 number 1011
---------------------
week 51 ---------------------
Vital Weekly, the webcast: we offering a weekly webcast,
freely to download. This can be regarded as the audio-supplement to
Vital Weekly. Presented as a radioprogramm with excerpts of just some
of the CDs (no vinyl or MP3) reviewed. It will remain on the site for a
limited period (most likely 2-4 weeks). Download the file to
your MP3 player and enjoy! Listen to the podcast on Mixcloud! before submitting material please read this carefully: http://www.vitalweekly.net/fga.html Submitting material means you read this and approve of this.
KALLABRIS - SCHÖN GEHT ANDERS (CD by Auf Abwegen) * MARGRIET KICKS-ASS - THE EQUATOR UPSIDE DOWN (CD, private) * MARGRIET KICKS-ASS - DELAY OF THE BIG BANG (CDR, private) * SLEAZE ART - INFRA-BLAST (CD by Sleaze Art) * HOWARD STELZER - HOW TO (CD by Phage Tapes) * MICHEL BANABILA - TAPU SAMPLER 2016 (2CD by Tapu Records) * MARC BARON - CARNETS (LP by Glistening Examples) BEN GWILLIAM - VESTIBÜL (CDR by Glistening Examples) * RICHARD FRANCIS - COMBINATIONS 2 (CDR by Glistening Examples) * BHAAVITAAH BHUUTASTHAH - REMEMBERING IN THE COSMIC MANIFESTATION (LP by Le Souffleur) SAJJRA - THE SUN REMAINS THE SAME (LP by Aloardi) JOE EVANS - ELEMENTAL STATES (CDR by Spectropol Records) * TYLER DAMON - SOFTENED SKULL (CDR by Yoke) * TYLER DAMON & DARIN GRAY - ONINBO (CDR by Yoke) * TYLER DAMON & DARIN GRAY - FORFOUR (CDR by Yoke) * ENZO MINARELLI - VOICE STUDIES 22 (cassette by My Dance The Skull) ADAM BOHMAN - VOICE STUDIES 21 (cassette by My Dance The Skull) ACCHIAPPASHPIRT - VOICE STUDIES 23 (cassette by My Dance The Skull) ARVO ZYLO - SEQUENCER WORKS VOLUME TWO (cassette by Rainbow Bridge Recordings, Forever Escpaing Boredom, C.I.P. and No Part Of It) KALLABRIS - SCHÖN GEHT ANDERS (CD by Auf Abwegen) Late 80s/early 90s I was a big fan of German's Cranioclast. I really enjoyed their electronic music, which was both ambient and industrial, but seemed to avoid many clichés. But part of their appeal was also the mystery of it all; no band members known by their real name, beautiful covers showing a love for design and photography. It was, very German, a true Gesamtkunstwerk. In their slipstream there was also a band named Kallabris, or maybe one-man project, but as well covered with a lot of mystery. It seemed to be a band with an emphasis towards acoustic instruments, even when they are treated with electronic means. Over the past thirty years they have never released a lot of work, but on the plus side: Kallabris plays also live and is perhaps less of an enigma (these days at least). They are always in for something odd, such as the twenty-nine pieces on 'Schön Geht Anders', which shortest piece is merely seven seconds and the longest close to six minutes. The press release is lovingly obscure: "Reductionist on their acoustic surface, constructivist in their compositional core, the tracks themselves and in their sequence point to a sociological base: a sociology of sound or a sound sociology driven by the rough necessities of political acoustics", but it's an album of 'musical positivism', which I totally agree with. The sampler works overtime here, taking all sorts of bits and pieces together, and Kallabris crafts together some might primitive pieces of rhythmic music. A touch of melody is never far away. That is to say this is not some happy-clappy music; this is some true Kallabris music; still a bit spooky and dark from time to time, such as in 'Flöz Mausegatt' (I have no idea what some of these titles mean, but maybe my knowledge of the German language is too limited). Likewise we are kept in the dark about the nature of the way this was made. The roots might very well somewhere in the use of acoustic sound sources (not necessarily instruments, also objects), but these are sampled and played around with lots of sound effects. In some cases, the every short pieces (those between ten and twenty seconds) perhaps even just a bit of effects and not much else, but in the longer pieces it balances out with melody, rhythm, compositions and atmospheres. Another example of pure mystifying beauty! (FdW) Address: http://www.aufabwegen.com MARGRIET KICKS-ASS - THE EQUATOR UPSIDE DOWN (CD, private) MARGRIET KICKS-ASS - DELAY OF THE BIG BANG (CDR, private) For whatever reason I have Margriet Kicks-Ass lumped in with visual artists who deal with 'machine art', maybe the likes of Survival Research Laboratories or the Staalplaat SoundSystem. Take a look at her website and you what I mean. She creates installations in which musical notions such as composition is perhaps less relevant. But a few weeks ago I saw one of her concerts, in a concert space, with a machine of her own making, which involved a bunch of synthesizers, both fancy shiny new ones, but also something that resembled circuit bending. She called this instrument the 'soundcase', as everything was inside a box. I was quite surprised by her more musique concrete approach to sound, with sounds bouncing around. It worked really well, save for the tacky synth sounds. So with that in mind I listened to these two released. 'The Equator Upside Down' is part of a soundsculpture, which was called "Druppel Op een Gloeiende Plaat" - hard to translate this Dutch expression, which literally means 'Drops on a hot plate', so it involves water drops falling on boiling hot metal plates, which give the idea of small explosions. These drops sound longer, and held up in some sort of granulating process, come in a different speeds, reversed and all those tricks you find in the musique concrete manual. Not entirely unlike Asmus Tietchens and his 'Hydrophonie' works, but with Margriet Kicks-Ass the whole fluid character of the music is more present; not a small river, but at times a mighty stream (steam might be a better word); like said, this owes a lot to the world of musique concrete, but Kicks-Ass cleverly side-steps anything that makes this tedious or pretentious. She keeps everything highly vibrant and with certain refined naivety. That's how we like these things best! 'Delay Of The Big Bang' is slightly older and this is the release, which Margriet Kicks-Ass did with the 'soundcase', consisting of two live recordings she did earlier this year in France. Here we find fifty-six minutes of some heavy noise. It doesn't resemble the 'soundcase' I experienced three weeks ago, which was quite diverse and ranged from ambient to noise, while the two pieces on this release show very much an interest in working with pure noise. The circuits are bend beyond believe, and fed through a closed system of feedback. It is all a bit on the heavy side and lacks the recent refinement she did with the soundcase. I guess if noise is your prime moving music scene in life than you'll find this of great pleasure, but I must admit that maybe I felt a bit spoilt after the concert, but then this wasn't the concert souvenir I expected. Address: http://margrietkicks-ass.bandcamp.com/releases SLEAZE ART - INFRA-BLAST (CD by Sleaze Art) Hold on. Didn't I already review something called 'Infra' by Sleaze Art, the quartet of bass-players under the guidance of Kasper T. Toeplitz, along with Eryck Abecassis, Frederick Galiay and Jb Hanak? Yes, I did, in Vital Weekly 995. This is however another version, called 'Infra-blast'. Back then I wrote: "at seventy minutes this is also quite a long work and not one that one easily digests. Heavy bass drones, loud bass noise, sounding almost like the sound of plane engine from time to time, the work takes quite some time to develop. Perhaps a bit too much time I would think". This new work is along similar lines; very much in the low end of the sound spectrum (what else would you expect from four bass players?), but it is only twenty-nine minutes long. That is, compared to the first recorded version of 'Infra' quite a blast. Much of this piece, about two thirds this is quite low rumbling, but slowly works its way in noise land, with all sorts of bass treatments, creating a varied myriad of noise elements. It then cuts out for about eight minutes and becomes much softer, but stays dramatic. There are a few thumps on the bass and crackles (maybe electronic residue when the basses are shut down). In the last five minutes everything works up into a might crescendo, of the well-known Merzbowian proportions. Yes, this is something I prefer over a seventy-minute version indeed. Short and very much to the point. (FdW) Address: http://www.sleazeart.com/sleazeart HOWARD STELZER - HOW TO (CD by Phage Tapes) By now you should know that Howard Stelzer is a man who loves cassettes. Not necessarily those used for the dissemination of his music, as I believe he prefers CDs; but in the process of acquiring sounds, making field recordings, and for playing back these sounds in unusual places, taping them again and whatever other possibilities the medium has to offer. These days there seems, thank god, more interest in his work, with a previous CD by Dokuro and a forthcoming one by Monotype Records. On this new album he kicks off with 'Probably Not', in which we find ourselves inside a turbine hall and there is a full-on overload on the cassettes of noise. Ah noise. Is Howard Stelzer a noise artist? Yes, he surely is. But he's not the kind of noise musician whose primary interest it is to let the noise rattle on and on. Stelzer uses lot of loud sounds, noisy textures but it is always about the composition that he wants to create, and not about having some sound rattle about. Its never easy to say what he recorded (not that it really matters either), walking about in large empty spaces, dogs barking in a park or indeed motors in turbine halls. Stelzer knows how to play around with these sounds and create something that is challenging to hear, full of dynamics, with great care taking of the very high end and the very low end of the sounds, which is also something others never seem to do right. I am sure that much of this music is completed using a computer, allowing Stelzer to make all sorts of considerations for his compositions but leaving the quality of the cassettes as they are: raw. 'How To' is another damn fine work of refined brutal beauty. (FdW) Address: http://phagetapes.blogspot.com MICHEL BANABILA - TAPU SAMPLER 2016 (2CD by Tapu Records) It is a bit unclear I got this because Michel Banabila wanted me to write a review of this, or just to hear it. In these economic hard times it becomes increasingly difficult to run a proper label, one that actually gets stuff pressed on black plates or shiny discs (and yes, I don't think vinyl is the hot seller either, but I might be the ever pessimist). This means that Banabila has to put an end to his Tapu Records label and will only exist in the digital domain (see also the announcement at the end of this week's issue for a great, new and 'pay as you want' download). As a farewell there is this double CD, a kind of best of from Tapu Records, showcasing Banabila's many musical interests. Ever since he released his first LP, 'Marilli', in 1983, he is a on a constant exploration of musical textures: ambient, ethnic, electronic, noise. To call him a 'fourth world' musician, as I did on more than a few occasions is not correct. I have reviewed some of his work, but by far not all. So maybe I am the intended target audience of this 'Tapu Sampler', a double CD compilation of works from 2005 to 2015, which were already released by Tapu Records, Michel's own label, named after his cat. I reviewed some of these, such as his works with Machinefabriek and Oene van Geel. Everything that Banabila does is part of this; there is wild drumming, beautiful serene and intimate textures, modular synthesizers, the trumpet of Eric Vloeimans, film soundtrack like music and all of that; it is all part of this 140-minute collection. All right, one could argue that a double CD with all new music would also have been a fitting end but for all those people, who are to discover Banabila's music later, this is a treasure trove of Banabila's musical development in the last ten years. (FdW) Address: http://banabila.bandcamp.com/ MARC BARON - CARNETS (LP by Glistening Examples) BEN GWILLIAM - VESTIBÜL (CDR by Glistening Examples) RICHARD FRANCIS - COMBINATIONS 2 (CDR by Glistening Examples) Three new releases by Jason Lescalleet's Glistening Labs label, and the first one is by Marc Baron. I reviewed music of his before, 'Une Fois, Chaque Fois' in Vital Weekly 692, and a release by his duo Narthex (with Loic Blairon, Vital Weekly 684). Seeing that his releases as by labels such as Potlatch and Cathnor, and that he played saxophone on these, that Baron is from the world of improvised music. However if one doesn't know this, and one plays his 'Carnets' record, one could get an entirely different impression. Both sides may have one piece, but also it might be more than one; the cover is not clear about that (and looking at the transparent vinyl it is not easy). The music is, me thinks (again: nothing on the cover about that), all about using old, analogue recording techniques, a pair of scissors cutting up tapes and treating acoustic sound sources with these techniques: musique concrete to be precise. On the first side this may, from time to time, the slowed down rustling of paper, loudly amplified but never noisy, whereas on the other side the music has a more electronic feel. These might be ancient sound generators; oscillators and what have you, turned (and tuned!) into music. Both of these pieces (or maybe: all of these pieces; by the time I played the record for the fourth time I was convinced there are various pieces per side) have quite a crude character, which I enjoyed very much. It's never brutal for the sake of being brutal, but just to present something that is great to hear. This is one totally captivating record. It combines all those things that I think is great: electro-acoustic sound treatments, musique concrete, noise, composition and throughout enjoyable experiments. This has nothing to do with whatever else I may have heard from him before. Record of the week, should I have such a thing. On CDR we find a name we don't see a lot in these pages (anymore?): Ben Gwilliam. Maybe because he is not so much into releasing material, or, and that's more likely, because much of his work deals with installations, film and video. In his discography we find an excellent collaborative work with Jason Zeh, as well as works with Helmut Lemke and Lee Patterson. Gwilliam, very much like, Zeh, is someone who likes to work with old and analogue techniques, mostly from the work of tape; either cassette or reel-to-reel, whatever is available. Early 2011 he worked right around the corner of Vital Weekly, but across the border, at the studios of NurNichtNur in Kleve on what has now become 'Vestibül', which is the German word for 'lobby'. This piece was originally intended as a series of short works, and Gwilliam uses a lot of old tape machines; it was mixed in parts, but in the end this is just one long piece, of forty- five minutes. If you listen closely you see that this is indeed various pieces. Gwilliam uses loops of sound and throughout there is a strange, mechanical feel to the music; like if we are listening to not just some loops of sound, but also to the motors of the machines playing these tape loops. Gwilliam's music is very minimal when it comes to development, mainly finding changes with the equalization of the sounds used. Around the thirty-minute break a piece with the sound of old vinyl skipping is started, which I must admit didn't work that well for me. That was however the only weak link in this forty-five minute piece of work. For the rest the somewhat dark textures of motorized sound, amplified hum and crackle work really well. Gwilliam created some intense sound textures. Just like Gwilliam, Richard Francis was also once part of the residency projects Brombron, in which people work together. In those days Francis was much more into the world of laptops and digital sound processing, but when I met him again in 2012 he was already (early I guess) into using a small modular synthesizer set-up. He was traveling from place to place and recording with his mobile set-up, perhaps adding instruments and sounds as he found them; one of these places is Worm, in Rotterdam, these days the guest of the CEM studios, with a beautiful ancient synth set-up. So all of that in combination with each other. Richard Francis might not be someone whose name is easily recognized these days, but before working under his own name he worked as Eso Steel and ran the CMR and 20city labels. These eight pieces here have little to do with the old Eso Steel sound, but very delicate modular poems. All of these relatively short, which is a pity. The album clocks in at twenty-seven minutes, which prompted me to play the whole album again, straight away. Francis' pieces are lovingly minimal. He sets a few sounds in motion and just let's these intertwine with each other. Sometimes it cuts out quite abruptly, but that adds to the surprise of this all. When you play this softly there is an excellent ambient to feel it, and if you decide to turn up the volume a bit more, things start to pleasantly buzz and ring, becoming perhaps all a bit vaguely more industrial. This is an excellent release with only one shortcoming: it's way too short. I really wouldn't have minded to have fifty minutes of this! It is interesting to see the similarities between all three of these releases, sharing a similar aesthetic to the use of hiss, white noise and crackling sound, and both of these composers doing so with their own means. (FdW) Address: http://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com/ BHAAVITAAH BHUUTASTHAH - REMEMBERING IN THE COSMIC MANIFESTATION (LP by Le Souffleur) It has been quiet around Raymond Dijkstra, although most likely he was active but much of what he does moves outside of our scope, being highly limited releases on vinyl, between two and five copies (this seems an usual intro these days when I write about him; I used something similar in Vital Weekly 972 when I reviewed his previous record). Dijkstra has released a lot of LPs in the past years, solo as well as with Astra, a duo with Timo van Luijk and with La Poupee Vivante with Timo van Luijk, together with Arlette Aubin and Frederique Bruyas or with the latter as Nivriti Marga. Now it's time for yet another new alter ego, Bhaavitaah Bhuutasthah - and I have no idea how to pronounce that. Dijkstra, who calls himself Le Ray here (so really two alter-egos really), plays Moog IIIp, mellotron and 'percüs' and with one side called 'Remembering In The Cosmic Manifestation' and the other 'Kosmische Vernichtung', one could, actually quite rightly, think, mister Dijkstra has gone down the hippie trail. While I haven't cracked the complete cosmic egg, I think especially the music of Popol Vuh is of particular inspiration here. I could wait with writing about this album, until our in-house expert on Popol Vuh (our very own Dolf Mulder), drops by and ask for his expert opinion, but over the years I heard a bit myself, and the percussive sounds of Bhaavitaah Bhuutasthah (mainly bongos or congas) are coupled with some very interesting synthesizer music come quite close in terms of inspiration. In the second part of 'Kosmische Vernichtung' there is no percussion, but clusters of synthesized sounds stabbed together. In the other three pieces (each title has two parts), Dijkstra has a more cosmic approach with his part abstract synthesizer parts and part melodic bits, along with the rolling percussion. In the first part of 'Kosmische Vernichtung', this is all quite orchestral, while 'Remembering In The Cosmic Manifestation' is a somewhat more open piece of music with Dijkstra spacing notes on his synthesizer, set against a drone on another synth and rolling around percussion. All of this is actually quite rough in terms of recording and production. No easy bouncing arpeggios in this cosmos, but rusty space ships on a dark psychedelic trip. More like Popol Vuh indeed in the early years than Tangerine Dream, if you get my drift. I enjoyed this shift in musical direction a lot. I have no idea if Dijkstra is planning to keep this going for a while; maybe a film maker should jump in and use this as a soundtrack and maybe we see Dijkstra's career take off in a similar was mister Fricke's? That would be awesome. (FdW) Address: http://www.le-souffleur.nl/ SAJJRA - THE SUN REMAINS THE SAME (LP by Aloardi) Maybe there is a Led Zeppelin connection in here that somehow eludes me; I am not a Zep fan at all. Behind Sajjar hails Chrs Galarreta, who is from Peru, but these days lives in The Hague in The Netherlands. He occasionally works with Janneke van der Putten. Depending on whom he works with and as which guise he offers quite a different set of musical interests. Back in Vital Weekly 955 I reviewed his self-titled release as Sajjra, which might be what we could call his 'pop' project. He plays here guitar, effects, voice, sampler and sequences. There are three songs on the first side, while the other side has one long piece. There is quite some difference in these pieces. The three on the first side range from orchestral loops in the second half 'Inocento Tortura' at the end and demented noise pop in 'Aurora' of the first half of the 'Inocento Tortura'. In 'Metamorfosis', the opening piece we are introduced properly, via some fast metal-like rhythm. It's quite all right this music, but that second half of 'Inocento Tortura' I really enjoyed; on the other side we have the very minimalist 'The Sound Remains The Same' (small difference of course), which is alike those orchestral loops, but now entirely played on a guitar, which sustains quite endlessly along with some loops pushed towards the back. This is some form, perhaps, of ambient/ drone metal, heavily influenced by late 19th century classical music slowed down to 16rpm. This side has some excellent slow building tension span over the course of these twenty or so minutes. It crawls under your skin, especially if you turn up the volume quite a bit. Metal might not be part of my daily digest but when it comes like this I am all ears. (FdW) Address: http://sajjra.net JOE EVANS - ELEMENTAL STATES (CDR by Spectropol Records) You may know Joe Evans from his previous releases (see Vital Weekly 750, 837 and 940) or his own label Runningonair. He is what we consider to be a computer musician, thinking about microtonalism, intervals based on prime numbers and such things, which, to be honest, is always a little over my head. Here he combines these interests with the four classical elements (water, fire, earth, air) with the four states of matter (solid, liquid, gas and plasma), but also combines ether with virtual, so five pieces in total, all around ten and half minute. In each of these pieces Evans explores these intervals and prime numbers, and in four of these, the conventional elements and states of matter, this is all done with percussive sounds. The sound, very vaguely sounding like gamelan instruments or wind chimes and in both cases one could easily think they are recorded somewhere outside. There is the far away sound of what seems to be fire crackling or cars passing at quite some distance from the microphone. The difference in these four pieces lie within the pitches used; for instance in 'Earth 2 Gold' it is all quite low, whereas in 'Water 5 Liquid' it has this somewhat watery effect. Maybe it's the nature of the field recordings added to these percussive sounds, but they seem to give away some of the piece. The mystery is explained a bit too much I think. In 'Ether 11 Virtual' it is not about percussive sounds (or perhaps it is, but then we no longer recognize it), but a heavily processed kind of music, in which no original sound is to be traced back to its roots. It's dark, drone like and ambient - but that can also be said about the four other pieces. The music is produced very well, with a lot of heavy low side, which makes this even at a low volume quite a release that is very much 'present'. Not really a surprising release in terms of something new, but of a consistent high quality. (FdW) Address: http://spectropol.com TYLER DAMON - SOFTENED SKULL (CDR by Yoke) TYLER DAMON & DARIN GRAY - ONINBO (CDR by Yoke) TYLER DAMON & DARIN GRAY - FORFOUR (CDR by Yoke) It's safe to say that Yoke is the label run by Tyler Damon, as he is present on all three of these recordings. Damon is a drummer/percussionist lives in Bloomington, Indiana and has two duo's, one with Tashi Dorji and with Darin Gray (more on that one later) and has played with bands as Open Sex and Lech, but also made his marks within the world of improvisation, with the Mars Williams Quartet, Ken Vandermark and others. Auris Apothecary and Magnetic South, at which latter headquarters this was recorded at April 6th, 2014, previously released the first disc as a cassette. Quite a short one, clocking in at eighteen minutes, but it is a fine showcase of what Tyler Damon does when playing the drums and percussion. Using bows and objects to scrape cymbals and drum heads, Damon also uses more conventional sticks to play the drums. He likes to play these in a very repetitive way, or rather: minimally. In 'To The Evening Star' he plays the skins with sticks and the variation is in the gradual shift over the skins of his various instruments. This is a short but powerful introduction, creating enough buzz to get to the next one. The other two are discs of works he recorded with Darin Gray, who plays electric bass and percussion on both of these recordings. You might know him from bands like Dazzling Killmen and Brise-Glace, Yona-Kit, You Fantastic!, Sad Lewis, Grand Ulena, and On Fillmore or improvisation music with Jim O'Rourke, KK Null, Cheer-Accident, Loren Mazzacane Connors and others. There are not a lot of differences between both discs. 'Oninbo' is shorter, clocking in at less than thirty minutes and has six pieces, while 'Forfour' is just one piece, just over thirty-eight minutes. The latter is a slow builder, as within the first ten minutes there is not a lot happening. Beyond that there are a few concentrated blocks of events, which occasionally bang on for quite some time. Maybe the emphasis here lies more on the percussion side, and less on the bass? Especially when the volume goes up, as does the intensity of it all, it becomes more percussion heavy, whereas if the volume goes down, Gray picks up a bow and plays the strings of his bass with that. On 'Oninbo' the balance between percussion/drums and bass is more in balance it seems, with Gray playing more free jazz material on his bass from time to time. Maybe it's because these pieces are shorter that it all sounds lesser of a free improvisation blast as the 'Fourfour' occasionally does. Maybe there is more concentration into the shorter span of a piece? They sure know how to rock in these pieces, whereas the meander freely over a wide rocky plain in 'Forfour'. I am not sure if I like one over the other. They both sounds actually pretty much like exciting improvised music. Shorter or longer: it really doesn't seem to make a difference. (FdW) Address: http://www.tylerdamon.com/yoke/ ENZO MINARELLI - VOICE STUDIES 22 (cassette by My Dance The Skull) ADAM BOHMAN - VOICE STUDIES 21 (cassette by My Dance The Skull) ACCHIAPPASHPIRT - VOICE STUDIES 23 (cassette by My Dance The Skull) While I am hardly the expert on the subject of sound poetry, I do recognize the name Enzo Minarelli from my formative years in the world of cassettes. Somehow his work seemed to exist in a sort of parallel universe, that of sound art, voice poetry and mail art, which was for the noise head that I was at that time, perhaps not always accessible. Did I hear his music? Probably I did, when it crossed roads with my world, most likely via such labels as Trax. Minarelli, already active since the early 70s, didn't release many records, but nevertheless an earlier release was reviewed in these pages: 'Fame' was reviewed in Vital Weekly 850. That was a recent work, whereas on 'Voice Studies 22' he has eleven pieces from his earliest work, 1974 to 1984. It starts out with a piece from 1979, 'Communicazione Telefonica', in which Minarelli keeps repeating his name and a few other things, down a telephone line, and which seem to have been recorded at the other end with a cheap microphone against the receiver. It has a very crude sound, but it says a few things about Minarelli's work. The repeating of phrases and words; sometimes just sounds or vocalizations. The recording quality is not always great. When he works at the Italian radio studios the sound is better, and he uses multi track equipment as well as some extra sounds from radio and vinyl. I prefer here the shorter pieces on the second side, as they had a bit more variation to it. Here Minarelli plays around with reel-to-reel recorders, slowing down his voice as well as allowing other sounds next to his voice, but which may 'body generated' (rubbing the microphone up and down his body for instance), along with his usual voice work, minimal as it is. The longer pieces on the first side are in that respect perhaps a bit too long. There is however a fascinating quality within this. Mysteriously lo-fi. Perfect cassette music. Adam Bohman, once a member of Morphogenesis and still part of the Bohman Brothers, is, besides a gifted improviser, also someone who is always recording cassettes with his spoken word. Maybe it has something to with his slight speech impediment (stutter), which makes this easily recognizable. Here has two spoken word pieces, in which on one side he recites a bit from 'Junky' (the Burroughs book), a text from Hornby model railways and a text on Dvorak's 'Dumky Trio' - the liner notes to the music, but he also bits of the music. On the other side more from 'Junky', as well as novels by John LeCarre, Clifford D. Simak, Frederick Pohl and an Alpine garden society magazine. This side also has three homemade prepared stringed instruments. The stutter is not very present; maybe it is a way of controlling it: just record it! This is not something you should hear while listening closely to it; the text is not here to be understood, I think, but rather serves as textures, intertwining with each other. And sometimes there is context, a reference or a cut-up. You hear an endless stream of words, sometimes solo and sometimes layered together, three or four voices at the same time. It is all perhaps on the long side, in terms of duration. Ten minutes of each piece would have made the idea perfectly clear. Voices stretched out to the world of improvised music are what we get on the release by Acchiapoashpirt, a duo of Jonida Prifti (vocals, vocoders, piano) and SDT (kaosspads, some vocals, human beatbox). I never heard of this duo. Their music seems to be generated most freely. A pair of microphones are stuck up, and there are two people making sounds into those microphone, and sometimes there is a bang on the piano, or some notes being played. Also sometimes these voice are fed through a vocoder or kaoss pad - but it doesn't get the same captivating sound as Minarelli has with his lo-fi methods or Bohman with his simple, direct way of cutting up sound. This all sounded like outsider music, or perhaps poesie- brut (you don't have to call it …. if the term shocks you), but it is somehow all a bit lost on me. Most of the times it sounded like starts of songs, ideas for songs, try-out of equipment and such like, and sometimes there was indeed (perhaps!) a sort of poetic content to be detected around this. I can hear what they want, but I guess this is not so much my cup of tea. File under: electronic free-freak folk? (FdW) Address: http://www.mydancetheskull.com/ ARVO ZYLO - SEQUENCER WORKS VOLUME TWO (cassette by Rainbow Bridge Recordings, Forever Escpaing Boredom, C.I.P. and No Part Of It) More music by Arvo Zylo, following earlier releases (Vital Weekly 819 and 965), and this time is a venture of four labels working together. The recordings were already made between 2000 and 2003, using a Yamaha RM1X sequencer in a period of extreme insomnia, while living in a closet or crawl space. Much of the material was recorded to a four-track machine, or simply direct to tape, and each of the pieces is called 'Fuck', 01, 02 etc. His earlier releases, the ones that made it to these pages, showed an interest in the world loud noise, but that is not something we have on this tape. Whatever is sampled or sequenced here is from the world of orchestras; not really my kind of world and half the time I have no idea if I am hearing a bunch of pre-set samples, or something that Arvo Zyla actually plays. It's a full-on sound, with lots of instrumental parts, but nothing much that makes sense in terms of composition. It seems as if Arvo Zyla wanted to record a bunch of keyboard sounds together with bombastic percussive sounds, and at that he succeeded pretty well. I have no idea what to make of this really. Is it good? Or is it bad? That is very hard to tell I think. Some of this I thought was quite all right, especially when it is all a bit more coherent, such as… hold on… well, one of those pieces on side B, and some of this is really tedious and boring. It is quite an endurance test to sit this all the way through in one go. It is perhaps either too much outsider for me, or the idea is this is all a test anyway. It left me a bit clueless. I am just giving the address of the label that mailed this to me. (FdW) Address: http://nopartofit.blogspot.com • |