Category: Recent arrivals

New promo CDs in The Sound Projector box

March 7, 2014

BlakesianWilliamness: a heady noise psychedelic journey of inner space

Holism Gaea, BlakesianWilliamness, Heart & Crossbone, CDR-HCB042 (2013)

As its title suggests, this debut album by new duo Holism Gaea is inspired by the British poet / artist William Blake, in particular his early personal philosophy as expressed in his work “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. I must admit I know very little about Blake and have not read that work but I hazard that some of its ideas on dualism in art and human existence prefigure Friedrich Nietzsche’s later concept of the development of art and culture in Western societies, revolving around two polarities of Apollonian order, structure and authoritarianism on the one hand, and Dionysian spontaneity, inspiration and creativity on the other. To be honest, I get very little sense of Blake’s early dualistic worldview from this recording and I think your enjoyment of the music need not depend on knowing any of the writer’s corpus.

The music is a mix of noise, tribal and space ambient, and post-industrial. “Antares Fall” leads off with a sinister beat against a weird spitting and hissing space-travel noise / electronica background. Cold sculptured tone effects form a repeating melodic motif while wubbly electronic sounds erupt and bubble continuously. The track develops into a lumbering majestic opus of mesmeric spooky voodoo rhythms and beats, runaway electronic thrills and flips, and echoes of a distant alien god looking over its cosmic creation and voicing more commands as galaxies and nebulae spring into being and fly out to the farthest reaches of the universe. Altogether this is a most strange and impressive opus that could well stand on its own as it draws in listeners and takes them on a trip through huge vistas of space at the speed of light. “But into the Wine Presses” is a more mysterious piece of spiralling noise and frothing texture over which sharp pin-prick tones dance lightly. “Ah! Sunflower” is a wonderful track of both early shuddering noise storm, eerie UFO lift-off effects and warm gentle cosmic-space tone ambience over which the Blake poem of the same name is recited.

More deliriously cosmic trance music, highly immersive to the point where it might be overwhelming and suffocating, follows: “The Argument” especially is a dark and sinister psychedelic mindfuck of wobbling rubber drone and abrasive texture crunch and shuffle. A robot voice detracts from the music which is forced to assume a more passive role while the vocals drone on but whenever the speaking stops, the noises and tones are able to fly as sky-high or as deep in the bowels of Sheol as they like. The album concludes with another epic space voyage that takes listeners deeper into realms and sub-realms of the extended universe as its branches stretch ever further into infinity. The sounds and textures quickly overflow the limits of restraint and boil into exaggerated clouds of noise chaos. The structure collapses and cannibalises itself, staving off final implosion where it can. But Dark Nemesis claims her own eventually.

This is quite heady music, highly absorbing especially when the singing or chanting ends and allows the instrumentals to launch themselves as far into the firmament of the heavens as they can. At times though some passages of music can become a bit comical possibly because the musicians let themselves go with the music and it flows or falls into excess. A lot of the music here is not exactly original; most parts will sound familiar to people already steeped in epic space-ambient psychedelia and it seems as if Blake’s early philosophy provides a convenient excuse for an all-embracing space-voyage soundtrack. But if you simply want music to transport you away into inner space, there are few recordings that can match this one for its consistency.

March 6, 2014

Quiet Village

Mike Cooper
White Shadows In The South Seas
AUSTRALIA ROOM 40 RM454 CD (2013)

Research wise – I’ll readily admit to falling ass over tip, when it comes to the career of a certain Mike Cooper. I thought that it was pretty damn unlikely that the highly regarded English avant guitarist/composer and Recedent could be one and the same guy who was behind a slew of very fine prog blues elpees back in the late sixties/early-to-mid seventies like the fabulously named Trout Steel (Dawn Records) and Life and Death in Paradise on the Fresh Air imprint. That would entail a really radical change of direction over some time admittedly… but one and the same person it surely is… mea maxima culpa and curse these blindspots!!

With a twenty-year love of all things south seas-related, Mike has gradually honed a particularly singular technique in merging experimental string bending styles/tonalities with the tiki bar ambience/birdcall-populated soundstage of lounge exotica. Souvenirs of a plastic Hawaii peopled by the likes of Arthur Lyman, duplicious first lieutenant to one of the genre’s originators: Martin Denny (read Incredibly Strange Music, Volume One for the whole story…).

White Shadows in the South Seas (c.d.) comes as a rather belated successor to the Rayon Hula 10 inch vinyl set and for about a third of the journey (by outrigger naturally), it’s all plain sailing with “Dr. Derelict” and the stellar lap steel figures of “Night Flower Tapu” easily functioning as moderne travelogue soundtracks. But further on, things get incrementally darker, with snaking tendrils and sundry foliage proving too much for the sun’s rays. Those early suggestions of Jon Hassel’s ‘Fourth World’ series and Pyrolator’s sampler-based “Wunderland” have clearly faded away and instead cuts like “Lung Collapse” and the brassy reverberations of “Tapu Lifted” (irrespective of mother nature-derived loopery) inch closer to the more foreboding area of the industrial tone poem. It’s like being so caught up in the lushness of these idyllic surroundings has made the intrepid voyagers completely oblivious to the leeches syphoning precious fluids from their flesh. Very rarely has anything from the contempo exotica subgenre flagged up this number of ‘Danger in Paradise!’ warnings.

March 6, 2014

Toxic Beach Party

Old Komm
Ventspils EP
UK DISCREPANT CREP08 EP (2013)

Latvia’s sixth largest city, Ventspils, has been a shipbuilding history that goes back to the Sixteenth Century. The port’s ice free harbour still makes it an important transportation hub today, so a record which presents electronic music derived from field recordings made in various locations around Ventspils promises a vaguely maritime listening experience, or so I first thought. This is not the case. I failed to recognise any obvious sounds derived from water, ships, heavy plant, cranes and so forth.

An intriguing 12” ep here. Old Komm declare the presence of field recordings, broken synths, found sound and church pipe organs. The first side is peppered with vocal samples like “no other attempt was made” and CITE. Tones could have been supplied by machines from a dental surgery or the cardiology ward of your local hospital. Vintage voltage-controlled synthesisers boosted with Warfarin. The beats are minimal and sullen; they seem from another world on this side, helping as they do only to propel the sinister bass frequencies. After this, there is an interlude with what sounds like the auto-accompaniment feature on one of Leslie Crowther’s massive old one-finger Kimball home entertainment keyboards.

But then things get a bit more abstracted.

From the robot cat purr paired with feedback samples played on a broken midi keyboard on an ironing board for a stand (perhaps) could be the source of the following musical development here – and musical it certainly is – despite their heavy use of samples and field recordings, these sources are arranged in a similar way as if they were traditional musical instrumentation.

Digital water drips, digital cowbells patter, handheld digital hard-drive recorders capture rain splashing on hot tin roofs. What’s interesting here is that Old Komm have an undoubted talent for production; for example, there are some cheap-sounding general midi-type sounds here but they are buried so low in the mix that their very nature is changed from the banal to the exotic. More vocal samples but detourned this time around – only vaguely reminiscent of human speech. A colossal, possibly the world’s largest, Leslie Rotary Speaker eventually comes to rest in a power cut while a Soviet politician rants and a “choir of angels” synth preset (038 on the Roland JV1080 or similar), while a car politely beeps its horn. Something extremely low-end attempts to shred my speaker cones before the sounds of waves breaking on a beach merge with the sound of fluff on the needle on a run-out groove (not mine – I checked), in a kind of post-apocalyptic beach party for the infected.

As I turn the record over, I’m expecting more of the same on side B, but am surprised to discover a completely different view of the city.

More heavy on the field recordings, but this time heavily processed and with a melodic low-register element hung off them. Its clear field recording techniques have been employed in the pre production, but the result is open, narrative and cinematic only without the detail and verve of Mecha/Orga or David Velez, for example. But these are perhaps unfair comparisons – Old Komm present themselves as an electronic act and not field recordists exclusively.

The nicely laid out sepia-toned cover is festooned with detailed photographs by Sergey Gorsky of Ventspils port itself, and the inner sleeve displays a series of shots of the interior of a ruined building presumably somewhere therein.

A vinyl edition of 250.

Discrepant

March 3, 2014

A Walk in the Park

M Vlatkovich / C Lee / K McLagen
Succulence of Abstraction
THANKYOU RECORDS MV015 CD (2013)

Last time I reviewed Michael Vlatkovich my ears were tuned to his ‘Pershing Woman’ – a live recording of his ‘Tryyo’. It seemed to find the group careening up staircase and down in search of a ticking bomb in the building: apt behaviour for an area known as ‘Grand Rapids’. For all its drive and virtuosity though, I did feel the performance suffered from a smidge too much emotional detachment, further expressed in its lengthy track titles, which oddly enough evoked word-playful west coast jazzmen such as Graham Connah. Well, Vlatkovich still favours titular verbosity, but here he exudes more of that west coast whimsy – not least in his decision to work through his set list in alphabetical order – even with his group stationed in Albuquerque for the occasion.

The south-western city certainly seems more spacious than Michigan: no longer do the musicians sound as if they’re playing cheek by jowl, and the resulting sound is open and leisurely. For the most part, Vlatkovich parps along jovially at Saturday morning pace, with occasionally plangent, reflective turns of mind, as on the anomalously short-of-title ‘Know I’. He is accompanied on his stroll by the warm, resonant walking/jogging bass of Kent McLagen and the sparing, almost ornamental cymbal taps and snare rolls of drummer Chris Lee. These fairweather companions exude a positive, ‘day off’ nonchalance in remarking on the generous dimensions of their surroundings, even as they compliment their leader’s oft-elongated notes with impressive rhythmic and tonal precision. And in spite of the novelty ordering of the compositions – something of a posterity effort for Vlatkovich, who doesn’t go in for multiple recorded versions it seems – there is a very natural arc to the performance.

In his notes, Vlatkovich remarks on the trio as his favoured format, offering equal measures of challenge, flexibility and concision: ‘the music dictates a certain path; it is the trio that brings the path into focus’ he explains. And though ‘Succulence of Abstraction’ only constitutes the present trio’s second recording together, the discipline and restraint they demonstrate suggests a more familiar, intuitive and longer-term grouping than one so ‘recent’ in its establishment. A bonus of sorts is the fidelity of the recording (an improvement on my last experience), sounding more like a studio effort than one captured on stage. It was evidently a fruitful endeavour for Vlatkovich, so let us hope he sees fit to keep McLagen and Lee in steady employment for the foreseeable future.

March 3, 2014

Back to the Future

Cavern of Anti-Matter
Blood-Drums
GERMANY GRAUTAG RECORDS GTR#006 2 x LP (2013)

Cavern of Anti-Matter is a project from Tim Gane, previously of Stereolab. Despite the ominous band name and moody black and white industrial photos that adorn the sleeve, this actually turns out to be highly melodic instrumental synth pop of a determinedly retro variety. Most of the songs are essentially extended grooves based around a certain repeated synth riff. Despite the album title, the synth is always the dominant instrument here, with any ‘blood drumming’ fading into the background as either minimal drum machine or simple rock beats.

Opener ‘You’re an Art Soul’ acts as a good primer for the ears. Structurally, very little happens beyond a repeated synth groove, but this just serves to emphasise the stereo panning effects and gradual changes in tone. ‘Hot Electric Insect’ presents layers of sequencer/synth riffs, sounding like banks of sci-fi computers talking to each other. Occasionally the band add some minimal guitar into the mix, with tracks like ‘Movin On Static’ featuring bright summery major chords for the chorus – all very jolly and upbeat, but the retro synth worship always moves back into pole position. There’s a distinct whiff of Giorgio Morodor about tracks like ‘Rotation and Particle Density in D’ and ‘Adventures in One Octave’, with the duppa-duppa style synths in full effect. ‘Dystopian Shopping Mall’ in particular sounds like such a homage it’s almost a surprise when Donna Summer or Russell Mael from Sparks don’t appear and start singing.

All pleasant stuff, though the most modern sounding artist I can compare this to are the mid-90’s grooves of Bentley Rhythm Ace (remember them?). In the late 70’s/early80’s this album would have sounded like a vision from an impossibly high-tech science fiction future, now it more sounds a little more like a knowing homage to the past.

March 3, 2014

Free Fall

Mathias Delplanque
Chutes
BASKARU KARU 23 CD (2013)

Musician, composer and improviser Mathias Delplanque’s latest album is a series of moody, textured instrumental pieces, recorded between 2010 and 2012. It’s a meditative and atmospheric work, full of mysterious clanks and disembodied twangs and chimes, like a gamelan orchestra played by robots.

Delplanque plays everything on the album himself – a right royal panoply of instruments and sound making gear ranging from electronics and guitar, through bells, metallaphone, melodica, kalimbas to various percussion and what the release notes mysteriously call ‘various objects’ – hooking it all up to a portable digital recording studio, before hitting ‘record’ and seeing what happens.

It’s the opposite to what those genius hermits – artists like Todd Rundgren, Prince or, more latterly, Burial come to mind – do, carefully crafting their pieces in the studio, painstakingly layering track on track to create the perfect tune.

Delplanque doesn’t do that. His pieces were recorded live – ‘there was no overdubbing,’ his notes tell us sternly – his recording setup enabling him to play, manipulate, edit and mix the sounds he makes on the fly. You can see it in action here.

The result is a curious mix, part composition, part improvisation, organic in feel, yet often mechanical in sound and texture, and makes for rich listening. In ‘Flo’, for example, its beautiful, shimmering intro, formed of bells and metallaphone gradually transmutes into twanging, clicking chorus, all underpinned by what sounds like a factory assembly line in the background.

Opener ‘So’ also draws from a palette of electronic and acoustic sound, but there’s a tenser, glitchier feel. It’s like something from ‘Rounds’-era Four Tet, with the jittery euphoria replaced with a caffeine-induced jumpiness.

There’s a pleasing consistency to the pieces on this album, Delplanque employing a similar armoury of instruments throughout. He keeps things interesting though, able to vary the mood and feel of each track with subtle variations of tempo and arrangement. In ‘Fell’ a distorted guitar gives the piece a gloomy, subterranean feel, its twang and resultant feedback echoing through the piece and complemented by a lovely bass drone.

This is all undoubtedly impressive. Yet I’m left with an overriding impression of, well, tastefulness. Delplanque’s pieces are poised, sinuous and are admirably well put together. But there’s just not enough grit here to jolt me out of my reveries, as if Delplanque has been too careful, too measured in his improvisation and too keen in his edits to smooth out any rough edges. Get loose and relinquish control, Monsieur Delplanque – what’s the worst that could happen?

March 2, 2014

Action Vision

You may recall we reviewed the lovely music of Neil Luck in October 2012, the London composer who gave us Last Wane Days, a truly unique operetta baroque-pop chamber piece – a real surprise for many a powdered wig. He also appeared with one cut on the GoldDust compilation for Slightly Off Kilter records. Luck it was who sent us Songs From Badly-Lit Rooms (SQUIB-BOX NO NUMBER), received here 13 March 2013, and another uniquely somehow very English piece of wailery and squealation it doe bee. As you can tell I am already lapsing into a Jacobean-era style of writing and speaking, a transformation I considereth most appte when hearing these sodden wood-panelled pieces of musicke, as I sitte beside the fire and peepe dartingly out of a small latch window. These airres fitte for the eares of our right royalle King were played by Tom Jackson the clarinettist, with the viola player Benedict Taylor ever by his side. Both are improvisers and performers well respected about the towne, and indeed have likewise found success beyond the seas. For many pieces the players doe buzz and humme at a frantic rate, as though pursued by two tigers from Oriental parts, or else find themselves besette with unwanted small insects crawling about in their nether garments. My advice would be to wear an iron codpiece and so preserve themselves from The Enemy. Also of interest are the different timbres and acoustic qualities, which vary from track to track; perhaps the titles indeed reflect the real-world locations for their performances. If so, most sensitive to the space of a chamber they have proven themselves. No man can listen and remain unmoved at such delicious sounds; barking, crying, hooting and issuing many a plaintive mew, both raising dreadfull clamours to the skies. The duo perform roped together like two sailors on board a shipload of tobacco, and communicate by unseen means that inform their every thought and move. In fine, most high recommendation for this moving and delightful recording. Now I must needs return to gutting my fish from Cheapside market, ere I expire from hunger.

From 11 March 2013 we received a glorious eccentric and fiery recording of avant-rock solo antics by GR (i.e. Gregory Raimo from France). What an axeman he’s proving himself on these solid high-volume grooves. I’d like to meet his tailor. His A Reverse Age (MEXICAN SUMMER MEX140) is a glorious blast of psychedelic rockabilly noise, the musical fabric cut to shreds by his nasal poison vocalising which mows down eight beds of precious flowers and causes entire trees to wither and die with just one billow from Raimo’s diabolical breath. With his ‘Hymn to Pan’ and his ‘The Primitive Hoodoo’ he owns himself a willing convert to the anti-religion of The Cramps, while his thudding drumming style and raw recording approach fuel the excitement to boiling pitch. The highlight though is his rich and juicy guitar style, often-times heavily psychedelic and reminiscent of Gary Ramon of Modern Art / Sun Dial (or the glorious obscurity Jesse Harper). Fans of Alan Vega and The Fall from circa 1980-1981 should devour this flaming nugget at tremendous speed, using crocodile jaws to chew the slabs of meat. Excessive and flailing adjectives abound on the press release, describing this wild trip as an “argument between myth and reality”, but such unhinged language and frothing praise is quite justifiable in the face of this rockin’ gemuloid.

Here’s the scrapey improviser Tim Olive with another release on the 845 Audio label sent to us from Kobe in Japan on 21 March 2013. He was carrying a metal pail full of old rusty bolts at the time. On Various Histories (845 AUDIO 845-2) he teams up with Katsura Mouri, a fabulously talented sound artist who works with turntables which are doctored with “prepared records”, percussive objects and pieces of metal. She’s been a member of BusRatch, DOOG, and herviviennestrap, but also performs solo and in 2009 she toured with other contemporary turntable manipulators eRikm, Martin Tetreault and Ignaz Schick; and has assembled a cunning multiple turntable set-up, like Philip Jeck used. This is the first I ever heard of Mouri, but I love her delicate approach; there’s none of the heavy-handedness, violence or sarcasm one sometimes finds with your basic turntabling types – present company excepted, of course – who seem intent on smashing the device, breaking records, or trying to single-handedly destroy the history of recorded music through the symbolic annihilation of this culturally-loaded (as they would see it) machine. Instead she works most sympathetically here with Tim, who plays pieces of metal amplified with guitar pickups, to create five intense pieces of heavily abstracted grey rumbly sound, rich with plenty of low bass grumbles and growls, most of the music hovering gracefully on the twilight zone where it might erupt into vicious anti-social table noise at the turn of a feathered cable. However, it never actually does that, and instead suffuses all emotions into this slowly-bubbling green soup of seething restraint. One listen to this shimmery-abraso beauty and I’m head over heels with Katsura Mouri’s playing style, now tempted to seek out her 2000 and 2002 BusRatch records for PARA discs.

March 2, 2014

Death Zoo

The Invisible Hands (ABDUCTION ABDT050) made a fine self-titled album of songs from Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls; he goes under his Alvarius B. alias for this Egyptian project, which took about two years to complete and features various sidemen from Cairo, where it was recorded. Bishop wrote and sings all songs and plays most of the instruments (guitars, keyboards, percussion) backed by Cherif El Masri, Magued Nagasti, Aya Hemeda and Sam Shalabi. Bishop is also responsible for the no-nonsense production of the album – mostly acoustic, dry and crisp sound, no frills, no pedal effects. This spare framework gives us a bare stage, the better to showcase the bang-on precision of the players, and also to bring home the full impact of his songs’ content. When Alvarius B. recorded with Cerberus Shoal in 2002, no maiden’s blush was spared as he dredged up gory, nightmarish images from the deepest buckets of his Id. Well, not especially wackoid surreal lyrics on this occasion, but as ever the content is tinged with dark horrors flapping at the edges like vile bats on periphery of vision. It’s hard to pinpoint any specific nastiness in the words, yet by the end of three minutes you’re walking away unnerved and jumpy. His “patented sinister style” is most evident in the singing; at best, he sounds impatient and twitchy, as if spoiling for a fight. At worst, ready to flare up into unexpected violence at the drop of a flick-knife. His lips curl sardonically around each tune and supply this undercurrent of menace, even when the melody and chords can be quite sweet; the song ‘Dream Machine’ might as well be sung by the dark brother of Frank Sinatra crooning an inverted Perry Como song in a Hellish cocktail bar dive. The clean production puts all of this implied malevolence in clear focus, and leaves the listener very little room to hide; you feel like Alvarius B. has his beady eye fixed on you throughout. All sung in English here, though apparently there’s also a version of the entire release with all the lyrics sung in Arabic, exclusively available to the Middle East market. Sumptuous cover art from the graffiti of Alaa Awad. From 11 March 2013.

In same package we received a Sun City Girls compilation called Eye Mohini (ABDUCTION RECORDS ABDT049), volume three in a series which rounds up assorted seven-inches and rarities by this unique and unclassifiable band. Recorded between 1986 and 1993, here are 14 glimpses into an overheated hashish world of scaryifing Eastern unfamiliarity. Most of these were originally released on their own Majora Records label, around the time of the amazing Torch of the Mystics and Dawn of the Devi LPs, and represent a time when the band were playing around with “Arabic guitar instrumentals” and “pseudo-Asian vocal folk styles”; 1993’s ‘Kickin’ The Dragon’ is one such, a rendition so accurate that you’d easily mistake it as a refugee from one of their Sublime Frequencies compilations. As such, the comp is mostly acoustic rather than “rock music”, although a few tracks such as ‘It’s Ours’ or the long live track ‘Soar / The Flower’ will satisfy your thirst for the crazed and unpredictable “Death to Jerry Garcia” styled guitar jamming this trio could execute while spinning sideways on their whirling Sufi asses ¹. Like the Alan Bishop record above, it’s also got its vaguely threatening undercurrents (I always feel if I fail to listen to their music “correctly”, then I’ll invoke the wrath of Kali upon my head), but it also possesses a lot of the Sun City Girls’ dark humour and sense of the absurd, an aspect which I think they always undertook with perfect seriousness; they played their pranks for keeps. I wasn’t even aware of this reissue project (the other two volumes came out in 2008 and 2009) but then I never had any realistic hopes of being a “completist” when it comes to hoovering up every last scree of this band’s considerable output. Given rarity and high prices of original Majoras these days, this CD is most welcome.

This gag adapted from a catalogue entry by Stefan Jaworzyn. ↩

March 1, 2014

Killer Drone

Guiseppe Ielasi & Kassel Jaeger
Parallel / Greyscale
AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO eMEGO161 LP (2012)

Two sides of pulmonary bass drones, growling sped-down tapes, and winter birch tree arteries of atonal synth – a kind of dystopian In C. Both these pieces are live documents of a new duo performing firstly, with all analogue equipment in Paris in October of 2011; the second, with a digital set-up this time, in Oreno the following June.

Giuseppe Ielasi runs Senufo Editions and has releases on Erstwhile, a 7” boxset on Holiday Records, and has contributed his mastering skills for certain releases on the UK’s excellent Consumer Waste label. Kassel Jaeger, I understand, has previous on Editions Mego, Senufo Editions, Unfathomless, and Antisolar.

The first side, designated Parallel, has tentacles like a giant deep sea octopus surfacing through the spume in horrific slow motion to drag an unsuspecting clipper to its watery end. There are bodies in the water but vital signs are barely registering. The flooded ship’s radio is producing tones that could be fractured Morse code or the reverb-tails of demonic tuning forks. Suddenly, the performance sounds weirdly digital – like there is the presence of software, but we are assured it is all analogue equipment being employed here. Then there’s the presence of what sounds like processed wind-buffeted microphones or the overheard heartbeat of something too near and too unspeakable. There is the sense that machines are at work here; but rather than helpfully and obediently carrying out the musicians’ sonic wishes, they are unstoppably macerating something organic. Tapes run backwards in one channel with digital artefacts running in the other. Fizzing, burning? Are they physically dismantling their machines in real time? I’m sure I can hear cassettes being manipulated/maltreated in the background.

Later, knives are heard being sharpened in an isolated tone-composition. Dangerous levels of moisture build-up on the leaves of plants, tendrils; excess oxide build-up on monolithic tape heads. The familiar and comforting sound of pitched down church organ, while the bearings on the capstan wear down and squeak.

Parallel is a massive, killer, sabre-toothed drone. Like the gates of hell are yawning open while the fragments of electronic pop song whip around in the maelstrom only visible now and again; like when anything accidentally gets sucked into the mammoth turbines of a hydro-electric plant – it doesn’t stand a chance. This is not quiet music; it’ll take your head off. Complex digital flutterings. Reinforced concrete stretches to breaking point, exposing the rusty reinforcement within, tarmacadam bubbles, masonry condenses and vaporises. That kind of thing. About as heavy as electro-acoustic improvisation gets these days. Warm and cold fronts collide. Or occlude. Whatever, once you sit this on your turntable’s platter you’re in for stormy weather.

The flip side, Greyscale is described as “…more laptop oriented”, and this is the performance from Orena, and is apparently only the second time Ielasi and Jaeger performed together. Here are sounds derived from rotation, possibly. Curiously, of the two, this one sounds more “live” to me despite the stated presence of laptops. New and devastating uses of DSP processing and mid-air refuelling. Satellites communicate; distant choirs transmitting from the 11th Century. Ruined abbeys protected by glass boxes – if you want to have a nosy around, its ten pound a punter into the pocket of the National Trust. Sounds grabbed from synthesisers combined with close-mic’ed table object manipulation. As regards an uninformed guess as to possible techniques employed, a lot of rubbing of the microphones themselves perhaps? A radio telescope being demolished slowly in remote woodland. Nature pushes back. Creepers creep, a briar curls over an abandoned stone cottage. If you sit in your car and fall asleep every time you visit a place of interest, it is no wonder your local knowledge is so poor. Just tell me which lay-by you’re going to be in and I’ll come and pick you up. They’ve mic’ed up a snake’s nervous system. Whoa. Back in the room. You’ve probably guessed that this is far more ambient to my ears than the Paris side. And all the better for it.

February 27, 2014

Before & After Skynet

Frank Bretschneider
Super.Trigger
GERMANY RASTER-NOTON R-N 149 CD (2013)

Returning to some of the then-groundbreaking sounds of the early ‘90s – among these, the Warp-championed ‘Artificial Intelligence’ – it’s less surprising how dated much of it sounds now than how charming such a pejorative adjective can be. Aphex Twin and Autechre fared better than most, and have gone on to fashion stimulating, retroactive works such as ‘Analord’ and ‘Oversteps’, which sort of ratifies the notion that being ‘dated’ or ‘of its time’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s possible to watch Star Wars for instance, and still be charmed by the resourceful special effects – such is not the case with the CGI on those egregious prequels though.

Hearing Raster Noton’s ‘Archiv 01’, which accompanied an issue of The Wire in 2005, was a real lightning bolt for me, emerging as it did during the first or second tidal wave of sub-par ‘bedroom’ electronic music, which effectively castrated the DIY democracy value stemming from a new glut of affordable equipment. Clinical in its administration of sound elements and events, and palming the devolutionary baton of techno minimalism from Plastikman, Mille Plateau and the like, the pared down Raster Noton sound alluded that a more ‘authentic’ form of AI had been born: a striking notion, even now.

One of the sonic architects, Frank Bretschneider – Raster Noton co-founder – has continued to refine (though not necessarily redefine) his sound over the years, and this process culminates (for the time being) in this menacing, techno-splicing platter. Full stops bolted into track titles such as ‘Over.load’ and ‘Mean.streak’ offer visual analogue to the intricately machined nuts that connect countless strata of drilled and ballistic, cross-directional rhythms, which in their entirety resemble the densely layered traffic networks envisioned in comics such as ‘2000 AD’. But he doesn’t reveal it at once: Bretschneider is calculating in his administration: each piece whirrs into life like a robotics factory that slowly gains sentience; there’s an incremental shift from cold mechanical repetition to self-assured robo-funk, which seems to mimic the very genesis of consciousness. On every side, rhythmic components vanish and reappear capriciously, as though Teo Macero were our ghost in the machine.

Is it formulaic? I suppose, but attentive listeners will perceive the ‘patterned’ connotation, as opposed to ‘repetitive’. The ruse of the mechanical opening might serve to delude credulous listeners, before the piece’s beating heart becomes apparent in one exultant flash. Subtle stylistic shifts separate one piece from the next, but the whole is peppered liberally with ground Detroit techno particles; entailing a cocktail of dread and awe as the final product – like some replicant – parades its unique, physical perfection for its short life span. Divine in proportion, these tracks display a seeming immortality, which will probably seem quite quaint a decade or two down the line. Will it have been supplanted by something even more lifelike? For that matter, will we?

Senking
Capsize Recovery
GERMANY RASTER-NOTON R-N 152 CD (2013)

If Bretschneider brings us the birth of machine intelligence, then Senking’s soundworld is the ponderous and skull-crushing dark nightscape of the soul after the Terminators have declared war on mankind. Taking as his prima material a dread-inducing low-frequency rumble that other producers might misuse as a welcome mat into their post-techno exhibitionism, Senking claws deep into the darkness to excavate an eerie array of disconcertingly familiar motifs drawn from dubstep to dub-techno. It’s an uneasy listen: partly because it threatens to yield to one or other of these well-worn styles (though never quite does) and because it expresses all the emotion of a sociopathic cyborg.

Most tracks kick off with an uneven, shuffling meter that calls to mind the inner-city prowl of Hyperdub stalwarts King Midas Sound and Burial, or Squarepusher’s electro-jazz superlative, ‘Plaistow Flex Out’. To this solid-but-shifting foundation he adds layers of growling lazer beams, drunken snares and the odd, disconcerting allusion to a known subgenre, such as on ‘Cornered’, where the cocksure bass reverberation suggests dubstep, which does get my spider senses tingling admittedly. Elsewhere, delivery is of a colder, more ‘Blade Runner’ bent, such as on ‘Nightbeach’, which evokes the silent stalk of a seasoned serial killer on a breezy midnight.

I never bothered to decipher the contents of The Fall’s ‘Dr Buck’s Letter’, thus its meaning remains unknown to me, though its filthy bass oozes through each of the eight pieces heard here. Another mystery is how capsizing could possibly affect a vessel as bottom-heavy as Senking’s, but he is evidently a more seasoned nautical engineer than myself. Perhaps the force encountered is that of the storm itself, and the perpetual malaise that informs every melodic gesture is the true indication of peril. With that in mind, and serious flooding affecting England on an unprecedented scale of late, and much speculation about our future of inundation, Senking’s aquatic apprehensions provide me with an apposite soundtrack to the heralding of end times.