EMILIANO ROMANELLI – 333 LOOPS (VOLUME 1) (CD by Terziruolo) *
JASON KAHN & TAKAHIRO YAMAMOTO & TAKUJI NAKA – YUGUE (CD by Akuseku) *
JASON KAHN & TIM OLIVE – TWO SUNRISE (CD by 845 Audio) *
JASON KAHN & SCILLIA LORAGE (3″CDR, private) *
SORK – HORSEFLIES FLIES (CD by Kapitan Platte) *
WE STOOD LIKE KINGS – BERLIN 1927 (CD by Kapitan Platte)
ANTJE VOWINCKEL – TERRA PROSODIA (CD by Gruenrekorder) *
PETER KUTIN – BURMESE DAYS (LP by Gruenrekorder)
ÉN – OP. 80530 (CD by Peripheral Conserve) *
ÉN – OP. 80530 REMIXES (LP by Peripheral Conserve)
ART-ERRORIST & ZSOLT SORES – THE WASP BOUTIQUE (2LP/DVD by Peripheral Conserve)
DREKKA – EKKI GERA FIKNIEFNUM (LP by Dais Records)
MASTERS – ACID WITCH MOUNTAIN (2LP by Adaadat)
THE MEMORY BAND WITH BELBURY POLY & GRANTBY – FURTHER NAVIGATIONS (10″ by Static Caravan)
LE SCRAMBLED DEBUTANTE – ART LESSONS (CDR by Attenuation Circuit) *
LYD KUNST ARKIVET (double CDR by Sweet Noise Studios)
STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER STAMPER – ECHOIC (CDR by Runningonair Music) *
THE RIGHT HAND GIVES THE LEFT TAKES AWAY (CDR compilation by Extrapool)
FREDERIC NOGRAY – WURITAGU (3″CDR by Taalem) *
YANNICK FRANCK – THE UTMOST NIGHT (3″CDR by Taalem) *
SUMMONS OF SHINING RUINS – MASAMI SSI, DANGSIN UI HIM E SU EOBS-EOSEO MIAN HAEYO. NANEUN DANGSIN EUL IJ-JI ANHSEUBNIDA. GAMSAHABNIDA (3″CDR by Taalem) *
PSARRA/KARAMANOLAKIS (cassette by Orila/Noise Below)
USKE ORCHESTRA/FYTA (cassette by Noise Below)
INVISIBLE ELEPHANT – SLEEPWALKING (cassette, private)
EMILIANO ROMANELLI – 333 LOOPS (VOLUME 1) (CD by Terziruolo)
There is quite some text for this release, which I copy in full, so you have an idea and I don’t make mistakes… “The system is composed by an archive of 333 pre-recorded sound loops, produced between 2008 and 2011 by a sound synthesis software played in different acoustic environments, and documented mainly with internal microphones of several digital and analog portable recorders. Subsequently, by custom software (2 loop players, 2 EQs, 4 delays, 1 digital room reverb, 4 LFOs), the loops are used as modules in a random process of juxtapositions (A//B) and multiplications (333²), able to generate live 110889 sound events to be diffused in the room via a multichannel sound system. 333 Loops as a possible field of investigation, lasting between 110889 seconds and 110889 years. The Volume 1 is the stereo documentation of the quadraphonic live performance at the medieval cloister of Ex Convento dei Cappuccini, Colli del Tronto, Italy as part of Within 01 festival, on Friday 13th September 2013, 10:45 PM.” This is the first solo record of Emiliano Romanelli, who was once half of Tu’m. I wasn’t sure what to expect here, based on this text. Maybe 333 loops, which seemed rather naive from me, or maybe something very chaotic that would culminate in some random order in something that would last that long. In stead we have three pieces here, ‘000148 Of 110889’, ‘000149 Of 110889’ and ‘000150 of 110889’, which last in total thirty minutes. A very low ambient sound that seems to be very synthetic in nature, and all three pieces seem to flow right into each other. While I was doing some e-mailing this music worked very nice as a backdrop, in a very much Eno-esque state. Not forcing it upon the listener, but rather filing up spaces. It’s surely excellent music and I enjoyed it well – just as I have some ten hours of very quiet Eno music on my ipod – but I must say, at the same time, that this seems to lack originality. If there are so many loops, why do they sound the same, I wondered. But perhaps none such deliberations are what you are looking for in music and you care about a beautiful ambient release: here’s most certainly a very fine example. (FdW)
Address: http://www.terziruolo.com/
JASON KAHN & TAKAHIRO YAMAMOTO & TAKUJI NAKA – YUGUE (CD by Akuseku)
JASON KAHN & TIM OLIVE – TWO SUNRISE (CD by 845 Audio)
JASON KAHN & SCILLIA LORAGE (3″CDR, private)
Sometimes, it seems, we hear a lot from Jason Kahn, and then suddenly nothing for quite some time. I could say, now, he’s back, but maybe this is another temporary short-lived release frenzy (if three releases is a frenzy of course). On the first release, Kahn plays analogue synthesizer, mixing board and radio and he does that in concert with Takahiro Yamamoto (turntable) and Takuji Naka (saxophone, tape, electronic device), on the night of October 2 in 2012. There is a trio track by them, which lasts twenty-two minutes, and the two Japanese musicians also have a piece of twenty minutes. Kahn recorded it, and I think with a pair of microphones rather than taping it from a mixing board. But that procedure makes it also a bit distant and remote. Maybe, as more improvisation releases are recorded this way (a pair of microphones picking sounds in the room, rather than close miking picking up the instruments directly), it’s a matter of personal taste, but it’s not something I seem to like very much. Maybe it’s an aesthetic thing, I was thinking. The music played by this trio is very nice. Very acoustic it seems, thanks due to the way it was recorded, with the electronics playing the second fiddle it seems – sometimes. And sometimes the electronics and saxophone wail about almost in a noise like manner, certainly towards the end of this piece, when everything seems to be coming together. In the duo piece this is more or less extended and another fine balance between the quiet and the (more) loud. Great improvisations.
Ex Nimrod member Tim Olive has been residing in Japan for quite some time now and is part of the improvisation scene in Japan. On the same tour as Kahn recorded with his two Japanese colleagues, he also played (at least) twice with Olive, September 27 in Kyoto and October 6 in Osaka. Here Kahn only has ‘electronics’ to his name and Oliver, ‘pickups and electronics’. The first and third pieces are recorded in the studio in Kyoto, the Osaka pieces in concert. In these four pieces things are much less careful than on the previous CD. While not exactly crossing the border to play all out noise, here we have something that is quite loud, most of the times, with piercing electronics cutting and intercepting each other, bouncing around and metallic objects are being tested for the tonal colours. Like wires suspended from the ceiling and the room as it acoustic resonator; all along somebody else uses and abuses the mixing board and with a pickup find whatever frequencies are hidden inside the machine and making them audible for the listener. At thirty-five minutes this has just the right length for such a noisy excursion. Very nice; it shows us a side of Kahn which we probably don’t see a lot.
I was looking on Discogs for the release by Kahn called ‘Scillia Lorage’, but found out she is a singer. There is absolutely nothing on this package, except their names, the fact that Lorage plays voice and sampler, Kahn plays analogue synth and ‘Zurich 2009′ and 21’14’. No label, no website. While much of the music produced by Jason Kahn is usually very carefully played, this is something else. Not entirely the noise blast you would expect, but it’s certainly noisier than you would expect, and also more straight forward in a strict linear way. The voice is sampled and sounds like a train, especially in the final half these twenty-one minutes, whereas whispering and field recordings are used in the first half. Less noisy than the one with Olive, louder than the other one, but the main difference here is the use of continuous sounds. A trio of distinctly different releases. (FdW)
Address: http://www.akuseku.net/
Address: http://845audio.org
SORK – HORSEFLIES FLIES (CD by Kapitan Platte)
WE STOOD LIKE KINGS – BERLIN 1927 (CD by Kapitan Platte)
Pop-music and Vital Weekly: it’s never going to be easy. Now while I privately enjoy popular music a lot, especially that from my late teens, it’s a private interest and doesn’t make me any expert on the subject. Kapitan Platte has here two quite varying releases. Sork is a trio from Sweden. Pontus Torstensson on drums and samples, Helena Engaras on bass and Magdalena Agren on vocals and trombone. Kapitan Platte says: ‘call it postpunk, call it art-punk, just imagine The Ex and Le Tigre would share the stage’. Now, I do know who The Ex are, and have a vague notion of Le Tigre – as to proof I’m hopelessly out of date – and yes, I can ‘dig’ those (an expression of yet another era, I guess) references when I was playing the eight songs from Sork. It has a great, bouncing, vaguely techno backing, sparkling guitars and bits of vocals spawn about. Oddball instrument as such is the trombone that pops up and adds a fine alien element to the music. Surely a great live band, and one I should see one day in concert, even when it works well at home. There is fine amount of energy sparking off here, which revitalizes the listener and brings your energy level up again. I quite enjoyed this. A fine mixture of punk, electro and improvisation. I would have probably liked this in my late teens too, and maybe was around in some incarnation also, except I didn’t know it. Great CD!
A while ago I played the few CDs I have by Godspeed You Black Emperor and I was thinking that they actually sound pretty much all right after all these years, with that very defined orchestral guitar sound of theirs. Back in the day, when I saw them play an open-air event locally, I joked they were like Electric Light Orchestra without a singer. It is a well-defined sound, I was thinking, when I was playing this CD by We Stood Like Kings. They are a band from Belgium and this CD contains their soundtrack to the silent movie from 1927 by Walter Ruttmann ‘Berlin: Die Sinfonie Der Grossstadt’, which I haven’t seen. We Stood Like Kings is a trio of Judith Hoorens on keyboards and synthesizers, Steven van Isterdael on guitars and Mathieu Waterkeyn on drums, whereas separate mention is for Colin Delloye on bass. I haven’t seen the movie, as said, but I can imagine what it looks like, and no doubt this is a great soundtrack to such a movie. I guess it even stands on it’s own two firm feet, without the movie, but looking at this from a more formal, musical stand point, I think the references to Godspeed are very easy to be made. From the tinkling of a note on a guitar to the rising wall of orchestral bombast and going back to a few sparse notes, with perhaps more emphasis here on the use of keyboards (digital) and piano. That is perhaps less Godspeed and more We Stood Like Kings, but by and large this is dramatic post rock music. Progressive too, and that’s a term that always seem to indicate something that is not very progressive, but very conservative, or a fixed path into well-known musical terrain. Whatever. I enjoyed this while it lasted, and then forgot about it again. (FdW)
Address: http://www.kapitaen-platte.de
ANTJE VOWINCKEL – TERRA PROSODIA (CD by Gruenrekorder)
PETER KUTIN – BURMESE DAYS (LP by Gruenrekorder)
Now that English is the world Esperanto, more and more languages will disappear; there is no ‘need’ for them anymore. Especially from more remote areas there are fewer people speaking local dialects/languages (let’s not go into the differences – you know what I mean). Antje Vowinckel sees an advantage here: if you no longer understand the language, it is possible to enjoy the musical quality of the language, the ‘melodic charm’ as she calls them. She travelled around Europe and recorded people narrating a short story about something personal and she made compositions with that, repeating phrases, sentences and vocalizations. Dialects used are Rumansch, Gutamal, Provencal, Wallis-Deutsch, Gascon and Scottish Gaelic. This comes with a ‘primitive’ musical backing; sometimes it seems an organ of some kind, something, however, I thought it could be samples from the original material. This is one of those things where I think the idea/the concept is quite interesting and the first few pieces are very nice too. There is indeed a nice melodic element to these spoken words, but then by the fourth or fifth piece you get the drift. The repeated words, the additional sound (a bass in the sixth for instance), the non-sensical text told: we now know how it works. Even at only eight pieces, thirty-six minutes, it was a bit long.
And then Gruenrekorder also expands to the world of vinyl with a rather unusual disc. Peter Kutin is a member of Dirac (see Vital Weekly 708 and 729) and had a solo CD (see Vital Weekly 818), which sees ‘all field and studio recordings’ by him, but also with Berndt Thurner on original Burmese metallophones and Dieb13 on additional electronics and turntables. If I understood correctly Kutin is the composer of this work that is partly a mixture of field recordings from Burma with some additional music from the musicians, all ‘arranged and composed by Peter Kutin’. It’s a pretty interesting work; one that works pretty well. The overtones from the metallophone collide nicely with the electronics from Dieb13 and mix well with the insect/bird sounds from the locations. Sometimes, and perhaps that’s the best part, it’s hard to tell whether we are hearing ‘just’ field recordings or perhaps also something else, something ‘extra’. I guess that’s where field recordings and ‘music’ – what’s the difference, I wondered – blend together in a very natural way. ‘Part 1’ seems to be more about the instruments and ‘Part 2’ more about the field recordings – but perhaps I am wrong about this. Maybe that explains why this is on LP, rather than CD: to mark the difference between both sides. Excellent stuff all around! Great, moody music, carefully balancing sound art and music, field recordings and soundscapes. (FdW)
Address: http://www.gruenrekorder.de
ÉN – OP. 80530 (CD by Peripheral Conserve)
ÉN – OP. 80530 REMIXES (LP by Peripheral Conserve)
ART-ERRORIST & ZSOLT SORES – THE WASP BOUTIQUE (2LP/DVD by Peripheral Conserve)
On of the most frequently visited websites – at least five times a day – is for me Imdb.com because whenever I am watching a movie I see an actor and think ‘wasn’t he/she in…’ and so a while ago I was watching a movie and I thought: that’s a familiar face, not as an actor, but as someone I actually met a couple of times. Obviously I’m talking about Toth Pal, from Budapest, who played Massimo, the Italian foley artist in ‘Berberian Sound Studio’, which, surprise number two, is a great movie by Peter Strickland, who, before directing movies, was behind the Sonic Catering Band (music made with the sound of cooking veggie food). Strickland set up this label, Peripheral Conserve, back then (late 90s) and released a bunch of releases and now returns with new releases. Maybe to repay Toth Pal for his acting (and btw: see that movie! It’s a great one if you love sound, sound studios and a great story!) he now releases a new work by him under his én moniker. Pal is not the most active musician and his releases are quite sparse, four in the last twelve years or so. Here is a new work, which lasts just over forty minutes and which is one piece. én is man of electronic music and I have no idea what his instruments are; be it entirely in the digital realm (which I believe) or perhaps a mixture of these with analogue synthesizers. I believe there is nothing else, field recordings or guitars such alike. The music is drone like, ambient of the more darker kind, but never too dark, never too drony. Maybe, so I was thinking but perhaps I was inspired by the somewhat cosmic design of the CD, it also owes to the world of cosmic music, especially beyond the thirty minute mark. Pal divides his work in distinct sections that flow into each other in a peaceful harmonic way. The music is quite full and perhaps not very microsounding, which I believe his earlier works were more alike. Quite dynamic with much attention for the details in the high and low end, this I think is a great work. Very organic, very ambient, yet never an easy pleasing piece, always with a bite. An excellent album, and hopefully Pal can produce more of this soon.
At the same time – is this a proper re-launch of a career I was thinking – Peripheral Conserve also releases a LP with five remixes. I wrote extensively about remixes before and some suggest that I don’t understand them properly (I had a “derogatory concept of a remix (which) is entirely insufficient to even grasp contemporary electronic music”, but I really beg to differ and my valid arguments of the nature of marketing, which I think remixing is all about, were not answered). And perhaps this package proofs that it is in fact marketing. Would you buy something by someone named Toth Pal, of whom you may not have heard? Maybe not, but if you like the remixes (or remixers) such as Andrew Liles, Colin Potter and/or Jonathan Coleclough, you might change your mind, which is totally fine. I love sitting with a bunch of sound material from somebody and have my way with it. But this is a review, and thinking as a consumer of music. Right? Again, too many words have been said about it, distracting from the matter at hand: the actual remixes. Colin Potter doesn’t seem to be taking it any new direction but carves matters a bit deeper, while Liles moves through the work and adds a (silly) piano loop to it, going up and down scales. James Cargill starts out with something really noisy and ends with something quiet, which was very nice. Sculpture, being one Dan Hayhurst, keeps matters on the louder side of things, even a bit distorted whereas Jonathan Coleclough doesn’t seem to expand anything, but does whatever does best. Nice record, I was thinking, but indeed to what end?
The next one is quite a bundle of music! Two LPs and a DVD (and download code) by Art-Errorist and Zsolt Sores. The latter we know from his previous works (see Vital Weekly 741 and 772), and behind Art-Errorist we find Jean-Herve Peron, probably best known as a member of Faust, the legendary German/French group of forty years of experimentation within rock music. I must admit I am not Faust’s biggest fan, even when I value it a lot. In 2011 Peron went to Budapest to play a concert with Sores and Theme (once from the UK, now mainly from Poland), which resulted in a troubled concert (thanks to double booking) and a record of them together (see Vital Weekly 859). But those days also saw Sores and Peron recording together, using a wide array of instruments. Peron on bass, acoustic guitar, trumpet, cavaquinho, psalterion, loops, samples, oil barrel, thermix chainsaw, hammerdrill, effects and Sores overseeing viola, circuit bent toys, home mades, lo-fi synthesizers, crackle box, Korg DS-10, theremin, dictaphone tapes, percussions, sonorous objects, voice and effects – that’s indeed a whole lot for two guys. Their improvisations aren’t easy to categorize – no doubt a good thing – but it’s certainly never traditionally linked to free jazz, free improvisation, noise rock or electronic music. I guess, in a way, it’s a bit of everything. It also seems heavy on the use of effects though. That’s their joint way of working. Especially there is quite an amount of delay on this record. It seems that every bit of voice, viola, electronic bit or thumb on bass gets a delay treatment. That makes the album quite ‘full’ and there is very little room to hold back, turn down and introspection. At the same time it also adds a particular private flavour to this record – it’s indeed their style as it were. Peron recites occasionally something in German, and Sores adds scratches of violin, distorted electronics and the whole thing is pleasantly nice. At times the music very noisy, which is great (because: only at times), sometimes a bit rock like and most of the times very direct, very weird and with a fine naive charm. The DVD is very short, seven minutes, but we get an impression of how they work – opposite each other with their instruments in front of them – and had a fine arty touch. Topped off with a cover by Babs Santini and you could wonder: what more do you want? (FdW)
Address: http://www.soniccatering.com
DREKKA – EKKI GERA FIKNIEFNUM (LP by Dais Records)
Music by Michael Anderson’s project has been reviewed a few times (Vital Weekly 705, 868 and 888 for instance), but it has been around for much longer, since 1986 to be precise. It’s not something that I easily can make my mind up about. On the oldest release I know, ‘Collected Works Volume One’ (Vital Weekly 705) I heard some drone like music, with a bit of vocals. A bit folk noir, shoegazing like, perhaps. On the more recent works it all was a bit more experimental, with electronics, field recordings and a bit noisy. The recordings on this album are from a couple of years ago, 2009-2010, partly recorded on the road in Belgium and Bloomington and in a studio in Reykjavik. That piece was from a 3″CDR in an edition of 20 copies, for his Iceland tour; Iceland is not that big it seems. The piece from Belgium contains the singing of Annelies Monsere. So far the facts. The five pieces are all quite moody and textured, loaded with lots of guitar sounds, electronics and maybe, just maybe bits of field recordings and Monsere’s carefully singing/chanting. There is an interesting psychedelic element to the music, of a sustaining nature. It seems as things go on and on, but it never gets to a point of being boring. One keeps on playing this and hearing new configurations move forward or backward. The drum machine of ‘Tarwestraat 52’ ticking away with a nocturnal hum around it is a great piece. This is all rather informal music with all the ‘mistakes’ carefully left rather that meticulously edited out. This makes this record rather warm and human and an excellent one at that. I know Drekka is in Europe from time to time – next time I should not miss out on it. (FdW)
Address: http://www.daisrecords.com
MASTERS – ACID WITCH MOUNTAIN (2LP by Adaadat)
The album “Acid Witch Mountain” is like a soundtrack for a hot and steamy western-movie or road-movie. Ten tracks will take you to the raw fields where the heat goes on. Sometimes the actors can stand the heat and relax in the sun, other times the sun shines too bright and it is painful for your eyes and skin. Anyhow… the movie doesn’t exist, but references to soundtracks of westerns and to music from the seventies and beginning eighties does remind me to soundtrack albums like “More” of Pink Floyd. The diversity in atmospheres and musical approach creates different scenes in your head. The album is a debut of Masters that was released in 2011 in a very limited edition. Masters consists of Christos Fanaras and M.K. Hauser aka Miklos Kemecsi who are living in London – U.K.. Both members played before in Agaskodo Teliverek. This band played also with bands like Foetus and as support of Siouxsie Sioux. The record is released by Adaadat, an independent record label from London founded in 2003 by Angus Keith and Bjørn Hatleskog. The label releases different styles of music like experimental electronic, breakcore and noise related genres. Anyhow, this album takes back to guitar music with nice licks, riffs and variation in rhythm. Some brass instruments, organ and drums guide the clear guitar tones. Elements of the music of Ennio Morricone in combination with mariachi, post rock and some psychedelic space rock are maybe the best description of the music. The album develops more and more into a psychedelic mood and ends with an epic track in which all elements of the album are passing by. Great album for a hot sunny day with a long sizzling evening. (JKH)
Address: http://www.adaadat.co.uk
THE MEMORY BAND WITH BELBURY POLY & GRANTBY – FURTHER NAVIGATIONS (10″ by Static Caravan)
Sometimes I wish for someone to help Vital Weekly out when it comes to anything that I would call close to pop/rock music – for instance when it came to that Kapitan Platte stuff; sometimes I don’t wish that all – for instance when it comes to the releases on Static Caravan. Now while some of their releases might be a little too folk/rock/pop for me, I always seem to enjoy them, mainly because it breaks the day, the mood, the atmosphere of whatever else I am playing. When Static Caravan releases something electronic, I am more than delighted. It’s always close to the world of pop tunes, and yet it always seem to have it’s own alternative niche. Stuff like The Memory Band, the ‘group’ of Stephen Cracknell (also of the Accidental), here with three new pieces. One piece by themselves, one with Grantby and one with Belbury Poly, who is Jim Jupp of the Ghost Box label. The 10″ starts with the latter, which is an absolute great song. A bit reggae/dub like, with some excellent looped voices, making the whole thing laidback, atmospheric and dub-like. The ‘solo’ piece has a slightly more commanding tune to it, with sampled voices counting – maybe a bit like a military march, but also very gentle. Behind Grantby we find Dan Grigson, who recorded for Mo’wax, before moving to Creation Records and then stopping for some time. Together they fill up the B-side of this lovely record, with an other take of ‘As I Walked Over Salisbury Plain’ (which was also on the previous Memory Band CD, see Vital Weekly 879), which is now rebuild into a lovely trippy piece with a great rhythm, sampled violins and a melancholic piano tune. Excellent songs, topping an excellent record. Perfect pop tone intermission on a grey day. (FdW)
Address: http://www.staticcaravan.org
LE SCRAMBLED DEBUTANTE – ART LESSONS (CDR by Attenuation Circuit)
More music by Le Scrambled Debutante, the impromptu band around Allan Zane, also known as Sir Bear Trapper, along with Sid Redlin, Lorelei Erisis, David Abner, Matthew Amundsun and Kimathi Moore. Recently we heard ‘Devils In Heavy Syrup’ which I quite enjoyed for it’s more krauty, spacey, psychedelic character and which seemed less chopped to pieces then the earlier work, ‘The White Wormwood Wormhole Album’ and it’s perhaps due to the nature of their fleeting interests that they return here to the more collage like techniques. I have no idea what it actually is that they are doing here. If I was told they are all behind a turntable and playing records of whatever kind – Star Trek sounds meeting children’s records – hand speeding them up and down all the time, I’d believe you. If there is some sort of John Cage inspired play at random putting sounds on a multi-track tape, and then mixing them together, I could equally believe you. If this ‘Art Lesson’ were the fifty-minute version of ‘Revolution Number 9’, then this is valid, I’d say; come to think of it, maybe it has something to do with ‘The White Album’ (me, now, confused). But there is a sense of editing I think, as, upon closer inspection, it’s perhaps not as chaotic and in some ways perhaps planned/composed/constructed (damn I think I hear that Beatles thing in here? Am I going insane?), especially towards the end I had this idea. The inspiration from Nurse With Wound is never far away, but then all bit more crude, a bit more lo-fi and even more spontaneous. It took me some time to get into this, but I quite enjoyed it. (FdW)
Address: http://www.attenuationcircuit.de
LYD KUNST ARKIVET (double CDR by Sweet Noise Studios)
In September 2013 the LAK festival took place in Denmark and was organized by MONOblaster. The festival is a festival for Nordisk Lydkunst, what stands for soundart. The compilation gives a wide impression of the Nordic soundart at this time and 35 soundartists presented themselves at this release. Most of the artists are living in Denmark and some do in Norway or Sweden. MONOblaster has the opportunity to promote sound-art in Denmark. They will do this by releasing music and organizing festivals. I think they will do a good job, because this compilation gives varied collection of sound-art. They are pieces of subtle field-recordings, word-art and poetry, annoying ticks and neuro-smashing cracks, sweet electronic lullabies, minimal synthesizer compositions, drony psychedelic sound waves, childish experiments with flutes and toy-instruments, militaristic noise with an old school drilling machine etc. The compilation starts with short tracks and the length of the tracks is growing. A nice concept to compile your compilation and strange enough, it does work very well. The tracks at the first CD are flowing flexible from one to another. The second CD has a slower tempo as the first CD, what makes the album less dynamic. The purity and simplicity were the main ingredients of the first CD. In the second CD is more attention to complex compositions. But honestly this compilation of Nordisk sound-artists is interesting because of the pure approach to sound and to work with sound without freaking out of all possibilities, which are available when you work with sound and effects. (JKH)
Address: http://www.lakfestival.dk/monoblaster.php
STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER STAMPER – ECHOIC (CDR by Runningonair Music)
Here’s someone who calls himself a ‘former teenage metalhead’ who likes musical extremity, but is not your standard noise boy. He is from Newcastle and lives in London where he mainly does sound work, installations and performances exploring acoustic phenomena and in 2012 he released ‘Begin Anywhere’ (see Vital Weekly 820), also on Runningonair Music. Now we have some more information, also on the music itself. Apparently the six pieces here originate from a box of old cassettes, which he still drags around, and now found a place in his set-up, which is ‘a jumble of digital filters and delays suddenly became my laptop’s echoic memory’, with credit to Ulric Neisser, ‘a significant figure in the development of cognitive science, echoic memory, or auditory sensory memory, is part of the short-term memory and refers to the way the brain can take exact copy of what is heard and hold it for very short periods, roughly two to four seconds’. These six pieces are densely layered pieces of sound – probably similar sounds overlaying and intertwining each other and creating hybrid life forms of insectoid sounds. Crawling over each other, we look through a microscope and see so much more. It’s, in other words, the work of ambient and drone, all of the more darker nature. As such Stamper may not offer something that is very new or very innovative, but I must admit I quite enjoyed these works. It was highly atmospheric, even a bit crude and raw (in ‘Out’), dark, greyish and a nice tune for a winter’s evening. My favourites where ‘Sea’ and ‘Absent’, for they seemed to have a slightly more lighter tone. If you like drones, ambient and a bit of shoegazing, then I am sure you will find pleasure in this as well. (FdW)
Address: http://www.runningonair.com
THE RIGHT HAND GIVES THE LEFT TAKES AWAY (CDR compilation by Extrapool)
If you have various volunteer obligations they might overlap and you miss out on something. That happened with the event at Extrapool recently called ‘The Right Hand Gives The Left Takes Away’, which was curated by London based artist Leigh Clarke and which had quite a political point of view to sell. It’s, more or less, about art and high finance, between generosity and greed and that the state forgets that the creative sector is a big earner (in the UK I assume). The evening had print-work, film, performance and a band. On this compilation we find them all and the booklet can be seen as a small art catalogue, which looks great: like social realist art from the Soviet era (by Red Bol) and starts out with an open letter to Michael Gove, in 2011, secretary of state for education, and read by Bob and Roberta Smith, and while interesting, you could have read this in print also and perhaps could have been placed elsewhere on the CDR. The two pieces by Leigh Clarke are quite nice, and funny, especially when he poses a posh rapper in ‘I’m A Mother Fucking Gangster’, even when I couldn’t who exactly he’s taking the piss out of. Then there is a piece of spoken word and organ by boyleANDshaw, which kind of eluded me and a phone conversation on expensive records by John Strutton and Riccardo Carbone, which is nice, since you don’t know if it’s real or fake. It has some nice sampled soundtrack to it. All girl teen punk (under 18!) band Skinny Girl Diet play two pieces which I also enjoyed a lot – see Sork, reviewed elsewhere – and their political message eluded me likewise. The rest of the CDR, fifty-three minutes, is filled up by a loop of ‘Rain Sound Effect’ by Adam Gibbons. I can’t say how long it lasted before repeating itself, but I very much enjoyed this loop; maybe because this seemed the least political inspired, and it worked best a backdrop if you are cleaning the house, or watching the sun gaze over a nice spring day. In pure musical terms this might be a somewhat disappointing release, but as a nice art object (16×16 cm booklet and high quality CDR) with a political subtext this worked very well. (FdW)
Address: <kunst@extrapool.nl>
FREDERIC NOGRAY – WURITAGU (3″CDR by Taalem)
YANNICK FRANCK – THE UTMOST NIGHT (3″CDR by Taalem)
SUMMONS OF SHINING RUINS – MASAMI SSI, DANGSIN UI HIM E SU EOBS-EOSEO MIAN HAEYO. NANEUN DANGSIN EUL IJ-JI ANHSEUBNIDA. GAMSAHABNIDA (3″CDR by Taalem)
Of course everybody – me at least – is wondering what Taalem will do next. When Drone Records released their 99th 7″ single they stopped. With these new releases on Taalem we also reach number 99 – Frederic Nogray does the honours and here we start. We know his music from releases on Kaon and he seems to be someone whose interest lies in the use of field recordings. Here he uses sounds recorded at the north coast of Honduras in May 2012 close to a lake of the same title. This twenty-one minute work is made from various recorded during various times of day and night. I assume these recordings were layered together as it’s all quite full with sound. The lower end of the seashore sounds colliding with the high-end singing of insects makes a particular scary move, I thought, especially if, at one later point, planes or helicopters are part of it. It’s all, in general, a bit louder than is usual, a bit cruder and with the constant pressing force of water sounds something you could easily drown in.
From Belgium we have Yannick Franck, who is also the boss of his own label (Idiosyncratics) but released his music on Silken Tofu, Monochrome Vision and Silentes. He went around the city of Ghent to record music in ‘naturally reverberated locations’ and to that end he uses electronics, drums, analogue synths and vocals. In twenty-four minutes he keeps building his piece, adding and adding layers of sound until it reaches a climax at twenty minutes and then the air is out quickly. It’s not sure if I could detect all of these instruments in here, but surely there is lots and lots of electronics on hand here and towards the end also something that may constitute as ‘drums’. Its all rather dark drone like and certainly also has the bearings of all things a bit noise rock. That was perhaps due to the use of guitar effects to create this somewhat gritty and distorted sound that grinded a bit like guitars. Quite a hermetically closed piece of music. Not to be played in a dark room, I’d say.
And we end this trip with the music of of Shinobu Nemofu, who works as Summons Of Shining Ruins, among various other names. He has had releases on Install, Resting Bell, Analog Path and his own Moufu Rokuon label and here has a crazy long title to offer here and I have no idea what it means – Google translate offers no help. The music is created with an electric guitar and a tape recorder and is a beautifully low humming affair. One of slow, minimal development; it’s there for sure, but Summons Of Shining Ruin works on a slow curve to unfold his story. Or, perhaps, unfold is not the right term; only towards the end things get louder, but that’s in the twenty-third minute only, and we seem to be left with the residual sounds of the guitar and the tape-recorder on repeat with itself. I was reminded of Chihei Hatakeyama’s music in this area, and maybe also of Machinefabriek, but perhaps Summons Of Shining Ruin was a bit darker than usual. Not really a big surprise, but surely a great piece. (FdW)
Address: http://www.taalem.com
PSARRA/KARAMANOLAKIS (cassette by Orila/Noise Below)
USKE ORCHESTRA/FYTA (cassette by Noise Below)
Two tape releases from the rich Greek underworld of experimental music, more new names to add to what we know. On the first we find Afroditi Psarra and Georgios Karamanolakis. The latter’s ‘main interest of his practice consists of collecting sounds and images from hidden urban spaces and post-apocalyptic structures’ and has worked with a whole bunch of people at the more noisy end of the musical spectrum, such as Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro), PS_Stamps back, Roman Pavlov, Dimitris Papadatos (KU, Virilio), Monotonic, Giannis Kotsonis, Manos Plitsis, Giorgos Aksiotis, Savvas Metaxas, Christos Chondropouos, Michalis Adamis. Here he plays EMS synthi E, tapes with chips, gameboy and effects and creates one hell of racket of very chaotic game boy music set to even more chaotic synthesizer sounds. As a manifestation of noise actually quite alright, but for me the other side, by Afroditi Psarra, worked even better. Her piece was improvised with the use “of three handmade embroidered synthesizers with embedded LilyPad Arduino micro-controllers and miscellaneous electronic components, an Electro-Harmonix 60 Seconds Digial Delay pedal and a 4-channel mixer” and uses, apparently, some field recordings. Here too it’s quite noisy, but she keeps things on a tighter leash and results, in the end, in some fierce sine wave like sounds. Nice.
The other tape is also a split release in what is probably the wildest home packaging I have seen in some time: a paper mache thing with paint on it. This tape was released to celebrate the birth of Comet Athena, the daughter of Thalia and Angelos, in case you were wondering; it’s not the first time that actions in Greece on the side of releasing deal with the birth or baptizing of children. On one side we have Uske Orchestra from Belgium with instrumental songs, played on a bunch of keyboards and cheap rhythm machines. It sounds all rather naive and I think that’s the intention of this. Which is perhaps pretty much the same as what can be said of the Greek group Fyta on the other side. The main difference is that Fyta uses vocals in their music and in general is a bit more introspective in their songs. But the same naive approach of sticking a microphone in the air and recording whatever it is they are doing applies here, which, in this case of electronic pop music, is very nice. It adds a very nice garage-rock flavour to the music, even when it has nothing to do with such a thing. A pretty wild release I think. Very raw, yet very much in the world of alternative pop tones. I wonder when the baby will appreciate this! (FdW)
Address: http://www.orila.net
Address: http://noise-below.tumblr.com
INVISIBLE ELEPHANT – SLEEPWALKING (cassette, private)
From Blackpool (UK) hails Invisible Elephant, an one man project dabbling with guitars, vocals, percussion and environmental sounds. He released his debut album in 2010 and was quiet for the last three years. ‘Sleepwalking’ is his first album, and was made in a period when he had ‘disturbed sleep. There were periods where I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake’. He also had the strangest dreams. All of this was used in the creation of these six long pieces. You may expect something that is alike ambient music, making sure the listener falls asleep, but in stead we have something that owes more to the world of folk, dream pop and shoegazing. Invisible Elephant plucks his strings and sings, sometimes has his chorus pedal down a lot to get that specific shoegazing sound and something the bass sound is thunderous loud, such as in the opening ‘Drift’. It reminded me of Third Eye Foundation and AMP(studio) at various times, and no doubt many others from the days I was more into the guitar based obscurities. Invisible Elephant doesn’t has a strong voice in music, pushed away in the mix with the use of effects, but throughout this is all very much the nocturnal humming music you would need. I don’t think it would necessarily mean you’d be sleeping much better after hearing this, and perhaps it’s a bit too much from the world of pop music for me, but I quite enjoyed this. (FdW)
Address: http://invisible-elephant.bandcamp.com