Tagged: performed

December 7, 2013

Rotten Developments

This should be the last of the bundle received from Richard Kamerman’s Copy For Your Records label in August 2012. Developer’s self-titled (CFYRT04) is a cassette most likely made by Matthew Reis of Ohio, whose email address for his Factotum Tapes label is supplied in the inner of this short, small-run tape. Despite indications of brevity, Developer manages to compress a good deal of overpowering factory-noise and metallic shriek into a tiny frame, creating a rather haunting sensation of alienation and futility with his echoing klang. Oddly enough, I like it less when the episode collapses into more conventional harsh noise, but even so there is plenty of evidence of skill and subtlety in the way Developer handles his very abstract, abrasive material – especially in the editing. Reis is one of these impossibly prolific creators who not only has numerous releases under this name, but has also operated under numerous aliases, including Antennaeboy, Black Almas, Disasternaut, Heart Of The Whore, Wasteland Jazz Ensemble, and Yes, Collapse. (09/08/2012)

Another noisy cassette is the one from Darren Wyngarde aka Filthy Turd, who also sent a package in August. For this C20 release, “The Filthy One” extends his filth into the packaging itself, which arrives with a little packet of dirt in a plastic bag, marked with the legend “This mud protects against Radiant Cracks” – presumably just one of many spells and charms lifted from his warlock’s cabinet of magic philtres. This even made me slightly reluctant to open the thing at all, which is another index of this uniquely English noise-maker’s success; he radiates powerful waves of unapproachability. Two titles are printed on the skuzzy photocopy insert – ‘A Rotting Throb’ and ‘Rancid and Trmblin’, and it’s released on Urine Soaked Rag as #23 in that catalogue. When you succeed in spinning the tape itself, you’ll know that the world has finally come to an end amid a cacophony of distorted screaming, sirens, extended explosions of devastating destruction of earth-shaking building collapse proportions. With this release, Filthy Turd manages to pollute at least three of our five senses, and right now he’s probably working on methods to assault our noses and taste buds too. Another triumph for this remorseless, absurdist fun-loving magickal-prankster. 30 copies only. (06/08/2012)

UN NU is the team of Pascal Battus and Benjamin Duboc, and their Recoupements (EH?63) was recorded in 2010 at a performance space in Albi in the middle of the Pyrenees. Battus has wowed listeners before with his radical “rotating surfaces” method by which he produces slow and grindy sound-art, and his 2010 Ichnites (a collab with Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour) was a “classic” of that genre. No surprise to learn Battus has been seen grinding his axe with that other primo scrapey fellow, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, for a goodly number of years. For Recoupements, he’s working only with guitar pickups, probably using them as a low-grade electronic instrument to generate the intensely irritating background squeal that permeates most of the length of this 52-minute endurance test; when he’s given the chance to “take a solo”, you won’t believe the obnoxious results nor the shrill, inhuman nastiness that Battus is capable of. Duboc meanwhile veers between attempting to play some simple tunes on his bass – free-form bowing to create simple two-note patterns, as if expecting Cecil Taylor to arrive and rescue the session – and making boxed-in clattering noises that are slightly more suited to the austere sound-art nature of the gig. As an album this has some great moments, but I sense the duo keep running out of steam every ten minutes, and the pauses in between ideas are a little bit awkward. But I’m a sucker for minimal improv when the noises produced are as deliciously abrasive, introverted and unfriendly as this. (08/08/2013).

Highly unusual item credited to HÁK-DAH is in fact the team of Hákarl (i.e. Kevin Nickells) and Daniel Alexander Hignell, and their Bambi (LF RECORDS LF025) includes a small insert which indicates, by means of a Venn diagram, what their musical contributions are where they overlap. Based on the scant 32 minutes of mist-drenched gumbo they provide here, I’d tend to characterise this music as a form of sinister ambient crawl, an assertion I make when faced by the nebulous clouds puffed out by Hignell’s fog-pumping electronic machines, and the experience is made ten times more creepy by the insistent violin work of Nickells. He himself calls it a “screaming violin”, and with good cause. One has rarely felt so terrorised by the sound of the instrument, which in his hands becomes a very persistent ghost stalking us along the deserted shore with all the tenacity of an M.R. James spectre. The agonised faces reproduced on the cover of this item are but a small indicator of the mental anguish that you, as the listener, will endure upon purchase and playback of this excellent item. Both players are based in Brighton, and on the strength of this they must have spent many hours wandering by the sea during off-season, when skies are grey and a mysterious offshore mist swirls around the feet of the unwary traveller. The record becomes even more of a weirdie around its mid-point, as voice elements and drum beats are added; one would hesitate to say it mutates into a “song”, but I’m lost for words to best describe the unsettling dirge that emerges from my tremulous speakers – the rhythms are askew, the pace lumbers like a crippled sea-monster, and Daniel’s vocals are just plain harrowing. HÁK-DAH would be lost with their echo chamber device, but they put it to very good use. This record may not be especially enjoyable listening, but it is quite unique and delivered with as much conviction as the two pallid ghoul-like creators can manage, as they brush the dirt of the grave from their faded black funeral outfits. (30/05/2012)

Bonus Filthy Turd image shewing bag of dirt

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 26, 2013

Only a Northern Song

Barbara Romen / Kai Fagaschinski / Gunter Schneider
Here Comes The Sun
RUSSIA MIKROTON RECORDINGS MIKROTONCD23 CD (2012)

We all love The Beatles don’t we? (This is a rhetorical question.) And what better ironic, tongue-in-cheek way to commemorate those lovable Liverpudlian longhairs than to record an album of difficult avant-garde music and then name it after one of their most successful tunes. Ho ho, you guys! As a wholly irrelevant aside, I seem to recall that the Beatles’ tune “Here Comes The Sun” was the theme for the BBC’s flagship holiday programme presented by Cliff Michelmore back in the 1970s. And that George Harrison; he’s the man. He was always my favourite.

Anyway. Great to hear hammered dulcimer played by an accomplished technician in an improvised setting that doesn’t simply rely on the irresistible potential of simply scraping all those strings in “new and interesting” ways. Barbara Romen’s name is unfamiliar to me, but on the strength of her involvement in this release I’m going to search out more of her music.

This is a strong collection of six recordings, all very self-contained and unique in their own ways, but still standing together as a unified whole. The first track, “Who’s There?” offers a coherent appraisal of each of the player’s interests over a twelve and a half minute duration that seems to fly by. If I’d heard this piece at a concert rather than on a cd I think I’d feel slightly short-changed perhaps. The languorous way the players pluck at, agitate, trill and breathe on their instruments seems to collapse time, (at least during the first ten minutes – things get slightly more demanding toward the end), with overlapping long tones driving things gently along.

Next out of the six is another longish piece at fourteen minutes; “Feelings Without End”. Here, the dulcimer sounds more like a piano at the very beginning. During one listen, I admit I was beginning to get a little bored until a hail storm hit the house without warning at around 8 minutes and turned it all into something quite magical.

“Dazed And Diffused” – another bloated and hirsute rock n’ roll institution reference; this time Led Zeppelin, you jokers! – is shorter at just under six minutes, and crawls along on its face with a sense of panicked yet resigned dread. “The Last Words” incorporates gorgeously warm long tones. It is followed by the intriguingly titled “At The End Of The Tunnel There Is Always A Lie” which does nothing but perpetuate the feelings of unease instigated by “Dazed And Diffused”. The second half of the disc feels as though (though probably isn’t – I have no real evidence to back this up) the last three tracks are all part of one long improvisation, with ID positions inserted at appropriate points. This adds to the overall cohesive and structured nature of these pieces and enhances the enjoyment of same immensely.

Mikroton should be commended for their impeccable programming of quality titles and Here Comes The Sun is the latest in a line of top-drawer recordings released by this Russian label. Their impressive back catalogue features other great projects involving big names like Jason Kahn, Lee Patterson, John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell, Tetuzi Akiyama, John Tilbury, Werner Dafeldecker, Keith Rowe and many more. Well worth spending some time investigating this label, I’d say. Let me know how you get on. Edition of 300.

Mikroton

November 23, 2013

People Go into the Stratosphere

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

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

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

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

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

November 16, 2013

Too From Tomoonttontwo

Tomutonttu
Hylyt
GERMANY DEKORDER 064 LP (2012)

Tomuuntuu
Tomuuntuu
BENIFFER EDITIONS BFF 110 12” (2011)

My enthusiasm for Finnish psychedelic music will never equal that of those fanatical folks at Aquarius Records. Not because of any audible shortcomings in what I’ve heard – quite the opposite in fact – but because I am so genuinely intimidated by the sheer quantity of product that I wouldn’t know where to begin, even if I had the time to check it all.

It helps immensely to have a small scene showcase on your doorstep. I was fortunate to be able to speak to Tomutonttu’s Jan Anderzen at one just a stone’s throw from here, last year. Flu-smashed yet hardy and pragmatic the way Finnish people often seem to be, he answered my questions, told me about his records (one of which I bought and review here) and went on to deliver a delirious AV set so pantomorphic one’s eyes could scarcely settle on a single shape. Harry Smith’s Abstractions had nothing on it. So intense was my experience of his work that it hardly surprises me that British man-flu should have been to Anderzen but a minor setback.

When he’s not delivering mass hypnotism, Anderzen trades actively under any number of guises in the Finnish scene. He’s the lynchpin of the rotating-cast of Kemialliset Ystävät, and features in and on too many groups and releases to mention here (including confounding variations on the alias under review). That’s what Discogs is for. Tomutonttu is Anderzen’s private playground, presumably providing some sort of release valve for the many ideas he has knocking around. Indeed, he makes something of a virtue out of putting discarded recordings to good use with this project, largely by applying a ‘smash ‘em together and see how it sounds’ credo, which seems to work in his favour for the most part.

Comprising a selection of ‘aborted’ releases dating 2005-11, and blended beautifully to beget an ever-morphing audio pot pourri that never dispenses the same scent twice, Hylyt isn’t just a whimsical spelling of the word that gives us ‘special moments’; it actually translates as ‘Wrecks’, which in this case refers to ‘the collective state of consciousness attained on the way to the bottom’. I’ll spare you the Stygian psychology; suffice to say that through its disparate array of mysterious landscapes (and fidelities), the music sublimely illustrates a shift from one state of collapsible horror to another, exposing something quite entrancing in its entirety. Defined by the artist as “diploma work for the University of Bananafish” (whose Dylan Nyoukis ratifies the proclamation by providing an anomalous poem insert), this could easily have graced any one of that beloved magazine’s cover CDs. In fact, it sounds rather like a mischievous reworking of one’s entire contents: speed, direction and pitch all victims to a capricious and curious little sprite; weaving in and out of passages of pastoral psychedelia, slug-speed walls-of- noise and amplified, night-time twinklefests. There are, admittedly, points at which the transitions are a little too sudden, raising moments of doubt, but I suspect this effect to be volitional. Overall, it is an approachable brand of chaos.

Of a similar species, if a little more refined in pedigree, Tomuuntuu is another restless, amorphous and entirely more streamlined beast. This attractive picture disc sports a recording assembled as a radio piece, commissioned by Aanem Lumo Festival for New Sounds, and performed at the Orion Theatre in Helsinki on the 8th November 2010. I imagine it made rather a good impression, if Anderzen’s kaleidescopic AV shows affect Finnish audiences the way they do me. Beginning as an effervescent organ over a measured, thudding gait, it is tugged by one of Anderzen’s slow, transparent howls through the mirror, into a labyrinthine Wonderland of alien tweets and twitters, zaps and flutters, before skidding headlong into an intense cartoon alternate dimension soundtracked by the kinds of tape-splicing boffins who turn up on plush multi-disc compilations nowadays. And so on. By virtue of the single side, time is precious, so great lengths are taken to maximise the zany, card-shuffling states of mind, leaving the listener a rather bewildered winner. Our insanity is clearly Jan Anderzen’s clarity.

Dekorder
Bennifer Editions
Tomutonttu’s Soundcloud page

November 13, 2013

The Angelic Conversation

Time to get our fangs into some more cassette tapes. There are times of the day when only a small-run independent tape can satisfy a man’s urges. Can a man who doesn’t own a tape deck truly be called a man, I ask myself ¹. Ilya Belorukov is a Russian fellow who we spoke to for TSP issue #21, and he’s pretty much waging a one-man campaign for free music, extreme metal, drone and avant-garde jazz in Saint Petersburg, often doing so in the space of a single album. Actually it’s not really a one-man effort when he has friends like the members of Wozzeck behind him. Wozzeck appear on side one of this split tape (ALREADY DEAD TAPES AD057) which we got on 11 December 2012. In fact for ‘Puhdas Ruoka’ they teamed up with the Finnish duo Banana Pill and the four-man team made a lovely sound together in Helsinki in the spring of 2011. What may begin as abrasive texturised abstractery resolves itself into quite a heavenly and mystical episode. Angelic choirs, I would say, worthy of inclusion as soundtrack music for certain cinematic moments of Tarkovsky. Many dream of achieving this degree of perfect and translucent blending of their combined sound, where the individual contributions just melt into a cosmic share of ever-giving plenty, surrendering their identities willingly. Just 40 copies of this artefact confirm it as something of a hidden gem.

Flip it over to hear the Coaxil side, which contains two pieces, ‘Gulf Of Izmir’ and ‘Mzee’ and represents quite a different burst of digital malarkey. It’s more in the zone of strident avant-garde Techno than dreamy droning. Synths and sequencers and rhythm boxes spit out slightly addled phrases and half-formed patterns, occasionally interrupted by the voice of a chanting female mystic issuing a terse and enigmatic sentence. The overall sound seems so stripped-down that I assumed it was the work of a single synthesist, and was a tad surprised to learn that Coaxil are a threesome of Russians who have been doing it in Saint Petersburg since about 2009, often joined by their singer and a fifth member who does live mixes of visual material for their multi-media shows. On a chilly Russian night at 2 AM, fortified by strong vodka and surrounded by enthused clubbers hopefully wearing fur coats, I expect the Coaxil experience is truly memorable – especially if amplified and accompanied by fast-moving visuals on a big screen. On this cassette tape though, it comes over a bit limp and constrained. The itchy restlessness of their scatter-shot music may appeal, but unlike the flip side of this split their pieces don’t feel “performed” enough for me, and I harbour some doubts as to how much the team are able to successfully control or direct their equipment in their favour.

Keeping things more or less Russian, I thought fit to delve into the box of goodments kindly sent to us in September 2012 by Ivan Afanasyev from Petrozavoosk. Very coincidentally of the six tapes herein (all released on his Full Of Nothing label), one of them is a self-titled cassette by Banana Pill (FULL OF NOTHING fon31). This gives one a chance to hear their solo turn, and the two Finns Dmitri Zherbin and Sasha Kretova spread themselves out quite luxuriantly with their guitar and violin-based performances, the rich and melodic drone-music much enhanced and deepened by use of synths and some studio processing, or simply using a smidgen of digital delay. Sasha and Dmitri may be a little slow to start (like a Tunturi on a cold morning), but when they uncoil at length into the correct musical niches, they tend to occupy the space like an incandescent python. A very sleepy python. The duo also exhibit their own brand of the whimsical eccentricity and cluttering sound that has come to characterise certain strands of music from Finland, often labelled by some as “Finnish Folk” for want of a better way to pigeonhole any music made with acoustic instruments. However, there’s little aggression or grit in their spacey-vibey trance music, and even the label notes tend to emphasise the calm, sweetness and peacefulness of Banana Pill. Nothing wrong with those sentiments, but when that Pill is wafered into the more punchy-noisenik tendencies of Wozzeck as above, a more complex dosage results.

This gag borrowed from Lawrence Burton. ↩

November 10, 2013

Calm Down Grandad

We last took note of the fine English combo Hamilton Yarns in February 2011. We received Calm Down Grandad (HARK! 018) on 2nd November 2012, meaning that the limited pressing of 70 copies with a silkscreen insert has probably long since sold out ¹, but the “quaint” music of this Brighton-based team is always worth investigating. The team of Paxon, Strachan, Colvert, Bissa and Homewood all seem to share a basic “gentle” approach to playing their instruments, treating the accordions and Wurlitzer electric pianos like old friends where only a delicate touch is needed to bring a generous response.

On this release the intention has been to paint pictures – probably executed with basic geometric shapes and rendered in bright primary colours – of an imaginary English workaday world where nothing much happens, and “a man lost in the sea mist” or “dogs on beaches” are regarded as major events on the horizon. These very fleeting impressionistic sketches are occasionally enhanced by unobtrusive field recordings, and the low-key vocals of the singers – unfailingly sung in a deliberately poised English accent without a trace of affectation, and with lyrics intuitively structured to resemble passing fancies of the mind rather than the all-out sloganeering of any given “rock” song. Even the title “Calm Down Grandad” feels like something the band would actually say (in the kindest possible way) to an elderly relative at a tea party; the same phrase in the mouth of a Roger Daltrey or a John Lennon would simply be a classic put-down of the older generation.

I think there is much to be said for the “collective” approach of a group like this. Imagine if Hamilton Yarns were just one person, and we’d probably have no problem writing it off as the eccentric musings of a lone genius. Instead, there is strength and continuity in the fact that the five of them can apparently dream together, sharing the same evanescent images within the comfort of the hive mind. Now I’m a big fan of the Ghost Box project, which has a similar toe-hold in a semi-imaginary 1970s England, and whose creators go to great lengths to reimagine and make real by all means at their disposal. Yet Ghost Box can seem slightly contrived next to the charming, natural, and very sincere Hamilton Yarns.

Actually it is still available from their shop at time of writing. ↩

October 24, 2013

Culture Clash

“…traditional song given a screaming punk twist…”

KIV Orchestra
La Roue
AURIS MEDIA AUM 035 / VIALKA VIA-012 CD (2012)

La Roue is a new collaboration between French-Canadian Turbo-Punk band, Vialka, and the Israeli Avant/Hardcore/Klezmer/Karate band, Kruzenshtern & Parohod. While the bands previously worked together in 2006 on a split album (aum011), this release represents the first time they have collaborated on new tracks under the moniker KIV Orchestra.

The result is a highly original and varied five track EP which, as expected, given the roots of KIV, reflects any number of cultures and musical styles. The EP opens strongly with the powerful ‘Bad Bad Horror’, complete with Marylise Frecheville’s unmistakable vocal, and continues to build momentum throughout.

Fans of the accordion and clarinet certainly won’t be left disappointed, as the instruments appear on several of the tracks. When combined with Frecheville’s emotive vocal, much of the EP gives off a distinctly French vibe. However, there are also traces of Berlin-style cabaret from the 1920s and some traditional Russian classics, which have been modernised to give the EP a definitely modern slant.

In truth, there are times when the influence of so many cultures and voices result in a bit of a chaotic and random sound, which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but does leave the EP lacking a certain coherence in places. This is especially true of the last track, ‘Po Shpalam’, a traditional Russian song given a screaming punk twist, which feels like it has muscled its way in from a whole different recording.

Overall, however, La Roue offers an accessible and interesting set of tracks that manage to evoke a traditional sound whilst also providing something new and innovative. This is just a sample of what fans and newcomers can expect from this ongoing collaborative effort; and no doubt any future releases will prove just as challenging, provocative and eclectic as this one.

This collection is an exciting introduction to the work of both Vialka and Kruzenshtern & Parohod, which no doubt many listeners will be inspired to further explore as they await the next release from KIV.

October 10, 2013

Maru Sankaku Shikaku (Circle Triangle Square): long shamanistic rituals of free-form experimentation

Maru Sankaku Shikaku (Circle Triangle Square), self-titled, Bamboo BAM3CD7010 (2013)

Long dormant artifacts from the halcyon days of Seventies Japanese trippy hippy psychedelia, three albums recorded by a group of travelling troubadours Maru Sankaku Shikaku have been bundled into a big set and made available to interested folks beyond the shores of Nippon. Led by Sakuro “Kant” Watanabe, the band travelled around Japan in the early 1970s performing publicly as street performers and dossing down in sleeping bags and tents where need be.

The three discs convey the impression of long shamanistic rituals in which free-form and improvised music dominates. A lot of it sounds direction-less and perhaps it was intended to be. There are sometimes passages where the music seems to coalesce into something definitely rhythmic and acquires focus and purpose. In such sections, the music is surprisingly energetic and joyful, and the performers carry on and on for their lives until they’ve sucked the life out of the groove. Disc 1 in particular feels like the appetiser to the main course and dessert that will follow on succeeding discs: while certainly very active, it has the ambience of the musicians practising warm-up and preparation, and occasionally psyching themselves into their own private trances, in which they engage in mental and psychic space travel, in order to ready themselves for the main rituals. The mood is happy and exploratory, as performers experiment with various objects, some musical and others not so but pressed into service anyway, and play with them for as long as their attention is not distracted by the next toy available.

At this point it should be said that each disc, representing an individual album, is about 30 minutes long with just two tracks (each corresponding to one side of the original vinyl LP release) so it can be assumed that the music was originally intended to be continuous on each album. It could very well be that the albums are excerpts of one continuous jam session. Disc 2 begins rather alarmingly with a woman’s wordless ululations against accompanying drums and a guitar: neither instrument makes any coherent sense and both play against each other. The music is frantic with a restless animated zip: all instruments zing off at tangents and follow their individual journeys in often demented ways. Guitar especially scrabbles through a forest of blues tones and drums knock about constantly. Organ noodles and stutters about. Later a definite guitar melody develops and energy concentrates in the riffing. As on Disc 1, there is plenty of mucking about and curious experimentation for its own sake.

Disc 3 features faster, slightly more structured music as the performers get caught up in the mood of their moment and go for broke while the inspiration powers them. The singing is perhaps the most outstanding aspect here: the disc starts off with a male performer babbling away excitedly while jaunty piano follows him. The troupe is caught up in the vocalist’s mood and garbled, wordless singing continues more or less for the length of the album.

The whole set really is a musical universe unto itself; to say the performers were off with the fairies is an understatement to say the least. Probably the closest contemporary parallel would be the strange fey fairy folk ambient music scene that used to exist in Kyogle in northern New South Wales some years ago. The music takes its inspiration from free-form jazz without appearing jazzy at all. What became of the performers after they recorded their five albums is unknown but if they knew their body of musical work has survived down to the present, they would surely be overjoyed. A new generation of listeners can finally discover the performers’ strange rituals and journeys to another world for themselves.

After forty years, the music remains fresh and as loopy as it must have been at the time. My copy of the set is a digitally remastered one and the hiss and crackle of the original vinyl do not appear.

September 28, 2013

Eine Kleine Jazz Musik

Mats Eilertsen Trio
Sails Set
NORWAY HUBRO MUSIC HUBROCD 2524 CD (2013)

The second recording from Mats Eilertsen Trio is a gallery of vignettes neither perfected nor perfunctory, but briefly stated sentiments seemingly abstracted from memorable scenes. This peripatetic piano, drum and bass trio locates their work somewhere in the liminal terrain between improvisation and composition – a claim far from uncommon – but one ratified by a supple, intriguingly intangible sound, which is fortified by a finely-tuned harmonic rapport as the three flow in and out of a shifting array of formations with a sense of equality and equanimity evident in every note.

The eponymous ‘Sails Set’ provides a nonchalant entry: Harmen Fraanje’s piano tumbles like a winding mountain stream, pillowed by vibrations drawn from a slowly bowed double bass. This carefree manner is abruptly more angular in ‘Stellar’, in which a stark solo piano pans through an abandoned house in monochrome. Drummer Thomas Strønen wields a range of sticks throughout the album, mostly catalysts for calmer climates, but in ‘Orbiting’ his off-meter rolls of tinkling percussion stand as the most striking feature, complimented by a newly springy and staggered bass sound. Overall, it is Eilertsen‘s bass-playing that I’m most drawn to, being expressive of the group’s warm, non-committal personality, but laced with a soft, all-adhering resonance.

The moods pass effortlessly from one instrument to another as easily as the leading role. A sparing attitude towards instrumentation resides among the group’s many graces, and the negative space that surrounds and permeates every musical event is often as expressive as the performance. At times it has the air of a good film noir score (with a hint of zen minimalism in the core), albeit one lacking a theme tune. It is not dissimilar to some of the better material from John Zorn’s recent jazz output, though luckily lacking the exhausting pace and vibes.

One might assume that on record the trio further explores themes discovered while improvising, though forsaking motifs and melodies for the sake of a more impressionistic array of atmospheres. Their avoidance of distinct phrases suggests a series of extended segues, not scenes. The credo that ‘less is more’ is articulated perfectly in this short set, where even in its evident freedom there is ever a sense of restraint. The group sets out not to dazzle, but to enchant with careful attention to duration and detail.