Tagged: performed

March 8, 2014

Grün ist grau: green gets ground out on this post-industrial dystopian music travelogue

Ravi Shardja, Grün ist grau, Grautag Records, 2 x LP GTR#005 (2013)

Aye aye, Captain Shardja … green is grey according to this French improv musician who has been let loose on a bewildering variety of instruments here: electronic bass, guitar, mandolin, various hand-me-down synthesisers, a broken-down Yamaha mixing table and other musical and non-musical gadgets of varying ages and music-worthy (or unworthy) condition, to create monumental audioscapes of noisy post-industrial improv. Fear not! – the result is a travelogue through dystopian post-apocalyptic soundscapes where steel skyscrapers and other monuments to the Age of Oil now lie in ruins and are over-run by Nature exacting her due on presumptuous humanity, now long gone. While the mood of the album isn’t bleak or hopeless, the general feeling tends to be one of clinical curiosity, as if listeners have been invited as disinterested tourists to survey this devastated world as a lesson in not what to do before travelling to the next planet.

On the four tracks, each of which gets a 12-inch vinyl-platter side to itself, Shardja surveys a different part of the post-anthropic Earth: one track might pass for a quick lookaround of India, to judge from the presence of a sitar (courtesy of Jean Marcel Busson whom Shardja roped in from their band GOL to assist) which appears at various points throughout the track. The music can be dramatic in parts but it’s generally approachable and light in tone and delivery. There is sometimes a playful quality and even the most doom-laden sections never sound really very heavy or morose. The mood sometimes seems quite wry and deliberately down-played, the music appearing very po-faced at what it may be observing.

Track titles range from the absurd and amusing like “Bombay Boobies Battle” to the deeply disturbing like “Attaque sournoise du Kopassus a Wamena” (“Sneak Attack by Kopassus on Wamena”), the latter covering some sinister spoken-voice field recordings as well as some toy-box melodies that seem quite out of order here. While the music on this track can be quite jaunty in parts and becomes shrill and intense in its final moments, listeners should be aware that Kopassus refers to a crack special forces unit in the Indonesian Army that conducts unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism and special intelligence gathering activities and as such has committed human rights violations in various parts of Indonesia including Papua where Wamena is a major town. Why Shardja should give this piece such a startling title I’m curious to know: is he trying to stir up listeners’ jaded sensibilities, dulled by always expecting to be entertained by one short-lived thrill after another, or is he merely commenting in a casual, almost noncommittal way on one aspect of the chaos and almost banal repression and violence that always seem to break out in at least one corner of the globe every so often? (This would assume that human violence is something that happens because … hey, it’s human nature to be brutal and violent and we just have to live with it. Move on folks, nothing to see here. The notion that violence of a brutal and vicious kind is something we are taught through our total and involuntary immersion in modern Western culture from the moment of our birth never occurs to people.) Whether the listener can be bothered to find out what messages or non-messages Shardja is trying to convey with the various track titles (given in English, French, German and Italian) and the music they attach to is another thing altogether. At the very least, it’s disturbing that we have a track called “Attaque sournoise …” with no further explication from the artist (I admit I don’t have the actual double LP artwork which might explain a lot more in front of me) which leaves me as a listener guessing at what Shardja’s intentions may be – but possibly the fact that I have to guess may be the intention itself: it at least has roused my curiosity and interest.

Some passages in the four tracks can be very intriguing and enjoyable to listen to but on the whole this quartet can be something of an endurance test and attention levels can flag very quickly. This double LP set is perhaps best digested in separate chunks. Each track could almost be substituted for one another and you would not notice much difference. I feel a bit debilitated each time I listen to the album and I think that’s due to the dabbling and dallying out stretched out to an interminable length.

March 2, 2014

Action Vision

You may recall we reviewed the lovely music of Neil Luck in October 2012, the London composer who gave us Last Wane Days, a truly unique operetta baroque-pop chamber piece – a real surprise for many a powdered wig. He also appeared with one cut on the GoldDust compilation for Slightly Off Kilter records. Luck it was who sent us Songs From Badly-Lit Rooms (SQUIB-BOX NO NUMBER), received here 13 March 2013, and another uniquely somehow very English piece of wailery and squealation it doe bee. As you can tell I am already lapsing into a Jacobean-era style of writing and speaking, a transformation I considereth most appte when hearing these sodden wood-panelled pieces of musicke, as I sitte beside the fire and peepe dartingly out of a small latch window. These airres fitte for the eares of our right royalle King were played by Tom Jackson the clarinettist, with the viola player Benedict Taylor ever by his side. Both are improvisers and performers well respected about the towne, and indeed have likewise found success beyond the seas. For many pieces the players doe buzz and humme at a frantic rate, as though pursued by two tigers from Oriental parts, or else find themselves besette with unwanted small insects crawling about in their nether garments. My advice would be to wear an iron codpiece and so preserve themselves from The Enemy. Also of interest are the different timbres and acoustic qualities, which vary from track to track; perhaps the titles indeed reflect the real-world locations for their performances. If so, most sensitive to the space of a chamber they have proven themselves. No man can listen and remain unmoved at such delicious sounds; barking, crying, hooting and issuing many a plaintive mew, both raising dreadfull clamours to the skies. The duo perform roped together like two sailors on board a shipload of tobacco, and communicate by unseen means that inform their every thought and move. In fine, most high recommendation for this moving and delightful recording. Now I must needs return to gutting my fish from Cheapside market, ere I expire from hunger.

From 11 March 2013 we received a glorious eccentric and fiery recording of avant-rock solo antics by GR (i.e. Gregory Raimo from France). What an axeman he’s proving himself on these solid high-volume grooves. I’d like to meet his tailor. His A Reverse Age (MEXICAN SUMMER MEX140) is a glorious blast of psychedelic rockabilly noise, the musical fabric cut to shreds by his nasal poison vocalising which mows down eight beds of precious flowers and causes entire trees to wither and die with just one billow from Raimo’s diabolical breath. With his ‘Hymn to Pan’ and his ‘The Primitive Hoodoo’ he owns himself a willing convert to the anti-religion of The Cramps, while his thudding drumming style and raw recording approach fuel the excitement to boiling pitch. The highlight though is his rich and juicy guitar style, often-times heavily psychedelic and reminiscent of Gary Ramon of Modern Art / Sun Dial (or the glorious obscurity Jesse Harper). Fans of Alan Vega and The Fall from circa 1980-1981 should devour this flaming nugget at tremendous speed, using crocodile jaws to chew the slabs of meat. Excessive and flailing adjectives abound on the press release, describing this wild trip as an “argument between myth and reality”, but such unhinged language and frothing praise is quite justifiable in the face of this rockin’ gemuloid.

Here’s the scrapey improviser Tim Olive with another release on the 845 Audio label sent to us from Kobe in Japan on 21 March 2013. He was carrying a metal pail full of old rusty bolts at the time. On Various Histories (845 AUDIO 845-2) he teams up with Katsura Mouri, a fabulously talented sound artist who works with turntables which are doctored with “prepared records”, percussive objects and pieces of metal. She’s been a member of BusRatch, DOOG, and herviviennestrap, but also performs solo and in 2009 she toured with other contemporary turntable manipulators eRikm, Martin Tetreault and Ignaz Schick; and has assembled a cunning multiple turntable set-up, like Philip Jeck used. This is the first I ever heard of Mouri, but I love her delicate approach; there’s none of the heavy-handedness, violence or sarcasm one sometimes finds with your basic turntabling types – present company excepted, of course – who seem intent on smashing the device, breaking records, or trying to single-handedly destroy the history of recorded music through the symbolic annihilation of this culturally-loaded (as they would see it) machine. Instead she works most sympathetically here with Tim, who plays pieces of metal amplified with guitar pickups, to create five intense pieces of heavily abstracted grey rumbly sound, rich with plenty of low bass grumbles and growls, most of the music hovering gracefully on the twilight zone where it might erupt into vicious anti-social table noise at the turn of a feathered cable. However, it never actually does that, and instead suffuses all emotions into this slowly-bubbling green soup of seething restraint. One listen to this shimmery-abraso beauty and I’m head over heels with Katsura Mouri’s playing style, now tempted to seek out her 2000 and 2002 BusRatch records for PARA discs.

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). ↩

February 5, 2014

Reflexion Interior

The item Eins Bis Sechzehn (CRONICA 069-2012) is by the sound artist Ephraim Wegner and the visual artist Julia Weinmann, with their audio and visual snapshots of old ruined hotels. Presumably they wander about these collapsing edifices while no-one is looking and operate their capture devices before a wedge of plaster falls on their heads. They present the finished work as a fairly short CD – just six tracks of field recordings – and a portfolio of full-colour photographs, very well printed and some of them folding out into friezes. Although at first glance / listen we may think we’re facing a rather empty and desolate set of surroundings, in fact there are minimal traces of human endeavour and past lives embedded in the recordings. We can hear something bumping about like the ghost of a portly man settling into a sofa or furniture removers operating a service lift. Also other signs of life, like birds twittering outside or the distant seashore. Evocative and airy, it’s quite a benign undertone here, and clearly not directed by Stanley Kubrick in the ruins of the Overlook Hotel while furrowing his beetling brow. I’m very much reminded of Michael J. Schumacher and his 2003 release Room Pieces – this one seems to be poking around in similar enigmatic blank zones. I haven’t read their lengthy explanation in the notes though, as I suspect it’s trying to overstretch a simple idea with one too many “resonances”.

Another nice printed book + CD package is GROC 1912-2012 (SONORIDAD AMARILLA) and may have emerged from a music festival in Sant Sebastia. Mostly printed in Spanish with English translations. Miguel A Garcia is involved, and so are Artur Vidal, Coco Moya and Alicia Grueso. The book is a puzzling set of fragmented texts, alongside equally baffling but very direct monochrome images, making me feel I’m wandering through a conceptual art exhibit from 1970s England rather than flipping the pages of a book. The CD is even more opaque, short tracks where nothing is really explained but which sound like captured output from the most avant-garde radio station ever to have escaped the attention of the authorities. There’s a gorgeous “distant” quality; you can almost see tiny figures moving about inside a small surreal TV set glowing with yellow light. Things may become clearer if you read the texts while listening. The book is a libretto, structured like scenes from a play (with very strange stage directions), and it’s possible to interpret everything as the soundtrack to a performance of a gently absurd drama, almost as empty as a Beckett drama, but without the despair. The creators are aiming at a certain open-ended framework so that the performance can “project into the viewer’s imagination”, and there are hints at painterly sensibilities at work what with the fleeting Kandinsky reference, and the fact that Groc translates from Catalan as “yellow”. It’s to everyone’s credit here that so much can be expressed in a small, compacted package, and this beguiling little gem will grow on all those who own it and live with it.

Segments (EM002) is the second release from Emitter Micro, the German label who sent us the 2 (3) Incomplete Triptychs cassette in a clear box. As HiFi / LoNoise, the trumpeter Louis Laurain is joined by the electronics of Pierce Warnecke for 21 minutes of thoroughly abstracted sound – starting as puffy blankets of “reduced improv” minimalism, then exploding into a more full-bodied broth of amplified buzziness. Evidence of strong concentration and focus from both players here. Has a refreshing “raw” quality; untreated surfaces which you could use as building blocks in modular self-assembly furniture, and transform your living quarters.

I’ll confess I’m struggling slightly to derive much meat from the wispy melodic bones of Twilight Peaks (SMERALDINA-RIMA 20), a Robbie Basho release which was reissued by the Belgian Smeraldina-Rima label in 2012. This may be because it was originally an unabashed New Age release, issued in 1985 by a New York organisation called The Relaxation Company on their Vital Body Marketing label, and existed as a cassette with a bland cover of soothing dimensions and packaged as “Rich & lyrical solo guitar”. Basho had his own reasons for treading the New Age music path; one possible motivation could have been that his music didn’t catch on as expected with the “folk music” audience, and by the mid-1980s when it seemed that New Age music was in the ascendancy, he decided to hitch his wagon to that twinkly star. Maybe it’s time for this overlooked genre to undergo some form of reappraisal. The writers Richard Osborn and Glenn Jones, who provide the notes to this release, need no such persuading and they write from the depths of their own experience; Jones, who produced this reissue from original tapes, was a friend of Basho and articulates the beauty and value of this music well, making a good case in a sympathetic manner. After all it’s fair to say that Basho has not sacrificed an iota of his skill or artistry here, and there’s still the focus and precision in the playing that characterises his earlier music. The overall saminess of the sound, and its rather thin over-processed patina, may start to grow wearisome to the ears after a while, but that’s the central paradox of this item; it might be a rare case of high art hidden within a bland and commercialised genre. This reissue adds three tracks not on the original cassette, including two live cuts; these live recordings have escaped the cosseting effects of the original studio production and have a slightly rougher edge; these extra 12 minutes may make all the difference to you if you’re considering adding this to your Basho collection. Tremendous cover art, but it’s a little bit misleading as to the musical content.

January 23, 2014

Ceremonious Occasions

K-Space
Black Sky
SETOLA DI MAIALE SM2410 CD (2012)

In K-Space’s omnidirectional blackness we bear witness to suspended temporality, wherein stars are both entities and life events splayed across an indefinitely elongated instant. The darkness is that of life unmanifested, and this duality is wed into a measureless nightscape into which the group takes flight, delivering a performance that unites the sonic equivalents of empty space and stellar incandescence. In more terrestrial terms, the performance was recorded on April 2009, in Catania, Sicily, to what one might assume was an attentive audience; given how silent and unobtrusive it is until the end. It marks a wildly different take on K-Space’s meditation on the infinite, as expressed in Infinity (2008); a CD ROM in which 200 recordings are perpetually reorganised into an ever-morphing, living improvisation.

Modalising their stated motivation into a small hedge, the multi-instrumental trio of Tim Hodgkinson (clarinet, lap-steel guitar), drummer Ken Hyder and Siberian vocalist Gendos Chamzyrin liken their journey to a shamanic trance, or ‘what may happen when a shaman…goes into (one)… not necessarily knowing what he or she is going to encounter’. Such claims may chafe the odd listener, depending on their tolerance for numinous rhetoric, plus one could just as easily state that improvised situations should always lack predictability. However, the trio’s patient pacing, ceremoniousness and (initial) sobriety as they unfurl a seamless trio of ‘personal traveling songs’ – betoken a level of reverence appropriate to the task of articulating a ‘higher’ mode of expression than that to which we might usually be accustomed.

The event crawls into action as each musician presents a brief preamble: Hodgkinson flailing clarinet into upper register; great guttural growls and clashing cymbals increasing alarm, until the group ‘starts flying’ around the 18th minute. And soar it does as these elements and more converge in mid-air, to rage like a tarry black torrent through the night sky, a prominent clang or streak of modified howling here and there; reaching a sustained and entrancing (pun intended) climax by minute thirty. Yet in spite of their collective power – notably Chamzyrin’s voluble, aerobatic chanting – the musicians never betray any tendency towards excess, nor do they crowd one another. At appropriate junctures, a pair will peel away to permit solo expression, and not reassemble before time. Individual contributions are so measured as to ensure that the ‘constant ambiguity between inner and outer movement’ remains both paramount and attributable to their finely tuned intuition.

So confident in the effects of the performance that the group maintain that ‘what was committed to the recording medium was truly some kind of an equivalent… to the experience of being there’. Bold words, but at the same time there’s nothing wrong with a suspension of one’s disbelief: in some ways it is more of a challenge than surrendering to kneejerk scepticism. Furthermore, the music itself stands as adequate testimony to what was evidently a powerful experience for all concerned; one (I should add) that will require a few listens, to acquire the appropriate sensitivity for this ritual of unhurried ecstasy.

para
para-ligo
PORTUGAL CREATIVE SOURCES RECORDINGS CS 228 CD (2012)

An unequivocally unhurried (and fathomless) atmosphere greets para-ligo’s listeners as well: Christmas-fattened audio dieters will relish the attention granted to its achingly subtle atmospherics, strewn sparingly with rustling leaves, squeaky doors (or instrumental equivalents) and playful (to painful) plucks at a prepared piano, plus the odd, probing Greek monologue for good measure. Indeed, so sparse is the audio space at times that good headphones are advised, for full appreciation of its textural delicacy and the weight of its silences (ensuring that crossing the road with this on your ipod should not be too perilous). Which constitutes a significant accomplishment, given that the three participants: Elena Kakaliagou (French horn), Ingrid Schmoliner (piano) and Thomas Stempkowski (double bass) are seldom off the job throughout the course of these nine tracks: a fact of which I am amply reminded during a spate of piano string hammering (underscored by some sustained but fragile breath work from Kakaliagou) in ‘Canidae’. For much of the recording, Stempkowski’s rattling double bass tag-teams with the French horn for the role of cohesive agent, creating lengthy, vibratory gestures that have a hypnotic effect, in contrast to the wind section’s more rounded, and vigilant mode of expression (one echoed, incidentally, in Kakaliagou’s two spoken sections), and Schmoliner’s adventurous search for new percussive dimensions within her piano. Praise must surely be due to the musicians for many a judiciously skeletal performance, and maintaining knowing poise between the ‘cross-the-road-to-avoid’ extremes of on-the-job tuning and bored-sounding repetition. While the question ‘how does a chopstick squeezed between the bass strings of a grand piano and hit by cymbal mallets sound?’ seems strikingly old hat in 2014, theirs is nonetheless an approach that successfully teases from the instruments their barest essence, while exploring very different (and interesting) parameters in each piece.

January 21, 2014

Frozen Lakes

Every so often we get musicians who decide they must get back to first principles and start asking fundamental questions about what their chosen instruments actually “do”; this can involve a radical deconstruction of said instrument, or even of the style in which it is played. Some of this line of thought may have fed into the construction of kopfüberwelle (ABSINTH RECORDS 024), where the players Chris Abrahams and Sabine Vogel ask each other some pretty pointed questions about the flute and the organ. They tend to ask these questions in musical form, and the enactments of these conceptual ideas are what we hear on the record, a fairly minimal and often beautiful set of pieces recorded in 2010 at a church in Zepernick. The study they make involves a comparison of the similarities and differences between the two, so we are treated to a fairly commonplace list of observations about air flowing through pipes and the respective limitations of the instruments. I suppose this could be fairly interesting, except I think it’s fair to say that old-fashioned classical composers have been aware of such characteristics for hundreds of years, and have reflected this understanding in their notated dynamics, the choice of instruments when scoring for the orchestra, etc. Where would we be without avant-garde musicians rediscovering the obvious for us? This gripe aside, the music here is enjoyable enough. Their most original discovery in this experiment is that the flute player is free to move up and down the performance hall, while the organist is not. This leads to some unusual acoustic sonorities as Sabine Vogel’s flute tone bounces off the wall of the church, or otherwise changes according to where he’s positioned himself. These process-based rules sometimes tend to dominate the work, becoming the primary reason for the performance, but the duo still arrive at some gorgeous sonorities, and do achieve the hoped-for blendings where you cannot tell one instrument from the other. Amidst all the poised and mannered droning, the track ‘Floating Head Over’ stands out for its slightly uncanny moaning voice, which I assume is Chris Abrahams generating a few head tones through his nose or mouth. If he’s doing so while also playing the flute, it’s a notable feat. (11/12/2012).

Nice blending of synthetic and acoustic tones on The Contaminist (INTANGIBLE CAT CAT 16), assembled by Homogenized Terrestrials (i.e. Phil Klampe). He does it by mixing recordings of synthesizers, percussion, field recordings and the human voice, until everything becomes a thickly wafered agglomeration under his processing tools. Much to his credit, he avoids numerous pitfalls of much ambient music, even when aligning himself with Brian Eno, Fennesz, or Robin Storey (as the press notes have it); he studiously rejects any clichéd or over-familiar sound. The other thing I enjoy is the eccentric structure of each piece; they don’t tend to follow linear compositional rules to do with beginnings, endings, and conventional rise-and-fall dynamics. Instead, Klampe succeeds in delivering genuinely open-ended compositions which float along like free-travelling bubble shapes in the ether, without succumbing to the usual problem faced by contemporary electronic music, that of pointless meandering with no end in view. In this context, his title ‘Gravity Reversed’ seems exceptionally apt. Not a track here outstays their welcome (most last around three or four minutes) and by completion of piece you experience a notable satisfaction and do at least feel like some useful information has been imparted. As can be seen from cover art, he likens himself to a bee collecting pollen. Or maybe the flowers themselves are like the music, and we as listeners must gather what we can, using our proboscis like an ear trumpet and bringing the golden tones back to the listening hive. Sorry about these over-stretched metaphors…From 13 February 2013.

My Dear Killer is the latest in a line of idiosyncratic and unusual musicians on the Italian Boring Machines label, with a solo album The Electric Dragon Of Venus (BM047LP). Like label mate Rella The Woodcutter, this singer-songwriter wields a jet black acoustic guitar which he strums in plangent fashion, his stark and clipped chords ringing out across a metaphysical void. On top of this spare framework, he adds his cryptic lyrics filled with many poignant symbols of alienation, disconnectedness, and melancholy. To make the listening experience even more craggy to your ears, there’s the decidedly odd singing voice; My Dear Killer is so apparently choked up with nameless emotions that he can barely complete a phrase, and the lines judder out of his tremulous throat in a deliciously broken fashion. Even though the lyrics are English, this intense affectation makes the words quite hard to understand. In short, this ghostly update on the acoustic Syd Barrett performs as though the recording studio were a prison cell, a confessional where he can disclose his most intimate thoughts in his inimitable halting fashion. I’m touched to learn that his previous LP – released many years ago in 2006 – was called Clinical Shyness, perhaps a diagnosis of the artist’s borderline personality disorder. To further crystallise the strangeness of this album, there are bouts of electric guitar (often scuzzed up with distortion and feedback) thrown in as occasional non-accompaniments to some of the songs, by which I mean these guitar lines bear no relation whatsoever to the metre, tone or mood of the song, and feel more like unwelcome mental apparitions, storm clouds on the mental horizon of the troubled singer. Then there are snippets of sound effects and field recordings which bookend most of the tracks; the sound of innocent children playing in the street has rarely seemed so forlorn and tragic. My Dear Killer’s sound is very much an acquired taste, but there’s no denying the sincerity of this album, nor the depth of his hurt. From February 2013.

January 4, 2014

We Free Kings

Reines of the Stone Age

Reines D’Angleterre is Ghédalia Tazartès with Jo [Tanz] and Elg. This Globe Et Dynastie thing (BO’WEAVIL RECORDINGS WEAVIL 50) is probably a one-off affair realised in Berlin with help of Daniel Lowenbruck and recorded by Rashad Becker. Tazartès is doing his unearthly singing, vocalising and whispering in the midst of a whirlpool of bizarre electronic music, with some occasional filtered and repeated vocal interpolations, perhaps supplied by the other members of the threesome. I think this shows that wherever he goes and whatever he does, Tazartès helps everyone else realise their potential for exotic, hashish trance visions in sound, sometimes whether they know it or not. I expect anyone who has fallen within the orbit of this unusual character will never forget the experience. This isn’t to denigrate Jo and El-G though; we have come across their splendid work before when they worked as a duo called Opéra Mort, on one side of a single for Spleen Coffin. They have a fierce and uninhibited approach to electronics that allows them to lift up the top of the brain and observe what scurries within. In 30 minutes and five tracks, a surreal and nightmarish avant-Techno trip unfolds, dripping corrosively into your mind like a powerful drug. The deep-bass grunts of Uncle Ghédalia, murmuring away like a benign bullfrog, make it the perfect antidote to a bedtime story. From 13 August 2012.

Ivar The Engine

The Norwegian label Hubro has built up a very fine catalogue of excellent instrumental music, much of it crossing genres in unusual ways. Bathymetric Modes (HUBRO CD2519) is a gorgeous item intended mostly as a solo showcase for musician Ivar Grydeland, an exceptionally able guitarist – and he also plays banjo, zither, ukulele and mandolin. I really enjoy the long track ‘Roll’ which is melodic, lively, spirited and comes with a danceable 4/4 beat courtesy of Jonas Howden Sjøvaag and his snare drum. The layers of string playing, especially the understated pedal steel guitar, are just sumptuous. Supple-fingered Ivar plays like a one-man Grateful Dead, and he’s arguably more technically advanced than eight full-size replicas of Jerry Garcia. ‘Roll’ turns out to be uncharacteristic of the rest of the album though, since the four instrumentals that follow are more about “abstract composition”, and Grydeland creates the basic platforms using his graphic synthesizer called the Terri-on. Wistful and melancholic tunes result, some of them embellished with tasty string work, but it’s getting a bit easy-listening and aimless by this point. Even so, ‘Roll’ flies like a seabird for eight glorious minutes of poignant yearning.

Danger Man

Oren Ambarchi’s Audience Of One on Touch was an exceptional release from 2012, but we mustn’t overlook Sagittarian Domain (EDITIONS MEGO 144CD); at 33 minutes, we might think this piece is almost cut from the same cloth as ‘Knots’ from the Touch album, which as it happens was also a collaboration with string players. But instead of exploring rich fields of tonality like ‘Knots’, Domain is a single-minded night drive along a lonely road, the soundtrack to a spy thriller where the payoff to the story never comes. Oren plays most of it himself – guitar, drums, percussion and using a Moog for the bass, while three string players add cello, violin and viola drones around the halfway mark, although their contributions are heavily treated and at times seemed to have strayed in from a Middle Eastern recording or an Alice Coltrane out-take. Oren opts for a remorseless, minimal, clipped guitar riff (non-riff) that pares away at the soft fruit of your mind like a sharp knife, and he propels it on its deadly path with equally stern and no-frills drumming. The basic framework is like a stripped-down version of La Düsseldorf meeting up with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, almost mechanical in the execution, and it’s as though Oren is playing out a connection between krautrock and drum and bass by recreating these genres on his own terms. There isn’t much of a melody here, but the “topline” – for want of any other description – occasionally modulates into phased effects or droney guitar solos, just to break up the monotony. I seem to recall that David Bowie’s band tried all this around the time of the Lodger album, and the musicians found themselves in the same cul-de-sac as Klaus Dinger in short order. The difference is that Bowie played his wild card by overdubbing Adrian Belew guitar solos in a weird manner (Belew wasn’t allowed to hear the backing track), and Tony Visconti made several judicious edits to the sprawl to boil it all down into song form. Ambarchi by contrast seems intent on piling on the content to the max, and stretching our nerves beyond the point of endurance. The lack of any “resolution” to these taut 33 minutes is pretty heavy going on one level, but then Editions Mego have been edging their electronic minimalism into the zones of the cruel and vicious for some years now (e.g. Life – It Eats You Up, Guts, and The Iron Soul Of Nothing). However, I’d have little hesitation in pointing out that Oren is as much a studio whizz as Bowie; he recorded this whole thing in a single studio session, and it’s an utterly watertight, steel-belted production with not a single flaw in sight.

January 2, 2014

I am the Eggman

We were sent a box of cassettes from the UK micro-label Mantile Records in January 2013, probably on the strength of their Kayaka release or rather reissue of a CDR called Operation Deep Freeze (see here for review). All of these were released in 2012 and are available in digital form if you don’t like cassettes. The item by Burd called Wild Saloone (MANTILE #019) comprises two long instrumentals, very melodic in nature but not much more than rather tame techno enhanced with some hesitant keyboard playing. The serious lack of “groove” here starts to get a bit wearing for me, although fans of Emeralds may want to investigate. Brood Ma‘s Fission (MANTILE #022) is more interesting, with a slightly darker tone to its electronic jacket and tie. It has a number of shorter tracks, some of them decked out with very surreal titles, and musically it shows that the creator has a range of effects he can wring from his sequencers and beat-boxes, attempting to engage us in many moods – from the upbeat and jolly to the sullen and grim. Like Burd, Brood Ma suffers from a lack of conviction in the playing, even when some of the actual sounds he makes have potential. Probably not quite as grotesque as the cover art would like you to believe. Spoils & Relics have their Stammer Challis (MANTILE #023), which is quite chaotic – lots of creaky and cranky home-made equipment, wobbly tapes and ugly electronic burbles, everything chopped to pieces and served up in an ill-formed and half-baked mess which is barely digestible. A very disjunctive approach to form would seem to characterise the music of this bedroom experimenter. I see there are some other releases which may appeal, on Chocolate Monk and Harbinger. They are (I can’t help thinking of them as a duo, for some reason) comparative veterans compared to Burd and Brood Ma, and have been concocting this kind of broken noise since 2009. Not too bad actually; if you can withstand the utter absurdity of it, this tape can be quite entertaining, in a nauseating sort of way. Lastly we have Fossils with What A Drag (MANTILE #020). At first spin, this derelict oddity may appear to be emerging from the same sort of broken noise outpost as Spoils & Relics, and it exhibits the same attachment to lo-fi recording methods and the production of inchoate, lumpy sounds that are very hard to swallow. Fossils are quite a well-respected improvising / free noise “collective” from Ontario who have been doing it since 2004 and the two key members, David Payne and Daniel Farr (who may or may not be represented on this tape), have been known to pass their tapes over to Graham Lambkin for additional treatment. The Lambkin connection earns them endorsement points from this quarter, and I may even be prepared to validate their parking some day. The tape is still a tough row to hoe for your ploughing ears, however. It’s not a question of harsh, blasting noise, but its determination to remain klonky and non-musical at all costs, as if sawing apart pieces of junk and reassembling them in a degenerate workshop of the mind. If Burd belongs on Spectrum Spools, then this release should also find a home on Public Eyesore.

A couple more items from Nick Hoffman and his Pilgrim Talk label, these from 9th November 2012. Back Magic is his “garage rock” combo in which he performs (I assume) as Hair Exp, the guitarist and singer, with just a drummer named Terror Trans to back him up. Blood Plaza (PT23) is a small lathe-cut three track which barely plays at 45 RPM. If it’s lo-fi you’re after, this particular wan item turns that aesthetic into a new form of trans-dimensional travel – you never heard such a pale and sickly sound, drums changed into soggy cardboard packets and the guitar screeching like a stillborn weasel. True connoisseurs of lame 1960s garage punk (as collected on Pebbles, Nuggets, etc.) tend to cherish the real bottom of the barrel stuff, Midwest bands who couldn’t afford proper recording facilities and yet still somehow got a record made on the cheap, most likely by piling into a phonebooth and using the receiver as an amplifier. Freak-beat lovers who dig that stuff should get their collecting fangs deep into this slice of anaemic coffin-fodder, while there’s still a pulse. The other CDR, Jonestown Death Tape (PT24), seems to be another release for the infamous Jim Jones tape recording, which has been issued in various forms by assorted sickos; at least three other versions can be accounted for since Genesis P. Orridge did it on Temple Records in 1984. While I’m personally slow to see the appeal of this “icon” of death culture, there’s no denying it’s a classic of nihilism and despair, and as such it fits into the Pilgrim Talk aesthetic perfectly.

The LP by Egg, Eggs is called The Cleansing Power Of Fruit (FEEDING TUBE RECORDS FTR073). The secret weapon of this zanoid American combo is the vocals and performing skills of David Russell, a charismatic fellow who is much more than just the singer in a band – just check out any of the numerous Egg, Eggs videos on YouTube to get some idea of the eccentricity and physicality of what transpires when a microphone is slipped into his paw. He looks like he just stepped out of a 1950s Bleecker Street café – he projects this formidable image of a burly jazz-loving beatnik with his wild hair and fearsome hornrims, and even so none of this prepares you for the sheer untrammelled craziness of his vocalese. You might expect free-form poetry of some kind, but what Russell offers us is mostly unintelligible – high-pitched whining, squeaking, barking and wailing, occasionally given added weight by nursery-rhyme styled chanting of nonsensical phrases. The main appeal is just the sound he makes with his voice – the twists and turns of his accent and phrasing, akin to which very little else sounds. Except David Thomas, of course. The press notes here do note the resemblance to Crocus Behemoth, and there’s even a physical likeness to some degree. Russell’s degree in far-out-ology should not distract us from the music on the LP – the collective efforts of Sheldon, Crespo, Robinson, Lee, Brewster, Callahan and St. George are all here, along with the drummer John Moloney (from Sunburned, and recent drummer for Thurston) and special guests including Matt Valentine. Together, these crazed North-Easterners blast out unhinged free rock sludge using guitars, basses, electronics, and lots of drums, also adding their vocal efforts to the general hullabaloo. It’s overblown, over-worked, and exhausting to listen to. This particular LP has been edited together from numerous live performances recorded in a three-year period (2009-2011), and this does add extra fire to the material; the editing knife always kicks in precisely at that moment when David Russell’s performance is at its most manic and emotionally heightened. This strategy is guaranteed to give the listener a high ratio of jolts and shocks per square inch of vinyl. For that reason, it’s a bit more rewarding than sitting through some of the longer YouTube episodes, which don’t seem to vary much over 20-40 minutes. Egg, Eggs is clearly a “live band” experience and I expect you really had to be there in Massachusetts to receive the full charge of 115 volts to your rocking bones, but if you want to collect more physical emanations from their odysseys, there are at least two dozen (very limited) cassettes of their work available from this label.

December 26, 2013

Vinyl Sevens round-up (2 of 3)

Two colourful and bizarre items now from Le Petit Mignon, both received 20 July 2012. LPM is the “in-house imprint” of Staalplaat in Berlin, and the publishers spare no expense in producing luxuriant fine-art packages with close attention paid to unusual vinyl pressings and high-quality printing for the sleeves. We’ve received from them at least three items in this vein in the past, and I prize them quite highly as grabbable artefacts. The Hans Trapp record (LPM10) is credited to “Various Artists”, and believe me you can’t get more “various” than this – 41 contributors, each providing a very short snippet of sound to the monstrous assemblage. I feel it would be futile to list them all, but rest assured that many TSP regulars will feel right at home in this very mixed company. I suppose the real endeavour has been to co-ordinate such a project in the first place, for which we have Insultor (as compiler) to thank, plus the efforts of three named “curators”; and then there’s the job of editing these wild fragments into some sort of cohesive whole, which task was assigned to Nicolas Wiese. Actually forget about “cohesive”. It’s a completely schizophrenic listen, shifting constantly and instantly between explosions of violent harsh noise into barrages of easy-listening, demented electronics, strangely tuneful segments, mad vocal yawps, and largely unidentifiable snippets of insanity. The hot orange vinyl pressing should clue you in to the degree of intensity (registers about 150,000 units on the Scoville scale) of this firebrand, while the screenprinted wraparound cover produced by Re:Surgo has a grim, black and blocky collage on the front and a Dada-inspired piece of typography on the back. Methinks the designers must have had access to some old Letraset ¹ for this. An absurd and in places slightly silly item, it’s hard not to love it. Even so, at just 41 artists it falls well short of the benchmark set by the notorious RRR 500 LP (500 locked grooves by 500 artists) in 1998.

The other item is a Split (LPM06) between two “bands”, both of which are formed from ad-hoc meetings of members of many other projects – MoHa!, Jazzkammer, Noxagt, Jealousy Party, Perlonex and Ultralyd – in fine, the best that the (mostly Norwegian) underground has to offer. I first played ‘The Early Years’ by Tree People, which is a grisly feast of John Hegre’s guitar feedback and Morten Olsen’s percussion combined with looping elements, the latter presumably provided by Ignaz Schick’s turntable struggling to make good in this testosterone-fuelled atmosphere. Tree People’s strength here is to create a vivid episode where nothing is muffled or dampened, thus enabling them to come out fighting with the hard, steel knives of “dangerous” noise. Pokemachine is the duo of Anders Hana and Mat Pogo, and they create ‘Eg Ottast Ingen’ using a diabolical blend of CD player, synths, vocal and percussion, all said components locked together in quickstep; everything is piled on in super-abundance and the track moves too fast for comfort, creating an alarming sensation of uncontrolled metallic filth, like spastic outdated robots going viral. This desirable “noiser” is pressed in clear vinyl coloured with an added “sickly green” tinge, which shows you that no detail is missed out when it comes to inducing nausea and prolonged vomiting. And that’s before you even open the booklet. Snap on the 3D glasses and prepare to have your eyeballs deep-fried in hot fat by Fredox’s images, lovingly printed by experts Le Dernier Cri. Plenty of skulls and bits of machinery collaged together, along with certain peers through the microscope you wish you’d never taken. No visual taboo is safe when Fredox is on the march, and a quick scrumble through Google images indicates that these are some of his “tamer” efforts.

Dry transfer lettering, popular in the 1960s and 1970s; often used by professional graphic designers, but I suppose since superseded by digital methods. ↩