Week 18

DAG ROSENQVIST – TVÅHUNDRA ORD FÖR ENSAMHET (CD by Dronarivm)
FRANCISCO MEIRINO – THE MUTE FORTRESS (CD by Ferns)
JARL – SYNAPSE VARIATION MUSIC (CD by Zoharum)
HEAT SIGNATURE – TRENCH TRAPPED (CD by Input Error)
FLEA APPARITIONS – AMPULLAE OF LORENZINI (CD by Input Error)
PIERCING – KITES OF NEPHYTHYS (CD by Input Error)
ILIA BELORUKOV – NRD DRM TWO 2022-2024 (CD by Crónica)
UBIKUITOUS (CD compilation by Unexplained Sounds Group)
KURT LIEDWART – VOLTA (CD by Ton)
FOURCOLOR – MOKO (CD by Ton)
RAVEN CHACON & PRESENT MUSIC – RAVEN CHACON: VOICELESS MASS (CD by New World Records)
JACQUELINE KERROD/JOE MORRIS – MORPETH CONTEMPORARY 2024 (CD by Relative Pitch Records)
FRED FIRTH/SHELLEY BURGON – THE LIFE AND BEHAVIOR (CD by Relative Pitch Records)
STILLUPPSTEYPA – SCHOKOLINO CHOCO LOCO (LP by Futura Resistenza)
LASZLO UMBREIT, SIRAH FOIGHEL BRUTMANN & EITAN EFRAT – LÀ (double 10″ by Futura Resistenza)
PERRACHE – MT. RUBBLE (cassette by Taping Desk-o-phon)
MATT ATKINS & CHRISTOPHER HILL – CAPILLARIES (cassette by Moonside Tapes)
SAMSUO – SWEET THING (cassette by Moonside Tapes)
PCRV/WAPSTAN (cassette by Brise Cul Records)
VOMIR/WAPSTAN (cassette by Brise Cul Records)

DAG ROSENQVIST – TVÅHUNDRA ORD FÖR ENSAMHET (CD by Dronarivm)

The last time I heard music by Dag Rosenqvist was when I reviewed his ‘Vråen Centrum’ in Vital Weekly 1277. That was a work of ambient music, using synthesisers. The new one, ‘Tvåhundra ord för ensamhet’, which roughly translates to “Two Hundred Words for Solitude”, is also ambient and atmospheric but an entirely different beast. The title is about the myth of the Inuit and their alleged many words for snow, but it’s also about how Sweden”used to be the loneliest country in the world, meaning the country with the most single households in the world”. Maybe that goes for Rosenqvist as well? I don’t know. The primary instrument here is the piano. There are 11 miniatures for piano and very sparse electronics on this album. Each piece is a slow burner, with just a few notes. There’s not a lot of silence between these notes, and everything has a gentle flow. There is a very sparse use of electronics in the background or above the music. These might be from a synthesiser, reverb or other ghostly events, adding colour to the music. A primary colour, greyish, like a rain-soaked day out on the Swedish fields or in their forests, mist over a lake, like singing ghosts. Like his previous album, the music has a very filmic character; I imagine a drama with not much conversation but distilled images of an unfolding, tearful nature. At 34 minutes, this is, perhaps, a short album, but Rosenqvist says everything that needs to be said. Very much in the style of people like Nils Frahm, but very much his personal piano album. (FdW)
––– Address: https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/

FRANCISCO MEIRINO – THE MUTE FORTRESS (CD by Ferns)

With regularity, there are new releases by Switzerland-based composer Francisco Meirino. He’s a musician working with electronic music, loving anything lo-fi and old; tape-recorders, near broken cables, electromagnetic hum, or electrical currents. I imagine him to be the field recordist staying home, working his way around the house, crawling around to find more buzzing wires hidden in the walls. I might be wrong, of course. On his recent album, ‘The Mute Fortress’, there are two pieces, part one and part two, and they last 19:56 and 19:44 minutes; no doubt recorded to be an LP release. In these pieces, Meirino does what he does best: creating a powerful collage of sound events, like the ones I just described. And a collage it is. Meirino builds a piece by breaking it down. Creating intricate cuts, jumping from one event to the next, is something he does best, more so in the first piece than the second. The second seemed more flowing, steadily rocking forward, more single-minded in the use of buzzing electrical sounds, and, ultimately, also the noisier brother of the two. The material seems more diverse in the first part, or maybe it only seemed so. Meirino is not a gentle soul; he likes his music to be dirty and loud, even in quiet moments. Meirino takes quite some time to explore something, loud or quiet, before moving on, but it is something radically different when he does. Ambient music it is not. It’s the kind of noise music that doesn’t deal with a barrage of noises, endless distortion, but with composition, knowing when to pull away, letting things die out, before bursting in another sound. Noise with some compositional consideration, along the lines of Joe Colley and the sadly missed Mika Vainio. It’s solid work, not his most outstanding achievement, and he never disappoints. Meirino’s music is a must listen for anyone tired of ‘true’ noise, wanting to hear something new. (FdW)
––– Address: https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/

JARL – SYNAPSE VARIATION MUSIC (CD by Zoharum)

Like Francisco Meirino, discussed elsewhere, Erik Jarl never disappoints, even when it seems he has more releases than his Swiss compatriot. “The album has a connection to the two previous albums, ‘Neurotransmitters Sphere Music’ and the recent album on Zoharum, ‘Receptor Radiation’. All three albums can be seen as a trilogy since they are similar in theme and sound. In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that allows a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or a target”, so I read, so I have to refer to Vital Weekly 1467 for a review of ‘Receptor Radiation’ and Vital Weekly 1446 for a review of ‘Neurotransmitters Sphere Music’. This time, Jarl offers five pieces of music, one hour of music. There isn’t much news happening here; these albums are connected in sound and idea. There is a strong cosmic undercurrent in the music, which is also very psychedelic, with Jarl connecting all the dots, creating some drone-heavy music, but the kind of drones are in constant motion. No doubt, he uses a bunch of modular synthesisers, never ceases to fiddle the filters, dials and knobs. As before, I am unsure about what this should be doing with my brain, but maybe I am too down-to-earth to notice these things. As said, there isn’t much progress on this CD, so let me quote from my previous review: One can argue a lot of Jarl’s music is very much alike throughout his album, and there isn’t a lot of development. Maybe a few of his albums are enough if you’re looking for that. If you like to take a deep dive, I am sure this new album is as welcome as the previous or next. (FdW)
––– Address: https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/

HEAT SIGNATURE – TRENCH TRAPPED (CD by Input Error)
FLEA APPARITIONS – AMPULLAE OF LORENZINI (CD by Input Error)
PIERCING – KITES OF NEPHYTHYS (CD by Input Error)

Just a month and a half ago, I reviewed some deliciously loud output by the British Input Error Records. And here we have yet a newer batch of stuff. Not only are they all new, but the quality is so high that one of them is already sold out.
We’re starting with Heat Signature and the album “Trench Trapped”. Behind Heat Signature are Brad Griggs and Luke Tandy from Ohio. This CD is everything you dreamt of if you normally dream of loud action-filled sounds that are incomprehensible, uncorrelated, in your face, heavily compressed into packages of edible noise. A sort of wickedness of what Soylent Green would be like if it were made of sound instead of people. Five tracks of which two are around 5 minutes and 3 are around 10 minutes and the result is fucked up. And I write that with the highest regards.
I’ve tried to read up on these guys a bit, and Discogs makes me think. The short description is ‘direct action harsh noise’, and I re-listened to the album after that. The sounds and structures can be best described as a live recording of two guys making noise with so much dynamics … I imagine two highly ADHD guys jumping all over the place and each. Movement is another fragment or layer in the composition. They steal each other’s mics and with the prior agreement that there would be no feedback, but that ain’t the truth. I’ve played with them in ’23 in Leiden at Crude Transmissions, and they were standing behind their gear in total control of what they do. If you think this kind of harsh noise is theatrics with contact mic’s, think again. It’s hard work to control your sound when it is THIS loud … Very well done.
The second one in this batch is Flea Apparitions with “Ampullae Of Lorenzini”, and Flea Apparitions is the project of Pittsburgh multi-media artist Lorne Zeman. Active in visual as well as audio art, and this seems to be his first full-length CD since 2013. So it’s no surprise that this is already sold out from this batch on, Input Error releases. If the whole world waited 12 years for this album …
In seven tracks and 52 minutes, Lorne dives into the swirling madness of Ctenocephalides, and he shares it with the listener. “Dream Deception” has a heavy death ambient feeling and wouldn’t be misplaced if we had found it on a sampler by Slaughter Tapes. “Crickets” is a weird experimental piece. There is a bit of noise and loads of analogue experimentation, but the choice of sounds puzzles me. It’s a mixture between drone/noise and what could be experiments like Phillips Lab. But in this track, you learn how to focus on the delay in the work.
“Halloween” is a track with a sound of unknown origin, but with a significant role for the delay above, though here it’s accompanied by feedback and saturated EQS. Again, an old-school feeling is creeping up, but that’s not a bad thing. “Neighbor’s Transmission” is a lovely, minimal, and short loop, but for me, it’s about these last two tracks with a 30-minute playtime. “Sleep in the Tomb” has dirty vocals and some beautiful pulsating noises to start with, and then … Wow … A few harmonic structures, loads of deep saturated noises, there is so much happening here. A few moments of silence could have indicated the plan to make it into multiple tracks for – for example – one side of a cassette, but it’s all there—fifteen minutes of hell. The final track “End Of The Society” starts with a loop with those words, and a noise scape is built on that. Again, heavily saturated noises and delay take care of a feeling of the time you were listening to the noise for the first time. If the previous track were the first side of the cassette, this would have been the reverse side. But I am more than thrilled to see this on a CD.
The final release of the batch is Piercing with “Kites Of Nephythys”, and yes, I’m saving the best for last. Piercing is Branden Diven, who works in experimental noise/sound collage. He runs the Abhorrent A.D. label amongst others, and “Kites Of Nephythys” is the fifth release under the Piercing moniker. The CD is just under 40 minutes and contains two long tracks. The opening track is hypnotic with layers of micro noises, quite pushed to the front, over loops with mellow industrial structured repetition sounds. When the track is halfway through, another loop becomes the track’s central theme, and I can’t stand it, but I have the feeling I know it from somewhere. It’s beautiful! The created atmosphere is charming, and this is a track alone to put on repeat and mesmerise. But the fact that I can’t grasp my feeble mind on where I know the loop from, or what inspired Brandon to create the loop …
The second track, “Goddess of Betrayal”, opens relatively quiet with an atmosphere that fits the first track. But it doesn’t take too long before the layers of micro noises at the beginning of the first track intertwine with saturated backgrounds, and it all becomes cumbersome. Though not for long. One of the key words that should be considered, which is part of the composition technique Brandon uses, is subtleness. Things don’t have to be loud to make an impact. The promotional text contains the words ‘a palpably surreal or transcendent atmosphere’ to describe these tracks, and I can confirm. (BW)
––– Address: https://input-error.bandcamp.com/

ILIA BELORUKOV – NRD DRM TWO 2022-2024 (CD by Crónica)

Crónica is a Portuguese label with loads of highly experimental or conceptual releases. This one, “NRD DRM TWO 2022-2024” by Russian Ilia Belorukov, is highly conceptual. Because of that, I listened to this one several times because I didn’t feel anything, but I did think a lot. And with the whole thinking versus feeling, I sometimes have a bit of a problem. But did I have that problem this time is what you’re wondering … Well, to make a long story short: It was a matter of volume to get the real beauty of this album out. And I suspect that it is precisely what Ilia tried with this.
The Nord Drum Two is a drum machine from Clavia, and as with all of Clavia’s machines, it’s red. And it has a synthetic way of generating sounds, so no samples form the basics of what you hear. On this album, where NRD DRM TWO refers to this exact machine, Ilia made single-step sequences with which he triggered the machine, and the output was manipulated and recorded. As well as some manipulation afterwards. So no, you will not hear complex drum patterns, and if that is what you are looking for, better skip this album.
The beauty in this album is the sound itself. The interpolation of the waves generated by the synthesis engine, the patterns evolving of the concrete sounds, and the manipulation flow afterwards. The complexity of the minimalism of just sounds. Because, well, if you have a particular sound and repeat it in 120 BPM, do you have a sequence? Or do you have a sound with a fundamental frequency of 120 Hz, but with a waveform so complex that tuning and twisting that waveform generates some kind of rudimentary drones?
That is the quest Ilia Belorukov, who lives and works out of Novi Sad in Serbia, went on between 2022 and 2024. And this CD is the result of said quest. As mentioned before, highly conceptual in its approach and maybe more of an advertisement for the Clavia Drum than an album to listen to and relax. But believe me, when I say that many layers underneath the obvious make this an album worth exploring. Like Ilia did. PS: No rings were harmed or thrown into volcanoes during the quest. (BW)
––– Address: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/

UBIKUITOUS (CD compilation by Unexplained Sounds Group)

Not only is this a sampler, but it’s also a sequel. As a sampler, 14 artists have been asked to deliver a piece of music inspired by Philip K. Dick’s dystopias. Philip K. Dick who probably 99% will know, but for the remaining 1%: Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), Minority Report, Screamers, A Scanner Darkly and The Adjustment Bureau are just a few of the movies you may have seen based on his stories. The term dystopian, concerning maybe sci-fi, is not far away, so the music you’re about to hear should probably be electronic and creepy.
I said it’s also a sequel, because earlier this year, Unexplained Sounds released “The Neuromancers. Music inspired by William Gibson’s universe” in combination with a book containing stories. They already did some things earlier with William Gibson, so the Aural Disorientation, the label is known for (read: uses as tagline) is audio, words and art. And that is a nice thing. Even though there is no book with stories this time, the CD itself, which is just about maxed out on 77 minutes total, has enough creepiness to give you nightmares, and enough harmony and structure to make you want to listen to it whole.
Artists on this album are from all over the world and from – for me – unknown to heroes. The opening track by Mark Hjorthoy is a welcome first indication of what we’re about to receive. Nice swooshing and some analogue sounds in the bass pattern. And directly after that is Adi Newton, who with “Non Psychogenic Ambivalence” delivered the longest track. The composition is close to later Psychophysicist, experimental and lovely in depth. But I’m not gonna go through all the tracks here. Then it wouldn’t be more fun for you to explore this one. Though there are a few tracks that are very much worth mentioning. The opening of Mario Lino Stancati’s “The Battle of the Inertials” is straightforward, and the track is quite descriptive of what a dystopia can be. Tescon Pol might well be my favourite on this album. “Something Wrong” has an alienating atmosphere and is a perfect example of the difference between vocals and voices in music. When does a voice end and become a word or a sound? But also, where is the line between when information becomes a message? Dead Voices on Air Dadu creeps the sh1t out of me with the dissonant layers. If the next instalment of this series is a sampler based on the mind of Aldous Huxley, feel free to mail the primary office. I might have a few uneasy listening tracks for you to include 😉 (BW)
––– Address: https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/

KURT LIEDWART – VOLTA (CD by Ton)
FOURCOLOR – MOKO (CD by Ton)

The last time I was in contact with Kurt Liedwart was about four years ago; he told me he was giving up the Mikroton label, which released many interesting works from the world of electro-acoustic improvisation, many of which I reviewed. His new label would be TON, which would be for “pop and mainstream versions of electronica” and ” ambient, electronica and techno”. After years of not selling CDs, it was time to make money. Imagine my surprise it took four years to release the first two CDs; I don’t know the reason for this lengthy delay. The big question is, of course, do we get some pop, mainstream versions of electronica, ambient, electronica or techno? The first release is by Kurt Liedwart and it sees him “return to his roots in techno and ambient genres he has been passionate about since the early 1990s when he first began crafting music in these styles”. There is not much techno on this release, no beats at all, but eight pieces of ambient music. I know Liedwart worked with modular synthesis in improvised music appearances, and maybe that’s also the case here, but for all I know, he could be using digital instruments. Liedwart uses a lot of words, “recontextualised elements of IDM, ambient, beatless techno, clicks’n’cuts, abstract electronica, and repetitive, icy synth-scapes, alongside minimal sampladelia”, but to me it sounds like ambient music. Solid, fine ambient music, with finely sustaining sound patterns, music designed to be enjoyed and ignored, as Eno once put it. It reminded me of a beatless album by GAS, even the one piece with the tracing of a beat, ‘Sometimes’, or the bleep of ‘Winds’. While nothing new under this particular horizon, this work is most pleasant and relaxing.
I had not heard or thought about FourColor, also known as Keiichi Sugimoto, in a long time. My last review was of the ‘As Pleat’ album on 12K in Vital Weekly 779. That label released more of Fourcolor, and there were also releases on Apestaartje. Looking at Discogs, there haven’t been many releases since that album, three, including this new one. Maybe Sugimoto spends more time with the groups Minamo and Fonica, which he is a part of. Primarily, he is a guitar player, but also uses synthesisers and samplers. The opening track, ‘Stof’, contains the vocals of Moskitoo, “a longtime friend and frequent collaborator”, who adds the kind of voice that makes me reach for the remote control. She returns in two other pieces but adds a simple vocal line, which is still quite ethereal. The previous time I heard Fourcolor might have been 14 years ago, and much music passed these ears, but if I had to draw a map of what Sugimoto does, it would be something along these lines. Spacious music, of heavily processed guitar sounds, but nothing scratchy or clicky, bending and reshaped into gentle ambient tones. Throughout, the sound is quite electronic, and the guitar disappears in the music; I am sure this is intentional. As I lost contact with such labels as 12K and Apestaartje, I have no idea what the current state of this kind of ambient music is. I assumed it would go the more acoustic route, the modern classical, minimalist, with some electronic tracing, and maybe it did, but not Fourcolor. I guess it would be unfair to label this as laptop music, even when I have probably done so in the past. Much like Liedwart’s disc, this is nothing new, but sounds refined. More musical and melodic than Liedwart’s more abstract ambient excursions. The cover lists Moskitoo’s vocals to be on A3, A5 and B4, which suggests there is also a vinyl version, but I don’t know if it exists. (FdW)
––– Address: https://t-o-n.bandcamp.com/album/volta

RAVEN CHACON & PRESENT MUSIC – RAVEN CHACON: VOICELESS MASS (CD by New World Records)

At Holland Festival 2023, a very special ‘concert’ night was dedicated to Diné (Navajo) composer, musician and artist Raven Chacon. Spectacular though the work was, his piece Report – a score for firearm ensemble, which presented shots being fired across the IJ waterway in central Amsterdam – brought together hearing, listening and a strong politcal messaging in the musical material itself and in the means by which the music was performed in the most profound and deeply touching of ways. That evening, amongst other works, Chacon’s composition Whistle Quartet was also performed. A work written to be played on dog whistles and referring to how people become part of a group by learning from a leader, or an elder and learning from listening, through listening.
Chacon simply declares: “I am a listener”.
A listener of his time and bearing in his ears a strong sense for audible history or history made audible, sonified and aurally personified. His is an attention to sound, projected through landscape and on landscape’s scale: vast and complex. With details beyond the immediate. Chacon composes the unheard as much as the heard, the unsaid as much as the said. The history and the story at once, now. His narrative focus is on the untold, the unknown and the absent. His practice ranges between blistering noise, Cage-like experimentation, visual art and chamber music. And site-specific works like Voiceless Mass.
A piece from 2021, Voiceless Mass for pipe organ and large ensemble, was commissioned by the WI Conference of the United Church of Christ, Plymouth Church UCC, and Present Music, and composed specifically for the Nichols Simpson organ at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A space of gathering, a work of ritual, a place of history. A piece in which Chacon addresses critical issues concerning the legacy of the Catholic Church and the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples, notably the residential schools, forced assimilation and abuse of Indigenous youth. And Chacon was eager to evoke this history directly within the walls of the sanctified institution. A mass, a newly formed ritual perhaps, cutting across and through time and space, slicing through the land, the lines of time. And piercing liturgy, empowering the unheard, voiceless, for there are no vocal parts and no audible singing in this mass. The resonance of the cathedral amplifies our listening to the unsaid, unsung, unheard. Or, as Chacon affirms: “the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power.”
Sorrow and inherent danger are creeping into the uncanny long lines projected by Voiceless Mass. There might be a point of convergence of these lineages of tragic, maybe even a proposed site of reconciliation. A work that plays with mass as weight. And mass as the many versus the one. As a silencing force, an act of replacement. Of people, of a people. Then, amplify sound and sound masses (by the massive pipe organ) to make the listener in the nave feel small. At the same time, resonant bodies are summoned by subtle sine waves that take the listening focus away from the mass and massiveness. In performance, the ensemble is also dispersed through the space. Or: displaced. Individuals, individual voices, rather than a group, a many, a people – a mass. A slight recurrence in motif picked up repeatedly, from a thread left earlier, proposes reliving, connecting to history and memory, perhaps agency, even and a refinding of a lost language. And a story retold. Not a burial or a requiem, thus, but a phoenix.
Also on this disc: Biyán for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and percussion reflects on the function of song and singing in Navajo ceremony – a work that invokes nature, bird song, calls through thin air, as if at dawn or dusk. Chattering and full of reflection, Biyán could easily be mistaken for a work by Beatriz Ferreyra or Annea Lockwood. Owl Song is equally non-static, constantly shifting shape and colours, cycling through timbres and speeds, turning heads, taking flight, like seeing in the dark. With laser-like precision, but also deeply organic and naturally moving. Always listening, above anything else. Reminding us to listen. Listen deeper. Listen more. Hear more. (SSK)
––– Address: https://newworldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/raven-chacon-voiceless-mass

JACQUELINE KERROD/JOE MORRIS – MORPETH CONTEMPORARY 2024 (CD by Relative Pitch Records)
FRED FIRTH/SHELLEY BURGON – THE LIFE AND BEHAVIOR (CD by Relative Pitch Records)

Jacqueline Kerrod is a harp player, born in South Africa but living in the US since 1999. She has played with top classical orchestras and well-known chamber orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, Alarm Will Sound, and Metropolis Chamber Ensemble, to name a few. Apart from classical music, she has also played in various musicals and performed with pop artists: Antony & the Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright, for example. She has an ongoing improvised series at Morpeth Contemporary. And this release captures her playing some extended improvisations with Joe Morris. He is a guitar and bass player who has his own record label, wrote an illuminating book on improvisation (Perpetual Frontier / The Properties of Free Music) and has performed in many duo, trio, quartet settings including Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Mat Maneri, Hamid Drake, Barre Philips & Marshall Allen, just to name a few. Three pieces on this release. The first one is the longest: 25 minutes. Jangling Travellers is aptly named, as this is their first encounter with making music. The old Oxford Dictionary states the meaning of to jangle: make or cause to make a ringing metallic sound, typically discordant. (concerning a person’s nerves) set or be set on edge. The last one is spot on for this listener: mindblowing music. All twenty-five minutes of it. Starting nervously, agitated with a flurry of notes in both instruments, things simmer down a bit, in loudness but not in atmosphere or tempo. Mirror Dance does the opposite: from gloomy, slow noises and sustained notes to a more classical setting with the guitar mimicking the harp and single string glissando notes on the harp to a frenzied finale. Coiled has a tad more extreme sound-making techniques: a lot of metallic scratching and low notes in the harp, almost like a bass. Overall, an impressive set proves that two classical string instruments can make excellent music away from the classical idiom. Or better yet, expanding on that classical idiom.
What are the odds? 😊 Another guitar and harp duo. This time it’s Fred Firth and Shelley Burgon. Fred Frith is a founding member of Henry Cow, Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, and Keep the Dog. He’s slightly older than Joe Morris. Shelley Burgon is a harp player, composer and sound artist. She studied with Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and Maryanne Amacher. She played and recorded with Bjork, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Butch Morris (not related to Joe Morris), Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto), Christian Marclay, Joan LaBarbara, Elliott Sharp and Maria Chavez. Two duo recordings with Trevor Dunn were recorded just a few years after these pieces. I’m guessing that Shelley and Jacqueline Kerrod are of roughly the same generation. The pieces on this release are archival, recorded twenty years ago. I’m guessing the time when she studied at Mills College—twelve pieces, with the longest piece clocking in at six minutes. Fred treats the guitar as a percussive instrument in some pieces, most prominently in Shaking Trees. This is adventurous music and more structured than the other one. Ideas are expanded upon and tried for a longer time. And a bit more tonal, or traditional, in some pieces. And therefore a bit more Spouse-friendly, but still far removed from the more mainstream Remy van Kesteren, judging from his recorded output. Anyway, I like this one a lot. A documentation of a teacher and his pupil making music together. It would be nice to hear what they would come up with some twenty years later. (MDS)
––– Address: https://relativepitchrecords.bandcamp.com/

STILLUPPSTEYPA – SCHOKOLINO CHOCO LOCO (LP by Futura Resistenza)

When I reviewed the previous album by the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa, it was after a long time, and I expressed the hope it was a comeback album after what seemed a hiatus of 18 years. That was in Vital Weekly 1138, so seven years passed until ‘Schokolino Choco Loco’. One half of the duo, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, is always busy with new music, solo and with BJ Nilsen, and drawing and performance art. I have no idea what the other one, Helgi Thorsson, does otherwise. The previous record had various guest musicians, but this new one doesn’t (so it seems). In many of his solo works, Sigmarsson goes for the massive drone treatments, something he did with Stilluppsteypa when working with BJ Nilsen (which happened in the intervening 18 years), to make clear the duo does something different, they hark back to the earlier work; much like they did on ‘Beach Jolanda’, the previous record. In the earliest work, they were inspired by cheesy electronic music, plunderphonics and dadaistic soundscaping – say the heirs of Stock, Hausen & Walkman, if anyone remembers them. Even when it’s all instrumental music, it’s quite joyous music, but not as in haha funny, with plundered media voices. It’s swirling organ sounds, like a street organ, laced with rhythmic sounds and samples, some buzzing delay pedals, creating a dreamy, melodic soundscape, some of which reminded me of Evil Madness, the Icelandic supergroup of which both were members. Still, perhaps as a duo, their work is more on the abstract side of music, but there’s an inevitable overlap between the two projects. While indexed as various tracks, it is best enjoyed as a continuous work, a collage-like composition of dadaesque proportions. (FdW)
––– Address: https://futuraresistenza.bandcamp.com

LASZLO UMBREIT, SIRAH FOIGHEL BRUTMANN & EITAN EFRAT – LÀ (double 10″ by Futura Resistenza)

Let’s start with a quote from the information about this release: “Là is an immersive, politically charged sound journey, a lament for the Al Naqab desert in Palestine. A collaboration between Sirah Foighel Brutmann, Eitan Efrat, Laszlo Umbreit, and Ot Lemmens, it combines acoustic instruments with processed electronics and mechanical sounds. The album includes Ensemble, created from recordings of eleven 16mm film projectors, and live sessions by Umbreit and Efrat in For Her, There, and No. It also features an extended text by Rose Higham-Stainton titled Strategies for Survival.” I read the booklet, but honestly, I don’t think I understood much of it. It has to do with the late filmmaker Chantal Akerman and transients and settlers of the Negev-Naqab desert in Israel-Palestine, but also with the current genocide in Gaza, and an installation with films and music. There are more layers of meaning here, but they elude me.
The music is quite lovely as it is, if I am allowed to use that word for such serious matters. The four pieces (three of which are nine minutes, and the last one is six) are spacious and drone-like, but from an acoustic point of view. Maybe stringed instruments mixed with electronics, even if the details aren’t precise. ‘For Her’ contains flute and effects by Efrat and Umbreit plays “NR2X and effects”. Only ‘There’ contains a rhythm, played by Efrat on the wooden temple block and tom, while Umbreit plays “Monomachine and effects”. The four pieces have a rather desolate feeling, which goes with the dessert idea, I guess. ‘Ensemble’ is the most significant piece, in terms of action, with many players, who, I assume, either use their voices to hum or play string instruments. This is also the album’s most contemporary piece, usually not my strong suit, but in combination with the text and the other pieces, something that works well. I doubt if my little review does the music, or rather, the total product, much justice, but hopefully it piqued your curiosity enough to investigate. This is a great record, even if just from a musical point of view. (FdW)
––– Address: https://futuraresistenza.bandcamp.com

PERRACHE – MT. RUBBLE (cassette by Taping Desk-o-phon)

Here’s the fourth release by Joachim Henn, also known as Perrache. I believed I reviewed them all, but I think I am mistaken. I reviewed his second release, an LP called ‘Barriere In Movimento’ (Vital Weekly 1203). He’s also a member of the funnily named Frood Of The Loop. His ‘Mt Rubble’ cassette is named after an artificial mountain in his home town of Stuttgart, created from rubble from the remains of the city being bombed in World War 2. It’s now a momument, and the six pieces are named after events (I think from that war; ‘Ouistreham, terminus (sans issue)’ is a name I know from the movie ‘The Longest Day’. I have no idea what ‘Den Haag – Hilversum’ means in this context). On his previous album, he recorded the music using an unspecified Moog synthesiser and an old Fostex 4-track machine. Maybe that’s something he still does? Whatever it is, I enjoyed the previous results, and so does the new material. There is that vaguely common ground of cosmic music meeting industrial music, evoking images of abandoned industrial lots or former battle grounds. There’s a rhythm aspect, but more a bounce than a rhythm (in ‘Ouistreham, terminus (sans issue)’ for instance). I compared Henn’s music with the grand tradition of German electronic music, Schnitzler and Cluster, the electronic side more than the krautrock/motorik rhythm side, the use of synthesisers but not the keyboards, which one these days calls a modular synth. Perrache erects walls of drones, a bit like Jarl does, but a tad more industrial, meaner, and perhaps more minimalist—an excellent cassette, which could have made a great LP too. This is some solid electronic music, right up my alley! (FdW)
––– Address: https://perrache.bandcamp.com/

MATT ATKINS & CHRISTOPHER HILL – CAPILLARIES (cassette by Moonside Tapes)
SAMSUO – SWEET THING (cassette by Moonside Tapes)

Chris Hill’s name came up once in Vital Weekly (1392) when I reviewed a CDR he recorded with Stephen Barrett for the Minimal Resource Manipulation label. Now, he teams up with the label boss, Matt Atkins, who plays “objects, percussion, contact mics, pedals, tapes” while Hill plays “ukulele, tapes, objects, pedals.” This is a relatively short cassette, about 26 minutes, two tracks per side, and the music has a somewhat improvised feeling, more than some of Atkins’ recent work. Since both musicians are based in London, I assume they met to record these pieces. It’s improvised but not very traditional. I account for all the other stuff with that, the buzzing of electronics, mangled tapes and near feedback, and the plink plonk of metallic percussion and ukulele. Some of the feedback generated by amplifying all instruments via amplifiers adds an organic buzz to the music, an energy one doesn’t have when carefully layering these sorts of events on the computer, and mixing them. Perhaps, this also means there is a bit of hit and miss here, in which some of the music takes too much space, and editing could have been necessary. Still, a lovely release!
I may not have heard of Samsuo before. Moonside Tapes and Bandcamp aren’t generous with information on the covers of their releases. Discogs knows a bit more, saying, “Samsuo is the moniker of Sam Sibbald, the electronic/experimental producer hailing from Cambridge, UK” and has releases on Whitelabrecs, Panurus Productions, Elm Records, and Healing Sound Propagandist. The music is at the deep end of ambient. Eight pieces, close to an hour of music, of massive droning, generated by sources unknown, but I think this is either synthesisers at work or the digital versions of synths. In some ways, the music reminds me of Celer. There is a similar slowness in development, and there’s no standstill. Movement is slow but constant throughout these pieces. They differ in length, from four to almost 12 minutes, which differs from much of Celer’s recent output. I am also considering slowing down old reel-to-reel music as part of Samsuo’s shtick. In ‘Let It Break’, there seems to be some crackle, which indicates such a thing, which also reminded me of GAS, but with a lot more variation throughout these eight minutes. The processes behind the music creating remain a mystery to me, but I love the results very much. It’s right there with the best ambient drone, lo-fi sound wrangler. (FdW)
––– Address: https://moonsidetapes.bandcamp.com/

PCRV/WAPSTAN (cassette by Brise Cul Records)
VOMIR/WAPSTAN (cassette by Brise Cul Records)

In Vital Weekly 1448, I reviewed a cassette by Martin Sasseville’s project Wapstan, a return after a long silence. He took some tapes recorded around 2010-2011 and created new pieces of harsh noise music. These two new split tapes contain new recordings by Wapstaan on one side and new music by friends on the other. First, there’s PCRV, the musical project of Matt Taggart, a long-term friend of Sasseville, and they shared stages but not releases. I first heard his music when I reviewed his ‘Big Sky’ CD (Vital Weekly 511), a work I described as “in the best Merzbowian tradition”. In recent years, I heard more of his work as Luer than as PCRV. His music is deafening, but also chaotic; not so much in ‘Data Corruption’, which is more a block of noise, slowly unravelling. In the other pieces, there is more chaos, feedback abuse and such, ending with a deep howl of quieter proportions in ‘Forgotten Reality’. The two Wapstan pieces were recorded in the rehearsal space of the rock group En Fer, and using amplifiers and prerecorded tapes, synths, metal, and pedal work, this is more uncontrolled, ear-splitting sonic work. Both sides work very well as complementary pieces of music.
Next level (creating music is not a competition) is by one of the inventors of the harsh noise wall genre, Vomir. “No ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse” is a great manifesto. There are more than 300 releases to his name, and I heard a handful (many of his previous releases were reviewed by the retired Jliat). I admit two things: I do not need to hear all his releases, but I enjoy the release when I do listen to them. Or maybe I enjoy the concept more than the result? Or perhaps I like the idea of doing what seems easy, noise music, and getting away with it? The word concept also has the word con in it. These 20 minutes are classic Vomir, but I assume all Vomir releases are classic Vomir. Heard one, heard all, so let’s hear some more. Wapstan’s piece is also called ‘untitled’, which uses the recordings of a snowstorm, played over some amplifiers, overdubbed with some synths. I assume this is against the rules of harsh noise wall music, with that explanation and such, but there is also variation in the piece. But there is enough minimalism as well, so Vomir can be assured. In pure musical terms, this is the more musical side of the two, depending on the definitions of music, but I found this also the better Wapstan piece, than the two on the other cassette. (FdW)
––– Address: https://wapstan.bandcamp.com/