Once again it’s that time of year when Waystyx, the Russian label of avant-garde music, generously decides to favour me with a batch of incrediblo monstrinas released in limited editions. We received these four refugees from the menagerie of European electro-acoustic snookery-pamookery in January this year. Astute readers will note the strikingly innovative packages for these four CDs, making bold use of die-cuts, shapes, folds, embossing, overprinting and non-standard cardstocks which is the customary Waystyx approach, although nothing here is quite as off the wall (or off the foot) as the laced-up boot they sent last time. In a way it’s a shame that these imaginative concepts are only used for a single project; just think if that same strategy were applied to the digipak, for example. But it makes each item here a unique hand-made artwork multiple, to say nothing of the music within…
My grasping fingers first snatched up Dos Hombres Verdes (WR67), by Lt. Caramel and Victor Nubla. These fine ring-wise veteran composers, French and Spanish respectively, are personal faves of this listener in the arena of imaginative and semi-narrative tape manipulations. These six odd studio collaborations don’t disappoint wherever they offer startling contrasts, colliding unfinished fragments, and snatches of spoken or shouted vocalising. Louise Blanchard and Rossana Maggia lent their tonsils of platinum to the project, and David Valentini adds guitars; the pieces are like numerous bewildering chapters in a book of modern poetry, offering music, sound-scaping, atmospheres, noise and much scratching of the noggin by puzzled listeners everywhere. A nice matt black plastic case on spine of which the designer has cleverly squoze the credits and titles.
Bridges Intact (WR 69) is the semi-hopeful promise of Illusion Of Safety, the American artiste Dan Burke whose unclassifiable work is just impossible for me to get a handle on; I think even if I had been listening solidly for the last 20 years I’d still be delightfully baffled and find no underlying pattern to his slightly sinister mode of music. It’s as though he manages to deflect common sense with his bare hands. On here are eight items with mysterious titles about abandonment, forgotten belongings, and passages over water that don’t appear to turn out too well. IOS creates fragile, skittery layers of instrumental music made perhaps with guitars and pianos, expertly aligned with the more foreign and undetectable sounds which he smuggles into his packages like so much mental contraband. Some electronic elements are notable, but the work feels mostly acoustic, and has a stark precision and “clean” feel to every passing moment. Guaranteed to pass on to the listener a sense of unease and disconnectedness within the hour. The astonishing package here, using hi-quality black and tan cardstock printed in white and in blind, pretty much unfolds into a cardboard bridge, complete with cross-girder effects, which you could use as a diorama on your tabletop while you’re lapping up the odd sound-art.
A Blue Book (WR 68) is a suite of seven pieces featuring the team-up of Lionel Marchetti and Olivier Capparos, with the the addition of Yôko Higashi on the final cut. Marchetti and Capparos impressed us in 2009 with their Equus (Grand Véhicule) on Pogus, and Marchetti has also created some fine collaborations with Higashi. Another wonderful set here, making use of Marchetti’s characteristic voice elements that are recorded and chosen with the judicious care of a micro-surgeon, then played back in layered, quiet-volume strategies that make them almost subliminal. The title track is a Capparos solo work, and he vouchsafes unto us that it’s “one of his memory books”; a gorgeous and dream-like world is spun for 19 minutes where reality and memories just seem to fold into one another in constantly-changing tableaux and vignettes. There’s also his restrained and melancholy String Quartet work entitled ‘Tenebrae’, and ‘A Short Story’ realised by all three artistes, another sad work of impossible surrealist beauty performed with synthesizers and voices, and making use of an early (1860) recording of a woman singing ‘Au Clair De La Lune’. What a fitting soundtrack this would make to Rabbit’s Moon by Kenneth Anger. Fantastic, essential release.
As to Unwharscheinlichkeiten (WR64), at time of writing I’m completely unable to get to the CD which is wedged tightly in the right-hand pocket of the wallet which happens to be shaped like the front wall of a piece of modernist architecture; when layed flat it looks like three Toblerones of various gauges. My inability to hear the record in this case may strike you as a fundamental Waystyx design flaw, but it’s my fault. I can’t risk damaging the package; I feel scared enough handling these things as it is. The work is composed by Johannes Frisch and Ralf Wehowsky, and features three process-based variants on a single recording using different edits, layers, playback speeds and so forth. One is however able to download a three-minute sample from the Waystyx website, and it’s a curious fragment of near-empty echoiness with micro-edits and subtle timbres that greets you there.