Tagged: electronic

December 12, 2013

Life Cycle of a Massive Star: a grand operatic work that falls short of great wonder and drama

Roly Porter, Life Cycle of a Massive Star, Subtext Recordings, SUBCD005 (2013)

At just over 35 minutes in length, how does a short recording like this recent album capture the immense magnificence and sheer scale of such a topic as the birth, life and death of a supernova? If your name is Roly Porter, you use the topic to explore what it means to be alive as a human, to be a tiny and insignificant speck living in a massive universe where such phenomena can exist yet experience the same life cycle as you do.

The music is split into five tracks that trace the upward trajectory from disorganised helium cloud into concentrated masses of cloud that soon reach critical mass and begin to draw other particles into them. Masses take on definite form and substance, generating internal heat, gravity and other forces, and from there evolution and growth begin and accelerate. The album gets off to a brisk start and rarely lingers for long on sounds, melodies, rhythm structures and tone wash for their own sake. There is plenty of dark void in and around the sounds, suggesting the vastness of space and our own lonely condition on a tiny blue planet in a small star system. The music combines elements from industrial, dubstep, formal acoustic composition, symphonic music and dark ambient.

For all the solemn beauty that passes our ears though, there’s something rather too controlled, steady and unemotional about the music – it’s very grand but it evokes no sense of wonder or drama in the way that the music selected by Stanley Kubrick for his sci-fi masterpiece flick “2001: A Space Odyssey” does. True, the clever director chose a wide range of music and musical styles, some stretching as far back as the mid-1800s, to emphasise the visual action or vistas portrayed – and that in itself points to a problem with Porter’s work: for much of the recording, there’s no sense here that he was reaching for the utmost in the genres of music he chose to work in for this album, no sense of risk or exploration. Only with the final track “Giant” do we arrive at a state of terror and awe as the star in question achieves super-giant status and engulfs some of its inner planets but the musical drama only goes so far. We are not even allowed to hear and visualise the star’s full glory and extent as it reaches its maximum size and development just before it begins to collapse in on itself.

It’s a beautiful work, grand in its own way, yet in my view not quite reaching the heights and depths that beckoned. Perhaps if Porter had extended his vision of the star’s life cycle to include its inevitable descent and death, a connection between the most incredible physical phenomenon and our own lives would have been established, and we humans would find comfort in knowing that even the mightiest things to exist must eventually die. Something really grand, intense and quite emotional could come out of that.

Contact: Cargo Records

December 10, 2013

Rubbed Raw / Volume IV: deranged outsider noise electronics skating close to madness and chaos

Rubbed Raw, “Volume IV”, Ormolycka, cassette (2013)

Wacky sped-up chipmunk vocals and glitchy rubber electronics herald this collection of often creepy electronics that almost verges on noise, isolationist dub and Whitehouse-styled power electronics. I have no idea who Rubbed Raw are and what connection they have to a character called Big Daddy Nugg who died in his early 40s in 2010, whether this person was a member of the band, a friend or a major inspiration. The A-side of the recording early on is dominated by a pounding percussion, wobbly watery sounds and deranged guitar feedback drone in parts, followed by a vigorous rhythmic stroll of more blaring industrial-sounding noise electronics with just a dash of techno thrown in. A later track consists of a spoken-voice recording overlaid by shimmering echo that renders the voice alien and sinister, and a quivering guitar feedback drone solo, leading into what sounds like a peculiarly sanitised exchange of gunfire as imagined on laptops and PCs.

Side-B is no less weird or abrasive with occasional rhythm loop forays into something quite funky and almost worthy of admission into dance clubs without fear of being thrown out by bouncers. Blasts of industrial-strength steel noise, searing guitar feedback drone and effects that fly in and out hold you spellbound. This is quite a short side compared to the A-side.

Although this recording seems very lo-fi, the composition, arrangement and execution of the sounds, rhythms, beats and field recordings are excellent and suggest the musicians, amateurs though they might consider themselves, have quite a long history of performing original music. The music is very edgy, skating very close to the jagged point of a sheer drop down into machine noise chaos. There’s a sense of the music being very deranged due to its extreme isolation from familiar music networks; that deranged attitude elevates the sounds into feverish paranoia territory. It can be terrifying to hear and it’s sure to warp your brain the more you listen to it. How can I get more of this stuff?

Contact: Ormolycka, PO Box 649, New York, NY 10163, USA

December 9, 2013

Deimos: scary little quartet of occult sounds taking listeners on a trance journey

Official pack shot from http://unfestinsagital.blogspot.co.uk/

Un Festin Sagital, Deimos, Black Horizons, cassette BH-72 (2013)

In ancient Greek mythology, Deimos was the god of terror and together he and his brother Phobos, the god of fear, would ride on either side of their father Ares during battle, glorying in the slaughter of soldiers as they fell from chariots or their horses, or were cut down by storms of arrows and spears. This cassette might be short at 20 minutes but the terror and fear it delivers are perhaps no less in the music’s assault on the eardrums. The style of music might best be described as a mix of blackened psychedelic free noise industrial ambient punk. If I missed anything out in that description, readers are free to suggest more labels ad infinitum.

The A-side ( “Terror Diluviano” and “La Ofrenda Danzante del Cuerpo Enamorado”) promises a real scare-fest with a short passage of deep chanting vocals counterbalanced by solemn trance-like witch voices all surrounded by strange twisted wobble effects and wisps of airy sound. A creepy lead vocal takes charge and for a few moments you wonder whether you’re hearing a real Satanic Mass being performed. We continue into a bass-like doodle that transforms into a series of berserk piano squiggles, background sigh and whoosh, and evilly grim black metal goblin vocals chanting repetitively in a strange tongue. Weird FX dive in and out of the music.

The B-side (“Deimos” and “Ni Sobreproteccion, Ni Descuido”) is more ominous and ambient than avantgarde weird. The title track is based around an original contribution by Wesley Young / Deciduous Flux who plays electronics here. (Young also modelled for the artwork by Jesse Pepper.) It consists largely of sleepy bass drone suggestive of an idling grinding machine over which a flute might play or a lone speaker might say or whisper something. Bringing up the rear is a piece that might have escaped from a long moody movie-music soundtrack: blowing wind, space synth wash, glitch rhythms, ticking percussion and glittery space-ambient tone squiggle loops will keep you guessing as to what kind of B-grade sci-fi monster flick from the 1950s is being referenced here.

Your brain will be kept in overdrive figuring out how all four tracks relate to one another and whether a theme greater than terror and fear is struggling to emerge. Track titles suggest occult references and the sequencing of the tracks might imply the performance of a ritual followed by transcendence and its after-effects. On the other hand, there might not be any relation at all among the four tracks and all that holds them in common is the effect they have on your mood and thinking.

Un Festin Sagital is a Chilean act revolving around one Michel Leroy aided by various musicians who appear on tracks 1 to 3.

December 7, 2013

The Bird Sings with its Fingers

I have a strong personal affection for the music of Algerian musician Jean-Marc Foussat, mainly because I find he’s a total whizz of invention when it comes to playing the VCS3 synth and because that particular instrument scores so high on the desiro-cheerometer of many fans (it’s clunky, it’s analogue, and Brian Eno used it with Roxy Music). Foussat has realised a good deal of his own superbly robust free-noise music – 1983’s Abbatage is a real heavyweight – and formed ad-hoc groups like Marteau Rouge and Thrash The Flash whose team members have produced gloriously unfettered and juicy instances of unrestricted noisy batterings. Alongside his work as a composer and musician, his name appears on the technical credits for many important recordings of European improvised music from the 1980s onwards, for labels such as Incus, Bead, Po Torch, Hat Art, Celluloid, RecRec, and many more. I’m always a bit baffled as to why his profile isn’t that bit higher than it appears to be, but it may be because he is just a modest hard-working fellow who doesn’t spend time on self-promotion and ego-preening vanity ads. Such a man, y’know you can trust.

As to modesty, his name doesn’t even appear on the front cover of L’Oiseau (FOU RECORDS FR – CD 01), a release which he kindly sent us in October 2012, yet it’s all performed by Jean-Marc using the AKS and VCS3 synths, and he also performs additional electronic generation, voice elements, toys, and the Jews Harp. The album is dedicated to Victor Foussat, a painter and poet (and relation?) who died in 2012, apparently quite young. That’s his photo on the front cover and a painting by him on the inner sleeve. On two long tracks, Jean-Marc unburdens his emotional state with courage and dignity. The title track is a bittersweet assemblage, composed of multiple synth recordings carefully chained together, some way from the pounding noise assault of Marteau Rouge and amounting to a heartfelt statement of very mixed emotions – mourning the loss of Victor, while also celebrating the glories of art / poetry and thus delivering a suitable musical eulogy of sorts. It’s gorgeous to listen to, a controlled and sustained meditation in electronic sound, freely moving in time and space with quicksilver changes of tempo, timbre and tone – Foussat is a master programmer, exhibits tremendous facility and spontaneity in his work, and unfailingly produces great electronic music with the speed and grace of an entire army of soldier ants. Much contemporary electronic music seems stale, clumsy, or ponderous in comparison.

‘La Vie S’Arrête’ is quite a different piece, a more discordant and dissonant “howl” generated by roaring synths and drawn from a more abysmal part of the soul; of the two, certainly the “nocturne” of the suite. In among the unhappy sighs, groans, and extended whispering utterances of the VCS3, small bursts of real-life field recordings creep in, only to be overwhelmed by the crushing emotions of the music. The sound of the crowd (children at play or a shopping mall) is rendered rather insignificant in the face of one man’s personal trauma and pain. This piece follows the same vaguely “episodic” structure as its predecessor, one segment of music overlapping the next in an intuitive programme of fades and layerings that create a steady continuum, a perfect flow of ideas. Yet you can sense the mood becoming bleak and forlorn as the sounds grow more thin and attenuated, conveying a feeling of futility where a life has indeed come to an end and the rest of us are not sure what to do next. Bird song – probably produced by synthetic methods – looms large in this piece, and the echoing repeats of these near-absurd twitterings and chatterings somehow evoke what has been lost with the passing of this painter and poet. A subtle and sensitive portrait emerges from this very sympathetic music. In between the two compositions, Jean-Marc Foussat takes one minute to read out a poem by Victor Foussat, ‘L’oiseau aux plumes bariolées’ – at which point your listener started getting a lump in the throat.

December 1, 2013

Glory Holes

Very long overdue notice for Tolvek (DOUBTFUL SOUNDS doubt07), this crapulous and absurdist record of genius by Micro_Penis, which we’ve had in the rack since at least November 2011 if not earlier. Perhaps I could use the unsettling cover art as an excuse for my tardiness, but now that I hear the record in its entirety it can only be declared as a tiny masterpiece of surrealism, a 19th-century nightmare of Freud and modern medicine, refracted through sonic images of the Crimean war and suggestions of typewriters, early automobile horns, and horrifying dreams of surgery going wrong. Most of the above can be deduced from just listening to the foul groaning spew that is spread across these two sides of vinyl; the team of Heyer, Kittel, Ogrob and Spenlehauer create ambiguous sound portraits in episodic form that can plausibly be read to contain all of those images. A man screams desperately on side one, undergoing painful surgery, to the sound of primitive saws buzzing horribly and a placid doctor murmuring his disdain. Warfare is clearly suggested across side two, either by distant cannon fire electronically simulated, or by crazed officers barking desperate orders in unintelligible ways, or by the ramshackle brass section imitating bugle calls. A more perfect realisation of a Max Ernst collage in sound, it’s hard to imagine; The 150 Murderous Passions LP (United Dairies UD 09, 1981) at last has some stiff competition.

Freud and Krafft-Ebing are also suitable subtexts, given the name of the combo and the cover images – collages by Michel Borgo from 1978 – which suggest a painful genital operation going horribly wrong, but also indicating that the team of doctors themselves, wearing sado-masochistic black masks, are somehow complicit in an institutionalised form of sexual deviancy. The assorted vocal groans, howls and pained ejaculations that erupt throughout the entire record are evidence that, in this looking-glass world, all sexual activity is a miserable, slow and painful process of joyless, physical grind. The association of sex with warfare, achieved by the record’s strong audio juxtapositions, confirms another deep archetype that has been with us since the time of Wilhelm Reich, and his studies such as The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Never a band to leave well enough alone, Micro_Penis also include a rubber object insert with the release, a “hybridization of sexual obsession and vegetable shape” developed by the artist Anne Zimmerman. This “sexual rubber beast” may have been derived from the leaves of a cabbage, but it also resembles a section from a lung or other vital organ, manufactured using a material which is alien neither to the operating theatre (rubber gloves) nor the bedroom (condoms). So far, plenty of the sort of twisted button-pushing that is guaranteed to activate every man’s dormant id – except it’s more like twisting a scalpel, in those parts we don’t want probed.

However, it would be wrong to overlook that this is also a very humourous record. The press release alone should have the reader in stitches, weaving fantastic yarns about band members being hospitalised or going on retreat in a Zen temple, while creating this work by digging in the hospital garbage bins (probably another deep archetype buried there too); they describe this grand guignol styled work as a melange of “horror movie, art brut and cruelty”. There’s humour in the sound too; if at any moment the music seems extremely bizarre, despairing, or violent, it’s instantly undercut by the next moment which makes liberal use of comic sound effects of farting and groaning bowels, be they created by brass instruments or electronic means. And the voices are exceptional. All four members of the band add voice elements, and they’re both hilarious and disturbing too (often in the same mouthful). They grunt and howl in unintelligible manner; this is not the systematic disassembly of language as practised by Burroughs and his cut-ups, rather the purely instinctive and animalistic reaction to emotional turmoil: this is call-and-response improvisation rendered 100 times more visceral. This is a juicy, dirty record that unflinchingly embraces all bodily functions, from intestines to genitalia and the “sang dans la culotte” that appears on side one, making a fleeting reference to menstruation. The creators of this lurid, nightmarish mess – François Heyer, Alexandre Kittel, Claude Spenlehauer and Sébastien Borgo – come to us from prior projects such as Sun Plexus and Myself, and have made one other LP under this alias in 2009. A truly nauseating delight!

November 28, 2013

O’Rourke (About)

Jim O’Rourke
Old News #8
EDITIONS MEGO OLD NEWS #8 2 x LP (2012)

Some of you may be more familiar with Jim O’Rourke’s work than I am. His name and his fingers – with which he proddeth many pies – have been quite ubiquitous since the early nineties. Discogs can attest to that, as can many a back issue of The Wire, or indeed this here publication what you hold in your screen, I should think. Be that as it may, this is the first Jim O’Rourke I’ve ever knowingly listened to. It might seem a funny place in some ways to start with, then, this double LP being one in a series of archive recordings, rarities, unreleased stuff and the like. However, this reissue is in the main part of one of the younger Mr O’Rourke’s first CD albums, Disengage, although presented simply and generically as number eight in this Mego-curated series (the packaging for which, it should be noted, is quite swell and surely formatted to look pleasant as a complete edition by its devious designers). So it seems this is pretty much starting at the beginning – which, it should be noted, can work sometimes, or so I have been led to believe.

We have, in our sumptuously packaged, graven grooves four pieces, one per side of sticky black vinyl. Three parts ‘Mere’ followed by a refreshing chaser of ‘Merely’.

Initial investigations seem to reveal a curious mix of steely alienation, lukewarm, beating ambience without being ambient. A sound touching on the cold drifts of a cloudbank of post-industrial fumes. Mercurial ebbs and shifts within a subliminal onward glide or inexorable undertow of momentum. An unheimlich phasing of indistinct scenes and moods, all witnessed at a remove, some coming nearer to impinging emotionally, some simply there and antiseptic, like a deserted hospital ward.

So, Mere – Smear, microscope slide, a glide between glass plates, afloat on sterile liquid, Vaseline laminations – Mir – Peace – a Space Station – artificial sustained atmosphere, microgravity, (Apollo) ambience – from peace to ill at ease – seasick – Meer – Das Meer – O’Rourke would of course go on in a couple of years to produce Faust’s ‘Comeback’ album Rien – La Mer, Foghorns – although no Debussy, for that we look to Philip Corner and his gamelan whilst twisting back round to Debussy’s orchestrations of Satie (more on which will be forthcoming, just watch this space) – More dreams of Exxon Valdez glinting on the surface of the oily grooves, Charles’ Ives alpenhorn echoing across an empty harbour or our wintry pond (see Ed’s review of PGA November 17th) visited again in tetherless phantasm, slipped away once again to affectless digital oscillation, lent a surface impurity through vinyl but still – disengaged. More? Four sides of it, but no Pink Floyd, only fluorescent pink ink on blue. Merely? Unprocessed, constituent elements more recognisable, roiling timps, oil drums and static rotation below the waterline.

Here the samples hang on a sagging washing line stretched between the academy (although having been in peril for so long it is perhaps in a new phase of respectability) and ambience, stained by the steam of cooling towers, an electronic interzone flotation tank. Instrumentalists are credited, the mycophilic Michael Prime contributes radio, for example, there is cello, trombone, voice (apparently four vocal performers, somewhere). For the most part these ingredients are carefully extracted in tiny slivers and processed into seamless loops in digital space, massed in fog patches of tone which swell, wheeze and collapse through a variety of moods, some mournful and lugubrious, one – the first section of Mere. Pt. 1 – almost glimpsing a universe next door of beatific ambient glow – thence to dissipate into inscrutable texture or uneasy quiescences of glassy DX synth drone. An exploration of abstract null-spaces and large colour-fields in various rainbow shades of greyscale. A stasis in a 3D hologram waterscape, rush into it and find it was all a mirage, though not exactly insubstantial.

Jim played his cards rather close to his chest at this point, I feel, presenting a music of negation – removing authorial touches, the young O’Rourke somewhere behind the whirring sound-carrier like a spectral Oz in hiding in a Turquoise City, obscuring gesture and individual distinction from the instrumental parts, glossing over overt suggestions of specific emotional responses; a music that paradoxically also negates empty space, that throbs with a steady subliminal momentum and always maintains fluid levels in the soundpool of disembodied sources. Despite this impulse for camouflage one gets the sense of an authorial personality behind things, an author who however is reticent about making definite statements and happier hiding behind pretexts of process, obscured as they themselves might well be. Perhaps this can be ascribed to the relative youth of the composer; a sly air of ‘well here it is, make of it what you will’, or ‘mere’ it is, merely, might also be discernable, equally so in its inclusion as another part of this uniformly glossed Old News series ¹.

As an exercise in deconstructing and arranging acoustic sounds in drones without any particularly overt programmatic schema revealed, and certainly in terms of when it was made it has an oblique interest. If certain palette choices and techniques have become more familiar over the intervening 22 – 23 years that shouldn’t necessarily detract from the music. To listen in historical context probably helps in that respect. It is drones, is more long form and more abstract while still being notably electronic than much electronic music of the time, but uses what could loosely deemed electro-acoustic means to achieve that electronic status whilst mostly refusing resolved melody or mood, setting it a little apart from much industrial soundscaping on the one hand and synthetic ambience on the other. Fans of The Hafler Trio, Illusion of Safety, Staalplaat, Korm Plastics etc. things of the era may want to investigate – which isn’t to say it’s only of historical interest. It may, or may not be, essential or fascinating or mind-blowing, or none of the above, or something else, but undoubtedly there’s a lot of content in there, however reticent, inscrutable or blurred at the edges, and there’s a hell of a lot more to unpack than many current drone or electronic releases I’ve listened to or reviewed. It’s also probably more ambitious – structurally it is still rather sui generis, whether you can pick them out individually or not all the time those contributions and sound sources from other instrumentalists and musicians contribute shades and dimensions, and whether he’s deigning to show his face or not, there’s a distinctive although maybe still nascent authorial voice lurking in amongst the ostensibly de-personalised tones. An early footnote in long career and something of a curiosity with added historical cache, then ².

I find some obscure significance (pun always intended) that a few years later O’Rourke released another self-deprecatingly titled record in Insignificance. ↩
But not ‘Merely’. And we like footnotes here, they appeal to the part of the music fan that shelters the spirit of the collector and the searcher-after of obscure cultural lore and artefact; the spirit that hopes for a revelation from the past that transforms the present, scrambles the possible timelines, that opens mental doors to new utopian listening vistas; and of course let’s not forget there’s the fact it’s part of a nifty looking series… Old News can still be good news. ↩

November 24, 2013

Night People

Marc Lardon Solo
Mörder In der Pulvermühle
SWITZERLAND DESZPOT #001 CD (2012)

Murderers? Snakes?? People Of The Night??? I hope my translations aren’t too wide of the mark, but this looks like a darkly appealing project worthy of mine and your attention.

Here is a new label, Deszpot, making a very strong start. Visually striking; a cut out in the mono-printed sleeve – designed by Miriam Affolter – in the shape of a forward slash (subsequent Deszpot sleeves also appear to have this design feature), reveals a small portion of a mysterious green and black inner sleeve. Closer inspection reveals very few clues as to the identity of the person or thing illustrated (someone’s ribs? Possibly those of Marc Lardon himself?), but on the rear of the glossily printed inner we have some production detail in German, with the Deszpot logo nicely rendered in dark grey on the black background.

So what we have here is an album of solo bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet music that is both vital and challenging. And in my opinion, essential listening. If you are not already a fan of bass clarinet or contra-bass clarinet improv, or indeed Marc Lardon himself, take it from me – you should be.

These pieces are heavier than a five year-old loose in a chocolate factory. The track titles are mostly diaphanous although the third track is called “Nachtvolk” or Night People in my very limited German understanding, which posits Lardon’s social interests, possibly.

The Deszpot website informs us that the six pieces that make up Mörder In der Pulvermühle are “…so precise that they often remind the listener of detailed composed and written music”. Well, ahem, I’d prefer to make my own mind up about what I’m being reminded of, thanks all the same, but it is true that you could mistake Lardon’s improvised playing, processing and electronic matter from this session for a composed piece. Happily, video evidence of the recording process exists on the website to substantiate the album’s improv credentials.

Improvising contra bass clarinettists are, if not actually thin on the ground, then certainly somewhat under-represented compared to other instrumentalists. Of course there are high profile examples such as Herbie Mann, Eric Dolphy, Bennie Maupin (who played on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi), Don Van Vliet, even Mick Karn (in particular I’m thinking of his playing on the Rain Tree Crow track “New Moon At Red Deer Wallow”), and more recently Harry Sparnaay (under whom Lardon studied), Jason Alder of Sonido 13 and Frantisek Sic who appears on several albums by The Vitamin B12, (Euphonious Murmur Blend on Fusetron, Badges on TipTop are two fine examples).

The opener, “Monsieur Verdoux”, sets the tone with cyclical runs augmented by processing on the instrument and tones generated electronically. Quite what the nature of Lardon’s electronic set-up is not explained on the sleeve notes of the album nor on the Deszpot website and the few photographs of Lardon recording at Gestle-Areal Hall in Chur, Switzerland (an “…ancient industrial space…” according to Deszpot), leave me none the wiser. To my ears there are certainly pitch effects being used, and some kind of loop capture and playback device/s, but beyond that I’m not sure what tech is being employed. However, the results are impressive, make no mistake. This piece develops in interesting, non-linear yet structured ways and is quite musical; all the better for leading us deeper into Lardon’s abstract sound world. Named after a respected 16th Century samurai handy with a spear, apparently, “Hattori Hanzo” is more staccato and minimal; for the first few minutes of this, Lardon utilises a dense reverb (possibly the sound of the natural reverberation in the huge space Lardon performs in), on the bass clarinet before a heavy pitch modulation is brought in gradually and before doubling and repeated playback processes become apparent. Electronics come more to the fore on “Nachtvolk” where what sounds to me like a monosynth of some kind is employed to set up a frenetic pattern to accompany a rolling and chaotic clarinet burst. As a self-contained, compact minimalist opera soundtrack for psychologically damaged meteorologists, “Traum” succeeds admirably.

“Black Mamba” (the second longest venomous snake in the world), sets up the kind of physical sensations of anxiety and panic you may find yourself subject to should you find yourself in the unfortunate position of an encounter with this particular serpent – it is particularly aggressive when cornered – Lardon’s snake is twelve minutes of the kind of alarm only imminent peril can instil in one’s heart. By the end, even the clarinet itself sounds petrified. “Epilog” is just that – a chance to reflect and begin to digest this new breed of sonic worry that Marc Lardon has so kindly brought to us for assimilation into. His ability, imagination, technique and ingenuity are by no means under question, Mörder In der Pulvermühle presents us with a sonic horror tableau of quite exceptional delight sourced from possibly the most sinister sounding of all the woodwinds. Highly recommended by this scaredy-cat. Also available on vinyl, this cd is released in an edition of 150 only.

Deszpot

November 23, 2013

People Go into the Stratosphere

The Martin Archer all-you-can-eat buffet is open for business…better bring a big plate and an extra fork…we received the self-titled double CD set by Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere (DISCUS40CD) on 19 November 2012, and it’s a real grand bouffe ¹. This is another grand scaled project organised by Martin Archer in Sheffield and released on his own Discus label. Archer, highly conversant with saxophone and electronics, has been a past master of small and intimate group situations involving those instruments, but increasingly these days he is thinking big; there’s a large number of gifted people involved in this ambitious project, and while the core Orchestra itself – mostly keyboards, electronics, synths and percussion – comprises just five players, there are also performances from La Garotte String Quartet, The Divine Winds (a saxophone and woodwind group), and Juxtavoices, the unique singing choir whose work is also represented on this label on the record Juxtanother Antichoir From Sheffield released this year. With this small army of musicians, this lengthy album presents a cosmic sprawl of massed organ drones and electronic doodlings, enhanced with jazzy brass blasts and free-style vocal episodes from the choir. Think of Tangerine Dream to the power of ten, joined by an early incarnation of the Mike Westbrook Band and the Scratch Orchestra – an early 1970s music fan’s dream come true!

On ‘Seen From Above Parts 1 and 2’, the Orchestra create a truly enormous and cavernous sound, occupied by detailed passages of free playing; it’s a remarkably sustained effort to keep the space as nebulous as possible, without allowing the work to collapse into a sludgy mess. Philip Glass saxophone arpeggios leak into this open-ended gaseous billow of Gong-esque organ and synth drone. ‘The Opposition Effect’ should appeal to anyone who enjoys the work of the John Aldiss choir on side one of Atom Heart Mother (and I know not many Pink Floyd fans do), with Juxtavoices chanting their clipped syllables in a strident manner to the backing of a lumbering rock beat, solid organ chords and flipped-out sax squawkings. “It’s a 25-voice choir that works on the premise that any 25 note chord is probably going to be OK,” is how Archer described the choir to me in 2011, reflecting on the mixed abilities of the singers in the group. “It’s more about text and performance and maybe experimental poetry.” That side of the choir is also to the fore on ‘An Open Vista Is Revealed’, an excellent short piece on the second CD, with the voices whistling and whispering in mysterious manner against a very restrained and open-ended instrumental backdrop. There’s more of their free-form poetry chants on ‘Star Procession’, which when combined with the dissonant string sections and electronic drones produces a heavy-duty dose of out-there weirdness.

Archer has stressed that he isn’t out to experiment with variety just for the sake of novelty; rather he regards his multiple approaches as different ways of solving the same problem. This double CD set abounds with experiment and innovation, exploring ways to make these group combinations work. On ‘Almost Unrecognisable But For Its Surface Markings’, the string quartet wander an alien landscape in amazement, while percussion clatters around them in tiny explosions. In that case, the keynote is uncertainty and doubt, but not so on ‘Duty Music’, a big-band escapade with the strings and brass creating a very forthright and upbeat mood. ‘The Umbral Length of Shadows’ is an extremely bold attempt to use most if not all of the musicians in one collective blast; a somewhat lumbering beast results, which misfires in places and gives us almost too much to listen to as it tramps along its path propelled by a faux-funky beat; but you’ve rarely heard such remarkable combinations of unusual sounds, timbres and pitches. And at 20 minutes, ‘Nimbus’ is another major showcase for noodling keyboards, heavy drone and errant string solos creating unearthly effects, only slightly let down by the rhythm section providing an unimaginative drum and bass beat which somehow falls short of the best moments of Can. That said, Can never used strings and brass to such powerful effect on their records.

With titles such as ‘Anti-Crepuscular Rays’, ‘Rainforest Tension’, and other titles quoted above you’ll have noticed the meteorological and sky-gazing themes of this release ². It’s a promise that is borne out by the very airy and open sound the Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere are capable of generating with their competing frequencies and strange juxtapositions, at their best achieving the ethereality of the air itself. As to the music, which incidentally has taken three years to complete, the press notes make explicit aspirations in the direction of Terry Riley, Stockhausen, Alice Coltrane and Krautrock – which should give you sufficient orientation. I think this is an exceptional work, which testifies to Archer’s very sociable and outgoing approach to making music; he simply likes people and likes to gather them around him so he can perform music with them, and I would estimate that a significant percentage of this album is performed live or in real time. Certainly the electronic effects are kept to a minimum, with only a few audible foot-pedals to tweak the organ drone, and acoustic instruments abound, holding their own against the amplified section of the Orchestra. And the sheer length is mightily impressive. In duration alone this would have occupied a four-LP box set in the old days, a generosity that pays off even when the music does sag in places (‘Coherent Backscattering’, a rather formless and laboured piece, is one notable failure) and the work overall might have benefited from a little editing or a more selective production strategy. The major disappoint to me is the utterly unprepossessing cover art, a grainy image of hideous browns and blacks which eventually resolves itself into a murky treated photograph of the band playing a concert in a venue. The cosmic Theta on the back cover is a good notion ³, but this powerful sign has had its energy somehow sapped by digital imaging, and it floats vaguely against a bitty background of artefacts when instead it should pulsate with all the mystical power of the black monolith object on Presence ⁴. The cloud photos printed on the discs are slightly better and fit the concept of the record. But overall I believe the strength of the music is seriously under-communicated by these poor visuals. This plaint aside, Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere makes good its printed claim to “propose an alternative reality”, and is warmly recommended.

I refer to the film of this title directed by Marco Ferreri and released in 1973. ↩
For perfect conceptual unity, the record really ought to have been pressed at Nimbus, who manufactured most of the releases for Recommended Records. ↩
Theta is used in meteorology to represent potential temperature. ↩
i.e. the Led Zeppelin LP. The puzzling cover art is one of Hipgnosis’s best, in my view. Storm Thorgerson appeared on a recent TV documentary about the making of Wish You Were Here, and neatly summed up Hipgnosis’s cultural achievement; he was simply fed up of rock album covers that were no more than photographs of old geezers. ↩

November 13, 2013

Astronautic Ambitions

"spaced-out slice of tomorrow..." — “spaced-out slice of tomorrow…”

Raglani
Real Colors Of The Physical World
AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO 149 LP (2012)

In times of uncertainty I’ll reach for the bottle of red with the nicest label. When it comes to music, one can usually rely on a label like Editions Mego to deliver tasteful material with a long shelf life. So when arrives a slab of thick black vinyl in a cardboard covering of riotous collaged colour (resembling, rather, one of Savage Pencil’s Wire ‘Primer’ illustrations) and bearing a GRM-esque legend like ‘Raglani’, then only the most doubting of Thomases will waver. And so it is that fans of all things concrète, Kosmische, vintage synth, and sci-fi soundtrack should consider snapping-up this spaced-out slice of tomorrow, yesterday, being as dynamic and dazzling as the sleeve suggests; and as full-bodied and smooth-tailed as a good Amarone.

Hitherto unknown to me, Mr. Raglani here sculpts sound as nostalgic and retro-futuristic as anything you’ll find on the Creel Pone label, and thanks to mastering mastermind Rashad Becker, it sounds richer to boot. Apparently, this is (Joe) Raglani’s first LP proper since 2006, though it’s rather difficult to tell, as he seems to have amassed a fair few limited edition cassettes and CDRs in the meantime, ostensibly of a darker ambient bent to the present proposition. This missive occasions a mission statement detailing a search for ‘the cosmic in the concrete’ and ‘construct(ion of) a plastic image of the imperceptible dynamics beneath the surface of the world ‘. What this means in concrete terms is a matter best left for an interview, suffice to say that he could scarcely be faulted for want of ambition.

The record comprises two extended, electronic compositions, each consisting of four (or so) movements that bleed phantasmagorically into one another. As cosmologies shift from dense to ethereal; electric to entropic, familiar elements of musique concrète and ‘kosmische’ emerge and merge while Raglani has a good old tinker with all manner of physical and phenomenological variables. Oft-animated, ever bleeping, yet sometimes lurching like wind-up robots winding down, the pieces present a sophisticated interweaving of natural and synthesized sounds, Carlos-esque vocodered vocals and shimmering segues that suggest at times the courting dance of electric shadows. Detectable also are shades of the Rephlex label’s more playful releases, and the corner of Trunk Records that happily houses now-revered names like Basil Kirchin and Tristram Cary. The album also sports a bonus 7” featuring arpeggiated, somewhat poppier numbers, which will surely seduce the club-goers of summer 3000.

I remember finally ‘getting’ the initially alienating mutant pixie music of Caroliner Rainbow: through a cassette Walkman, blanketed on a sofa with heavy flu, when suddenly the mountainous riffage of ‘Rainbows Made of Meat’ spoke to me like the voice of God. So vivid is this recollection that I can give ready credence to the myth that attending an Otomo Yoshihide show with a heavy fever was the catalyst for Raglani’s own musical productivity. While the rest of us were at home sick, feeling sorry for ourselves! So on the strength of releases like this, I’m considering giving up washing my hands altogether.

Raglani’s Soundcloud page

November 9, 2013

Blunt Instruments

One day all obscure punk music will be collected, anthologised and reissued, fed to the hungry ears of those who continue to relish this great music and somehow missed out on its first incarnation, or have declared themselves born-again hardcore fans, or simply like obscure music. In the case of 1980s US punk band Mission For Christ, their obscurity is fairly understandable – it seems they only released one single, only existed for about two years, and they came from a part of the USA (Washington DC) which apparently was not – erm – highly regarded in terms of its general contribution to the American punk and hardcore movements. I have the impression they didn’t tour as widely as Black Flag, but then again, who did? We now have The Complete Sessions (EKTRO-079) CD from the Finnish label Ektro Records, which is a corker of a release and presents the band as a well-honed machine producing highly original, eccentric and noisy song-based material with influences from funk music, dub, and the more extreme reaches of art-rock. Plus there’s a healthy dose of protest and current affairs awareness, as indicated in songs like ‘Nancy Reagan’, ‘Smash The Rich’, and ‘The Lebanon Song’. Both sides of the seven-inch ‘Pennies From Hell’ (No Trend Records #4, 1984) are included on the comp, and we also get the entire contents of their 1983 demo cassette which led up to its release, plus an additional six unreleased cuts from 1984. As to the band’s complicated history and extremely fluid membership, it’s told in concise and well-researched detail in the enclosed insert by the very knowledgeable writer Jordan N. Mamone, currently based in NYC and himself a musician (he was the main man in Alger Hiss in the 1990s). Bass player John Gibson was the mainstay of MFC, but I have a lot of time for the hollow and desolate moans emanating from the mouth of Dave Berman, who sings the first nine songs here. Berman’s tone indicates he’s fully on board with the band’s ethos…Mission For Christ had an association with No Trend, whose 1984 debut album Too Many Humans… is now a £100 collector’s item, and were a band noted for their extreme antagonism towards most of society’s mores and the cliches of punk culture in particular (not unlike the way that Zappa poured sarcastic venom on the despised hippy culture). Both bands clearly shared the same outlook on humanity, and were not afraid to dispense their sceptical and acerbic views on the unthinking conformity of the masses. Matter of fact the No Trend guitarist Frank Price joined Mission For Christ in 1985, but apparently there are no tapes surviving of this incarnation. No matter, as this 36-minute CD is a vital and exciting document of the times, a useful piece in a vast jigsaw puzzle, and a thrilling listen to boot. (03/12/2012)

Now for a fairly repulsive smear of power electronics noise…Fecalove appears to be completely obsessed with shit, piss, semen and perverted sex, and wallows in his unwholesome predilections on the album Void, Chaos & Cum (CRUCIAL BLAZE 005). This is released in the Crucial Blaze zine-and-disc series that presents a generous package with an album along with a little full-colour booklet and folder inserts; the visuals for these are also created by Fecalove and prove to us that there is no taboo he won’t violate with his deadly brush and ugly flat colours printed in a limited range (mostly flesh and brown). I would have photographed more of these for you, but it could be they violate obscenity laws in 18 countries as well as all the rules of good taste! So far, pretty yuk-worthy; not even a close reading of Freud’s Totem and Taboo will get you through this monster with your mind unscathed. The Italian creator Nicola Vinciguerra is Fecalove and has been inflicting unspeakable records on the world since about 2004; he also runs the label Turgid Animal, and commits further artistic abominations under the name TISBOR. If you can separate the record from the trappings however, I gotta admit he’s a cracking good noise artist, capable of generating some highly dynamic and imaginatively twisted racket. While this album is mostly a remorseless and grim wall of harshness, the general monotony is tempered by his ultra-violent screaming vocals, his rhythmical power-blasts, his occasional use of samples, and the way he is apparently able to tame his feedback to make it administer forty lashes on the back of the listener. Most of the time though, Fecalove is happily pissing and shitting on the floor of the toilet with no restraint, happy to affront the world with his infantile proclivities. He’s so committed to maintaining this identity that he even tweets as “Bowel Documents”. (11/12/2012)

PRSZR is a team-up between Pure and Hati, and their Equilirium (HINTERZIMMER RECORDS HINT 15) was recorded in a German studio in 2009. Peter Votava (Pure) is an Austrian former DJ who has been baffling us for years with his inscrutable albums of extreme electronica and dark ambient-styled music, while Hati are the Polish duo of percussionists Rafal Iwalski and Rafal Kolacki, who have a penchant for moody and introspective work, and may have borrowed an idea or two about magick rituals from Z’EV, with whom they have collaborated. On Equilirium, I suppose the shared common ground between the creators is a desire to build a very occluded and low-key atmosphere, and the mysterious pulsations and uncertain tones of this album will effectively induce a brooding state in the listener, as if listening by candlelight in a small concrete cell. The third track upsets this trend somewhat, with its rather alarming metallic sounds, its abrasive buzz, and its general sense of hectic urgency; this cut in particular is like a very avant-garde rethink of techno dance music (Pure’s 1990s background is pretty much in this area, I gather), stripped-down and restated as a rather spastic form of mind-numbing repetitious throbbery and clatter. The commitment to near-stasis in the music and the determination to refuse dynamic development is awe-inspiring. The ambitious final track is over 17 minutes long, and comes closest to realising a full integration of the percussion and electronic sounds, to the point where the frequencies of each instrument blend into an indistinguishable array of constantly-pulsing information. As indicated by the title, your sense of balance (equilibrium) is soon replaced by a palpable “delirium”. I would like to say it’s all very mesmerising, but it’s also not unlike being tortured in a sensory deprivation tank. When you come out of the trance, the world will look as upside-down as the bleak landscape photograph on the front cover. From December 2012.