We’ve heard Janne Eraker’s tap-dancing before on Movements For Listening, but this time she’s directly hooked up to the electronics set-up of Kristoffer Lislegaard in such a way that the contact mics on her dancing stage will trigger the sounds from his computers and sequencers. She may have mics on her tap shoes, also. There’s more to it than that of course, and the creators will happily describe at some length the process of working together and how these interactions can influence each other’s performances in a dynamic fashion. Very innovative method, but the music sounds flat and uninspired, with much banal cosmic droning often emerging as a fourth-rate imitation of Tangerine Dream.

Some moments of excitement can be found on ‘The Foyer’, where the percussive foot-falls of Eraker are somehow managing to wrongfoot the brains of the computer and producing some unexpected artefacts. Yet the players clearly don’t yet feel fully comfortable or confident with their invention, and I feel they could be a lot bolder with it. (Nov 2024)

Another curio from smaely p, the low-profile person of mystery who creates hand-knitted, locally-sourced electro-acoustic music and sound art…the CDR (are you taken) aback (CHOCOLATE MONK choc.578) is described by them as “a more recording-based approach”, perhaps to distinguish from their other free-improvisation or collaborative works. There’s a lengthy list of equipment on the back cover, which crosses over into describing the techniques involved (lo fi recording, collaging, mixing) in getting these boundary-free sprawls over the line. The finished results are then appliquéd with nonsense-gibberish titles, which (like the music to some extent) comprise unfinished sentences filled with exotic and made-up words, which promise much yet don’t really take the reader anywhere. I like the informality and spontaneity that’s going down here, but the performances seem to lack tension somewhere; they just start and stop in an unfocussed, uncertain manner. They’re both too long and too short; for one so devoted to splicing and collaging, it’s perhaps odd that smaely p can’t seem to edit themselves to give their work more impact. While this try-anything approach is very healthy and allows them to grasp at any passing ostrich or woodlouse, the actual sound of the record is not especially unusual, and curiously flat. From one who plays “broken membranes” and “scrap metal”, and boasts about doing so, I expect a few more surprises, éclats, and exotic tastes in my bowl.

Double-CD helping of assorted sound art experiments from Christof Migone, the Swiss-born creator who may now be living in Montreal. At one level Wet Water (Let’s Dance) (FUTURA RESISTENZA RESCD006) is a survey of his various achievements over a number of years starting around 1997, some of them realised as video soundtracks, art installations, collaborations, performance pieces, and such like. There may be some patterns to be found on CD 1 – buckets of water, saliva, telephones, sneezing, and a recording of neighbours arguing in Portugal. It’s possible these diverse non-events amount to an 11-track observation on the difficulties of communication, though I fear that may be a terribly banal comment on my part. But the art here is equally banal. The annotations and photographs in the booklet don’t communicate much either, rather tending to obfuscate; Migone himself finds deep significance in these trivial gestures, yet fails to convey any of its excitement or wider meaning to an audience. Shallow, boring, unengaged. (31/10/2023)

From Berlin, the cassette tape Blast Of Sirens (FUU RECORDS FUU008) is credited to Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach with all songs penned by Başak Günak and Stefan Goetsch…someone in amongst this list of names seems to be a real equipment fetishist, as they lovingly list their vintage ARPS, Oberheims, their Hohners and their Prophets, a roster of boxes that apparently includes some near-antique Italian models. Hainbach, who is in fact Stefan Paul Goetsch, has been releasing his material since 2014 and is a committed explorer in this area, and distributes his lectures on YouTube to the edification of those seeking information about the history of electronic music and its creation in an avant-garde context. What results on today’s outing is an enjoyable enough set of instrumentals which start out bouncy and jolly at the front end of the tape, then grow progressively more introspective and worried, resembling ballads of sorrow and doom for the disaffected 21st-century soul. “The record explores a world in uproar,” is the label’s claim, reflecting a melancholic (although not completely despairing) caste of mind. The music might privilege the sounds of the vintage synths over its compositional ideas, but the production is tight and clean. (31/10/2023)

I never saw the original Dublin piece, but from online reviews I learn that Emily Aoibheann is an aerialist, which I take to be a more artistic / performance version of the kind of entertainment we used to get from trapeze artists at the circus. Sorry Gold was a dance piece for sure, but the reviewer was impressed by the costumes and masses of coloured fabric floating in the air, into which performers can mysteriously disappear. Aoibheann is convinced that “aerial”, as she styles her craft, is the “dance of industrial technology”, and her piece intends to communicate certain truths about civilisation and nature. Faint traces – very faint – of the original dancers can be seen printed on the digipak of Sorry Gold. Interestingly, the music here has been in part derived from the music of Monteverdi and Henry Purcell, and Michelle O’Rourke does a tremendous job updating this classical repertoire, distilling it to a spectral near-chilling perfection, her voice floating in the mix in a manner that will find favour with fans of 4AD acts, like Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance. Gorgeous skeletal melodies are rendered with grace and delicacy by her crystal voice.

Gintas K is the Lithuanian electronic musician, whose solo works and experiments with granular synthesis have become steadily more challenging over the years, but his work here is just dandy. He seems to have forsaken his interest in severe, alienating minimalism in favour of textures, backdrops, patterns and moods which are all very suitable to the task in hand – heck, at times he even deigns to play in the same key as O’Rourke’s singing. I’m none the wiser about Aoibheann’s abstruse ideas, nor can I see how this record says very much about civilisation and nature, but I expect you need to have been at the event and seen her making her graceful aerial passes on the stage. This record, on the other hand, succeeds like a dose of French perfume inside a Dutch hat from Prague. From 3rd January 2023.

When we last heard him with My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell he was playing a lot more instruments, many keyboards I seem to recall, plus his main instrument the cello, and the keynote for that album was one of lush production, electro-acoustic treatments, and heat-haze “unreal” sound to the enterprise. For today’s record, there’s still that dreamlike vibe but it’s being produced by more minimal means, indicating that Storring is the kind of gifted semi-surreal player who can make anything turn into a sewing machine and an umbrella just by touching it. You’ve gotta believe he could pick up a clarinet and end up with a bunch of ripe bananas at the end of the day. The full title of this record includes two Chinese characters which we can’t reproduce on WordPress, but it seems they translate roughly as “becoming”, or “turn into”, which is apt given Storring’s capacity for musical metamorphing, but the title comes to us from Yvonne Ng who invited Storring to perform with her on her dance piece of this title. Nick Storring ended up joining the choreographer on tour and needed a reasonably portable way of getting around by plane without carrying heavy instruments with him. He writes as though he was the only musician to have ever thought of accompanying dance with piano, but you get the idea – and he deserves credit for how he wheedles the Yamaha Disklavier into the album’s fabric.

It’s true the music is pretty varied across these eight parts – now quiet, now dense, now melodic, now noisy, and only on occasion is there something resembling a rhythmic pattern which one might consider suitable for dancing, but that shows my ideas about modern dance are in need of an update. Storring’s music does have an affable charm, which wins me over even when it’s on the verge of being rather glib and eager-to-please. Note how the front cover artwork makes a slight visual pun between smiling teeth and the keys of a piano, even as an impossible porcelain horse is floating on top of a Rothko-lite background of fuzziness. (21/09/2022)

Midori Hirano has certainly come our way before via one of Rinus van Alebeek’s Staaltape cassettes, and we recall becoming quite enchanted with the subtle sounds and music of this Berlin-based Japanese composer. Appearing here as Mimicof, her Distant Symphony (KARL RECORDS KR093) is pretty much her EMS Synthi 100 record, and she made it at Radio Belgrade. These pleasant tones and textures have been very carefully prepared, recorded, layered, and arranged. Although Hirano is a pianist, this record is not simply her “playing” the Synthi like a keyboard; she patiently recorded many sound samples as the first stage, and then diligently assembled them into this completed three-part suite. There are long notes which when layered together create the suggestion of chords and harmonies, as opposed the short “blippy” bubbly sounds which are more obviously synthetic. But – unlike some users of this family of instruments – she’s not interesting in creating an “alien” sound, and indeed a lot of Mimicof emerges as something warm, human, and friendly. A good part of this project shows her striving to be true to the instrument, to honour the character of the EMS Synthi. Where the first movement is dreamy, droney, and painting abstract scenes of limpid beauty, the second movement aims for a minimal-serialist statement somewhat in the mode of Philip Glass. Melodic, accessible, very good. (27/05/2022)

Sintesi (OTONO OTN-021) is a solo electronic-ambient thing from Alessandro Baris, an Italian-American living in Bologna. Mostly soft and sentimental mush played on digital keyboards by Baris, although guest singers and reciters do appear. Lee Ranaldo’s contribution is to intone a soppy poem, about loneliness and loss (due to the pandemic), so bad luck if you were expecting some noisy guitar action from this former Sonic Youth guy. Even this clunker is a highlight compared to what follows: bad songs and airport lounge music. Yuck. (27/05/2022)

Impressive work from David Bennet & Vilhelm Bromander who perform Within Reach Of Eventuality (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT13). The title of this one could be taken to mean “It’ll happen some day”, the world-weary sigh of many a downtrodden cynic too wise in the ways of the world, but the music is very fine – cold, glacial, minimal saxophone and acoustic bass tones from this Swedish duo. Well, despite that pairing of instruments, this isn’t improvisation or jazz, but restrained, slow, barely-moving music of intense sadness. It was composed by Bennet who produced an “open score”, presumably leaving plenty of space for collaboration and interpretation; this means that all the pauses and gaps are sort of pre-planned, their placement in the temporal unfolding quite deliberate, giving both musician and listener time to pause for reflection. Often this kind of playing can seem forced to me, but this instance works very nicely. Together, the duo propose a form of “limitless exploration” and invite the listener to join them on this voyage, and I’m all for that – as soon as I got a copy of the record, I packed my haversack with plenty of thick socks. I also like the sound they make; not remote or inhuman, but full of “breathing” and (very slow) movements. Other “keywords” to summarise this achievement might include microtonality, beats, intensity, and “non-pitched sounds”, which in my non-musicological way I take to be something that’s a departure from conventional playing. I think this label has been home to similar austere releases, which I enjoy. (27/05/2022)

Intense record of solo double bass by Swedish player Johan Berthling. His Björnhorn (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT12) is his debut as solo recording and it’s impressive to hear the way he throws himself into the task, and is not afraid to touch on as many extremes as he possibly can – frenetic sawing actions, deep bass throbs, monotonous long-form grinding and groaning. It’s also quite some way from the high-energy firework jazz we have heard from Fire! Orchestra and Arashi, both Norwegian jazz-improv groups who don’t spare the horses when it comes to serving up platters of high-octane raw meat. Berthling solo is more thoughtful and contemplative, as if intent on exploring the acoustic space of the studio with his resonant thwacks, but also threading his way around his own interior spaces. Six segments titled ‘Björnhorn’ are presented here, with a break in the middle where he plays a Charlie Haden composition in his own lugubrious manner. Limited CD of 100 copies, though there’s also an LP version.

Berlin-based sound artist Jana Irmert here with What Happens At Night (FABRIQUE RECORDS FAB097). For this record, she took the unusual step of working primarily (though not exclusively) with recordings generated from smashed lava rocks…she rubbed them together to generate sounds, but also became fascinated with looking at the layers of strata within these volcanic fragments. There seems to have been some process whereby she aligned the visual information with the sonic forms, which led her to speculate and ruminate on the passing of time, as measured in “millennia of existence and non-existence”. After gazing at her screen, mankind’s presence on the planet suddenly seemed very insignificant to her, a consideration which evidently awaits any serious student of geology. Although rubbing rocks may sound unpromising, and her method may lead you to anticipate a record of empty process noise, What Happens At Night is in fact a very charming and poetic work. We could attribute these qualities to the album title, to the combination of field recordings and minimal synth melodies with her lava work, to track titles such as ‘Dust is the Rust of Time’, and the image on the cover which seems to show her (or another woman) walking through a time portal into the distant past; that image alone should resonate with Kate Bush fans. Last heard from Irmert with The Soft Bit, also made with rocks (and metal objects); her work has seemed a bit insubstantial to us on previous outings, but this is a good one. (04/04/2022)

Alpaca Ensemble, The Sky Opens Twice (PARTICULAR RECORDINGS COLLECTIVE P!38)
Norwegian trio of contemporary classical players joined by jazz sax player Eirik Hegdal who also composed most of the music, and Thea Ellingsen Grant who contributes lyrics and songs. Jazz mixed with classical, pop, beats, and improv….I’m really not sure what to make of this unusual set, and neither it seems are the musicians themselves, who start out describing this opus of 18 short pieces as “pop, experimental, contemporary” then simply blurt out, “Ah forget it, just listen!” at the listener. The creators are not only happy to mix genres, but also want to be held as both quite “serious” and also very “playful”. Some of the tunes are rather formless, others hop about from one place to the next like a restless grasshopper…the lyrics, when they appear, have a vaguely Dada-esque charm in their nonsensical phrasing, but I can’t get used to Grant’s mannered voice as she half-sings, half recites these inconsequential utterings, which may be banal or profound at the same time. Still, no denying her jejune enthusiasm every time she brings her effervescent personality before the microphone. This is the group’s 11th album. I sense that in their energetic quest for novelty and surprise, they seem to have overlooked what it was they were trying to say in the first place. (19/01/2022)

Labelled by its creators as “salsapunk”, here comes a fun album of light minimalist lo-fi salsa dance music made with whatever instruments and electronics the Contento men had at hand at home and in their recording studios. Contento is two Colombian expats Sebastian Hoyos and Paulo Olarte who moved to Barcelona and Geneva respectively and independently of each other, meeting in Berlin in 2011 and discovering a mutual love of salsa. Keeping in contact, they were only able to come together in 2016 to discuss and work out ideas for their new Contento project, and “Lo Bueno Está Aquí” is the result.

The music does sound retro and a bit conventional, and I must say that, as it is coming from two musicians working with a limited number of acoustic and electric instruments, and using drum machines and synthesisers as well, the overall sound isn’t as full-bodied, spontaneous and raw as fans of salsa might expect. Instead the flat electronic sound gives the music a mischievous elfin quality, as though cheeky little sprites already in the instruments at last have been given an opportunity to swarm over the songs and work their deviant little charms into the beats, rhythms and melodies. Inevitably given their nature, the sprites end up taking over the music and turning it into something insane. There seems to be a very knowing attitude here that the limitations of the instruments and methods used to record the music would result in a less than authentic salsa sound and so these limitations are parlayed into the music’s distinct characteristics and strengths.

All songs are short and most don’t amount to much more than layers of rhythm, melody loops and beats with lyrics sung or chanted over the top. Tracks like “De Todas Maneras” and “Pelo Negro” (a whimsical Latino EDM cover of the Led Zeppelin song “Black Dog”, the lyrics of which are faithfully rendered in a style that satirises their sexualised posturing) are very cute in their unrelenting demented electronic miniature-space-alien way as they play in some far-off interstellar nightclub catering for little green men and women (and any others in-between) sipping fizzy cocktails that pack tiny punches. Those space aliens certainly are impressed with the beings they observe on Earth, even if their attempts to portray human behaviours inevitably fall flat because the motivations and emotions behind them happen to be beyond the aliens’ realm of understanding and awareness. A few, like “Las Gotas”, do end up overstaying their welcome with clunky repetition of music and vocal loops.

The album works best in a song like “Pelo Negro” that sends up its inspiration in a delightfully witty manner and in others where listeners can easily imagine an orchestra of tiny animated machines reproducing salsa music for audiences more at home in the digital cybersphere than in the sweaty clubs, dancehalls and outdoor concerts where salsa originated. “Lo Bueno Está Aquí” may end up as a cult classic of a kind, born at and for a particular moment in a historical / cultural context that needed such music like it, with the restraints and limitations the musicians themselves had to undergo to make it.

The plan is to attempt a modernist update on the traditional Polish mazurka, a musical form associated with the countryside, and more often than not used for folk dancing; the Ansambl want to inject it with contemporary strains of minimalism. We think the culture of the mazurka started around the 16th century in East Poland, but its popularity and influence spread across the world, first to Russia and Germany and then to ballrooms in England and France. By the early 19th century, English dancers were hopping to the mazurka, and some 20 years later Chopin composed over 50 mazurkas for the piano, honouring the tradition of his homeland. The players in the Ansambl have been recruited from other groups including L. Stadt, Lautari, Tegie Chlopy and Odpoczno, and their ingenious idea was to add Piotr Gwadera playing the “old village drum set”, a turn of phrase guaranteed to suggest everything that’s rustic and hand-made, in keeping with the project.

So far so good…while I know nothing about this specific musical form, it’s evident that these tunes have mostly been derived from traditional folk sources, and the players do an excellent job of performing these radicalised versions; one highlight is ‘Combattimento Di Gaca E Meto’ which starts out uncertain and disjointed, wallowing in fine post-modern doubt, before turning into a spirited jig after some three minutes, signalled by an impassioned roar from one of the band; the drummer lets rip and the strings fly past at 90 mph. As already indicated, Radical Polish Ansambl claim to be blending the mazurka tradition with “the most avant-garde elements of contemporary experimental music”. To this end, they quote a 1952 John Cage lecture on the inner cover, and they also invoke the name of one Tadeusz Sielanka, a shadowy figure who supposedly was one of the country’s leading composers in the minimalist mode.

In their publicity blurb, the Ansambl cite just two sources for Sielanka, one of them suggesting he was a folk violinist who was recruited into the Polish army during WWII. The other source informs us that his work shows up among some musical annotations in the public archives in Delhi, and by a circuitous route it seems that Sielanka was engaged on a project showing the links between mazurka and Indian raga. I’m afraid I found all this too good to be true, particularly as there are two tracks attributed to this Sielanka on the record, one of them called ‘Mazurka In C’. My theory is that the whole story is invented. Sielanka is not a common Polish surname; it’s a noun, which translates as “paradise” or “idyll”, a word which coincidentally also features in their press – a “utopian attempt” is how the describe their project. Had there indeed been a Polish representative of minimalism active in the 20th century, surely history would have recorded a more lasting trace of it? Calling a composition ‘Mazurka In C’, invoking the work of Terry Riley in this context, is also just wishful thinking.

Even so, ‘Mazurka In C’ is a very strong piece, probably one of the best on the record; I’m not sure why someone felt the need to invent this rather unconvincing hoax to bolster the music. This quibble aside, a fine item. From 19 December 2019.

I suppose the two things to mention are firstly that Lucia Dlugoszewski was a dancer herself, and her deep knowledge of choreography influenced she way she composed her music; and secondly, she invented and built her own instruments, mostly percussive in nature, and constituting her own brand of prepared piano. Listeners who like rugged Americans doing their own thing will inevitably connect this to the music of Harry Partch and Moondog, but today’s record doesn’t actually feature those instruments. Instead, we’re able to appreciate the details of her compositional technique, articulated very precisely by the notes written by Krzysztof Stefanski; her skills are to do with “changeability”, “strong contrasts”, and “instability”. ‘Openings Of The (Eye)’ is an avant-garde ballet piece with a vaguely mythological theme, which her husband specially commissioned for his dance; there were costumes and masks, and the minotaur and a chimera may make appearances. Listening to the disjointed music, one can almost visualise the piece on stage; Dlugoszewski seems attuned to every smallest movement of a dancing body, and the music articulates itself in sympathy. Not an especially joyous piece, though; ‘Openings Of The (Eye)’ has a serious tone and many discordancies in its elliptical, modernist forms. The piano of Pitor Salajczyk and the flute of Ania Farpowicz make pleasing sounds, but they perform with a coldness that makes the music a tad brittle and distant.

Conversely, the later piece ‘Lords of Persia’ sounds much fuller, played by a clarinet, violin and percussion with a small brass section. Hawkins’ dance piece here was a semi-philosophical presentation about the invention of the game of polo, and the dancers were required to wield polo mallets while wearing their costumes and turbans. It might have been a slightly comic enterprise; the music has moments which might have worked as music for a Mack Sennett silent. Lucia Dlugoszewski’s understanding of percussion and rhythm is much to the fore on this one, and she scores passages of such complexity and layered trickiness that I’m surprised Frank Zappa didn’t nominate her as one of his influences. From 31st January 2020.