Latest missive from talented guitar-deconstruction expert Lauri Hyvarinen of Finland. His Trukki (ART FIRST RECORDS AF017) is 25 minutes of amplifier hum and buzz, at times suggesting that he might simply be plugging and unplugging his jack as his fancy takes him. Also dry spells of silence, or of nothing much happening. This really is taking the conventional idea of a “guitar performance” into a new realm of anti-pleasure. At times you’re wondering if he’s completely given up the idea of playing and is instead considering a career in accounting, or animal husbandry. As such this insane, alienated, illogical guitar noise is totally in keeping with the previous items received from him, and we totally love it. (15/01/2018)
Palcolor is Emil Macherzy?ski from Lodz in Poland, now in Warsaw…his Wróg (KOSMODRONE DRONE 1701 CD) album uses analogue synth technology to produce a species of clunky techno-ambient music with plenty of squelch and drum-machine beats. Quite nice, even though his sounds are not especially inventive and there’s no real sense of drive or determination behind any of these pieces. Emil’s artistic muse is informed by local political developments that are apparently breeding a new kind of internecine strife in Poland, since 2015; some describe it as a “new McCarthyism”, where fellow Poles are turned against each other for no good reason. The word Wróg translates as “Enemy”. Emil is also well-read on the history of cold war paranoia, and has studied such manifestations as number stations and the space race between the superpowers. We need clear thinking brains like that of Macherzy?ski to help us identify the enemy. (18/01/2018)