Kiki Bohemia and Sicker Man’s Waiting For Wood (BLANK RECORDS blank035) is art-drone music set to a beat, with added layers of fuzz and distortion. Berlin-based Sicker Man (i.e. Tobias Vethake) has form in producing what he calls delirious art-pop music with Krautrock influences, and what he does with his electric cello does a lot to further the ideas of Tony Conrad and Pauline Oliveros, making them that shade more accessible without trivialising matters. The 6:39 minutes of ‘Unfold’ manage to compress all that American minimalism into a solid vitamin-enriched drone of epic scale. Kiki Bohemia (i.e. Karla Wenzel) has provided her vocal talents for Baby Universal, This Immortal Coil, Trialogos, and many others, and has been appearing on Sicker Man records since 2011. I can’t make out her voice, but it’s somewhere inside the delirious mix. This particular record – released as a 10-inch vinyl and a cassette – emerged from a lockdown project called Cleansing Drones for Locked Down Homes, when they did 56 live-stream concerts during the pandemic years. Odd record, the music gradually becoming more introverted and even sentimental as we progress; it starts out stately and dignified, but then we start to see the vulnerable side of the creators, and raw emotions start to manifest. Odd cover art too, conveying something about compassion and solace during difficult times, in contrast to track titles like ‘Rumpy Riser’ and ‘Hissy Fit’. (24/10/2022)
Perpetual Bridge is the solo act of Nadia Peter, who has spent many years honing her craft as performer and DJ using guitars, pedals, synths, loops, and effects before inventing the Perpetual Bridge idea in 2021. Today’s record Astral Departures (EVEREST RECORDS ER108) arrives after her EP Upon The Deep, which garnered some interest on Bandcamp and led to festival and concert appearances. Not unpleasant, but mostly rather ordinary ambient-electronic music is what she produces, in service of the idea that she (and the listener) can explore the astral world replete with dreamscapes and half-familiar views. Nadia Peter does have a light touch in her performances and programming which is welcome, but musically these tunes are very under-nourished, short on ideas, not really taking us anywhere, with too many over-familiar sounds. (24/10/2022)
Viable Systems 5 (VSM008CD) is latest instalment from Keith Berry in his plan to realise the potential of generative music systems. Loops and cycles of sound overlap. Their generation is governed by rule sets, and the finished work evolves from the way these computer policies overlap, rather than by any of the traditional methods a conventional musical composer might use. In doing this, Berry states he is explicitly continuing the work begun by Brian Eno in 1975 on the now-famous LP Discreet Music. I do enjoy Berry’s work, and this one is very much of apiece with the previous releases in the series – slow, centreless, ambient tones, and the ten tracks have evocative titles which might trigger associations in the mind, such as ‘Pollen Drift’ or ‘Cloud Seeding’ or ‘Terminal Beach’, as ever suggesting specific parts of the environment that the music might accompany. Eno’s rule-based ideas – interestingly, applied to magnetic tape and analogue players at first (although he did develop computer systems for it later) – were all about notions of increased efficiency, showing how one could create a lot of musical output with very minimal input, bypassing all the conventions of labour-intensive classical music with its scores, its trained musicians, its orchestras and its large venues. Eno might have been making some wider points about the wastefulness of 20th century capitalism. Berry doesn’t seem to have quite the same agenda, and while his generative systems may be efficient, it’s interesting that the results are always a bit samey, however attractive. However, I do like to contemplate the idea of “music that has shifted from the traditional centres to the edges”, as he puts it. (01/11/2022)