I’m enjoying the overall sounds that emerge from New Urgences – read the label page for a long list of unlikely methods, equipment, objects and tape-mangling actions that have fed into it – but the ideas don’t develop very much. Having entered themselves (and us) into an alien and bizarre eco-audio-environment, the duo aren’t able to do much more than sit down and observe the debris, hoping that the discombobulated parts might fall into a new pattern or Meccano toy. Not enough tension or dynamics. I like it when recorded voices – heavily distorted and disguised, natch – swim to the surface, and this makes me wish for some of the ramshackle song-form structures that Andy Rowe is so gifted at creating.

Carping aside, few records sound as unusual and different as this, and it’s good to see the craft of abusing physical objects in this junkathon recycling and tape repurposing still thrives, at a time when so many fall into the snares and traps of all-digital working. (31/10/2024)

Ali Robertson is a marginal Scots performer whose work I wish I could enjoy more. Perhaps I haven’t heard enough of it. The tape I Used To Be An Improviser (SOUNDHOLES #115) does deliver a deal of DIY, home-made charm, sub-par recording quality, and deliberately naive playing, but its limited sonic range and flailing repetitions soon start to irritate. I’m not sure what instruments or objects are the targets for his blunt weapons, but a variety of rubbing, hitting, and strumming actions are documented, mostly generating neutral and sterile non-musical noises. The title of this release might be intended as provocative, or playful; the implication is that Ali Robertson has turned his back on the genre of free improvisation now. “Ask him for the score for this tape so that you can play along at home,” suggest the press notes. 60 numbered copies were made.

Getting more mucilage for my labels from Jones Rowden and their Sore Forest West Coast (SOUNDHOLES #113) tape. Al Jones and Zach Rowden are the performers and going by the high-res cover image it looks like they might be using mixing desks as part of their chosen machinery. These are presumably live actions captured in Canada and the US. Both new names to me; if online sources speak true, Rowden is also a bass player (both upright and acoustic), has played with Anthony Braxton, and has about 50 releases to his name since 2015. Audio magus Jones (formerly from California, now in Washington state) has likewise touched elbow-joints with fellow ear-clench geniuses in the minimal-ish area, such as Bruno Duplant, Jason Kahn, and Cristián Alvear. Sore Forest is moulding my cones in many enjoyable ways – I always like a nice continuous, no-let-up steamroller of non-specific textures and grumbleton pavings, but Jones Rowden spice up the proposal with added surprise moves, pulled from pocket like so many magic novelty tricks. I like a noise that doesn’t over-assail the listener and also I like players who don’t step up to the podium full of foregone conclusions or over-baked ideas. In short, they explore and they invite us to come with them. As such, Sore Forest West Coast keeps the attention hovering nicely in place like magnetised man in suit, regardless of how many contradictions are thrown up. This may sound like they make it easy, but this duo are in full control of their multiple layers and never let a single caterpillar slide off the glass into the bucket of PVA waiting below. The use of voices – looped? Pre-recorded? – speaking absurdist rondellos into the ether is especially innovative and effective. A good one!

For this release, Moras recounts how he discovered a “found message” on an old dictaphone machine that he purchased online; he assumed it was from a previous owner, an old man, and found poetic resonance in a certain phrase that he encountered. I very much like the idea that we can find poetry and art hidden in unlikely places, and I also support creators who are convinced they are hearing a message intended for their ears. In following this inspiration, Marios Moras has used a variety of methods and analogue equipment to arrive at these treated, old-school sounds, which make a virtue of cassette glitches such as dropouts and tape wobble. His intention is ambitious; he wants to scale up this message to say something about the fate of humanity, and whether we can resist the “rise of the machine” as he puts it.

When most pundits comment on such themes, we end up with glib diatribes about the internet and AI, but Moras is making an honest and heartfelt statement. He has tried to honour the intentions of the old man who originally spoke into the dictaphone, and attempted to form a bond across generations. A strong piece of work, rooted in the real world and not overly abstracted. I particularly like the whispering voices on the long track ‘Between Existence and Data’.

Random Architecture (C29) is credited to Matt Atkins and Stuart Chalmers, both UK creators I believe; Atkins runs the label Minimal Resource Manipulation in London, while Chalmers has beguiled us with mysterious sounds from his Yorkshire home. This is their first joint venture. It’s a combination of recordings of performed music (on percussion and shruti box) mixed up with field recordings, and then edited in interesting combinations, using random methods, to form surprising overlaps and dream-like utterances. I liked the track ‘Doric Order’ best of all – it gives the listener an overload of strange colours and shapes, and suggests an eerie vision on the verge of coming into focus. ‘Ball Flower’ comes a close second with its many noisy layers invoking a slightly violent time-travel experience, where we’re not sure where we’re going or even if we’ll arrive in one piece.

From 1st July 2024.

I had to look that one up online to find out it’s a rare mental disorder, where the sufferer has the illusion of “phantom movements”, such as making you feel you’re onboard a boat even when you’re not. I suppose this might have afflicted our 19th century forebears after a long steamship voyage, but they would get over it after a day on dry land, whereas those afflicted by MdDS can totter and reel about in this unfortunate condition for years. Good job I’m not a hypochondriac or I’d add this to my list of imagined ailments.

Vernon ought to be well known to regular readers, but Elen Huynh is a new name to my compositors. French DJ and sound artist she be, getting to the transcendent place through live performances and mixes, and she’s especially good with spoken word. Matter of fact her whispered utterances on this tape are, for me, sufficient to admit her as honorary member to the pantheon of sound poets who clustered around Henri Chopin in the last century, drawn like talented fireflies to the flame of his Revue OU publications. However – lined up against such as François Dufrêne or Bernard Heidsieck – the sound poetry of Elen Huynh is more subtle and reflective than that of those two aggressive barkers, who often seemed intent on ripping the language apart with their very teeth as they spoke. Huynh brings mystery and compassion to the table, helping to make each of these delicate sound-collages a beautiful and very intriguing experience.

Is it too early to claim Mark Vernon has found here a perfect artistic soul-mate for his work? They both share an intense interest in humanity, the voice and frame of the human being, and wish to gently explore in the unknown realms of the mind and the inner being, by any means possible. I say this to distinguish such creators from electro-acousticians of the more academic persuasion, those who insist on the supremacy of the composition, or the techniques they used to assemble it. Conversely, Mal De Débarquement has a delightful transparent quality, a filter or prism allowing us to view the world anew and make unexpected connections. The selection here has been drawn much a longer piece that was composed for radio in 2020 and broadcast on Lyl Radio (based in Lyon and Paris). Like the best of Vernon-associated works, this is a radiophonic piece for sure, but it’s also to be regarded as an “essay” – a term I like very much, wishing for the times when more writers would pen an essay to disclose personal thoughts, TV presenters could deliver a coherent argument in documentary form instead of indulging their inflated egos by waffling in front of a moving camera, and even film-makers could produce short personal works – Orson Welles regarded his F For Fake as an essay in cinema form. The tape here has been composed, assembled carefully and collaged to great effect, letting each element breathe and allowing maximal resonance and poetic power to shine forth.

Now I want to hear more from the gifted and simpatico Elen Huynh – she appears on the first release from this label, Les Maux Libres, another set that has its origins as a Choses Contraires broadcast with Lyl Radio; and she even appears on a 2018 House track by River Yarra. Highly recommend this release – a gorgeous, inspirational and moving piece of sound art. Bloeme van Bon did the cover drawing. From 8th November 2023.

Faring better, me, with Two Rooms (PRESSES PRECAIRES), which on one level is a very imaginative take on the “music made by shifting furniture around an interior space” genre, which is arguably a real thing if you consider La Monte Young’s formal experiments in that area. Two Chinese creators here, Mengting Zhuo and Li Song. Mengting comes from a performance art and installation art background, and she’s one of those daring to pose awkward questions about society, the human body, and our perceptions of noise. Li Song, lui, does what he does from the safety of his laptop, joining the ranks of those who use their mouse and keyboard to improvise with digital, processed sounds. On A side it’s a concert – that’s right – performed in London and working to a score, which may seem a tad surprising, but if you listen I think every step they take around the performance space has been carefully orchestrated and mapped out in advance. ‘Room with Air Conditioning’ is thus 15 minutes of abstract noisy delight made with a mix of furniture and speakers / mics (so perhaps a little feedback hum bleeding in). And electric fans. Use of fish line makes me wish I’d been there to witness how they deployed this piece of angling equipment.

No less fabboo is ‘Room with wooden floors’ on the B-side. Also a live concert, also scored, also using much the same minimal array of non-musical objects, this time including a clock and fabrics and a snare drum, probably for its resonant frequencies on the goat hide. Again, footsteps on the wooden floor are much in evidence. It’s as much a dance / performance piece as a good hunk of noisery. Citizens of Waterloo area in London were invigorated by amazing featherweight drone for 16 mins, occasionally flowering forth into an angry red rose of edible feedback. But this description doesn’t convey the genius of these Chinese players, whose gift is for focus, clarity of intention, engagement with physical objects in the space of one specific venue and, through this gateway, a deeper engagement with society at large. Excellent.

Danish label Janushoved has lately been releasing some very lovely electronic ambient music on cassette and this recording from Sejlet is a good example of what Janushoved specialises in: graceful if perhaps introspective ambient with a melancholy air. Apart from “Halvvind mod Kerteminde”, most tracks are quite short, the last couple of pieces very much so, and all of them are very distinct from one another in atmosphere and mood as well as tone. “Halvvind mod Kerteminde” especially is a dreamy piece in which you can float away completely enveloped in a cushion of serenity and peace, accompanied by occasional birdsong, insect rhythm and wisps of trance drone. Later tracks like “Sjællands Rev” and “Korshavn” may have a darker atmosphere with a more sombre, wistful mood while “Langør”, definitely not the liveliest piece here, does no more than what its name (in English, “languor”) says.

For me, the most attractive (and the shortest!) piece here is “Sælen Ved Romsø” which packs in a dreamy (even if sickly sounding) fairy-tale world with tinkly tones and bleached swirling drone, and then another dream-like soundscape of toy-like tones and background fumbles, all of which give the entire one-minute wonder (well, maybe almost two minutes) the impression of being a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it snapshot of a dizzy kaleidoscope universe filled with ever-changing colour and spectacle.

At just under 21 minutes in length, this truly is a miniature universe of wonder and magic which, if you’re willing, can expand to infinite dimensions in your head.

It’s a pity this album, the second by Portuguese act Durvena Cabina, has come out quite late in 2024 as (for me anyway) it’s certainly a contender for Album of the Year in 2024: inspired by the folklore and legends of northern Portugal, and using samples of the folk music of this area, “Contos da Casa do Lobo” (in English: “Tales of the House of the Wolf”) lays out an extraordinary sonic tapestry of hilly and mountainous landscapes, cold rainy winters and peoples of Celtic, Iberian and other mysterious origins whose beliefs revolved around human contacts with otherworldly beings both benevolent and maleficent. I am not at all familiar with Durvena Cabina – I only heard of this act very recently – but the artist behind DC also runs a black metal project, Sokushinbutsu. Durvena Cabina’s music here embraces black metal as one of several inspirations and core elements that include neofolk, psychedelia, ambient and musique concrète in a setting of long droning shamanic freeform ritual pieces, each and every one of which is highly absorbing, hypnotic and magical.

Although the album is divided into six tracks, it’s best heard as one complete unit from the first track to the last, or even with the tracks mixed – though individual tracks, even the shorter ones like “Solstício”, are enchanting enough that you’ll be quickly drawn deep into the mysterious dimensions behind them. Each track reveals a lush soundscape that can contain unexpected power and menace as well as charming beauty and sometimes plaintive melancholy. Tales of wolves and their ability to inflict disease and suffering through their evil gaze, and of other hostile beings and spirits, often magnified through long periods of isolation and cabin fever during inhospitable weather, come to terrifying life in tracks like “Caí no Poço, Morri no Campo”, a spooky ambient work of ghost voices and effects made even more chilling by constant background metal-sawing noise drone. Samples of folk chanting are given a sinister edge through distortion and a wave of harsh BM noise guitar drone accompanied by eerie fragments of flute melody and space ambient effects in “Ela que chamou o Fumo”. Closing track “Luna” starts off as the most soothing and song-like piece, though it has the mood and atmosphere of a keening elegy, but the simmering chaos of the Otherworld and its denizens is never far away.

A beautiful and enthralling album of mystery, magic and menace, this particular collection in sonic form of dark folk tales is a unique achievement indeed.

You probably can guess this alarmingly titled album is the product of a frightening new sonic creature, one christening itself after Finnish black metal act Beherit’s third album “Electric Doom Synthesis”. Hailing from France, EDS presents a very pessimistic view of future human society, one governed by an oppressive, technologically dependent apparatus in which humans are viewed as a giant mass of soulless entities, each no better or having more value than an insect, on this work of bleak industrial / noise / power electronics. There may be other musical genres represented on this debut, but their influence seems very slight, and the dominant style of music is harsh, bleak, often rhythmic and highly abrasive in texture.

The album divides into two halves and the latter half is taken up by one track “Carverider” performed in a live setting in March 2024. Stretching over half an hour, “Carverider” winds its way through many detours in different music settings, most of which are noisy, aggressive and highly confrontational. There are some unexpected quiet surprises – though they don’t stay quiet for very long! – and a few passages are dominated by heavy beats, with one late section filled with rapid-fire breakbeats that go so fast they end up turning into one continuous cacophonic noise drone stream. Despite all this, the track holds together very well, channelling its restless energy from one noisescape to the next smoothly.

The album’s first half, also about half an hour long, is slightly better behaved and a bit more restrained, with found sound recordings and vocals present in parts. Four tracks of varying lengths take us through different parts of the EDS dystopian hell, some more darkly ambient, menacing in mood or close to sheer madness than others. Though they’re all noisy and chaotic, they do differ from one another in mood and are frightening in their various ways, especially in their use of vocal samples to portray a post-modern dysfunctional panopticon society.

For all its strident cacophony and sometimes monstrous vocals, all steeped in a harsh production, the album does exert a pull on your consciousness: you find yourself anticipating whatever unpleasant surprise might be just around the corner, and you end up having to follow the music and see out its post-industrial nightmare vision to the bitter end.

An elegant and ethereal release of ambient droning sound art, “Magnetically Yours” is structured from repeating tape loops that, over time, deteriorate in the quality of their sound as the physical tapes themselves slowly degrade from over-use and exposure to their immediate physical surroundings. Mancunian native Andrew Hargreaves, the sole member of Tape Loop Orchestra, constructed the two tracks of this short release (just over 30 minutes long) from soundtracks of strings-generated music under a layer of “eroded choral humming” (according to Vaagner’s Bandcamp page) and the use of reverb and synth samples, creating a work of introspective melancholy and languid nostalgia bathed in a warm or cool misty atmosphere.

Track 1, recorded in 2022, despite its slow, gentle pace, turns out to be a continuously changing creature of many moods, generating an overall impression of a steady rolling tapestry of ghostly scenes, memories and long-gone visualisations, all gradually fading or blurring, doomed to an indistinct oblivion. The music’s tone is sombre yet soft and peaceful, passing no judgement on this procession of nostalgic recollections that may soon be forgotten or out of reach forever. Sonic transitions are so gradual and so smooth as to be imperceptible, though listeners may be aware of a darkening mood, more lush and dream-like, developing in parts as the background hum becomes more bristly.

Like Track 1, Track 2 which was made in 2023 is just as changeable, though it initially seems sadder and more spiritual and heavenly. Depending on your point of view, some of the spiritual parts can also be a little creepy as what appear to be fragments of voices float in and out of the flow of music which itself is composed of melodic piano and other keyboard flotsam and jetsam. Some of the source material here is more defined and, as the track continues, distinct melodies may become noticeable. Transitions are a bit sharper and faster, and listeners can feel they are definitely on a journey deep into hitherto inaccessible reaches of space.

It’s definitely very haunted and haunting, a work to be treated with respect as you find yourself passing from your mundane material surroundings into a strange world of many interlinked dimensions with porous boundaries, as you drift from scenes of longing and nostalgia into altered states of consciousness where the heights of heaven are but a passage into dark realms of space. “Magnetically Yours” may not compare in scale and grandeur to epic minimalist tape-loop dramas like William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops” but, unlike that work, itself set in a particular point in time and space through its artwork and the circumstances of its recording, “Magnetically Yours” is (as its title suggests) a work you can make very much personal and intimate through your own listening experience.

In contrast to its black metal / ambient twin “Sils Maria”, released on the same day (17 July 2024), “Limbs of Dionysus” is a ferocious beast of blackened psychedelic sound art. Two long and twisting tracks take listeners through a dark labyrinthine cosmos of jangly guitar riffs and speedy thudding percussion, all overseen by a mysterious spectral vocal that appears now and again as if to guide the music down further shadowy and indistinct paths. Where “Sils Maria” is a restrained work that is light, even elegant in its execution, “Limbs of Dionysus” is feverish and desperate in tone and pace, and the music can appear very dense and convoluted in its structure as it barrels along like a wild cyclone.

At 23+ minutes, Track I is a sprawling soundscape piece of dissonant jangly black metal guitar, set in the same space as “Sils Maria” with a similar clear sound and a sparse minimalist approach, accompanied in the main by blast-beat percussion and wraith-like cries and screams in the far background. Riff after riff after riff is thrown up in the music though each does not repeat for very long and as a result listeners can have a hard time getting a-hold of anything in the music that might serve as a reference point. The one thing that does impress this reviewer is the resonant ringing quality of the guitar tones, however far deep in this dark abyss the guitars may be. The music is urgent and desperate, and listeners can feel overwhelmed by the claustrophobia such desperation produces after over 20 minutes of non-stop rush-about. Eventually a point of exhaustion or release is reached, and the heavy droning tones of church organ swamp the listener, as though God or some such other deity is pronouncing judgement on us lost souls.

Track II may be the shorter track but it is more tortured in form and emotion as the music quickly passes through many moods and the vocals, becoming clearer, reveal anguish and torment in their ranting and shrieking. The music quickly becomes just as fast and frantic, close to hysteria, as the first track as it dives and dashes about; riffs rarely settle into a particular groove before they are swept aside by another frenzied detour into yet another part of the darkness. As with Track I, the organ glides into the music in its last few moments, seemingly to offer comfort or judgement.

Like “Sils Maria”, no matter how intense or aggressive the music becomes, “Limbs of Dionysus” actually sits quite lightly on the ear and the result never becomes overly dramatic or histrionic. In their linear structures both albums turn out to be thoughtful and meditative works, perhaps contemplating the present sorry state of humankind and its uncertain future in a universe indifferent to its children. The twin albums may appear opposed to each other in style and mood, but when heard together they complement each other so well that they really have to be heard together for their strengths to be fully appreciated.