Zbigniew Karkowski & Julien Ottavi
Double Live Bitche
FRANCE FIBRR RECORDS FIBRR027 CD (2023)
Laptop noise from 2012. Julien Ottavi is the adored French maestro who runs this label and has been active in many forms of musical activity, from the extremes of modern free improvisation with Formanex, to the very purest and brutal harsh noise imaginable, often operating in a collaborative and international context. Politically very committed (I like to think), Ottavi is one who won’t rest until his message is platformed on as many soapboxes as the world will allow, be they virtual or otherwise, so it’s nice to see his compassionate side revealed on this release as he lets his radical-activist mask slip for a second to pay tribute to “our dear friend Zbigniew Karkowski”.
As the world knows, Polish composer Karkowski flew up to the great dynamo in the sky in 2013, and the release of this record in 2023 is intended to mark the 10-year anniversary of their shared performances in Les Ateliers de Bitche in Nantes. Having said “compassionate”, in fact you may not find much of that Christian virtue in evidence on the actual sounds here, which start out mean and snarly before building up to the full-on “annihilation” mode which so typified the work of the Polish half of the act. Well, perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but most civilians run a mile from the intense bombardment of which Zbigniew Karkowski was capable, and even hardened soldiers admire the tenacity of his stern and steady onslaughts. None of this is to suggest that Double Live Bitche is an unapproachable mortar-attack of jet-propelled shark grenades, nor that its volumic dimensions reach anywhere near the ear-splittage levels you might suspect, but it’s the continuous flow of negative energy that’s passing through their ordinateurs that is so formidable. It just doesn’t stop. Never one to quit once he’s climbed aboard the patrol boat of noise, Karkowski always sees the job through to the end, displaying clear-eyed focus on the task.
While we’ve struggled to assimilate some of Ottavi’s more recent noise-o-magon excesses – one example being the insufferable Bruital Automaton – this one contains just the right amount of toxic death to make it both palatable and useful. I mean useful in a hospital ward where all other treatments have failed and the doctors are desperate enough to try anything. From 12 February 2024.