Tagged: vinyl

December 1, 2013

Glory Holes

Very long overdue notice for Tolvek (DOUBTFUL SOUNDS doubt07), this crapulous and absurdist record of genius by Micro_Penis, which we’ve had in the rack since at least November 2011 if not earlier. Perhaps I could use the unsettling cover art as an excuse for my tardiness, but now that I hear the record in its entirety it can only be declared as a tiny masterpiece of surrealism, a 19th-century nightmare of Freud and modern medicine, refracted through sonic images of the Crimean war and suggestions of typewriters, early automobile horns, and horrifying dreams of surgery going wrong. Most of the above can be deduced from just listening to the foul groaning spew that is spread across these two sides of vinyl; the team of Heyer, Kittel, Ogrob and Spenlehauer create ambiguous sound portraits in episodic form that can plausibly be read to contain all of those images. A man screams desperately on side one, undergoing painful surgery, to the sound of primitive saws buzzing horribly and a placid doctor murmuring his disdain. Warfare is clearly suggested across side two, either by distant cannon fire electronically simulated, or by crazed officers barking desperate orders in unintelligible ways, or by the ramshackle brass section imitating bugle calls. A more perfect realisation of a Max Ernst collage in sound, it’s hard to imagine; The 150 Murderous Passions LP (United Dairies UD 09, 1981) at last has some stiff competition.

Freud and Krafft-Ebing are also suitable subtexts, given the name of the combo and the cover images – collages by Michel Borgo from 1978 – which suggest a painful genital operation going horribly wrong, but also indicating that the team of doctors themselves, wearing sado-masochistic black masks, are somehow complicit in an institutionalised form of sexual deviancy. The assorted vocal groans, howls and pained ejaculations that erupt throughout the entire record are evidence that, in this looking-glass world, all sexual activity is a miserable, slow and painful process of joyless, physical grind. The association of sex with warfare, achieved by the record’s strong audio juxtapositions, confirms another deep archetype that has been with us since the time of Wilhelm Reich, and his studies such as The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Never a band to leave well enough alone, Micro_Penis also include a rubber object insert with the release, a “hybridization of sexual obsession and vegetable shape” developed by the artist Anne Zimmerman. This “sexual rubber beast” may have been derived from the leaves of a cabbage, but it also resembles a section from a lung or other vital organ, manufactured using a material which is alien neither to the operating theatre (rubber gloves) nor the bedroom (condoms). So far, plenty of the sort of twisted button-pushing that is guaranteed to activate every man’s dormant id – except it’s more like twisting a scalpel, in those parts we don’t want probed.

However, it would be wrong to overlook that this is also a very humourous record. The press release alone should have the reader in stitches, weaving fantastic yarns about band members being hospitalised or going on retreat in a Zen temple, while creating this work by digging in the hospital garbage bins (probably another deep archetype buried there too); they describe this grand guignol styled work as a melange of “horror movie, art brut and cruelty”. There’s humour in the sound too; if at any moment the music seems extremely bizarre, despairing, or violent, it’s instantly undercut by the next moment which makes liberal use of comic sound effects of farting and groaning bowels, be they created by brass instruments or electronic means. And the voices are exceptional. All four members of the band add voice elements, and they’re both hilarious and disturbing too (often in the same mouthful). They grunt and howl in unintelligible manner; this is not the systematic disassembly of language as practised by Burroughs and his cut-ups, rather the purely instinctive and animalistic reaction to emotional turmoil: this is call-and-response improvisation rendered 100 times more visceral. This is a juicy, dirty record that unflinchingly embraces all bodily functions, from intestines to genitalia and the “sang dans la culotte” that appears on side one, making a fleeting reference to menstruation. The creators of this lurid, nightmarish mess – François Heyer, Alexandre Kittel, Claude Spenlehauer and Sébastien Borgo – come to us from prior projects such as Sun Plexus and Myself, and have made one other LP under this alias in 2009. A truly nauseating delight!

November 30, 2013

All Change Please!

"...a petri-dish for musical metamorphosis..." — “…a petri-dish for musical metamorphosis…”

Andrey Kiritchenko
Chrysalis
UKRAINE NEXSOUND NS 68 LP (2012)

With a healthy swathe of over 40 recordings under belt, among which roisterings with the likes of Francisco López and Kim Cascone, Nexsound label founder (and occasional visitor to Sound Projector pages) Andrey Kiritchenko now unveils Chrysalis: a petri-dish for musical metamorphosis in which ‘acoustic instruments and electronics flow into one another, dissolve in devolution, decay in a space of interactions’ and experience ‘rebirth’. Well, there’s a palpable sense of dew-dropped newness and wonder throughout: a beguiling innocence that arises from the satisfying compositional integrity of a solid set of slow and graceful jazz numbers for an augmented quartet of clarinet, double bass and violin and whatever else Kiritchenko happens to deem apt for each occasion. Tracks stroll the gamut from mechanically precise electro-jazz shapes to lusher, more laconic orchestral outings, pleasant surprises abounding from one moment to the next.

Bass-driven with warm, round tone, ‘Vortex Singular’ establishes the quirky, hobbling rhythm that runs through much of the record; a clarinet mantra bobbing overhead, with an occasional riptide of electronic screech. Forgivably brief spells of synthetic string stabs do set teeth on edge, reminders of Innerzone Orchestra’s electro-jazz or ‘90s Ninja Tune (which no-one seemed to have a harsh word for, back in the day), standing out as the one undermining element of this otherwise mellifluous melange. An arguable disadvantage of adding computers to jazz I suppose. However, guest instruments such as xylophone, thumb piano and some crisp drumming add much to the music’s resonance, its patient, layer-by-layer development and minimal mood, redolent of organic machines in a Hiyao Miyazaki animation. Each piece artfully rephrases this formula, while never quite straying into parametric extremes, and sitting side by side most successfully on side B: ‘Momentum Derive’ being a personal highlight.

My only other fault with this record is a real first-world nit-pick: its paper-thin outer sleeve really does the beautiful silver-inked artwork a disservice, along with the attractive transparent grey vinyl and the music itself, of course. If only more records suffered such slight afflictions!

Andrey Kiritchenko on Soundcloud

November 26, 2013

Some Words On Western Art

Weisser Westen
Weisser Westen
APPARENT EXTENT AE017 2 x LP (2013)

A daring debut from Düsseldorf Duo, Weisser Westen (‘White West’), this eponymous double LP (and CD) drops a lifetime’s worth of oddly angled ideas into the same sack and wields threateningly. Like a savvier (and wordier) set of Lebowskian Nihilists, but decked out in white paper armour, the spiritual siblings Angela Fette and Phillip Schulze rather resemble those theatrical Swedish electro-popsters, The Knife, whose predilection for dramatic dress-up and Darwinian opera find resonance in the über-conceptual happenings here, if not a spitting image. Weisser Westen declare open allegiance to ‘avant-garde’ culture in its manifold historical forms (without naming names albeit), and their homepage houses an artistic manifesto that promotes (rather obliquely) ‘Art’ as a natural proclivity; as much I assume, to set themselves apart from would-be ‘kultur vultures’, as to justify their uncompromising sound. The music is rich in mannerisms both shocking and sublime, which work surprisingly well given how infrequently modern electronic music traffics in ‘surprise’.

Listeners are advised to ‘listen loudly’ and adherence does pay off: every track is dark, dirty, dense and detailed, volume enhancing rather than dulling character. Stylistically, sounds range from thickly layered electro-pop to fat psychoacoustics. My only caveat is the vocals, which will probably polarise listeners (an indifferent reception seems unthinkable): German lyrics delivered rapidly like a stentorian, slightly nasal airhostess trying to take control in an emergency situation. Thus every track seems like a showdown between music and voice, both of which betoken a larger-than-life personality.

The only point at which events threaten to overwhelm is on ‘Species’ when the narrator adopts English to articulate the duo’s artistic raison d’etre; likening it to a biological, evolutionary or spiritual imperative (‘a wonder/a fire without cinder’). Never having been partial to public soul-searching, this sparse, cymbal-mirrored monologue strikes me as a tad egocentric. Likewise, the crazed Cabaret-histrionics of the side-long ‘Galley’ – with its maddening mantra of ‘ABER JETZT!’ – demand a stronger set of lugholes than I can offer.

Compensation is abundant though, chiefly on the album’s sole instrumental, the dark-electro ‘Mothership’, which is skin-tinglingy sexy, like Detroit techno done well (I speak as someone who has found disappointingly cheap, synthetic procrastination in the vaunted DT scene). One second of this reverberant, robo-techno in a decent club and everything would become a blur. My only criticism is that it’s too fleeting to realise its full potential.

On paper, this project has all the makings of a pretentious waste of time: overpowering personalities; overconfidence in its marshalling of styles; possible delusions of ‘avant-garde’ grandeur. Saturated as I am with music these days though, I find its boldness charismatic; the modest ‘challenge’ it presents, quite refreshing. That said, I suspect the opposite could just as easily be the case.

November 24, 2013

The Drummwich Horror

DRUMM A — “…three dire creatures of the night pause whilst ripping an 18 century creature’s carcass just long enough to eye us balefully…”

A Relief Reviewer Writes…

Kevin Drumm
Relief
AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO 137 LP (2012)

In which ol’ Kev hits us macho square in the lugholes with his 12 inch mastermix, noise on 45: Relief. Throws into. Is in stark. Is in bold. Bas (no bass, however). In fact, think back and recall when your friend and mine Howard Phillips L. used to write about grotesque bas-reliefs hewn from basalt etc. Well, there are some similarities, here.

Relief clocks in a relentless 40 minutes or so, packaged in a monolithic black sleeve with black inner bag. On the cover three dire creatures of the night pause whilst ripping an 18 century creature’s carcass just long enough to eye us balefully – as indeed we imagine Kevin is doing, peering hairy-armed over the foot high legend ‘Relief’ (‘by Kevin Drumm’ – similar to a perfume, but sweatier) that confronts us on the back. One slab, two faces, a ceaseless, pitiless, writhing, tentacles as the volcanic column (yes, I know. In fact, coincidentally, since I wrote these initial notes Ed has more fully explored the Freudian ramifications, as it were, of some noise approaches in his review of Seth Cooke’s Pneuma ¹) emerges from the depths. See water streams off those hideous bas-reliefs, terrors which should not be named revealed by the flashing of convenient lightning and the insane dive-bombing of rotting Stukas. Piloted by zombies. Perhaps zombie Keith Rowes.

These imagistic impressions (which we should not disregard the influence of the deliberately calculated packaging in forming ²) are rendered unto us by way of a fair amount of high frequency feedback and what could be radio abuse – like Spinal Tap’s wireless mic picking up air base chatter this sounds like a table top guitar picking up Satan’s own CB radio, but unlike Nigel Tufnell and co. there is not much in the way of bottom end. Behind everything a relentlessly cycling maudlin orchestral motif grates away in the background. A mouldy melody of a sort of melancholy at three removes, cannibalised horror forged in the gleam of efficiency and commerce. Hollywood’s very own horror tropes, the signifier rather than the signified being deployed, in a similar manner to the artwork, although in that case other conventions are being used. And thus it goes, grinding, maximum on small details, minimum on large scale movement. A slab, indeed.

Flip the record over and it carries on where it left off. The stukas still swarming around the storm-wracked, pitted and hoary monolith. Which in fact as far as volcanic rocks goes is probably more of a pumice. Not that that doesn’t abrade, some, mind you. Excellent for calluses etc. It is just rather lighter in terms of overall mass.

We get no progression, no climax; rather an enervated and continuous crumbling.

But wait! What’s this? A minute or so from the end of the second side we are granted (a sort of) respite in a brief second track, a solo for distorted guitar, simple where the previous track is loaded with baroque details, brief where the other is long, dynamic where the other maintains a constant level, throwing things into… wait for it… relief. It’s still melodically over-egged and portentous, but it’s nice to feel in on the joke. A spirit of generosity which is echoed in Kevin’s exhaustive thanks list included on the back of the picture postcard you also get slipped into the sleeve.

The feminine or anima – there I go mixing my Freud and Jung – has plenty to offer to noise. Think of the archetype of Kali, for example. ↩
The music lies in a shifting hinterland between instrumental expressionism and the creation of illusory pictures, in a similar manner to the conversation in packaging Drumm has been pursuing since Tina Frank’s Sheer Hellish Miasma artwork, the using and subverting of an archetypally ‘metal’ or ‘noise’ presentation in the service of something more abstract and electronic. ↩

November 21, 2013

Lord Tang’s Haunted House of Dub

Lord Tang
Hello
ALARM AV002 LP (2013)

Why does everything sound so ‘hauntological’ these days? Take ‘Fog’ – the opening to ‘Hello’ – in which wibbly-wobbly hills of dubby bass are spooked by a warbling whine, fuzzed-up and visited by vintage movie samples that speak of ‘fog’ (though a tad plosively on the ‘g’, leaving me to wonder if I just heard the f-word). It sets the ghostly tone for what’s to come, and though not an unwelcome tone by any means – possibly a little closer to the faux-naiveté of the much-missed Plone than the now well-ensconced Ghost Box stable – the preponderance of such music over the last few years renders increasingly familiar that which would be ‘eldritch’.

To be fair, the designs of Lord Tang – one Dominic Cramp, of Gigante Sound, Evangelista, Vulcanus 68 (etc.) fame – are on whimsical interpretations of his cherished ‘Golden Age’ dubs, and the tracks comprise a diverse set of variations on this variable. Matters quickly mutate out of hand – cobwebbed and lead-footed one minute; agitated by an obsessive organ dirge the next, suggesting that deep troubles weigh on the mind of Count Dracula. Ever longing to change the mood, the closer the needle moves towards the spindle, the more whacked-out things become; the darkness delved more deeply, but with an ever-present playfulness that keeps Lord Tang clear of Demdike Stare’s obsidian murk.

Side B is b-side version time, in a manner of speaking. It’s more muted and melancholic in manner, as side A’s rolling bass is skeletoned; foregrounding and freeing delayed and delicate instrumentation (including melodica, organ, dulcimer etc.) from the supporting role, while lending an emotive (if remote) air at times, like King Tubby hazily remembered on Vincent Gallo’s ‘When’. There’s a great sense of space throughout, as though the audio fog of these nocturnal wanderings were in fact slightly sedative. And – just as judicious in duration as it is sparing in ingredients – the ethereal melodies each dissolve into the invisible without ceremony or warning, like the passing of a dream.

It’s a charming record, quite unassuming, and at just 200 available copies, its low profile is more than just an audible feature. Kelly Porter’s sleeve artwork is a bit of a tie-breaker: displaying a vivid range of autumnal tones that enrich the abstracted topographies of a hidden season. Rendered in innocent, ‘I could do that’ pen-and-ink lines, these graphics are as ambiguous as the music, looming like benevolent but unnamed entities from the hidden world of Arthur Machen. One for twilit Sunday evenings.

Lord Tang
Alarm

November 13, 2013

Astronautic Ambitions

"spaced-out slice of tomorrow..." — “spaced-out slice of tomorrow…”

Raglani
Real Colors Of The Physical World
AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO 149 LP (2012)

In times of uncertainty I’ll reach for the bottle of red with the nicest label. When it comes to music, one can usually rely on a label like Editions Mego to deliver tasteful material with a long shelf life. So when arrives a slab of thick black vinyl in a cardboard covering of riotous collaged colour (resembling, rather, one of Savage Pencil’s Wire ‘Primer’ illustrations) and bearing a GRM-esque legend like ‘Raglani’, then only the most doubting of Thomases will waver. And so it is that fans of all things concrète, Kosmische, vintage synth, and sci-fi soundtrack should consider snapping-up this spaced-out slice of tomorrow, yesterday, being as dynamic and dazzling as the sleeve suggests; and as full-bodied and smooth-tailed as a good Amarone.

Hitherto unknown to me, Mr. Raglani here sculpts sound as nostalgic and retro-futuristic as anything you’ll find on the Creel Pone label, and thanks to mastering mastermind Rashad Becker, it sounds richer to boot. Apparently, this is (Joe) Raglani’s first LP proper since 2006, though it’s rather difficult to tell, as he seems to have amassed a fair few limited edition cassettes and CDRs in the meantime, ostensibly of a darker ambient bent to the present proposition. This missive occasions a mission statement detailing a search for ‘the cosmic in the concrete’ and ‘construct(ion of) a plastic image of the imperceptible dynamics beneath the surface of the world ‘. What this means in concrete terms is a matter best left for an interview, suffice to say that he could scarcely be faulted for want of ambition.

The record comprises two extended, electronic compositions, each consisting of four (or so) movements that bleed phantasmagorically into one another. As cosmologies shift from dense to ethereal; electric to entropic, familiar elements of musique concrète and ‘kosmische’ emerge and merge while Raglani has a good old tinker with all manner of physical and phenomenological variables. Oft-animated, ever bleeping, yet sometimes lurching like wind-up robots winding down, the pieces present a sophisticated interweaving of natural and synthesized sounds, Carlos-esque vocodered vocals and shimmering segues that suggest at times the courting dance of electric shadows. Detectable also are shades of the Rephlex label’s more playful releases, and the corner of Trunk Records that happily houses now-revered names like Basil Kirchin and Tristram Cary. The album also sports a bonus 7” featuring arpeggiated, somewhat poppier numbers, which will surely seduce the club-goers of summer 3000.

I remember finally ‘getting’ the initially alienating mutant pixie music of Caroliner Rainbow: through a cassette Walkman, blanketed on a sofa with heavy flu, when suddenly the mountainous riffage of ‘Rainbows Made of Meat’ spoke to me like the voice of God. So vivid is this recollection that I can give ready credence to the myth that attending an Otomo Yoshihide show with a heavy fever was the catalyst for Raglani’s own musical productivity. While the rest of us were at home sick, feeling sorry for ourselves! So on the strength of releases like this, I’m considering giving up washing my hands altogether.

Raglani’s Soundcloud page

November 12, 2013

Robotic Reveries

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 8, 2013

Music Has The Right To Vowels

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

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

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

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

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

November 2, 2013

Gauzy Dreams that melt away

Robert McDougall
Unfinished Studies
AUSTRALIA ANGKLUNG EDITIONS ANG01 LP (2012)

Now an ultimately absorbing and beautifully realised slice of vinyl hailing from the antipodean quarter, 2012. This comes in the form of the Unfinished Studies l.p. by Robert McDougall, a Melbourne-based electro-acoustician and label boss, who certainly appears to have a fresh handle on investigations into the disciplines of avant-garde composition. A pleasing meld of pre-production treatments, electronics and field recordings can be found on the four long pieces within the somewhat anonymous-looking sleeve art. Starting with “Platter Study No. 2″; in which the platter in question appears to be a recording sourced from some ancient eastern ceremony, where distant gong/metallic bowl (?) tones are under threat of being consumed by a fluctuating foreground hum of unknown origin and, of course, the reassuring crackle that only distressed shellac can produce. “Untitled No. 4″ uses the same brand of disconcertingly blurred perspective as “Platter…”. The shimmer of a gently uncoiling keys/guitar figure is set against the distant hubbub of what seems to be a village market and reminds me of one of those gauzy dreams that’s remembered on the very cusp of awakening, before melting away forever. Further distant metallics are employed in “Installation Study No. 2″ in which the sound of an all pervading outboard motorboat drone is eventually punctuated by some quietly struck drawing-room piano chords, giving added dramatic import. My favourite though, is derived from a piano piece by Anne Boyd, a music professor from the University of Sydney. “Angklung Study” sounds, for all the world, like an outtake from Cluster, during their fields and streams period, circa Sowiesoso. Rather damn fine. A soft insidious assault on the senses, where…more or less, less is more.
A limited edition of 300 through Angklung Editions.

Bandcamp page

September 15, 2013

A Vinyl Varambolage

Another fine Jean-Noël Cognard project – ever since this veteran French drummer got in touch with TSP, he’s been exceptionally generous in supplying us with his vinyl releases, which happen to be on the Bloc Thyristors label and are usually sumptuous objects pressed in coloured vinyl with screenprinted covers, witness their other releases by Tankj, Empan, Tribraque, Ressuage and others. La Vierge De Nuremberg is a six-piece combo featuring the great Jac Berrocal on trumpet, flute and various “jouets sonores”, Cognard on the drums, plus a jazz-rock-type combo on guitars, bass, sax and “clavier vintage”, by which I suppose the French understand old analogue keyboards. They play a solid and energetic set on Le Retour De (BLOC THYRISTORS 0100), reminding us of a forgotten time when albums really were “albums”, by which I mean a collection of related and well-produced tracks edited into a coherent whole, and not simply two 20-minute sprawls of improvised noise plastered onto vinyl. The band here exhibit diverse interests in jazz, free-form improvisation, progressive rock, psychedelic rock songs, and a fair dose of inventive insanity when the occasion calls for it. Fans who are in the know will appreciate the first track on side two, ‘Rock N Roll Station’, where Berrocal stages a remake-revisit of one of his most famous pieces (the original was recorded in 1976 with Vince Taylor on vocals, but I find Berrocal has revisited it at least twice before in 1996 and 2007), and it’s still an eccentric gem, although its avant-mischief is largely untypical of the rest of this album which is more in the area occupied by great French prog music of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Gong or Lard Free, with perhaps the odd touch of Rock In Opposition groups. Recorded in 2011 in the Pierre Schaeffer studio. Mika Pusse did the highly kinky cover artwork with lashings of spanking, lingerie and tit clamps. From July 2012.

The Swifter is a collaboration between the Italian percussionist Andrea Belfi and BJNilsen, plus the pianist Simon James Phillips. Just four enigmatic instrumentals on this eponymous long-player (THE WORMHOLE WHO#02), where the pattern is that each piece starts with uncertain, near-chaos, coagulating gradually out of forlorn percussive scrapes and bangs, as if a house were being put together by renegade builders invading your garden at midnight; and then develops slowly into a glorious melodic crescendo as Phillips executes his assured minimalist arpeggios to soaring effect. What begins as slightly broken music transforms itself into a very stable and pleasing harmonic arrangement. The odd effect of hearing so many drum-rolls and piano introductions that don’t develop anywhere is that the listener is kept in a state of constant anticipation, as though watching a music hall stage where the orchestra are creating the world’s longest build-up for a star singer who never appears. An enigmatic release – the titles refer to capstan bars, wave guidance and neap tides for no apparent reason, and the record purports to be about “space”, but I enjoyed the very crisp and clear sound of the recording, a no-nonsense and unfiltered document of the performances. From 18 October 2012, apparently the second vinyl release from this subsidiary of the cassette-only Tapeworm label.

Guerilla Toss are an American five-piece here with their Jeffrey Johnson (FEEDING TUBE RECORDS FTR 095) LP, just six tracks which make for a shortish LP or a longish mini-album. The band form a basic oddball rock setup with guitars, bass and drums, but much sizzling heat is added by their two secret weapons – the synth of Ian Kovacjr and the vocals of Kassie Carlson. Kassie’s vocals are shrill, high-pitched and harsh and most civilians will reach for their steel helmets after just five minutes in her company, but when she’s in the shrieky mode she reaches new heights of deliberate-obnoxiousness not heard since Japan’s Space Streakings. Mark you, she is also capable of muttering strangely into the mike like she’s just been woken out of a coma in the psycho ward, and is recounting the dreams she just had. Kovacjr’s insane electronics add tasty flavouring too, although I for one would have liked to hear more from his moth-like fingers skittering across the keys and dials. The rest of the band are great though, straining quite hard (perhaps too hard) to play crazy dynamics, with wild stop-starts and frantic explosions of errant rock noise provided as needed. They fit together as a unit like sixteen pairs of odd socks – you never get the same match twice. Their strenuous efforts ensure the music is always extremely surprising (to say the least), even at the expense of structure or song form. Clearly all of these young Bostonians have been digesting their post-punk record collection well. I dig the spontaneous energy of the whole album while it’s spinning, even if it doesn’t leave much of an impression after the fizz has died down. Since we received this item, they’ve got a CD out on Tzadik, so maybe that one’s slightly better “produced”. Jeffrey Johnson gave the album its name and also did the bonkers cover art. (23 November 2012).

Thurston Moore is one of the “executive directors” of Feeding Tube Records and it so happens he’s featured on the album Caught On Tape (FEEDING TUBE RECORDS FTR092 / MANHAND MH131), two sides of recordings taken from a European tour he did in 2012 with the drummer John Moloney covering his back. It’s a tremendous record. As is well known, 2012 was the year that Sonic Youth went on “hiatus”, and not even the press release makes any reference to this seminal band (although there’s a long checklist of Thurston’s other projects). Here, liberated from the song form and the need to hit marks, play on cue, imitate Glenn Branca compositions or do anything other than just play the guitar as he sees fit, Thurston is suddenly unleashed, born again. A meticulous musicologist could probably listen to side one alone and unpick musical quotes referring to anyone from John Fahey to Albert Ayler by way of Tom Verlaine, but everyone else is just enjoying the glorious melodic and psychedelic noise of unfettered amplified axe. Moloney’s drumming finally makes sense to me in this context too. I was usually disappointed by the sluggish Sunburned Hand of the Man records, but here Moloney’s loud and primitive bashes completely fit the bill, and the pair of them genuinely sound like they’re enjoying themselves. How often do we get that sensation these days? Recorded on cassette (like audience recordings) with a rough edge that aids the rawness of the music, the finished product has I suspect been edited in places – one or two splices are detectable on side one at least – but the cumulative effect is a non-stop exhilarating juggernaut of avant-rock madness. Fine art by Raymond Pettibon and Emma Kohlmann completes the package. Since the original “tour pressing” of 113 copies sold out instantly, this edition is a must-have! (23 November 2012)