The Sound Projector

The Boring Machines label operates out of Treviso in Italy, a lovely small town I happen to have visited once in 1988 as a semi-accidental guest at a comics fair. Whispers For Wolves may have whiff of the ‘gothic’ in their name and mysterious dark cover art, but Language of the Dards (BM006) delivers an engaging mix of roaming free-form acoustic instruments and disembodied voices floating with spectral elegance across droney backdrops. Satan is My Brother with their eponymous record are a four-piece who almost look like a conventional jazz quartet set-up on first glance, until you hear their moody and introspective woodwinds combining with sinister electronic ambiences and snatches of sampled devil-worship rituals and incantations. Lastly, we have Marco Giotto with his solo CD under the name of Be Invisible Now!. Neutrino (BM002) is very low-key ambient electronic swirls made with analogue equipment and is intended as a homage to Klaus Schulze and The Cosmic Couriers, and its plain green cover conceals a bat-like image among the ink blots spread on a green cutting mat.

Also from Italy, the EAQuartett (GRIMEDIA RECORDS), who are a four-piece of academy musicians who combine brass instruments with electronics, free-form guitar, and rock drumming. The two core members started their Music Improvisation Research Group, or GRIM, in 2005. The cover art, which juxtaposes a classical art nude with a pared-down speaker set-up, may tell you something about the predilections of these players.

Yet more music from Italy, a CD by the estimable Andrea Belfi. Knots (DIE SCHACHTEL ZEIT 06) is an incredibly subdued suite of music in four indiscernible parts. Strangely muffled rhythms, resembling a drum kit played in a rehearsal studio four blocks away, leak out into a suffocating mass of atmospheric rumble producing an overall sensation which is not unlike being trapped inside a giant clam. The disc was mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, another maestro of the quiet mode, and it’s just perfect music for tottering about under the blank sky of an English May afternoon. I sometimes wonder what became of Bowindo Recordings. In a sumptuous gatefold digipack which is the hallmark of this highly artistic label.

Dr Markus Jones has sent an interesting document of his large-scale electro-acoustic experiments. Sympathetic Vibration (Prolongation of Sound by Reflection) started out by gathering ambient sounds from around the campus of York St John University (where Dr Jones has a residency). Such a method reflects Jones’ cross-media interests (he’s worked with dance, installations, cinema and noise) and can be usefully aligned with the site-specific experiments of Achim Wollschied. The four long pieces here sit midway between field recording and electronic music and are all strangely compelling. Not quite a ‘released’ record, as what I currently hold is a CDR, although the insert is professionally printed and tells us that the ‘results will be available for download early in 2008′. I’d suggest exploring the University website to seek what ye may.

A split LP of guitar music is available from Barge Recordings in Brooklyn NY. MGR VS XELA (BRG 004) has been sent as a CDR but you can buy the LP or get a digital download from the label website. MGR is Mike Gallagher, a guitarist from the redoubtable Isis, and on Shipping Gold he presents 16 minutes of extremely troubling post-post-avant metal guitar stylings played in a relentlessly slow mode. Anguish-inducing frown-music at its finest…XELA is John Twells from the UK, and his allotted 23 minutes are used to present Calling For Vanished Faces, a fascinating construct of detailed sound-collage. Choirs of eerie voices float around this quagmire of noise, competing for air with a mad jazz drummer and waves of guitar feedback. In its way no less suffocating than the MGR side, yet the angelic voices seem to offer some cause for hope. Boy, I’d certainly like to get a vinyl of this one…

Chop Shop is the New York sound-art veteran Scott Kunzelmann. His Oxide (23FIVE CDP 801673901225) is derived from tapes of his metallic sculptures, junkyard specialities which have featured heavily in his steely soundworks from over 20 years. Those fearing a brutal assault on the ears need not worry however, as this 49-minute CD is an intriguing assemblage of long-form abrasive drones, whose varying timbral qualities have been further distressed by moisture damage sustained by the original tapes. Cover imagery features a close-up photograph of a morass of unspooled cassette tape forming a worm-like jungle of disturbing proportions, and it arrives in an embossed slipcase bearing Chop Shop’s emblem. From same label, we have Boston-based Brendan Murray and his Commonwealth (23FIVE CDP 801673901324), a studio-based many-layered recording. He intends this mighty, monolithic sonic structure as a gesture of respect towards ‘classic [American] minimalism’. Again, 49 minutes in duration, this slow-moving epic is filled with many gradual changes, which I suspect will reveal fine-grained detail if played at excessive volumes. Golden-hued cover art could be a close-up of the fin of a fish or other marine life from the ocean floor. Very deep!

Gnaw Their Tongues has been something of a revelation to TSP contributor Jennifer Hor (and myself) this year, certainly as one of the sickest and most extreme examples of nightmarish Black Metal to have assaulted our innocent ears. “You can see just from these track titles alone the CD is screaming for a review in the TSP, if only we could get our soiled little paws on it,” wrote Jen in February, quoting titles such as ‘Teeth that leer like Open Graves’. An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood (CBR067-2), originally on vinyl earlier this year on Burning World Records, will be out as a CD version later this month from Crucial Blast in the US. The Gnawsters are a couple of Netherlandish maniacs who are real masters at layering recordings – their horrific doom-laden thunderous guitar noise is combined with distorted orchestra recordings, found tapes, and spoken-word interludes describing all manner of unpleasant subjects which you don’t want to hear. The only recording that has induced similar sensations of imperilment and helplessness is Rehtaf Ruo, not a million miles away if you think of this work as an extreme form of electro-acoustic composition. About as far from formulaic BM as it’s possible to get, this is simply hideous noise fit for forcibly inducing the deepest and most insane brain-storms it is possible for human minds to endure. Shriek!

The label also sent Desire in Uneasiness (CBR065-2), the newie by Nadja. Ever since this Canadian duo became the hipster’s avant sludge-merchant of choice, plentiful releases have poured forth representing the overdubbed-guitar excesses of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, not to mention reissues and new versions of their older works, but this five-tracker enjoys the distinction of offering all new material. I would hesitate to say the Nadja bubble has already burst, but so far I don’t hear a tremendous amount going on in these meandering droney grooves that might further the reputation of this talented duo. Business as usual, in other words - in spite of their new live drummer. Also in the package, Trees with Lights Bane (CBR066-2), an incredibly ordinary set of quasi-malevolent doom metal from a Portland quartet. In their hands, noise and feedback become obstacles to the free expression of hate, where they should be used as weapons radiating death at the listener.

Still in the realms of misery and murk, we’ve got a fascinating disc of black-wreathed atmospheric doom from Autopsia. The Berlin Requiem (OLD EUROPA CAFE OECD 084) achieves its effects using the lower register of a grand piano, plus sparing use of synth strings and other instruments, at times sounding as professional and polished in its production as the soundtrack to a film. The Dämmerung Orchestra assisted with these recordings made in Prague during 2006; inside, a photo of old-style mountaineers who seem oppressed by the enormous granite mountain range behind them as they trudge to their doom in heavy boots. Maybe they’re mentally listening to ‘Sounds for Remembering Death’ on this CD.

Coh plays Cosey (RASTER NOTON R-N 091) is an interesting oddity, made by Ivan Pavlov reprocessing and cutting up voice recordings made by Cosey Fanni Tutti. Atomised fragments made from gasps of breath and micro-particles of vowel sounds is what we hear, sometimes resembling pocket-sized disco-beats when cut into patterns and loops. The subtext to this release is something to do with human vulnerability, a theme the duo first hit upon when they were corresponding by email. There’s little compassion or warmth on offer in this strange, artificial sound-world, though; just lots of alienation and fear.

Lastly, we’ve got this strange experimental electronics LP by Jamka. Z Okna Ucha is available as a 12-inch artefact pressed in carbon fossil fuel, but also in digital form as a download for those who do not care to house such artefacts in their abode. Jamka are a duo of Slovak youngsters named Monika and Daniel who use vintage synthesisers, mics, pedals and drum-boxes to produce a species of avant-techno instrumentals, all heavily-amplified, recorded live, and whacked straight onto the tape with no overdubs. The resultant energy and excitement lifts off palpably from the grooves of this little beastie…Jamka spurn polite and tasteful production values in favour of nasty, loud and unrestrained analogue yawps. While I’m too old to groove out to every milestone on this LP’s project path, I gotta ‘fess up that it works like juju when you sense that the voltage overload becomes a little too much for our plucky pair to handle, and things start to veer slightly out of control. I’ll also welcome any record which name-checks the legendary Golem on side two!

Great to hear from Ryoji Ikeda again, whose ultra-minimal electronic abstractions were such a feature of the 1990s for me. He doesn’t appear to have varied his practice much on Test Pattern (RASTER NOTON R-N 093), which so far exhibits the usual enjoyable features I know and love so well – grids, patterns, sharply-defined electronic bursts of energy, high-definition contrasts and dynamics, and the clarity of a diamond razor blade behind those pulsing digital throbs. You could set your watch by Ikeda’s high-precision excursions…he’s the builder of virtual sculpture-installations made of stainless steel, 5000 feet high.

Guitar trio Virak from Denmark provide many mournful and introspective blasts of avant-rock on Threads (MIRROR MIRROR MUSIC mimi01), and their titles and symbolist lyrics are packed with tons of information to feed your clue-hungry paranoia and melancholic tendencies. Their cover features an attenuated sketched-out version of a moose or elk, whose nervous system is made visible through the spidery linework. This may happen to you if you listen to this crisp, edgy music for too long.

English player C Joynes reached us a few weeks ago with his great guitar CD for Bo’Weavil Recordings. Here he is with a mysterious mini-CD Pianer Magick (PR07) for the Cambridge-based CDR label Palimpsest Recordings. Eleven short pieces for the piano appear at first to be inconclusive, abrupt and inscrutable, yet I am persuaded there is much hidden meaning locked in these haiku-like statements. The cover art seems to depict a flock of wild birds, seen through the overlaid rough-hewn mandala with a square cut out of it. Very good.

Maja S.K. Ratkje is well-known as one half of Norwegian duo Fe-Mail, whose imaginative and powerful noise recordings are always well-received at Sound Projector mansions – indeed the very term ‘noise’ is something I have always found inadequate to express the richness of her music. This is now confirmed once again as I spin the mighty River Mouth Echoes CD (TZADIK TZ 8051), which is a collection of modernist-avant compositions she’s been working on for the last ten years and have now come to fruition thanks to John Zorn’s label (it’s part of the Composer Series). Herein, some staggeringly powerful electro-acoustic experiments on which she processes the guesting musical instruments of the talented external contributors, rendering them into strange and other-worldly shapes. The title piece is 20 minutes of atonal composition scored for four viols, and it holds a convincing candle to any given piece of sheet music loosed from the Darmstadt school.

There seems to be a general movement towards the canonisation of John Fahey and all those associated with that maverick and unique acoustic guitar player. The recent discovery of these 1980 live recordings of Robbie Basho is no exception…the presentation of Bonn Ist Supreme (WEAVIL29CD) stops short of depicting the man as a saint, what with the effusive tributes written by James Blackshaw, Richard Osborn and Steffen Basho-Junghans, and the powerful image (used twice) which elevates Basho’s guitar to the status of a holy relic mounted in a shrine. However, Basho’s music and singing on these live recordings from the Bonn Kulturforum will not disappoint, and the spiritual energies with which he is credited by his acolytes shine forth on every minute of this pure-silver music. The title ‘Rocky Mountain Raga’ sums up perfectly his dual interests in eastern and western musical forms, and his genius in combining them so seamlessly through the sheer magic of his strings and his quicksilver fingering. May I suggest a mandatory purchase for this one.

Yoshi Wada’s release is another CD which requires compulsory deployment of Visa, Switch or other major credit card. The Appointed Cloud (EM RECORDS EM1076CD / OMEGA POINT OP-0005) is a single hour-long recording of a 1987 piece which he realised in the New York Hall of Science; it’s mostly a large-scale sound installation involving a gigantic hand-built pipe organ and computer interfacing. Plus there’s bagpipes galore and huge clashing sheets of metallic percussion and tympani drums. The titanic, awesome forces unleashed from these sonic combinations and the visionary imagination of the composer-performer Wada defy any rational understanding…if you’ve ever witnessed a mighty thunderstorm during a summer night and thought you were hearing the voice of God, then this incredible record is for you. With a great fold-out sheet of photos and explanatory notes, score another crucial release for Koki Emura’s fine label.

Four marginal CDRs from the Finnish label Harha-askel will intrigue the questing mind. Talugung (ie Canadian genius Ryan Waldron) expresses clearly the feelings of living Under Humid Light (HA-5) with 11 instrumentals of strange exotic drone, plucked and percussive sounds. Sing With Me (HA-4) is a compilation of unusual music made with human voices – this survey of international underground performers has as many craggy features as the landscapes they are born in. Norwegian electronics duo Bjerga and Iversen are represented on Shortest Way to the Moon (HA-2), a sadly rather half-baked live document from their 2006 UK tour which is filled with pallid, meandering drones and pulses. Lastly American singer Andy Futreal laments how Ophelia Wanders (HA-3) on his very average collection of bedroom acoustic guitar folk-blues improvisations. Our UK customers can order these very limited pressings from Boa Melody Bar. Many thanks to Ville Forss for sending these.

Another micro label is LF Records run by Greg in Bristol. In this envelope from the thin end of the Western wedge, we got Dsic with Bush Psychedelia (lf004), a 3-inch CDR whose opening track of intensely disrupted fizzing electronic gibberish is decidedly tasty. Said Dsic (his monicker is sometimes rendered with a pirated version of the copyright Compact Disc logo) also collaborated with Cardiff’s Ian Watson to produce Phantom Dsic, a joint release with Phantomhead Recordings. Three tracks of insane hoover-noises and unremitting sequenced digital blather will soon clear out your mental-mush! Nice package on this one too – a strange photo of an anatomical head mounted with photo-corners in a black card wallet. Ahh, and here is the second companion disc to this project – it’s housed in a black clamshell with same x-ray head image adhering as a postage stamp. Further unrestrained electronic burbling and shredded sound pours out of Dsic on his Love City full-lengther (lf003), which presents a very paranoid and sprawling urban portrait of the decaying, over-developed city which spawned it. Very little love in this city selon Dsic. Can you resist a title like ‘Ambient Deathbed’? Lastly, a clear clamshell is unpopped to release the incoherent horrors of New Zealander Duncan Bruce and his New Glass Tapu (lf005). A densely varied set of sound collages, horror-movie instrumentals and upsetting ambiences await you here. What must Bristol be like these days? No longer the sunny dreamland that it was 20 years ago, that’s for sure. Be sure to check out this label for further psycho-geographic reports and ‘Western thunder blasts’ from the front line.

Continuing our occasional forays into avant-garde film, may we thoroughly recommend this new DVD box set of the works of Guy Sherwin. Optical Sound Films 1971-2007 (LUX) contains a good run (maybe his entire ouevre) of the “classic” 1970s films, plus later reworkings of same films into ‘more complex projections’. There’s also an excellent well-illustrated book included in the set where Mr Sherwin provides clear and simple notes on how each film came to be, and a handy explanation of how optical sound actually works in film projectors. (This is a process which has always fascinated this writer, and is also manifested in the work of Lis Rhodes). Plus there’s a visionary essay in the back by Sebastiane Hegarty where the nature of seeing what we hear is explored in all its fascinating aspects. Using sound projectors as artistic machines seems almost archaic now; it is a mechanical, Newtonian process which has probably all but vanished in the 21st century, where the image format of choice is all digital and depends heavily on an ever-updating scheme of codecs.

Around 1981 I was little short of obsessed with UK structural-materialist film. I thought about it too much and it didn’t do me any good. It was a very unhappy time. I knew Pete Woodin at art college, and I think he had been ‘mentored’ by Guy Sherwin in some small way. He was certainly in favour of Sherwin’s pared-down, basic approach to cinema. The early films you will see here are compacted, ingenious examples of projected abstract art, for the most part using only black and white shapes – or rather perhaps we should say making the most of projected light and celluloid. Harry Smith’s similar abstractions (dancing squares and other geometric shapes) come across as positively romantic in comparison to this restrained, severe work.

The Lux Cinema was to some extent the successor body to the London Film-Makers Co-Operative, an organisation founded almost at the same time as the London Musicians’ Collective. At one stage they even shared premises in North London. Now both are defunct, a testament to the way that marginal art practitioners have a very precarious existence in this country, regardless of the political climate. Said climate is currently not exactly favourable to improvised music or structural film. The Lux used to have a cinema in Hoxton Square, but that’s also disappeared. Fortunately Luxonline now exists as an ‘Artists’ Moving Image web resource’. The site is worth visiting, not only to order this DVD, but to see streaming clips of experimental film and video.

Vomir is Romain Perrot, the French nabob of harsh noise wall. Claustration (ATWAR023) is a six-CDR set presented in a DVD box with hinged components and each disc decorated with images of death (skulls and a gibbet being the most prominent). Plus you get a free button decorated with another skull and further inserts depicting depressing death imagery. While discs 1-5 present the glorious symphony of roaring racket that is Claustration, the sixth disc gives us some ‘bonus archive material’, including one track from Vomir’s first ever release. 40 numbered copies exist of this marginal monstrosity. It’s a grand thing that Vomir does what he does, but as I’ve said many times he steadfastly refuses the possibility of dynamics or change. So if you want 5-6 hours of grimly unchanging tornado-blast distorted horror-slabs, you know where to look. M. Perrot also kindly sent me two of his cassette tapes, one of which is his first ever release (he just found a few of these historic documents tucked away in a cupboard somewhere) and a split CDR he made with another harsh noise act whose name I decline to provide at this time. Both cassettes and the CDR, it is fair to say, feature sexual imagery and perverted themes quite prominently. One of them even uses the word ‘frottage’, an example of esprit Gauloise in the way it refers obliquely to the solitary vice Anglais. The CD box set was packed with paper towels, ostensibly to protect the discs, but perhaps I’m expected to put them to another use. Despite what I write about his work, the robust Vomir seems to be immune to criticism, thankfully. He warned me this was coming in February: “still no dynamics, no ideas…but you asked me to keep sending you my material hehehe”.

Blue Wine murmur through 19 lugubrious songs on Harp On (BROKEN ELECTRIC RECORDS DEV06); the leader of this post-countrified grunge trio is a modernist composer from Australia named Kahl Monticone. He sings in a world-weary bass voice. Not quite in my line, but the languid pace and detailed, symbolist lyrics may appeal to fans of Lambchop or Tindersticks. Originally on Devastation Records, it’s since been picked up by another label.

R.P. Collier from Portland in Oregon sent us Deconstruction of Twilight, a half-hour CDR of his guitar improvisations. This one is a little too sketchy and tentative for me, but there are some nice moments when the subdued feedback murmur threatens to engulf his meandering plucks. The sleeve note claims that it ‘opens out like an origami mandala of chill’. Enquiries to skeptikalist [at] gmail [dot] com.

It’s often hard for me to credit that Faust are still recording, but here comes Kleine Welt (live) (EKTRO RECORDS 046) as hard evidence. This incarnation of the famous and indefinable genius-deconstructionist heroes features original member Hans Joachim Irmler, the seriously talented organ player, and Steven Wray Lobdell, that deranged American wild-genius guitarist. Lobdell has been contributing great things to Faust projects for at least ten years and he can do no wrong for me when he picks up his mighty axe with a derrick. Irmler (perhaps the only original member here) is likewise proving a master of improvisation, sonic experimentation and electro-acoustic brilliance with his various solo and side projects. Only spun a couple of the long instrumental cuts on this collection of 2006 live performances, but I am mightily impressed by the steady relentless rhythms, and the sheer gravity and weight of these solid post-krautrock excursions. This CD has the potential to untap much dark energy and unleash it into the world.

Greg Headley’s 24-carat abnormalities promises to be quite an intriguing bucket of electronic shape-shifting. Although created with guitar, software and shortwave radio recordings, the inspiration for the works comes from within the depths of his labyrinthine personality and life-changing episodes brought about by exotic travels. While most of this CDR is pleasant but ordinary melodic ambient droning, the opening cut is filled with exciting cut-up changery which veers from insane noise to soothing electric tones, with additional textures supplied from his radio set. Headley’s ninth release.

Candidate for ‘puzzler of the week’ is a curious recording by Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, here trading under the name of @c. Their Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom (CRÓNICA 031) takes the practice of sampling into a strange and hermetic dimension. About 11 musicians were recorded over a five year period, only to have their distinctive contributions rendered down into this digital soup of confusion. Filled with perplexing angles and dimensions, to listen to this is like wandering in a crazy house. The title of the work I think confirms their approach to sonic architecture is somehow skewed with a perverse desire to keep turning everything sideways and upside down. Better not hire these two guys when you’re moving house!

This bundle of blessingness comes from Jesse Paul Miller, the Seattle-based artist whom we interviewed in issue 11. Everything you see is a CDR packaged by his own artisan’s mitts into little xeroxed packages and plastic wallets. The main event is called Reconstructed Optigan Disc, a very limited (10 copies) CDR mounted on top of an acetate print of a black disk. A small and easily-produced art object. The acetate print depicts an old Optigan record with extremely thick grooves, an image which Jesse has collaged and cut up with all the abandon of Christian Marclay (who glued together shards of actual vinyl LPs, to make a multi-coloured sculpture). Doubtless what we hear on the CDR (50 short tracks) is snippets of the sounds that have resulted from Jesse’s peculiar brand of process-mayhem when he salvaged what he could from one of these antique novelty records. (For more astonishing information on the world of Optigan than you could have dreamed of, see here.) Fragments of bouncy organ music leak out from a morass of deathly, horrifying and unnatural sounds, for the most part happy accidents produced by malfunctioning equipment meeting a damaged object. This overlaps strongly with the excellent work of Michael Gendreau in California. Jesse made something of a name for himself in the Seattle art scene with his ’secret records’, where he recast old vinyl discs in resin and filled the resin with foreign bodies before it set, thus producing many a colourful artefact / sculpture. I commissioned a special one myself (I can see it on my wall as I write). And he produced a 45rpm EP recording what happened when he played one of these recast monsters on a record player. Jesse’s preoccupation with vinyl history extends to his collection of forgotten easy-listening LPs from the 1950s and 1960s (we would call them charity-shop records), which he assiduously collects from yard sales and goodwill shops around the state of Washington. He wrote a little article about his hobby for Eric Lanzillotta’s Bixobal magazine recently. One such item lifted from his box, Love After Midnight by The Moonlight Strings (COLUMBIA MUSICAL TREASURES DS 441, 1969), has had its cover recycled for this Optigan release. ‘Look inside’, Jesse has helpfully written on the back with a fibre tip pen, just in case I missed finding the CDR. Also in the pack: a strange cut-up record I think is made from playing an old Folkways LP backwards, plus one by his band Algae, The Man Who Broke Everything, a project he started with John M. Allen. Also about four CDRs (and a DVD) of field recordings and ‘ambient’ sounds he made during his travels in Thailand and Laos. He’s going there again in April ‘with a little bit better equipment this time, back to SE Asia for six months including Java, Bali, Sumatra, Thailand, Japan, Myanmar and Laos’.

A fine bewildering package sent from Allon of Entr’Acte, a UK record label named after the famous Surrealist movie by René Clair and which it looks like might be devoted to the choicest cuts in avant sound-art dronery and electronic buzz-swarm attack. The owner clearly has in his possession a heat-sealing device of some sort and wants to package everything he possibly can in clear vinyl wallets and cellophane wrappers with sealed edges, much like Gen Ken in New York laminates anything that moves. On receipt of this box I felt like the astronauts on the Jupiter mission in 2001 : A Space Odyssey with their packets of nutritious space food. I found that not only were all the records (vinyl and CD) inside individually heat-sealed, but so was the entire package itself. Sensuous shiny shapes result, especially for the 12-inchers. But I still haven’t played a note of music at time of writing. Wait until I find my kitchen scissors. The Idea Fire Company 45rpm single Lost At Sea (E51) will be of interest I am sure – it’s from their European tour of 2005 and Frans de Waard is on the record alongside American avants Scott and Karla. Frans is also responsible for Shifts and Trees / Leaves (E43), which is the ‘quiet guitar’ project of this great Dutch genius. Filter Feeder has produced Pleasure Cycle / Peak Oil / 13/ 11 (E44), an extremely cryptic title which to me reads like a few frames from a Jean-Luc Godard film shot in a gas station. Julian Doyle is Filter Feeder and (from his sleeve notes at least) is a process artist who leaves very little to chance. How will this one sound? Or the one by Kallabris which is called Hund Vor Die Tür (E49), apparently some sort of tangentially-skewed concept LP about dogs and the canine world? All the vinyl records allow a three-columned sleeve note for the artist to present a smattering of contextual ideas for us to chew on, and the label’s design sense is utilitarian and uniform, allowing a clarity right down to the large, no-nonsense serif font that is used for the catalogue numbers, which as you can see are as basic a deployment of alphanumeric references as you could wish for. Lastly, my hands are caressing a fat pouch which probably contains many CDs sealed up in foam packing. On the top of said pouch, the name of Christopher McFall is visible, suggesting he recorded Four Feels For Fire. I’ll have to let you know how these items actually sound when spun and determine artistic merit at later date, but the vibe here is that all material is credible and worthy of attention. Also note the use of red tape on the package, a gesture which can’t help but remind you of the work of artist Eleonora Aguiari (who wrapped Lord Napier’s statue in London), but also the grid-based works of late 1960s conceptual artists…now I feel like I have a cardboard miniature Donald Judd piece of mailart in my home.

Three new pieces of beautiful music from the estimable John Clyde-Evans, also known in recent years as Tirath Singh Nirmala. The LP with the tree trunk and other woodland imagery on the back is a record he made under his Nirmala name with Richard Youngs, which maximises the loud and powerful violin droning for which this musician is so justly renowned, with percussion and bells for accompaniment. Not sure if this LP has a title, label or catalogue number even. Very clearly influenced by the music of the Indian sub-continent which he has made his home. The second LP with the randomised markings which almost resemble a disjointed cursive script is Delight In The Stream (AMEN ABSEN 001) and credited to John Clyde-Evans. With three long tracks recorded in 2006, this contains references to Eastern mysteries such as the ‘Etonal Ricedance’ and ‘Plug music for Noah’, references which (however obliquely) show the artist’s continuing preoccupation with water imagery and aquatic themes. Well, there’s Noah with his flood…and you need a lot of water for a rice field, no? And I assume the stream we are invited to delight in is a mountain spring, but perhaps it refers to something more metaphysical. Also a CD (not pictured) on Digitalis Recordings digi044, whose title is hard to pin down, but which features the tunes ‘Apetal Thunderfall’ and ‘Cutting Down Orange Towers’. Both this and the LP feature, I think, evidence of the musician’s experiments with digital recording and editing technology, techniques to which he was introduced by Neil Campbell. The results are certainly interesting to listen to – instruments sound heavily denatured, and all sorts of ‘impossible’ speeded-up events and overlays are taking place in cosmical patterns that would be impossible to reproduce in real time. At first hearing, these works may appear to lack the harmonic confidence of the music he performs with real instruments, and don’t immediately cohere into satisfying mandalas of musical perfection. But I think it’s a question of digesting the complexity over time, allowing the overall shape of these strange compositions to reveal themselves. Clyde-Evans is in no doubt that these new records are ‘much better…more oomph!’

Always nice to showcase an attractive vinyl package as best we may….beautiful and striking screenprinted sleeve art on this one, resembling a dust jacket for a mystery novel published in the 1930s, executed with panache by one of the performers on the LP. This is the second release on Anna Tjan’s Dancing Wayang Records label, a small enterprise in West London. For each release, the idea is that she records the music herself in her own studio, and packages the production for issue as a limited edition art object on her own label. “My aim at this point is to release music that I recorded personally utilizing the studio I work in,” Anna reported in December last year. “I’m trying to have a hands-on approach to the label and the recording and mixing of the material is very much a part of that.” Acting as sound engineer, producer, art director and probably distribution manager as well…you can’t get much more hands-on than that! Directing Hand are Alex Neilson (the free drummer who also appeared on this label’s first LP) and Lavinia Blackwall, a Glaswegian singer with a background in studying and performing early music and member of Pendulums in her home town. Who Put The Blood (DWR002) is a record which exploits her beautiful voice and classical training, showcasing it alongside the noisy unkempt drumming of Neilson. One thing the record is trying to do is discover and expose ‘parallels’ between experimental noise, improvisation, and traditional folk music, a project Mr Neilson has been engaged with for some time. I personally have yet to be completely convinced about this line of thinking, but we can’t deny Neilson’s distinctive contributions to the 2005 LP No Earthly Man by Scots performer Alasdair Roberts. Besides being great to listen to (the voice of Roberts is unearthly), No Earthly Man is a fine record which has a very interesting take on notions of authenticity and continuity in the traditions of folk music, debates which have been occupying the minds of those in Cecil Sharp House for many decades. Accordingly on Who Put The Blood we hear their idiosyncratic and doom-laden version of Child Ballad 13 ‘Edward’, and we also hear Blackwall being prompted to turn in a free-form vocalising and wailing episode propelled by the manic drumming of Neilson. The latter experiment is clearly inspired by the Patty Waters LP for ESP-disk, something which has become a common touchstone for young minds everywhere these days, but it’s impressive how the classically-trained Blackwall doesn’t come a cropper at all and turns in a convincing bleat. I wish I could say the same for Neilson’s peculiar singing, but perhaps I will find his style is an acquired taste and concede that it adds a ‘rustic’ charm to the recording.

The ballad ‘Edward’ of course is known in many versions (including some American variants), and I’ve long wished to write an incisive essay that accounts for the existential gloom that this mysterious story exudes (like all good death ballads, it can be read as an unexplained detective story that dwells on the violence and anguish and doesn’t begin to solve the motive for the murder at all), and might somehow tell the tale of how we arrived at the version that was used as the soundtrack for the 1949 avant-garde film The Lead Shoes by the American visionary film-maker Sidney Peterson. When I first saw this astonishing film I was mystified for days by the unforgettable images, but also by the music, with its strange combination of unbalanced Dixieland jazz, wild drumming, and free-form vocalising that extemporises freely around the lyrical content of this ancient ballad. The credits don’t reveal much about how it came about, simply stating ‘Sound by The Three Edwards and a Raven’, but I recall reading that Peterson used the services of some enthusiastic college students. It’s not a random choice of music; the story of The Lead Shoes itself is a modern update on the same ballad, believe it or not. You can see this meisterwerk here and find out for yourself. At all events, perhaps this is an example of the same seam of commonality among musical forms, which Neilson is trying to mine.