week 33: no Vital Weekly
week 34: we hope to return to out Tuesday schedule
LARRY POLANSKY – FREEHORN (CD by Cold Blue Music) *
DANIEL LENTZ – RIVER OF 1,000 STREAMS (CD by Cold Blue Music) *
STEPHEN WHITTINGTON – WINDMILL (CD by Cold Blue Music) *
SHARIF SEHNAOUI & ADAM GOLEBIEWSKI – MEET THE DRAGON (CD by Uznam) *
TASADAY – L’ANIMALE PROFONDO (CD by Officina Fonografica Italiana) *
T.A.C. – SYMPHONIE INDUSTRIELLE (CD by Officina Fonografica Italiana/Spittle Records) *
CULPHO DOG GYMKHANA – CULPHO DOG GYMKHANA #1 (CD Cordelia Records)
KRAFT – HARVEST OF DESPAIR (CD by Opa Loka Records) *
ECHOES OF YUL – THE HEALING SESSIONS (CD by Zoharum) *
PHURPA – YA TOG RID PA’I GVER (2CD by Zoharum) *
PHURPA – RITUALS OF BÖN II (LP by Zoharum)
GÜNTER SCHLIENZ – BOOK OF DREAMS (CD by Zoharum) *
TIM OLIVE & JIN SANGTAE – NAAR/VOOR (CD by 845 Audio) *
ESM – NESMYSL (CD, private) *
REGLER – BLUES FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION (LP by At War With False Noise)
THE NEW MOVEMENT & KH12 QUARTET – NICHTS FUR NITSCH (LP by Psych KG)
BLUE CHEMISE (7″ by Il Dischi Del Barone)
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION (7″ by Il Dischi Del Barone)
ARV & MILJÖ (cassette by Il Dischi Del Barone)
TOAN – HISTOS LUSIS (CDR by Eilean Records) *
JOSCO & SPHERULEUS – FOLDED DISTANCE (CDR by Eilean Records) *
BRB>VOICECOIL – RECONFIGURE MOMENTS (cassette by Muzamuza) *
BRB>VOICECOIL – CONTAINMENT (cassette by Muzamuza) *
ARTWHORE – PASTY POSTURE (cassette by Muzamuza) *
CHANNELERS – FACES OF LOVE (cassette by Inner Islands)
LARRY POLANSKY – FREEHORN (CD by Cold Blue Music)
DANIEL LENTZ – RIVER OF 1,000 STREAMS (CD by Cold Blue Music)
STEPHEN WHITTINGTON – WINDMILL (CD by Cold Blue Music)
The name Larry Polansky is more familiar with me than I actually know his music, even when I
reviewed his music before, albeit a long time ago (‘Four Voice Canons’ in Vital Weekly 346). What
I do know is that he’s well known for his work in the field of computer music, creating the
computer music software language HMSL and theorizing about computer and music but he
also plays guitar and mandolin. On the three pieces on ‘Freehorn’ (or rather ‘freeHorn’) there is
just computer in the title piece and I believe not in the other two pieces. The title piece spans
two-third of the entire (thirty-two minute) release and it’s a small chamber orchestra of piano,
trumpet, electric guitar, violin, cello, tenor saxophone and horn plus of course the computer
playing a very moody piece. Maybe it is the use of the horn, but in an odd way I reminded of
the music of Architects Office, but then without voices and much better recorded; nevertheless
there was a similar moody atmosphere, an excellent slowness about this, which I enjoyed very
much. Music for an endless slow, warm summer’s day. The other two pieces sees Giacomo Fore
on guitar and Polansky on fretless electric guitar on one piece and electric guitar on the other.
‘ii-v-i’ is a “continuous modulation between different harmonic series” (just like the title piece,
apparently; I hadn’t noted) and is a more hectic piece, but both gentlemen keep things very
civilized. ‘Minmaj’ is a very quiet piece that ends this release and passes without too much
notion, which is a pity. With ‘freeHorn’ being such a fine and long piece I am still quite pleased
with this.
Followed by the music of Daniel Lentz, who is a regular contributor to the catalogue of
Cold Blue Music (see Vital Weekly 964, 663, 519 and 433), as well as performing works by Chas
Smith. Many of works deal with the piano and ‘River Of 1,000 Dreams’ is not different. Just like
Polansky there is also a computer aspect to it, but had not I read that on the information, I would
probably not have noticed it. This is work for “solo piano and up to 11 layers of ‘cascading
echoes’ (which are created in a live performance via a computer running a MAX patch). Each of
the piece’s hundreds of ‘echoes’ is a short moment (generally one to a few bars in length) of the
piano solo that may reappear anywhere from a half-second to 25 minutes after the pianist first
plays it”, so how does that work out? The piece is just under twenty-nine minutes in length the
aspect of cascading sounds is surely something that one recognizes from the music, like waves
rolling on a beach. At times very densely layered and quite dark but always it seems to be played
out and it becomes more open and we hear a lighter, clearer piano, almost solo (or perhaps that
should: really solo) with faster notes and it almost becomes an entirely different piece of music.
The ending is a bit odd I think, but perhaps it is also a bit premature; I wouldn’t have minded this
to last longer than it does now, as it was working beautifully, inspired by the Yellowstone River,
and that’s something one fully understand when one hears this music.
The Zephyr Quartet performs the music Australia’s Stephen Whittington, and it’s the release
of this trio of new releases by Cold Blue Music that I found the most difficult to write about. There
are many Chinese references here to ancient poets, Zen and such like, and the music is, to these
untrained ears (easily admitted), fairly traditional modern classical music. Introspective but not
always ‘quiet’. There are two pieces here, ‘… From A Thatched Hut’, in seven parts, and ‘Windmill’,
about life in Australia and how many survived over the years in what is called ‘an inhospitable
climate’. That piece, with its minimally changing, staccato string work, I liked quite a bit; it
reminded me indeed of a windmill, cracking it’s mill in the wind, like a rusty memory of ancient
days in a dry and wooden land. There is a bit of dissonance in this piece, which is also highly
enjoyable. The seven other pieces, making up for two-third of the release I found more traditional
playing about which I have not a lot to say, really. It is quite nice, but I have no idea how to
comment on this any further. Check it out for yourself is probably my best advice. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.coldbluemusic.com
SHARIF SEHNAOUI & ADAM GOLEBIEWSKI – MEET THE DRAGON (CD by Uznam)
It’s been a while, so I believe, that I last heard from Shariff Sehnaoui, especially when it comes to
having an important role in a small improvising group, like here with Polish drummer Adam
Golebiewski, of whom, au contraire, we hear more and more (see for instance Vital Weekly 1005,
1015 and 1076). In February 2015 Sehnaoui picked up his acoustic guitar and Golebiewski sat
behind his drum, cymbal and selected objects and the two began improvising. I have no idea if
there has been any additional editing in this material or that we have here a complete registration
of the proceedings that day in Poznan, Poland. What we find on this disc is a forty-six minute tour
de force of guitar and drums. There is hardly any conventional rhythm and yet there are many
‘other’ rhythms here. Whatever Sehnaoui uses to play his guitar is from other objects. He rarely,
so it seems, picks up the guitar to play it like we expect from free improvised music (providing of
course there is a guidebook at all how to play ‘proper free jazz’). Sehnaoui rattles small chains over
the strings, adding another layer of rhythm over what Golebiewski is already doing with his objects
on the drum skins and cymbals. They scratch and hit surfaces in a very direct approach, and while
some of the music goes down in volume every now and then, ‘silence’ is a notion that does not sit
well with these two men. They rather play upfront and ‘loud’, even when it never becomes ‘noise’.
But the massive strokes on their instruments come with a certain forced power; like they have very
little respect for their instruments, which is something I enjoyed very much. Especially in the first
twelve minutes they create a hell of a racket, which reminded me of an acoustic approach to the
sound of The New Blockaders, sans feedback, and creating similar sound work using acoustic
instruments played bluntly with those objects. This is an excellent release of hard core
improvisation. (FdW)
––– Address: http://uznam.bandcamp.com
TASADAY – L’ANIMALE PROFONDO (CD by Officina Fonografica Italiana)
T.A.C. – SYMPHONIE INDUSTRIELLE (CD by Officina Fonografica Italiana/Spittle Records)
All the time I was playing this CD by Tasaday I tried remembering whether or not I saw them play
live in 1986, at a festival that also included SBOTHI, Etant Donnes and Coup de Grace. It was two
days, but Tasaday was on the first night, and perhaps I was there only the second? (Check out
this: http://v2.nl/events/metabletica). After 31 years my memory is certainly not as good
anymore. I believe I did hear some of their work at that time, and I do remember not being blown
away. Tasaday was an experimental group from Italy who worked more inside rock music than I
liked in the 80s, but opening up this package I must admit I was curious enough to see how they
held up over time. I must say not bad at all. There is a certain industrial rock edge to this music
that was perhaps not common in the deep world of cassette only release that was very much the
world I was interested in, even when early Tasaday releases were on cassette also. But certainly
the rock line up with tapes mixed in remind the listener of Laibach and perhaps also Einstürzende
Neubauten (think odd percussion, maybe even a bit of metal banging of their own), combined
with stabs of electronics that we could regard as more traditional industrial music throughout
make this quite a nice release. One thing that didn’t win me over then as well as now is the use
of the voice. It is not that these lyrics are in Italian (I should think), but the way they are shouted
around, through a bunch of delay pedals, adding perhaps a mystic, ritualistik element to the
music is just not very well spend on me, but in a way seems very Italian (think Sigillum S, F.A.R.
or Ain Soph). Probably it’s either resisting catholic upbringing or celebrating an obscure variation
thereof. You never know.
T.A.C. stands for Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata, which stands for “the medical imaging
device Computed Tomography (CT)”. This band started in 1981 with five members Andrea Azzali,
Simon Balestrazzi, Giorgio Barbuti, Fabio Cortesi and Giampaolo Terenziani but later on other
people joined, including Massimo Pavarini (see also Vital Weekly 1033). This was a band that
passed me by at the time, but I am not sure why. I am sure I must have some of their music, as
I am sure I had various compilations featuring their music. Somehow it must have failed to impress
me I guess at the time and I didn’t further investigate it. I learned from the booklet that in 1985
Andrea Azzali and Simon Balestrazzi were the only two members that were left from the original
line-up, which they decided was a good moment to start playing music that was different from
their earlier more industrial rock approach and in a short time span they worked on the ‘Symphonie
Industrielle’, by splicing tape loops and sounds together from the vast archive of band recordings
they already had. The project was never finished as in June 1985 they had new members and the
sound again changed. So it is not easy to judge the recently salvaged ‘Symphonie Industrielle’ as
part of the entire band history, but maybe more as some oddity in between, and such it is not
easy for me to judge this, partly because I am so unaware of their other releases. Shimmering
throughout these eight pieces one probably hears the original band playing, such as in the fifth
part of the symphony, but then looped around and added with a whole bunch of new synthesizer
treatments. In other pieces these treatments come to the foreground and the group plays
something that is more along the lines of experimental electronics of the day, with a meandering
trumpet hovering about from a previous session (the sixth part for instance). Sometimes these
pieces seem a bit too loosely structured for my taste, and the wanderings in the world of
electronics don’t seem to go anywhere, but that is, of course, also very much a marking on
the time in which this was created, which perhaps is a most valid excuse. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.goodfellas.it/
CULPHO DOG GYMKHANA – CULPHO DOG GYMKHANA #1 (CD Cordelia Records)
Eh? It would seem this album documents (future and past) experiments in multi-dimensional
parallel-worlds sound recording pioneered by Culpho Dog Gymkhana at the University in Culpho
last year. The members of Culpho Dog Gymkhana wish to remain anonymous, but have given
themselves, for practical purposes, ‘stage names’ such as The Rat, The Rabbit, The Wasp and
The Mole. So there are four. As in the typical four members of any classic pop band (The Beatles,
The Residents and so on). Interesting is that The Wasp is identified as female. Anyways, the four
met over their mutual love of Experimental Surf Music, which was, as you will perhaps recall was
previously discussed in Vital Weekly. On this album the CDG explore the endless possibilities of
making music by using existing band recordings combined with elements of the same recording
sourced from several parallel worlds where different decisions were made during the compositional
and recording process. I am sure you are still with me. The members of CDG were also able to
physically travel to targeted parallel dimensions, causing challenging situations such as a recording
session inside the stomach of a giant crocodile. Add to the confusion the fact there were (are? will
be?) two parallel members called The Rabbit and you have a possibly explosive situation. So much
for background information. In a parallel review of this album I will be discussing the fact that I
think the cover of this album is ugly. The resulting album by CDG features two 20-minute tracks
‘Have you seen your macaroni, Chimp?’ and ‘Everything has moved two feet to the left’. The album
concludes with the much briefer track ‘Ursonate III (featuring Kurt Schwitters)’. As I am sure you
will agree in a parallel universe, theorizing about music is best left to people like Frank Zappa, who
built a semi-interesting career on the back of expressing his opinion about music in music. So
what do the GDC actually has to offer? The synthesizer intro on ‘Have you seen your macaroni,
Chimp?’ soon gives way to the Experimental Surf Music, which we have heard before on Cordelia
records. It’s instrumental surf music, with plenty of Fender Jaguar lead guitar, which in its turn
soon gives way to a long composition of synthesizer weirdness from some (or perhaps any)
parallel universe. In that sense I am remembered of the long collage ‘The octagonal rabbit surplus’,
which is not incidentally also my favourite track from the Deep Freeze Mice’s 1979 debut album,
where the combination of traditional songs with the electronic collages in one long collage works
is sheer brilliance. Maybe in the parallel world of the CDG they went forward to 1979 and remixed
and reworked (or premixed and pre-worked) those sessions. ‘Everything has moved two feet to
the left’ also combines the Experimental Surf Music to great effect with field recordings,
discussions between CDG-members and more electronic sounds creating some really good
ambient soundscapes. The final track ‘Ursonate III (featuring Kurt Schwitters)’ does indeed
feature a future performance of Schwitters reciting his famous 1920’s Dada-poem set to a
rhythm box and assorted odd sounds. It’s strangely appealing. Much, in fact, as this album. In
mixing these different elements of music, the CDG are perhaps not unique, but they are one of
few bands I know who actually get away with it. Of course, selling millions of CDs and playing intra-
galactic sell out shows in parallel universes does help pay their (future) bills. To help them out in
their parallel universe in Leicester, England you could do worse than to order a copy of the first
Culpho Dog Gymkhana album. It really is very good. (FK)
––– Address: http://www.cordeliarecords.co.uk
KRAFT – HARVEST OF DESPAIR (CD by Opa Loka Records)
Robert Hofman hails from Rotterdam, where he is a member of Osewoudt, which was “received
very well in the Neo-folk scene”, so perhaps that accounts for the fact that I had not heard from
him or his band before. Since there weren’t many live shows he started to work on a solo recording,
which became Kraft, and ‘Harvest Of Despair’ is his first solo album. It is inspired by a love for the
music of Muslimgauze and also the struggle in Ukraine, which is one of the main topics of the
album. Hofman plays all the instruments himself (accordions, keyboards, drums, percussion,
sampling, field recordings and lyrics), but gets help from Stefan Hayes (acoustic guitars), Dennis
Lamb (electric guitars), Richard Leviathan (vocals) and Kateryna Vinitskyi (vocals). One could say
this is not really my cup of tea and you’re probably right with all things you think I would not like,
such as neo folk or political statements (or maybe even Muslimgauze), but whatever Hofman took
out of the work of Muslimgauze, it doesn’t show that much. Surely there is percussion here, with
heavy amount of reverb, some of dub inspired song, as ‘Gold Into Lead’, but one could not easily
recognize Muslimgauze in this. The music is dark, atmospheric and besides some solemnly spoken
in ‘The Dreadful Hours’ it hardly sounds like neo-folk (or perhaps I have the wrong impression of
the genre). The music is more collage like, taking influences from various genres and countries,
which act like a melting pot here; some Slavonic chant, a dub piece, rattling drums and noise
guitars in ‘The Dreadful Hours’, or the more melancholic ‘Maugre’. It is not really abstract and
alien, but in some ways one could see the background in rock-oriented bands shining through
the sometimes-melodic soundscapes. Quite a varied bunch of songs on this album, but it all
together makes quite a coherent listening. (FdW)
––– Address: http://opa-loka-records.com
ECHOES OF YUL – THE HEALING SESSIONS (CD by Zoharum)
PHURPA – YA TOG RID PA’I GVER (2CD by Zoharum)
PHURPA – RITUALS OF BÖN II (LP by Zoharum)
GÜNTER SCHLIENZ – BOOK OF DREAMS (CD by Zoharum)
Hey, didn’t we already review a CD called ‘The Healing’ by Echoes Of Yul, the musical project of
Michal Sliwa? Yes, we did, back in Vital Weekly 1004. Sliwa recorded so much material, that he
also released a cassette back then, ‘The Healing Sessions’, in an edition of 50 copies, which
became a sought after collectors item. Now it is re-issued on CD for a wider audience to enjoy.
It expands further on what we already heard on ‘The Healing’; slow, dub like rhythm, heavy in
origin, like in the best tradition of trip-hop. Real drums, me thinks, as well as real guitars and
bass, along with a bit of synthesizers and effects. Think Scorn, think the Wordsound label, maybe
Bowery Electric; god, it all seems so long ago that I properly heard this kind of music. The guitars
are played with much gusto and again one thinks post-rock, krautrock and psychedelica, but
perhaps with even some more dub inspired rhythm this time around. The music is melodic despite
it’s heaviness and it works really well. While this is perhaps not something I seem to be playing
every day/not as much as I did, I thought this was really great music. And what I wrote before is
still valid; I have no idea if Echoes Of Yul is something that Sliwa wants to do in concert, but I
think he should. I can imagine this stuff sounding massive on a really good sound system; perhaps
that is the one downside to this. The home entertainment system may not do this entirely justice.
Heavy and dark are keywords to the music of Phupra, but that’s something I already knew. I
am sitting, sweating in the HQ with Bermuda shorts, cold drink and blazing sun outside thinking
this might not be the entirely right moment of the year to play the music of Phurpa. Let alone a
double CD and a LP, which is surely some 140 minutes listening to crossing the Styx, going into
an underworld. The music is spiritual and sacred and they use ‘rgyud-skad’ singing, which sounds
to me, not a connoisseur per se, as throat singing. This comes along with the rattling of metallic
percussion, even when in the two parts of ‘Ya Tog Rid Pa’i Gyer’ the emphasis is altogether more
on the use of voices by the various members. The voices sound like they were recorded in a cave,
deep down under the ground and we watch from distance as some ritual is going on. On the LP is
all about the magical practices in Tibet, Iran and even (words from Zoharum) Egypt, with more
percussion than the double CD. I played all of this with interest, and I actually do enjoy it, but I
feel I will always remain an outsider to this music. Not being religious at all, or very much interested
in the whole world of rituals, magical caves and what not, there is a side to all of this that eludes
me. I can imagine that other people would strongly oppose me and that’s fine. I must also admit I
don’t hear that much differences between the various releases of Phurpa, but surely playing new
tunes is not an objective of the group.
After all this heaviness and darkness it is time for some gentle music. Back in Vital Weekly
1056 I was very much surprised and taken by the CD ‘Autumn’ by German modular synth player
Günter Schlienz, who now returns with a new album, ‘Book Of Dreams’, with more pieces, nine in
total. Parts of this was first released on vinyl, but now expanded with more tracks. Zoharum calls
this music at ‘the intersection of ambient and new age’ and that is very much true. With the
previous release I was thinking about ambient in the finest tradition of Brian Eno, and thus firmly
rooted in the world of ambient music, but with some of these pieces Schlienz moves a bit closer
to the world of new age music, which for all I know and care, is something he should not do. A
piece like ‘The Female Coffee Drinking Dwarf’ (a silly title I’d say) with it’s soft tinkling bell synth
sound is simply too easy and too sweet for my taste, but it is followed by ”Kafkaesque Speeches’,
a lovely dark drone with a soaring synth melody on top. It is limping on both ends here, the softer
new age approach and the somewhat grittier ambient side, and for now, I’d like to give Schlienz the
benefit of doubt here. The music is still lovely shimmering ambient, I am still reminded of De
Muziekkamer and their ‘Kamer Muziek’ release, and that is enough for now. I am curious which
road Schlienz will take in the future. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.zoharum.com
TIM OLIVE & JIN SANGTAE – NAAR/VOOR (CD by 845 Audio)
Much if not all of the work of Tim Olive are in collaboration with other people, and preferable, so it
seems in concert. Every year or so he travels from his new home country Japan to Europe to tour,
with people like Takuji Naka (in 2016) and Anne-F Jacques (2017) or in Japan with people like Ben
Owen and Nick Hoffman. Or in this case Korea’s Jin Sangtae, who is part of the scene around the
Balloon & Needle label, known for their heavy approach to the world of improvised music. Sangtae
is someone who uses near death hard drives in his music, crackling and bursting with the final shot
of electricity massively amplified. Olive on the other hand rummages the kitchen sink in search for
objects onto which he places his magnetic pickups and amplifies these as well. Both of these
players use ordinary objects, which are far away from the world of conventional instrumentation.
Here we have three lengthy pieces, fifty-four minutes in total, of some great music. They cover
the entire dynamic spectrum, with lengthy passages being all loud and brutal, but also going all
quiet, and all of this in a very fine collage-like approach, cutting in and out of the mix, going from
zero to one hundred, as it were. There is some excellent beauty in this brutal work; brutal but not
necessarily very noisy, I would say. It makes that you start listening differently to the world
around you, I guess (maybe providing you never heard this kind of stuff of course); at one point
I thought my disc was slipping in the machine, but it turned out this was part of the bigger
picture. Lovely stuff, beautiful poetics of the ordinary world in a new context. (FdW)
––– Address: http://845audio.org
ESM – NESMYSL (CD, private)
“Free form improvisation in avantgarde jESM” is how Eventualni Slozeni Muzikantu, in short ESM,
describe their music, and in the somewhat hand painted package we find a pro-pressed CD, with
three pieces. The first piece is the shortest and last seven and half minutes. Much of the
information on the cover is in the Czech language and therefore difficult to access for me. The
first piece is solely made of voices, layered and it might be Czech talk, but it also reminded me
of the music of Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Ursonate’. Quite nice. The second piece is at thirty-one minutes
the longest and more or less a free jazz improvised piece for bass, drums and synthesizers. It
starts and it stops and in between there is very little room for change. Everyone plays their own
part, and the electronics may seem to get a bit more intense, a bit more distortion pedal work on
that, but the bass and drums keep playing that irregular free jazz work. Just two minutes shorter
is ‘Zlive/Mrdve V Studiu Pon Terex’, and had it not be for this piece, I would have let this to Dolf
Mulder to chew on this release, but I am pretty sure the close to thirty minutes of noise here would
not really be his cup of tea. Everything explodes in this piece and if there are drums and/or bass
used we hardly recognize it. A barrage of electronic transformations is used to transform each and
every sound while trying to retain that collage like approach of sounds cutting in and out. I liked
those long pieces, but not in this extended version. I would think it could have been twenty
minutes and I’d be happier with that. Sometimes one has to know when it becomes too much, I
would think. (FdW)
––– Address: http://bandzone.cz/merzbauten
REGLER – BLUES FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION (LP by At War With False Noise)
With Regler exploring per release a whole musical genre, such as free jazz (see Vital Weekly 957),
dub (see Vital Weekly 966), harsh noise wall (see Vital Weekly 983), classical music (see Vital
Weekly 1015), Metal (see Vital Weekly 1034) it is now time for blues. I am not sure if Regler do
what I do if I don’t know the answer, which asking the oracle, also known as Wikipedia; “Blues as
a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues
verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th
century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting
of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer
concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often
relating the troubles experienced in African-American society.” On September 23, 2016 the duo
of Mattin (on guitar) and Anders Bryngelsson (on drums) played at Urban Spree in Berlin, and
perhaps this is AAB pattern; how I do know, not being musical at all in that respect, with some
taped spoken word, audience interference and brutal approach to drums and guitar. I am not sure,
but to me it hardly seems like conventional blues music, which of course is totally fine. I do like the
rough and punky approach of these players very much though; there is a fine sense of urgency in
this concert, whether one calls this blues or not. I wonder which genre they will examine next. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com/
THE NEW MOVEMENT & KH12 QUARTET – NICHTS FUR NITSCH (LP by Psych KG)
‘Nichts Für Nitsch’? That reeks of The New Blockaders, I would think, but it is not; The New
Movement, a duo of Kenny Johansson and Tony Eriksson are however strongly inspired by the
Blockaders, as I read on Discogs: “Inspired by anti-‘artists’ like Marcel Duchamp, Luigi Russolo
and The New Blockaders the group emerged from the intention to create a new form of anti-art
with a nostalgic feeling but soon moved further into the ‘philosophy of nothing’ and they wrote
the manifesto ‘X’ even before they ever recorded something in the name of The New Movement.
With their manifesto TNM ‘stand their ground’ to reject and destroy everything for their
‘philosophy of nothing’ and to be pointless as their weapon of choice”, which reads to me like
something them Blockaders could have also written. KH12 Quartet is also a duo, Matthias Horn
(also the label boss here) and Phillip Zimmermann and in Sweden the four of them recorded this
tribute to Hermann Nitsch, the infamous Austrian performance artist, with whom I have absolutely
nothing at all. I could launch into a diatribe about performance art, but I will save that for another
day. Like I wrote last week about the Blockaders I like a bit of noise, and this is what we get here,
as not just the manifesto is copied also their approach to sound is surely a strong source of
inspiration. Acoustic objects are hand cranked in front of a microphone and then fed through a
bunch of sound effects, while the original bursts of acoustics remain intact. In fact more here
than on the latest Blockaders cassette, I would think. No doubt the musicians cringe over me
saying this, but it seems to me some thought went into producing these noise pieces, of cracking
acoustic objects, loops of metallic rumble and spacing out distortion over the pieces itself. I am
not sure, but surely this is music that mister Nitsch would like as a backdrop to his performances
as it sounds like the sound of destruction and decay. Me personally, I don’t need the performance
aspect at all; not even the ‘blood’ spattered picture disc; the noise that is captured in these
grooves is more than enough for me. Stick to what you best and leave out the rest I would say.
A bit short this LP, it seems, but quite lovely all around. (FdW)
––– Address: <psychkg@online.de>
BLUE CHEMISE (7″ by Il Dischi Del Barone)
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION (7″ by Il Dischi Del Barone)
ARV & MILJÖ (cassette by Il Dischi Del Barone)
Of the last two I did hear before, but not of the Australia’s Blue Chemise, who apparently released
a “gone-in-a-heartbeat ‘Influence On Dusk’ LP from early 2017”, so with that missed heartbeat I
have no point of reference probably, but ‘The Music Lesson’ on side A sounds great; a bit lo-fi with
some scratchy tapes of obscured field recordings, and amplified hiss while some violin playing is
also happening. Make that perhaps three violins each playing their own soaring note. There is a bit
of percussion like sounds in there as well. The other side sees ‘Watcher At The Window’, with a
slightly cruder approach to the use of tapes, which might very well what all of the sounds are
about, cleverly mixed together. Some sort of wind chimes at half speed and the crackling objects
in a room disturbing every now and then; a music box caught some rust sometimes also joins in.
Crude yet elegant, which is something that can be said for both sides. Lovely lo-fi!
Varbara Manning (guitar, organ, banjo, objects, percussion, voice) and Seymour Glass
(objects, loops, electronics, cassettes, guitar, piano, voice) I heard for the first time back in
Vital Weekly 1075 and was pleasantly surprised by their cassette and I can easily imagine the 7″
being a very good format for their music. Their pieces can be short and to the point, and also
they can be pieces, as opposed to long pieces faded in and out to fit on a 7″. Their music uses
loops of sounds, usually from the many instruments mentioned and on top of that they wave
together cut up of voices saying weird things (on ‘Backlit Colander With Holes Shaped Like
Numbers’) along with cut-ups of those looped instruments going in and out of the mix, while
on ‘Bok Choy Festival’ everything is tighter together with loops of mumbling voices and a more
singular use of electronics throughout the piece. Only towards the end a stringed instrument
comes in. Two different pieces, both are heavily inspired by nurse With Wound I would think,
and both pieces are very lovely.
Arv & Miljö had their 7″ before on this label (see Vital weekly 1024) and now they have this
cassette (a first for this label I believe), which is, I believe, a re-issue of a LP released by Förlag För
Fri Musik in 2016. The label describes as “Snippets of boredom, heart attacks, disgusting food,
“När vi två blir en”, Dan Treacy meets Birgitta Stenberg and the coming of age, assembled into
some sort of nonlinear and rather dizzy audio diary that will speak to few. 50% dumb shit, 20%
other people’s music, 29% larger-than-life grandiosma, 1% Swedish tape noise”, which is quite
funny, perhaps. Maybe this description is something that distracts me a bit as I am pretty much
clueless about what it is that I am hearing here, let alone which pieces I am hearing anyway.
Sometimes I could easily believe that this is something that Arv & Miljö actually play on
instruments, organ drones for instance, or some kind of field recordings they made, but for all I
know this could also contain bits of sound that are lifted from other people’s records, slowed
down, pitched up and altered in whatever way. This is all very much like two sides of one long
collage in sound, like an alternative radio running wild but never really hits a musical groove. Odd
but nice. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.iddb.se/
TOAN – HISTOS LUSIS (CDR by Eilean Records)
JOSCO & SPHERULEUS – FOLDED DISTANCE (CDR by Eilean Records)
Opening up ‘Histos Lusis’ in iTunes says that is filed under rap, which scared me, but I realized
that Eilean Records would never release rap music. Toàn is from France, living in Britain and also
creates beat based music “mixing jazz and hip hop influences under the pseudonym of Qiwu
Selftet”, but none of that on this release. There aren’t even any synthesizers on this album, as
the whole thing, all eight pieces, was composed from taking samples from old records, live
instruments and field recordings. The pieces are lengthy, somewhere between six and twelve
minutes (more six really) and operate all within the genre of ambient music, but then in the sub
department of all things being melodic. The music Eno did with people like Hassell and Budd seem
to be a point of departure here. There is quite some piano and violin sounds here, both of them
played by real people as opposed to sampling them from battered old records. Those sounds
provide crackles, drones and something that makes it sound ‘old’ in a way, almost like listening
to something that has been ripped from a vinyl release from thirty or more years ago. The overall
moody, textured pieces owe to the world of modern classical music, but also something that is a
bit like world music, found on 78 rpm shellac at times (or so it sounds) and field recordings are
added when needed; it doesn’t rain throughout, which is very fine. The overall tone may be a bit
dark but there is something quite relaxing about this music also. I had the impression of being on
a trip, down some tropical stream, slow and gently down the stream, into a hot tropical forest; all
in black and white and the calendar says it’s 1925. Sometimes a bit too sweet perhaps, but great
it is anyway.
The other new release is a collaboration between Josco, who “is a writer, photographer and
sound designer from the Republic of Ireland. He is currently based in China” and Spheruleus, also
known as “Harry Towell, a UK sound artist who has recorded with labels such as Hibernate, Home
Normal, Under The Spire and Time Released Sound. Harry has a long standing netlabel called Audio
Gourmet but also runs physical edition labels Tessellate Recordings and most recently, a special
collector’s imprint called Whitelabrecs”. They worked together on this for about five years and I
would think all of this working together was down through the exchange of sound files through
the Internet. I must admit I was not able to tell this was the work of five years of working together,
but alas the music was quite nice. Obviously also along the lines of ambient music, but hey, this is
Eilean Records and this is music that is very much along the lines of whatever else they release.
Mood music of course, but then from a more abstract angle and with heavily processed field
recordings, lots of reverb, the tinkling of a guitar and the singular stroke of a cello here and
there. Field recordings, we are told, were made in Thailand, Turkey, Austria, UK, Ireland and
Morocco, though none of that is something that we would recognize either. Lengthy, sustaining
sounds and massive walls of drones, though not mildly distorted like they would be an average
Malignant Records release, this very well-crafted ambient/drone music; it reminded me in, for
instance in ‘Praterstern’, of the music of :zoviet:france:, and as such they stand in a long
tradition of isolationist music. Good but not the most original. (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.eilean-records.com/
BRB>VOICECOIL – RECONFIGURE MOMENTS (cassette by Muzamuza)
BRB>VOICECOIL – CONTAINMENT (cassette by Muzamuza)
ARTWHORE – PASTY POSTURE (cassette by Muzamuza)
Back in Vital Weekly 1075 I welcomed BRB>voicecoil back after quite a long hiatus in releasing
new music and recently Kevin Wilkinson went on tour along with Spoils & Relics and Ali Roberston
of Usurper and for that occasion he had two new cassette releases. The first is ‘Containment’,
nine pieces of “totally untouched field recordings. No processing or manipulation used in these
recordings just microphone placement”. It’s hard to say what kind of field recordings we are
dealing with here, but it seems to me the microphone is stuck in various windy places, with
objects hanging the wind (next to the wash drying in the wind perhaps) and there is strong
bass end to these recordings, which makes it all very enjoyable. A car passes in the distance;
there is a piece with rattling of key in a rusty door. There is throughout these pieces quite some
variation, and it is almost like a story, going from the outside, the wide open land, to a closed off
space. It works quite well, also as composition of the whole release itself. In a way it sounds like
vintage BRB>voicecoil music and that’s great.
As a companion/sister release there is also ‘Reconfigure Moments’, which contains ‘heavy
manipulation of source material and resetting of audio time frames’. This too can be regarded as
vintage BRB>voicecoil music and in some ways I am again reminded of the music of Small Cruel
Party, but this time around also Hands To sprang to mind. In ‘Reform’ the process applied seemed
to be very computer minded, with glitches and all such things, but the rattling of sticks on the
pavement that open ‘Recast’ is a more familiar territory. The objects rattle and the effects are
placed nicely along the way. Delay, reverb, chorus and all such like thicken the sound and here it
slowly transforms into some more quiet. BRB>voicecoil may call this heavily processed and
perhaps it is, but somehow it seems to me that the original sound shines through this quite a
bit. In a way this was all quite percussive in an odd sort of way. Nothing ‘beat’ like or strict tempos
but rather like but it works very fine. Noise based and at the same it is not so much noise based;
analogue and digital processing gets mixed here and the result is, as always, quite lovely. I hope
BRB>voicecoil crosses the sea and we get to witness his live sound and see how he all does it.
Artwhore was a duo of Steve Legget and Bob Burroughs and back in 1996-97 they did some
recordings and only recently it was decided to do a proper release. “The dole office was next to
the Get Carter Car Park. Grey days spent dreaming of the sun. 50p for a can of Vibourg, £5 for
some Old Windsor Sherry. There is an Alien intelligence from Sirius orbiting the Earth and it beams
thoughts into your head using rays of pink light. Abandoned cats, one warm room. Pass the tray
and put on another episode”, which perhaps describes the way the circumstances in which this
music was created. There is no description as to what kind of instruments are used, but I should
think some synthesizers and cheap sampling keyboards. The first three pieces take us into some
more moody, dark, lo-fi ambient territory and perhaps one could think this is what they are after,
but in ‘Shamm’ a short sampled glitches is the rhythmic content of it and it becomes a curious
techno hybrid; one could think of a highly experimental form of Porter Ricks which is something
that in ‘Horseloverfat’ is further expanded. A rhythm is stuck in limbo and keyboards wave on
top. But then ‘Electricity (Version)’ is more of an industrial rhythm exercise, unlike the original,
which opens the cassette and in which rhythm is absent. ‘DC10’ is then an ambient thing again.
I can see why they would perhaps not released it back then; it is too much of a mixed bag of
sounds, even when I quite enjoyed this crude variety of ideas, textures and rhythms. Interesting
stuff indeed, worth checking out, even when hardly alike BRB>voicecoil. (FdW)
––– Address: http://muzamuza.bandcamp.com
CHANNELERS – FACES OF LOVE (cassette by Inner Islands)
Behind Channelers is Oakland based composer Sean Conrad, who plays on the two pieces (one per
side) harmonium, bowed bass, dulcimer, piano and Juno 60. He writes that the two pieces on this
cassette are the result of “a practice of recordings and improvising as a mindfulness practice,
playing to listen to and be with the sound”, which may sound a bit hippie-dippy, and throughout
the lengthy pieces of slow cascading harmonium drones and plink plonk of dulcimer, one could
easily draw the conclusion that this is some lame meditation music, but I’d like to believe this is a
little bit more than just that. The drone used by Channelers is just a bit stronger and deeper than
on your average new age record, I would think (even when I hear a lot of those, thank god) and
also it seems there are treatments that link his work to that of microsound. Both pieces evolve
quite slowly and have minimal changes throughout. I guess one could lie down and stare at the
ceiling with this music, and that’s not a wrong thing to do. I read a book while contemplating
what to write about this music, what to eat tonight and then put the book aside and all other
thoughts and simply drifted along with the music. Maybe it’s all a bit tacky, a bit new agey, but
like with the Schlienz release elsewhere I would give Channelers the benefit of the doubt. (FdW)
––– Address: http://innerislands.com