Got a couple of cassette tapes from the More Mars (or moremars) label in Greece who previously sent us some fine curios in 2020 and 2021. One of them is Non Living Nature: Compositions for Dictaphone (C28), credited to Marios Moras who just happens to be a co-founder of the label. He’s also a member of a local music association, Τhe Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association (HELMCA), comprising “composers and sound artists who engage in the creative use of music technology”.
For this release, Moras recounts how he discovered a “found message” on an old dictaphone machine that he purchased online; he assumed it was from a previous owner, an old man, and found poetic resonance in a certain phrase that he encountered. I very much like the idea that we can find poetry and art hidden in unlikely places, and I also support creators who are convinced they are hearing a message intended for their ears. In following this inspiration, Marios Moras has used a variety of methods and analogue equipment to arrive at these treated, old-school sounds, which make a virtue of cassette glitches such as dropouts and tape wobble. His intention is ambitious; he wants to scale up this message to say something about the fate of humanity, and whether we can resist the “rise of the machine” as he puts it.
When most pundits comment on such themes, we end up with glib diatribes about the internet and AI, but Moras is making an honest and heartfelt statement. He has tried to honour the intentions of the old man who originally spoke into the dictaphone, and attempted to form a bond across generations. A strong piece of work, rooted in the real world and not overly abstracted. I particularly like the whispering voices on the long track ‘Between Existence and Data’.
Random Architecture (C29) is credited to Matt Atkins and Stuart Chalmers, both UK creators I believe; Atkins runs the label Minimal Resource Manipulation in London, while Chalmers has beguiled us with mysterious sounds from his Yorkshire home. This is their first joint venture. It’s a combination of recordings of performed music (on percussion and shruti box) mixed up with field recordings, and then edited in interesting combinations, using random methods, to form surprising overlaps and dream-like utterances. I liked the track ‘Doric Order’ best of all – it gives the listener an overload of strange colours and shapes, and suggests an eerie vision on the verge of coming into focus. ‘Ball Flower’ comes a close second with its many noisy layers invoking a slightly violent time-travel experience, where we’re not sure where we’re going or even if we’ll arrive in one piece.
From 1st July 2024.