Tagged: electronica

February 27, 2014

Before & After Skynet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 15, 2014

Tribute Acts

Home Body
In Real Life
USA FEEDING TUBE RECORDS FTR-102 LP (2013)

Bringing to bear a deft, understated lyricism that immediately recalls Pierre Menard’s rewriting of ‘Don Quixote’ in its inspired repetitions of its hitherto inimitable phrasings amid landscapes foreign, Home Body’s Hayley Morgan uses mantra to masterfully seduce the listener with polysemous couplets such as “I hustle bustle and I hustle bustle” proving particularly enticing. Careful listeners will observe the sly injection of Home Body’s initials in this novel recasting of two collocated, rhyming nouns into an energetic new verb. Elsewhere, she outdoes the Bard himself, with indelible epithets such as “I can’t live without you. I can’t sleep without you” and “Toodle-loo, I’m sorry but this has gone too far”. It’s as though Bjork, Kate Bush and Roisin Murphy were at once reborn as the same Tesco checkout girl with a penchant for quicksilver haiku, but delivered in a withering monotone that actively interrogates the very virtue of melodicism. Brilliant!

The duo pose in white overalls on the inlay sheet, standing robotically aloof of a riot of coloured fur that represents the contrivance and gaudiness of so much ‘industry sound’. The commentary is subtle, quite sublime, and probably all-too-easily overlooked. The music is a similarly sly bag of synthesized jingles, jangles, whoops born of Eric Hnatow‘s Korg collection; and on the ‘darker, weirder songs, like “Hunt It”’ – there’s a touch of hair-metal rock-out. It all shifts effortlessly underfoot, like rug pulled from underfoot the unwary intruder in this private world of playful linguistic and musical frippery. Essentially, it’s a first class send-up of the kind of bedwetting indie pop that gets Pitchfork readers frothy on a daily basis. In the group’s own words: “outside of time or style, these pieces hew to Home Body’s own standards of canonical pop re-imagination”. Amen.

Ignatz
Can I Go Home Now?
FINLAND FONAL RECORDS FR-91 CD (2013)

What a shame. It turns out I’ve just missed an Ignatz show, as he played a few UK dates in January. Bother. I rather wish I’d heard this a little earlier. It’s a fairly simple set of songs with a country/blues fanboy thing happening; not my usual cup of tea, but it should be a tidy enough offering by anyone’s estimation. Songs bounce along at a calm canter, notes flicked cleanly from flinty fingers, lyrics – apparently pertaining to the human condition – more or less indecipherable mumbling, and a rather contrived lo-fi sound reduction that sounds a little too clean to me to be attributable to tape corrosion. Though seemingly improvised in parts, it sounds to me like there’s a bit of overdubbing – either that or he DOES have lightning fingers; it’s perfectly plausible. Make no mistake: Ignatz offers no new twists or innovations in his designated style, nor any kind of cosmetic wizardry. However, his honest take on country blues is as devoted and unpretentious as the dog that adorns the cover. It’s a warm and inviting sound: that of a serendipitous evening in a nice venue on a dark January evening. At least, I imagine so.

Hoofus
Several Wolves
UK EXOTIC PYLON EP21 CD (2013)

Dear Lord! What is this bent-circuit apocalypse you have seen fit to visit upon me? Hoofus is the nominated harbinger of this specific bout of frenzied audio paintballing: unleashing on environment and audience the rampaging bastard child of a bank of senile machines and sporting more colours than one finds in the visible spectrum. Supposedly inspired by the ‘restless feral yearning’ of ramshackle life in the rural wilds, one quickly discerns that this shag-haired ruffian’s governing mandate is a total aversion to structure – as evidenced by his rapid dismissal of the slightest hint of a drum beat – and the coercing of every whim to its logical limit. In live performances, he twiddles knobs with one hand, bangs a drumstick with the other and is presumably rather adept at clearing rooms with the resulting cacophony. Similar results might be expected here. Sounds range from skin-grazing blasts of guitar to more sentimental dulcimer-type dallying as favoured on occasion by Kid606, whose Tigerbeat6 label would have granted warm berth to this electronic pen pal of psychosis. Truth be told, the very same ‘enfant terrible’ of the noughties offers the best all-round audio comparison I can think of. Anyway, there’s an interesting piece that sounds like a blindfolded man stumbling around precariously inside a pinball machine, but I can’t seem to find it now. Oh well.

February 2, 2014

By the Akerselva River

Pure I believe was this electronic extremist who did stuff for Mego and attained notoriety for sampling the run-out grooves of vinyl records to create his very austere digital music. He’s still milking the “end of vinyl” concept apparently, since on No End Of Vinyl (CRÓNICA 079-2013) he’s enlisted ten prominent electronica creators to contribute tracks (some of them remixes) based on the theme. Even the sleeve itself is cleverly overprinted with concentric circles on black card, so that it looks like an idealised vision of microgrooves. Hereon, @c – slow and increasingly menacing fragments of gurgly broken sounds; Christoph de Bablon – remix of the original ‘The End Of Vinyl’ to produce a boring and pompous synth tune; JSX with his ‘Biological Agents’ and a decent piece of techno-stealth dredged from the sewers of Paris; cindytalk hurling buckets of digital water over a cliff in slow motion; Goner’s remake of a Pure track, using too many effects and gimmicks until incoherence dominates; and Opcion – an effective object lesson in “less is more”, with chilling desolate tones. We also have the very interesting Arturas Bumšteinas, whose ingenious ‘Opera Povera’ was probably constructed from classical music on vinyl, and exhibits a painstaking craft that is notably absent from the other auto-piloted submissions. But Rashad Becker is also memorable with his strangely rotating and colliding elements, spinning in layers like a wall-sculpture made of 100 bicycle wheels; and Pita, whose solo work I don’t seem to have heard for a long time now, and whose ‘This & That Edit’ has the kind of purity of form that Terry Riley would adore, plus a clarity of tone that’s like spring water on an otherwise rather sludgy-sounding comp. All of these contributions show us possibilities, ways of opening out an idea through remaking and refitting. Yet very few of them really reflect the vinyl-ness of records, apart from a few audible samples of crackles and clicks which surface in some of the contributions, and the digital “identity” is very much up front – processed, artificial, impossibly “perfect”. There’s a double-edged irony to all of this, since (as the label webpage indicates) the original release of fourteen years ago was full of millennial uncertainty about the future of media carriers, and recorded music in general; it was asking the question “will vinyl die?” and weeping a solitary tear as if every CD being pressed were another nail in the coffin. Now of course, the way the tide is turning in favour of vinyl and analogue media again, it seems the question is whether the digital has a future.

Speaking of your “millennial uncertainty”, the Norwegian quartet SPUNK just completed an extremely lengthy musical project which they started in 2001. Every year they would meet up to play a single tone and continue to hold it as a sustained drone, using mostly acoustic instruments (strings, brass, woodwinds) and voices. By the time they had finished they had completed a realisation of all 12 notes in the scale. Now the collected recorded results have been released as Das Wohltemperierte Spunk (RUNE GRAMMOFON RCD2140) as a six-disc boxed set, meaning you get two of these drones per CD at approximately 30 minutes apiece. The players involved are the lovely Maja Ratkje (constantly proving herself as a formidable all-rounder – singer, composer, improviser, noise artiste) and Hild Sofie Tafjord (see previous remark), plus the cellist Lene Grenager (guesting from +3dB Records) and Kristin Andersen who plays trumpet and flute. Although not remarked on in the press notes, that’s an all-female team making this ethereal yet wiry music, and among the first things you notice is how unlike American minimalist (masculinist) music this set is: and by unlike, I mean it’s intuitive instead of programmed to death, sensitive to the listener rather than running them over with a relentless systems-based steamroller, and almost completely lacking in the enormous ego drive that, for me, characterises the long-winded work of some composers in this area. This isn’t to say Das Wohltemperierte Spunk is a set of drifty ethereal wispiness (though some may hear that at first), since there is a very simple structure at work in realising the 12 notes in a pre-determined sequence, drawing ideas about mathematical composition from Bach, and there’s an unflagging determination to see the work through to the end over a very long period. I also like the fact that they did it in a variety of locations around Oslo, including a cabin on a fjord, and a mausoleum with a very long decay time within its walls. Usually they played to a very small audience; no wonder they regarded this as a “secret shared among…closest friends”. Clearly the four of them found it a very unifying experience, and one of the keywords (which may get up the backs of some readers) is “meditative”, but there is no pretentious pseudo-spiritual psycho-babble here, just a commitment to finding (and creating) enough space to play and to listen in a very simple way. In the interests of disclosure, I’ll admit I haven’t got much beyond D# in the set so far, but even so I can report that these drones are far from being flat, smooth or boring progressions; there’s a very ragged surface to all the performances, with unexpected angles, corners and planes fully on display, and much of the genuine spontaneity that we would hope for from good improvised music; plus much variety and dimension in the tones and timbres that are being explored. In short, listening engagement is guaranteed throughout these 12 slow but intense pieces. Methinks that the effects of hearing it all in one sitting would be considerable. (13 February 2013)

From Groningen in Holland we have the fairly bizarre combo Sexton Creeps, who for their third album Alex Hotel (HEILSKABAAL RECORDS HK023) have teamed up with the sound artist Kasper van Hoek. The Creepsters pride themselves on their international membership, their shared passion for psychedelic music, and the use of home-made instruments alongside the more traditional guitar-bass-drums-keyboard setup. The opening drama ‘Homophone / The Unicorn Dies’ is a genuinely odd escapade, mainly because it works through about three different dynamic shifts, starting off as a quasi-Nick Cave dirge which lumbers forward for some minutes before exploding in the centre with a crazed echo and guitar screech-out of acid-fried freakery, then descending into the quagmire of a dark fairytale acoustic ballad sung in a minor key. The Sextoneers may come on like indifferent, slouching stoners, but when a certain switch is flipped upwards, they instantly transform into vibrant electric eels. ‘Pissing In The Woods’ is also a rum fish, a moody spookster with a compelling organ sound that would make Tom Waits trade in his golden trilby, and mumbled lyrics which may be packed with menacing symbols. As for ‘Elderly Ladies’ Umbrellas’, it confirms the band’s penchant for formless slow slide-guitar jams underpinned by eerie wailing effects; it’s as though they’d read all about Pink Floyd (1967 period) and their lost and unrecorded performances at the UFO Club and decided to reimagine for themselves what it must have been like to be that band. Did I forget to mention the contributions of the vocalist, J.C.? He’s got a great line in lugubrious mumbling when he’s doing the creepy death-ballads, but also capable of erupting into shouty and screamy blasts of horrifying proportions when the occasion demands it. While I can see this strange record appealing to the prog and psych revivalist brigade, there is also a thoroughly weird strain that writhes at the heart of this album, and the listener will struggle to pin it down like a wriggling centipede in the core of your apple. Bert Scholten did the unsettling artwork of sleeping bodies packed into a compressed grid, like human sardines. (28 February 2013)

January 7, 2014

Slender Oriental Bea(s)ts

Springintgut
Where We Need No Map
GERMANY PINGIPUNG RECORDS 37 CD (2013)

It’s been a while since I did any backpacking – ensconsed as I am these days in the trappings of urban convenience – and long forgotten is the excitement I found kicking around in unknown climes. Sounds like a different story for Springintgut (aka Andi Otto) though: so romanced has he been by the heady sites and cities cited in this CD’s tracklist – among these Kyoto, Bangalore and Yakushima – that he’s pumped out an eclectic set of foreign-flavoured electro-pop numbers in tribute. It’s a light-hearted affair, of moods one encounters in the serendipitous delights and ephemeral friendships of time spent traveling on a budget, and occasionally touching on the more tender moments found in the Touch catalogue, though I offer this as both a qualifier and a caveat. Your level of enjoyment may well depend on how much you enjoy films like ‘The Beach’.

Ever hapless, tracks take one blind turn after another – giving credibility to the titular cartographical crisis and the giddy sense of adventure engendered – flying along with a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ sense of abandon, which alas delves into disposability in the less cultivated episodes. These I would name and shame as ‘Bangalore Kids’ and ‘Bangalore Crows’ – in which clumsy, cringe-inducing electronic rhythms warbling tones rub incongruously against recordings of locals singing and chanting, the resulting mass sounding like a beach party full of grinning ecstasy neophytes. Bangalore is – I gather – India’s silicon valley, so such artificiality is to be expected I suppose, but it’s a faux pas that really has no place in the music of 2013 (or ‘14), and pretty much completes the case against cultural appropriation in music. Also questionable are tracks that feature the breathy tones of Sasha Perera. Nothing wrong with her singing as such; but combined with bland, uneventful loops (and likewise lyrics) the whole melange sounds rather like trip-hoppy cocktail lounge runoff.

The music works best – to my ears anyway – when instrumentation and effects are most sparing in their application, such as those found in the first half of the album. ‘Kamogawa Cycling’ through to ‘Western Kyoto’ (all of the ‘Japan’ tracks, in fact) are, in particular, beasts very slight of frame; composed of galloping, grasshopper-taut phrases plucked from the ‘fello’ – a custom variant of the cello – and smatterings of similar strings, sounding somewhat suave, if slightly sentimental. The rest of the album – which closes on a note of ghostly longing – falls somewhere between the above extremes.

Aoki Takamasa
RV8
GERMANY RASTER-NOTON R-N 148 CD (2013)

Also Japanese and devoid of flab, Aoki Takamasa has been on the ‘IDM’ list for over a decade now; collaborations with Tujiko Noriko and others among a respectable cache of releases, which have seen him honing his craft in a rather exclusive niche in the techno realm. RV8 is his follow up to the Rn-Rhythm Variations EP (also) on the Raster Noton label, and apposite tenement it finds there: its precision-cut beats and intricate, textured layers locating it neatly between the likes of Alva Noto and Thomas Brinkmann. As the title suggests, Takamasa works to a formula, but it’s a compelling and thoroughly explored one. Every track is propelled by complex layers of digital rhythm, which so subtly admit ballistic bursts, ball bearing clusters and split-second vocal snippets that accumulation is practically imperceptible. A standard 4/4 tempo leads for the most part, slyly suggesting dance-floor compatibility, though only for clubs that cater for androids. Still, it’s a friendlier sound than one finds elsewhere on the RN label; briefly shimmering microfibre layers obviating any hint of sterility, and placing matters on the more dynamic side of ‘clinical’, where we find the likes of Surgeon and Plastikman. Takamasa’s rhythmic mastery is impressive, and he displays incredible finesse in his allusions to a variety of electronic styles, from the host label’s stock-in-trade minimal electronic to digitised house and dub techno; hitting a confident swagger in the penultimate track (my personal favourite), but ever expressing a sense of adventurousness (and spaciousness) that can be appreciated through headphones and speakers alike. Full marks.

December 21, 2013

Clouds and Jetstreams

Banabila & Machinefabriek
Banabila & Machinefabriek
NETHERLANDS SELF RELEASED NO NUMBER CD (2012)

Rutger Zuydervelt and Michel Banabila present nine pieces of leftfield contemporary electronica expressed in a highly modern and technical way to create a crystal clear digital sound world. Who is exactly responsible for what is not revealed, but perhaps this is not important. Opener “Ascend” does what you might suspect from its title, and in little more than two minutes. The following track “Slow Wave I” accretes amp hum, analogue pops and occasional long reverbs, before a celestial melody is gradually exposed, obscured by more hums, bleeps and scrapes and finally exposed once more before a rhythm is constructed, perhaps from the sounds of pebbles or masonry falling and water dripping.

“Fälschungen” is a bizarre twenty-three second overture of android owls which fades straight into the fourth track “Dead Air” which is hardly reminiscent of the same, being as it is filled with phased filter sweeps, digital chirping, multi-pitched drones, samples derived from static and so forth. It puts me in much the same mood as the David Sylvian’s earlyish solo material does (Alchemy: An Index Of Possibilities is a good place to start); which is to say, mainly welcome mental calm inducing a physical relaxation with a not unpleasant hint of gloom.

The fifth track, “Frost”, actually initiated a massive muscular pain at the base of my skull during one listen, although I feel it would be unfair to attribute this solely to the music, and I’m sure such extreme effects were never the intention of either Mr Zuydervelt or Banabila. Based around a glacial semi-tone shift in pitch, “Frost” invokes a good approximation of the feelings you get walking outside at 7am on a crisp winter’s morning. Listening to “Slow Wave II” makes me think momentarily that I’m listening to an album of eai – the album as a whole really does have that feel in places – before the electronics and samples kick in. Natural sounds combine with submerged traffic noises and high end synthesis in an unmistakably organised way. It reeks of impending calamity. Similarly, “Bad Wiring” is also an apt title – six minutes of tetchy and paranoid electronics, a psychotic Leslie rotating speaker casting about blindly for victims in a crimson flood of unchecked voltage and displaced air. The final piece, “Descend” posits a surprisingly melodic resolution.

Decorating the packaging and disc are simple images, (photographs taken by Michel Banabila), of clouds and jetstreams, signifying, if not air travel to exotic destinations specifically, then escapism of some kind or other. It is possible that the unsuspecting could mistake the package for a Ministry Of Sound-type item given the typeface used is of a similar manifestation, but perhaps this is the intention and is some kind of homage to the uniform look, (at least to me), of the genre. I could try to extend this theory by stating that the music contained within is a kind of extreme futuristic interpretation of house music, but I suspect this may be a step too far.

This disc I have on my desk in front of me is, according to Discogs, one of a pressing of only 25, which is perplexing that it ended up in my hands, so although a second pressing is on the cards (and may already have happened), presumably Banabila & Machinefabriek intended these self-released discs to be PR for the download version of the album. So this is the first time I’ve come across an album intended primarily to be disseminated by download – if you don’t count the precedent set by In Rainbows by Radiohead, and I always try not to – rather than physically, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. I am someone who is far happier searching through piles of dusty cds in a second hand record shop than scrolling through the pages and pages of endless distro and/or label websites but that doesn’t mean I don’t do it. A lot. And I suspect, like myself, dear reader, you love every minute of it.

December 16, 2013

People Passed Away

Gintas K
Slow
FRANCE BASKARU KARU:22 CD (2013)

Gintas Kraptavicius is from Lithuania and active since 1994. At the beginnings, he was a founding member of the local industrial band Modus, then ran radio shows devoted to experimental music and organized some theatrical Fluxus-like performances. Soon after, he got more and more into digital minimalism, recording the soundtracks for various films and installations. Primarily interested in sinewaves, glitches and noise manipulations, he recorded some interesting material, mostly unpublished or released on small-run CDRs. This situation changed in 2006, when Gintas got in touch with the famous Portuguese label Crónica Electrónica. They released his album Lengvai / 60 x 1 Minute Audio Colours Of 2kHz Sound on a double CD – the self-explanatory title suggested the experimental contents, building a bridge from rude techno minimalism of Raster-Noton tradition to the more conceptual side of his work, presenting the variety of sound transformations in a limited time frame. Another work, Lovely Banalities released in 2009 by the same label, presents skillful microsound manipulations derived mostly from recordings of everyday life. With this really good start, it’s not a big surprise to see his brand new album Slow in the Baskaru roster – this French label has always been interested in electronic experiments and provided an impressive catalogue of international artists whose names should be known to all experimental music lovers. What is absolutely an evident change, is the overall mood of the album – not really slow, but somehow warm and easy. Well, maybe “easy” is not the right word, don’t expect any sweet melodies or relaxed rhythms here. The nature of these compositions is still very abstract and sparse, and the music relies more on the glitchy side of electronic sound. The track titles are more or less typical for this style, formed by letter characters and signs of no particular meaning. Some tracks have a kind of lulling background ambience, recalling many pioneering releases of the 12k label. Others demand more attention to see the intricate relations between loose and staccato sounds while walking through quiet acoustic rooms. Mastered by omnipresent mastermind Lawrence English, the CD is housed in beautiful digipak and awaits careful listeners.

Various
Re(c)quiem
ITALY SANTOS PRODUCTIONS SNTSR01 CDR (2012)

The ultra-productive Italian label run by Davi Santos F provides a catalogue of nearly one hundred releases which appeared just in one year – of course, almost all of them are very small-run CDRs, tapes, and even floppy-discs! No downloads, that’s a good feature (maybe). Well-known names of Gianluca Becuzzi, Mauthausen Orchestra, Simon Balestrazzi, MB (Maurizio Bianchi), Dead Body Collection & Museo Della Tortura appear on the label, but also lots of total unknowns for me. This compilation has no goal to introduce new names or remind us of the old ones, but face the fair concept of requiems for famous people passed away: Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Ezra Pound, Rozz Williams, Lucio Fulci and Yukio Mishima, to name a few. Composed exclusively by Italian artists, all of them drive us to the industrial/ambient realm of looped sounds, drones, sombre chanting, mysterious sounds and heavy atmosphere. Some rhythmic tracks thrown in as well, in post-industrial fashion of course, with sampled voices and sinister, minimal melodies. Quite diverse stuff indeed, absolutely not boring in any sense, it will appeal to many lovers of dark and brooding sounds. For those of you who perceive the world around us through music, it can also wake up your curiosity to find out about all those people mentioned. And, of course, to discover names like Filippo Zamboni (of Culto Dell’Annientamento), Noisedelik, Adern X, Augustus Gloop, Mario Marinoni, Brigata Stirner, Automageddon and others. However, many of them are quite obscure and have not so much music published (if not taking into account a couple of self-produced CDRs). On the more well-known side, there are TSIDMZ & Rose Rovine E Amanti, Maurizio Bianchi/Stefano Gentile/Gianluca Favaron, Khem (Teatro Satanico new side-project), Uncodified, Testing Vault and Deison, who also made the impressive cover artwork, manipulating photos by Fabio Orsi. An interesting exploration!

December 15, 2013

Brooklyn Connection

DJ Olive Featuring Honeychild Coleman
THWIS
USA THE AGRICULTURE AG055 CD (2013)

Looking past the tiresome and arbitrary nature of journalistic neologisms such as ‘post-rock’ and ‘folktronica’, usually utilised to fence in disparate but geographically proximate artists, I have to say that I never felt there was much substance to the music that fell under the ‘illbient’ banner back in the ‘90s. Wordsound releases often hit the spot (were they illbient?) but little else. I gave DJ Olive’s We™ a try and quickly traded it in, the same with some of DJ Spooky’s stuff. Whatever parties they were playing at, I certainly wasn’t invited, nor was I covetous. So with a hint of apprehension I have given this one a shot, many years on.

To my surprise, it’s a warm and friendly post-party playlist of minimal dub/dancehall rhythms infused with tickly twinkles and drizzlings of delay. Snare – as is pointed out – is largely absent, and the drum palette is sparse by design. This effectively foregrounds whatever rhythm or texture Olive has established as the dominating feature at any given time. For the most part, the music sits innocuously on the border between background and mood music: neither to be ignored nor distracting, and always effusive when engaged, if a little forumlaic. This attribute is mitigated somewhat by the silken tonsils of vocalist Honeychild Coleman, whose invitation to ‘come home’ (with her) and such on several tracks will inevitably prove divisive. Personally, I’ve never been one for ballsy R&B voices, so I’ll skip, thanks. If you’re fine with that, you can fill your boots for roughly a third of the album.

By Olive’s admission, this work is the culmination of ‘countless hours’ refinement – both live and in studio. The process presumably being one of paring down operations; to the point at which – I imagine – it was probably a relief just to get it out there. Still, the care shows, every track exudes a feel-good exuberance – and for me it’s a surprisingly appealing formula. At the same time, I find the evidently painstaking approach amusing, considering how King Tubby’s early dub inventions supposedly arose from happy accidents.

Locust
You’ll Be Safe Forever
AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO 162 CD (2013)

Latest on the list of superannuated rock star cash-ins is the return of Londoner, Mark Van Hoen’s Locust project after a 12-year absence, his better-known work under the alias being a number of records on labels R&S and Apollo in the ‘90s. Word has it that Locust’s latest dispatch arose serendipitously during a jam session with one Louis Sherman in the latter’s Brooklyn studio, prior to a set on WFMU radio. The duo went on to record and perform live, the fruits filling much of this album. I’m guessing that they’re the ones that sound an awful lot like Boards of Canada, who seem to be the main muse here, right down to their hazy swirls, starry stabs, and predilection for interludes between every fully realised idea. Which is not in itself a bad thing – lest we forget the many layers of that much-cited duo’s popular music, which reward repeated listens as easily as the upper blanketing confirms impatient accusations of homogeneity. Observe, for example, the mechanical, shuffling snares that subtly counterpoint woozy, atmospheric stabs and clicks in ‘Fall For Me’ and ‘Oh Yeah’ – two of the album’s stronger offerings. Other tracks express less subtlety, favouring a more overwhelming collision of big drums and vocal samples, ‘Just Want You’ being one such example. Climate changes towards the less expansive in the final third of the album (mood remaining reflective albeit): stretched and muted guitars make more ‘90s allusions, certainly to Seefeel; the more moon-booted jazz moments to Herbaliser and even Amon Tobin. Make no mistake, surprises are not on offer here, nor is the nostalgia for the unnameable. However, these ‘post-trip-hop’ (to coin an inevitable future trope) ditties should fail only to displease.

November 30, 2013

Grotesque Mandarin Splashback

Fans of absurdist low-key acoustic mummery should tune into the zig-zag waves emanating from the skewed mind of Daniel Spicer and his album Ylvmlvy (SLIGHTLY OFF KILTER sok045), whereon eight brain-slices from his unique cerebellum can be chewed and savoured by the curious tooth. Some will enjoy his free-form poetry recits, often executed with the help of Tom Roberts’ acoustic guitar, and his wayward disorganised delivery method which seems to involve Mr Spicer wandering shambolically about the recording space while he utters the poems, armed with strange acoustic instruments and percussion, letting the mic pick up what chance fragments it may – in fine, a more benign version of Mark E. Smith’s studio anti-method. Elsewhere, friendly jazzers Caines, Garside and Pyne join in for a lengthy and enjoyable free-form blaster that gives ample evidence that more people should engage and play improvised music, rather than leave that genre in the mouldy hands of the established old-guard professionals ¹. An even stranger “jam” session – and it’s refreshing that Spicer is not afraid to use the word “jam”, a term usually frowned on by prissy proper musicians with scratchy beards – is called ‘Cake Shop Power Breakfast Jam’, featuring Shurdut, Fontanez, Maxwell, and Janas in a truly freaky collision of unhinged minds; in my alternative universe, this is the sort of loopified music we should have heard on The Goon Show interludes, rather than the stuffy and respectable jazz of Ray Ellington. Perhaps weirdest of all are the two ‘Sans Titit’ tracks, short but delicious episodes of Dadaist poetry composed of strangulated and fragmented syllables and phonemes, which Spicer treats with all the seriousness you’d expect from a dignified professor presenting an inaugural lecture at The Royal Academy. Even the album’s title of compressed consonants participates in this game of private language and insane information-scrambling malarkey. All this, plus a violin duet with his eight year-old daughter. Very high recommendation for the work of this approachable and user-friendly Brighton loon-boon. From January 2012.

The great Katherine Young is a member of Architeuthis Walks On Land and Civil War, among others, and she plays the bassoon and composes all the music for Pretty Monsters on this self-titled record (PUBLIC EYESORE 120). I have the impression (see interview in TSP#21) that she likes small ensembles which work with a very judicious combination of instruments, and the instrumentation on offer here – Owen Stewart-Robertson’s guitar, Mike Pride’s drumming and Erica Dicker’s violin – makes for a superbly realised, vibrant and unusual sound. Coherent and ingenious in its dissonances and consonances, there’s not a single note played here that isn’t memorable in some way, well-defined and as three-dimensional as a living painting. The music just leaps off the printed page like a team of wild animals from a picture book, even when the printed page in this case is a compact disc. Young’s other music which I have heard may have veered towards the introspective or the soothing (in a very twisted way, like an old bough curlicued around near a Japanese lake at sunset whose water is slowly turning pink under the sky), but the somewhat rock-music-ified elements here of drumming and electric guitar give Pretty Monster an additional force, transforming the imaginative and unpredictable melodies into even more mind-melting possibilities. By no means an ego-trip for Katherine Young alone, the album gives plenty of space to all the players: Dicker’s violin work on ‘Crushed’ is particularly strong, reaching remarkable heights of controlled frenzy. For fans of the brown, creaky, leathery qualities of the bassoon (a sound which in Katherine’s hands becomes pure flaked tobacco carved in huge ancient chunks), I also recommend ‘For Autonauts, For Travelers’, a cut where that woodwind beast truly burbles and growls in plangent tones, enriched with her unique playing style, and enhanced by electronic treatment. All of this music is just solid enough to eat with a fork and spoon. May I propose that listeners investigate and hear as much of Katherine Young’s music as is humanly possible. Lovely cover art by Rob Patterson. From November 2012.

I am always happy to receive these small gobbets of American weirdness from Amalgamated, a project looming from Spring Valley in Illinois. The deal is that the four-piece Klampe, Newell, Bengtsen and Richards perform their unusual brand of crazy rock-improv-ambient music, then allow D. Petri and Gus Kumo to rebuild and reshape the recordings in the mixing room. Short but intense bursts of energetic and erratic avant-rock noise emerge from these experiments, and two of the tracks on the mini-CD Spark II (INTANGIBLE CAT CAT-17) have additional instruments dubbed in to thicken the rhythms, spice things up with unexpected saxophone toots, or just contribute to the general air of mayhem and directed madness. ‘Musst’ works exceptionally well; one suspects it’s an assemblage of many takes and edits contrived into a single eight-minute slab of Faust-like loopery and pre-planned auto-destruction, but what isn’t? Many great rock records have been assembled from many elements to one degree or another; it’s a question of which gifted hands are doing the cutting and pasting. These talented American goops also believe in producing a very rich and generous sound, never stinting on treatments and effects; the end results are as warm and tasty as a handcrafted cheeseburger. From 14 November 2012.

Two intriguing examples of underground electronica-instrumentals by solo acts Charlatan and Clathrus on their self-titled split tape (FULL OF NOTHING fon36). Sides are unmarked on the cassette but I simply threw the item into th’ player and let it spin. Assuming that this is Charlatan whose noise greets me first, then we’re hearing the music of the famous Brad Rose, the man behind Foxy Digitalis and a fellow with not a few solo aliases in his career. Both ‘Grotesque Social Grid’ and ‘New Millennium’ are fascinating mantra-like constructs whose charm works by using much repetition and looping of very simple phrases, yet never once does it become standard-issue techno-loop trance or boneless ambient. There’s intelligence and imagination abounding in this dense & steely machine-like music, which incidentally is also sunny and upbeat enough (almost psychedelic in places) that it will not be mistaken for “bleak industrial”. I was impressed how busy Rose has been under this name alone; about a dozen Charlatan releases since 2009. The Russian Clathrus is in fact Dmitriy Vlasov, whose Billiam Wutler Yea guise (insanely mutated loop-based gunk) appeals to me mightily. Some of that same intense, determined dementia shows up in the grain of ‘Manitoba’, ‘So Long’ and ‘Zond’ on his side of this C49 tape. He’s certainly keen to show off his transformative skills wherever possible, reworking synth sounds and drum-boxes into unrecognisable utterances, but I suppose his real triumph on these three tracks is the illogical construction of his tunes; they follow crazy paths, make unexpected dives, and disappear down rabbit holes in a highly inconvenient manner. To bewilder the listener in entertaining ways appears to be Clathrus’ plan, and like Charlatan he too manages thereby to avoid the pitfalls of the obvious and keeps us alert at all times. One of many tapes received from this Russian label in September 2012.

This piece in particular calls to mind the clattersome glories of The Vitamin B12, another Brighton project. ↩

November 12, 2013

Robotic Reveries

"Perfectly-proportioned space-pop" — “Perfectly proportioned space-pop…”

Three Legged Race
Persuasive Barrier
AUSTRIA SPECTRUM SPOOLS SP022 LP (2012)

Check the Edition Mego’s ‘Spectrum Spools’ website, scan the covers and this is the one your eyes will be drawn to: a tightly rendered telephone melting out of a white leather egg. Correspondingly, the record it protects vomits vast valleys of multi-coloured, molten strangeness into listening spaces, and long may it do so. Persuasive Barrier is the surreal spawn of Robert Beatty: Kentucky-based multi-media artist, progenitor of a panoply of psychedelic sleeves (including the iconic, airbrushed moonscape to Burning Star Core’s Challenger), small-run cassettes and now this strangely hued volume of lysergic library music under the ‘Three-Legged Race’ moniker. It calls up any number of potent references: visual classics such as La Planète Sauvage, the works of Piotr Kamler, right up to the deliciously dreary Willows by Belbury Poly, but none more accurately than Mort Garson’s Black Mass (under the ‘Lucifer’ pseudonym). Like the scratch-card I’ve never found, it’s an instant winner.

I was fortunate enough to receive the record during a spell of the ‘there’s no more ‘new’ music (just a spectrum of spins on the old)’ doldrums, and to be honest my mind hasn’t changed. However, faith is fully refurbished when, balanced between the imitation and ‘innovation’, one encounters such a successful restoration of a well-worn sound. Alternating between ear-baitingly brief synthetic song-craft and longer, woozier wig-outs, the tracks exhibit resourcefulness using a presumably pared-down set-up and an intrepid navigator’s spirit of adventurous tomfoolery.

The scene is set in the opening tracks: ‘Traces of a Wet Crowd’, a spirited swarm of pinpricks and clipped garbles, lasts long enough to bemuse before melting into ‘Permethrin I’: a yawning groan of cold, metallic space. Alternation between these atmospheres of bleepy whimsy and deep paranoia characterises the overall content. Highlights include the melancholic ‘Persuasive Barrier’; a ponderous procession of descending, doleful pulses, eliciting many a bleak, airbrushed sci-fi paperback landscape, and ‘Magnetic Bride’: another Terry Gilliam sky rattled by ring-modulated gargles, faint laboratory burbles and quicksand-distressed SOS bleeps, as if an old Dr Who soundtrack had somehow gained sentience and outgrown its background role.

Though teasingly tiny, the album is perfectly proportioned space-pop: its 5-year genesis suggesting sincere craftsmanship: the labour of love. Retro-sleeve art included, Beatty himself has confirmed that he sees his work as a considered reaction to a pervasive culture of internet-ready laziness. Persuasive Barrier isn’t an original sound, granted, but neither is it derivative, and certainly has the capacity for succour, not least to Ghost Box fans who feel those releases have lately lost the zeitgeist that once distinguished them. Of all the releases I’ve reviewed for this journal thus far, this is one of the best. It has my fullest possible recommendation and strikes me as the very reason replacement cartridges are made available.

November 8, 2013

Music Has The Right To Vowels

EAU-DC
NR 2
GERMANY EMPIRIC RECORDS EMREC 3 (2013)

It begins as a series of warm, leisurely pulses that ripple across my living room, like Janek Schaefer’s respiratory system beamed live from ‘Basic Channel’ radio. It’s a bare beginning, but evolves by and by, softly excavated by sub-bass scrapes, then accommodating an array of devices cherry-picked from the modern electronic(a) lexicon and stripped to the skeleton. The sound is eclectic but implacable, as if dreamed, depersonalised and filtered through the same slurred, sun-bleached prism that renders the best available dub techno so hypnotising.

EAU-DC is Messrs Thorsten Polomski and Jens Fischer, the latter of whom may or may not trade under the guise of ‘DJ Fox’. Information on the pair is scarcer than this 200-copy record (large posters enclosed in the first 100). It is a streamlined sequel to the artists’ ‘sometimes hasty’ debut, and it displays an approach to track construction that is as laconic as their press: “just mixing up favoured elements, adding more restrained, but sometimes pretty hasty beats and analog sounding fx’s”. And though dropped twice in the same copy, here ‘haste’ is as conspicuous by its audible absence as is unnecessary explanation. Personal satisfaction is the artists’ evident motivating mandate, but with indulgence subordinate to intuition. The results should thus please anyone with an ear for ambiguous, understated atmospheres that don’t necessitate herbal accompaniment.

The seamlessly segued ‘SKLLRDE / PRNCS’ provides a lengthy lead-in, draping layer upon luscious layer of languorous cloud-tone over a ghostly heartbeat. An arrhythmic limp sets the tempo for ‘MCROMRKA’, the first track to make use of more than one vowel in the title. The resulting oxygen expulsion and subsequently dizzying head-rush might explain this ear-catching meter, which is, in due course, ameliorated by a vertiginous, undulating organ line. Side B ups the speed slightly: scattering suggestions of drum’n’bass and even dubstep here and there, though always in the sparest, most tasteful manner I hasten to add. Even the remote, pitch-shifted (but radiant) female vocals in the final track – ‘ESTUTHAT’ – look unlikely to divide listeners the way Burial’s ‘Untrue’ did, instead allowing the record to drift into its longed-for last slumber.

NR 2 is a solid listening experience in its entirety, offering your ears some of the best comfort that music money can by, short of Boards of Canada reissues perhaps. These 8 tracks amount to a hazy road journey that casually deconstructs any number of electronic sub-genres, and if you choose to ignore the label’s ‘33rpm’ notice, you can make a double album of it to no dilution of your enjoyment.