Got this triple-CD set by the great Thomas Dimuzio, probably sent in October 2020 when we got a copy of the Slew Tew compilation. Balance (GENCH TD234 CDX3) brings together 28 instances of collaborations, live performances and such like, mostly dated around 2014 onwards (although the earliest is from 2009), between Dimuzio and a host of international experimental star names. He’s arranged it under headings, so that’s Duos on disc one, Trios on disc two, and Combos of three or more on disc three. Among the names I recognise: David Lee Myers, Jon Leidecker, Rick Reed, Dan Burke, Alan Courtis, Joseph Hammer and Rick Potts, Chuck Bettis, Moe Staiano, Gino Robair, Ava Mendoza…and there are plenty more besides, amounting to a unique “sweep” of the experimental underground insofar as these entities met up with this ingenious electro-acoustic performer. Useful as this is, it’s quite a sprawl at three CDs, and I haven’t yet found any real stand-out tracks or amazing events; indeed the prevailing mood is almost one of anonymity, as one inexplicable episode follows another, creating an abiding impression of strangeness and unpredictability. Maybe this is the best way to let the Dimuzio culture spread itself into your life, like its own “ecosystem” with particular manners, language, protocols, and customs. I kept hoping for more wild noise, but I’ll settle for these sinister drones and creeping ambiguities.

En Souvenir De L’Horreur (RONDA rnd09) by the crazy French experimental band Sun Plexus 2 is very old (released in 2008) and may have been sent by Sébastien Borgo as a catalogue item in one of his many packages. Laurent Berger and Rémy Bux may be the other two members; we have heard Berger in various other projects, such as Suboko and Le Cable Du Feu, plus there was the unforgettable event when Sun Plexus teamed up with Nihilist Spasm Band. Crazy avant-rock with a punky edge and perhaps some tape experiments too; weird titles, and lyrics are growled and snarled rather than sung. I’m consistently perplexed by the very peculiar music of Sun Plexus, with its odd stop-start rhythms and the musicians’ general refusal of everything, their stubborn compulsion to avoid fitting into any known genre of recorded music. On that account I suppose they’re no more bewildering than Boredoms, but at least the Japanese band managed to be entertaining as well as shocking in their colourful try-anything antics. Conversely Sun Plexus come across as slightly nasty, as if carrying a grudge against the audience, and unwilling to explain anything as they strum and thump away with stern expressions. I’m hoping one day that this will all click into place for me, and we can see them as carrying on the achievements of Faust or other greats.

Three CDs of music by the excellent Biliana Voutchkova on Blurred Music (ELSEWHERE MUSIC elsewhere 001-3), documenting three live performances from Dec 2016, where this violinist was joined by Michael Thieke and his clarinet for these dates in America. The word “blur” is being used to set the scene for “indeterminacy”, and refer to the method used by both musicians, for instance alternating between improvisation and composition in the structure of each piece. Ultimately, they’d like to “blur” time itself. There’s nothing unfocussed about their playing, if that’s what you were thinking; Voutchkova in particular lands each note with the grace of a bird somehow alighting on a cloud. Not minimal music; it’s packed with empathy, emotion, meaning, and genius. Released in 2018.

Austrian genius Katharina Klement here with Textur (KALD CD 03) – 14 experiments composed for the piano and loudspeaker, using a six channel tape recorder. Some technicians and mixers are credited, e.g. Flo Prix, Oliver Gross, David Petermann, but I think this is all played by Klement. I love the precision of this – it feels like she’s typing it all out by longhand, setting each note in metal in preparation for a letterpress edition. She packs so much complexity and density into short, economical spaces that it’s like hearing Xenakis compressed in a matchbox with a Stockhausen packed lunch at the interval. One of several back catalogue items she sent to us years ago; see this page. This one was released in 1998.

Doc Wör Mirran sent us Confusion Rocks! (MISS MANAGEMENT HAVE TEN) – recorded in 2015 in a German studio. Joseph B. Raimond plays all the guitars and synths, and did the cover paintings, supported by Stefan Schweiger on drums. Raimond has been ruder, and more abrasive, but this is enjoyable and well-made rock music, not especially avant or challenging. Think of it as a form of latterday Krautrock with added Euro-synth melodies and textures. I’d like to have heard a shade more “confusion” in the grooves, but the mood throughout is pretty mellow, despite growling mad head painting on the cover and titles like ‘Every Fibre of my Body Hurts’. Not enough Jean Dubuffet, more like Marc Chagall. The ‘Self Portrait, Broken’ does at least deliver a mildly uncertain episode of self-contemplation. Released in 2016, their 142nd release (take that, Zappa).

Also from Doc Wör Mirran the much more interesting Tape Hissed (Historical Obscurity Volume 2) (MISS MANAGEMENT HAVE NINE) which apparently was drawn from the archive of DWM recordings as far back as 1983 up to 1994. A long list of collaborators and camp followers on these rare cuts, even including Jello Biafra. Packaged as a “three-sided” release, of which the first two sides on tape might be included as a snippet inside the jewel case! At least two tracks here – unsure of the titles which don’t quite add up – are brilliantly concocted layers of balmy noise, accumulating in a very open-ended fashion and allowing any errant synth squiggle or passing gnat to flap their wings in the general melee. Some tracks may appear more conventional art-rock mode, but even these uglified workouts are informed by a lunatic sense of mayhem and controlled chaos. They also had the good taste to dedicate the release to David Bowie. Maybe the time has come for a proper reevaluation of Doc Wör Mirran, arguably a much “better” band than Sunburned Hand Of The Man. From 2016, I think.

Nowadays, with music genres continually splintering into a thousand and one pieces, it was a full-on dead cert that mentions of “post everything” world eventually surface in those accompanying crib sheets. The trio, who’ll subsequently be called O.D.E.H., are a good a choice as any to be the hood ornament for this particularly spacious vehicle. After a handful of European and middle-eastern concerts performed as a duo, electric oudist Dargent and guitarist/vocalist Oberland later joined up with bassist Tony Elieh (also of Karkhana) and Polyphemè’s Wassim Halal (on darbuka and percussive ‘others’). Their first recordings were hatched at the Downton Studios in 2002; a three-day brainstorming session where this plunge into cross-fertilization, now finely tuned, became the more manageable “Sihr”.

We’re in safe hands here b.t.w., as Oberland’s ten years as Oiseaux-Tempête’s majordomo means that there’s an experienced ear hovering over this and indeed other projects inc. Foudre! And L.R.D.T. But, as anyone who is aware of sixties U.S. combos Kaleidoscope and The Devil’s Anvil (not forgetting * The Saqqara Dogs with Factrix’s Bond Bergland), when it comes to east meets west alliances, there really isn’t anything new under the sun. However, O.D.E.H. acquit themselves famously. “Oui-Ja’aa” matches an insistent marching beat with a hyper-tense swarm of keyboard activity. The sombre/lyrical tones of “YouGotALight” are dominated by Frédéric’s breathy alto sax while slithering into view “Babel Cedex” would be perfect for a Marrakech-based T.V. Thriller where intrigue and the fine art of double-crossing is second nature.

Now well into its middle-age, Sub Rosa remains in the forefront of labels where consistently challenging and adventurous releases come with the regularity of a stuck disc. “Sihr” is a welcome addition to that ever-teetering pile.

* ‎One-time ‘Melody Maker’ scribe Paul Oldfield made their “Thirst” (on Pathfinder Records/U.S.), one of his top five albums for 1988. How soon we forget.

…being a French male/female studio-based twosome, now well established in certain underground outposts of their native country. The noise-rock tendencies of band members Nicolas Laureau (gtr/keys/perc) and vocalist Sasha Andrès, with Prohibition and Héliogebale respectively, now seemingly inching towards more ethereal territory. More recent projects such as Don Nino, NLF3 and A Shape leaving a breadcrumbed trail of clues sound wise.

Inevitably with any ethereal rubberstamping, comes crib sheet talk of ‘the cult with no aim’, otherwise known as ‘Shoegazing’. However, with considerably more fibre in their diet, they manage to dodge the clammy grasp of Slowdive, Lush and their followers. Opening with a native-tongued tip of the cap to Belgian poet Henri Michaux, “Ex-Agir” matches solitary acoustic guitar with attractive piano confectionary that is shadowed by an unsettling distant whirring, somehow sounding like its origins came from the schematics of an early edition of ‘Practical Electronics’. A change in tempo occurs with the languid strains of “Birds Nest” in which the heavily gauged six-string figures recall Angelo Badalamenti’s tenure at Twin Peaks (population: 51201). The intriguingly titled “Vertical Janus” steps up the unease quotient a shade with an x-rated, table-turning exercise in spectral keyboards and the rusted clangs of guest guitarist and Sister Iodine member Erik Minkkinen.

With Laureau’s involvement with both Françoiz Breut and Brisa Roché, adding to the mix, plus Sasha’s shoehorning in of a pro acting career (!), it might be time for the duo to cool these scattershot bursts of creativity and take stock. Because, on the strength of this, ‘Project Specio’ should really read more like a novel and less like a few lines from a short story.

The label are quick to point out the “zero guitars” ethos in operation here, and perhaps in the minds of the label curators this helps to align The Telescopes with certain strains of electronic music which we know they like – e.g. Coil, Psychic TV, and Martyn Ware. But Lawrie has an old-fashioned rock fixation that doesn’t overlap neatly with those dark-disco and mutant funkoid types, he also sings, and as we noted re 2019’s Stone Tape album, he can naturally slide into a Velvet Underground groove with ease and enthusiasm, for instance on ‘Leave Nobody Behind’. With Stone Tape, I sent myself on a wild goose chase – or ghost chase – looking for hauntology themes that probably weren’t there, while today’s record instead contains dark hints about the physicality of death and disease, faced head-on in Lawrie’s no-nonsense manner. You get the feeling he could stare down the Grim Reaper in a duel at fifty paces, leaving old “Mr Bones” a quivering wreck.

Other listeners may simply savour the very raw distorted textures that emerge from our man’s lo-fi set-up, which compel us to stir our stumps in a dance of the dead just as surely as the mesmerising repetitions, intense organ drones, and relentless nature of these performances – plenty of repeated chants, simple lyrics, and staying on a steady course with a core of iron on board the yacht of steel he uses to glide across the oceans of acid. This release includes remixed versions by Black Market Karma (Sten Belton, a London-based devotee of psychedelic fuzz guitar) and the unknown Mosaic Runes. Black Market Karma does add a lot to ‘Leave Nobody Behind’ with his guitar breaks and live drums, but maybe he adds too much; listening to his mix, already I miss the simplicity and insistent quality of solo Lawrie, and this just sounds like any Bevis Frond track (although the wobble effect on the vocal does add a nifty lysergic touch worthy of Sun Dial). The Mosaic Runes take on ‘45E’ is a real spooker, though – isolating elements from the original track in a dubby manner, he succeeds in exposing some of the real damaged voices of instruments, which might otherwise be concealed under layers of nasty fuzz. From 15th Jan 2024.

These solemn, interminable instrumentals are enhanced on this occasion by the addition of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, an American fellow who is a vocalist and, interestingly, a sound-art composer type who’s managed to get his work into the movies, including recent films such as Candyman and Sicario. Although he does sing on some tracks – the highly unusual ‘Taphead’ may surprise the unwary – what we have here is nothing so conventional as a rock band setup with a lead vocalist. This particular piece, for instance, is more of a melancholy inverted jazz ballad with strange, semi-coherent moans and mumbles, possibly expressing lines of dark poetry in places, in a highly mannered way. I think Lowe is also playing his modular synths on the album too, so may be contributing to the overall musical schema of More Human, besides being co-credited with some compositions. It seems the band went to some lengths to work with Lowe – he couldn’t get into the Norway studio because of Covid, so his parts were recorded in New York – and they value what they regard as his “touch of mysticism”.

As to the album title, which is also used for the world-weary fourth track instrumental, it’s making a direct comment on the horrors of Artificial Intelligence; Splashgirl now see the AI problem as a competition, a life-or-death struggle between man and machine, and ask questions about “what price humanity” when we now have such a high dependency on technology in society. While their pro-human response is generally upbeat, there’s no escaping the pessimistic direction reflected in the long track ‘Landfiller’. Over 11:43 minutes, we experience an endless truck-driven journey into a bleak and unforgiving landscape, where things start out bad and only get worse. The exact trajectory of mankind’s imminent doom is shown in the structure and shape of this remorseless instrumental. (22/04/2024)

With guest drummer Ren Karlmann and Rough credited with “other machines”, and probably edited together in the studio from numerous takes and sessions in the tradition of Pink Floyd, who took much longer over it and still ended up with pompous, boring, emptiness. End Of The Line is indeed a Euro-synth rack journey by super-powered Metro train into the worlds beyond, with many diversions into invisible and menacing dimensions as we pass over one “event horizon” to the next… (02/04/2024)

Having made all these proposals and comparisons, in fact this group of three Mexicans and one Frenchmen would likely refuse any form of musical categorisation, especially two labels which others have thrown at them to wit Krautrock / Kosmische and New Weird America, in the form of No-Neck Blues Band and other such overly-ritualistic improvising groups. Instead, they simply regard music as a “magical” action, claiming in their own words that “we rise to draw from the sources of the cosmic Grand Souk”, indicating I suppose that they don’t over-think it or analyse their performances, preferring to simply play. While this LP might be regarded as a concession to “conventional” rock music by this otherwise far-out label, on the contrary we find in these recordings the same concerns with pure sound production and an unvarnished honesty which exactly matches other releases in the (admittedly small) catalogue of L’Eau Des Fleurs. What I particularly like is the unaffected, simple approach of Los Lichis; here are genuine players who don’t care to puff themselves up with ambitious grand designs, utter pretentious or incomprehensible statements, strike poses, nor set themselves high-minded targets on which they cannot deliver. The plain, unadorned nature of the recordings – almost DIY in their lo-fi starkness – are all part of the charm and the aesthetic.

Given their occasional meanders into lysergic turf here and there, one is tempted to liken them to The Grateful Dead (around the time of Anthem Of The Sun), only without the bombast and without the slickness. Issued with a full-colour booklet insert containing some incredible images, paintings, and collages. Excellent. From 20 Feb 2024.

For the brief lifetime of this meteoric combination, Jean-Marc Foussat happened to be on hand to make some recordings, and these three examples amounting to about one side of a vinyl LP in playing time have finally been pressed into CD. Crazed guitar work from Pauvros, sometimes a member of of Tribraque and Marteau Rouge, but happy the collector who gets his paws on a copy of No Man’s Land (a rarity from 1976, thankfully reissued by Le Souffle Continu). Gilbert Artman comes our way from Lard Free and Urban Sax, and what better pedigree could a connoisseur of experimental art music from the 1970s ask for? The creative genius of Berrocal, contributing indecipherable electric hieroglyphs galore, is likewise unfathomable, but if you enjoy hearing him in “raw and unfettered” mode, this is the record for you.

This brutal, disturbing noise rock is something I would have hesitation in aligning with benchmarks of similar agitational angst from the post-punk milieu, such as This Heat and The Pop Group, but it also matches the No-Wave Mars record for sheer unhinged energy and volcanic incandescence. While a part of us wishes for a triple-CD set of this music we could cherish, we’re grateful to have heard this much of it, reinforcing the notion that it’s a fleeting snapshot of a glorious moment that has passed long ago and an event that could never take place again in the milieu of modern music. To put it another way, this is all there is, and it makes its statement with beaucoup de force in a small space of time.

Additionally, I suspect that hearing more than twenty minutes of it would be decidedly unsafe, resulting in profound changes to the minds and souls of those fortunate enough to open this Catalogue and face these Assassins. Essential! From 3rd April 2024.

16 solo pieces from this renowned Band Of Susans guitarist who has also performed the music of Phill Niblock (with bandmate Susan Stenger) on the Touch Strings album.

Steve Albini regarded Poss as an unsung hero of drone guitar; there’s something quite special about the way he builds his songs, or compositions, around the possibilities of a treated and droning guitar sound. Equipped with this insight, I did indeed find moments of this album very appealing – sitting somewhere between Robert Fripp and Bill Nelson, although not quite as menacing and acute as the former nor as lush as the latter. Or if you prefer another take, here are 16 songs and instrumentals that manage to incorporate a species of drone theory not entirely divorced from American minimalism, especially Niblock as mentioned above. In the light of that discovery, it’s tempting to hark back to the first Velvet Underground LP where one can discern traces of La Monte Young’s tutelage in the obsessive piano-hammering of John Cale, perhaps one of the more successful integrations of modernism within a pop-rock music context. Robert Poss has turned out an accomplished and pleasing record of avant-rock.

If you enjoy this one, you might want to seek out his earlier solo discs Distortion Is Truth and Crossing Casco Bay, both released in 2002 on this same label. As for this writer, while Band Of Susans never quite clicked for me, I might now care to revisit my copy of Hope Against Hope in search of this “wall-of-guitars” effect which is spoken of so warmly. (13/02/2024)