Janne Eraker’s Movements for Listening (ESC.REC. 106) is certainly unusual – putting the sound of her tap-dancing alongside various instrumentalists, a long list of collaborators who supply everything from jazz standards to more abstract-mode backdrops. She’s a talented and unique European, very determined, and bound to go places, but the record’s a bit too showy for me; Janne aims for dazzling feats of skill, almost pyrotechnics for the foot, as she moves at hyper-speed and dances on unexpected materials and surfaces, bringing unorthodox objects into the equation. Yet it’s somehow unchallenging, lacking any sense of genuine discovery. The audio backdrops are either too tasteful, or like a debased version of a Fluxus composition with furniture being dragged about on a stage. Cage and Cunningham it ain’t; experimental art for modern audiences who don’t really like experiments. (16/10/2023)
Another curio from smaely p, the low-profile person of mystery who creates hand-knitted, locally-sourced electro-acoustic music and sound art…the CDR (are you taken) aback (CHOCOLATE MONK choc.578) is described by them as “a more recording-based approach”, perhaps to distinguish from their other free-improvisation or collaborative works. There’s a lengthy list of equipment on the back cover, which crosses over into describing the techniques involved (lo fi recording, collaging, mixing) in getting these boundary-free sprawls over the line. The finished results are then appliquéd with nonsense-gibberish titles, which (like the music to some extent) comprise unfinished sentences filled with exotic and made-up words, which promise much yet don’t really take the reader anywhere. I like the informality and spontaneity that’s going down here, but the performances seem to lack tension somewhere; they just start and stop in an unfocussed, uncertain manner. They’re both too long and too short; for one so devoted to splicing and collaging, it’s perhaps odd that smaely p can’t seem to edit themselves to give their work more impact. While this try-anything approach is very healthy and allows them to grasp at any passing ostrich or woodlouse, the actual sound of the record is not especially unusual, and curiously flat. From one who plays “broken membranes” and “scrap metal”, and boasts about doing so, I expect a few more surprises, éclats, and exotic tastes in my bowl.
Double-CD helping of assorted sound art experiments from Christof Migone, the Swiss-born creator who may now be living in Montreal. At one level Wet Water (Let’s Dance) (FUTURA RESISTENZA RESCD006) is a survey of his various achievements over a number of years starting around 1997, some of them realised as video soundtracks, art installations, collaborations, performance pieces, and such like. There may be some patterns to be found on CD 1 – buckets of water, saliva, telephones, sneezing, and a recording of neighbours arguing in Portugal. It’s possible these diverse non-events amount to an 11-track observation on the difficulties of communication, though I fear that may be a terribly banal comment on my part. But the art here is equally banal. The annotations and photographs in the booklet don’t communicate much either, rather tending to obfuscate; Migone himself finds deep significance in these trivial gestures, yet fails to convey any of its excitement or wider meaning to an audience. Shallow, boring, unengaged. (31/10/2023)
From Berlin, the cassette tape Blast Of Sirens (FUU RECORDS FUU008) is credited to Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach with all songs penned by Başak Günak and Stefan Goetsch…someone in amongst this list of names seems to be a real equipment fetishist, as they lovingly list their vintage ARPS, Oberheims, their Hohners and their Prophets, a roster of boxes that apparently includes some near-antique Italian models. Hainbach, who is in fact Stefan Paul Goetsch, has been releasing his material since 2014 and is a committed explorer in this area, and distributes his lectures on YouTube to the edification of those seeking information about the history of electronic music and its creation in an avant-garde context. What results on today’s outing is an enjoyable enough set of instrumentals which start out bouncy and jolly at the front end of the tape, then grow progressively more introspective and worried, resembling ballads of sorrow and doom for the disaffected 21st-century soul. “The record explores a world in uproar,” is the label’s claim, reflecting a melancholic (although not completely despairing) caste of mind. The music might privilege the sounds of the vintage synths over its compositional ideas, but the production is tight and clean. (31/10/2023)