The Sound Projector

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1. Units, ‘Bug Boy’ (1980)
2. Tuxedomoon, ‘Joe Boy The Electronic Ghost’
3. Chrome, ‘All Data Lost’
4. Screamers, ‘Need a head-on’ (1977 or 1978)
5. Units, ‘Cannibals’ (1979)
6. Tuxedomoon, ‘Nervous Guy’
7. Units, ‘Bird River’ (1978)
8. The Residents, ‘Home Age Conversation’
9. Tuxedomoon. ‘(Special Investment For) The Family Man’
10. Units, ‘i Night’ (1980)
11. Screamers, ‘Magazine Love’
12. Screamers, ‘Government Love Affair (Don’t Pay The Whore)’
13. Screamers, ‘I Wanna Hurt’
14. The Residents, ‘Sinister Exaggerator’
15. Chrome, ‘Nova Feedback’
16. Units, ‘Contemporary Emotions’ (1978)
17. Screamers, ‘I’m a Mensch’
18. The Residents, ‘Melon Collie Lassie’
19. Units, ‘Warm Moving Bodies’ (1980)
20. Chrome, ‘Pharoah Chromium’
21. Tuxedomoon, ‘Pinheads on the Move’
22. The Residents, ‘Krafty Cheese’
23. Units, ‘Go’ (1980)
24. Tuxedomoon, ‘Midnite Stroll’
25. The Residents, ‘Walter Westinghouse’

3, 15, 20 from Alien Soundtracks, original issue USA SIREN RECORDS DE 2100 SEC (1977)

8, 18, 25 from Fingerprince (1976), TORSO CD 407

1, 5, 7, 10, 16, 19, 23 from History of The Units, USA COMMUNITY LIBRARY CL16 CD (2007)

4, 11-13, 17 from In a Better World, USA XEROID RECORDS XER001 / EXTRAVERTIGO RECORDINGS EXTR009 2 x CD. 11-13 were recorded Live at The Whisky 1978.

14, 22 from Duck Stab (1977), TORSO CD 406

2 and 21 are A-side and B-side of first Tuxedomoon single. Original issue USA TIME RELEASE RECORDS TR-101 7” SINGLE (1979)

6, 9, 24 from Scream With A View EP, original issue PRE RECORDS PRE 7 12 (1979)

For a slice of synth-punk history that’ll knock spots off your Depeche Mode collection, why not tune in to this excellent new comp History Of The Units: The Early Years 1977-1983 (COMMUNITY LIBRARY CL16). This band were prominent in the San Francisco “scene” in the 1970s and are often mentioned in the same breath as The Screamers and Tuxedomoon, both of whom they shared live shows with. From what I’ve gleaned after a cursory listen, Units turn out to be slightly “poppier” than The more-abrasive and punky Screamers who I discovered some time last year thanks to a great 2-CD comp of their live work and early singles demos, but that isn’t to say Units aren’t equipped with requisite doses of restless, alienated energy and sneering humour. To flesh out the story, there’s a full-colour booklet inside which combines polemic and propaganda in prose with highly-charged collage images, deliberately pastiching the look of a late-1970s photocopied fanzine. Units made a passionate point about rejecting guitars in their music, and saw their gesture as something bordering on political – loaded with anti-capitalist meaning and anti-American rhetoric. Learn how they were hell-bent on assembling “a synth band that kicks ass”, and hear for yourself how successful they were. CD edition out 15 June (with a vinyl version coming soon).

Grisly noise gemstone of the week is awarded to Nate Young for his Regression (iDEAL RECORDINGS iDEAL076), a short but devastating collection of seven warpoid analogue electronic noise-globs, laced throughout with grim and anxious emotions and packaged with a double skull on the all-black cover (from which emerge the two helpless arms of a defeated human). The titles and unnaturally twisted sounds do everything that is humanly possible to emulate the effects of sickness, claustrophobia, and other unwelcome forms of bodily discomfort. A great solo statement from this Wolf Eyes founding member, one which really allows his most sickening aspects to shine forth without the distraction of over-amplified explosions and crashing metal noises from the other Wolfsters. Terrific digipack includes a small booklet of abstract paintings, likewise designed to induce nausea via the visual apertures.

No less desolate than Nate Young’s record, and an equally important part of musical history as Units, is Human Being’s Live at the Zodiak Berlin 1968 (NEPENTHE MUSIC AMC 09008). Human Being’s membership included Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Boris Schaak, and many other performers all doing evil non-musical things at a particularly volatile time and place in European 20th-century history. (There’s a Conrad Schnitzler connection here too, as one of the co-founders of the Zodiak Club.) The counter-cultural significance of this objectional, Dadaist noise cannot be over-stressed. It’s the unacceptable face of German musical history, positing a much darker origin to all our beloved Krautrock music of the 1970s as opposed to the cheerful Kosmische image that is often projected. This important record can also be said to pre-figure and predict a good deal of so-called “industrial” music, which wouldn’t come to pass for another ten years. I haven’t even heard past the opening choruses of this single hour-long piece, but the dismal attenuated wailing combined with mechanical pounding noises is compelling, and the utter desolation of its tone is unmistakeable; I look forward to completing the whole experience, that I may be assaulted by further doses of heavy futility, angst and despair.

Japan’s finest neo-hippy pagans Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. continue their project of borrowing heavily from the recorded past of progressive and psychedelic rock, rewiring it for a new generation of cosmic voyagers through their own highly skilled and intense playing. Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and The Magic Elixir (ALIEN8 RECORDINGS ALIEN8CD84) may not be so excessively crazy or unhinged as some of their earlier PSF records, but I prefer this more measured and disciplined side to their work; there’s more gravitas in both the playing and the recording. Indeed it’s the portentous sound of this well-made record that cannot fail to hook you in, with its delirious combination of old Hammond organs, valve-powered guitars and layers of wailing choral voices. Generous layers of over-dubbing fatten up the mix, much like their compadres Ghost have been doing lately with their lush jazz-inflected extravaganzas. In cover imagery and titles, we have numerous references to sorcerers and cosmic wizards of all stripe, and if swallowed whole, this record administers a dose of benign, tripped-out magic for your brain.

Scarcity of Tanks are a large combo of Cleveland loons delivering a great set of itchy power-rock and absurdist songs on No Endowments (TEXTILE RECORDS TCD21), a CD that’s heavily spiced with knowing post-punk references at every turn. One moment they’re striving to invoke that nerve-jangling slide-guitar sound from Pere Ubu (New Picnic Time-era), the next moment the two drummers are comparing notes on MX-80 Sound’s dark funkoid rhythms. With three or maybe four guitarists all competing for space, it’s no wonder this collection winds up resembling a brawl taking place in a crowded pub; full of angry shouts, waved fists, and brooding scowls as sleeves are rolled up and tattoos are bared. Weasel Walter produced and Devendra Banhart did the cover drawing for this musical punchfest.

In quieter vein, the three-inch CD [parvo] art (PARVO 007) contains seven lovely miniatures of music from the worlds of ambient electronics, quiet music, “lower-case” music and general friendly wispiness. The seven contributors, including porzellan, rim, shinkei, krzysytof orluk and the boats, are relative unknowns who were brought together for this modest project via the gift of online social networking. An intimate and charming collection, full of rather wistful nostalgic music.

Australian Lucas Abela is a larger-than-life performer and entrepreneur who has gained notoriety over the years for his uncomfortable live shows and the ultra-bizarre record label which he operates jointly with Swerve Harris. Performing under his Justice Yeldham alias in the group Rice Corpse, he improvises on the new CD Mrs Rice (DUAL PLOVER 666) by playing amplified sheets of glass, probably using his mouth and his hands in alarming and unexpected ways, alongside an impromptu rhythm section he happened to pick up in China during a recent tour in that country. What a musical find that turned out to be. Pianist Li Zenghui bashes the keys to generate a demented misinterpretation of the records of Cecil Taylor, or John Cale’s piano work on the first Velvets LP, while drummer Yang Yang from local band Mafeisan shows us exactly why he’s earned his reputation as the “craziest exponent” of percussion in the Beijing area. A thrilling record results. With this added accompaniment, I feel that Abela’s inchoate and formless noise has finally found a framework that gives it some real body and resonant presence, increasing its impact one-hundredfold. Needless to say with all that glass around, the sense of implied violence and bloodshed is never far away.

Alva Noto has stepped out from the comfort zone of his computer suite to collaborate with Japan’s palest aesthete, Ryuichi Sakamoto, to produce the splendid utp_ (RASTER-NOTON R-N 96), a composition blending electronic and digital works with the clinical string playing of Ensemble Modern. This modernist workout sounds utterly crisp and clean to the point of generating a sort of mysterious, glacial precision. Apparently it was commissioned to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the old city of Mannheim, itself a 17th-century triumph of utopian design in its day, and the abbreviated title of this work refers in its computer-speak way to that utopian ideal. Besides the music, the happy purchaser of this item also receives a DVD whereon you can just make out, through the subdued lighting effects, the Ensemble performing this piece before a huge video backdrop which is filled with visual white noise and abstracted shapes. I can well believe this combination of dessicated, formal classicalism with the clean lines of ultra-sharp computer music is a fitting parallel to the city of Mannheim’s pre-planned grid system, and this record could shape up to be an interesting commentary on modern man’s doomed attempts to improve the life of citizens through town planning. Or perhaps a celebration of the line of thought that would eventually end up giving us the pedestrian precinct and the shopping mall.

Tarab has no qualms about urban decay, however. He ends up using the very fabric of rotting cities to make music, as you will hear on Take All Of The Ships From The Harbour, and Sail Them Straight To Hell (23FIVE INCORPORATED 014). This Melbourne-based artist made site-specific recordings in Angel Island in San Francisco, a zone with a lot of interesting 20th-century history but now apparently somewhat neglected. Combining his recordings with other similar recordings from Australia, Tarab has captured a mood and an atmosphere rather than documenting actual sounds of flaking plaster and rusting nails (although there may be some metal girders groaning in protest somewhere on this record). In like manner, C M von Hausswolff, Christopher McFall and Marc Behrens have each in their time exhibited a similar unhealthy fascination with deserted once-thriving urban areas, and like Tarab have brought some sort of melancholy, desolate process-art out of the experience.

Further images celebrating the bittersweet joys of urban horror can be revealed by simply opening the gatefold package of Reflections (MEDUSA MUSIC TSUCD027) by RMSonce, an electro-acoustic composer from Barcelona. However, Francesc Martí finds genuine beauty in these monochrome images and indeed welcomes the onset of scientific progress; his piece ‘Lullaby in a night of radioactive fallout’ is evidence of this. On this fine CD he delivers himself of nine pieces of distorted humming electronic music, sometimes rendered in multi-layers with radio samples and smothered voice fragments. A not-unpleasant minimal ambient buzz exudes from all tracks, and the CD has a warmth which Tarab lacks; maybe it’s the suggestive photographic images doing this, but Reflections really does seem to be love songs created by lonely pylons.

While RMSonce is abstract, at least his ideas seem to be rooted in some sort of physical reality, which is more than can be said for the ultra-fantastic soundwork of Irr. App. (Ext.). This Californian composer has been baffling and perplexing the ears of international listeners for not a few years now, and his new Kreiselwelle (THE HELEN SCARSDALE AGENCY HMS016), a single 45-minute work of strange process music, is a slow voyage into the unknown. Within minutes, we’re taken far beyond the relatively familiar world of “dark ambient” and enter a murky field of immersive and twisted shapes, where possible danger lurks at every corner. Conceptually rooted in an interpretation of the works of Wilhelm Reich, Kreiselwelle is the third part of a trilogy whose other episodes have so far eluded me, and to connect with the “spiral waves” of the title, derived all of its sounds from things shaped like spirals (such as metal springs, or the circular movement of the ocean). In like manner, M. S. Waldron’s composition will probably suck you into a whirlpool of doubt and ambiguity.

American composer David Rosenboom is known to me as the inventor of a method to produce electronic droning music by capturing energy from the brainwaves of human beings, but with this new release I find there are numerous other aspects to this polymath hitherto overlooked. How Much Better if Plymouth Rock had Landed on the Pilgrims (NEW WORLD RECORDS 80689-2) is a double-CD set documenting a large-scale collaborative project, originally realised around 1969-1971. On it, we have chamber music instruments in mixed set-ups (cellos, woodwinds, saxophones) playing deliciously scored minimal music, some non-Western instruments such as the tabla and Balinese drum, and assorted rogue elements emanating from the composer – field recordings, electronic drones, computer music, and pianos in unusual tunings. The subtitles to this massive, sectioned work indicate that Rosenboom’s themes are extremely ambitious – we start with ‘essential tension to universe’, and move through world, life, humanity, and culture and end up in a place called ‘unification’. This clearly belies the slightly jokey title (adapted I suspect from a Cole Porter couplet which opens his song ‘Anything Goes’), and I am greatly looking forward to hearing more, reading the hefty booklet and exploring this considerable piece in more detail.

We very much enjoyed an uncanny night of music at Café Oto last night. (See here for a great poster). This was the first venture of The Sound Projector to this London venue with which all of the capital’s underground cognoscenti are abuzz, and quite rightly. We were there to see a performance by mudboy, who unbelievably was supporting a rare appearance by The A Band, who (rather than simply reforming) simply seem never to have gone away. Slow Listener came up from Brighton and surprised me with his table-top setup which looked like an arsenal fit to deliver an onslaught of harsh table noise. Instead, a concise set of beautiful processed drones issued from these pedals and mixing desk, guided by his steely white talons. Upon completion his equipment fitted neatly into a compact blue backpack and he was ready for the train ride home.

The A Band have long existed as a rumour for this listener, despite ownership of a Qbico LP by this UK freakoid collective which I haven’t yet dared to spin. Neil Campbell (one prime mover of The A Band) said this to me in 2005:

NC I played in the A Band at the end of the eighties, early nineties.

EP I’ve heard of that. Tell me more about that.

NC It was just like really where we started playing big-band improvised things, and we’d have children playing, and people who didn’t know how to play. There’d be a core of us who were into, I guess, left-of-centre music and would just rope everyone in.

EP Who else was in it, besides yourself?

NC That you would know? Richard Youngs, Stewart Walden, Jim Plaistow, Stream Angel, there was loads of people. It had a much more, I don’t know, for want of a better description, performance-art Dada edge to it than Vibracathedral. We’d be playing this droney music and we’d have someone doing a live action painting, naked, eating fire. So it was kind of daft. But we had this core of rocking sort of thing. We made a few records, by default, I think! It was much more, anyone can join in and that. I think that some people perceive what Vibracathedral do as being that as well. Every now and again, particularly when we were first playing out, we might get a hippy come up to the front trying to bang a drum with us. We’d have to put him off, whereas in the A Band, we’d have given him a guitar. In the A Band, we’d have left the stage and got him to play instead.

None of this prepared me for what I beheld at Café Oto, where I counted about eight beautiful people on stage who proceeded to run riot and perform some of the most anarchistic and humanistic free music I’ve seen and heard for a long time. Players run on and off stage, swap instruments, drop out and drop in, engage audience participation, and are clearly having a great deal of FUN (a phenomenon I rarely witnessed in years of attending Company Week, I’m here to say). A guitar player and a tall white-garbed fellow who played a saucepan (both with shoulder-length hair and beards) acted like the sort of mischievous pixies I’d always hoped Gong would be like on stage, while a stunning young lady with red hair dressed like Wilma Flintstone played the Theremin with studied lunacy. Plus live electronics, toy trumpets, toy accordions, upright bass, drums, coconuts unexpectedly clopped in your face…most telling of all perhaps is to hear their onstage dialogue before and after the music (in that most intimate of settings, you have no choice); they clearly speak a shared private language, which all but excludes us outsiders. The music (although mixed with too much top end; I wasn’t the only audience member with fingers jammed in ears on occasion) was totally glorious, streaming free-form genius and also (thanks to the instrument-swapping tactic) packed with dynamics, ideas and tons of sheer FUN. Far more exciting than some more solemn large-scale collectives who purport to offer us similar doses of freedom. “This is the real thing!” bellowed mudboy in my ear, between mouthfuls of Doritos, and he was totally right. Sheesh, can you imagine spending a weekend with these guys? Exhausting!

mudboy’s stage act (first time I have witnessed it) entails, much as I suspected it would, a great deal of psychological and physical preparation on his part. It’s a ceremony. When he got started he ensured that all house lights should be dimmed, then lit bundles of incense, placed small blue lights in impossible parts of the ceiling and tables, rang bells, donned his ceremonial jacket with his adopted name sewn on back, and emitted backing tapes of eerie drones and nature recordings. Then climbed up on tables (chairs thoughtfully deployed to enable this, minutes before) to declaim Walt Whitman styled poetry through a radio mic. Smells and bells and a sermon – isn’t this a ceremony from the Catholic church? At length his portable organ sonorously groans forth, producing loud marching music and beautiful swirling drones which somehow inhabit the same sound-world and dimension. Within a matter of 25 minutes, mudboy had totally transformed our surroundings – visually, aurally, nasally (!), but also in some deeper psycho-pagan-ceremonial way which I still cannot understand. I soon had to flee in terror to ride the bus home. Further terrors of the London night awaited me outside, but none so strange as what had taken place in that secret darkened room!

Skullflower’s main man Matthew Bower teams up with Lee Stokoe, Samantha Davies and Stuart Dennison, to produce the amazing Malediction (SECOND LAYER RECORDS SLR002) record, a blistering studio bash recorded last November. Guitars and percussion (plus some cello and violin) have rarely sounded so utterly cataclysmic, except in the hands of this reliable veteran player of underground English noise and evil droning. Thundering feedback effects, overloaded amplifiers, and ultra-intense neck-wringing are the order of the day on this massive record; Bower is emerging as the UK’s answer to Keiji Haino. Triple gatefold digipack with full-colour renderings of Bower’s artworks, and the enterprise is overlaid with title-elements which bring forth supernatural curses, warlock’s spells, and sinister esoterica of all stripe. Lovers of no-nonsense ferocious guitar noise should check in here immediately.

World Sanguine Report have made an original and innovative record with Third One Rises (GRAVID HANDS GRVH002). Here be eleven quirky songs, not unlike sea-shanties with surreal imagistic lyrics – a sort of mash-up between the whaling songs of A.L. Lloyd and the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire. Andrew Plummer (singer, electric guitar) is the composer of these eleven Captain Ahab-styled diversions, pitching his earthy tenor voice into the songs with gusto and coming across as a more approachable variant of Nick Cave (the song ‘Jazz Hell Murder Ballad’ is, in title at least, something Cave would surely relish). Plummer’s ably supported by a crack team of acoustic players who turn in very clear, distinctive performances on these odd arrangements, leaving no space unfilled with many a creak and lopsided rhythm. The abiding impression is of a peg-legged mariner accosting the hapless listener much like the narrator in ‘Orange Claw Hammer’, and the strange woodcut-styled cover artworks of Chris Odgers fit right in to this schema. Very good.

Norwegian power trio Puma and noise genius Lasse Marhaug joined forces in 2007 for a live tour, and have since decided to carry on working as a monstrous entity of ungodly noise, unleashing roars of toxic waste to the nation wherever possible. The recent LP Fist Full of Knuckles (KNUCKLEMAN RECORDS KNK001), featuring live recordings plucked from that 2007 tour, is an absolutely murderous beast – a snarled-up noise rock trio clashing heavily with the added lethal doses of Marhaug turntable and electronic noise. Two long and heavy pieces lumber along in neutral – it’s Godzilla crossed with King Kong in a titanic battle (and they’re both wearing blindfolds at the time). It’s all great constipated blackness of the first water, but in particular you should listen to what guitarist Stian Westerhus is doing with his detuned strings (they sound like bass guitar strings) – both menacing and hilarious in the same moment. I must get a vinyl copy of this, and so should you; try the Norwegian distributors Looop.

Sur Fond Blanc (EKUMEN EK009) is the effort of two electro-acoustic composers Nicolas Bernier and Jacques Poulin-Denis. A lot of their brittle sounds are a shade too tasteful for my ears, but they do occasionally harness some decent processed noises in service of dramatic, narrative effects. Actors and actresses use their speaking apparatus to contribute fragments of prose and poetry into the mix, as do certain dancers whose footsteps form part of the compositions (the record has its origins as a commission for a dance work). These Canadian musicians are, they say, attempting to convey something about “interior space, emptiness and absence.”

Chihei Hatakeyama’s Saunter (ROOM40 RM432 CD) is a very pleasant record of Japanese Ambient electronic music. The composer combines field recordings with electric pianos and electronic drones, and avoids abrasive noises for the most part; with his love of contemplating nature, perhaps he’s not unlike a more melodic version of Koji Asano. The press releases invites us to find parallels with Sansui-Ga, a specific form of Chinese painting which deals with landscape and the changing seasons.

I was intrigued enough to bend an ear to Form (FORWIND FWD00) by CjC, since its composer Conor J Curran served in Dublin under the tutelage of fellow Irishman Roger Doyle, a visionary composer whose work I always enjoy (he recorded as Operating Theatre for the United Dairies label and earned himself a place in the quasi-surrealist parade of Nurse With Wound’s universe). Curran’s work is not unlistenable, and has a very professional polish, but sadly I find it unadventurous and a shade overworked. His combinations of found sounds with born-digital sounds are not especially innovative in a world that’s familiar with Hecker and Peter Rehberg, and his attempts at deploying the “glitch” – a highly specific invented term to describe certain desirable mistakes which arise in the course of processing digital materials – come across as slightly inept, like a traditional landscape painter who has only just discovered Jackson Pollock. His compositional titles, including ‘Circular’, ‘Tangents’, ‘In Between’ ‘Angular’, and ‘Point’ might have been taken from a book on geometric patterns or architectural design, suggesting there is a deal of precision in what he terms his “over-arching sound aesthetic”.

Ocean Sounds is Heike Vester, whose Marine Mammals and Fish of Lofoten and Vesterålen (GRUENREKORDER GRUEN 066) is a beautiful collection of recent field recordings of whales, dolphins, sharks and seals in their marine habitat. Vester is a marine biologist and she’s also committed to preserving life on this planet “by trying to minimize human destruction”. The CD, partly supported with money from the World Wildlife Fund, comes with a full-colour booklet packed with photos and contextual information about the mammals and their behaviour. An extremely moving and wonderful record which is great to listen to. One thing that’s interesting is that unlike Chris Watson, another noted genius in this field, Vester is not especially interested in showing us the drama and danger of nature, and instead what comes across is a deep serenity and peace that we human beings could do well to emulate.

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1. ‘Starlight’
   From This Is Folk Music, USA LAST VISIBLE DOG LVD 092 CD (2005)
2. ‘Wwhirlpool, Wwindow Liight Nightt’
   From Hungry Ghosts! These Songs Are Doors, USA DIGITALIS INDUSTRIES ACE005 CD (2007)
3. Extreme Animals, ‘Lil John Carpenter Tribute Song’
   From Mudmux Vol. 1, USA DNT RECORDS DNT035 7” SINGLE
4. ‘Thaw’
   From Music for Any Speed, BELGIUM LEXI DISQUES LEXI002 7” SINGLE (2009)
5. ‘Beirut Dance Party’
   From This Is Folk Music, op cit.
6. ‘The Martian Timeslip’ (recorded 21/05/09 for TSP)
7. ‘Freeze’
   From Music for Any Speed, op cit.
8. Extract from Beats III Metal USA, USA BREAKING WORLD RECORDS CASSETTE TAPE (2008)
9. ‘Swamp Things’
   From Hungry Ghosts!, op cit.
10. mudboy and Orphan Fairytale, (Track 2)
    From Live-Antwerp, USA FREE MATTER FOR THE BLIND CDR (2009)

Tonight’s Sound Projector radio broadcast is a showcase for visiting American musician / artist / performer mudboy from Providence RI, who is presently touring Europe. Show will feature a new 23-minute performance which he recorded especially for this show, plus I’ll be spinning lots of rarities from mudboy’s catalogue of cassettes, CDRs and singles. mudboy is performing at London’s Café Oto venue on 23rd May (tomorrow).

Great LP by TANKJ, a lively French group led by veteran drummer Jean-Noël Cognard; the combo play brass, upright bass and live electronics in an inventive set-up, producing much energetic noisy jazz. Indeed “Free jazz meets Junk Noise” is how they accurately describe their work. I find it very much in the great tradition of Jac Berrocal and the overlooked Algerian genius, Jean-Marc Foussat – the latter in particular made great use of the pneumatic drill alongside the analogue synth in his wild improvisation set-ups. Cognard has been trotting out his sticks since the 1970s and was a founder member of Yog Sothoth who made an RIO-styled chamber prog LP for the Cryonic label in 1984. I’m also partial to the electronics and mixing desk work of Titus Oppmann (his noise never dominates, and in fact the acoustic instruments usually prevail in the razor-sharp mix), but all the players are great; Chicco Gramaglia puffs his enjoyably impolite blurts from the bell of his trombone as if sending a fierce riposte to all enemies of freedom across the world. Pressed in pulsating purple vinyl as y’ can see, and wrapped in a handsome double-sided screenprinted hunk of cardboard decorated by Jörg Morning. LP title may or may not be Puissance 36kw (BLOC THYRISTORS 0030), and only 300 copies of it exist. May be purchased from our good friends Bimbo Tower in Paris.

Greek solo electronicist Anika arrives from Athens with an LP called A:05-07 (NO LABEL) which he released last year; it’s a decent collection of droney, menacing science-fiction music, quite heavy on the effects and the filters which often-times render every analogue note into gobbets of glistening glorp. As well as meandering in his Chrome-inspired keyboard mindscapes, he likes to deploy his editing tools in odd ways – cutting up and rearranging his own material, resulting sometimes in very clipped and abrupt endings for some pieces, while others exist as mere sketches or short fragments. Sometimes I wish certain tracks could be given more room, as they seem to fade out just at the moment when they’re getting interesting, but in principle I agree that the editing scissors can be a musician’s best friend, and I wish more artistes could emulate Anika’s discipline. The artworks, somewhat like the music, are packed with distorted and cut-up information, using collaged close-ups of photographs and texts to create alienating and futuristic effects.

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1. Now, ‘Splurge’
   From Ooodipooomn, UK PICKLED EGG RECORDS EGG 74 CD (2009)
2. Calle Debauche, ‘Regarding Pete’
   From Calle Debauche, USA EGG HELMET RECORDS NO NUMBER CD (2009)
3. Kacheltisch, (Track 4)
   From Kacheltisch, GERMANY BETONG TONTRÄGER 001 CDR (2009)
4. Leverton Fox, ‘Rubbed Out’
   From Country Dances, UK GRAVID HANDS GRVH001 CD (2009)
5. Jim O’Rourke, ‘Let’s Take it Again from the Top’ (2001)
   From I’m Happy, and I’m singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4, AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO 50 2 x CD (2009)
6. Evan Parker / John Wiese, ‘No Shoes’
   From C-Section, UK SECOND LAYER RECORDS SLR001 CD (2009)
7. Maher Shalal Hash Baz:
   1. Matsuyama Jazz
   2. The Rear Of The Cape
   3. At Dusk
   4. Vegan
   5. Household Management
   6. Original Burnet
   7. Shofar Inevitable
   8. Set Things Straight
   9. A Stream Going Down Inside The Chest
   10. Congestion On The Way To The Fireworks Display
   From C’est La Dernière Chanson, USA K klp210 2 x CD (2009)
8. Starving Weirdos, ‘Dawn in the Distance’
   From Into An Energy, UK BO’WEAVIL RECORDINGS WEAVIL38CD (2009)
9. Adam Lygo and EMB, ‘Lithosphere’
   From Earth, UK THE SLIGHTLY OFF KILTER LABEL sok024 CDR (2009)
10. urbsounds with urbanfailure and rbnx, ‘Bashing’
    From Back Mirror, UK URBSOUNDS 10” LP (2008)
11. Kinit Her, ‘Colossal Portal’
    From Glyms or Beame of Radicall Truthes, SWITZERLAND HINTERZIMMER RECORDS HINT 06 CD (2009)
12. Tom Hamilton and Bruce Eisenbeil, ‘The Salt Eaters’
    From Shadow Machine, USA POGUS PRODUCTIONS P21051-2 CD (2009)
13. John Wiese, ‘Mystical Finland’
    From Circle Snare, USA NO FUN PRODUCTIONS NFP 49 CD (2009)
14. Anla Courtis, extract from ‘Coriandro’
    From Unstringed Guitar & Cymbals, USA BLOSSOMING NOISE BN034CD (2008)
15. Pål Asle Pettersen, ‘Komposisjon 19′
    From Komposisjoner 2005-2008, ZANG:RECORDS Z.021 CD (2009)
16. Pimmon, ‘Dervieux’
    From Smudge Another Yesterday, AUSTRALIA PRESERVATION PRE012 CD (2009)
17. Perlonex and Charlemagne Palestine, ‘Part Three’
    From It Ain’t Necessarily So, GERMANY ZAREK 11-12 2 x CD (2009)

Second Layer Records of North London, already one of the smartest record shops on the planet, has launched a new record label, first release being a collaboration between Evan Parker and John Wiese. C-Section (SLR001) dishes up four live improvisations recorded in the studio by Anna Tjan, packed in a handsome digipack and wrapped in a collage sleeve by Cody Brant. The sonic contrasts between Evan’s manic tootling and waves of triple-tongued parps and the sandpapery, chaotic blasts of electronic mischief from Wiese certainly produce the requisite effect. Parker has achieved many highly successful collabs with electronicists throughout his career – Paul Lytton, Lawrence Casserley, Disinformation, and now Wiese. In fine, here’s two of the strongest and most distinctive talents working today in improv and noise; label boss Pete Johnstone (who has staged not a few memorable gigs clashing jazz, noise and improv in London) has exhibited his usual assured boldness in co-ordinating and releasing such an exciting work.

Tenor sax with electronics in quite a different vein on Lausanne (FOR4EARS CD 2072), with these 2006 live recordings made in Switzerland by Urs Leimgruber and veteran analogue synth genius Thomas Lehn. While the CD begins in fairly tranquil mode, full of discreet hums and gentle lulling sax blurts, the duo grow gradually more agitated over time; the third track is nothing short of science-fiction plumbing, Leimgruber drastically mutating his own tubes in real time without any sort of electronic processing.

Freakish item of the week might be this new double-CD from Maher Shalal Hash Baz, the Japanese combo of high oddity. C’est La Dernière Chanson (K KLP210) resulted from a recording session in France put together by band leader Tori Kudo, where the band (aided by French local players) recorded over 200 new tunes in six days. 177 of them are now released for your delectation; there’s 99 of them on the first CD alone, and needless to say they are notable for their extreme brevity. They mostly seem to state a melody – or just a fragment of a melody – then stop dead, using brass instruments, guitars, percussion and bass, all rendered in a highly skeletal fashion, and played quite slowly with an endearing clunkiness. At times you may think you’re hearing your local school band rehearsing for a Burt Bacharach concert. Maher Shalal Hash Baz have, I think, tended to divide listeners with their previous releases, and I admit to having no firm grasp on their back catalogue; with this puzzling item, it’s clear that Kudo is keen to resist being pigeonholed, which is a good thing.

DAKU (OUTFALL CHANNEL SPILL #016) arrived from Dayton Ohio. It’s a collection of very extreme vocal recits from Bryan Lewis Saunders, with sonic accompaniment by Z’EV. Saunders recounts nightmarish tales of mental anguish and medical disasters, with titles like ‘The Absurdity of Pain’, some of them involving anal penetration and much personal bodily agony. Saunders’ work has been described as “visceral” and “confrontational”, and his very urgent near-hysterical voice on these pieces (he literally sounds like he is possessed by demons) will probably alarm most listeners, if not repel them entirely, while Z’EV’s eerie distorted electronic sounds also tend to induce paranoia, claustrophobia, and a general sense of unease. This document of extreme performance art comes packaged in a handsome silk-screened wallet.

Swedish creator Ronnie Sundin (see earlier post) is back with another music-and-book package. Seven Year Silence (FANG BOMB FB011) is a full-length CD of his own music, packed in a slim booklet of monochrome drawings printed in dazzling, sharp blacks. All the sonic material was assembled over a seven-year period and subsequently compressed into two aural wodges of hissing, slithering and clattering noise in Ronnie’s Malmö studio. These are two of the densest, most dynamic and near-impenetrable blasters I’ve yet heard to be issued in the name of electro-acoustic noise; they are packed with content and import, even if the meaning is hard to decipher; and an overall sense of doom, defeat and futility (which fits this label’s identity) is never very far away. Meanwhile the booklet is filled with fragmented images of skulls, pyramids and disjointed lettering rendered in Indian ink, sometimes obscured with heavy ink blots and grey ink-wash clouds. Great! A gorgeous release fit to accompany anxieties and emotions of the jet-black variety.