Tagged: percussion

March 4, 2014

Cults Percussion Ensemble (self-titled): a mix of kitsch and sublimely dreamy music

Cults Percussion Ensemble, self-titled, Trunk Records, JBH046CD (reissued 2012)

A very obscure release from 1979, copies of which were usually sold privately by the group itself, this is a charming set of mallet music made by a group of 14-year-old girls working on xylophones, glockenspiel, marimbas, vibraphones and timpani drums under the guidance of their percussion teacher and conductor. The group got its unusual name from the girls’ home suburb of Cults in the city of Aberdeen in northern Scotland. The only thing that may be a little sinister about these lasses is the hypnotic and sometimes dreamy music that pours forth from their hammers which the youngsters apply to their instruments with a light and skilful touch.

Although a lot of the music on this album can be very cartoony and kitsch, there are some very beguiling pieces worthy of a band with a name like Cults Percussion Ensemble. Early track “Baia” is a gorgeously languid glide through shimmering lush tropical forest and turquoise-blue waters gently lapping sandy crescent beaches hugging the edges of palm-fringed islands. The ambience enchants the senses with jewelled raindrops of sound. Diamond tones seduce the mind into floaty journeys over coral reefs in tropical waters. “Circles” is an urgent hyper-energetic spin through a twinkling kaleidoscope of fragile tones. Amazing that young teenage girls could play music with such a light airy touch and delicate feel that landscapes they would have little or no familiarity with could spring fully formed from their hands and mallets. “The Little Dancer” must surely be the last word in music describing the lonely and melancholy path taken by a lone unnamed protagonist in her life’s journey.

“Two Jubilee Pieces” comes close to abstract experimental darkness as the girls race up and down the bars or carefully trace the orbits of planets circling a lonely red dwarf star in an atmosphere of stark introspection. After the halfway point, the music goes down a cloyingly kitsch direction and this part of the album, emphasising technical virtuosity and playing to its audiences, is the least satisfying section for this listener. The album picks up and ends on a high note with “Polymers”, a soulful atmospheric piece that features singing.

For such an old recording, the sound quality is very good with very little hiss, and the instruments seem fairly soft in tone. While I wish that the selection of music in the album’s second half could have been better and could have demonstrated more of the girls’ feel for and sympathy with their material, as opposed to merely exploiting their technical skills and speed in playing popular sentimental tunes, I’m aware that the material chosen may be all that has survived of their work.

A tidbit of historical interest is that the ensemble includes the virtuoso percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie as a member.

February 27, 2014

Emotional Cream Sauce

Leo Ciesa
Coat Of Arms: Music for Solo Drumset
USA SOUNDYARD 001 CD (2012)

There is a drawing of a literal ‘coat of arms’ on the front of the CD wallet. A piece of clothing made of arms and hands. A reference, for sure, to the agility of this drummer/composer, Leo Ciesa, whose movements are apparently sometimes too fast for the eye to follow whenever he is going for it behind his drum kit. The title and drawing are a play of words of course, and we read on the back that it “reflects his interest in seeing and hearing beyond the obvious”.

The agility and the ‘beyond the obvious” I directly believe when listening into his CD. The wallet explains that we are listening to Leo Ciesa “powerful, melodic, polyrhythmic, compositional and virtuosic drumming. (…) Twenty-two distinct solo-pieces on a basic traditional drumset without any overdubbing or layering.”

His skill is undoubtedly high and Ciesa showcases on this album all the different sides of solo drumming that spark his interest and passion. Pieces are short, with an average length of two minutes. One longer piece, “Sweet Butter”, sticks out. The rest of the CD feels like quick dips into the sea of sound that Ciesa is able to create, which leaves a listener like me rather frustrated at times. Often, the moment something interesting is established, the piece already stops. It makes the listening experience somewhat cerebral, as piece after piece, different ideas are showcased, but nothing is given the time to mystify, bewitch or enthuse the listener. The feeling is that of an album of ‘modern etudes for solo drumset’ rather than ‘music for solo drumset’ as the subtitle suggests. And this is a shame because the musical potential of what Leo Ciesa is offering us is high.

Drumming, even the contemporary type, can usually really lift me up and drive emotional vibes through my body and in Leo Ciesa’s virtuosic playing, there are in principle all the ingredients to do just that. But just as I start getting carried away in a beautifully frantic piece like “I’ve got an accent” (2:25) or the weird, slow and mystifying “Emotional Cream Sauce” (1:58) it – just stops!

Due to this, the only longer piece on the CD – “Sweet Butter” (6:40) – really feels like a relief. Finally we are allowed to dwell a little bit in a sea of rhythms, and get engulfed by the music.

All in all, it makes for a CD that seems to be recorded for fellow drummers, showcasing ideas. I am no percussionist myself, so I am not qualified to say something about what the album potentially could mean for that insiders community, but after checking his website, it seems that Ciesa indeed has this audience in mind. All tracks of the CD are described there in a technical fashion. For the aforementioned “Sweet Butter” (track 9): “This African rhythms inspired piece starts with a 5 way independence intro. Entering one by one, it begins with the right foot on the bass drum playing 2, followed by the left foot on the bass drum (double pedal) playing 3, then the left foot heel on the hi-hat playing 6, the right hand on the floor tom playing 4 and last, the left hand on the rack tom playing 8. (…)”

On the back of the wallet, we read: “Creativity, curiosity, emotionality and spontaneity characterize this iconoclastic and highly personal work”. I do believe immediately that this describes Leo Ciesa’s musicianship well, but to really experience it, my ears and soul would need a different type of album. I guess with 22 minutes per piece, stringing together different ideas and letting them cook for while so that I can taste them, rather than 22 pieces per CD where I am only allowed to look at the ingredients, the whole listening experience would be totally different.

Concerning the emotional and ‘highly personal’ side of Leo Ciesa’s musicianship, Coat of Arms only allows us a few glimpses. I would be curious to hear more of it. For the moment, Ciesa holds it off by offering us only very short, though undoubtedly exciting, dips into the waters of his solo drumming universe. I am looking forward to an album with much longer dives!

February 16, 2014

One Harp, One Guitar

The Harp of the New Cambria

Yeah…Rock! Rhodri Davies finally discovers the power of heavy metal! For years this Welsh genius (improviser, composer, innovator) was known for producing extremely quiet and minimal music with his harp, often in the company of other minimal improvisers, although admittedly he was recently drawn to use of the ebow as a process whereby he could extend the resonating strings into a powerful, humming, ultra-long drone. As is well known we love his work here and some of his recent records (e.g. 2010′s Carliol with John Butcher) have been exemplary in terms of their stripped-down astringency, their frightening sense of purpose, their deep-frozen “core of ice” affect such that to listen was like being stabbed in the head with an icicle. Now on Wound Response (ALT.VINYL av038) he’s embracing amplification and distortion, and with these groovy cuts he’s turning himself into a Welsh avant-garde version of Jimmy Page or Leslie West, riffing away in gorgeous circular patterns with a strong sense of simple melodic drive, anchoring down his quicksilver inventions with a solid root note, and generally updating the blues / rock mode in his own shimmering image of palpitating atonal holydom. In fine this is the sort of harp record that Keiji Haino probably wishes he could have made, during that creative purple patch when he figured he was tough enough to play any instrument known to man and create a hideous racket on it, including the hurdy-gurdy which he memorably transformed into a shrieking wheezy monster of steel and wood. Now Haino must surrender his laurel wreath to a new victor.

Davies is getting this fab new sound from use of transducers, contact mics, a volume pedal, an overdrive unit and two amplifiers, the sort of setup that produced those side-long versions of ‘Dazed and Confused’ (although in fact a theremin was also used I believe). The volume pedal in particular is one of my personal favourite devices and isn’t used enough in my view, ever since Derek Bailey trod his well-brogued foot on one of them during his brief but memorable “electric” phase ¹. Mostly of course the quality of the music here is produced not by means of electronic assistance, but through the sheer dazzling brilliance of Rhodri’s attack. Man, you could use these fingers to mow an entire field of wheat – he’s his own combine harvester! Speed and coruscating energy are the order of the day, at times making music that resembles the hammered dulcimer or autoharp of an acid-fried folk musician, perhaps named Barney Pembleton, on the most gloriously impossible folk-rock record that never existed and was in fact purposely suppressed by Elektra, Island and Transatlantic working in an unholy triumvirate of conspiracy to conceal dangerously good music from the crowd. Now through the gift of channelling the spirit of Barney Pembleton, Rhodri Davies has succeeded in unleashing that monster from the vaults. Lovely screenprinted card presentation on this beast, with drawings by the organist / composer Jean-Luc Guionnet, a Phil Begg recording, and title borrowed from the musician’s personal bookshelf of great literature. And it’s pressed in clear vinyl, which ought to be the clincher. From 26 October 2012, and a total goodie.

The Persian Version

Last heard from Yek Koo with her single Alone Together, now here she is with an entire album recorded for the same label called Love Song For The Dead C (EMERALD COCOON EC009). Yek Koo is Helga Fassonaki from Metal Rouge, working solo with guitar, percussion devices and her voice for this uncanny limited-edition vinyl item, released at the same time as her one-person show at the Human Resources gallery in LA. The order of the day on this highly discursive and ghostified dron-gronathon is a fairly skeletal approach to music-making, selecting bare twigs or bent wire sticks, remnants and rags of material and assembling them with the intuitive flair of a collage artist or maker of bricolage. These tunes unfold in real time, coming to life on the gallery wall rather than enduring a half-life as tracks etched into dead vinyl. There’s a gloriously delirious tone which the press notes describe as “drunkenly stumbling”, to account for the free-swimming odd mismatches of sound-generation here. The very body of each tune appears fragile, so brittle that it might shatter at any second, or so nebulous that you could disperse the entire album by turning on the fan. Yet Yek Koo’s music keeps on going, and the mysterious drug-like logic of her music is as potent as a spell from Circe burning evil incense blocks in her copper bowl.

Everything is suggestive of alienation and distance – distorted, weirdly-echoed effects, beautifully badly-played electric guitar to produce unearthly tones, an out-of-tune waily voice drifting in from a secret chamber – yet in the final analysis, it’s the most honest and intimate music you could hope for. It’s as though Fassonaki has found a completely instinctive way to outwit the subtleties of our own mind games and ego tricks, and bypass normal channels of communication to arrive at a very direct statement delivered from the heart. The label exhibits a certain pride in the “tradition of the great outsider sides of the early 90s”. Although “outsider” is becoming a commonplace term these days, the point is well made, and even the cover art with its simple pastedown wraparound is trying to forge a link with the 1990s “tradition”, if indeed there is one, when great underground music was packaged in master bags with paste-on covers (mainly for economic reasons) and released in near-secrecy. Of course this attentuated, formless wailing sound she makes isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but I personally am completely enchanted with this LP and it’s highly worthy of your attention. Received 22nd May 2012.

Best heard on the classic LP Domestic and Public Pieces. Let me know if you ever find a copy. ↩

February 7, 2014

Belgian Barrage

Well here I am, back from travelling through Father Christmas’s black vortex and spat out the other side, not looking back like Orpheus – no way – stumbling into the light without a drachma to my name, just a number of scrawls on the back of some wrapping paper which I will endeavour to transcribe for you in the here and now being as it is such a beautiful February morning the sun is shining the birds are singing and it’s time to give a tip of the hat to some cult objects of the 21st century earth-dwellers that TSP has jiffy-bagged my way at some point or another. Call it a round-up, if you want. Phew! Let’s hope we can make it and still go and soak up some vitamins.

In no particular order, then:

Let’s start with Charlemagne Palestine and Z’EV with their double CD of collaborations and solos from last year, Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear (SUB ROSA SR340). Issued on Sub Rosa it is as you would expect a fine and pleasing production visually and tactilely, in the classic tradition of ‘professionally’ produced CDs, an art multiple for you to own and hold, and sometimes to hear. Which is what happens if you place one of the two shiny plastic discs in an appropriate playing device.

For this tag team match-up Charlemagne plays his carillon, hitting it and pedalling for all he’s worth, and Z’EV, as you might expect, also hits things – he also does some scraping, and maybe a little tickling. Funnily enough, although Charlemagne is playing tuned percussion, melodic content mostly comes from the tonalities of Z’EV’s percussion, padded basslines creeping from the lower depths and mournful wails from the guts of metals. The carillon plays like an extra-slow-motion version of Palestine’s strumming music, large and clanging like a clapper ringing in the empty Belgian sky, cycling through the limited intervals available continuously, although in an ambulatory rather than mechanical manner. Around these coded, elephantine dabbles, giant ripples, hints of bells ringing the hours in fresh air, Z’EV’s percussion dances, organic and low, like a bodily function, yielding and pulsing with the hidden energies of the lower centres. It’s a strange mix of the earthy and airy, the heavy and ponderous and the light. Students of the cabala may in fact be able to apprehend which precise path describes the experience evoked here, there are hints of pattern and systems in the combination of elements notes and parameters. Like an uncertain day, though, tentative clouds hinting at promise yet masking the sky, it doesn’t give up its secrets easily. Or perhaps its secrets are there for all to hear, merely registered on a more instinctive, bodily, level. Bells in the sky, elusive moods from a big sound. It should also be noted that on the second CD you get three solo pieces, one Charlemagne, two Z’EV, the second Z’EV one being the length of an album itself (40 minutes plus) and a thoroughgoing burrowing into rhythm and physically derived pulsation which is very useful.

Next, also on Sub Rosa, Zahava Seewald and Michaël Grébil – From My Mother’s House (SR349).

These artists, who delivered an instalment of John Zorn’s Radical Jewish Culture series as part of Zohara present here, using the works of various Hebrew and Jewish poets as a starting point, a text-heavy, implication-dense montage of thought and reflection, personal and cultural, on the Jewish diaspora, poetry, Yiddish song, Auschwitz, memory etc. elided and superimposed together similarly limpidly, although without the sheer ravishment of mysterious sound, as Luc Ferrari. In the way material is put together there is also a faint echo of say, Pousser’s concrete paeans to Liège. As with both of those composers there’s an interest in speech and the sound of the voice, here Zahava sings and recites, dialogues, monologues, poems. Other voices are layered or respond. There is a mix of other sound sources: domestic scenes, snatches of Middle Eastern radio and melancholy reflection; Singing, composition and improvisation all edited into a gliding digi-montage which in its overall form reminds more of a visual-less film than a piece of music as such. Subject matter and treatment may also recall literary works (inevitably perhaps given the poetry-based nature of the work) including the Sebald of Austerlitz, the Emigrants etc. Also certain mittel-European art films. Heimat perhaps? Buried in the booklet text is a dedication to Chris Marker, which provides some sort of context and hints as to where the artists are coming from and perhaps what they hope to achieve; in fact I found the whole thing best appreciated as an audio analogue to a film such as Sans Soleil, although I remember Sans Soleil, which admittedly I haven’t seen for quite some time, as being far more invigorating – aesthetically and imaginationally intoxicating. This does, however, share a wide-angle view of humanity and cultures, obviously adjusted for subject matter, temperament and concerns, with scenes and locations passing and cutting adroitly and transparently; furthermore, it is undoubtedly one whole text-sound-music essay rather than a musical album of discrete songs.

As to content it is historically aware, perhaps even saturated. The texts themselves (although not all of them) do not shy away from blood and flames and travesty, framed musically by the always pristine – perhaps even aloof – formalism derived from cinematic editing and to some degree musique concrète. There’s a sense of the dry bitter taste of ashes or Passover herbs and of lamentation, or in some sections the cloistered dryness of an unenjoyable university course or anonymous cultural institution.

The voice is ever present -mutter, murmer, mother. One work of the poet Rose Auslander in particular seems a keystone for the project, regarding as it does questions of a ‘mother tongue’ ‘father land’ and portraits of humanity and peoples; an excavation of the cultural and social through the personal. As to temperament I found the piece in parts rather heavy going, and sometimes cloyingly melancholy. There is certainly an air of introspection and inner inquiry on both a personal and a cultural level. Needless to say a lot of hard work has obviously gone into the work, but the overall tone, and a lurking sense of the didactic, does colour my response to it. Allowing for quirks of personal taste, however, it certainly lives up in some respects to its inspiration from Rose Auslander, reflecting her neologism ‘Menschmosaik’, i.e. a Mosaic of Humanity, presenting some sort of collage of the Jewish diaspora in Europe over the years, united by shared culture and history.

As a personal investigation and rapprochement through art with some weighty concerns it contains plenty to unpack and engage with, textually and formally, even if it doesn’t necessarily inflame the non-analytical levels of the imagination ( above and below) in the same ways as Charlemagne Palestine and Z’EV do ¹. If I find it less than satisfying emotionally, it does however as a whole showcase an abundance of material, emblematic of a culture that may be unfamiliar, to engage with, or at least encounter. Which must have been one of the artists’ aims, and is surely a worthy one. Whether that makes for wholly successful art or not. Well, I’ll evade that thorny question and let you decide…

Unfortunately, I have at this point run out of steam in my rounding up. The round is only a hump, the circle is not unbroken, it has turned into a parabola, distending as it has from the concise to the wordy. Two items do not a round up make, I know, the good news though is I did manage to have a walk in the sunshine before it got dark – the vitamin D was excellent, since you ask – , the bad news is that I will endeavour to continue to review some of the pile I have here as soon as I can. Stand by for more words…

Z’EV, himself Jewish, has also recorded for Tzadik, who released the preceding instalment of Seewald and Grebil’s three part work; Charlemagne Palestine, as well as one of his middle names being Tzadik, is also Jewish. Z’EV’s lifelong investigations into Jewish mysticism and Palestine’s experience training as a cantor growing up in Brooklyn – he discusses in a recent interview the importance of Jewish sacred singing in his musical education – both feed into their work. Palestine and Z’EV draw from their cultural roots and knit them into their work in very different ways, synthesise many strands of their personal histories and passions sublimate them into powerful and individual musics that can still be viewed in some degrees as reflecting aspects of Jewish culture(s). ↩

January 26, 2014

Numb Sock Rinse

FRITZ WELCH – RADIO FLOW

Fritz Welch
Radio Free Alcatraz

Fuck me. This gave me a headache. On the cdr it sez something akin to ‘Numb Sock Rinse’ which I thought was a great noise name… but the writing style was so aberrant that I couldn’t be sure if that’s what it really said. After spending two whole days analysing the cover I eventually spotted a sticker emblazoned with the name ‘Dave Welsh’ in the tinniest writing imaginable. Well, that got me mad. Dave Welsh, what a shit name. Utter toss. Not my thing at all. If Someone called Welsh Dave’ tried to sell me his noise works I would BUY!BUY!BUY! and if someone called Dave Walsh tried to sell me his noiseworks I would spit in his EYE!EYE!EYE! – at one point I chucked this CD/R in me bin so profoundly upset was I. Me mate Andy visited later that day and fished the thing out. Andy makes a living from bin robbing and coffin bugging. He’s the finest in Burselm. He was intrigued to know why I was binning the works of Fritz Welch! FRITZ WELCH!!!! Here’s a tip Fritz, it’s an ageing population and we have nothing to live for, if you cause me massive eye-strain-again with DELIBERATELY TINY PRINT, ‘pon my turning the age of 70 I’m going to shoot up some PCP (or the future equivalent which will hopefully be much better) strap some home made explosives to me noggin and come a calling for you, YOU SMALL TYPE BASTARD. Anyway, it was nice to see Andy and hear all about what’s happening in the world of bins and coffins. I had a quick browse of Fritz’s web site where he bangs on no end about ‘Human Sacrifice’ which is all right by me, without human sacrifice how will the gods know we love them? Ahhh, now I see. Human Sacrifice = Numb sock Rinse. Everything always makes sense in the end. Somewhere on the website something says something about how Fritz has got an urge for ‘percussion and objects’ – I love percussion. I love objects. I had a little hope a little flower in my little heart that Fritz in his own tiny writing way was going to build the bridge that joined rockabilly and noise in perfect perfection. Also on his website it says he plays gigs in old Hair Dressing salons. I love hair dressers. Lorna’s Salon in Burselm is like a CHURCH. When I quit the noise game I’m going to become a barber. You can go to the worst, deprived hellhole on Earth and I can guarantee the one man doing good business and loved by all is the fucking barber. Honestly. I’ve done me research and it is an irrefutable FACT. I’ve gone all happy now. Apologies to Welsh Dave for the earlier threats. Oh shit. This isn’t rockabiily. You can file this under ‘sound poetry’ . It’s vocal yammer. Where’s the bloody percussion I was promised? If you wants some lazy ass journalism, I can put it thus if you like vocal theatrics ala Bllood Stereo, then you will surely like this. Me? I find a lot of this thing upsetting. When I see some youth gurning and wheezing and spitting out nonsense I get an urge to kick them straight in the face and send them back to the hell from which they came. I like Keith though. On this CDR he does one long 30+ mins thing with lots of silence. Silence to me is a track break. It says this track is over and another one is just around the corner. To me this is a CDR with 40+ tracks. Keith’s gargling and shouting is committed stuff. Clean sound but it’s not ineffectual. I can sit and listen to this and imagine a lost tribe somewhere, living under an all mighty rock (perhaps they live under ground?) and over the years they have heard a rumour of a rumour of a rumour of a rumour of something called ‘thrash metal’ and they are all fired up by it. With little idea of what is and no instruments at all they create a studio out of the skulls of beetles and set about creating and recording some thrash metal and then they get involved with the international tape trading scene. Am I being a twat? Possibly but no one cannot deny how nice it would be if 90′s noisecore fans / bands (7 Minutes of Nausea, GeroGeriGeGeGe and the like) gravitated to this kind of thing and anyway what could be more metal than ‘human sacrifice’ it’s a lot more metal than a numb sock rinse. Pardon me. There is percussion on this. It’s not just mud from the lungs, there is some noise and effected trickery…but not much, it doesn’t overpower. It’s all quite sparse. Sounds like it could be edited together from live recordings (or even one straight take) with either no overdubs or very minimal ones. It’s all very CONCISE. Compact. Well executed and deliberate. There’s nothing out of place here, there is no fat to trim. In short this is an evocative and enjoyable release – definitely one I’ll be coming back to for repeated listens.

December 22, 2013

Black and Blue Blues

Simon Balestrazzi sent us a copy of Hashima’s record from Italy – Simon may not actually appear on this 47-minute stretch of doom-laden rattling noise, but he is credited with the mastering and I venture to say that it’s a project laced with a palpable dose of the characteristic Balestrazzi traits, including that sense of blackened occultism and semi-magickal ceremony in the enactment of the mysterious sounds. Collapsing New Buildings (SANTOS PRODUCTIONS SNTSR08) echoes its way into infinity; it resounds with such ominous natural echo that it might as well have been performed in a long, old-fashioned corridor some several hundred metres in length and lined with civil-service styled wooden panelling decorating the drably-painted walls. One is reminded of the anecdote often told about the recording of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Boxer’ and how the dramatic percussion effect on that record was achieved by setting up an enormous bass drum at the end of a studio corridor for Hal Blaine to bash ¹. Hashima’s intentions are far from benign, and this darkened record reeks with fugged-out screams and tortured feedback effects – much like prising open an enormous door in this ‘new building’, and the entire record is characterised by ferocious percussion work reminiscent of the demolition crew hammering down walls with sledgehammers, or ripping apart metal siding inside an elevator shaft. The other part of the puzzle is that Hashima Island is a real-life location (off the coast of Japan) and a notorious site of dereliction and ruined buildings – what was once a prosperous coal mining town in the first half of the 20th century is now a major symbol of serious neglect. Two other artists who have been intrigued by this world-famous “ghost town” are CM Von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad, whose response was to make a video “installation” out of the place. I have seen this video, and believe me, it’s a haunting and harrowing experience. Perhaps Hashima is another alias for Balestrazzi? Perhaps the work was actually recorded in one of the decaying buildings on that bleak atoll? Speculation aside, I would imagine the cover art for this release is a genuine Hashima photo, and you couldn’t wish for a more palpable image of extreme urban decay. The record itself more than lives up to that visual promise! Arrived 3rd January 2013, but may have been released in October 2012.

Blue Poles (SLIGHTLY OFF KILTER sok046) is a collection of aural experiments by Paul Khimasia Morgan, recorded in various locations during 2011 and 2012. They don’t seem to have any theme or connection and are related only by appearing together on this album. They comprise field recordings, pieces where he’s working with musical instruments in various combinations, or more abstract experiments in sound art using feedback and white noise through a mixing desk. Morgan restricts himself by only allowing an interpretative dimension to appear inside his titles, some of which are like isolated fragments from poetry or the opening lines of mysterious short stories. For the rest, all description is stony-faced: he delivers only a completely factual shopping list of the objects and bric-a-brac used to create each track, noting the location and place where he did it. On this outing at least, Morgan shows himself as a devotee of the “small objects and small sounds” school of sound art, creating curious creaky episodes of rather dry rattling and rustling like a slightly more fulsome version of the later Jeph Jerman. The work may occasionally produce some odd musical notes or drones from a guitar or zither, or some low-key electro-acoustic effects where a microphone or mixing desk may interact with the activities. Largely though, Blue Poles takes a non-musical and documentary approach; the musician’s own work is treated as though it were an event taking place in the countryside, and recorded as though he were making a field recording of it. This lends a diffuse quality to each piece; it’s not clear where it begins or ends, if indeed it can be said to occupy such certain ground. Rather than finished compositions, it might be more apt to regard these as fleeting snapshots of unusual phenomena in progress. (24/01/2013)

Piatcions are an Italian psychedelic rock group who made an LP called Senseless Sense in 2011; we received an advance copy of their 12-incher, Heaven’s Sins (FC009V12), from the London label Fuzz Club Records. Three tracks in fifteen minutes, including a remix of ‘Reel Loop’ by Atom Eye. I won’t pretend that any of this music is particularly “experimental”, but I like it. It brings home the bacon in terms of solid, trancey avant-rock with all the desirable qualities – a solid beat, fuzzed guitars, trippy keyboard drones. Not as self-consciously proggy or kosmische as the retro items we often get from Sulatron Records, this is good treacly dark-drug music that’ll keep a few Spacemen 3 diehards happier for a bit longer. Allegedly, they’re great in a live situation too. (22/01/2013)

The three-inch offering by Vile Plumage is another odd ‘un sent in by Filthy Turd. The Plan Be Vile, Conceived In Shame (NO LABEL CDR) is described as a “metaphysical journey…through Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent”, and consists of lo-fi field recordings made around that undistinguished locale. The recordings have been layered with an uncertain acoustic guitar plucking the idle music of the damned like a diabolical busker in the streets of Hades. Plus menacing whispers and grunts which are occasionally dropped into the continuum. The gentle noise grows into more alarming proportions, with echoed chants, strange howling effects, and gasping women victims; all the while that relentless acoustic guitar keeps on trotting out its implacable rhythm, as though its player was grinning at us with the sinful smile of the fallen. Vile Plumage is the team of Filthy Turd and Andy Jarvis, but in true magus fashion (shape-shifting like a witch’s familiar) even their very name can change at will and they are sometimes called Vile Goldenn Plumage or Goldenn Viles. The actual surface of this recording may not strike you as especially inventive at first, but persevere ye must, since a desolate and spooked vibe runs through it; it’s as though the pair shrunk themselves into small hobgoblins to capture the sounds from the “parks, tunnels and ginnels” of the area, and at length are able to transform into the hideous horned and hairy creature on the cover. Filthy Turd continues to shine his light into odd places, and you may not like what he reveals. From August 2012.

Other reports say this effect was achieved with studio reverb. ↩

December 8, 2013

Classic Rock

Philip Corner
Rocks Can Fall At Any Time
GREECE MORE MARS TEAM MM010 LP (2013)

Corner, amongst many other things, is noted for the performance in the 1960s of his Flux event in Germany that ended in the dismantling and dismembering of a piano. Something that caused a minor scandal at the time, supposedly due to the sacrosanct significance of the piano as cultural symbol, but which in fact was not specified in the instructions for the piece. This twist evidenced a spirit of physicality and utility – apparently the artists would have had to pay someone to remove the piano otherwise. A similar physicality and a thriftiness of sound, expression and presentation is something that Corner retains to this day, selecting and minimally burnishing to reveal delicate expansive impulses latent in simple materials and open structures.

Over the years he has shown a particular affinity for gamelan and metal percussion, a major strand of his work being his Gamelan Son of Lion associated pieces, which explore in a Western context the musical languages and approaches of Indonesian gamelan musics, and his ongoing explorations of resonant metals, which are flavoured very much by those Indonesian influences.

The influence of a heady hash of eastern derived thought systems is also evident throughout his work, be it the ‘Om Duet’ here or a randomly picked title out of many such in the back catalogue such as ‘Uhhm (After a Deep and Tibetan Image)’. Considering this, I have no doubt that the readymade koan of the album title, featured on the road sign photographed in the booklet accompanying this LP, appealed to both Corner’s Fluxus roots and his Eastern mystical leanings. This mix of ingredients hints of a certain time and space, a little American, a little far-out Far-East ¹. A smattering of musicians this mix has manifested to some degree in would include John Cage, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Henry Flynt…no doubt you can also provide your own examples. This mix bubbled up with the Beats as well, and can also be discerned in the counter-culture of Ed Sanders, The Fugs, ESP-Disk, etc. A time and space, like I said. But as is the way with time and space, not limited to one of either.

In Corner’s case from Fluxus he derives a directness of approach, from Indonesia a sense of movement and rhythm, alongside a Japanese Zen-like mindfulness and simplicity. The music here is danced and performed. Rather than the long form, the eternal drone, Corner is interested in discrete, physically derived sounds in the here and now that in their transitory and ephemeral nature – like Blake’s winged joy or the compressed meaning conveyed with a few select symbols (cymbals, in this case) in Japanese poetry – become possible drops of satori.

Sound quality is various degrees of verité – in the case of the earliest recording, a pretty gnarly tape. Wrapped-up and encapsulated succinctly this collection is not (rather like this review, then) – consider it more of an open-ended proposition, comprising historical document, off the cuff performance, sketches, marginalia, off-cuts from an on-going exploration. The four pieces presented represent four disparate points in time and space on our peripatetic composer/performer’s journey, all threaded together loosely through a unity of focus and open approach.

Resonating in physical space, the spinning of the record edge round like a cymbal, we first hear on the A-side ‘Gong (Ceng Ceng)/Ear’, recorded in 1989, in Bali. The piece combines Corner’s solo cymbal work with an exploratory, ritualised, performative edge hinted at as well by photographs and notes

For ‘Two in Thailand’ (performed New York, 1997) the score is reproduced in the notebook. It is a poem in space for cyclical movement, instruments, and sound. Rubbing of cymbals, procession by one performer around another, slow hits on the nipple of a gong. ‘Time is a Man Space is a Woman’ as Blake tells us, which may come to mind as we see in the evocative back cover photograph and hear this personified on record, Corner defining the pulse, circled by the travelling cymbals of Phoebe Neville, his partner in the performance. Many fine filaments of poetic connection can be hung on these choice but earthy elements. The booklet provides more hints for imagination.

Both these percussion and dance pieces have something of a beautiful shimmer of Indonesia about them, a subliminal bloodstream of rhythms of the Gamelan and graceful, stately movements of court dances.

On the B-side we flip back in time to New York, 1972, towards the tape and Fluxus era documented on various excellent Alga Marghen releases. ‘Om: Duet for Jug and Bottle’ (also featuring James Fulkerson) is a primitive, primal piece, a stoned age Jug band mantra. Breath as the beginning. The first letter of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter in a monograph on pre-Columbian pottery vessels aspirating and aspiring with burgeoning self-awareness. The cooing of pigeons hidden beyond cool plaster walls, linoleum on the floor of a midnight apartment, for some reason I think of an allegorical figure out of Ginsberg melding with the nocturnal all-vibes, simply the roundness of a bottle and jar in a kitchen at some still hour, emptiness containing the idea of the animating breath.

The final piece, ‘Satie’s Chords of the Rose + Croix … As a Revelation’ presents another aspect of Corner. The side that also has incorporated Baroque keyboard influences from Lully and Couperin. A room recording, cut from the frayed corner of bellows cloth, glow off-stage, creaks of a wooden body and room front and centre with the occasional passing car in the distance or sighed breath, or exhaling instrument. The piece, recorded in 1999 in Vermont, gently teases various Satie related implications viz. entr’acte (a pun almost on the musical interval of the two chords that Corner chooses to explore), rickety furniture music, unadorned as in the ancient Greek gymnos. A wealth of allusion in the lightest, simplest sounds from a room with a squeaky piano stool.

Throughout there is an air of unforced concentration, attuned listening. The rotating of the cymbals against each other or the pumping of the harmonium bellows like quietly observed personal rituals, the dull thump on the gong the tap of a Zen masters stick on his zazen-seated student. Of course, Corner wears this as lightly as baggy pair of unbleached cotton trousers; impression, allusion, wisp of suggestion that can enter and pass like clouds in frame of view. Music of material, of pleasure in, contemplation of. Not overly-determined moments.

Package-wise, whilst the cover isn’t the best ever – the geometric shapes seem a little clumsy when compared to Corner’s fluid calligraphy which has been showcased on other recordings – the documentary material included is excellent. The booklet contains writings, descriptions and notes on each piece, graphic score, notation, sketches etc – all intriguing and thought-provoking – and helps to shed light on what we hear on the record.

Taken as a whole, the collection of material is somewhat fragmentary, by nature, although the concept of the definitive piece would not, I imagine, be an over-riding concern of Corner’s. We only have fragments of Heraclitus, after all ². What we hear through each recording is interplay of intuitive movements and simple ideas executed with a magnanimity and lightness of touch which pay attention to the extra-musical harmonies and happy accidents of time, place and material. A scrapbook of thoughts and actions, attuned to dance, movement, sonority and rhythm, modest, quietly assured and engaging, which can indicate plenitude found in the partial and hint at intimations of the infinite OM in the momentary and ephemeral.

Not pinned down too much by the stylus these four documents, although quiet and sometimes unassuming, retain a sense possibility. The possibility of lightbulbs flashing on, of illumination stemming from connection with the basic and physical considered mindfully – of rocks falling at any time.

Father Yod once told us ‘East will meet West and that will be that’. Composers like Corner have been working on a similarly syncretic mission since the sixities. ↩
Speaking of flow, some of my favourite pieces by Corner are those involving his kitchen sink. ↩

November 17, 2013

Getting Through Accidentals

An astonishing outpouring of energy from Invisible Things on their Home Is The Sun (PORTER RECORDS PRCD-4069) album. The label Porter Records is often home to some far-out free jazz enterprises, but this bizarre monster has most of its clammy paws planted in the art-rock camp…the duo of American players Mark Shippy and Jim Sykes realise most of this dazzling escapade with a guitar and drums set-up, although Shippy also adds rich keyboard layers and sings, and guest player Jeff Ziegler is on hand to supply further keyboard goodiness like so much cookie dough. Drummer Jim Sykes apparently bases his work on a deep awareness of percussion methods from Sri Lanka, applied to modern instruments…given that Sri Lankan percussion traditions are said to be about 2500 years old, and at one time the culture had over 30 different types of drum, this is quite an achievement. On Home Is The Sun, there are 17 short tracks which are in fact index points for a enormous whole thing, a continual and overwhelming flying carpet of remarkable music. I think both players come from a Chicago background, with respective histories in bands Parts and Labor, Grooms, Marnie Stern, U.S. Maple, Miracle Condition, and Shorty, and have been honing this approach to their craft since they met in 2009. Impressive, and not just admirably clever; it rattles and roars with unhinged, psychedelic mayhem. Personally I far prefer this open-ended and juicy lubed-up style of playing to the tight-ass precise renditions of Om, for example. The electrifying cover art truly lives up to the music within. From 9th October 2012.

Seth Cooke realised Pneuma (LF RECORDS LF028) using just his crotales (percussion instrument, a specific type of cymbal array) on one track and a pneumatic drill on the other, hence the title. Certainly a process piece, requiring long duration; two tracks at nearly half an hour apiece; gradual shifts in timbre across continual tones. But not an infuriating piece of semi-preciousness, Cooke’s work retains a steely core of hard-edged realism and never drifts off into the clouds of ivory-tower aesthete-land, where velvet-caped fops may shower you with lilacs. If you just read about the crotales piece, it may put you in mind of soppy singing-bowl type music, but when you actually hear it it’s as sturdy as a sheet of tin; it just hangs in the air like an unyielding, brutal, fact. The drill piece is also surprising; far from the industrial noise-brutality some listeners or fans of SPK might expect, it’s an ingenious well-structured composition whose every waking moment is a vehicle for contemplation. “Drills are the aspiration of the male saga”, is all he’s prepared to tell us, by means of an obscure quote; no doubt he’s alluding to the phallic qualities of the pneumatic drill, a factor that leads most road workers to take up the job in order to cure their problems of impotence and flaccidity. There’s nothing like feeling a powerful metal shaft surging between your thighs to cure those erectile tissue problems. If Cooke can tame the savagery of this particular mechanical penis-like device, methinks he could set out a plausible plan for altering the entire mind-set of the modern world, by a combination of chemical processes and other, more occult, strategies. Given Cooke’s wide range of useful skills – he is a sound artist, percussionist who plays unusual objects, and a practising psycho-therapist – anything seems possible. From 27 December 2012.

Third release in from the Norwegian Va Fongool label, and this time we’re moving away from the high-energy high-decibel clattery rough-house parties that Eirik Tofte gravitates towards for his Oslo-based label. PGA are the duo of Jan Martin Gismervik and Fredrik Luhr Diterichson, who perform all of Corrections (VAFCD003) using just an acoustic bass and drum set, though the duo are joined by the brass players Nørstebø and Larsen for a couple tracks. Very far from jazz, music, or even improvised music – this intense, minimal stuff just creaks like broken boughs of an old oak, while sloughing its way out of the speakers like three-day old porridge. I just love the severe and sullen aspect of their sound, which makes virtually no concessions, refusing to be held hostage and turning many debtors away from its door. The pair themselves are far from being cranky old geezers though, and come to us from lively backgrounds in group playing – Moskus, Skadedyr, Sagstuen, Karokh, and the Wolfram Trio, where they both played – see here for a review of that album, also on this label. Apparently the rhythm section couldn’t make themselves heard about the blurty racket from tenor saxman Halvor Meling, so their only course of action was to have him assassinated. The Norwegian Mafia were hired to do the job, and they sealed Meling’s feet in a bucket of cement and then threw him in the Hobølelva. With “Old Hooty” out of the picture, Gismervik and Diterichson could proceed unimpeded with their new minimal plan. Sure enough, pared down to a duo of scrapey wooden and metallic noise-production using highly innovative methods, this pair have a chance to shine – or at least to glimmer like the limpid light of a pond in a heavy fog under the obscured winter sun. Arrived 23 October 2012.

We last heard from Hitoshi Kojo with his Omnimoment CD from 2012, although this unclassifiable Japanese musician is also one half of Jüppala Kääpiö, a name which betrays his likely preoccupation with modern Finnish music and its eccentric psychedelic clutter. High Tide Mirror (OMNIMOMENTO OM06 / SHINING DAY SHINE 12) contains six pieces of very accomplished layered studio working, where whatever instruments were originally used are cunningly blended and morphed into kaleidoscopes of shimmering, bustling sound. Not a surface is left unfilled in these incredibly “busy” scapes, presenting elaborate views of a colourful fantasy world. I am always deeply impressed by the surface beauty of this music at first listen, but then find my attention wandering and I begin to wonder if they really need to be nine or twelve minutes long, since little of any value is added by the duration. Instead of of 6 long tracks, it might be interesting if Kojo were to present 24 short tracks, where the intense and dazzling strangeness of his inventions could astound the listener for a precious moment, then swiftly fade away like a vanishing dream. The cover is fantastic, made of screenprinted card with a cut-out hole and a triangular flap, with sumptuous images of foliage and sealife.

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.

October 22, 2013

Ectoplasm and Adrenaline

Ken Hyder / Z’EV / Andy Knight
Ghost Time
HINTERZIMMER HINT 16 CD (2012)

As initial reactions go, the question “what is this scary music?” is certainly auspicious, offering assurance that I’m playing something interesting. The group goes by the name of ‘Ghost Time’, and is an ethereal, instrumental trio of overlapping interests, all peripheral to jazz. Most (in)famous of the three performers is Z’EV, known for his molten, multi-kulti-meets-industrial approach to percussion. In these four post-mortem ‘jazz’ pieces he is joined by composer and fellow percussionist, Scotland’s Ken Hyder, whose predilection for prog/jazz fusion puts him on first-name terms with the likes of Tim Hodgkinson, Phil Minton, Keith Tippett and Elton Dean. Finally – and most enigmatically – Andy Knight is, according to the group’s website, simply ‘an English trumpet player’. The group’s moniker offers ample indication of what to expect: ghostly, post-mortem ‘soundscapes’ steamrolled by sub-bass and streaked with spaghettified phantom yowls. The formula may not be rare, but the product permits little more than a passing acquaintance: depersonalising all participants and foregrounding none into the bargain.

The tracks are largely cymbal-led, shimmering with glassy, growling backdrops coloured by a faint pull of pocket trumpet. Though potentially generic to casual listeners, the riches of this dark ambience will be revealed to the patient. The press claim that there is ‘a feeling of something you felt before… A hint of music you might have caught on the wind, off the water, in your sleep, or in someone’s eyes’ is not inaccurate, though by the same token, specific influences such as Canntaireachd (‘a vocalisation of bagpipe playing’), Tuvan Khoomei singing and Tibetan ritual percussion playing will be evident only to ‘those who know’. Not until ‘Faint’ are we treated to any significant tonal variation, where a more menacing air of rolling snares and guttural sub-bass enshrouds the careful listener, while in ‘Glimpse’, a sharper strain of muted trumpeting pierces the atmosphere like it does the ‘Silencio’ scene in Mulholland Drive.

Generally, there’s little to differentiate one track from another, as all possess the same ingredients and ideas, leaving us with a subtle, longform exercise in theme and variation. Not that there’s anything wrong with this of course. The music can be easily enjoyed, especially if one assumes a horizontal position and surrenders to the near-darkness it articulates.

Terrie Ex / Paal Nilssen-Love
Hurgu!
PNL RECORDS PNL012 CD (2011)

On the other side of the jazz divide we find – in this exclamatory effort, ‘Hurgu!’ – Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and guitarist Terrie Ex (of Dutch troublemakers, The Ex) in singularly confrontational and uncompromising mind-states, both in jazz-flag burning mode. Little need be said about proceedings other than the fact that they are a) loud and b) fast. However, lest the reader experience apprehension at the appearance of yet another jazz-rock wank-fest, I hasten to add that it is c) completely captivating from start to finish.

The recording rocks and rolls with an itch that begs for relief: like two lion cubs tumbling playfully in the savannah, Ex and Nilssen-Love tussle with dental intent. In ‘Harar’, Ex’s guitar is edged and muscular, withstanding every pummelling beat of Nilssen-Love’s relentless percussive rejoinders. The mood becomes more jagged in ‘St. George’ – Ex chipping off chunks of flaming scree, which Nilssen-Love volleys with thundering skin rolls and searing cymbal smashes, the two colliding like masochists in a moshpit. Initially of a more sinister species is ‘Bedele’, which begins with a bassy rumble and a rant of agitated strings, but soon enough becomes another high-pace terminator chase through a collapsing metal works. Not until ‘Meta’ does the blistering meter relent, slowing to an agonizing howl of abrasive growl and angular twang: atonement expressed with the most depraved definition of ‘grace’. This comedown comes across like one of DNA’s primal scream therapy sessions hijacked by an enervating lecture on entropy. Utter perfection.