Three new CDRs from the excellent small label Kirigirisu Recordings. Arrived 19 December 2022.
Pressure Cooker Relief Valve – new to my brain-pan methinks – may be a solo act from Leeds in the north of England. Made a few records with Territorial Gobbing, an implacable abrasive act whom we also love, though haven’t heard nearly enough gobs from their gob. Page strewn with releases since about 2018, including one named Offer Your Self-Recorded CDRs to God, which indicates a true and correct attitude. Has some ethos about being post-computer, maybe a Luddite who refuses digital tech where possible – maybe he was never computer to begin with and went straight from analogue to his present position. Hence today’s record Two Pieces For Unprepared Guitar (kgr035). What a relief (and we use the word advisedly) after so many avant-would-be-goods boasting about their “preparations” on their chosen device. Even so these two tracks are presented as “electro-acoustic experimentation” of some ilk. The two pieces amount to about 10-12 mins of non-musical racket of joyful almost nihilist strain, although some strings and even notes can be detected in the second burst. We learn that he “hits” his guitars, perhaps to underscore how different he is from a conventional guitarist, fingering chord shapes. Hitting may sound violent, but nowadays a woman’s gotta haul off and hit a man. Also that this music is not much to do with the guitar as an instrument. Took him months of “research” to get to this point, and we’re not talking about YouTube instructional videos, Clyde. In between the unprepared-git episodes, we haff 10 mins of field recordings made in York on at least two or more occasions. Urban life made to seem odd, beautiful, threatening, absurd. Encouraging that he selects banal and everyday sounds for presentation (e.g. the cafeteria, a man whistling), rather than more conventional phonographic “natural” subjects such as canyon or cricket swarms. Also contains church bells and some powerful industrial noises. Consider yourselves cooked, or relieved. A good one. 30 copies made.
From Liminal Haze we have Volume 6 (kgr036) – 50 copies made and already sold out. Duo of Craig Johnson and Ross Scott-Buccleuch, said Ross once heard here as Diurnal Burdens on a split tape with Knowing on Bivalve. Also he runs the Steep Gloss cassette label. Craig Stewart Johnson of Gateshead also has tape label (Invisible City Records) and exhibits fascination with decay, texture, grain – found in the everyday world – local UK and darker version of Jim Haynes, could we suggest, without the rust or the mist. He also calls himself Rovellasca when the occasion demands it. LP length set of three recordings here under press of ambiguous monochrome images, and inexplicable sound art for the ears. Not just inexplicable but unexplained. With Liminal Haze, one could see material process at work and view this record as a series of exercises in tape degradation, but I prefer my fantasy version of events. My fantasy version involves travelling back in time, suffering rare sleep disorders, deliberately injecting self with rare and incurable diseases just to see what the effects are on nervous system. Also encountering lost giants from mythology and history, be they Nordic or Anglo-Saxon, and engaging in slow conversations with said giants to learn the ancient secrets. I like the way the tracks have no titles as such apart from the Roman numerals, strongly suggesting Liminal Haze see their work as steps in an ongoing scientific experiment, each action documented correctly. Title Volume 6 shows us how far they’ve come already, in quite a short space of time; even without the benefit of Horizon EU programme funding. UK research councils should take note of this duo and apply their revelations to the practical uses we will all need in the coming years, in this bleak post-Brexit environment. I seem to be saying I would trust Liminal Haze with a programme of transformative works that included environmentally-friendly power generation, social reform, and vegetable farming, all of which may sound far-fetched, but wait until you hear this record.
Third of three items sent is vinyl (kgr037) by km:. Seven tracks made by Katayama Mitsuru of Osaka in Japan. Perhaps the most texturally “rich” of the three records in this batch, which isn’t to say it’s any less minimal. These seven tunes are quite gorgeous – using simple methods, everyday objects as well as conventional instruments to arrive at moments of rare beauty. Km: has been evolving his approach since 2011, and in all this time has not seen fit to flood the world with product, preferring the abstemious path, plus occasional collaborations and appearance on compilations. Perhaps this is why his music seems so distilled and crystalline. On page, he describes how each piece is assembled and is perfectly transparent about his use of inputs, recorders, cassettes, found recordings, overlays, and such like – yet despite matter-of-fact description, we reach aesthetic sublime zones within seconds of hearing. I like the way some of them are aspiring to be, or pretending to be, cinema soundtracks – and nowadays everyone says they’re trying to do that, but what’s unusual here is Mitsuru’s concept of what cinema is, and what a soundtrack is. You and I may think these terms are commonly understood, but he thinks otherwise. For one thing he’s not malarkeying around with story-telling or dramatic incident, and instead seems to be determined to construct a dream-like illogical structure, one that connects instantly to the human eye, ear, and brain. Additionally, his notes contain hints of compositional ideas, some of them based on numbers or structures, that are incredibly simple, yet they work very well in the hands of this player. In fact they also seem to work best when the rules go slightly wrong, and odd unintended artefacts creep into the music. All of these are part of the creative process and perhaps should not surprise us overmuch, but put them all together in the soul of this unique player and what beguiling music there do be. Besides his music, he also has a hand in curating events such as Hinatamizu Ambience, and even takes the trouble to organise workshops in how to brew coffee, a fact which endears me to him even more. In fact he even calls himself “coffee” at these seminars. After initial print run sold out, this one went to a second pressing, of which 30 copies were made. Recommended.