Week 25

HET ZWEET – DEMO (CD by Staalplaat)
JEAN-CLAUDE ELOY – FAISCEAUX-DIFFRACTIONS/MACLES/BOUCLE ET SEQUENCE (CD by Hors Territores)
JEAN-CLAUDE ELOY – REMINISCENCES (4CD by Hors Territores)
SWANIKA – RENOISED FROM JAPAN (CD by Benevolent Pain / Pflichtkauf)
PATRIZIA OLIVA/FRANCESCO COSTA/ STEFANO GIUST – CROMOSOMA (CD by Setola di Maiale)
KLANG! – SCARTO (CD by Setola di Maiale)
EUGENE CHADBOURNE & JAIR-RÔHM PARKER WELLS – FED UP WITH BASS (2CD by Public Eyesore)
RON HEGLIN & TOM DJLL – DUOS FOR VOICE AND RUNGLERS (CD by Public Eyesore)
HALLWAY FIVE – BLACK PITS (cassette by Eh?)
GEORG ZICHY & REINHOLD FRIEDL – VLEISCH (CDR by Opal Tapes)
AUDIORCIST – AND THE FIRE SAID TO ME (CDR by Benevolent Pain)
FRAGORE PER QUATTUOR II (CDR compilation by Benevolent Pain)
ASSFALT – EXITSTRATEGIE (cassette / CDR by Benevolent Pain)
MELAPHOBIA & OCCUPIED HEAD – PANTA RHEI, SOME ANACHROMISMS (CDR by Aphelion Records)
7697 MILES – KECHU (cassette by Kinetik Records)
MÅLGRUPP – SORL (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
LIZ MEREDITH – FORTH (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
SUBUBURBANABUSE – PHUCH (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
SUNPLEXUS – SENTENCE DE MORT POUR HAUTE TRAHISON (cassette by Fissile)
H. FLORA/ALEXEI BORISOV & VYACHESLAV ISMAGILOV (split cassette by Attenuation Circuit/Grubenwehr Freiburg)

HET ZWEET – DEMO (CD by Staalplaat)

More by Het Zweet is always good. It’s great to see Staalplaat cares about the musical legacy of Marien van Oers, the man behind Het Zweet, who passed away in 2013. Having already released a double LP (Vital Weekly 1343), focusing on his last works as Het Zweet (which he ended in 1988; the 2LP got re-issued by Klang Gallerie), there were four re-issues of cassette releases (Vital Weekly 1448), originally by Van Oers and Staalplaat, when they were called Staaltape and had their HQ in Amsterdam. This new CD is not necessarily a straightforward demo, unearthed from some archive, but a collection of early pieces, some intended as a demo. Included are two pieces Van Oers submitted to Willem de Ridder’s radio show Radiola Improvisatie Salon (see also Vital Weekly 1479 for an LP document of that show), which includes the most curious, non-Het Zweet-sounding ‘Gloria’. Here, Van Oers also uses loops, but not of percussion, but from a film dialogue—an oddball in his catalogue. There are five pieces from an ‘Unused Demo’, one live recording, from Bukbuk, Heiloo (the same night THU20 played their first ever gig, if I’m not mistaken) and various other pieces, including a collaborative piece with Seisei Jack. I’d never heard of him, nor knew Van Oers did this sort of thing. Seisei Jack also worked as The Joke Project in the 1980s. He released a ‘music by mail’ project in 1984, with one track by him and Het Zweet, which turns out to be also a slightly different track with more open-ended percussion and less loop-based and with the additional vocals, a fine diversification. The cover doesn’t provide us with recording dates, but they are relatively early pieces, with an already fully formed sound approach that he was known for. Het Zweet plays very rhythmical music, a combination of tape loops and live drumming, or with Van Oers playing wind instruments and chanting along. The music is an excellent mixture of that industrial, metallic approach (think Z’EV, Test Dept and Neubauten), but also has a great organic approach, very tribal and hypnotic. This works very well, especially in the longer pieces, as the music needs time to work on its trance-inducing hypnosis fully. It’s mechanical, at times, but it feels very organic. And it also sounds very 1980s, but in this excellent restored and mastered version, it brings out the most minor details and makes the music even more powerful. (FdW)
––– Address: https://hetzweet.bandcamp.com/

JEAN-CLAUDE ELOY – FAISCEAUX-DIFFRACTIONS/MACLES/BOUCLE ET SEQUENCE (CD by Hors Territores)
JEAN-CLAUDE ELOY – REMINISCENCES (4CD by Hors Territores)

Here are two releases by French composer Jean-Claude Eloy. The first disc contains older orchestral works from 1966, 1968, and 1970. Eloy is 87 and releases works from his past on his Hors Territores label. For Vital Weekly, not all of his works are interesting, and some are beyond what we know and can comprehend. As such are the three works we find on the first disc. These are for small orchestras, with some less traditional instruments such as a Hammond organ, electric guitars, a cymbalum and a solo Zarb. It all sounds quite interesting, but it all eludes me simultaneously. I lack he vocabulary to discuss this.
Luckily, there’s a 4CD set, with an electro-acoustic work from 2017-2019, ‘Reminiscences’, a collection of four pieces, for which he uses sound elements of a previous composition, ‘Yo-In’. Eloy recycles the electro-acoustic parts from that piece (recorded in 1979/80, in the Netherlands), and he uses samples and recordings of percussion instruments by Sumire Yoshihara (in 1979) and Michael Ranta and his collection of Asian percussion instruments, recorded in 1980. Each of these CDs contains a piece of music, 70 to 80 minutes each, and I played these in their entirety last Sunday, following hearing each disc on various days and returning to them once I thought about the review. Now, this is more like it. Eloy takes the listener on a wild ride. From thick masses of processed sounds, intense and drone-like, from relatively loud and present, to tranquil and disappearing, from sparse percussion sounds, bells, drums and such, to what seems like field recordings, but may very well be different kinds of electronics. This work is best enjoyed in one listening session, even when Eloy describes this in the booklet as a ‘television series of four episodes’. If so, then binge-listen to this series. It’s difficult to remember everything you hear on this trip, especially if you listen to one thing after another. The four parts have titles, reflecting a particular state of mind, and that’s reflected in the music. There’s, i this order, ‘Incantation’, ‘Confrontation’, ‘Contemplation’ and ‘Oppression-Liberation’. The first is a radically different piece from the last, with little room for anything tranquil. But with something quiet followed by something louder, then calm and finally louder again, this makes much sense and brings on some excellent pacing here, long-form spacing, but time becomes relative once you drown in Eloy’s sound world. (FdW)
––– Address: https://www.hors-territoires.com/

SWANIKA – RENOISED FROM JAPAN (CD by Benevolent Pain / Pflichtkauf)

In December 2024, I wrote my first reviews about a label from Aachen, Germany, called Benevolent Pain. In March, I wrote about the same label again, and now, exactly three months later, it’s time again to give them some credit. A new batch of releases was dumped on me, and I enjoy listening to them so much that I almost forgot to write about them. To prevent one massive piece of text, I’ll review them separately, as they all have their own story.
The first one is a pressed CD by Aachener heroes Swanika. Thomas Hein and Sebastian Schweren are the daddies of Swana and Anika in everyday life. The concatenation of their names led to the project they knew they had to do. “Renoised from Japan” is the third full album they are releasing and even before I heard this one, I was already a fan. The first two albums are from 2010 and ’12 titles’, ‘Hotel’ and ‘Volkhoven’. Tracks on these albums play a central role in the “Renoised” album. Ten Japanese artists were asked to remix, manipulate, or ‘do something’ with the Swanika tracks. An experiment to see how the approach of the Japanese noise scene was towards, in this case, Swanika’s music. And there is the interesting thing: yes, Japan isn’t Europe, but what does it mean soundwise?
The ten artists that were addressed, I will not introduce individually. I mean, who hasn’t heard of Noiseconcrete x 3CHI5, Government Alpha, Gutenberg, Shikaku, GC, Tomohiko Sagae, Linekraft, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Contagious Orgasm and Shinkiro? And each of those artists sounds different, yet the atmosphere of the whole album is very consistent. And that is for me remarkable. The quality of the source material must be – at least part – of the reason why. But the weird part is that it’s the source material of two different albums (and a sampler track), yet it still sounds massively coherent. And of course, the noise approach of Hiroshi Hasegawa is entirely different and way louder than the ambient approach of Shinkiro. But it all fits!
And the cherry on top is the choice of artwork. Like the other Swanika albums, this is a monochrome (silver) print on black cardboard. The choice for ‘Karaoke Torii’ is a sound sculpture by Benoît Maubrey from 2016. I don’t know if it’s still active. Still, it’s a collection of speakers in the shape of a Torii, which is ‘a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred, and a spot where spirits are welcomed and thought to travel through. (wiki)’ Only Maubrey’s torii is equipped with a Bluetooth receiver so you could play your music and a microphone in case you want to karaoke. I had never heard of this artist before, but something as simple as using a picture on a CD cover makes you want to explore. Now it’s your turn to explore Swanika! (BW)
––– Address: https://itdrones.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://swanika.bandcamp.com/

PATRIZIA OLIVA/FRANCESCO COSTA/ STEFANO GIUST – CROMOSOMA (CD by Setola di Maiale)

It’s been a while since I got a release from Italian label Setola Di Maiale on my desk for reviewing. Cromosoma is the title of a long-form piece made by three Italian improvisers. Patrizia Oliva is a singer, musician and visual artist. She has made many covers for releases on Setola Di Maiale. The founder of the label is Stefano Giust. Patrizia and Stefano form a long-standing duo named Camusi. Both are very active in the Italian impro-scene and beyond: Oliva played bass in all-female punk band Allun and made music under the name Madame P. Francesco Costa is a new name for me, and I can’t find much information about him. Nevertheless, he can make interesting and intriguing music by hearing this. Here, we have thirty minutes of delicate, sparse music built with various building blocks. First off, we have the instruments: drums [batteria], cymbal [piatti selezionati], gong [wind gong], glockenspiel [glockenspiel pentatonico], kalimba, wood block [wooden blocks], voice [voce] & objects played by Stefano Giust. Melodica [melodica soprano], jew’s Harp, tape [tape recorder], instruments [piccoli strumenti] & objects [oggetti] played by Patrizia Oliva. Trumpet [tromba], bells [campane da pascolo], clarinet [clarinetto con tubo in silicone/clarinet with a silicone tube], guitalele (small acoustic guitar, smaller than a guitar and bigger than a ukulele), synth [sintetizzatore monotron], percussion [percussione in legno] & objects [oggetti] played by Francesco Costa. Sparse percussive sounds, longer melodic lines on several wind instruments, but not all at once, with the opposite of dense music, not minimal in the usual sense of repetitive, but sparse with a very nice flow in the stereo field at some points. This music is best heard with headphones or in a quiet environment. I enjoyed this one very much. It’s a refreshing take on improvised music, more in line with a composer like Morton Feldman or John Cage. There’s no guessing what comes next. You could also say that the piece consists of ever-evolving vignettes with definitive distinctions between the vignettes. The main building blocks of music are rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, dynamics, texture, and form. In the thirty minutes, we hear a creative use of all these building blocks. I have this one on heavy rotation, and I can recommend this one wholeheartedly. (MDS)
––– Address: https://www.setoladimaiale.net/

KLANG! – SCARTO (CD by Setola di Maiale)

Another new release on Setola Di Maiale. Klang! Is the trio of Stefano Giust (drums and cymbals), Andrea Massaria (electric guitar, effects (fx pedalboard)) and Alessandro Seravalle on electronics. The music was recorded live in concert during the Space Music – Musica Concreta Festival in the gardens of the Sartorio Museum in Trieste, on July 10 2024. And space music it is. This sounds like an Italian incarnation of the Projekcts, several spin-offs of King Crimson, and well worth a listen. Just like this performance here. There’s never a dull moment here. Starting with a frenetic guitar solo and maybe processed by the electronic wizardry of Seravalle, the music soon gets more sparse and delicate, but always with an inherent tension. It’s 45 minutes of mindblowing music that fly by. During that time, the three musicians listen intently to each other and create exquisite sonic tapestries. This should be listened to in a quiet environment or with headphones (or both). It’s engaging music with many details that warrant repeated listening sessions. And as always, this music benefits from expert mixing and mastering. And that’s the case here. All details can be heard in detail. This is also highly recommended. (MDS)
––– Address: https://www.setoladimaiale.net/

EUGENE CHADBOURNE & JAIR-RÔHM PARKER WELLS – FED UP WITH BASS (2CD by Public Eyesore)
RON HEGLIN & TOM DJLL – DUOS FOR VOICE AND RUNGLERS (CD by Public Eyesore)
HALLWAY FIVE – BLACK PITS (cassette by Eh?)

In a different life, I ran into Eugene Chadbourne many times. He dropped cassettes and CDRs to sell in our store, we drank coffee, and then he was off to the coffeeshop. This was in Amsterdam, a lifetime ago. Before that, I saw him play a rake during a Sunday afternoon concert at a student club, and, along with John Rose, he came to my illegal radio show to derail the program, spinning multiple records, doing funny voices and all that. All of this to say, I have heard very little of his output. Here he works with Jair-Rôhm Parker Wells, of whom I had not heard before, and who plays acoustic upright bass, NS Design electric basses & bows, synthesis, modular processing, sound design, while Eugene Chadbourne is on acoustic and electric guitars and personal effects. There is one track with John Sinclair with voice & poetry. This double CD has 33 tracks, spanning two hours and 35 minutes of music. Spoiler alert: way too much for me. Whatever the electronic part is, there isn’t much to be heard, as this remains a duet of two improvisers on guitars and basses. It all seems to be one continuous track, cut into 33 bits. Perhaps there are several sessions. As much as I enjoyed the first 45 minutes, as there is some fine interaction between these two players, I had had enough by then and lost interest. I know one doesn’t need to play CDs in their entirety, but it’s a habit for me to do so. I don’t know if this ‘let’s release it all’ works to the benefit of the music or not. I think some kind of selection is better.
The next release is a single CD, nine tracks, close to 40 minutes of music by Ron Heglin (voice) and
Tom Djll (Original Rob Hordijk Blippo Box, Meg Qi Wing Pinger, Benjolin). Looking at the title of the CD, I take it that Djil plays the runglers, a word I had not heard before. This is a disc of voice improvisations and electronics, and it’s not some (alternative) pop music, but sound poetry. For many years, I tried and tried, but sound poetry remains one of those things that’s not my thing, and, in general, voice improvisations (what’s the difference?) are things I find rigid to engage with. The blips (or is that ‘blippo’s?) and blops of the modular set-up are in tune with the voice approach here, jumping around, chaotically moving around, following and contrasting the voice, and such a combination that works very well. As with many things from the improvised music world, I can imagine this works well in a concert situation. I witnessed quite a few concerts by Jaap Blonk, and he’s quite the expressive performer, and it’s that sound poetry in action I quite enjoyed.. I don’t know if Ron Heglin is along those lines; his performance is not as expressive, but relatively civilised, and the modular is what takes this into something extreme, while keeping it well under control. This is not noise music, but rather something more of a classic electronic approach.
The final new release is on Public Eyesore’s cassette imprint, EH? and is by Hallway Five, which, surprisingly, is not a quintet but a trio of Sequoyah, Jacob, and John. Jacob is Jacob DeRaadt, who is also behind Sterile Garden. I believe the group no longer exists. The recordings were made in 2017, in a warehouse in Portland, Maine. No instruments are mentioned, but there seems to be some kind of electronics, very hard to define what kind, and wind instruments. The music veers to the noisy end, but it never becomes harsh or all too distorted. The music has a free aspect, particularly the saxophone, but it’s hidden in the cavernous space in which it was recorded. The two sides seem to have individual pieces, stuck together into two lengthy compositions, which makes this cassette quite varied; variations on a theme, as the approach remains the same, but they keep finding different approaches. At thirty minutes, this is also the right length. If I remember their music well enough, I am reminded of the Japanese noise act Dislocation. This is one coming closest to my taste in music from these three releases, and something I’d likely return to. (FdW)
––– Address: https://publiceyesore.bandcamp.com/

GEORG ZICHY & REINHOLD FRIEDL – VLEISCH (CDR by Opal Tapes)

Let’s assume Reinhold Friedl is a name you should know from reading these pages. He’s behind the Zeitkratzer ensemble, an extraordinary piano player, composer, and improviser. Georg Zichy, on the other hand, might not be a household name. He is “a sound artist, improviser and (de)composer based in Vienna and Munich.” His background is in philosophy and experimental music, “exploring the possibilities of a sound phenomenology based on the methods of Pierre Schaeffer and Edmund Husserl”. His instruments are the guitar and scrap metal, with a penchant for distortion, disintegration and feedback. ‘Vleisch’ means ‘meat’ or ‘flesh’, which English version is the title of the longest piece, whereas the other two are in Swedish (I think) and Dutch. I haven’t heard all of Friedl’s work, but I am convinced there aren’t many releases in which he goes so noisy. ‘Flesh’ is the best example, in which the piano almost disappears, and Zichy takes over. Maybe Zichy picks up some Friedl piano playing and transforms that on the spot, true Merzbow-style here? The other two pieces are more equal, with electronics and piano being heard, even when Friedl’s approach is far from conventional. The inside of the piano is very well-explored, mainly in a rhythmic way, very much like cluster-like, resulting in dark clouds of tonal mass. Occasionally, Friedl is on the keys, jumping straight out of the melee, while Zichy keeps scratching and scraping the strings. At 61 minutes, not the easiest release available, and with the current heat, I’m sweating while listening and not doing anything else. There is an excellent consistency in approaches here, going from loud to noise and all-out distortion and chaos – improvisation meets electro-acoustic meets noise. (FdW)
––– Address: https://opaltapes.bandcamp.com/

AUDIORCIST – AND THE FIRE SAID TO ME (CDR by Benevolent Pain)

Krister Bergman has been active for a long time. It started in the first decade of this century, and many releases under various names have already seen the light of day. These projects include Demons That Drove, Leg Ryan, Positive Adjustments, Secondstroke, Step Further Away, The 36th Movement, V.O.E.R., Audiorcist, and a collaboration with Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro / C.C.C.C.) called Pulse Detonations. And I can only say I never heard of them except for a few tracks on a sampler. But those tracks were under his Positive Adjustments moniker, and believe me, there’s no comparison between those two. It’s all new territory from here on.
“And The Fire Said To Me” is a six-track, 34-minute release with, according to the info, the cursed recordings from the long-lost Mojave Desert tapes. Never released before, and they seem to be two different planned tapes. There is a difference in the style between the two halves of the release. ‘Tape 1’ is more open and accessible than the other. But rest assured, open and accessible only means that the first tracks have a bit more of a Power Electronics feel, while the second part is better labelled as harsh noise with vocals. So I’ll try to dive into those two halves a bit.
“Humanity On Repeat”, “And All You Can Do Is Pray” and “Great Halls Of Fire” are the first part and with the opening track, it’s already audible that you’re in for a treat. A heavy looped bass sample with a dead industrial voice, sparse rhythmic structures, and atmospheric sounds … In the ‘Pray’ track, a rhythmic structure forms the track’s base, and the vocals have only gotten more disturbed. The third and final ‘Halls’ track is the noisiest of these three, yet the composition has a lot of open space. It’s pretty erratic at moments, but it only takes the ears off any possible expectation you could have as a listener.
The second tape has the tracks “Allt Ger Vika”, “Common Sense” and “Believe In Nothing” are, as said, way harsher noise compositions with vocals. Compared with the first half, the voice is processed much darker, as if an octaver or pitch shifter signal has been added. As we heard in the first part, the ‘eeriness’ of Death Industrial/death ambient vocals has been eradicated. “Common Sense” is my personal favourite of this release. I don’t know why the only words that come to mind are relentless and unforgiving—pure energy. And finally, “Believe In Nothing” may start as a drone, but you’re proven wrong as it develops.
This is an excellent first encounter with a new name in the noise scene. (BW)
––– Address: https://itdrones.bandcamp.com/

FRAGORE PER QUATTUOR II (CDR compilation by Benevolent Pain)

And here we have the second instalment of the ongoing Aachener Benevolent Pain label project. “Fragore per quattuor” or a ‘Crash for four’ is a series where four artists get around 15 minutes each to fill a CD, and in March I reviewed the first one with Positive Adjustments, Persons Unknown, Praying For Oblivion and Necroviolence. So yeah, that first one was quite heavy, but on this one we are presented with Grodock, D.K.E., K2 (!!!) and Carsten Vollmer.
The release opens with almost 19 minutes of Grodock. “Isolationsschlaf” starts with beautifully ambient drones of, amongst others, slightly detuned oscillators dancing in minimal patterns. After a while, noise gets added to the composition, and it slowly but surely, with a transition of feedback structures, evolves into a nightmare. Not a normal one, but one you wake up from, and you are trying to go back to sleep because you want to know how it ends.
The Dunning Kruger Effect, which is, as said in December of last year, a project of Sebastian Schweren, who people might know of, config.sys, Contaminant or Swanika. Yes, the same Swanika I wrote about earlier in this Vital. D.K.E. cut their time into two tracks. “Irgendwer über Irgendwas” has an ambientish approach with voices so messed up that it’s hard to pinpoint the subject, the origin … Which fits the title perfectly. “Die Fische, sie leuchten” starts as an ambient drone but gets noisier as the track evolves; A collision between the beauty of nature and the dangers of nuclear waste.
Third on the CD is another long one. Kimihide Kusafuka, a.k.a. K2, presents “Lego Pri Kontraurimedoj En Kazo De Malfacilajoj En La Nutraja Provizo,” which translates, according to Google, to ‘A Guide to Countermeasures in the Event of Food Supply Problems’. Note of writer: I do not know what he means by this. Fifteen minutes of modular noise, and me being me, I loved it. Noise without distortion, but where sounds generate the noise. Pure sounds and their beauty in their natural habitat.
The CDR closes with Carsten Vollmer and “Die Speisung van der Fünftausend”, the exact title of the 1979 CRASS masterpiece. I sincerely have no clue in what way both are connected. Maybe Carsten makes use of samples or parts of the original, maybe it’s a hint towards the problems with food distribution in certain places in the world these days (which might be a reference in the K2 track too now I think of it) but that might very well be my personal wish the message would be. Saturated noises of unknown origin looped into a massive epos. Maybe not with as much impact as CRASS back in 1979, but it’s a great track. Up to #3 (BW)
––– Address: https://itdrones.bandcamp.com/

ASSFALT – EXITSTRATEGIE (cassette / CDR by Benevolent Pain)

At first I was puzzled by this, but after listening a few times I think I started to get it. It’s a short release, only 15 minutes or so, packed in an oversized DVD case, and that’s where the tension starts. It’s released on Benevolent Pain, which until recently I found only noise and noise-related sounds, and that’s the second part. Tagged with EBM oldschool electronic EBM EBM harsh and electropunk on the BandCamp page, this release holds five tracks, all short catchy songs where party and society critical thinking are leading. It’s the message above the track: function over form.
Titles like “Blumenkübel Aus Beton,” “Maschinen,” and “Schützenbrüder” will say enough for our German friends on the lyrics part. ‘Machines operate machines’, machines run exact, machines program machines, and machines optimise machines. It’s fun and makes you think, though the depth of thinking is kept on the surface. With that, I mean it’s not deep philosophical issues, but hey, who knows? Maybe it’s too deep for the current generation of the target audience.
Musically, it’s all over the place, and that’s where and why I like it. Partially, the music is electro / EBM driven—like the “Machinen” track—but another track can have downright punk rock patterns in the drum computer (“Gummijesus”), which is a ‘from the book’ example of what I think electropunk is.
So yeah, I played this one with a big smile on my face, and if you want to smile again, you might want to try it out too. (BW)
––– Address: https://itdrones.bandcamp.com/

MELAPHOBIA & OCCUPIED HEAD – PANTA RHEI, SOME ANACHROMISMS (CDR by Aphelion Records)
7697 MILES – KECHU (cassette by Kinetik Records)

Two times music by Dieter Mauson, both collaborations, and for both, continuing projects. From Melaphobia (from Greece) and Occupied Head (Mauson’s nom de plume), I reviewed a previous CDR (Vital Weekly 1426), which wasn’t their first work together. Much like the last release, the music here isn’t easily defined. Sure, there’s undoubtedly a firm dose of ambient music in these pieces, created by washes of synthesisers, slow sequences, but also a string of other sounds, spoken words, for instance, which in the first track reminded me of an early Chris & Cosey compilation contribution, percussive bits but never forming massive rhythms. But the music also has something of organisation, making these songs rather than pieces, if you understand. It’s both abstract in its execution and working around fixed themes and repetitions. Again, there’s a mixture of longer and shorter pieces, which I favoured the longer ones last time, having more time to explore. This time I don’t favour one or the other, and see this more as a continuous trip, all 46 minutes, going from one quiet place to a less quiet one, with a rhythm popping around the corner (‘Ephemeros Kairos’), followed by sustainig and droning synth washes (‘Eikonic Antilogos’). All of this is quite a step forward, making this quite a coherent album, upwards and onwards.
I reviewed more music from the duo 7697 Miles, the distance between Chilean Cristobal Rawlins (Raw-C) and Dieter Mauson, who live in Hamburg. Their work is synthesiser-based but leans more toward using rhythms and sequencers. Think of it as a mix of old school cosmic music and ambient house, but as I wrote last time, their drum machine reminds me of Cabaret Voltaire. Their minimalist music, but with that driving rhythm, never feels too much of a repetition. Would I were the sort of person to run outside for fun, I could imagine this to be a soundtrack for such an exercise. The rhythm ticks away, the synths play longer, sustaining patterns, without being too much of a drone and on top there’s always a melodic touch, sometimes more to the foreground, sometimes a bit below. There is a touch of melancholy to the music, with minor chords played, which, come to think of it, makes the music less of a soundtrack for jogging. It’s again an excellent mix of cosmic music, krautrock and ambient house, and as such, nothing new under the sun. A high-quality work, like there are already quite a few in their catalogue. This is not one better than before, but an equal high level. (FdW)
––– Address: https://aphelioneditions.bandcamp.com/
––– Address: https://kinetikrecords.bandcamp.com/

MÅLGRUPP – SORL (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
LIZ MEREDITH – FORTH (cassette by Spleen Coffin)
SUBUBURBANABUSE – PHUCH (cassette by Spleen Coffin)

Here we have three new cassettes by the USA’s Spleen Coffin label, some of which are a first. One is målgrupp (‘ target group’), which “started as an experimental DIY solo act around 2008. After releasing a CD and a split album as a group, they became a solo project again in 2013.” Previous releases were on such labels as Artsy Records, Hockey Rawk, Allt Hela Tiden, Maternal Voice, På Månen and Flacon Recordings, and there has been music for films, but also fanzines, short films, exhibited artwork, installations and hosted workshops. On this cassette målgrupp uses unnamed musical instruments, objects, and field recordings, which are recorded on a Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorder for treatments. The music consists of 12 relatively short pieces, ranging from 30 seconds to four minutes and has a rather lo-fi character, almost like some living room recording. The music is kept small, with a few sounds per track at most. Even when I sometimes recognised a saxophone, the music has a musique concrète-like streak, but here in a rather primitive fashion; slowing down, speeding up, some reversing and some erasing. Quite lovely stuff, if you are into this sort of primitive electro-acoustic work that doesn’t play by the rules of conventional musique concrète type of composing.
I reviewed an LP by Liz Meredith in Vital Weekly 1175. She plays the violin and electronics and does so, this time at least, in a much noisier form than before. The viola is part of the music, so I assume. Still, unlike on the previous album, as a dominant instrument, this time, embedded within noisy loops, which are her trademark anyway, and hissing and droning electronics. What these electronics are, I don’t know. Maybe she derives these from the viola playing, but it could also be an additional sound source. Sometimes, the viola is recognised, such as in ‘2’, sounding like a violent electrified four-string. It is between these two opposites, pure noise loop-based pieces and those in which the viola has the upper hand, that this release moves, and that’s quite interesting. Sometimes pure noise, sometimes boisterous electro-acoustic music and with each of the 10 pieces relatively short (usually around three minutes), there is a lot of variation in these pieces, which keeps the energy levels of this release relatively high. Plus: 30 minutes is enough, especially with the final piece being a true burst of energy.
Even noisier at times is Suburbanabuse, the solo project of Washington, D.C., based experimental filmmaker Gabriel Achilles Bellone. I haven’t seen his 16mm films, which I am told is, “super hands-on and obsessively fucked with”. Bellone plays “detuned guitars, bass, electronics, voice, and percussion”, which the label calls “a warped hybrid of lo-fi deconstructed industrial psych-blues”, with references to Snakefinger, ONO, Fred Frith, King Frog, Bugskull, and Patrick Lombe, not all artists I know. Oddly enough, this is at times noisier, but also the one that is the most rock-like, non-conventional, as the results may be. There is some mighty free playing going on here, but some of these pieces are pretty long, and in some cases, too long. Maybe if one sees these as minimalist, psychedelic weirdness and with the proper hallucinogens, it could be something. But sipping tea, on a sun-soaked Friday afternoon, may not be the ideal circumstances for such a release. (FdW)
––– Address: https://spleencoffin.com

SUNPLEXUS – SENTENCE DE MORT POUR HAUTE TRAHISON (cassette by Fissile)

I believed in recognising the name Sunplexus from previous releases, but I am mistaken. The only time the name came up in Vital Weekly was when a member named Orgrob had a solo release. The band name appears as one word on the cover, but on Discogs as two words. They are a trio of Laurent Berger, Rémy Bux, and Sébastien Borgo (Ogrob), first released music in 1997. About this new album, the cover mentions (in French) that it was recorded and abandoned in 2008, but there’s no reason why it was abandoned. As much as I thought I knew the group, the music also sounds familiar. Sunplexus is a rock band from the noise end, but not working exclusively with much distortion. Sure, there is a feedback-like howl occasionally, but it also works along free rock and minimal music lines. In rock terms, this is a dirty sound, without any polishing, recorded in a garage, direct to two-track, and that’s it. But, with the variation, it’s much more than your standard rocking noise work. Sometimes revolving around a single beat (such as in ‘Sunplexus Repet 02′), or with vocals (the only instance, I think) in ’07bis’ (I am guessing here, over in hand, to name these tracks), or grinding away in the opening of the cassette. I don’t have many points of reference for this kind of music, as the history of noise rock flew right over my head when I had the opportunity to explore it when it happened. That said, I enjoyed this particular blast, without knowing if this is mighty original or a shameless copy. (FdW)
––– Address: https://astatine.bandcamp.com/

H. FLORA/ALEXEI BORISOV & VYACHESLAV ISMAGILOV (split cassette by Attenuation Circuit/Grubenwehr Freiburg)

These two labels release recycled cassettes, focusing on “new or lesser known artists with already more widely connected practitioners in the experimental underground scene”. I assume the latter is Alexei Borisov, who has another work with Vyacheslav Ismagilov from Kazan, Russia. I reviewed a cassette from theirs only two weeks ago. There’s a lengthy quote about ancient Chinese emperors, which I fail to see the connected with the three pieces they recorded. This new one is quite different if their previous work resulted from improvisation, lots of electronics and cut-up percussion. There are three pieces, each about 12 to 14 minutes, ‘1 hour’, ‘3 hour’ and ‘5 hour’, and at the foundation of each, there is some time-stretched sound material, voice(s) most likely. On top, the two of them improvise with electronics in a slightly chaotic way. I admit not being blown away by the time-stretching, which sounds too easily generated. The electronics play a minor role in the first piece, the most in the second and percussion is leading in the third. Maybe there is some decay at work here, but the music fails to grab me on a musical and conceptual level.
On the first side, we find music by H. Flora, also known as Felix Birke, from Leipzig. He is the lesser-known quantity here. His interests are modular synthesis, field works, biophotonics, and electro-acoustic exploration of musical and non-musical content from below and beyond the big global “Geräuschesammlung” (“sound collecting”). He has a label, Frentic Magic Sounds, and releases on other labels, and does “performances with the sonic live noise-cooking unit Radial Taste Wokout”, which sounds already tasty. Curiously, the cover says “all recordings & sound by U. Schwitters”, so what’s Birke’s role? Unless it’s the collaging and processing of these Schwitters’ sounds, “wildlife recordings from the wetlands and rainforests of Guinea-Bissau recorded around Enchude, Ganjetra, Buba Tombo, Batambali Beafata, Amedalai, Jemberem & Cadique in early 2024,” and “sampled bombolong recording near jugul, toy flute & modular synthesiser”, for the shorter second piece. These are quite pleasant pieces of music, in which the original field recordings work very well with the processed versions, and the line between both ends is pretty blurry. But that makes this a nice release; it sounds like being in wetlands, with birds and insects chirping away. Only some abrupt changes make you realise this is a collage and not a straightforward recording from an exotic place. (FdW)
––– Address: https://emerge.bandcamp.com/