DIY home-made detritus noise and degraded tapes abound on New Urgences (Kirigirisu Recordings kgr048), made by the duo of Matt Atkins and Andy Rowe performing as Strange Devicers – a most apt name descriptive of the practices of these two lo-fi experimenters of long standing. We’ve long enjoyed the loops-and-rumble records of Rowe as Slate Pipe Banjo Draggers, and I’m glad now to finally hear Atkins whose MRM label has passed our way a couple of times now. MRM is Minimal Resource Manipulation, another fitting name, and he’s also appeared on Rusted Tone Recordings, Steep Gloss, Chocolate Monk, and similar micro-labels.
I’m enjoying the overall sounds that emerge from New Urgences – read the label page for a long list of unlikely methods, equipment, objects and tape-mangling actions that have fed into it – but the ideas don’t develop very much. Having entered themselves (and us) into an alien and bizarre eco-audio-environment, the duo aren’t able to do much more than sit down and observe the debris, hoping that the discombobulated parts might fall into a new pattern or Meccano toy. Not enough tension or dynamics. I like it when recorded voices – heavily distorted and disguised, natch – swim to the surface, and this makes me wish for some of the ramshackle song-form structures that Andy Rowe is so gifted at creating.
Carping aside, few records sound as unusual and different as this, and it’s good to see the craft of abusing physical objects in this junkathon recycling and tape repurposing still thrives, at a time when so many fall into the snares and traps of all-digital working. (31/10/2024)