The Sound Projector

Brighton’s Adam Lygo continues to impress with abundant releases representing his unique strain of excessive, airless guitar noise. Each of these three new CDRs (released, I think, on his own Hivemusic label) continues his visual insistence on deploying the severe black-and-silver colour scheme, upping the ante on Keiji Haino’s aesthetic, while his beautiful-ugly guitar sound seems to be trying its best to emulate the hidden effects of mercury and liquid metals. Comparative Darkness is a set of live-improvised guitar loops, recorded direct to tape in 2007, with fanciful titles that allude to mazes, hidden rooms, and the meeting of metal with flesh. Intensive cyborg-music generated from sheer guitar mayhem, looping technology and ferocious amplification; even as he lets rip with the most aggressive sounds he can, there’s still something fundamentally neutered about the dry-humping effects here, as though a powerful snorting bull is attempting to slip its chains so it can wreak havoc in nearby village. Spine of jewel case contains a small plastic ant, in tribute to the poetic Dali-esque title of track five.

King Of Ravens arrives in a full-size case, containing two three-inch tiddlers which when spun proceed to sap your sanity and swathe your light in darkness over next 40 or so minutes. Lygo continues his nocturnal themes and creates strong impression of a mad guitarist who only plays outdoors at midnight under a full moon in November. Various winged lizards and birds of prey assist him in his diabolical rites. The first disc is utterly suffocating, a ghastly ride through sludgy swamps of greasy mire. Second disc is even more insufferable, making you long for the comparative calm of a tornado attack. I assume these are home recordings, or executed in a rehearsal space; my sense is that if Lygo was ever admitted to a professional recording studio, the engineer would need to be equipped with an oxygen mask and two well-filled tanks in order to survive the session. Packed in a die-cut sleeve with multiple artworks inserted like lithographs in a folio. Bones, shadows, wings and a taste for the supernatural haunt this record like malevolent spectres.

The Mirror’s Secrets pursues further this obsession with passing through the wall of the mirror, much like Orphée in the famed Jean Cocteau cinematic work, except that what Lygo invites us to find inside looking-glass world is far from comforting and leads to little hope of redemption. He sees the mirror as a repository of memories, a doorway to supernatural worlds beyond, and a fundamentally deceptive device; Dr John Dee, with his scrying of volcanic rock and his uncanny illusions that depended heavily on the use of reflecting surfaces, could have used these guitar loop workouts as soundtracks to his daily conversations with the angels (and Lygo to my mind completely trashes Coil’s work in this area). If only Blue Öyster Cult (similarly notable obsessives in their use of mirror imagery) could have found room to include vast swathes of avant-guitar noise as part of their catalogue of esoteric Heavy Metal alchemy, then Sandy Pearlman would have summoned Lygo to a recording session in New York City in short order. This release comes in a rounded-corner jewel case inserted with a sheet of shape-shifting plasma, making this a supernatural object of the highest degree. All these discs are highly recommended slabs of introverted, horrifying and relentless supernatural guitar noise!

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The Sound Projector Radio Show 26th June 2009

1. Don “Sugar Cane” Harris, ‘The Buzzard’s Cousin’
   From Fiddler on the Rock, original issue GERMANY MPS RECORDS BMPS 19-208788 (1971)
2. Jean-Luc Ponty, ‘King Kong’
   From King Kong, UK LIBERTY LBS 83375 LP (1970)
3. Ornette Coleman, ‘Falling Stars’ (1965)
   From The Great London Concert, USA ARISTA FREEDOM AL-1900 2 x LP (1975)
4. Eric Dolphy, ‘17 West’ (1960)
   From Out There, USA NEW JAZZ / PRESTIGE OJC-023 LP (1982)
5. Leroy Jenkins, ‘Kick Back Stomp’
   From Space Minds, New Worlds, Survival of America, USA TOMATO TOM-8001 LP (1979)
6. Gato Barbieri, ‘In Search of the Mystery’ (fade) (1967)
   From In Search of the Mystery, USA ESP-DISK’ ESP 1049 CD (2009)
7. Jean-Luc Ponty and Frank Zappa:
   ‘Dog Breath’
   ‘Dog Breath Variations’
   ‘Uncle Meat’
   From Live at Festival Hall Melbourne 1973 bootleg
8. Eric Dolphy, ‘Status Seeking’ (1961)
   From Fire Waltz, UK PRESTIGE PR 24085 2 x LP (1978)
9. Leroy Jenkins, ‘Why Am I Here’
   From Solo Concert, USA INDIA NAVIGATION IN 1028 LP (1977)
10. Albert Ayler, ‘Ghosts (1st Variation)’ (1966)
    From Lorrach / Paris 1966, SWITZERLAND hat MUSICS 3500 2 x LP (1982)
11. Eric Dolphy, ‘Duquility’ (1961)
    From Fire Waltz, op cit.
12. Jean-Luc Ponty, ‘Twenty Small Cigars’
    From King Kong, op cit.
13. Leroy Jenkins, ‘Albert Ayler’
    From The Legend of Ai Glatson, USA BLACK SAINT BSR 022 LP (1978)
14. Don “Sugar Cane” Harris, ‘No Inspiration’
    From Fiddler on the Rock, op cit.

Very nice to hear from 1980s veteran American avantster Matthew Ostrowski – it seems like years since I dug his rib-tickling Vertebra record for Pogus Productions. Well, here he be as one half of KRK rattling out some lively digital electronics on Acouasm (ACHEULIAN HANDAXE AHA 0802) alongside his partner George Cremaschi, who wields a huge contrabass plus further live analogue electronic effects for additional perplexment. This record’s possessed of the same sort of unpredictable crackle and lick we’ve been hearing from some of Alvin Curran’s recent crazed cut-up experiments, with the additional bonus of being performed in real time by two very quick-thinking and hipster geniuses. Cremaschi’s quicksilver work on the double bass throws in a connection to the history of free jazz in NYC, but at that point the analogy breaks down. This is another chapter in the international ongoing task to open up undiscovered spaces in the electro-acoustic performance realms, and a great success too. Published on a tiny label owned by an experimental guitarist Hans Tammen, this is well worth clicking on your PayPal button if only just to check out what a track named ‘Humenscrump’, ‘Snirtle’ or ‘Tubicination’ is going to sound like pouring from your hi-fi.

One of the month’s more “testing” releases comes from Narthex, whose Formnction (POTLATCH P209) appears to be little more than a series of musical tones appearing in between long stretches of silence. The two creators, Marc Baron and Loïc Blairon, assembled these two pieces (each precisely 30 minutes in duration) from a carefully structured division and re-division of six improvised pieces. You may find your attention wandering over the course of one hour’s listening, but when sounds do appear (briefly) they might just startle you out of your hide.

Somewhat more eventful is a new collection by Phosphor, the pan-European combo of improvisers which includes such fine performers as Burkhard Beins, Axel Dörner, Robin Hayward, Andrea Neumann and Michael Renkel, all playing their usual fascinating combinations of wind instruments, percussion and electronics in ways that confound any normal expectations we might have from tuba, guitar or piano. On II (POTLATCH P109) it seems the Phosphorous ones have moved on considerably from their association with the “Berlin Reduced Playing” school of improvisation, and are instead going for something far more maximal with plenty of textures, dynamics, open-ended noise, throbs, squeals and sibilant whisperings. Very good.

From Jesmond Vale in Newcastle come Necro Deathmort, with their new CD This Beat Is Necrotronic (DISTRACTION RECORDS DIST19), which may at first glance appear to have been affected with strains of Black and Extreme Metal (Newcastle’s Steel Wheels record shop has an amazing stock of this sort of deadly music), but turns out to be mostly electronics – sometimes enriched with powered-up mechanical beats, or deployed in the service of harsh Ministry-styled anti-dancefloor songs, or simply in pursuit of ultra-grisly suicidal ambient-scapes of chilly mien. While overall mood is sombre, it’s also faintly wacky in places; with titles like ‘Technicolour Minstrel Show’, I’m just not sure where to put myself. Matthew Rozeik and AJ Cookson have made a convincing record, even if it’s not strikingly innovative or anywhere near as doomy or menacingly Satanic as they would like to think. The card artwork unfolds into a frieze of superb drawings by Dominic Hailstone (who has also limned art for Isis, Mogwai and Aphex Twin), wherein he executes very accomplished pastiches of medieval woodcuts to depict implausible scenes of plague deaths by the multitude, hellish punishments, and utterly strange witchcraftian antics. “The music’s better than the album title,” I am reliably informed by Darren of Distraction Records. Not half bad; this will be released in August this year.

Merzbow completists will be competing like monkeys to grab hold of Tempi / Matatabi (DOTDOTDOT MUSIC dotdotdot007v), a luscious double seven-inch artifact pressed in marbled colour vinyl. This drum-heavy set features mightily reverberous recordings made in 1974 (with Masami Akita himself doing the drumming as if hoping to be auditioned for the job of Max Roach), said beats sitting abrasively alongside very wild power electronics, the latter elements added more recently. This record will cause many an exciting frisson along the spines of readers of Surrealist poetry. In keeping with the vintage of those drum tapes, the inside spread of this gatefold sleeve features frottage artworks executed by Masami in the same year. He clearly applied his greasy black crayon to the floorboards with the same passion as Max Ernst, although the results (a fairly tame still life of curvy shapes) aren’t quite as compelling as Ernst’s darkly psychological revelations. Nonetheless, this release is another reason why Merzbow (for me) works best in small bursts (the 50-minute CD releases just exhaust me).

Sula Bassana’s The Night (ST 0901) isn’t much more than retro prog-rock with a very cosmic theme, but here at TSP we do have a soft spot for many of the psychedelic and proggy releases on Dave Schmidt’s Sulatron Records in Austria. This release (everything played and recorded by the very talented Mr Schmidt) has the distinction of being mastered by Krautrock veteran Eroc, and indeed Krautrock diehards will find much pleasure on these home-made grooves, packed with great guitar soloing and juicy organ escapades. Even the cover is reminiscent of the Roger Dean painting for the Rameses Space Hymns LP on Vertigo.

Heart and Crossbone is the Israeli noise-rock label which has provided us with much ghastly mirth in the way of evil black filth masquerading as records – for example Barbara, Grave In The Sky, and other great extreme bands with one foot in the Black Metal camp. Raxinasky are a Belgian combo playing the sort of fiercely energetic 21st-century rock noise I was once content to characterise as “mathrock”, but clearly this tag is inadequate when faced with something as insane and assaultive as The Anti-apopathiaphulatophobicoustical Days (HCB 019 CD). This fine CD is notable for including two very long tracks, one of which is 18 minutes of tangled-guitar mayhem and aggressive pounding on the drumkit, arrayed in ultra-dynamic and fast-changing blasts. It never ceases to impress me how such fully-formed bands seem to appear on the scene so suddenly. Same label has also vomited out an impressive compilation of heavy noise drawn from Japan and Israel. What Pleasing The Lord Looks Like Marriage (HCB 020 CD) contains eight solid bursts of frightful ferocity from names which are mostly unfamiliar to me, with the exception of the diabolical Poochlatz – we have Cadavar Eyes, MONEYISGOD, Zenocide, Remesh, Nerveless and more. There seems to be very little table-noise in sight, just plenty of grisly stoner-death bands playing leaden drums, feedback, overamped bass guitars and emitting their swinish, grunty vocals all in real time. Totally irresistible! Many thanks to Rani for sending these brutal bashers.

Matt Shoemaker is the Seattle sound-artist who perches midway between arrayed ranks of analogue synths, exotic field recordings from Eastern lands, and a computer with the sort of processing power that even Pixar are envious of. Here’s his new release Erosion Of The Analogous Eye (HELEN SCARSDALE AGENCY HMS 015), full of noises which certainly live up to its sponsor’s claims of “mesmerising”, what with the shimmering fields of sound that elide back and forth between semi-recognisable human shapes and completely abstracted electronic fields of impossibility. Shoemaker is evolving into a plausible matchstick we can hold alongside the twin flambeaux of murmur and López. 300 copies only of this nifty item, due to its hand-made cover artworks.

Couple of very nice recent ones from French improviser and occasional polemicist Michel Henritzi. Over time the man has built up a considerable rapport with the Japanese contemporary wing of extreme improv. On Ecstasy Of The Angels (OPPOSITE RECORDS OPCD4) he does it with sax blower Masayoshi Urabe and the singer Junko, that brilliant and demonic shriekstress from Hijokaidan. Henritzi is laying down a fantastic barrage of alienated metallic percussion against Junko’s horrified yelps, Urabe yawps into his bell like a man dying of slow poison (he plays guitar and chains too!), and this edgy record just oozes pure disaffection. This radical stuff, for me, contains a huge amount of emotion dredged from the “pure” heart of improvisation, and that’s something extremely rare. On Shinjuku Blues and Whispering Shadows (DYIN’ GHOST REC 02), we have a modernist blues album – numerous solo guitar recordings from Henritzi made in Kyoto or at home in Metz. (I wonder if he’s drawing some inspiration from Tetuzi Akiyama, that highly original Japanese guitarist who is unafraid to profess his love for blues and rock music). In all cases Henritzi’s titles here suggest a certain ennui and disenchantment with urban life, as manifested through street lights, gathering evenings, and cold shadows. Every piece is a slow nocturne, there’s plenty of minor key modes, and the eerie sound he makes (enhanced by a little echo and reverb) is a keening, doomed, whine. Henritzi couldn’t play a clichéd phrase on the guitar even if he tried, and these are 18 tracks of the most original six-stringed improvisation you could possibly wish for.

Process-minimalism at its finest in the very clean and simple record Vanishing Point (23FIVE 015) from the American musician Jason Kahn; you recall at one stage this innovative creator was thick as thieves with Toshimaru Nakamura, and they performed and recorded as Repeat. This single 47-minute mechanical drone, which appears to explore the inner workings of a metaphysical steam-factory in the sky, can also be read as a very touching and personal meditation on a death in Kahn’s family. “I can’t say exactly,” reveals Kahn with simple honesty in a five-line sleeve note, as (like all serious artists) he treads the fine line between vagueness and clarity of ideas, feeling his way along.

From the Portuguese Crónica label, there’s the Lithuanian player Gintas K with Lovely Banalities (CRÓNICA ELECTRONICA 040), an appealing collection of minimal electronica; what I like about it is that Gintas keeps most of his pieces quite short (nothing over five minutes), and each one explores a single idea relentlessly, despite temptations to widen out the sonic horizons. Through observing these two simple disciplines, he makes good and realises his intention to celebrate ordinary, everyday things. The remote and abstracted cover art by David Muth slightly undercuts this intention, but no matter.

From same label, Compilation Works 1996-2005 (CRÓNICA ELECTRONICA 041) is an astonishing compilation of music by the great Marc Behrens, one of the most severe and dessicated electronic minimalists working in this area and one for whom I have a lot of time. This 19-track collection amounts to two CDs’ worth of music, and it rounds up a number of cuts released as parts of compilations, collaborations, or submissions to galleries and audio journals. You can find here, for example, his excellent interpretation of Disinformation’s music from the 1997 double-CD Antiphony, now pretty tough to find. Plus there’s his contributions to Tulpas (the RLW sampler), sul (the Chris Marker tribute CD), and one piece which was inspired by Stockhausen’s Gesange Des Jungliche. Although very conceptual in nature, this is a set which restores my faith in the power of the mixing desk and reprocessed electronic noise. What’s more, you can download it all for free from the Crónica website.

Here’s June’s dispatch of new releases and reissues from ESP-Disk’. In 1967 the Gato Barbieri Quartet went In Search Of The Mystery (ESP 1049). I never heard this particular LP by the famed Argentinian tenor player before, but hearing it now I would guess he’s paying a form of homage to a certain famous John Coltrane LP (A Love Supreme) which cast a long shadow over the golden fields of 1960s free jazz. Gato’s wild squonks, happy hoots and overblown honks, which are spread thickly like hot jam across the buttered toast of the LP’s first side, are tempered by the comparatively restrained rhythm section, which includes the great Sirone on bass and most notably a fine cello player named Calo Scott. Personally I can’t get enough of stringed instruments in free jazz (step forward Leroy Jenkins), and this dynamic though somewhat meandery LP is another treat from the ESP jazz archives.

Cromagnon were one of the more bizarre ESP signings from the lunatic fringe of post-psychedelic rock music, and in fact it would be a brave man who would characterise 1969’s Cave Rock (ESP 2001) as anything remotely resembling rock music. Casting themselves as primitive futurists, Austin Grasmere and Brian Elliot reconnected with their Neanderthal inner man by means of time machine, and recorded a series of strange grunts, shrieks, thumps and insane cackling noises, sometimes with the help of an unidentified troupe of gonks named The Connecticut Tribe (who were to Cromagnon what The Familiar Ugly were to The Red Krayola). Admittedly the songs ‘Caledonia’ and ‘Crow of the Black Tree’, the former recently covered by Ghost, do have guitars and lyrics and even attempts at melodies, but even the most broad-minded stoned-out hippy would have baulked at any suggestion of grooving along to these lumpen plods. Even the themes of this LP that might be interpreted as aligning themselves with the 1960s “free love” ethos, such as ‘Ritual Fast of the Libido’ or ‘Genitalia’, are a million miles away from something Grace Slick would have recognised; indeed this LP, which was also once issued under the title Orgasm, makes sex appear to be a dangerous, life-threatening activity. Among the wilder cuts here is the impressive ten-minute ‘Toth, Scribe I’, a growling and thumping monstrosity that has drawn comparisons to other primitive recordings (including the first Residents LP), and resembles a battle between mastodons and sabre-tooth tigers taking place in a wild thunderstorm. If you enjoy The Godz and Erica Pomerance on this label, prepare for something still crazier.

And speaking of hippies, here’s a CD reissue (the first) of the 1966 LP by Timothy Leary. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out (ESP 1027) is a spoken word LP in which Dr Leary murmurs away in a very quiet speaking voice, presumably relating something about the experiences of taking acid. it was recorded by classical pianist David Hancock, who also (it is now revealed) faced the tedious task of editing out the incredibly long pauses between Leary’s monotonous utterances to put the material into some form that could be released. He wound up with a floor covered with tape cuttings, and this LP. Frankly, Leary has always struck me as a pretentious opportunist and a boring windbag to boot, and this record (not to deny its importance as a counter-cultural document) does nothing to dispel my impression.

From the contemporary wing of ESP, we have Talibam! with Boogie in the Breeze Blocks (ESP 4055). There’s no denying the high energy and passion that has been poured into this CD by Matthew Mottel and Kevin Shea working with their large team of very talented collaborators, but the illogical mix of numerous musical styles is utterly bewildering to me, the relentlessly fast-paced and breathless playing is exhausting, and the CD feels rather forced in its attempts to be as wide-ranging, eclectic and as “far-out” as possible. That said, it’s arguably in the Zorn tradition, and resonances may be found in other NYC schools of noisy energy music.

ESP-Disk’ also distribute records on Steven Walcott’s Brooklyn-based Engine label. Tom Abbs and Frequency Response play some very interesting improvised free jazz on Lost & Found (ENGINE 031), working to elaborate musical structures devised and composed by Abbs. The combination of instruments (tuba, cello, sax, violin) produces gorgeous and haunting harmonies, and Chad Taylor’s drumming is superlative on these sessions. Tenor player Fred Anderson leads a trio on Staying In The Game (ENGINE 029), recorded in Chicago last year, and his music is enjoyable enough but not especially “out” or innovative as jazz, and could have been recorded 35 years ago. Lastly we have Warren Smith and The Composer’s Workshop Ensemble, whose CD Old News Borrowed Blues (ENGINE 027) displays an eclectic mix of compositional styles and world music rhythms played by a large brass ensemble supplemented with African drumming.

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The Sound Projector Radio Show 12th June 2009

1. Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., ‘Eleking the Clay’
   From Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and the Magic Elixir, CANADA ALIEN8 RECORDINGS ALIEN8CD84 CD (2009)
2. World Sanguine Report, ‘Third One Rises’
   From Third One Rises, UK GRAVID HANDS GRVH002 CD (2009)
3. Joe Frawley, ‘Lipstick’
   From Emperor of Daffodils, USA JOE FRAWLEY MUSIC JFM-CD06 (2009)
4. Scarcity Of Tanks, ‘Growing 33′
   From No Endowments, USA TEXTILE RECORDS TCD21 CD (2009)
5. Masayuki Imanishi, ‘Land IV’
   From Land, JAPAN DESERTED FACTORY DF8 CD (2009)
6. Porzellan, ‘vopar tar’
   From [parvo] art, GERMANY [PARVOART] RECORDINGS PARVO 007 3” CD (2009)
7. Merzbow, ‘Tempi Part One’
   From Tempi/Matatabi, IRELAND DOTDOTDOT MUSIC 007v 2 x 7” (2009)
8. Alva Noto with Ryuichi Sakamoto, ‘Grains’
   From UTP_, GERMANY RASTER-NOTON r-n96 CD + DVD (2009)
9. David Rosenboom, ‘Section IX (links) [a.k.a. Piano Etude I]‘
   From How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, USA NEW WORLD RECORDS 80689-2 2 x CD (2009)
10. Nate Young, ‘Sweating Sickness 2′
    From Regression, SWEDEN iDEAL RECORDINGS iDEAL076 CD (2009)
11. RMSonce, ‘Nocturne at Rothko Room’
    From Reflections, SPAIN MEDUSA MUSIC TSUCD27 CD (2009)
12. CjC, ‘Circular’
    From Form, UK FORWIND FWD00 CD (2008)
13. Skullflower, ‘Ghost Bitch of Blackflame’
    From Malediction, UK SECOND LAYER RECORDS SLR002 CD (2009)

Ferran Fages and Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga have teamed up, perhaps on a temporary basis, to form ap’strophe; Ferran plays the acoustic guitar, while his sparring partner handles zither duties. On objects sense objectes (ETUDE RECORDS 019), the listener should be prepared for lengthy stretches of exploratory noise-making, as both players seem determined to extract anything but “normal” acoustic sounds from their chosen instruments, and tentatively approach these wooden stringed monsters as if they were tentacled aliens from Venus, or caged tigers that might bite. (One press photograph shows Fages holding his instrument with its head brushing the floor, a most unconventional posture). The winged bird on the turquoise cover promises something of the romance of freedom, but this CD spends more time on the runway and less time in the air than we might have expected. Writer Michalis Kyratsous devised the title for this CD; in explanatory notes, he speaks of “the suture of various schemas”, “ontogenesis” and “psycho-physico-acoustic stimulation”, in his attempts to “throw some light on the paradoxes of the function of objects”.

The CD Borderline (NOTA MUSIC CD 632) is also largely acoustic, but it’s all tunes and songs. Songwriter Loris Vescovo sings in Friulian, a language spoken in a part of north-eastern Italy, and he also accompanies himself on the acoustic guitar, backed by musicians on cello, double bass and other instruments. Some of the songs deal with political subjects, quite topical and even controversial (’Ellis Island’ is about migration), but one would be mistaken, I think, to characterise this warm, melodic and friendly album as a protest record.

From Illuminating Technologies in Prague, a new release from Autopsia. On Karl Rossmann Fragments (IT0011), Autopsia purports to perform certain snatches of works by an obscure 20th-century Czech composer of this name. Is that him on the cover? Doubtful; one suspects that Rossmann (of whom I can find no reliable records or biographical details) is simply a fantasy, but the music here is compellingly difficult to listen to; all-electronic, denatured, inhuman, discordant and filled with atonal explosions and hard-to-follow twists. None of it feels remotely “composed” in the conventional sense and indeed this slithery, semi-mechanical record almost seems to be the product of wayward machines, not all of them necessarily computers. This is almost how a mischievous player from the Mego label might proceed if they were fabricating a lost composer of electronic music, something they were (incorrectly) accused of doing with Max Brand (see the double CD on the Rhiz label). For other possible playful hoaxes in this area, seek out the work of Frank Rothkamm, who openly pastiches music of the Cologne school. The CD arrives in a card wallet slightly smaller than the sleeve of a seven-inch single, the inside of which is printed with puzzling texts about Heterotopias and agglutinated resemblances.

From the Connecticut composer Joe Frawley we have his new work Emperor Of Daffodils (JFMCD06), a release which (as he points out) is conspicuously more collaborative than his previous solo works. Rachel Rambach contributes voice, Greg Conte guitar and bass, and Frawley plays piano and electronics alongside his usual array of carefully-selected and edited found sounds. (We should also note that the players never actually met up to make the recordings, and all was done “virtually” by email and swapping sound files in the post.) Frawley’s samples are apparently taken from a series of found videos on YouTube depicting a woman putting on her makeup and providing a live commentary on her actions. Where previous Frawley works have been extremely open-ended and ambiguous narratives, this one is more directed and conceptual, underscoring speculative ideas about narcissism (and something about the exclusion of males from female rituals). While sceptical UK listeners may think they’re in for nothing more than an arthouse version of the X-Ray Spex classic ‘Identity’ post-punk anthem, there is a lot more going on under the surface; the third track, for example, simply repeats treated utterances of the word ‘Lipstick’ to layers of very romantic music, and it offers everything Frawley does best; utterly simple, yet apparently impossible to fathom in its opaque mystery. Also it’s very beautiful to listen to. You probably won’t find this gem in the shops, so best to order direct from the composer.

Here be three Vinyl Voots of fairly monstrous noise, quite a lot of it enriched with printed imagery of bones, deaths-heads, and skeletons. Stan Reed of Washington State was the concepto-genius behind cut-up noise prankster project The Broken Penis Orchestra, but of late he has turned his noise-dealing mitts to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, a live electronics band project with Wm. Rage; besides wallowing in death images, they also flirt with Black Metal titles, fonts and imagery, and create a strain of virulent performed noise that’s incredibly harsh, but excitingly dynamic too. I’ve heard a record of live blasts from this duo which you could use to boil a bucket of soup!

If you’re up to it, BSBC feature on all three of these limited-pressing splits; on Bleak Village…Mob Rules (DRUG-FRONT PRODUCTIONS NO NUMBER), we hear a growly and sullen mope from Reed and Rage, filled (like everything you see in this picture) with large amounts of implied menace. Slow, dark and nasty, their two tracks ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Elektrisches Begräbnis’ unspool with the calm but fierce deliberation which John Wiese can also do so convincingly. On the flip, Penetration Camp (a repellent name, that; somehow conflating concentration camps with rape) perform ‘Mob Rules’ at 45rpm, a piece which starts off with a few bleak, desolate clangs as of some lone soldier’s canteen dangling hopelessly from barbed wire. This is just a taster for the insufferable sounds of torture which ensue, comprising screaming, yelling and the sound of remorseless hammers smashing limbs. A painful nightmare reinforced by a grisly colour painting insert. Gerald Hansen recorded this duo who trade as M and ~dyna*girl.

For D.D.T.T.N.B (ANARCHYMOON RECORDINGS ANOK 27), the duo of BSBC have collaborated with veteran English noise-blasters The New Blockaders; both Richard and Philip Rupenus have brought “additional sound sources” to this party, and a one-sided LP picture disc resulted. It’s an unvarying stream of mashed data, a monotonous and sluggish death-ride. The intense, over-crowded racket is laced with many elements I’ve come to associate with the anti-pleasure principles of Mr Rupenus, and we seem to hear the very fabric of music itself being smashed, pounded and crushed in a violent and ugly car-crash, from which few survive unscathed. The gigantic skull image (by Demian Johnston) is repeated on the picture disc, and the beautifully-made cover has a sturdy card flap, making it like an updated cover for a folio of Goya lithographs. 200 copies only; looks like this one’s already sold out at source.

The 10-inch item features two untitled pieces and is released on Reed’s own label Gnarled Forest Recordings (GF25). The BSBC side is, once again, slow, dark, evil and seeping despair from every one of its ill-lit corners. Much “simpler” than either of the above pieces, this achieves its effects through fewer combined sounds and a little more chilly air circulating in its overall audio space. Like taking a midnight bathe in freezing sewage. Dried Up Corpse win the prize for the most memorable name of grisliness on this page, and offer a very dessicated sound, like a thousand sheets of sandpaper flying through a howling wind. Uncomfortable rather than painful, they still remain extremely abrasive. The screenprinted cover is a belter; sharp screenprinting in ultra-solid jet-black blacks. I think this front cover image, of two skeleton riders on skeleton horses, may also have been used by Davenport for an LP on Not Not Fun Records, although they printed it in red. Many thanks to Stan Reed for sending these bitter growlers (what are you trying to do, ruin my day?!)

Some very tasty science-fiction inchoerent noise escapades from Masayuki Imanishi, whose Land (DESERTED FACTORY DF-8) is filled with many distorted, swirling and hyper-edited adventures in boldly reverberating insanity. Unlike many noise artists who place too much faith in violence and volume, Imanishi pays close attention to fast-moving dynamics and juxtaposing of sonic layers, and somehow maintains a high degree of obnoxious unlistenability throughout. Recommended to all you noisician sophisticates who are getting bored with the usual daily diet of Hair Police, Pain Jerk and John Wiese. From same label we have a promotional copy of Alien Symbiosis (DESERTED FACTORY DF050-2008), a joint effort by D.B.P.I.T. and Xxena. This 42-minute example of urban nightmares and fiery paranoia was executed with minimal means, the main auteur D.B.P.I.T. being unable to access his usual panoply of equipment as he paid a visit to the film-maker and visual artist, Xxena (the latter making her debut entry into the world of sonic arts). If it’s true that these excitable, blanched-out terror-noises resulted largely from domestic objects and a broken laptop, then all credit to this plucky duo for realising this imaginative Blade Runner-styled cybernoise-work. Many thanks to Ryosuke for sending these from Kyoto.

Japanese vocalist extraordinaire Ami Yoshida continues to distinguish herself in the world of minimal European improv, with the help of percussionist Freddy Studer. On Voices (UNIT RECORDS UTR 4208), Yoshida is joined by Lauren Newton and Saadet Türköz in the vocalising department, for twelve contemplative studio cuts that simply reek of ceremony and ritual. The record is largely meant to showcase Studer’s work, however; as producer and instigator of these improvising actions, he is cast as both “listener and actor” in a series of instant dramas, which he does his best to interpret as he follows the strange interior monologues of his very vocal collaborators. More than just singing, there’s plenty of disturbing and elaborate mouth music on offer too, involving the lips and tongue in juicy salivatory outbursts.

Dark ambient texture-works may be had from Meerkat, whose Kapnos (AFE RECORDS AFE121CD / GREY SPARKLE GS CD 02 / NIGHTHAWKS TAPES / CTRL+ALT+CANC CTRL666) is the third in a line of recent releases by the team of Maurizio Bianchi and Matteo Uggeri / Hue. One of them was about clouds, another was about a desert. Fans of Bianchi who prefer his altruistic and wispier side to the early cassette noise-releases of the 1980s may or may not be interested in investigating this release, although Bianchi himself doesn’t actually appear on it; Meerkat are in fact ten Italians who claim they like to operate under a “cryptic name”, and to prove it they provide three pages of biographies and a detailed discography by way of a press release. On Kapnos, they play in various duo and trio pairings, and the results are very polished combinations of field recordings with highly treated electronic music, creating slow-moving but strangely immersive environments.

The Manchester group A Middle Sex have grown from a duo to a trio and improved their act somewhat since we last heard them on a rather feeble CDR called Look, which they made in 2007 for the Slightly Off Kilter label. However, judging by their half of this split LP (CARNIVALS 001), I feel they still lack a musical identity that’s all their own. Their ‘Unclean Yawn’ is an entertaining rondello of tribal drumming, chants, noises and weird voices, but it feels like they’re just trying very hard to “do a Boredoms”. The Temperatures half of the split, ‘Bifurcation’, is much more interesting and original. Mangled voice loops present an instant vision of unpleasant but intriguing ugliness, much like the purple face of a troll or dwarf; ere long, we’re dragged further into a world of gnarled guitar work, propelled by stoned-out free-form drumming which suggests their stickman has taken a caseload of uppers and downers, and washed them down with a bottle of Jim Beam neat. Great! Looks like the debut release from this Manchester record label, and it’s got two photocopy inserts and a strong front cover image, almost worthy of a lost frame from a Jack Smith movie.

From Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, we have a double ten-inch LP called Neunundvierzig Entgleisungen (AUFABWEGEN AATP23), as puzzling a segment of vinyl as you’ll ever own. Guido Huebner is reprocessing a set of recordings he had made in Caen between 1998 and 2003, some of which have been deployed at his live concerts and art installation pieces, usually involving playback over large-scale and complex speaker systems, and designed to interact with (or be projected upon) the environment in unpredictable, slightly absurd ways. What you hear on this pack is four delirious sides of hermetically-sealed confusion, playing havoc with your acoustical preconceptions and expectations until you won’t know which way is up. Noise, glitches, murmurs and clicks are abstracted by careful processing, and apparently edited together into microscopic mosaic patterns to stimulate your perceptual receptors in ways you’d never have thought possible. Jean René Lasalle contributes profuse printed texts inside the cover, which are likewise streams of cut-up absurdist poetry containing such deathless observations as “glances irrigates elytrons in a trembling headlight”. Françoise Vigot did the cover paintings, featuring the domestic (and amorous) adventures of the red and blue cipher-like figures whose antics I have seen, I think, on a Hypnagogia release by DSM. Verily, Huebner’s universe is an elaborate many-layered puzzle which is slowly coming together for this listener.

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1. Mad River, ‘Amphetamine Gazelle’ (1968)
   From Mad River, UK EDSEL RECORDS ED CD 140 CD (1990)
2. Kak, ‘Disbelievin’ (1968)
   From Kak-Ola, UK BIG BEAT CD WIKD 187 (1999)
3. The United States Of America, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ (1968)
   From The United States Of America, UK EDSEL RECOPDS ED 233 LP (1987)
4. SRC, ‘Checkmate’ (1968)
   From Black Sheep, UK RPM BAM CARUSO SERIES RPM BC 201 CD (2000)
5. The Godz, ‘Lay In The Sun’ (1966)
   From Contact High with The Godz, ITALY BASE RECORD ESP 1037 LP
6. The Deep, ‘Turned On’ (1966)
   From Psychedelic Moods. A Mind Expanding Phenomena By The Deep, USA CICADELIC RECORDS / COLLECTABLES RECORDS COL 0521 CD (1993)
7. Joe Byrd and The Field Hippies, ‘The Elephant at The Door’ (1969)
   From The American Metaphysical Circus, USA COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS MS 7317 LP
8. Fifty Foot Hose, ‘If Not This Time’ (1968)
   From Cauldron, USA WEASEL DISC RECORDS 744213 19451 3 CD (1994)
9. Iota, ‘Within These Precincts’
   From Growing Slowly Insane. 14 Psychedelic Unknowns, USA TIMOTHY’S BRAIN TB 1010 CD
10. Cromagnon, ‘Ritual Feast of the Libido’
    From Untitled, original issue USA ESP DISK 2001 LP (1969)
11. The Spoils of War, ‘Now is Made in America’ (1969)
    From The Spoils of War, GERMANY SHADOKS SHAD 001CD
12. H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The White Ship’ (1968)
    From At The Mountains of Madness, UK EDSEL RECORDS DED 256 2 x LP (1988)
13. Ultimate Spinach, ‘Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess’ (1967)
    From Ultimate Spinach, MGM RECORDS LP 831 180-1 LP (1986)
14. Sam Gopal, ‘Season of the Witch’ (1968)
    From Escalator, ITALY GET BACK GET 523 LP (1999)
15. Fifty Foot Hose, ‘Red The Sign Post’
    From Cauldron, op cit.
16. Ultimate Spinach, ‘Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse’ (1968)
    From Behold And See, MGM RECORDS LP 831 181-1 LP (1985)
17. Preston, ‘The World is Closing in on Me’
    From Growing Slowly Insane, op cit.
18. Joe Byrd and The Field Hippies, ‘Nightmare Train’
    From The American Metaphysical Circus, op cit.
19. The Deep, ‘Trip #76′
    From Psychedelic Moods, op cit.
20. The Godz, ‘Where’ (1967)
    From Godz 2, ITALY BASE RECORD ESP 1047 LP
21. Cromagnon, ‘Fantasy’
    From Untitled, op cit.