Week 37
VIVENZA/DE FABRIEK – MUSIC FOR METAAL 2024 (CD by De Fabriek Records & Tapes) *
DE FABRIEK X AUSLAND – EMIGRÉ (CD by De Fabriek Records & Tapes) *
VINKEPEEZER – EVERYTHING IS A FREQUENCY (CD by Kazemat) *
ROEL MEELKOP & MARTIJN HOHMANN (CD by Universaal Kunst) *
NURSE WITH WOUND – BACKSIDE (CD by United Diaries CD)
DIE SONNE SATANS – OMEGA (CD by Eighth Tower Records & Luce Sia) *
WILT – MOLD THE EARTH (CD by Fusion Audio Recordings) *
R4 – REPULSER (2CDR by Fusion Audio Recordings) *
TONEGÄNGER – OTOOTO & ELSEWHERE (CD by MultiSounds) *
ZOLDER ELLIPSIS – IL LIBRO DEI TROPO (CD by Lizard Records)
KELLY BRAY + CALEB DUVAL – BRAY/DUVAL (CD by FIM Records) *
LUKE ROVINSKY & CALEB DUVAL – DIGNITY (CD by FIM Records) *
LEFT LIMBS – (IN) TRANSITION (LP by Vermin Resplendence) *
SCHNEIDER & SERRIES – BRECHT/DOHR (LP, private) *
NEMO/MILANO/CLEMENTE – FRATTURA COMPARSA DISSOLVENZA (CDR, private) *
VIVENZA/DE FABRIEK – MUSIC FOR METAAL 2024 (CD by De Fabriek Records & Tapes)
DE FABRIEK X AUSLAND – EMIGRÉ (CD by De Fabriek Records & Tapes)
For reasons not of general interest, I re-discovered Vivenza’s music last year or so when I got some of the old vinyl and a CD again, and I played these with much enjoyment. I don’t know why Jean-Marc Vivenza never released any new music beyond 1994, but I am sure he has his reasons (a study in esoteric and philosophic movements may be the answer). The exciting aspect of his music was his recordings of machines, which he didn’t link to the industrial music scene of the mid-1980s when the bulk of his was released, but to the 1910s Futurism, in particular Luigi Russolo, best known for his ‘art of noise’ manifesto. I saw Vivenza in concert, in October 1986, and I was surprised by his use of two EMS VCS 3 machines and whatever he did, they sounded like machines. Now, I know he may have used tapes of machines and industrial recordings in this synth. Two years later, he played a concert in Groningen, The Netherlands, which found its way to a cassette by De Fabriek, who also had a live recording on the side. Both the release was a surprise, and the live recording by De Fabriek, a group known not to play live. In the end, during a 45+ year career, they played three concerts, most likely without founding member Richard van Dellen.
There have been various re-issues of Vivenza’s music in recent years, so only some are gone and remembered. In his three pieces, he takes on a particular industrial modus operandi: lots of machine sounds, piercing electronics, and, towards the end of the final, a choir singing. I can’t determine what this is, but no doubt some glorious revolution is celebrated here. It’s a slightly noisier approach than some of his other works, showing an interest in developing his music and adjusting levels each night. Perhaps sadly he didn’t take up the idea to rework the recording, as requested by De Fabriek. They had a go at the 1988 recording, which I’m sure can be found online, and it makes a nice comparison with the new work. Elements such as certain rhythms, voices and guitars can be recognised, but they all sound distinctly different from the original. I wonder if the archives of De Fabriek contain all these separate elements from so long ago, allowing them to do such a remix. It isn’t easy to pinpoint the differences, yet it is also evident that it’s a rework/remix/polish-up job. It’s also music one wouldn’t link to De Fabriek, being all more electronic and atmospheric, whereas here there they sound, at times at least, like no wave/post-punk band sans drummer and with a drum machine. Strange, but in the universe of De Fabriek, strange is a badge of honour.
The other project is a recent one, in which Roberto Auser, also known as Derk Reneman, also known as Ausland and Martijn Hohmann of De Fabriek talked about doing an update of the legendary ‘Neveleiland’ LP by De Fabriek (their second LP from 1984), in which there is music and narrative, about Indonesia and Iceland, based around invisible cities by Italo Calvino and Hakim Bey. De Fabriek’s boss, Richard van Dellen, also had something going with Harold Schellinx, a Young Lion a long time, and these days, an author and conceptual musician with cassettes at his heart. Everybody has different expectations about this project, becoming a tower of babel. On ‘Neveleiland’, the Icelandic narrative is by Haraldur Ingi Haraldsson, who also narrates four pieces here. The starting point was thirteen instrumental pieces by Ausland, all of which were processed by Schellinx, and later on, Van Dellen, Hohmann, and Peter Ehrmann did other processes and the final mix. Like many other works by De Fabriek, as a miasma of people delivering ideas, sounds and mixes. Different from ‘Neveleiland’, there aren’t two long stories here in languages you don’t understand (well, most anyway), but fifteen short stories, with languages from more countries and, again, not always to be understood. I believe to hear a bit of Schwitter’s ‘Ursonate’ in there somewhere. It is all about the atmosphere music and words create here, vistas of terra incognita. The music relies heavily on the synth-based sounds by Ausland, complete with a bit of rhythm, but maybe a little less than otherwise. Whereas the old ‘Neveleiland’ LP consists of two coherent stories and everything sounds quite together, here the nets are cast wider, and there is a story within a story, with music also across many fields, remaining a mystery quality. Excellent (also two great packages here) (FdW)
––– Address: https://defabriek.bandcamp.com/
VINKEPEEZER – EVERYTHING IS A FREQUENCY (CD by Kazemat)
Both Vinkepeezer (the musician Ivo Bol, once a member of the duo Wrikken) and (his) Kazemat are slow burners. The first release is from 2009 (Vital Weekly 665), the second from 2020 (Vital Weekly 1237) and now a third one – things only speed up slowly. The last release was a kind of concept album; this new release seems to be a collection of pieces without an overall thematic approach, but if there is one, it’s the voices of people talking about research, vaccination, Bill Gates, and such and sounds like voices from the deep past (thank God!). In my opinion, Vinkepeezer is a classic computer music composer; his work easily connects to the world of laptop musicians, and the electronic bleeps and peeps deep bass rumble remind of the world of clicks ‘n cuts, so it has a slightly ‘old’ sound, despite sounding all hyper-clean and modern, it remains something we know well from the past. Ivo Bol invited various guest musicians to contribute voices, guitar, saxophone, and trumpet, plus a recording of the Utopa organ at Orgelpark, but with his radical processing, none of these instruments is easily recognised; the trumpet in ‘e’ is one of the more obvious. It took me until the seventh piece these voices were about “the merging of spirituality and conspiracy theories”. I mistook the Dutch lyrics in ‘Polysorbaat 80’ for modern poetry, but it’s about the substance in vaccines to which some people are allergic. Most voices are, however, in English, and when I played the album again, I noticed the overall theme, and even then, it’s not as much in your face. This is a good thing, as I admit I heard enough conspiracy nonsense for a few years to come. It’s a solid album with a slightly outdated sound, but maybe the whole laptop school is due for a comeback. It’s not always the most accessible stuff around, but something requiring your full attention. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.kazemat.com/releases
ROEL MEELKOP & MARTIJN HOHMANN (CD by Universaal Kunst)
Last year, Martijn Hohmann bumped into Roel Meelkop at a concert, and as two like-minded musicians would do, let’s work together on music. Hohmann mailed drones and field recordings to Meelkop, who did his magic (as in processing and adding sounds of his doing). Upon completion, a second round of new sounds and new reworkings resulted in four pieces of music, each around 15 minutes, so a solid hour of music. I have followed Meelkop’s work ever since his first cassette releases (first as Happy Halloween, then Mailcop and since the mid-1990s as Roel Meelkop), and I heard a lot of music (if not all, but I don’t like bragging). Meelkop most likely heard previous work by Hohmann and used some of his compositional ideas here and left some of his own out. In his solo work, Meelkop uses the collage form with intricate cuts, lots of dynamics and much less of all the all-encompassing drone approaches of heavily processed field recordings, even when not wholly opposed to these. In the four pieces, he does precisely that: play long-form drones of heavily processed field recordings. In the second piece, I recognised street sounds (cars passing), but otherwise, I didn’t. Various forms of electrical currents, machines whirring, electromagnetic signals from behind walls, that kind of thing. The laptop was the machine for Meelkop for many years. Still, for about two or three years (or more even), he also worked with modular systems, and, at least that’s what I assume, he uses the laptop for recording and editing, and in these pieces, he creates a long-form crossfade in all four pieces. There is the darkness of Hohmann’s solo work, with deep rumbles, spacious oceanic drifting and abandoned industrial spaces, and stale, cold wind licking rusty objects. This is one for everybody who loves the grittier and darker ambient works. It also comes in a beautiful package: minimal (as in, no information) but great design (Hohmann’s day job being a designer helps). (FdW)
––– Address: https://universaalkunst.bandcamp.com/
NURSE WITH WOUND – BACKSIDE (CD by United Diaries CD)
The late 70s and early 80s were amazing times for experimental music and DIY artistry. So much adventurous music found its way to eager listeners, quite a few of whom would become artists themselves. Truly fertile sound grounds. One of these adventurous records was the wonderfully titled ‘One Day I Was So Sad, The Corners Of My Mouth Met And Everybody Though I Was Whistling’ album by the equally wonderfully named Bladderflask. Behind the Bladder was, in fact, Richard Rupenus, who also appeared in Mixed Band Philanthropist with Nurse With Wound’s Steve Stapleton and The New Blockaders project. As you can tell, this was also a time when choosing a band name was a lot of fun. The bond between Stapleton and Rupenus provided the world a new version of The New Blockaders’ album Changez Les Blockeurs, when Stapleton released a cover of the whole album some years ago. In 2021, a surprise lathe cut album entitled Backside was released by United Diaries in an edition of 100 discs with handmade covers. The album was created by Stapleton, Rupenus and Andrew Liles, making good use of fragments of old Bladderflask-material courtesy of Rupenus. Featuring the tracks Backside and MDZhB (Chernobyl Picknick) the record sold out in the blink of an eye. To compensate potential listeners who missed out the opportunity (and the funds) to buy the lathe cut, its music has now been re-released with the 20-minute bonus track Backside (Cloud Chamber). So what is this rarely-head album all about? The opening track, Backside, is a more chaotic, unstructured affair with lots of concrete sounds-going-ons. As such, it is reminiscent of the original Bladderflask album and perhaps even Nurse With Wound’s debut with both projects sharing a similar outlook on abstract sound. MDZhB (Chernobyl Picknick), on the CD retitled Chernobyl Picknick, and Backside (Cloud Chamber) are far more ambient affairs. Here, we get proper doses of what The Nurse does so well: creepy atmospheres, lots of reverb, gloom, doom and room, with random sounds thrown in. It shares familiarity with the ambient waves of Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith, and do I recognize bits and pieces of the original Bladderflask album thrown in? I used to have that record decades ago, and listening to Backside makes me want to hear it again. With the considerable amount of music currently being released, it is perhaps more challenging to choose what is actually good and what can be neglected. A good drone is a horse’s bone to a dog and all that jazz. Personally, I consider Backside a very worthwhile release in the canon of both Bladderflask as Nurse With Wound. Plus, it comes a lot cheaper than the original art-edition lathe cut! (FK)
––– Address: https://www.nursewithwound.co.uk/
DIE SONNE SATANS – OMEGA (CD by Eighth Tower Records & Luce Sia)
Did I hear of this group before, back in the day when the music was made in the early to mid-1990s? That’s the question running through my head. Somehow, it seems I heard the name before but not the music. Paolo Beltrame is behind Die Sonne Satans, sometimes losing the last ‘s’, meaning Satan’s Sun. It’s from a novel by Georges Bernanos. The catalogue of the project is relatively small: three cassettes in the 1990s, one of these reissued on CD in 2018 and, oddly, three compilations of those cassettes, two of which were released in the late 1990s (the other reviewed in Vital Weekly 1388). There was much confidence in the project. One of those cassettes was ‘Omega’, now re-issued by the Italian labels Eighth Tower Records & Luce Sia, but it’s not a straightforward remastering job.
Beltrame revised four original and two bonus tracks between 2017 and 2023. From Bandcamp, I understand that “Die Sonne Satans is driven by the desire for self-determination in opposition to dogmas or conventions supported only by tradition, authority, or revelation”, which sounds ominous. Slightly more mysterious is this: “‘Omega’ is the third and final release of the project. It is partly composed of tracks specifically produced based on field recordings and tapes from various sources and partly from previous sessions that did not find a place in the original tape”. Hold on, is this about the tracks on this new version or already on the original tape? I don’t know, as I didn’t hear the cassette. Whatever field recordings were used in these recordings is hard to say, as the transformations are immense most of the time. It all sounds very electronic, as in synthesiser-heavy. Sometimes, these synthesisers are pretty dark and dramatic, full of nocturnal scariness, but in ‘Lab City Report’, they are in the higher frequency range, and there is some bird twitter (see, some are recognisable). In ‘Lewd Conduct I (revised), ‘ a rhythm drops in somewhere halfway through, which is rare on the otherwise drone-heavy record. While the music is very much of its time (think of releases on Old Europa Cafe or Cold Meat Industry), especially in the traditional approach regarding synthesisers, it aged pretty well, as it sometimes connects to the kind of dark ambient that goes around these days, mixed with more melodic synthesisers. Die Sonne Satans offers a small variety of approaches, but enough to keep the album interesting. With such a limited output and, apparently, such a demand, why wasn’t there ever a complete boxset all works? (FdW)
––– Address: https://eighthtowerrecords.bandcamp.com/
WILT – MOLD THE EARTH (CD by Fusion Audio Recordings)
R4 – REPULSER (2CDR by Fusion Audio Recordings)
James P. Keeler’s project Wilt was reviewed quite a lot in Vital Weekly, the last time in a review penned by BW in Vital Weekly 1376 and by me in Vital Weekly 935. He’s been active since the century’s start and has more releases than we reviewed. I was surprised by the amount when I looked it up on Discogs. ‘Mold The Earth’ is not a new album; it’s one from Wilt’s earliest days and was sent as a demo to Fusion Audio Recordings in 2001 but never got released. The audio was considered lost, but the label mailed back the original sound and art files in 2022 and was properly released as a CD. Keeler writes, “At the time, I was heavily influenced by Aube and Hands To. I wanted to create an opus from singular source materials and ones that were all natural. Ultimately being a sound sculpture crafted from the sounds of the earth”. He uses sound material from Steve Brand (ex-Augur), J. Benham, and Jeph Jerman (Hands To) on this album. I believe I can hear that single source approach, but unlike Aube, who did a single source per release, Wilt lists various sources (field recordings, wood, rock, dirt, metal, samples; although samples aren’t a source but a method), so here per track. Wilt’s music is too much of the past for me, and I no longer know how it all sounded. I do like what he does here. There is a lot of sampling of sources, perhaps with ‘proper’ samplers, early laptops or sample and hold devices (or maybe even the Casio Sk 1 and 5 samplers), and the outgoing signal firmly going to several other devices, effectively altering whatever source is in there. The result is dark, atmospheric and seriously spooky material at times. ‘The Space In Between’ is such a horror narrative, but I admit, the title helps (sounding like an episode of the ‘Twilight Zone’. Within the ten pieces, there is quite a bit of variation, both in sources and approaches, both in composing and techniques, at times something that I found lacking with Aube’s music. Tracks are, generally, between four and six-plus minutes long, and none of this seems too short or too long. Each is a small story, and Wilt knows how to tell these. Excellent release!
The Fusion Audio Recordings label is run by Barry D. Scheffel, who also has a music project, R4. In 2022, he had a bunch of mini CDRs, and ‘Repulsion’ is his first full-length album since 2001. Scheffel started the label and the music project in 1999, ran it until 2001, and resurrected the label in 2022. I don’t know what caused the hiatus. In Vital Weekly 1324, BW reviewed one of those mini CDs. Scheffer refers to his music as ambient noise, which is absolutely nail on the head for the 18-minute opening piece, ‘Ashfall 2’. Dark and mysterious, this is the sound from below the earth’s core, a rumble picked up of unrest alive yet out of sight. ‘How To Spend a Weekend In Mariupol’ is the one that follows and the title is a sarcastic look at the sorry world. The ambient tag can be left behind as this one is very noisy. There are many disturbed transmissions in the war zone and a lot of distortion, but the whole 33 minutes isn’t static, as things rumble back and forth. It’s okay, but there’s also too much of a break with the first piece. The other two pieces on the first disc also have more noise than ambient; horror soundtracks of being locked inside a machine room coming to life and setting out to kill anyone side the factory. The three pieces on the second disc are also more noise than ambient and seem more minimalist than on the first. There’s not always a lot of development; it all is about various levels of distortion intertwining and feeding each other. I found it all most enjoyable, even when the two most extended pieces seemed a bit too long. (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.fusionaudio.net/
TONEGÄNGER – OTOOTO & ELSEWHERE (CD by MultiSounds)
If I am not mistaken, the band name might mean something like ‘going with tones’. Behind Tonegänger, we find a duo of Sawada Morihide on snare drum and Jacb Draminsky Højmark on melodeon and effects. Now, all too quickly, one could believe this is a work of improvisation; it is, perhaps, not as much as those instruments would lead you to believe. They have a mutual fascination for krautrock, which may explain the very electronic tone of their album. They recorded the six pieces already in the fall of 2019, just before everything went into lockdown (this is in the information, but I fail to see the relevance; were they planning to tour the album?). I have no idea why they took almost five years to release this album. Both musicians have a background in improvisation, and that’s undoubtedly to be heard here. Still, by opening a bucket load of sound effects, that side of the music is now pushed towards the background, and these strange patterns of electro-acoustic and ambient electronics are in the foreground. There is one snare drum? I honestly couldn’t have mentioned this after hearing this CD several times. Morihide plays a very steady beat, for in stance in ‘Cosmic State’, right on the drum, or using the rim in ‘Solar Wife’. What kind of a sound a melodion is supposed to make, I have a vague notion of (it’s also called a mouth organ, and immediately I am thinking of reggea music; well, and some New Order songs), but wrangled to electronics, it becomes vastly spacious and massively drifting. I am unsure if this is something we could label as krautrock, but certainly, there’s an element of cosmic music here – not the same, but from a similar background. The electronic change pitches and creates clusters, adding an elegant density to the music. Upon closer inspection, you become aware of smaller sounds buried below the surface, perhaps of individual sounds upon the skin of the snare drum (in ‘Space Weeder’, for instance). It’s, altogether, a great CD, well beyond my expectations. (FdW)
––– Address: http://multisounds.dk
ZOLDER ELLIPSIS – IL LIBRO DEI TROPO (CD by Lizard Records)
Rattled by its raucousness (and confused as to why he received this release, as it’s not really VITAL fare), FdW lured me out of the wainscotting by reminding me that Zolder Ellipsis’ last release, £ntropy Override (2022, also on Lizard Records) – which started out as a reverse engineering of Frank Zappa’ Civilization Phase III (the latter a masterpiece we all love and adore and secretly play at least once a month on Dad’s Victrola, right?) – tickled and tormented my hammers, anvils and stirrups so much that I spouted one of my very sporadic screeds for him.
While the starting point of their last release gave me an inroad, that was not the case with Il Libro…. I’ve played it probably twenty, no thirty, times and it wasn’t until I started hearing it, instead of listening to it, that it started to gel. Instead of clinging to every bar, I played it while engaged in other uncumbersome activities, so encephalon akimbo but antennae attuned, with the bandmembers lying on skins behind my back turning the knobs on their small transistor radios. And then the parts of its sum seeped in.
The title, Il Libro dei Tropi, translates as ‘The Book of Tropes’, where ‘trope’ can be understood as ‘using a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it’. Recontextualising styles, techniques and sounds to hatch something that both eviscerates and enfolds itself. So a journey through numerous sonic scapes, spread across 11 tracks. (Eleven! It’s not even funny!)
I like the middle much more than the very beginning and a lot of the end. Good god, they shouldn’t have given the drummer so much of some on the first track – maybe he could have left his third arm at home (although I have suggested to the St. Vitus Dance Society that they spin this track the next time they break bread). Wonderful horror organ start but still oddly angular for a curtain raiser. Night Crossing starts out wacky enough, but perhaps the primary problem is that I just don’t like the sound of the drums on several of the tracks, this one included (and a few others that shall go unmentioned). Passed the Storm smoothens out the ruffles of the first two pieces, perfectly placed in the sequence and absolutely sublime. Track 4 does Feel Like a Man. BIP – angular, hypnotic space whatevva that dissolves into a delightful frothy maelstrom, then Brunette – I’m suddenly with JMJ and his Band in the Rain live in China, Ennio M casts a twangshadow, dang, where am I now?, oil slick guitar, tears (in the rain, again), flarden. Plenty of gorgeous sounds, beautifully played, maybe my favourite track. Yes, definitely, with BIP close behind (geddit?). Followed by the equally sweet-sounding Lydian Riff, one of two tracks with lyrics by Eunsong Kim sung by Esther Mugambi; ‘Export the trash but not the tools’ (lovely fingerstrutting, lovely centrefold image on the packaging); The Purge is the other. I like some parts of the last track more than its knotty sum, but mostly not at all – it’s dub-based (and) improv, neither my thang.
Took me a while to assimilate it (that’s a good thing). It’s not often you can hear so many different genres and styles without changing the disc. What a dandy assortment of keyboard sounds! Highly accomplished rambunctiousness. Made me think of John Zorn’s Naked City. Keep on turning the knobs on them radios, I’d say. (MP)
––– Address: https://tomaldrich.bandcamp.com/album/
KELLY BRAY + CALEB DUVAL – BRAY/DUVAL (CD by FIM Records) *
LUKE ROVINSKY & CALEB DUVAL – DIGNITY (CD by FIM Records) *
Once in a while, I receive links to Bandcamp pages with download codes. Since Vital Weekly reviews only physical releases, I pay attention only to those with a physical release.
The following two releases I got through FB Messenger, downloaded them and put them on the “digital” pile of releases. FIM Records is a record label founded by Luke Rovinksy and Caleb Duval and is the channel for putting out music coming out of FIM Improvisation. This community-based organization organizes concerts in all types of venues around Connecticut. Luke’s a guitarist, and Caleb’s a double and electric bass player. The first one is a duo between Kelly Bray and Caleb Duval. Kelly plays the trumpet. Three pieces, all improvised. Two more extended pieces of more or less fifteen minutes and a coda of almost five, conveniently named I, II & III. Beginning tentatively but assuredly, flurries of notes are interspersed with firm statements that are transformed into longer melodies. The double bass interjects, undermines and emphasizes equally mercury sounds or solid (bowed) notes. Both are accomplished musicians, and let us witness their journey together. It’s not about egos; it’s about making music together using every means necessary or somewhat any technique needed. It’s a fun release, with both musicians eager to make the most of it. Because of how it is recorded and mixed, we witness an intimate conversation or dance between the two.
A whole different beast is Dignity, a duo by the founders of the label. The previous release is primarily tonal. Here, we have a release that’s mostly but not exclusively about an exchange or collision between two string instruments. And it is definitely the more experimental of the two. This is not everybody’s cup of tea. Shorter pieces lasting two minutes or less build up to the most extended piece: ‘It Happened in My Town (They Say I’m to Blame)’. This one is almost 22 minutes long. It makes me wonder what happened in that town. Strings get plucked, attacked, bent & bowed. And not randomly but with intent. Because that’s what free improvisation is all about intent and execution. They are not doing the motions every time again and again in the same sequence. No: with creativity and what’s needed at that exact moment. And the need arises from listening and playing simultaneously, scurrying fields of notes & timbres. Some patterns are held for a few moments, then it’s on to the next creation à la carte. And the listener doesn’t have a menu. It’s that exciting. The textures and sounds they create here are phenomenal with an ease that reveals their mastery of their respective instruments. That is not to say that Kelly isn’t a master of her instrument, far from it. It’s just that with a string instrument there’s more possible in terms of textures and sounds because of the amplifications.
Anyway, check out FIM Records, the Connecticut-based one. It’s a label waiting to be discovered. (MDS)
––– Address: https://fimimprovisation.bandcamp.com/
LEFT LIMBS – (IN) TRANSITION (LP by Vermin Resplendence)
On red vinyl, in a very limited edition of 50 copies (worldwide!) comes the first record by Left Limbs, a duo of Raul and Jake, a drum and guitar duo, yet I don’t know who plays what. It says “No overdubs, no bullshit. Recorded by the inimitable Jason Morales at BBQ Shack in Austin, Texas, planet Earth” plus “As always, we turned up and we played. Two takes from those sessions are this record”. A warm summer Texas night didn’t hold them back at playing the music, and it “is a celebration of friendship, change, and finding refuge in the interstices of joy, against all odds in an unrelenting world. No war!” This is the sort of energy I like, also concerning the music they play. It’s obviously firmly rooted in the world free rock music, but the two sides show a great difference. If you think free rock equals rock noise than ‘Year Of The Rabbit’, the second side of this LP is right up your alley, with the guitar not completely in feedback and distortion modus but nevertheless loud enough, while the drums rattle and bang all over the kit. It’s noise as much as it is out of control, wild and the two have an excellent understanding of the rules and know how to break them.
On the first side we find ‘Exeunt’, which is much more of a slow burner, with both instruments drifting further a field from the stricter noise rock approach. More improvised stoner rock if you will (is that a thing? or is all stoner rock improvised?), with that slow, hot summer vibe. You want to play but it’s too hot, very much like this very instant, with one of those very unusual hot September days, here in The Netherlands. That languid feeling, but there is also that urge to create. That’s something I hear in this piece by Left Limbs, but hardened as they are by the heat, the march on it and slowly get some coherency together, which slowly disappears, beyond the horizon and it’s all over. Then the next one starts nd we know now what’s going to happen – I should rethink the procedure for writing about last tracks first. (FdW)
––– Address: https://verminresplendence.bandcamp.com/
SCHNEIDER & SERRIES – BRECHT/DOHR (LP, private)
As I finished the previous review, the one about Left Limbs, true story, the last mailman of the day handed me this album. It was the end of the day, so I postponed listening to it. Had I done it straight away, I may have lumped this LP together with Left Limbs one, as there are similarities and differences. Two men again, drums and guitar, and again rock meets improvisation. I’ll get to the differences. Dirk Serries, on guitar, isn’t a one-trick pony (I may have used these exact same words before), as with his guitar he can play very much the sort of chaotic improvised music we know from free improvisation, but also thoughtful ambient music (and here too he has various sub directions) or metal-inspired music. The latter we find on this LP he recorded in June 2023 with drummer Jörg A. Schneider. I don’t think I heard his music before, or the many groups he’s part of (Gaffa, Glimmen, Jealousy Mountain Duo, Les Hommes Qui Wear Espandrillos, Nicoffeine, Roji, SWWS, Tarngo, Teen Prime, The Nude Spur). he has several collaborative projects, mostly with guitar slingers, such as Thisquietarmy, N, Mikel Vega, Aidan Baker and others. If Left Limbs combines rock and improvisation, they do it from a more punky perspective, while Serries and Schneider operate from a metal music perspective. The opening piece, ‘Muscle Steam’, rips right in with much distortion and banging on the drums. I am the first to admit that I don’t know much about metal music (or nothing at all), but even I hear it’s nothing traditional. It’s the idea of something with guitars and volume, but straight away, Schneider plays his drums in a more improvised manner. He’s all over the kit. In other tracks, Serries maintains force by using several sound effects. Still, it can be open and dirty yet spacious, such as in ‘Enhance The Machine’, sparse notes, still brutal, whereas ‘Mechanical Collapse’ ups the speeds and aggression. If Left Limbs plays their music in a free improv way, they have a different, perhaps friendlier atmosphere than Schneider and Serries. Their music is much darker, sealed off from the outside world. The last piece, ‘Force Regeneration’, is the album’s jazziest affair, in which both players find their way to play their version of jazz music. It’s also the album’s lightest piece if you can imagine such an album having a lighter side. It also shows the amount of approaches they take on the notion of ‘let’s play some loud drum and guitar music’. A tour de force. (FdW)
––– Address: https://schneidercollaboration.bandcamp.com/
NEMO/MILANO/CLEMENTE – FRATTURA COMPARSA DISSOLVENZA (CDR, private)
Wow. This is one you’re either going to love or definitely going to hate. Three men use their voices and are accompanied by piano and additional manipulations by Teo Ratelli. Usinbranchg both Western and Eastern, or rather Middle-Eastern tonalities, the voices invoke an atmosphere not unlike some symphonic rock or even some obscure metal branch, like sludge. And instead of the flurry of guitar notes or the double bass drum kicks, we get a serene background not unlike Dead Can Dance, but far more sparser than they ever did. There’s a backstory. And I quote: “The transmission of “knowledge” from one person to another in the era of revisionism and redefinition of geopolitics, through universal sound. A formative and dramaturgical path that originates from the nuances of the voice is understood as an “original instrument” (J. LaBarbara). A viaticum that contradicts the Eurocentric idea of the tempered system, as also understood by art therapies and musicological narration, which places at its foundations the need for an “integrated system” (and therefore also beyond the idea of a classical-contemporary “mixed system”, which organically, not alternately, grafts assonance and dissonance, serialism and harmonic macrostructures, through micro-tonality and electronics). If in the beginning there was “the logos”, or “holding together, binding through the truth”, which is the light also expressed through sound, at the origin of mantras as well (“Om”: without the word there is no hymn and without breath there is no song; “Namu myoho renge kyo”: harmonizing one’s life by opening to the universal law to draw strength and wisdom, achievement of one’s goals) what is the end if not the return to what has been lost? What has current humanity lost? In addition to the value of history for the reading of the present with its “courses and recurrences”, it has lost the value of spirituality and a consciousness of the Jungian archetype to overcome its own limit. In short, current humanity is infantile, disordered, incapable of understanding the limit between itself and the other respectfully, of reading itself, of expressing self-critical judgment and inevitably destined to collapse on itself. THREE VOICES EXTENDED FROM THREE DIFFERENT REGISTERS: Alberto Nemo (tenor – the mystic), Niccolò Clemente aka Whale (baritone – the man of science), Claudio Milano with Teo Ravelli aka “Borda” (bass – the dramaturgy) In origin it is the exploration of Captain Nemo, in his own way a scientist, not at all misanthropic, in no way a vengeful. Nemo is the show’s origin and end; he opens questions and closes them, as in a therapeutic process. Nemo is the essence that welcomes Western and Eastern ways of singing. The consciousness of the self listens to itself and lets go of all the superfluous, representing (not expressing) “the essence”. Nemo, through singing and his piano chords reduced to basso continuo on which to move rivulets of notes and melismas supported by the breath in perfect harmony with the phonatory system to understand cells as water that flows and transcends form, is an entity that crosses time and space. He is aware of the end: energy. “Nothing is created, and nothing is destroyed; everything is transformed” (Lavoisier). The point is: is man ready to accept that the ongoing wars of religion, culture, hunger for space and more can disintegrate linguistic superstructures and cultural structures? The space-time “fracture” created by Nemo is immediately mended by the man of science, Whale, a humanist paediatrician, an enlightened person not unfamiliar with “perception” as a law that expresses a human limit to be overcome rather than respected. He is “the present” or “the appearance”. However, the present is already the future, and evolution, to name it, is the “new frontier”.
In listening to Whale and in his piano supports, the need, the urgency, of a hyperkinetic present appears, capable of a thousand and more mental associations immediately translated into sound. His is organized improvisation. The voice that manifests welcomes the romanticism of the “lied”, but through the baroque “recitarcantando”, it projects itself into artificial intelligence to transmit the fabric and the place on which to graft new intuitions. It is a “mental” voice, sharp in metallic lines (bionics).It explores directions that are more geometric than interior, it outlines developments… Construction, evolution, despite everything. What will remain of our passage when we are gone? What will remain in “structure”? Let’s be honest: what remains of a civilization without concrete testimonies? Do we perceive the energy of those we do not know? Nothing is known to us of cultures whose languages we do not decipher. Claudio Milano (bass) chooses to be deconstructed by a collaborator (Borda, aka Teo Ratelli) to amplify, dry, and deform an exposition equal to a scream. His role is “the future”, but Icarian. He is “what one does not want to perceive”. The sound that belongs to him explores rooms of the self (vivisection), but it does so starting from a text as if loaded with a dark biography. Its fading is in the realization of being able to be split, violated in body and mind, dismembered as for the protagonist of the final scene of “Perfume” by Patrick Suskind, in a Christological ambition of breaking one’s body in the Eucharistic rite (his singing includes an “Our Father”) in a translation that does not seek proselytes but that affirms “avoids the fading of life”, while making a sacrifice in the emission of extreme and repulsive vocal techniques. Milan is consumed and induces catharsis but has Greek and twentieth-century stigmata with it. Nemo returns as a conscious reclamation of the value of pre-existence, post. He has chosen to be in space-time relativity, yesterday as tomorrow. If you look closely, the entire performance is an action that places itself outside of space and time, creating a world of its own, liturgical, cathartic, therapeutic “other”. It places the conscious man at the centre of a sonic exposition without latitude and time (Western and Eastern, ancient and contemporary ways). Even if everything that is our image of reality were to collapse, the modern/future man has consciousness (active, silent, reactive, passive). He may need an awakening of the same, but above all, he has an urgent need to communicate it to the other from himself. The conscious self cannot be “new age” today, it knows it can bring its own message of life even “only” through its own energy, through ruins that hurt to the point of losing reason, capacity for love and balance. This show wants to be “operated beyond the manifestation of the self”. It presents itself as “logos”, sound, thought, and action. It does not pretend to “shock”; it denies being entertainment.It is. Nothing else.” Does it work? Yes! Is it for everyone? No! But you might like it. Some might consider this pretentious drivel. But I really liked it. There are some quartertones in their singing, but mostly, it’s tonal and quite dramatic because the tempo is quite slow and the singing is operatic. Treat yourself to something different and seek this one out. (MDS)
––– Address: https://whalecx.bandcamp.com/