An Antidote to Music
Original position in magazine: pages 12-13
Hatohan, Utah Kawasaki, MSBR, Aube, Koji Marutani, Akira Yamamichi, Toru Yamanaka, Tamaru, Tak++
Chiky(u)u
UNITED KINGDOM ASH INTERNATIONAL # 3.6 CD (1997)
Kevin Drumm, John Hudak, Earth, Jim O’Rourke, Daniel Menche
Scatter
UNITED KINGDOM ASH INTERNATIONAL #3.5 CD (1997)
Francisco López, Panacea vs Advanced Academy, Put Put, Edvard Graham Lewis, Hecker, AER, Anton Nikkila, Shirt Trax, Fennesz, Noto
Decay
UNITED KINGDOM ASH INTERNATIONAL #3.9 CD (1997)
Investigate this Trilogy or Triptych of compilations as soon as possible. A tripartite electronic and field recording international survey, mostly new artists from (respectively) Japan, America and Europe…all extremely strange and worrying sounds, and even if you like droning Ambient noise you may find some of it a bit too far-out for your tastes. As a listener, you’ve got to do some of the work yourself. Little of it is actually ‘musical’ at all, deriving from other sound sources. The project almost comes across like an antidote to music.
Chiky(u)u is a series of environmental recordings with a twist…’all material used in the sound pieces is gathered from the earth (stones/water etc) or activity resulting from movement in the earth (earthquakes etc)’. Starting off on this rather traditional Japanese premise - respect for the mother planet, landscape art like Hiroshige woodblock prints in sound - the technology whisks us into the twentieth century with tape treatments, layers of overdubbing, extreme volumes and stereo panning effects that even the most stoned out psychedelic record wouldn’t dare experiment with. The listener becomes a worm in the ground, a spawning salmon leaping up a waterfall, a wood-boring beetle disturbed by a sudden earthquake. Ten new works by Japanese sound artists unknown in the UK, and one hidden track - includes ‘Water Margin’ by Tamaru, who attached electrodes to the banks of the river Arakawa; ‘Scenes 4′ which is a field recording from a National Park in Osaka; and Akira Yamamichi’s ‘Topography I-V’, described as ’sand dust limestone cave dead mine crystal frequency magnetic field’. Not a record to sit down and listen to, so much as an organic thing to live with: plant it in the CD player and watch it grow over a long period.
Scatter - the second in the trilogy showing our Mother Earth theme is taking off in a big way. Agriculture is one key; the first part offers the sounds of the earth crying, in part two the farmer plants his crop, ’scatters’ his seed. For further detail, perhaps the secret blueprint is another Touch-distro release Farmers Manual, see below. Nature allusions are evident in the titles of the five tracks here, John Hudak’s ‘Sketch of a Field’ and Daniel Menche’s ‘Unholy Cricket Fuck’, and the third artiste is simply named Earth. ‘Cricket Fuck’ suggests a crop failure on a par with the disaster in Days of Heaven, as a swarm of locusts invade in a beautifully photographed vignette. Menche’s visceral power is no less persuasive.
But our final stage is the most pessimistic, Decay - the ultimate end of our our harvest kept too long in the grain silo. No joyous hymns about bringing in the sheaves here, brothers. A finality underscored by the fact that this is the last-ever Ash International Release, and official release date tallies with Armistice Day. The manna from heaven should be eaten and enjoyed today, while you still can (Exodus, Ch 16). This CD is still being investigated in the Sound Projector house; it gave me nightmares the night after its arrival. A selection of extreme and unsettling sound artists from Europe, of which the unremitting loop structure of ‘I Saved M.I.T (Yes I Did)’ leaves you with one of the most indelible stains in the brain. Decay is DARK, the so-called Dark Ambient comp Narcosis is a bright August day in comparison…the trilogy turns into a Hieronoymous Bosch triptych, most probably The Garden of Earthly Delights. Chiky(u)u is the Japanese ‘Heaven’ of the triptych’s left wing, on the right it’s clearly the ‘musical hell’ delineated by Decay…but what can Scatter tell us about the state of the world today? Listen and learn…it’s not a palatable message.
Music nowadays is becoming invasive. It projects its way into your life and pushes aside everything else to make room; listen to any record with an ‘In Yer Face Bass’ and you’ll get the picture. Or simply enter any pub, shop, restaurant or building on the high street and see if you can escape the loud in-house radio or CD jukebox. (What’s next…Government sound trucks in the streets playing mandatory purchase Elton John singles?) This Ash International trilogy is an alternative, it presents musicians who barely intervene in the world; their sound offers us a transparency, like a floating OHP slide or a microdot sealed onto your eyeball. A prism through which we might interpret the world anew.
In today’s arena it’s becoming increasingly easy to suggest that the sounds of nature alone can be music. This trilogy seems even more subversive to me, posing a radical question as to whether we actually need music at all. In a world of too many CDs, perhaps we need more like this, perforated with the healing balm of silent rest-periods, presenting a paradoxical conundrum about our conditioning and listening practices. This slight of hand is reflected even in the throwaway remark in the press release to the first item, ‘comes in a gatefold plastic waller which comfortably fits into your hip pocket for easy access’ - undermining through satire the conventional presupposed notions of CDs as useful consumer objects. I suppose this argument does collapse if you actually go and purchase these CDs, but blow it - you really have to hear them. Probably viewed as little more than an ‘interesting side development’ elsewhere, but I care very much for this little set.
ED PINSENT
[2004 additions: the title Touch Song Trilogy is completely inappropriate, as the releases are on Mike Harding’s Ash International label, rather than his sister label Touch. Full artist credits, not in the magazine, have been added to the online version. Earth are a noisy guitar amp band, rather than an ‘artiste’.]