From Norway, the duo Brutter present their Outta (SUSANNA SONATA SONATACD078) release – the brothers Christian Wallumrød and Fredrik Wallumrød made it mostly with drum machines and percussion, although synths, electronics, and autoharp do make an appearance in their blanked-out abstractified arena of grey polyforms – as does the lap steel guitar, the last instrument I’d expect to discover as I wander in these futuristic semi-cyborgian realms. Brutter claim to have absorbed influences wafting in from glitch and associated genres, and (like many an avant-Techno buff) profess an interest in dub mixing. Their rhythms here certainly do overlap into a somewhat confusing array and are apt to wrong-foot any passing spider, centipede, or other multi-legged crawler. Yet for all their cross-rhythm push-pull efforts, the actual music ends up lacking in depth, and most of Outta comes across as flat and ploddy, exhibiting little of the sense of a stereo space which our dub heroes like King Tubby and Scientist exploited so well. But it’s this feature which also makes the album suitably depressing and introverted; what starts out as an uncomfortable living room soon becomes a dark prison cell for the mind. Press release advises us that the target audience for this music are “those not afraid of the abyss staring back when staring into the black and bottomless voids of their innermost soul.” Very Frederich Nietzsche! (Sep 2023)
Four contemporary field-recording types from Portugal on Lisboa Soa: Sounds within Sounds (CRÓNICA 207-2023). Lisboa Soa calls itself a Festival, but it seems to be a lot more than that – growing some sort of locus for like-minded fellows to gather and thrive, and propounding the notion of “acoustic ecology”, grounded in ethical ideas about our shared environment. They believe we can achieve a lot just through the simple act of listening. This particular release was a commission, delivering new works from João Castro Pinto, Sara Pinheiro, Mestre André and Ana Guedes. However, it seems none of them roamed the wilderness with their tape machines to collect new sounds, and instead all four pieces have been assembled using existing tapes stored in the Festival’s archives. Mixed results; I get the feeling everyone was a bit too respectful to the sources and didn’t feel inclined to try anything especially bold or daring, although moments of Mestre André’s ‘No Earlids’ serve up a few pebbles and twigs of dramatic noise, and Guedes does at least make the effort to transform the original tapes on her ‘Splicing_archives_’. Very few specific environmental sounds emerge from this processed and layered melange, and one starts to wonder what exactly we are hearing. I find this lack of contextual detail vaguely troubling; the notes supplied by each creator tell us more about their selection methods and their multi-channel spatialisations than they do about the earth’s environment. (Sep 2023)
Self-titled album (DRIP AUDIO DA02420) by Josh Zubot Strings – a small combo led by violinist Josh Zubot from Vancouver. He’s joined by other string players – Jesse Zubot, James Meger, Meredith Bates and Peggy Lee, and they offer us ten instrumentals of considerable variety. Just when I think it’s going down a semi-scored jazz route, it suddenly switches into lively free-form improvisation, then starts to assumes the form of dissonant, difficult, modernist composition on the next piece. Josh takes composer credit for everything, but it’s evident his talented group are given much free rein to interpret and improvise the clusters of black notes that flow from his fine pen. Plenty of dense, high-energy music on offer besides the slower more introspective moments – giving the lead violins a chance to exhibit superhuman fast runs, as well as stylistic flourishes that (for me) verge on the exhausting. It’s music that’s overly complex, without any real need for the complexity, other than being difficult for its own sake, or for the sake of giving the hyper-skilled players a vehicle for their quicksilver moves. When they do manage to slow down, the group are capable of some original sounds, and Josh Zubot’s composerly skills are considerable, even if he is one of these contemporary types who feel they have to prove their point by making wild combinations and mixing it up through cross-genre experiments. One of his works was inspired by farm machinery that does something interesting to grain, reflecting his pastoral upbringing. The group photo shows them wearing casual attire – denims, baseball caps, T-shirts, and projecting a rather utilitarian vibe, like hipster workers taking a break at a micro-brewery. Their jaunty informality is slightly at odds with the serious music. (25/09/2023)