SHE SPREAD SORROW – RUMSPRINGA (CD by Cold Spring Records) *
SIR ASHLEIGH GROVE – THE NIMPLY POWER SESSIONS PARTS I-VII/AUDIO MEMOIRS OF A GENTLEMAN AESTHETE (CD by Siren Records) *
STEPMOTHER – CALVARY GREETINGS (CD by Megaphone/Knock ‘M Dead)
DECODER ENSEMBLE FÜR AKTUELLE MUSIK (CD by Ahornfelder)
OLAN MILL – CAVADE MORLEM (CD by Dronarivm) *
KOSTIS KILYMIS – BETHNAL GREENER (LP by Rekem Records)
SEBASTIAN STRINNING – KERRIN (LP by Wide Ear Records)
PSYWARFARE – THROW AWAY THE OCEAN (7″ by The Tide Of The End)
SVARTVIT – BURNED THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS (cassette, private)
VERTONEN – SEND THE CALL OUT SEND (double CDR by Ballast) *
UJIF_NOTFOUND – [PRE][CODE] (CDR by Kvitnu) *
JEAN-LOUIS HUHTA – NO HISTORY NO FUTURE (CDR by Glistening Examples) *
JASON LESCALLEET – THIS IS WHAT I DO VOLUME TEN (CDR by Glistening Examples) *
JELA BAUER & MARTYN SCHMIDT – OBWOHL KEIN SCHALL ZU HÖREN IST (CDR by Des Etudes Blanches) *
MARTIN LAU – NUMEN (CDR by Atemwerft) *
LÄRMSCHUTZ – RE: REVIEW (cassette by Barreuh Records)
SHE SPREAD SORROW – RUMSPRINGA (CD by Cold Spring Records)
From Italy comes to us the debut album by She Spread Sorrow, and behind that is Chastity. That might not her real name. That might be Alice Kundalini. She plays synth, pedals, noise box and vocals. The cover is mostly white, which is probably a first in the black world of Cold Spring, and has pictures and texts, suggesting rape and sex. It’s about guilt, punishment, pleasure and perversion, if I understood this well. This is the world of power electronics. This is not something to be taken lightly I would think. Deep synth sounds, suppressed feedback, whispering voices, and cascading waves of crashing noise, such as towards the end of ‘Spring Of Regret’. Yet this is not some over the top noise, harsh noise wall or such like. In ‘Red Rumspringa’, the synth is slow but bouncing, and there is the whispering again, layered and hard to understand, with an occasional feedback tone, making this heavily controlled in its noise. Nothing mindless going on here; nothing that says ‘let’s switch on a bunch of synths and noise/drone away’, but more so it’s all about constructing some heavy weight music, using the idiom of industrial music, power electronics, noise and ritualistik music. I think that whereas a lot of others in this field are having a laugh and play around with cliché images and sound, She Spread Sorrow is actually a more genuine artist. I like to believe she means what she says and what she does here is all part of a personal purge or treatment. I might be entirely wrong of course, and if I am, She Spread Sorrow is a very convincing actress. Somehow I think I am right though. It’s uneasy and unsettling; way out of any comfort zone. (FdW)
Address: http://www.coldspring.co.uk
SIR ASHLEIGH GROVE – THE NIMPLY POWER SESSIONS PARTS I-VII/AUDIO MEMOIRS OF A GENTLEMAN AESTHETE (CD by Siren Records)
If the alcove’s of early 80s industrial music/power electronics/noise is not your daily bread, then the name Sir Ashleigh Grove may not mean anything to you. I know a bit of the scene, and heard the name before. Quite rightly I associated it with the likes of New Blockaders and Whitehouse, as I saw the name in combination with a legendary live recording at Morden Tower in Newcastle in 1983. Yet Grove didn’t release much music: two recordings with The New Blockaders, and four pieces on compilations, two of them by Broken Flag. According to Siren Records Grove disappeared in 1984, without any trace. I have a vague notion where this recording comes from: out of the circles around The New Blockaders, who might have a cassette of this somewhere, hidden in the cupboard. I am not sure if he was a ‘sir’ at all, but his interests where not in the usual Nazi/sex/serial killer thing, which was all around the world of power electronics back then, but he liked Poe, Lovecraft and Doyle and Grove didn’t fool around with the much used synthesizers as many other did, but ‘old valve radio sets, malfunctioning fx pedals and even a metal detector’, as Siren Records tells us. This is not something that we could easily have learned from the music, me thinks. There are seven parts to ‘The Nimply Power Sessions’, which could have been made using synthesizers and sound effects, especially in ‘Part VI’. There might also be a whole bunch of tape loops in play here, which sometimes take on just a bit too much time, leaving pieces in quite some static place, such as in ‘Part III’. But no doubt one could see that as part of the compositional notions at the time, when everything was probably a bit more static in the world of noise – or perhaps one could see this as the forerunners of the harsh noise wall scene from the current cycle of noise. Sir Ashleigh Grove’s music is not like, say, Whitehouse, but very much along the lines of Ramleh and other artists on Broken Flag. It’s surely loud and noisy, but also with considerable depth and layers. It’s heavy music indeed, but it’s something that worked quite well. Is there more in the vaults I wondered and when can we expect that? This certainly made me want more of this. (FdW)
Address: <sirenrec@hotmail.com>
STEPMOTHER – CALVARY GREETINGS (CD by Megaphone/Knock ‘M Dead)
Stepmother is a quartet of Bill Gilonis (voice, bass, guitar, keyboards, clarinet, stylophone), Lukas Simonis (voice, guitar, woorden thing), Jeroen Visser (voice, bass, organ, synth, clarinet, baritone sax) and David Kerman (drums, percussion). Names that ring lots of bells here: Gilonis worked with The Work, The Hat Shoes and other RecRec-related projects and the same goes for David Kerman of 5UU’s and Présent. Lukas Simonis you may know of Dull Schicksal, Coolhaven, etc. Jeroen Visser is known from Trio Kazanchis and morForm. So a collective of experienced musicians with long histories, that led us back to Recommended Records-times. As I know these times very well, I may not do them justice when I felt often-beamed back to the 80s while listening to ‘Calvary Greetings’. The CD contains fourteen songs, most of them written by Gilonis, Visser and Simonis, recorded between 2012 and 2014 in Zürich. Instrumentation is diverse, also due to the guest appearances of Nina Hitz, Ilja Komarov, Tracy September and Blasnost. They stay within the song format, leading to a fine collection of poppy and jumpy pieces, full of dada-esque and other humorous manoeuvres. So very entertaining on the one hand, but not very urgent musically spoken. However this music has a lot of surprises for those who are not that known with their backgrounds, and are open for other formats then the usual ones in pop- and rock music. (DM)
Address: http://www.megaphone.comhttp://www.knockemdeadrecords.com
DECODER ENSEMBLE FÜR AKTUELLE MUSIK (CD by Ahornfelder)
An excellent debut from a new ensemble from Germany. Hamburg-based, they started in 2011 as an ambitious collective of young musicians and composers: Frauike Aulbert (voice), Leopold Hurt (electronic zither), Andrej Koroliov (piano, keyboards), Carola Schaaal (clarinets), Sonja Lena Schmid (cello), Alexander Schubert (sound design) and Jonathan Shapiro (drums, percussion). With the assistance of four guest musicians, they perform six compositions, all composed between 2010 and 2013. Three of them composed by members of the ‘band’: ‘Sugar, Maths and Whips’ (Schubert, 2011), ‘Fred Ott’s Sneeze’ (Hurt, 2011) and ‘Like my domination’ (Koroliov, 2013). The other compositions are by Gordon Kampe, Burkhard Friedrich and Jorge Sanchez-Choing. The ensemble is interested in just performing new works only. They don’t want to be just another new music ensemble. So the play not only unconventional works, but work also along unusual lines. They are very involved in the compositional process and as a collective they run all aspects of being an ensemble. This first effort states that they have a strong focus and clear vision. Most works on this cd have a strong emphasis on percussion and rhythm. Also the mix of acoustical and electronic sound sources is a characteristic. From what I taste, they are not interested in highly academic, hermetic compositions. Although the works are of considerable complexity, they are in a way also very accessible. Drama and dynamics, elements of popular music, may explain this. At moments the music is even weird and bizarre. A consistent and powerful first statement, that came into being in collaboration with Deutschlandfunk. (DM)
Address: http://www.ahornfelder.de
OLAN MILL – CAVADE MORLEM (CD by Dronarivm)
Here is more music by Olan Mill, who previous had releases on such labels Home Normal and Hibernate Recordings (the latter being a collaboration with Keung Mandelbrot, see Vital Weekly 935 and 963 respectively). Like his previous release this new one is not very long, clocking in at thirty-eight minutes and again he uses ‘additional violin by Mike Jessop’; it’s not something we easily hear in this music. Alex Smalley, he who is Olan Mill, tells us that writing and recording this new album was ‘one of the smoothest experiences I’ve had’ and that these pieces were created for a series of concerts from last year, and that he played processed guitar, recordings of a voice and an organ, with some help on the violin. Apparently the recordings on this CD are ‘calmer’ than the original concerts, although I can’t imagine this being any loud, even in concert. Likewise I can’t imagine many instruments in these pieces. The level of treatments is very high here, everything is effectively melted down to sound like smooth cascading waves (a river shore, rather than the sea, I would think) and one could think of these chamber orchestral sounds as being something that sounds like a bunch of violin, a guitar plus numerous sound effects and/or some heavily treated computer music. All of this is very heavenly again (even when this time it’s not Christmas), with these great atmospheric textures buried inside these pieces. Some of these are remarkable short, with about half the tracks around two minutes. It adds some variation to these pieces, which I guess is much needed. If you like what Olan Mill did in the past, then this new album will surely be something you dig as well; and that is perhaps also the weakness of this album. It sounds like music we already know of him; we could perhaps also do with a bit of variation in this idiom. (FdW)
Address: http://dronarivm.com/
KOSTIS KILYMIS – BETHNAL GREENER (LP by Rekem Records)
Although earlier (collaborative) work has been reviewed in far away issues, the real solo releases I heard were reviewed in Vital Weekly 908, 842 and 966. Kilymis lives in London (the Bethnal Green area I assume), and he works with electric, electronic sounds, electro-acoustics, feedback, noise and ‘his work attempts to unveil the nuances within the complex sensory experiences surrounding us’. He records his work solo, but also works with Lucio Capece, Leif Elggren, Sarah Hughes, Stephen Cornford, Nikos Veliotis and Phil Julian from time to time. Some of his work seems very conceptual, such as his recent 7″ on Dischi Del Barone (Vital Weekly 966). On this new LP we have seven new pieces of music and this is not music one can easily digest, I think. For one the music is quite radical, with extreme frequencies in the higher regions. Kilymis’ music is not noise-based per se, as it doesn’t seem to dwell on the extensive use of distortion. I have no idea what it is that he uses here, equipment-wise that is, but my best guess would be that he uses a bunch of modular synthesizers (I know: that should be ‘a bunch of modules from the analogue synth world’), and some field recordings – planes over London, or some such like. Sometimes these modules beep and bleep and form an occasional rhythm, such as in ‘Stepney Way’, but this might be a coincidental collapse of sine and square waves bouncing together. This is not easy music I must admit; in fact I had quite a hard time getting into this. It might be because of the music, but it might very well also be that I just had problems concentrating myself when I was playing this. Everything came across as quite minimal with beeps and bleeps, sometimes low end drones, a bit of field recordings. Not every bit of music aims to please, I guess, so we should regard Kilymis record like that: something we should put quite some concentration to before it unfolds its beauty. A raw kind of beauty I guess, of bleak landscapes of the big city, its repeating architecture, empty streets at night, the flickering of a CCTV camera and such images. Kilymis produces some highly thought-out, planned noise music and stripped away everything that is not necessary, and the residue is quite a chilling piece of music. In fact: all seven of them. Quite a tour de force, quite the beauty. (FdW)
Address: http://rekemrecords.tumblr.com
SEBASTIAN STRINNING – KERRIN (LP by Wide Ear Records)
Wide Ear Records is a small label specialised in improvised music, based in Zug, Switzerland. This time they release a solo album by Sebastian Strinning. He is a young saxophone player based in Switzerland. He did his studies with Leimgruber, Hemingway, among others, and he is involved in numerous projects in the improv scene. For instance he is in a trio with Manuel Troller and Gerry Hemingway. Strinning is both of Swiss and Swedish nationality, which may explain his interest for Swedish folk music. ‘Kerrin’ is his first solo statement if I’m not mistaken. Improvisations for tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. Recorded on February 14th, 2014 at Gabriel Recording. For the recording 20 microphones were used, to catch every little sound nuance. The improvisation is divided in seven parts. Parts have titles like ‘Umfeld’, ‘Magnetfeld’, ‘Eisfeld’, etc., evoking special metaphors. Strinning demonstrates he has a rich vocabulary and a story to tell. Dissonant and noisy sections on the one hand, but Strinning weaves also almost lyrical and melodic textures. So an album full of contrasts and inspired investigations. (DM)
Address: http://www.wideearrecords.ch
PSYWARFARE – THROW AWAY THE OCEAN (7″ by The Tide Of The End)
SVARTVIT – BURNED THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS (cassette, private)
The Tide Of The End is a label run by Kevin Svartvit, one of The Netherlands (never say ‘Holland’!) prime movers when it comes to harsh noise (walls included) music. He just released a 7″ by Psywarfare, which is the solo noise project of Dwid Hellion, who is also part of Integrity, and as such someone I never heard of. The six pieces on this 7″ were recorded in the early 90s and eye-catching is of course the cover of ‘What A Day’, Throbbing Gristle’s song from ‘Twenty Jazz Funk Greats’. Apparently Hellion also worked with Merzbow, Masonna and Full Of Hell, so perhaps wrongly I expect something along similar lines: lots of distortion, feedback and what mayhem this kind of noise usually brings, but I was quite surprised by this. This is noisy, sure it is, but of the variety that uses a bunch of synths and that not necessarily goes all the way over the top. There is even bits of melody in this music, such as in ‘Edgewater Frog’ or rhythm, rudimentary as it is in ‘See You Before Seventeen’. The title piece is the noisiest of these six, but with a fine cut-up applied to it that reminded me of Nurse With Wound’s piece on ‘The Second Coming’, voice and feedback. Multi-layered voices in some of these pieces reveal the inspiration of 80s power electronics. A children’s voice sings ‘What A Day’, and the price of this package is 6,66 euros. And who says there is no humour in harsh noise? Excellent release.
I am not sure why Svartvit didn’t release ‘Burned The Candle At Both Ends’ on The Tide Of The End. You have a label, why not let it work for you? Here too I was surprised. I expected some very loud and utter minimal slab of noise music on both sides of this rather short cassette, but that wasn’t the case. On ‘Pasttense (Euphoria)’ we hear a distorted piece of noise, of what seems to be a loop of dust below the stylus fed through some distortion pedal. Yes, noisy, but it doesn’t shoot off into a wall of noise. It’s more an accurate tribute to the work of The Haters, I’d say. On the other side we find ‘Flowers Clutched In Her Hands’ which continues this along similar, yet slightly different lines. Here Svartvit takes a more chaotic approach to this, stylus on an uneven surface, fed through more distortion pedals but also allowing feedback to take over command very now and then. This is perhaps more along the lines of what one expect from Svartvit, but here too he’s not erecting harsh noise walls. That’s great! Power electronics, noise: whatever you prefer to call it. Short and to the point. (FdW)
Address: http://thetideoftheend.bandcamp.comhttp://thetideoftheend.com/
Address: http://svartvit.bandcamp.com
VERTONEN – SEND THE CALL OUT SEND (double CDR by Ballast)
Shamefully I admit, I didn’t give the text cards much thought, nor the piece of paper that said Errata for these cards (and it made me think, maybe that was all part of the deal anyway) and went straight for the music, which, spread over two discs covers some 140-minutes of music. The cards deal with the Book of Lamentations, from the Bible, and according to Blake Edwards, the man behind Vertonen, some of the music, especially on disc two, reflects some of the ‘claustrophobia, anger, persecution and curses’ from that book, but I must say, had I not known this, I wouldn’t have seen the music as such. Vertonen dances many ways, musique concrete, noise and, my favourite of his, drone music, and on these two discs he goes again for the latter, thankfully. Apparently he treats a single sound source in many ways and then creates these long form pieces of drone music. According to Edwards, the drone work on the first disc is his favourite drone music so far. In the middle of that there is a very loud break, which breaks up the two parts; otherwise all of these 140 minutes (minus five from that loud break), this is all very dark and even more so atmospheric. The differences between both discs seem minor to me. On the first disc the two main portions are built up in a more linear fashion, fade in, stay in one place, and fade out, whereas on the other disc the pieces flow more or less into each other. That seems minor differences to me; it’s the result that counts of course. It’s hard to say how Vertonen works (I might have said that before). This could be computer treatments for all we know, but also it could have been created with a synthesizer or two, filtering these sounds; or something along more analogue methods, playing back sounds in a room and re-recording that (say, what I call the Alvin Lucier ‘I’m Sitting In A Room’ method), while playing it back, and that for any number of transformations. It’s not Vertonen that we didn’t hear before, but it’s indeed Vertonen at his best. I can imagine some people would need a small new direction for his music, especially when it comes to the drone variation, but this is an excellent work. Great package too, with silkscreened covers and cards; oh, and an Errata. (FdW)
Address: http://ballastnvp.blogspot.com
UJIF_NOTFOUND – [PRE][CODE] (CDR by Kvitnu)
It’s been a while since I reviewed a very short release by Gregory Potopalsky, who goes by the name of Uijf_notfound, surely one of those tongue twisters which makes that we don’t announce pieces in our podcast. His ‘Aneuch’ was a miniCDR and reviewed in Vital Weekly 907. Now there is a new CDR with ten pieces, which lasts a total of forty-four minutes. Back then I suspected Uijf_notfound to be another one of those Kvitnu Pan Sonic adepts, but this new CD learns me otherwise. Surely deep end bass and beat sounds is still an interest of Uijf_notfound, but there is more than that. At the core of his music, Uijf_notfound uses extensively max/msp patches, which he doubt wrote himself and which is something one can hear. Easily each of these ten pieces belongs to world of digital sound processing. There is lots of crackling, hissing, white noise to be detected in this lot, which goes out to the world of beat music, such as in ‘Constbeat_bc1551’ (though perhaps not directly aiming at the dance floor) and ‘Clicks_1235’ (a reminder that we used to call this music ‘clicks ‘n cuts’ ages ago) but also ambient in ‘Atma_cycle’ and ‘Internal_audit’. A bit of noise is found in ‘Porvan 2.1’ (all of the titles are nicely modern too, I was thinking) and ‘Rect100’, the seventh piece is the first true Pan Sonic/Alva Noto/Ryoji Ikeda styled piece, even when it also sounds very digital. All of this makes that this is a highly varied release and thoroughly enjoyable, even when not all of this was very ‘new’ or innovative. There have been others in the past – Alva Noto and Ikeda for instance for their use of computer technology – but Uijf_notfound created something that was quite entertaining, especially due to the variation this release had. (FdW)
Address: http://kvitnu.com/
JEAN-LOUIS HUHTA – NO HISTORY NO FUTURE (CDR by Glistening Examples)
JASON LESCALLEET – THIS IS WHAT I DO VOLUME TEN (CDR by Glistening Examples)
Last week we reviewed music from Saturn And The Sun, with two members of The Skull Defekts, here’s a release by another member of that Swedish group, Jean-Louis Huhta. He was also a member of Lucky People Center, Ocsid, Texas Instruments, 413, Cortex (not to be confused with the one from Insane Music) and The Stone Fuckers, while he sometimes works as Attack/Decay, Dr. Nobody, Dungeon Acid and Kozmic Niggah. Most of these, I must, I never heard and so I don’t know what the difference is between all of these. The pieces on this CDR were recorded live, straight to disc as the cover says between 2006 and 2008. Likewise there is also no information with regard to instruments used in this release. It’s not easy to say either what it is. Surely there is some kind of synthesizer (modular no doubt), sound effects, maybe electronics of an undefined nature, laptop (I’m not sure there) and field recordings. Huhta sets out to play some music, defines what he wants to do and then does it, right here and on the spot. He decides if a piece of music should be very noise like, such as in ‘Prime Time’ or more subdued, dark and atmospheric, as in ‘Abgrund’ or near silent in ‘Expulsion’. Huhta’s music has a lo-fi quality to it: in ‘Drinking Someone Else’s Dreams’ the tape hiss is still present, which is a sensibility he shares with Jason Lescalleet. He did the selection of these pieces and did this very well. It takes the listener on a great trip, moving back and forth in spaces, textures and atmospheres; from the brutal to beautiful and back again. Excellent release, to be played loud.
The other new release is by Jason Lescalleet himself, also the label boss here, who presents another volume in his yearlong series ‘This Is What I Do’. I believe this is a collection of piece he recorded in a particular month, either at home, while on the road, in concert or rehearsal. I haven’t heard all entries in this series, but the ones that made it to this desk sounded pretty good. We can very much regard this as an audio diary by mister Lescalleet. There is not a lot of information here, although I suspect these five pieces to come from concerts at Non Event and the ICA. In these pieces the ‘noise’ aspect is pretty much absent; it’s not that it plays a big role in Lescalleet’s music, but when it does it is very much present. Only in the minute long ‘Soixante Seconds’ there is a bit of loud, piercing sounds, but otherwise the ambient/drone character prevails in these pieces. In ‘Circuit City Letter Beacons In Nature’ we hear some bell like sounds, like slowed wind chimes or a field recording in Buddhist temple, which ends with some fine bird twitter recordings. Lescalleet’s trademark of lo-fi sound from cassette and low-resolution sampling is all around present here in this rather subdued pieces. In ‘The Longest Distance Between 2 Points’ the sound drops below the threshold of hearing every now and then, but if you turn up the volume, you will notice some very deep bass frequencies in play here. In ‘The Translation’ he also uses a voice that recites a French text. It is all in all quite a sombre release, with some pretty radical use of frequencies. Very atmospheric, very dark but also highly enjoyable. (FdW)
Address: https://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com/
JELA BAUER & MARTYN SCHMIDT – OBWOHL KEIN SCHALL ZU HÖREN IST (CDR by Des Etudes Blanches)
MARTIN LAU – NUMEN (CDR by Atemwerft)
Found in the same mailer, but the connection eludes me a bit here: I believe Martyn Schmidt released both, on different labels, both his own. The first is by Jela Bauer (voice) and himself, Martyn Schmidt (music). Schmidt calls himself ‘a sound artists and sacral musician’, who deals with acousmatic music, drone, new music, field recording and ambient music, but also plays sacral music in churches. In that regard we should see his work with Jela Bauer, of whom there is no information but who recites texts by Teresa Von Avila. She was born in 1515 (died in 1582) and is regarded as the most prominent female mystic in the Christian Church, and who was a very contemplative person (and, not mentioned in the press text, was no doubt a reaction to the rise of the Protestant Church in the same period; the Catholic Church, under attack for its richness, needed their own nuns and monks with a strict contemplative life, devoted to God). The texts, all recited in German, sound wonderful, even if you haven’t mustered the language or listen superficially. Remember those first Kluster records, which had religious texts? It’s a bit like that, but Schmidt’s music is a bit different. He’s a like fellow laptop musicians, stretching out sounds, adding field recordings and placing sparse effects on the voice, creating a highly minimal electronic context. His music is not Omni-present, disturbing all the time but rather contemplative as well. Nothing is forced upon the listener, and one can sit back and enjoy the textures created, or contemplate along with the text if you are able to understand them. It would have been great if translations had been included (or the liner notes in English for instance).
On Atemwerft, a label dedicated to ‘vocal arts & adventurous breath’, a release by Martin Lau, born in 1984 and who lives in Berlin. He studied literature and performance, published a volume of poetry in 2010 and since then works on the performative and sonic side of poetry. The six pieces on ‘Numen’ were recorded live and I think he also uses a bit of electronics. What kind of electronics these are I don’t know; they might be loop stations of some kind, of pedals. It’s not that Lau uses these a lot. He uses it sparsely and to overlay his own voice, and built a small choir with this. In many ways I am reminded of the old Jaap Blonk; Lau uses his voice and whatever else is in his mouth to create these crazy sounds and constitute these as poetry of an unworldly character. Lau is very good at repeating phrases and sounds, changing them with the smallest details and keeping his music highly vibrant. The second piece – all are untitled – is the noisiest of the lot, with the sound of Dictaphones making everything mildly distorted. It’s even at forty-nine minutes not always easy to digest and one could think that Lau could add some more variation, but altogether this is a radical as well as beautiful release. (FdW)
Address: http://des-etudes-blanches.bandcamp.com/
Address: http://www.atemwerft.de
LÄRMSCHUTZ – RE: REVIEW (cassette by Barreuh Records)
The name Lärmschutz (noise protection) sounds somehow ‘punk’ in my ears, but perhaps because there was once a Dutch punk called Lärm. There are no names on the cover, nor on the bandcamp of the label, so Google/Facebook provided the answer: this is a Dutch anarchopunk-jazz trio, consisting of Stef Brans: guitar, violin Rutger van Driel: bass, trombone and Mo van Alen: drums. The four pieces on thirty-minute tape all come with QR Codes referring to reviews of other people’s work, including Franz Schubert and Mumford & Sons. I believe all of this has very little to do with the music Lärmschutz plays. While ‘Feet And Knees’ is a true mind-blowing free experience rock/jazz/punk/noise manifestation, the next one, ‘De Goedzak’ isn’t. Here Lärmschutz shows there is more to be enjoyed than just pure energy and mayhem and these introspective tunes on violin and guitar and a bit of drums sound actually quite jazzy, but smooth. Smooth and yet still a free. In ‘N’ there is quite a bit of distorted guitar towards the end. ‘Believe’, the final piece, on the other hand combines the softer edge of Lärmschutz, with clear guitar parts and distortion pushed away to the background. Lärmschutz plays indeed very free jazz music, but do so with a remarkable sense of variety: loud, soft, chaotic and structured. That’s not something one hears a lot. Nice one. (FdW)
Address: https://barreuhrecords.bandcamp.com