PAUL LOVENS & FLORIAN STOFFNER – TETRATNE (CD by Ezz-thetics) *
ANDY BOLUS & JOSEPH HAMMER & JOHN WIESE – PRELUDE TO HAWAIIAN RADIO (CD by Troniks) *
CATHERINA CHRISTER HENNIX – UNBEGRENZT (LP by Blank Forms)
ASMUS TIETCHENS/FRIEDER BUTZMANMN – NNOI#2 (LP by 90% Wasser) *
ZEA & OSCAR JAN HOOGLAND – SUMMING (LP by Makkum Records)
ZOIKLE (LP by Tractor Notown/Red Wig) *
OCCII – DIY COMP LTS (7″ compilation by Occii)
RICHARD JOHNSON – RAMLEH: GRUDGE FOR LIFE (book by Fourgh Dimension Publishing)
CLAUS POULSEN – REAL ANGELS SINGING CAUGHT ON TAPE (CDR/cassette by Aphelion Editions) *
GNAARF – BEYOND REPAIR (CDR by Xtelyon Records) *
MODUS VIVENDI: A BENEFIT COMPILATION FOR CHRIS PHINNEY (CDR by No Part Of It)
GINTAS K/KAZUYA ISHIGAMI (cassette by Neus-318)
E.O.M./ALEXANDER HOLM – A LIMB BETWEEN TWO GREENS (cassette by Sensorisk Verden)
SOFT ITEMS – H (patch by Sensorisk Verden)
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – DSB (cassette by Cronica) *
PAUL LOVENS & FLORIAN STOFFNER – TETRATNE (CD by Ezz-thetics)
These end days of the year are usually slow, and this year, called by many ‘a weird one’ (I am not among them), is not different. Looking at an empty desk is rare at the VWHQ, but during these days it happens. There is, today, only one CD, by Paul Lovens (drumset, cymbals, gongs) and Florian Stoffner (electrified guitar), and in busier times I would have listened to it a bit and shipped it of one of our regular writers for improvised music. Both gentlemen have a long tradition in that musical field. But, as this is the one thing for the day, I decide to sit down and play it all. I may not be the regular writer for improvised music, I am not averse to it and actually like several releases. Maybe it is the combination of guitar and drums that I find appealing in this release. Evan Parker, in his liner notes, remarks that both gentlemen use all four limbs to play their instruments. Lovens uses his feet for bass drum and hi-hat and Stoffner volume control and effects pedal. The recordings here were made by in March 2019 during a concert in Ljubljana and these are “unedited free improvisations in the order as played”, but still four separate pieces. Thirty-five minutes and most of the time drums and guitar sound as intended by the manufacturers of their instruments; no resonant boxes or all too strange objects upon skins and strings. There is an excellent balance in energy here, a fine dialogue between both players, covering wild hectic wild parts and some chaotic introspective ones, crossing just as easily to normal introspection and regular wildness. This is a great, vibrant set of pieces, action, reaction, response and no answer, bouncing, colliding but also of intense togetherness in playing. They were both in great form that night! (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.hathut.com/
ANDY BOLUS & JOSEPH HAMMER & JOHN WIESE – PRELUDE TO HAWAIIAN RADIO (CD by Troniks)
Seymour Glass wrote some extensive liner notes about this recording session that took place on December 13, 2019, in Studio 1/4, Los Angeles. The session lasted two-and-half hours, and it was during the first visit to the USA of Andy Bolus, also known as Evil Moisture. In that studio, there was also Jospeph Hammer present, whom you may know as part of Solid Eye and Points Of Friction and John Wiese, one half of Sissy Spacek and an active solo force in the world of noise music. I won’t repeat what Glass has to say about the technology involved, right down to types of machinery, but Wiese has a cassette player and Sherman filter bank (haven’t seen one of those in years), Bolus uses loops on a bunch of Walkman with speed control and control voltage inputs and Hammer mostly a reel to reel deck and the three of them throw around to sound like there is no end. Whatever was on those tapes is now gone, I suppose. By using the play and fast-forward or rewind button at the same time, sounds are played superfast and quickly erupts into a dense pattern of noise sounds. And this time three means there everything is a played at different speeds at the same time. None of the original can be recognized; it might be spoken word, pop music or field recordings (or…? Whatever else can be captured on tape, of course). It is noise music but what else would you expect from a Troniks release, but unlike quite a few other releases by Troniks, this one is not an endless stream of distortion, but a very chaotic cut-up sound collage; a different take on noise. That afternoon everything was recorded on multi-track tape and Wiese did a mix of this. I was playing this a few times over the past few days/week, and the more I hear it, the more I recognize the organization in there. Sometimes tracks may flow into each other, without any interruption, but Wiese gave each of the thirteen pieces a distinct character, even pulling back to something less noisy, such as in ‘De-Rhotacization’. Given that each of these pieces has a title is further proof that we should see these as distinctively different pieces. Throughout a great blast and one of those noise releases that I enjoyed a lot. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.iheartnoise.com/
CATHERINA CHRISTER HENNIX – UNBEGRENZT (LP by Blank Forms)
Of course, I know Karlheinz Stockhausen; I assume everyone reading this rag does. I admit I don’t know much about him, other than this is as brilliant as mad. I used to have a couple of his records, ‘Telemusik’ and ‘Stimmung’; the first I thought was great, the second total shitty hippie wank. Furthermore, I learned today from the extensive liner notes of this LP, that Stockhausen was interested in tantric singing but didn’t have the faintest clue about it, and such is also the case with his ‘Unbegrentzt’, which he wrote in 1968, which is a form of ‘intuitive music’, but from a very European academic background. I think the words cultural appropriation can be used here and that is what Catherine Christer Hennix says about the German composer. She has studied ragas and knows how it all works. In 1974 nobody would program the music she made with her group and then decided to play something by Stockhausen, which was ‘Unbegrentzt’, meaning ‘unlimited’. The music is for recitation, percussion and electronic sounds from tape (Hennix), gong (Hans Isgren), and Hevejra Tantra (text)) In his own version, Stockhausen uses Buddhist text but without proper understanding. It is a free form piece, ‘play a sound/with the certainty/that you have an infinite amount of time and space’ (which on the cover note gets a sneer ‘do white men ever assume otherwise?’). You can see this as a performance of a Stockhausen piece, but I like to see it as a composition by the performers. And, perhaps, we should see this is an improvisation? The music has a very free form indeed; nothing wild or chaotic, more quiet and dense. Some fine feedback-like sounds are going on, while the playing of percussion is loose and not very rhythmic; more creating further textures and atmospheres. The text is not easy to understand, but it further enhances the piece. By all means, this is a very strange piece. There is no narrative, no structure, not much in terms of dynamics; it goes on and on, yet with enough variation in the sound material. Striking a bow across percussion surfaces, using sticks and mallets, feedback, deeper electronic sounds, there is quite a bit of change on the equal level it all plays out at. I very much enjoyed this piece (a CD version with the whole thing uninterrupted would also be great) of sheer subtle changes and the non-committed playing, like a meditation. That is something I am not doing (for no particular reason, to be honest), but I sat back and let it all work onto me. (FdW)
––– Address: https://blankforms.org/
ASMUS TIETCHENS/FRIEDER BUTZMANMN – NNOI#2 (LP by 90% Wasser)
This is the second instalment of NNOI, which, so I was led to believe when I reviewed the first one, back in Vital Weekly 1228 (by Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg and Felix Kubin), which is a “festival for 12,756 tone music, obscure teaching & organ of the world-ventriloquist-lodge”, which is no doubt that wacky German humour, and once again we have two elderly statesmen of German electronic music; one older than the other, but there are some more differences to note, especially when it comes to the way sounds are approached. The older of the two is Asmus Tietchens, and he has on offer nine pieces of his ‘Stenogramm’ series. He previously had a whole release with those, ‘Stenogramme, Zweite Folge’ (see Vital Weekly 1156), where he presented twenty-eight short pieces of his more concise approach. I would think that in each of these pieces (here, on this new LP, or on that previous release, is created from a single sound source being treated, and that in his other work, the longer pieces, it is a combination of various sources. I called this before the ‘concise Tietchens’ and in these nine pieces, more or less two minutes per ‘Stenogramm’, Tietchens carefully explores the boundaries of the sources. It is as if he is touch upon them, but then without really touching; more like tracing the edges of it all. As with much of Tietchens’ post-2000 output, this is all very reduced music and with all of these quite brief, you might easily miss something along the way. It took me a few rounds of listening before I was really ‘into’ this, which for the Tietchens fan that I am, is hardly a problem.
The other side is something totally a different beast. Butzmann plays live a ‘suite for sine waves in seven parts’, which he announces to the audience, with some cheery short banter. The music is, however, quite serious. I would think he has a few of these sine waves, which he transforms, on the spot, using a few reel-to-reel machines and all along with this there is the use of voices, radio, recorder, toys and such, which makes a wonderfully naive version of musique concrète. It ticks all the right boxes, sine waves, tape manipulation but in a straight forward, childlike manner, bouncing neatly all over the spectrum and all of this with a most direct approach; indeed, as a live recording would sound. As such it is the total opposite of Tietchens’ very careful approach, but these two opposites meet very well. (FdW)
––– Address: https://90-prozent-wasser.bandcamp.com/
ZEA & OSCAR JAN HOOGLAND – SUMMING (LP by Makkum Records)
ZOIKLE (LP by Tractor Notown/Red Wig)
OCCII – DIY COMP LTS (7″ compilation by Occii)
How many concerts did I see this year? I have no idea, I never know, but this one would think it is easy, as it can’t have been many. And yet still, I have no idea. Five at the most is my guess, and only three weeks ago it was Zea and Oscar Jan Hoogland. Just a few days before that I got a CD by Arnold de Boer, the man behind Zea, but for the first under his own name (see Vital Weekly 1263). That was a very nice one, with some interesting improvised music, diversifying from his work as Zea and singing and playing the guitar with The Ex, his other day job. That night in Extrapool he played with Oscar Jan Hoogland, of whom I had not heard before, and he is “is an improviser, pianist, composer who is working actively in the field of both music and dance improvisation in Amsterdam. Doing so he works within fixed bands and groups as well as in first-time collaboration settings”, and this one. That night he played keyboards, electronics, the good ol’ Steim crackle box, and they had a piece that involved Extrapool’s latest 7″ (reviewed last week), of which he used five copies on five turntables. I had no idea what to expect that night and was pleasantly surprised by their use of a combination of conventional song structures and more out-there elements of sound art. Here De Boer uses Zea compositions (hence this being Zea and not ‘Arnold de Boer & Oscar Jan Hoogland’) as the starting point to have Hoogland play his keyboards, adding more melody, while De Boer uses a slightly more improvised guitar sound at times, and sometimes vice versa and Hoogland playing his monotrons and other, less easy to define sounds but which made me think of Konono No.1’s electronic kalimba’s. I recognized some of the songs they played that evening, such as ‘You’re Dead’. There is some fine interaction going here and partly a bit abstract and mostly fine punk, post-punk and yet intimate songs. Maybe a bit too conventional at times, but a fine reminder of a great night, a much-needed break between various lockdowns.
And while I am on the subject of something a bit more conventional, I was reminded of the LP I got some time ago, not necessarily for review (at least, that’s what I think), but that also has a connection to The Ex. Zoikle is a quartet with Lukas Simonis (guitar), Nina Hitz (cello) and Cor Hoogerdijk (drums) and G.W. Sok on vocals, and die-hard Dutch punk fans recognize the latter name as the former singer of The Ex, up until 2008 or 2009, I think. As Zoikle they made one 7″, a very long time ago (reviewed, not by me, in Vital Weekly 816) and now, ten years later, there is an LP. The cover says that this was mostly recorded between 2010 and 2013, on all sorts of recording devices and in various stages of being finished or not. When I got this I also bought a small booklet by GW Sok, who did one of those stupid challenges of ’45 records in 45 days’. Well, in so much that his 45 records were all related to his work with The Ex and many of these still gracing these shelves, so it made me delve into some of them (and so much for ‘stupid challenge’ of course) as I was a for a long time buying every new one. I am not sure why I gave up (or if I did give up). In any case, playing The Ex, with Sok on vocals and Zoikle in proximity it is difficult to see the differences and easy to confuse the two. Sok’s typical voice stands out a mile and the three musicians follow suit in playing some of the more interesting takes on the whole notion of punk music. The Ex are no strangers to using non-standard instruments (they did, after all, two releases with cellist Tom Cora) and the sound of Zoikle is perhaps less a surprise. Lukas Simonis hammers out punky riffs, Hoogerdijk plays with a great drive and Hitz plays along or against. ‘Red Devils’ has her opening up the song, and she plays the lead here in a surprisingly folky tune. However throughout the material is uptempo, driven and played with some power, yet the element of improvisation, something I know Simonis and Hitz for is never far away. It is altogether a great record, and at times perhaps too conventional too, but at times it totally fits these pages.
Serendipity it is, this week, as it so happens that I also received a 7″ by the oldest space, still autonomous, from Amsterdam, the OCCII. If you want to see weird and unusual music, this is your place. Or a punk band, of course. In May 2019 they organized a conference for all things DIY, places to play, bands and how to promote these places in the current corporate social media climate. There was an idea for a fanzine to document the event, but it turned out to be this 7″ with four bands, from Amsterdam, Nijmegen (another curious event!) and Groningen. OCCII describes these “post-punk, Dbeat-punk, hardcore-punk and free-punk”. I may no longer be that much into punk music, and so I didn’t recognize these bands, not even from my home turf, Oust that is, not Lange Niezel, Gif and Ponyclub Tartiflette. I particularly enjoyed the latter, which is certainly ‘free-punk’, from this duo on drums/fx and guitar/fx, with a chaotic track, recorded free up your face. Gif has a short straight forward hardcore punk song. Lange Niezel also has a long song, in Dutch/Frysian or some such, and is the post-punk representation here, full of drama and regret, I suppose. Lyrics for this enclosed 9and for Oust, not for the other two). Oust celebrates DIY the hardcore way; “Fuck your band & your booker & your rider & your guarantee” is part of the lyrics for ‘Fuck Your Band’. This comes in lovely pink vinyl, with poster and badge. Clearing out my desk on Boxing desk, I decided to play Dutch punk bands from the old days and celebrate the DIY spirit. (FdW)
––– Address: http://www.makkumrecords.nl
––– Address: https://gwsok.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://occii.org/distroinit/
RICHARD JOHNSON – RAMLEH: GRUDGE FOR LIFE (book by Fourth Dimension Publishing)
Reading books about music, musicians, audio technology (up to some extent), record labels; I love it all. This year I read autobiographies by Mariah Carey, Sting, Stewart Copeland, Andy Summers, Pauline Black, Chris Frantz, Stephen Morris and lots more. In some cases, I may even enjoy their music (you guess here), but best, of course, is to read about when you actually know the music quite well. In Ramleh’s case, I didn’t know it that well, to be honest. As we learn from this book there have been various incarnations from Ramleh, since their start in 1982 and each period had its distinctive different approach. The Ramleh I love is the first incarnation, from 1982 to the end of that decade, when they were mainly a duo of Gary Mundy and Bob Strudwick and later Jerome Clegg. The band started with Mundy seeing Whitehouse live, thinking he could do something along similar and yet different lines. The Ramleh power electronics phase was one of the dense layers of synthesizer sounds, feedback, drone, and somewhere buried in the mix, there are voices with lyrics that were hard to decipher. After a short of period of inactivity, the second phase started and Ramleh, then Gary Mundy and Philip Best (of Whitehouse and Consumer Electronics fame) picked up guitars and first did a very short-lived Factory Records inspired duo, The Worried Well, but as Ramleh went for some heavy riffing and strumming, with ‘Grudge For Life’ being the first release. I remember when it came out and I thought I was not interested. When Ramleh later expanded with more players, among them Anthony di Franco (of JFK fame) and Stuart Dennison on drums, they went along the lines of Skullflower (of which Mundy and Best were also a member for a short period), Splintered, Swans, Sonic Youth and all those heavy rock bands, which also went into a hiatus at the end of the 90s. A few years after both incarnations, the rock band and the power electronics duo got renewed interest and both were revived, with Mundy and Di Franco member of both versions. This book details it all and over Christmas (and the time leading up to Christmas) I delved into both the words and the music. I noticed I missed quite a few of their releases, especially from the second and third phase, because I was one of those people who thought they better stuck to noise. I was wrong back then already, as I was listening to Skullflower at that time too, but some of these works are particularly good. I very much enjoyed their latest release, ‘The Great Unlearning’ (see Vital Weekly 1218), which sums up what Ramleh is all about, the rock and noise combined.
This book takes the form of a lengthy interview with Gary Mundy on every phase, and a smaller one with Anthony di Franco about his ongoing involvement (and, as I understand, this duo will continue for years to come), plus smaller bits, usually culled from interviews, with Dennison, Mauro Theo Teardo, Stephen Meixner, Steve Pittis, Yuntaro Yamanouchi (the latter three in the role as label bosses releasing Ramleh music), William Bennett (oddly, no Philip Best in this section), plus various pieces by the late Simon Morris (of Ceramic Hobbs, concert organiser and writer), followed by recommended records by Mundy and Di Franco and extensive commented Ramleh discography, though a complete one. For a die-hard fan, a must-read, obviously, but also if noise, power electronics, heavy rock has your mild interest, I would recommend this. I learned quite a few things that I didn’t know. I did know that Mundy backed singer/poet Anne Clark on guitar in the early stages of her career, but I didn’t know he had his involvement with an indie group called Breathless, which I also checked out, but that was not my cup. Which brings me to the musicianship of (probably) all members, something that one suspects not all noise makers have (I know a few who can’t keep tune nor rhythm). I found it odd that much of the music is talked about as “this piece was composed by…”, or “I delivered the basic riff from which the piece was built”, etc., whereas I would have thought that much of the Ramleh music was generated more spontaneous, by jamming for a long time, and then taking the best bits as a piece. Also, much to my surprise, there is a big love for all sort of unexpected bands and musicians, forming an inspiration for one thing or another. Pink Floyd is mentioned a couple of times, Fairport Convention or Focus. This shows them to a band who knows and cherish the musical history and incorporates that in their music, most of the times, obviously, giving it, of course, an entirely different twist. Reading this book, and meanwhile playing their music, many of which are either new to me or like with the older stuff a feast or recognization, opens up a whole new perspective. Ramleh describes their output as ‘bleak psychedelica’, and that is a wide term that covers quite well their entire output. Being along during dark, short days enhanced that experience quite a bit. If a book on music makes me pick up a record (or finding it online; I ain’t no snob in that regard), then I am won over. Eat that Phil, Mariah and Black. Ramleh wins. Only 500 copies will be made of this book, so act quickly! (FdW)
––– Address: https://fourthdimensionrecords.bigcartel.com/
CLAUS POULSEN – REAL ANGELS SINGING CAUGHT ON TAPE (CDR/cassette by Aphelion Editions)
You could think that this is a silly title, and you are right, it is. Poulsen says this is a comment on “bullshit spiritualism, freeing the listener to put their own meaning into it”, which is something he’d rather have listeners do. The work of Poulsen is not easy to classify as one thing or another. Much of it deals with improvisation, alone or with others, such as with projects as Blind Man’s Band, CAM, Small Things On Sundays and Star Turbine (his duo with Sindre Bjerga)., but also noise, jazz, and ambient as we noticed only last week, with his latest release with Stuart Chalmers. Ambient is also the direction his latest solo release takes, hence the silly title. The music, however, is serious. He’s been exploring ambient music for some time now. Poulsen made some field recordings, in front of the local disco on Saturday evening, but where it’s normally noisy, it is now, all quiet, because of the lockdown. He adds to this guitar, pedals, found sounds, tongue drum, SK-1 (which is an ancient sampling device, with very low-resolution samples), synthesizer and the “swarsangham”. Three pieces here, ‘Relaxtions’ and ‘Eardrops’ well over twelve minutes and in the middle, ‘Saturday Night Corona Fever’, about half that. The sort of ambient music Poulsen plays is not pressing down a few keys on a keyboard and fiddle a few knobs on a synthesizer or looping a few notes on a guitar, but playing a somewhat busier, hectic web of sounds. In ‘Eardrops’, these might indeed all keyboards and sound effects and a bit of percussion, or more guitars in ‘Saturday Night Corona Fever’ (played nu Marco Winther, but in both cases none of it too traditional. Poulsen uses too many sounds to fully lie down and relax, but that happens to be exactly the sort of ambient that I like. In the opening ‘Relaxations’, he starts by spinning a web of synthesizer sounds and fishing sounds (courtesy of mister Bjerga), which then, gradually cross over into a darker percussive pulse, which has very little do with ambient, but it sounds very intense and horror-like, including ‘rattle in the cornfields’ sort of sounds. This could easily have been two totally different pieces, but that is perhaps the improviser that Poulsen also is, cobbling various bits into a bigger thing. This is, altogether, a great release with the sort of ambient music I enjoy a lot and at thirty-five minutes a bit too short for my taste; we want more! (FdW)
––– Address: https://aphelioneditions.bandcamp.com/
GNAARF – BEYOND REPAIR (CDR by Xtelyon Records)
There is not an awful lot I know about Austra’s Gnaarf. They have a Bandcamp page with five releases, including this new one from Xtelyon Records. The cover lists the following personnel; gnaarf / Karl Pelzmann – all instruments and noises and Lara Jones – saxophone (#1, 3 & 7) and Espen Lund – trumpet (#1, 2 & 4). There are ten pieces on this CDR and oddly enough the ones with the guest players on their wind instruments are mostly in the first half of the release, which may give the listener an odd first impression. In those pieces, Gnaarf sound like a fifties smoky nightclub band with mutes on the trumpet. Jazzy of course, but Gnaarf has a slightly more experimental edge to the use of electronics, making this not one on one perfect for a film noir with a chain-smoking detective and a blonde hiring him to spy on her husband, who may or may not be a serial killer. The ‘other’ instruments, as played by Pelzmann include drums, bass, keyboards and electronics. In the five pieces that I assume are all his solo work, he goes for a more abstract sound, veering towards all things slightly more chaotic, but not with a strict explosion of anarchy, tons of hectic notes. The mild, smoky jazz club noir style is here too, but now the instruments are all strictly different territories, like every instrument plays his thing, regardless of the others. There is a bit of melody popping up, here and there, amidst the mild organized chaos. While I think that some of this film noir atmosphere is usually one big cliché (I envisage men with hats playing the saxophone, snapping fingers and smoking a copious amount of cigarettes, thinking it’s still 1953), I enjoyed the additional layers of weirdness that Gnaarf imposes on the music. That made all of this less of a cliché and added an original flavour to the notion of film noir soundtrack. There is some room for improvement on the cover though. (FdW)
––– Address: https://xtelyonrec.wordpress.com/
MODUS VIVENDI: A BENEFIT COMPILATION FOR CHRIS PHINNEY (CDR by No Part Of It)
When you read the title of this compilation you will either know who Chris Phinney is or not. Those of you who do know that Phinney has spent his life in the service of underground and experimental music. Phinney’s Mental Anguish recordings, his Hard Reality label, and his involvement with 1980s cassette culture all helped push the genre and scene forward. If you don’t know who Phinney is now you know the basics. So, go out there and explore his rich and diverse body of work, but before you do that, there is a slight matter at hand. This comp. The title is loosely translated to ‘way of life’. Musically everything contained is a nob to Phinney’s past. On another level, the title relates to Phinney’s current situation and trying to prolong this way of life. In 2019 Phinney was involved in a car crash. It didn’t go well, compounding previous injuries and putting him in a wheelchair and unable to work. All the proceeds of the album will go to Phinney. The album is made up of artists Phinney had either worked with or who wanted to get involved. Regardless of their connection to Phinney’s work.
‘Grief’ but Content Nullity just gets right in your face from the start. It’s a massive sounding piece of music effectively built around a simple melodic loop. On top of this is layers of distorted, feedback and flotsam and jetsam of noise to create a twitchy, caustic track that sounds punishing no matter how loud, or quiet, you play it. There is a savage beauty to it. It reminds me of going out as a teenager and being terrified and in awe of just massive people on nights out. They were going about their business without a care in the world but also knew that at any moment they could instantly change the mood of the room. This is how ‘Greif’ feels. It also works well as a piece about, well, grief. Throughout the track, you have a numbed feeling in your stomach, and nothing can shift it until it finishes. It also taps into the overall theme of the album. When Phinney got into his accident he was just divorced and had recently lost his mother. All this comes pouring out of the track. It sets up the comp in the best possible way. ‘The Pillar I (For Ossington)’ but Attrition opens with haunting strings while gentle maelstroms of drones, field recordings and female vocals. It is unsettling but captivating. As it progresses everything around you feel like it is frozen in amber or is trying to spring through molasses. While not a great deal happens, everything that does it epic and flawless. There is something about ‘The Pillar I (For Ossington)’ that I may never fully recover from but am glad that I experienced it. To call it the standout moment on the album belittles the other tracks, but nothing else on ‘Modus Vivendi’ hits these highs quite so well.
Overall, the album works well. As with every comp, there are a few tracks that don’t quite take your fancy. ‘Bethlehem’ by Dieter Müh doesn’t quite work as well with the other tracks as I’d have hoped. There is nothing that wrong with ‘Bethlehem’ but after Attrition, I was in the mood for something a bit quicker and abrasive. That said ‘Modus Vivendi’ is a really fun listen full of inventive ideas and brutalist soundscapes. Music like this was Phinney’s way of life, so its more than fitting that this music should be used to try and help him. And help him we should. Phinney has constantly delivered music that delights and horrifies in equal measure. Now it’s our time to say thank you by helping when he needs help the most. (NR)
––– Address: https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/
GINTAS K/KAZUYA ISHIGAMI (cassette by Neus-318)
This is a release in a limited edition of just 12 copies, which, I assume, is to satisfy personal needs for physical copies and, perhaps, to send one over here for review. Releases by Gintas K make their way to these pages quite a bit, but those from Kazuya Ishigami less often. He runs the Neus-318 label out of Kobe, Japan. Before he worked as Daruin and Billy? Gintas Kraptavičius is the man behind Gintas K, and he is from Lithuania and specializes in computer music. I wouldn’t know what his favourite tools are, Max/MSP, Audio Mulch or Pure Data, or even something that I never heard of. While he is serious in his work with a computer, he is also part of the ‘underground’, whatever that term is worth. His piece ‘Bliss’ is twelve minutes long and quite the hectic and busy piece of music. It is like someone put a can of worms inside his laptop, and they are having a contest who is out there, so everything is crawling in every direction. Any recognizable sound sources have disappeared in the many treatments applied by Gintas K. No such hectic on ‘Behind 200911’ by Kazuya Ishigami, even when I believe this is also computer music. The sound of coins, I noted at one point, but most of the time I had not many clues as to what and how. Ishigami uses the collage form in this piece, starting and stopping his segments to create a delicate tension between the various passages of the piece. Usually, these passages are quite a drone-based and over fourteen minutes this is an elegant modern-day musique concrète. (FdW)
––– Address: https://neus318.bandcamp.com/
E.O.M./ALEXANDER HOLM – A LIMB BETWEEN TWO GREENS (cassette by Sensorisk Verden)
SOFT ITEMS – H (patch by Sensorisk Verden)
Even while Bandcamp and the cover of the cassette list this as a split cassette, assigning each side to one particular project/musician, I am also to understand that this is a collaboration of some kind. The thread that runs through these pieces is that they both use field recordings from The Landbo Højskolens Have in Copenhagen and the Görlitzer Park in Berlin and each of them adds sound and instruments to them, rather than processing the field recordings. Or, perhaps, these field recordings have been cut-up or altered, but they are embedded into a bigger piece of music. On top of that, there is the sound of a guitar, mangled and crippled, altered and sound very Oval (later period). On the mid-level, there are some more computer sounds, which I suspect to be alternating guitar sounds. That is on the E.O.M. side whereas Holm (I don’t think I know other work by either of them) keeps it all more in the realm of computer processing, removing the field recordings (well, true, they might be heavily processed) and taking the guitar to another abstract glitch level, but at the same warm and cosy, yet never too ambient. It is all with a fine touch of uneasiness that makes it even better.
Behind Soft Items is one Claus Haxholm and ‘H’ is a patch that you sew on “any jacket, hat or shoe in need” and a download code with the music. In 2019, he toured in Japan and did an improvised session on a roof in Tokyo, which is the material and inspiration for the music on this ‘release’. Previously I only heard a release by Gate Hand, a duo of which Haxholm is a member, so I had not much frame of reference. I even have very little idea as to what Haxholm uses instrument wise, and what’s complicating things, is that he uses the collage as a method of composition and as such the input is wide and even more difficult to guess. There are acoustic sounds, field recordings, a piano, electronics and so on, and throughout they composed some interesting pieces of music. It is not something one easily classifies as one thing or another, be it modern electronics, sound collage, found sound or improvisation. It is, I’d say a bit all of that and more and not easy to put in a box. Noise is certainly not. Haxholm never oversteps his sound and keeps it well under control. There is a fine random approach to this material, and it comes in a well-dosed variation. (FdW)
––– Address: https://sensoriskverden.bandcamp.com/
FRANCISCO LOPEZ – DSB (cassette by Cronica)
The title doesn’t tell us much more than Francisco Lopez’ myriad “Untitled” works do; I’ve no idea what DSB is an acronym for, if it’s even an acronym at all. So I’m really unsure what this album is all about… which I imagine is fine with Lopez. While many of his previous albums have little by way of cover art, this one has an image… is it a blue sky? Or a painting? Or… who knows? Looking for context seems to be beside the point, so I’ll accept “DSB” as pure sound and not attempt to discern more from it than an experience of listening. The first side is a college of domestic machine clanking, airplanes (sourced from… a war movie?), engine roar, the hum of empty hallways, burbling water and gusts of air… each one treated as an isolated episode with sudden jarring edits from one sonic space to the next. “DSB” is not obviously organized with a dramatic though-line, as many other Lopez works are. A noisier section about 3/4 of the way into the first side that pairs breaking glass and irregular thump with what might have been hurricane-force winds could have been the focus of an entire piece. Unfortunately, it cuta off abruptly, shifting focus to an entirely different density… and then again… and again… and I started to wonder if the editing was random. Side two picks up where side one left off, with small someone-shifting-their-weight-in-a-chair movements accompanying a distant cyclic whine. After seven minutes of this, Lopez changes the channel again and we’re listening to a worn copy of “Changez les Blockeurs” on a record player at the bottom of a lake… and incongruous heavy breathing (hey, I like that TNB record also, but… keep it to yourself, okay?)… before more jarring edits that seem unrelated to one another… and we end on a battlefield with a sudden stop. Most Lopez albums are challenging. I expect to not have an easy listen, to have all the pieces spelled out and handed to me. “DSB” is no exception. But when this ride ended, I was left wondering what I just heard. The second time through didn’t make anything more clear. Was there cohesion to the source material that will reveal itself to me after further listens? Or is the episodic nature of the composition significant to a theme of war or machines or… is it purely sound and I should accept it as exactly what I heard and nothing more? Lopez certainly isn’t saying. But where other Lopez albums make a visceral impact without so much as a title or cover art, I feel that “DSB” would benefit from some context. (HS)
––– Address: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/