music quite a nice, yet loud flow. Maybe it’s a bit long, but such is the nature of this kind of loud noise music. You cannot take words into space, Burroughs said, but you can take noise out of history, apparently. I thought this was an excellent work! (FdW)
Address: http://www.jliat.com
BUILD BUILDINGS – A GENERATION OF BOOKS (CDR by Audiobulb Records)
An excellent, pro-printed digipack around this CDR, which makes this look like the real thing: now that’s how one should do these things. Build Buildings is Ben Tweel’s project for many years and although I haven’t heard his more recent music (the last time might have been in Vital Weekly 634), I am always interested in his particular brand of electronic dance music. Much of what he does has to do with ‘sound’ and not much else, which is something I always like. No bullshit, just music. Tweel loves sounds; of clicks and clacks of pencils, chopsticks, scotch tape dispensers and candy wrappers. He samples them and then loops them around, plays with them, adds a bit of Rhodes pinao, acoustic guitar, upright piano, harp, mbira and harmonica – all of which are no doubt also sampled and made to measure to fit the beats he’s already crafted and then he plays around with them until he has a three minute piece of music. Lots of ‘intelligent’ beats, whatever these are, more glitches and everything with a fair amount of warmth. A bit of Fennesz, a bit of Herbert (especially when it comes to sampling electro-acoustic sources, even when Build Buildings doesn’t come with a grandiose political story) and Oval, but Build Buildings has a rather nice, playful sound; joyous even at times. With none of these pieces really long and a sufficient amount of variation this is one of the better albums I heard from him. It doesn’t stay in much the same place but keeps moving around, from strength to strength. Not something to be easily found on the dance floor I guess, but it works well as background music in the modern household. (FdW)
Address: http://audiobulb.com
WEGRZYN – TANZMUSIK (CDR by Eta Label)
As a follow-up to ‘Volksmusik’ (see Vital Weekly 923) there is now ‘Tanzmusik’ by (Lukas) Wegrzyn. This has nothing to do with dance music as such, I believe. From the information given I deducted last time it was music about a sad event, and it was all created with piano. Now he informs us that ‘Tanzmusik’ was a ‘fun record’ to make, even when it was made at the same time as ‘Volksmusik’. It was recorded with a sample of a terribly recorded mini-moog emulator which was processed over and over in very much the same way as he made ‘Volksmusik’, “same method, same measures, same attitude”, but no longer resulting in three long pieces of carefully constructed ambient pieces but seven pieces, which aren’t short either, clocking at three to ten minutes, of minimalist clicking and ticking. I assume Ableton Live plays an important role in these heavily loop based pieces. There is not really a low end to this and everything is on the mid to high end of the spectrum and even when it ticks in a rhythmic sense it doesn’t make this dance music at all. Instead one could say it’s more like a very primitive sort of Steve Reich phase thing that is going on here. There is not a lot of tension in these pieces, but I don’t believe that’s the idea of these pieces. It’s rather about all things lo-fi, rotten and decaying, the residue of what a sample could be, rather than about some highly refined audio work. Slowly evolving around a few patterns, some moving around for a longer time than others, intertwining each other in irregular intervals. A low-resolution version of Oval or Fennesz, like they are armed with a 1-bit sampler and yet Wegrzyn creates some wonderfully interesting music with this. Excellent release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.etalabel.com
GUTTER SOUND (cassette by Cautious Horses)
It’s always good when there is something to learn. “The project (I assume this release – FdW) is dedicated to the ballsy action of Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, who on 21 June 1919 took the unilateral decision to intentionally scuttle all 72 ships of the German High Seas Fleet, interned at Scapa Flow since the end of the Great War. The British, waking up to the sight of a bay full captive ships slowly disappearing into deep water, were not best pleased’. Learned something from this duo that call themselves ‘two North London idiots’. They have a bass guitar and a drum machine. They do their improvisations and cut these cut up and down and present those us in these two side-long pieces, of thirteen minutes each. On the ‘Szent Istvan’ side, the B-side here, this results in more consecutive beats than on the A-side, which is more a mash up of beat oriented music. That side, ‘Emden’, I thought was a bit uninformed and chaotic. It had some nice bits, which could work better if they were worked out more into more song like structure. The B-side had more of these moments; even dabbling with dance beats, showing the potential is certainly. Isolate these, work ‘m out into songs and Gutter Sound might be going (dance-) places. (FdW)
Address: http://cautioushorses.bandcamp.com
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Snail mail: Vital Weekly/Frans de Waard – Acaciastraat 11 – 6521 NE Nijmegen – The Netherlands
All written by Frans de Waard (FdW), Dolf Mulder (DM) <dolf.mulder@hetnet.nl>, Niels Mark (NM), Jliat (Jliat), Freek Kinkelaar (FK), Jan-Kees Helms (JKH), Michael Tau (MT), Peter Johan Nijland (PJN) and others on a less regular basis.
This is copyright free publication, except where indicated, in which case permission has to be obtained from the respective author before reprinting any, or all of the desired text. The author has to be credited, and Vital Weekly has to be acknowledged at all times if any texts are used from it.
The editor can shorten announcements. Please do NOT send any attachments/jpg’s, we will trash them without viewing.
There is no point in directing us to MP3 sites, as we will not go there.
Some people think it’s perhaps ‘cool’, ‘fun’, ‘art’ or otherwise to send something to Vital Weekly that has no information. Don’t bother doing this: anything that is too hard to decipher will be thrown away. Also we have set this new policy: Vital Weekly only concerns itself with new releases. We usually act quickly, so sending us something new means probably the first review you will see. If we start reviewing older material we will not be able to maintain this. Please do not send any thing that is older than six months. Anything older will not be reviewed. In both cases: you can save your money and spend it otherwise.
Lastly we have decided to remove the announcement section of Vital Weekly that is archived on our website that is older than five weeks. Since they 95% deal with concerts that have been, it’s gentle to remove the announcement and more important the e-mail addresses coming with that.
The complete archive of Vital Weekly including search possibilities:
http://www.vitalweekly.net