On today’s spin I’m reminded more than once of the similar odd sound produced by Hans Reichel and his “Dachsophon” or Daxophone, which he invented in 1987 and played on The Dawn of Dachsman, and other recordings. Reichel’s wooden instruments were carefully carved tongues mounted in resonant wooden boxes, but like Hornorkesteret he tended to apply the bow and likewise produced animalistic whines and grunts. Qvale and team also add percussion and some conventional instruments to the mix, but to remind us of their quasi-pagan roots, there are four antler-players in the band, plus the use of bone flute, moose skull and hoof rattle tells us that animals are never very far away – in spirit, and in a very corporeal sense.

I like the way they keep the melodies very simple – if they were rock musicians, this could almost be very rough post-punk riffing or even a form of acoustic Black Metal (which is something they ought to try, in my view), but they can’t help syncopating their rhythms, in an attempt to get us onto their dancefloor and watch us execute a lumbering stomp. When I say dancefloor, it’s probably a charmed circle in the forest with mushrooms and stones and goblins nearby. Elaborate cover art curlicues, emblems and pastoral scenes likewise confirm this “wild men of the woods” image they’re trying to push, as do the charming silhouette pix of the band indicating that long hair and nudity are entry-level requirements if you wanna “blow” with the Hornsters. At the same time, they’re also urban sophisticates who are keen to blend krautrock and minimal-improv moves with their folk-inflected antics. Some nice moments of wildlife field-recording punctuate the tracks, but I don’t think they actually recorded it in the open air. (11/11/2024)

Available in the UK through Cold Spring

The two musicians broke away from the Seoul Metropolitan Youth Traditional Music Ensemble, and while DAL:UM was first founded in 2018, by the time the pandemic was winding down, these determined musicians had developed enough of a strong identity and sense of where they wanted to take their music and their unique sound. There are influences here coming from unexpected places – visual artist Cornelia Parker for one, a TV documentary about deep-sea diving on another – and while the liner notes find parallels with a Chopin nocturne, I can also hear echoes of Satie in the very satisfying ‘Dodry’ with its peaceful centre of serenity. But it’s much harder to account for the elliptical phrasing and astonishing intervals in the playing on ‘Poison and Antidote’, music of such confidence and precision we can only wonder – how did they get to this point?

While these zithers may sound exotic to Western ears, the inventive approach of DAL:UM speaks a more universal language. Perhaps Suyean Ha and Hyeyoung Hwang don’t worry too much about techniques or genres, nor are they troubled by conventional Western string-playing expressions like vibrato, and are instead guided by their simple philosophy: “how can we harmoniously coexist with the life surrounding us?” This beautiful music indicates they are succeeding in finding the way. (23/09/2024)

Pernice composed this work for a stage play, a contemporary version spoken in French, of the Sophocles tragedy staged by Emma Gustafsson and Laurent Hatat; what we have today isn’t a “soundtrack” to the play exactly, but rather an assemblage of all the music he composed for the production – hence the subtitle “Complete Sessions”. Six actors from Antigone are also credited on the CD, although we don’t hear much from their declaiming voices on the disc apart from a brief exposition on ‘Stasimon 1’; they are also represented by the rather washed-out ghostly images printed on the digipak. The 20 tracks indicate how closely Pernice adhered to the story and structure of the play; they read like episode titles. Interestingly, I see the original tragedy (with which I am not familiar) touches on themes of citizenship and obedience, and how society’s constraints conflict with the individual’s sense of “self”, along with the expected subtexts about families, conflicts, and familial duties (some say that all Greek tragedy is really about the family).

The response of Laurent Pernice to all this textual richness has been to create rather solemn, minimal, and poised music; some of it quite classical in its harmonic approach; all of it conveying deep melancholy and a sense of futility. There’s isn’t a great deal of departure from the central sadness underpinning everything, although the Nyman-like structure of ‘La Lutte’ goes some way to enliven the mood. A bit of me was half-expecting simple “atmospheric” tones to act as a backdrop for the actors, but no – each piece, no matter how short (some are delicate miniatures lasting for just over one minute), has been thought-through in detail, never drifting away into the land of wisps and ghosts, nor filling space with unnecessary padding. We’re intrigued by Pernice ever since we learned of his association with Palo Alto, a French combo seemingly determined to keep the Zeuhl flame burning and extend their complex music into sci-fi and philosophical areas; we enjoyed their album Difference and Repetition: A Musical Evocation of Gilles Deleuze from 2021.

With this record and the Martin Küchen / Angles Kalypso jazz opera, and to some extent the recent jazz LP Medea by Star Splitter, perhaps we’re seeing an emerging rediscovery of the enduring power of Greek tragedy. (22/04/2024)

This piece is the principal showcase for the “let’s sample old gramophone records of Caruso” strategy, and successfully achieves the hoped-for effect of a “virtual choir” with its loops, repeats, layers, echoes and time-stretching by the kilo. But Fennessy transcends the process; if you think you know what to expect, stop rustling your programme and sit still in the box until you’ve heard all 23 and one-half minutes of track 01. The arrangement of the samples is done with care and attention, and I like to think a good deal of spontaneity – the ghost of the singer soon appears with flesh on his bones and a velvet cape around his shoulders. The genius stroke has been to combine it with this eccentric guitar-playing – it’s not free-form blast-outs in the style of Sonny Sharrock, rather slides, picking, distorted vibrations, and a hefty dose of sheer oddness. Not even the craziest New Wave band from 1978 would have dared employ such an inventive axeman. If (like me) the closest you’ve come to experiencing the operatic arias of this internationally famous historical figure is the movie Fitzcarraldo, well – it so happens David Fennessy has composed an entire trilogy of orchestral pieces based on Werner Herzog’s diaries written during the time this film was being made. I’m glad to hear Fennessy did not attempt anything so banal as a “re-imagined soundtrack” to the movie.

Also here are three other pieces which may link together (apparently it’s a viola triptych) and may not be connected to Enrico Caruso in quite the same direct way. ‘Nox’ is written as the portrait of a musician, but the musician happens to be Garth Knox – who also plays it on his viola and adds peculiar syllables and French vocabulary from his intoning voice. ‘Haupstimme’ is played by the great Ensemble Modern with another viola solo from Megumi Kasakawa. Where ‘Nox’ is intimate and low-key, this one’s an all-out modernist freak-out in high fiesta mode. Part of the plan is to make the poor viola player work ten times as hard, simply to be heard against the unkempt blasters in this crazy group. The percussion section alone ought to restore your faith in avant-garde orchestras, if you’ve not yet found a recording of Varese that can satisfy your inner John Bonham. Really feeling the pull and push and warp-and-weft of this heavy tapestry, one that’s complex and high-achieving enough to hold its head alongside the work of Sam Pluta. Only ‘Nebenstimme’ doesn’t quite re-point the brickwork for this listener, although the combination of viola and celeste is an imaginative choice, and Knox turns in another superb performance here.

An excellent release, great musicians in the room, and an inventive composer at work, flirting occasionally with meta-music themes in an imaginative and productive way. (15/05/24)

This is amply demonstrated on the opening title track, where Harry Partch meets free jazz in a percussion whirlwind along with fifteen flying geese and an automatic knitting machine, but there’s six other examples of his “reach for the sky” approach to generating music on this wild album, recorded in Beat Club Studios in Japan in 2022. I might clutch at the “sky” metaphor as if he were an architect rather than a musician, one hell-bent on bending the rules of physics and attempting to design and build a cantilevered tower that peers over the cityscape in ways that defy gravity. The label notes describe his overdub technique as “typical PG fashion”, indicating that label boss Bryan Day is more than familiar with the works of this butter-nut swan who has been active since the 1990s with a hammock load of releases for Yabyum Productions, Family Vineyard, and others, but his personal musical history extends even further back – “played in funk/rock/folk/blues/punk/country bands on and off for 30 years” is his calling card according to his website.

Also appearing here are Japanese friends Shogo Ohshima, Shizka Ueda, and Omusubi San and Fuuchan. Actually the ‘Mammoth Flower’ riot of explosive colour turns out to be untypical of the rest of the album, which showcases studio concoctions and experiments which are a bit more focussed, concentrating on one or two instruments at a time rather than the entire orchestral magoo. The other heavy-hitter, lengthwise at any rate, is the 15 mins of ‘Zone’, a three-parter mainly constructed on a guitar with steel strings that are so plangent that you can experience a taste of cold metal in your mouth, just by listening to it. Gayle overdubs his six-string homunculi with passion and force, propelling us into new areas of “freedom” – creating a manglement that borders on delicious chaos, yet clearly driven by the magnetic powers of human creation. If Derek Bailey and John Fahey had gotten into a punch-up over the relative merits of Billy Strange, the world might be a better place.

I say this by way of coming to the conclusion – light gradually dawning – that this is 80% a solo guitar album, and the firework sandwich of cellos, banjos, mandolin, piano, voices, toys and other action-painting moves to be found on Track 1 reflects but one aspect of this fellow’s musical philosophy. Plus – guess what, it’s pretty much all-acoustic. Did I also mention there are environmental recordings in here somewhere, including a creaky door, and anything he could persuade to come within speaking distance of his microphone in a public park in Japan. The splurgy paint cover artworks are very suitable to the music, but they’re not his – they were done by Kohei Akiba. Now I know what they mean by “Gayle” force! From 30 November 2023.

We all know this label loves a heavy dark drone, but Chore IA serves up that commodity with 18 gallons of extra dissonance – so palpable it’s like a dose of astringent lemon-juice ammonia injected in the brain. What’s more he mostly does it by acoustic means – we’d like to think he’s at his most fulfilled with a good wooden cello in his paws, although he also plays bass and guitar, and does allow for some sparing electronic ice-cream filter diapasons to his carefully-layered stronks. He makes timber resonate so strongly that the very fibres peel apart before him, and carpenters tremble at his approach. This really pays off on two ultra-long pieces, ‘They Say Nothing / Ils Sont Morts’ and ‘I Die / Respirateur’. The Nothing-Morts piece is especially alarming, highly conducive for a nightmarish walk in the concrete park of Hades’ outer precincts…here, some of his string-scraping anti-harmonic approaches put me in mind of Fred Frith in attack mode. It’s a long walk down a strange corridor where the moment of arrival is endlessly deferred, while “Mr Lizard” whispers in your ear.

The “respirateur” piece ladles in a side or two more percussion like so many brass nodules in the tanker, plus an intoning voice supplied by “Mr Errant Medico”, an imaginary character who inhabits this imaginary hospital where the life-support system is not supplying air to the dying patient, but instead pumping in some nasty form of hallucinogenic gas. Suckin’ in a good healthy dose of fretful imagination from this droning Pole, who is clearly skilled with studio craft as he chunks up his air-miles on the recording tape, one pass-mode at a time. He’s also remorseless, tightening the screws on his listeners with no let-up on the tension, foreboding, and nausea.

Top marks to the dispensing chemist from Hell so far, but there’s more…the bonus disc contains rare tracks from his 1995 cassette Neogolizmowa (plus some unreleased doubloons from same date), originally squeezed out on the Obuh label. Quite the contrast to disc one; in 1995, Wanat v1.0 was evidently more rough-edged, lo-fi, bitty, minimal and raggedy in his experimental crondlings, ingeniously making the most of his simple sounds as he scrapes and bashes, and uses his voice to bark or murmur mysterious statements, sometimes getting quite frantic and over-wrought in that department. Still just as insistent as the later work though, so I guess he was a man who having latched onto an original thought or an unusual vision (and he’s got a million of ‘em), he wouldn’t let go of it until he’d ground it all out in audio form. For some reason this guy’s work just exudes a powerful Eastern European vibe, like finding a lost movie starring Pola Negri. This cassette work of his likewise would not feel out of place alongside any given post-punk cassette band of the 1980s.

A real pleasure for me to discover the music of this tough-minded, singular creator, and his powerful medicine. Recommended. From 23rd October 2023.

Four contemporary field-recording types from Portugal on Lisboa Soa: Sounds within Sounds (CRÓNICA 207-2023). Lisboa Soa calls itself a Festival, but it seems to be a lot more than that – growing some sort of locus for like-minded fellows to gather and thrive, and propounding the notion of “acoustic ecology”, grounded in ethical ideas about our shared environment. They believe we can achieve a lot just through the simple act of listening. This particular release was a commission, delivering new works from João Castro Pinto, Sara Pinheiro, Mestre André and Ana Guedes. However, it seems none of them roamed the wilderness with their tape machines to collect new sounds, and instead all four pieces have been assembled using existing tapes stored in the Festival’s archives. Mixed results; I get the feeling everyone was a bit too respectful to the sources and didn’t feel inclined to try anything especially bold or daring, although moments of Mestre André’s ‘No Earlids’ serve up a few pebbles and twigs of dramatic noise, and Guedes does at least make the effort to transform the original tapes on her ‘Splicing_archives_’. Very few specific environmental sounds emerge from this processed and layered melange, and one starts to wonder what exactly we are hearing. I find this lack of contextual detail vaguely troubling; the notes supplied by each creator tell us more about their selection methods and their multi-channel spatialisations than they do about the earth’s environment. (Sep 2023)

Self-titled album (DRIP AUDIO DA02420) by Josh Zubot Strings – a small combo led by violinist Josh Zubot from Vancouver. He’s joined by other string players – Jesse Zubot, James Meger, Meredith Bates and Peggy Lee, and they offer us ten instrumentals of considerable variety. Just when I think it’s going down a semi-scored jazz route, it suddenly switches into lively free-form improvisation, then starts to assumes the form of dissonant, difficult, modernist composition on the next piece. Josh takes composer credit for everything, but it’s evident his talented group are given much free rein to interpret and improvise the clusters of black notes that flow from his fine pen. Plenty of dense, high-energy music on offer besides the slower more introspective moments – giving the lead violins a chance to exhibit superhuman fast runs, as well as stylistic flourishes that (for me) verge on the exhausting. It’s music that’s overly complex, without any real need for the complexity, other than being difficult for its own sake, or for the sake of giving the hyper-skilled players a vehicle for their quicksilver moves. When they do manage to slow down, the group are capable of some original sounds, and Josh Zubot’s composerly skills are considerable, even if he is one of these contemporary types who feel they have to prove their point by making wild combinations and mixing it up through cross-genre experiments. One of his works was inspired by farm machinery that does something interesting to grain, reflecting his pastoral upbringing. The group photo shows them wearing casual attire – denims, baseball caps, T-shirts, and projecting a rather utilitarian vibe, like hipster workers taking a break at a micro-brewery. Their jaunty informality is slightly at odds with the serious music. (25/09/2023)

Mika Taanila for me never quite surpassed his wild early cassette work as Musiikkivyöry, but his more recent items for Ruton Music are still exceptional. Jussi Lehtisalo has scored numerous plaudits in “rock” type bands Circle and Pharaoh Overlord, but here’s your chance to hear him shine on the synths and drum machines instead of the electric guitar. The secret weapon on this record is Hannu Saha, playing the five-stringed kanteles, a traditional Finnish instrument associated with folk music and a distant relative of the zither family. Saha is known for his traditional folk music work, sometimes performing in groups like Salamakannel, Mahti, and Mummi Kutoo. He may also have brought a sense of history to this project too, as there’s a lovely photo (from 1917) of the musician Fedja Happo towards the end of his life aged 76, and a quote from his sage wisdom has informed at least one track here, with its suggestion of an eternal “universal music”, one which Happo was able to tap into with his very open-ended, near-mystical philosophy of music.

As it happens Jussi Lehtisalo is also zithering it up on this record, but doing it in a very “prepared” manner (nuts & screws) and putting it through pedals also. Mika Taanila we might note is not just playing synth, but also repurposing his old answering machine messages (from his landline telephone!) which end up as voice samples in the performances. This isn’t just another texture in the mix, it’s intended to add meaning to the whole set – it’s about “the union of futuristic and historical thinking” – if they can bring together modern and traditional instruments into the same space, the telephone messages are cementing it into a pleasing whole, bringing the trio closer to their stated aim of “200 year-old futurism”. Wasn’t that also the supposed hidden message behind the gatefold cover of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album – the old man with his bundle of sticks being pushed aside by the modern brutalist architecture? Well maybe, but that remark doesn’t quite prepare you for the dazzling invention and unusual music on offer here.

Much more than simply setting a traditional instrument in a contemporary setting with amplification, I think the whole project is a genuine attempt to rethink a lot of our assumptions about music, history, sound, and performance, and through their efforts, this ultra-talented trio create something quite new. Wonderful. From 18th August 2023.

The central idea is a strong one – Söderberg performing in duo situations with a number of talented musicians, including the cellist My Hellgren who was also on FRIM2. Again, it’s a crossover endeavour, blurring the lines between composition and improvisation and covering much ground thereby. Peter plays his guitar, lute, and his beloved Theorbo, the large 14-string instrument that I’d venture to suggest he is making all his own. Very clear recorded sound for each piece allows us to savour the precision of Söderberg’s ideas; as is evident from the crisp and detailed annotations he provides, he’s exploring specific things like timbre and non-conventional tuning systems, and apparently trying to evoke the appearance of a “hybrid” – as though the two instruments are growing together into a weird chimera, as they move closer towards each other with their respective sounds and playing styles. Along with these challenging experiments, the creator is also well-informed about the history and background of his chosen instruments, and the lineage of music generally.

Despite the poise, restraint, and technical mastery on offer, I think String Dialogues is potentially quite radical and challenging in its musical reach. With Katt Hernandez, Stina Hellberg Agback, Mats Persson, Sten Sandell, and Vilhelm Bromander. (From July 2023)