Very happy to hear a recent-ish release from the paws of Carl Michael von Hausswolff, that singular and tough-minded composer and sound artist from Stockholm. Used to be we heard a large number of chapters from his gigantic never-ending saga, but the last time we heard from him in these pages was in 2015, with the unsettling Enough!!! release (with Jason Lescalleet and Joachim Nordwall) and also that odd team-up with Leslie Winer (American poet who can shrivel the world of man into a dried prune with her withering voice).
Carl Michael is here today with Chandra Shukla and they’ve made Travelogue [Bali] (TOUCH TO:122). We’re told it’s the “second in an ongoing series of collected international audio diaries” – a follow-up to the Nepal edition released on this same label in 2020. The two artists met up in Indonesia and, over nine days, travelled to many locations to capture what sounds they could with their “facilitation of something to record audio” – which seems to be their long-winded way of describing a tape recorder, unless of course they use some highly-advanced means of doing it, or they’re so evolved by now that they simply have to twist their ears two turns to the right to click the apparatus into gear. I say this to try and account for the other-worldly, unfamiliar and near-alien experience that this CD conveys…obviously the artists have done extensive post-production, arrangement, and mixing to their field recordings, but even so the uncanny visions conjured here are considerable.
I suppose most of the audio fireworks are let loose on ‘Kecak! (Sanghyang)’, the very strong opening cut where music, singing, chant and other rituals bubble to the surface of the swirling array, and we experience a wild rush of thoroughly non-Western impressions, and sensations of near-terror, accurately conveyed by the 1940 drawing of the “Dagger Dance” inside the card wallet here. But there’s also plenty of bewildering wonderment and oddness on the subsequent quieter cuts, which seem to escort us down an endless meditational river in a slow boat in the manner of a Werner Herzog movie, to a destination of unknown proportions. It’s during these moments I feel I’m getting back to the unique Hausswolff signature sound (and process) I recall from many years ago, where he would transform the sounds of international locations from his extensive world travels to an extreme degree, and in some cases take the extra step of playing back his distilled experiments to an audience in the exact same locations – as if showing the world our own image in a truth-telling mirror, and we might not like what we were seeing. Travelogue [Bali] isn’t quite as confrontational as that strategy suggests, but there’s still the truth-telling, a core of directness and integrity which few can match.
Well, evidently Chandra Shukla can match it. This Californian fellow is sometimes called Xambuca and profiles himself as an experimental avant-garde musician, with side interests in video, performance, and graphic design. He also runs the label Eroto Tox Decodings with Carl Abrahamsson. He may come to us from a background in Indian classical music, but he’s also rubbed shoulders with Genesis P. Orridge, Nurse With Wound, and Die Angel, thus tapping into that rich post-Industrial zone of ambiguity and doubt-filled drone. An old friend of Carl’s, he is ideally suited to the realisation of this project. Very impressive. From 2 May 2023.