The Sound Projector

A personal pleasure to receive the splendid new release from Philip Jeck, Sand (TOUCH TO:67). It feels too long since his last solo record. Sand has been put together from live recordings made some time ago, edited by Jeck at his Liverpool home, and is a fantastic assemblage of deeply moving and elegiac music. Filled with reminders of human mortality, its metaphysical aspirations are given additional weight through the simple addition of an Emily Dickinson quote about ‘eternity’ on the inside cover, and the dedication to a Jeck family member (perhaps his mother) who died this year. It seems pointless these days to mention Jeck’s working method which starts with old records on old turntables in various states of operability and functionality, often in multiple large-scale set-ups; pointless because (I hope) most listeners are aware of this already. Edwin Pouncey recently stated how Jeck plays his records as though they were musical instruments, and that’s accurate; he’s as familiar with his vinyls and Dansettes as Derek Bailey was with his Gibson guitar. The evidence is all here on Sand, and it’s a set of beautiful music which totally transcends the method of its production. This one is mandatory purchase!

We received a generous package from Inam Records of Bloomington Indiana, all of them intriguing representations of contemporary US underground noise and drone. My favourite might be the full-length noise fest provided by Korperschwache on their Brotherhood of the Bowl (INAM 18) CDR; I certainly enjoyed their mini-CD for Public Guilt. The Texas duo wield their guitars and drums fearlessly, building huge edifices of lumbering dinosaur feedback, while their humourous titles (’Fire is the Answer to Everything’) relieve any sense of turgidity. They seem to love Black Metal, yet can’t help sending it up at the same time. Olekranon’s Cohesion (INAM 21) is a compilation of sorts, gathering tracks previously released as very obscure and limited CDRs. All ten tracks combine sinister and worrisome noise with fractured drum-machine beats, a strategy which works very well as long as he reminds said drum-machine just who’s in charge. Dirac C has a limited self-titled CDR (IMAM 20), mostly the work of solo player James Adkisson with his multi-dubbed guitars. Every track appears to be in a different style – we’ve got avant rock, queasy ambient soundscapes, pastoral noodling, and insane doodles aided by effects pedals. Also in the envelope (not pictured), two very limited three-inch releases: Sujo’s Pia (INAM 22), a single 21-minute dronework with an old engraving of a sea monster on the cover, and Vopat’s self-titled record (INAM 19), which is six tracks of quite good home-made guitar rock which might appeal to fans of Mono. The label does not have a website yet, but curious listeners are advised to send an electronic message to inamrecs [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Hinterzimmer Records is also the home to Herpes Ö Deluxe, a strange Swiss combo whose retrospective CD we reviewed in issue 16. Kiko C. Esseiva has recorded Sous Les Étoiles (HINT 04) for the label, and a true puzzler it is too; more sound-art than music, it’s a dense construct of strange scraping noises, eerie voice and spoken word passages, and uncanny distant blarts that might as well be made by some distant mythological horseman blowing into a conch. The quasi-poetic titles involve stars, fanfares, water, dancing and travels, and the ‘En Rêve’ track, for me, confirms Esseiva as a born-again follower of Max Ernst. The sleeve is gorgeous, clever collages and decorative overprintings on a brown card gatefold jacket, plus a full-colour insert displaying four surreal artwork-assemblages. Label-mate Reto Mäder, who also records as RM74 and compiled said Herpes CD, did the mastering for this spooky weird dreamscaper.

Yoshio Machida brings us the utterly charming hypernatural#3 (BASKARU KARU:10), the third part of a trilogy begun in 1999; it so happens I was sent (and still cherish) hypernatural#2 which was released in 2001 by Softl Music. Here, the gifted and mystical Japanese genius combines some live musical performances with field recordings and electronic music, constructing and processing everything to perfection using the Max/MSP program. Unlike 90% of shilly-shalliers who use similar processes, Machida actually emerges with something that’s not only worth hearing, but is also exceptionally compelling and (at times) beautiful. Aki Onda, the wonderful sound artist who records the world around him on cassette tapes, guests on ‘Camouflage’. Machida intends there to be some continuity across the entire hypernatural series; if only one could access a copy of volume 1, which was self-released in 1999.

We may need to do some ‘research’ on Aranos, whose Mother of Moons Bathing (SOL 145 CD) is available on Soleilmoon. On first spins, we hear a highly bewildering mixture of things. Dark ambient instrumentals and slow-moving creaky floorboard soundscapes alternate with highly idiosyncratic songs, performed with a lilting acoustic guitar so as to resemble a kind of avant-garde calypso and delivered in one of the most peculiar singing voices you have heard since the work of L Voag (ex The Homosexuals). If still not sufficiently baffled, the inquiring mind can make what it will of absurdist titles such as ‘Towards Glittering Warm Dumplings’ and ‘Invisibility Cloak of Time’. These last two are assigned to two long tracks at the end of this bizarre release, the ‘Dumplings’ suite in particular emerging as a brilliantly demented 21-minute excursion into the Amazonian heart of darkness, apparently while riding on the back of a gigantic five-legged beetle. Play this track last thing at night, and who knows what dreams it will engender in your fervoured noggin!

Couple of new vinyl goodies arrived courtesy of Scott Foust and his Swill Radio label. The new Idea Fire Company LP is The Island of Taste (SWILL RADIO 026). I can safely vouchsafe that I think this is the best work they’ve ever produced. The texts provided reveal Mr Foust delivering his usual high-handed sentiments regarding the production of a ‘masterpiece’ (his contention is that the modern world doesn’t really want great art because it’s too much trouble to produce and it doesn’t sell), but perhaps The Island of Taste is as close to a masterpiece as IFCO have yet managed. After the disastrous closure of their previous pressing plant, it looked uncertain for Swill’s vinyl future (Foust believes in the absolute supremacy of vinyl over digital media and will defend that position to his last drop of blood), and yet here be a high-quality pressing and very beautiful sleeve decorated by IFCO member Karla Borecky. The package arrives with an envelope of outsize postcard artworks, recalling the folder of prints provided by artist Peter Schmidt for Brian Eno’s Before and After Science, that seminal 1977 LP. And you’ll find affinities with Eno (for example Music For Airports, or his work for Bowie’s Low) within the LP. The slow, eerie music shows IFCO have benefited enormously from Borecky’s move towards the acoustic piano; now she can actually deliver resonant chords, instead of struggling with monophonic synths. Indeed, the analogue electronic sound which used to feature so heavily on IFCO records has been all but replaced by other, simpler sounds: principally the radio and tapework of Foust, the found sound of Lambkin, or the mixed singing voices of Borecky, Swenson and O’Reilly. True to form, it is also a concept LP, but compared to Tales From Topographic Oceans (for example) the concept here is not easy to grasp immediately, and its underlying message is not a palatable one. One side one, the musical explorers set to the task of building the imaginary Island of Taste; in so doing, they manage to suggest limitless vistas which the imagination of the listener can wander across for days. On side two, the inhabitants of the island are already defeated, and deliver four sad musical laments to past failures. The last of these, ‘Last Man…Last Round…’ is desperately bleak; it’s perhaps the single most challenging listen that Foust and Borecky have ever committed to tape. Not an easy forty minutes on offer here, but every minute has been carefully chosen with extra-special care; it’s a condensed work of near-genius.

The record with the white cover and stark geometric design (by Josef Albers) is a stark, geometric LP by Asmus Tietchens, Teils Teils (SWILL RADIO 027). This release confirms Foust’s abiding interest in the European avant-garde and his penchant for listening to demanding minimal electronic music. ‘Teilmenge 20′ on side one is a comparatively rich mixture of crackling sounds arranged in careful layers, to suggest vast cavernous spaces; almost like an aural optical illusion. Side two contains three extremely severe experiments in minimal feedback and pulsing arrangements, including ‘Ein weiteres Leben geht zu Ende’. This of course translates from the German into ‘A lovely waitress will get you in the end’, although this carnal fantasy of mine is not exactly confirmed by the near-empty noises which pour off the black grooves of this particular spiral towards blank oblivion. The work is undated, but it feels like it ought to represent the more recent (and stripped-down) side of Tietchens’ endeavours.

1. Smegma, ‘Porky Section’ (1987)
   From Nattering Naybobs of Negativity, UK HARBINGER SOUND 051 CD (2008)
2. The Weird Weeds, ‘Lies’
   From I Miss This, USA AUTOBUS RECORDS AUTO005 CD (2008)
3. “Blue” Gene Tyranny, ‘Next time might be your time’ (1977)
   From Out of the Blue, USA UNSEEN WORLDS UW01 CD (2007)
4. Philip Jeck, ‘Fanfares’
   From Sand, UK TOUCH TO:67 CD (2008)
5. Olekranon, ‘Necropolis’
   From Cohesion, USA INAM RECORDS 21 CD (2007)
6. Kiko C Esseiva, ‘En Rêve’
   From Sous Les Étoiles, SWITZERLAND HINTERZIMMER RECORDS HINT 04 CD (2008)
7. Korperschwache, ‘Fear of a Black Metal Mustache’
   From Brotherhood of the Bowl, USA INAM RECORDS 18 CD (2007)
8. C. Joynes, ‘Night on Djerba’
   From God Feeds the Ravens, USA BO’WEAVIL RECORDINGS WEAVIL28CD (2008)
9. Lanterns, ‘Bruised Loser for Lips’
   From Sea Houses, UK SCREECHING SNOWFLAKE SS07 CDR [2008]
10. Dale W Miller and Tony Gordon, (Track 6)
    From dwm-tg, USA OLD GOLD RECORDS OG-185 CD (2008)
11. Pure Sound, ‘Dialect Poetry’
    From Acts of New Noise, UK EUPHONIUM RECORDS EUPH004 CD (2008)
12. Yoshio Machida, ‘Retrospective Future’
    From hypernatural#3, FRANCE BASKARU KARU:10 CD (2008)
13. Martin Archer, ‘Spun sugar barbed wire’
    From In stereo gravity, UK DISCUS 33CD (2008)
14. Dirac C, ‘Rise and Fall’
    From Dirac C, USA INAM RECORDS 20 CDR (2007)
15. Aranos, ‘I Saw Women’s Rising Fry’
    From Mother of Moons Bathing, USA SOLEILMOON SOL 145 CD (2007)
16. RLW and Tito, ‘Geschissen ist nicht gemalt’
    From Mahlzeit, SWITZERLAND HINTERZIMMER RECORDS HINT 03 CD (2008)
17. Rothkamm, ‘Encounter with Remarkable Trees’
    From Just 3 Organs, USA ROTHKAMM.COM CD (2008)
18. Alan Licht / Aki Onda, ‘Ship Shape’
    From Everydays, USA FAMILY VINEYARD FV58 CD (2008)

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

Here’s a couple of new arrivals to tide you over the Easter season. No digital photo for your eyes today as the light has been virtually non-existent in this near-zero blast of wet and greyness that invadeth our Nordic climes at time of writing. Old friend Clive Scruton used to be a semi-regular correspondent with me many years ago when he bought some of my small press comics. He sent me his Kanalkrank record (CENTRE OF WOOD C.o.W. 003)… “I’ve finally got something I can send you to thank you for all the brain fun and pleasure your books have given me,” writes Clive, in his usual generous style. “I’ve been quietly recording my lofi-wired-plank-accidents!” It seems that after hearing some samples of these experiments lodged in myspace, the Italian label Centre Of Wood thought fit to issue this CDR of them. It’s in a brown card envelope tied up with string. I have at least one similar CD from the Ukraine where string plays a prominent role in the packaging, and Dave Knott in Seattle is one other who has experimented with wired planks (although judging by what I hear on the disc, Clive is actually just referring to his gtr and FX setup) but guess what? While it won’t turn the home-recording world on its head, Clive’s CD is a little gem of imaginative ambient electronics and process music that doesn’t outstay its welcome, unlike a lot of more ‘professional’ works that blight my head-space on such a regular basis. Not half bad!

Another name from my past is Ben Young, a gregarious American fellow with whom I once went on a short jaunt to Amsterdam so we could hear and meet Dr Eugene Chadbourne playing there. “My best to the bartenders of Elephant and Castle”, writes Ben, in a penned salutation attached to his 3-page press release. I have no idea what he means by this. The area of South London to which he refers has some way to go before its drinking establishments are blessed by the presence of ‘bartenders’. Nonetheless, Ben continues to run Old Gold Records and release underground and marginal far-out music of all stripe. Four recent CDRs have emerged from said label. Dirtbrain have recorded The Dog with the Chicken Leg in His Mouth…which is nine tracks of amateurish home-stew blat featuring much clumsy percussion, recorders, and inept string work of all sorts; these single-mic home recordings won’t give Valley Of Ashes any sleepless nights. Stewart Voegtlin and Marshall Avet have Lucky Waffles, a record which is an utterly perplexing mix of saxophone playing and aimless percussion combined with odd ambient recordings; the strangeness of this artifact may derive from the fact that it was recorded in an empty warehouse, wherein the artistes aimed for a ‘jazz-musique concrete feel’ and recorded it in ‘lo-fi confuse-o-rama’. Confusion is right; you won’t know where to put yourself as you spin this blarting oddity and succumb to its acoustical conundrums.

Zandosis have unleashed Nuclear Winter, a 2005 recording which apparently emerged from a moment of personal crisis on the part of those involved, and was performed in the cold before an audience of one girl. As a reward, they received one kiss. Which nameless, exiled souls were creating this skittery, alienated, improvised disjunctiveness? We don’t know; ‘Creeping, crystallised sound evoked from the hard cement floor’ is all they can tell us. This one could be something of a grower; it has some sense of rawness and import which you won’t find among the more ‘polite’ end of the acoustic-improv spectrum. Sometimes good art can arise from painful situations, no? Lastly, we have dwm-tg, a collection of short duo recordings made by Dale W Miller and Tony Gordon in Brooklyn in 2005. Their instruments are bass guitar and drum kit, and while this record ain’t exactly Lightning Bolt or Ascension, the duo do achieve a fairly diverting dark intensity and explosive collisions on some of their paired moments. “We are still as you see determined to age as disgracefully as possible,” reports Ben. “Hope you enjoy the carnage anyway”.

This column hates to play favourites, but this CD by “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Out Of The Blue (UNSEEN WORLDS UW01), made a fairly massive dent in my auditioning-hat when spun earlier in the week. Tommy McCutchon has been trying to send it to me for best part of a year. I don’t know much about this highly individualist polymath composer, real name Robert Sheff, apart from his contribution to a triple LP called Music From Mills which I happen to own. This particular collection of avant-songs originally appeared on the Lovely Music label in 1977, now available here in a fine 2006 remastered edition and sparkling like a multi-faceted diamond cast in platinum sheets…now, some of you will be wary of American modernist composers electing to do ’songs’, and certain lamentable efforts by Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson are both primary exhibits for the prosecution, but you’ll be swept off your feet by at least three of the sumptuous jazz-inflected and complex melodies here, their mysterious lyrics delivered with masterful precision by a team of songstresses, while the woodwind players vibrate with warm harmonies and Tyranny himself throws out exciting mixed chord shapes from his various electronic keyboards. The Sound Projector has been playing a lot of Frank Zappa records at home recently, and in some ways this record could be seen as an alternative, cleaner approach to somewhat similar territory. Fabuloso!

On same label, we have Woo Lae Oak (UW03) by Carl Stone. In distinction to many noise-merchants who crassly print ‘Play It Loud!’ on their CD cover, this release arrives with the gentle suggestion ‘we recommend listening to this album at a soft level’. Stone is a serious composer and has his supporters (including many of the big boys of American Minimalism), but I’ve always found his work a little too ‘nice’ for me personally. This single 53-minute piece, originally released on Wizard Records in 1983, has some attractively diffuse shapes arising from a string section, but the pan-pipe sound brings it perilously close to New Age relaxation music. Tommy also kindly sent a copy of I Miss This (AUTOBUS RECORDS AUTO005) by The Weird Weeds, which is a set of fine and crisp avant-rock songs performed by a trio from Austin Texas. I’m often vaguely troubled by the use of the accordion in a rock music context, but this record is full of intriguing stuff which seems to occupy some middle ground between REM and English post-punk bands of around 1981.

I had to break the plastic cover to open my copy of Acts of New Noise by Pure Sound (EUPHONIUM EUPH004), finding the right-hand seam of the jewel case had somehow been sealed up as surely as if an arc-welder had been applied to it. Vince Hunt is occasionally joined on these nine cuts by guest vocalists and guitarists, but it’s essentially a solo record and a trip into the oddly-shaped mind of Mr Hunt. Twisted poetry, minimal song-craft and pre-recorded tapes are assembled into exceedingly bizarre shapes; the use of washing machine recordings on one track is a particularly inspired choice. “Took longer than I expected”, explains Mr Hunt in a note he has appended in his own hand to the press release from this Manchester record label. To do what – realise the project, or get it sent to me? Not sure. Pure Sound may be an acquired taste, but this record just emanates gruff personality in the same coarse and hearty way that Mark E Smith does on his spoken-word records like The Post-Nearly Man.

Martin Archer’s In Stereo Gravity (DISCUS 33CD) is a double-CD set whereon he plays alongside English avant-greatsters Chris Cutler and Julie Tippetts and various sidemen, including the mysterious UTT on turntables. Archer himself does a certain amount of software reprocessing across the set, resulting in a somewhat cold but nonetheless intriguing surface sound. The cover painting is charming, and may represent a view of his home town Sheffield, but could equally apply to any part of England where faceless modern architecture and technological advances are visibly encroaching on nature and threatening other parts of our heritage.

Another new release from Brian Day’s Public Eyesore label features Anla Courtis, Seiichi Yamamoto and Yoshimi performing Live at Kanadian (PUBLIC EYESORE #110). The colourful psychedelic gatefold cover attracted me towards this one, and I always like to keep it touch with Anla’s recent developments. Here, he pitches his meandering and abrasive guitar solos against the rather formless backdrops of the Japanese electronicist, while Yoshimi’s aberrant wails are heard to advantage on the final long track. While not without its moments, I sense a certain lack of communication may have marred this musical encounter in ways that not even the United Nations could address.

Like Anla Courtis, (((vlubä))) are from Argentina, and their new CD Eternal Magic Music for the High King From the High Spheres (MAJMUA MUSIC MM 2) sees them making a bid for recognition among the many other contemporary youngsters who play long-form, freaky, quasi-psychedelic drone-rock music. While not quite as supernaturally spooked-out as they would like us to think (the use of book engravings from works on Alchemy and Diabolism is a bit of a gaffe), there are some intriguing moments of dark-trance droning and lost-voice howling on the second track which are bound to appeal to fans of certain strains of progressive German music. The label appears to be an imprint of Fire Museum Records in San Francisco.

Lanterns are the UK drone collective who I have a lot of time for. They’ve just resurfaced with a new CDR in a pretty hand-made cover called Sea Houses (SCREECHING SNOWFLAKE SS 07). Their music is not only simple, unpretentious, natural and beautiful, but quite often enhanced by a certain recording quality (not lo-fi, I must stress!) which adds greatly to the hazy, dream-like atmosphere emanating from all four of these sumptuous cuts. Phil Todd woulda been proud of these guys. “I find I can get lost in it for days,” writes Luke, the ostensible band leader, in an enclosed note on ruled paper torn from his notebook. He’s referring to something else entirely, but the statement is not inappropriate to this lovely record.

Music listeners who enjoy the acoustic guitar, UK folk music, and American ‘rural’ blues recordings of the 1920s are advised to bend an ear to C Joynes and his God Feeds The Ravens CD (BO’WEAVIL 28CD). Now there’s been a lot of lesser players on this label who can’t help name-checking John Fahey, but in this instance I find a simplicity and honesty in Joynes’ ripple-picking that stirs me mightily. His precise sleeve notes also reveal a depth of musical and historical knowledge that many of us can’t begin to match. This release is endorsed by Rhodri Davies, the great Welsh harp player who is usually associated with avant and improvised music, and he provided the sleeve note; speaking personally, I’ll trust Rhodri’s advice on anything. A fine collection of slow and sad music which somehow seems uniquely English too; the beauty of an English spring day is captured on the front cover (a still from a film about trees and clouds), while the inner sleeve prints a map of the British Isles indicating all the named stations from the shipping forecast (a broadcast which is of course known to all BBC radio four listeners as pure weather-poetry, from the airwaves).

1. John Levack Drever, ‘Phonographies of Exeter’ (fade)
   From Phonographies, UK SOUND-MARKED SM0301CD (2003)
2. Andrew Kötting, ‘North South East and West’
   From Shanghai Frolics, UK BADBLOODANDSIBYL CD (2004)
3. id battery, (Track 1)
   From Last blue before black, USA UNIQUE ANCIENT TAVERN NO NUMBER CD (1998)
4. Alejandra & Aeron, ‘Trows’
   From Scotch Monsters, GERMANY SOFTL MUSIC SOM 302 CD (2002)
5. Doug Haire, ‘Tarkio, MT 3:30am / Sumatra, MT 2pm’
   From Nineteen American Waysides, USA ANOMALOUS RECORDS NOM 17 CD (2002)
6. Jesse Paul Miller, ‘Swamp at Sunset’
   From Searching for a Quiet Place, UNRELEASED CDR (2003)
7. Yoshio Machida, ‘Malaria’
   From hypernatural #2, GERMANY SOFTL MUSIC SOM 101 CD (2001)
8. Alejandra & Aeron, ‘Birlibirloque y la Escuela de Gaita y Tambor de Alberite’
   From La Rioja, USA LUCKY KITCHEN LK 009 CD (2001)
9. Aki Onda, ‘The Blank Space’
   From Precious Moments, GERMANY SOFTL MUSIC SOM 102 CD (2001)
10. Gen Ken Montgomery, extract from 23rd Street New York City, PRIVATE PRESS CDR (2002)
11. Aeron Bergman, (Track 19)
    From The Shed Record, SCOTLAND DISKONO 010 CD (2000)
12. Gunter Saxenhammer, ‘Gunter meets Doric on the night bus’
    From Naked and alone on the celebrity circuit, SCOTLAND DISKONO 07 CD (2001)
13. Aki Onda, ‘Morning, June24′
    From Precious Moments, op cit
14. Scott Smallwood, ‘Rusted Womb of Bomber’
    From Desert Winds, USA DEEP LISTENING DL 17-2002 CD (2002)
15. Francisco López, ‘Untitled #101′
    From untitled (2000), POLAND IGNIS PROJEKT DI 009 CD (2000)
16. Hazard, ‘Anemo’
    From Wind, UK ASH INTERNATIONAL ASH 6.5 CD (2001)
17. Eric La Casa, ‘Incandescence part 2′
    From Fonderie.Paccard, FRANCE COLLECTIF ET CIE mts 04 CD (1999)
18. Dale Lloyd, ‘Stairwell acoustics (former SPL building)’
    From phonography.org 3 CDR (ND)
19. mnortham, Molecular Knot Phase One, SWITZERLAND CLOUD OF STATICS COSm 05.01 3” CD (2005)
20. Yannick Dauby, Alisen, SWITZERLAND CLOUD OF STATICS COSm 04.01 3” CD (2004)
21. Count Zero / K Kombat / DJ Dizzy, ‘LA Rage’
    From Constructive Engagement, USA free103point9 Audio Dispatch 02 CDR [2002]

7 and 8 played on top of 6; 11 and 12 played on top of 10; 15-16, 17-18, 19-20 were simultaneous playbacks

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

1. Iannis Xenakis, extract from ‘Pour La Paix’ (1981)
   From Musique Electro-Acoustique, FRANCE FRACTAL 015 CD (2001)
2. Jorge Antunes, ‘Contrapunctus contra Contrapunctus’ (1965)
   From Savage Songs, USA POGUS PRODUCTIONS P21027-2 CD (2002)
3. Trevor Wishart, (Track 2) (1971)
   From Machine, UK PARDIGM DISCS PD 25 CD (2008)
4. Pierre Henry, ‘Souffle 2′
   From Le Voyage, UK PHILIPS 4FE 8000 LP (1966)
5. Lionel Marchetti, extract from ‘Livre Maudit’ (1997-2005)
   From Red Dust, USA CROUTON NUMBER 29 3 x 3” CD (2005)
6. Denis Smalley, ‘Vortex’ (fade)
   From Interpenetrations, UK UEA RECORDINGS UEA 84099 LP (1984)
7. George Katzer, ‘Aide Memoire’ (1983)
   From CMCD: Six Classic Concrète Electroacoustic and Electronic Works 1970-1990, UK RéR MEGACORP RéRCMCD (1991)
8. Tod Dockstader and James Reichert, ‘2nd Movement’ (1966)
   From Omniphony 1, UK ReR MEGACORP ReRTODD1 CD (2002)
9. Max Brand, ‘Die Astronauten (Ausschnitt)’ (1962)
   From Osterreichische Musik Der Gegenwart. Elektronische Musik 1 : 30 Jahre Elektroakustische Musik, AUSTRIA CLASSIC AMADEO 427 039-1 LP (1988)
10. Operating Theatre, ‘Finestra’ (1982)
    From Rapid Eye Movements, UK UNITED DAIRIES UD011 CD (1992)

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

Darsombra is Brian Daniloski from Baltimore. He made an impression with his rather shocking little 3-incher for Public Guilt last year, and is back for a second bout with Eternal Jewel (PG015) for the same label. Here, his saturnine aspect is turned towards exploring five lengthy episodes of deepest melancholy, as confirmed by titles like ‘Night’s Black Agents’ and ‘Lamentings/Auguries’. Three haggard faces on the cover accept their sad fate with the stoicism of long-term sufferers. While not as immediately startling as his previous release, these process-based and layered drone epics look fit to inspire many a tortured night.

The Remote Viewers are a UK combo who transcend boundaries, crossing freely between the defined realms of improvised music, live electronics and song. Their membership is also very fluid, and you never get the same line-up twice across the five discs that make up Control Room, although certain core members (David Petts, Louise Petts) make their presence known. One of them is the saxophonist Adrian Northover, who put his head round the door of the Resonance studio when I was broadcasting my John Stevens show. Adrian turned out to have played in various workshops with Stevens, and we had a pleasant chat about the great man who I regard as having been slightly overlooked in the field. The Remote Viewers were I think associated with B-Shops for The Poor, and you can get this presumably self-released item direct from their website.

Got a couple of sizzling electronic blasters from Editions Mego on their new DeMego catalogue series. Skylla (DEMEGO 001) features the computers of Silvia Fässler and Billy Roisz producing many intriguing collisions of loud hum and fizzy textures, but Break Before Make (DEMEGO 002) by Gert-Jan Prins just edges ahead by dint of its conciseness (24 minutes total) and its single-minded devotion to screeching out its nerve-shattering digital razor sounds in compacted bursts that often barely occupy one minute of your time. Both are housed in triple-gatefold outsize wallets layered with hard-edged digital graphics by Tina Frank. Bring your own rusty spoon!

Nos Phillipé are the subdued UK duo of Jonathan Webb and Robert Hopps. On Shh…Camille (CONFRONT COLLECTORS SERIES CCS7) they create a highly ambiguous and cavernous imaginary space in your mind, using only electronics, turntable, and a prepared guitar. A single 23-minute performance from last year and released on Mark Wastell’s label devoted to reflecting all aspects of quiet and reduced improv.

Timo Puustinen of Tampere in Finland sent a new release by Elektronavn, plus other CDRs on his IKUISUUS label. On Cosmic Continuum (IKU-008), Elektronavn may appear to be competing with My Cat Is An Alien as regards LP titles, but this 38-minute solo workout contains some of the most intense music I’ve heard from him…showcasing his own voice overlaid in multiple overdubs of wailing and shouting, pitched against a sparse backdrop of droning and percussive music, he comes closer to the mysterious hermetic worlds of The Taj Mahal Travellers than many others who make the same claim. Also in the envelope, we have the rather aimless scraping of Open Eye Duo on Sea & Fish (IS-18), the strange pseudo-ethnic instrumentalising of Lead Sister II on Interplanetary Craft (IS-016), and the fine noisy trio of Matomeri with their rousing Joys of Summer (IS-017). For some truly obscure Finnish underground music, you need look no further than what this label has to offer.

Three fine seven-inchers of demented and dangerous noise arrived from Epicene Sound in Dayton Ohio, each one a split release fit for inducing teeth-grinding agony in the homes of most listeners. Blue Sabbath Black Cheer team up with Pig Heart Transplant on the most morbid and black of the three (ESS013); the B-side promises the experience of ‘Crawling Through Hell’, and the artwork depicts a lonely patient (or corpse) lying supine on a steel-framed hospital bed. Vestigial Limb and Fletcher Pratt offer us ‘Thick Airs’ on ESS014 and back it up with a troubling image of a human head embedded with electrodes, rendered in shocking pink. Wether and Teeth Collection’s split (ESS012) is perhaps the most intriguing, with Wether’s brand of heavily-reverbed and booby-trapped noise demonstrated to great effect on ‘Anything Worthless’. Mostly slow-moving and heavy sludge-music on offer here, but the right amount of twist to the volume knob can reveal hidden and terrifying delights.

Preston Swirnoff was I think involved in the Somethings #1 compilation for Last Visible Dog; here he is on that same label with a solo release, Maariv: Four Pieces of Electroacoustic Music (LVD125). With utilitarian titles like ‘For Piano and Electronics’ which simply describe the processes used to realise the works, Swirnoff is aligning himself with the pantheon of 20th-century experimenters on this fine release. The cover art, a pastiche of LPs released on the Odyssey label (a CBS imprint) in the 1960s, confirms his aesthetic targets.

The Child Readers are Loren Chasse and Jason Honea of the Jewelled Antler collective, still widely regarded as one of the high watermarks of dogged and determined isolated American folk-weirdie individualism. On Music Heard Far Off (SOFT ABUSE SAB 021 CD), they propose 16 pieces of ‘otherworldly and metaphysical torch songs’. This they achieve by passing their original acoustic recordings (voice and acoustic guitars) through the mysterious and distancing lens of computer processing, resulting in blurred sonic images, layers of unexpected foreign bodies, and an overall ambience of dream-like fuzziness. When this works, which is more often than not, the promised sensations of nostalgia and wistfulness will descend upon you as surely as the black bird alighting on the desert on the front cover.

Black Mirror (DTD-10) is an unexpected treat from Ian Nagoski in Baltimore, who also sent me a solo LP of his music. Subtitled Reflections in Global Musics 1918-1955, this is part of an ongoing series from the Dust-To-Digital label in Atlanta who are, I assume, doing their level best to retrieve and rescue lost music which has been preserved on 78s and wax cylinders with the determination of the National Sound Archive, and re-presenting it for the benefit of a musically omnivorous 21st-century audience. Many American researchers and musicians too numerous to mention have been pursuing similar lines of endeavour for many years, including the notable Rob Millis in Seattle, but I had no idea that Nagoski (who jointly compiled this one, with Steven Lance Ledbetter) shared an interest in the field. On this amazing package, 24 tracks of early ‘world music’ from across the globe are represented in glorious ear-filling fidelity and supported with interesting contextual notes and images in a hefty booklet; it reveals aspects of a hidden musical history that can make your head swim. As a confirmed lover of early Blues 78s for the last 27 years, I’m pretty much convinced I need the full set of these already…