Hannes Seidl of Frankfurt is trying to tell us something about machines with Befreit die Maschinen (GRUENREKORDER Gruen 211). Indeed he proposes a mini-thesis on the subject of machines in society, starting with the premise (not a very original one) that machinery was supposed to make everything easy for us and we could spend our lives concentrating on things that mattered, or lead a life of leisure while robotic giants did all the heavy lifting for us. This promise, at one time, included music too – “every man their own jukebox” was perhaps the slogan that helped sell us the Moog synth, the electric guitar, the Synclavier, or such apps as GarageBand or BandLab. To illustrate the trend of his ideas, Seidl intercuts his understated electronic sounds with recordings of a philosophy lecture by Michael Hirsch, which ruminates on the idea of a Labour Society in 2016. The resulting radio work – the title means “Liberate the Machines”, which seems to take us off on yet another avenue of investigation – was commissioned by hr2-kultur, an important radio station in Germany owned by Hessischer Rundfunk, transmitting classical music and spoken word over the airwaves since 1950. Seidl’s combination of crackle, hum, and distorted spoken-word sampled fragments is an oddly compelling listen, executed with an artful light touch, and though its messages are suggested rather than spelled out, that might be part of its appeal. (07/07/2023)
From Poland, we have Parabola who also calls themselves Elektronik and used to be a member of Yutani, a duo who played bass guitar, electronics and drums on Not Much of a Talker in 2022. Parabola has evidently decided they can make their point without any help, thank you, on Pure Holistic Evil (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 294-2), a collection of eight nasty all-electronic punch-fests with titles that hint at unpleasant themes of darkness, murder, destitution, and oppression. As power-electronics goes, Parabola’s take on the genre is surprisingly approachable – melodies, regular beats, and not too much excess from the distortion department. But the ideas are thin, and each cut runs out of steam in less than two minutes. Despite his avowed iron-fist themes, the music lacks real clout; rather than being beaten up by masked thugs, it’s more like witnessing a mild attack of harmless pests in the home. (11/07/2023)
I’ve written all I can about Tunnels of Ah and their brand of suffocating infernal racket, but I will mention that The Smeared Cloth (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 297-2) is available for completists who want to hoover up these unpublished tracks from 2012-2018. Apparently they’re taken from the early pre-Lost Corridors era and from the Thus Avici sessions, thus pre-dating this fellow’s debut on Cold Spring, while the second disc concentrates on the brief time-window between Surgical Fires and Charnel Transmission. About two hours of charred, blackened noise, sufficient to smother your hopes and dreams. (11/07/2023)