STOCK, HAUSEN AND WALKMAN – ORGAN TRANSPLANTS VOL. 2 (CD by Hot Air)
SALE TIMBALE – SALE TIMBALE (CD by Acteon)
SCRATCH PET LAND – SOLO SOLI IIIII (CD by Sonig)
AZUSA PLANE – THE HIGHWAY’S JAMMED WITH BROKEN HEROES (CD by K-RAA-K)JOHN DUNCAN & GIULIANA STEFANI – PALACE OF MIND (CD by Allquestions)
DIEB13 – RESTRUCTURING (CD by ORF/Charhizma)
MOTTOMO OTOMO (Compilation CD by Trost)
STOCK, HAUSEN AND WALKMAN – ORGAN TRANSPLANTS VOL. 2 (CD by Hot Air)
One gets the impression that Wand and Sharpley are very tiny, swift creatures with busy schedules and oxygen-enriched blood. Whomever that one is, please let him know that the doctour would like to see him now. Rationally-integrated as they are with their names, they should be much bigger. Much! When approached by this reporter, Maverick Records execs showed shameful ignorance of the existence of our organ transplanters. And so on.
These are the kinds of sound that make one wonder how long it took to sew them all together. How many experiments led to the final whole cloth, studded as it is with mice and creakiness? A new kind of Northern soul, p’raps. Claps and a whistling in the dark – now it putters along, an innocent wind-up (toy), stopped by the piano-led strains of the past and the end of the recording itself. But, it leads off the edge and runs over the ouevre, to beget more tiny rodentia…
This critique is in memory of Mrs. G. Cotner, died 6 January 2001 after
a long illness.
Address: <well, facs maschine, really – 44 161 832 7991>
SALE TIMBALE – SALE TIMBALE (CD by Acteon)
A Commercial Suicide Edition.
The sleeve is a faceted, complex jumble of sides and focus, but the cd comes in a sealed pouch. A cookie in cellophane, selling pain – but I won’t open it. I refuse. Right now – not yet. Several different languages cross the oft-folded cardboard, urging me to break open the cd – to free it, and play it.
But is that necessarily the point. It is unclear. An art object is what it is – but who am I to object? Right now? But but but. It goes away.
It’s a lovely item, really. A lovely thing. Spectacular.
Address: <acteon@compuserve.com>
SCRATCH PET LAND – SOLO SOLI IIIII (CD by Sonig)
Maybe Scratch Pet Land will be another household name, due to their involvement with Sonig, the small but vertile labelgrounds of Mouse On Mars. Scratch Pet Land are two brothers from Belgium. I vaguely remember seeing them live some years ago, on a night they shared with Pan Sonic, Rehberg/Bauer, Porter Ricks, but I don’t recall very much of SPL live. Apart from remix work and compilation stuff this is the first full length record. In 16 short tracks they show us their rooms full of low tech equipment, old samplers, musical toys and small percussion. They combine free improv stuff with odd electronica. Maybe it’s an idea that is only in my head, but SPL do manage to sound like Mouse on Mars at times, but are a tad more chaotic, crazy and collaged. It’s been a while since I heard the sound of a percussion pad of the casio SK 1… (in ‘Abeilles asbl’). Curious music that is mildy attracting, and at times very unattractive (such as in the forementioned piece). It seems good to me that naivety is cherished, but an editor in the music is welcome. If I had to rank from 1 to 10, I’d give it a 5… (FdW)
Address: www.sonig.com
AZUSA PLANE – THE HIGHWAY’S JAMMED WITH BROKEN HEROES (CD by K-RAA-K)
As far as I understand this is the final statement from Jason D’Emilio under his nom de plume Azusa Plane. Over the years I managed to get hold of some of his work, mainly small edition releases of 7″s, CD’s and LP’s. I am just an old sucker for improvisational music, drone noise, lo-fi guitar and all that muck. Azusa Plane was great stuff, walls of guitar noise, so I am sad to see him go (unless of course his next move is even more brilliant, who knows). In his final work, Jason takes stuff to the extreme. The first piece, ‘No Future’ (let’s hope it’s not programmatic), is a 28 minute some piece of guitar plucking. You know the kind of stuff you do on a guitar if you can’t play it – at least I do. There are buzzes, hiss, microphones dropping out and a general feel of disorder. However, all of this seems intentional, with careful works in the stereo mix and other subtle changes. The second and final piece is ‘No Fun’, and was maybe so called because it uses some loops – maybe no fun to make because it was so easy? This piece, even when it has these trademarks of improvisation to it, is more gentle and less nerve wrecking. That’s it. The final 40 minutes of Azusa Plane. Even when it came a surprise release for it’s musical content, a worthy addition to the man’s discography. And the third installment in Kraak’s guitar series, after the mechanism of Shifts and the guitar sample madness of Es. A fine series, so get it if the guitar means something to you. (FdW)
Address: www.kraak.net
JOHN DUNCAN & GIULIANA STEFANI – PALACE OF MIND (CD by Allquestions)
John Duncan is still one of the more interesting pioniers of electronic music. He delivers every year a CD or so, and you can catch him playing stuff live. Recentely he started his own label, Allquestions, and this is his first release, a 50 minute opus, recorded with his partner in life, Giuliana Stefani. The title refers to a house, a house with various rooms. Rooms you can enter, but which are not always easy to find. The brain is a house, filled with rooms like that. A labyrinth. The duo uses data files, shortwave (a trademark of Duncan since many years) and voice. The latter can not be heard as such, due to the extensive processing of the sound, mainly because Duncan and Stefani stretch out the sound and thus play a game with the listeners perception of time (and space of course). Overall the music has a droning characteristic, slowly building blocks of sound over eachother until the form a massive, thick wall. That’s the end of the room. Other rooms are open, with a far sound that is waving, like an open window. ‘Palace Of Mind’ is a narrative piece that should be heard without interruption. Only then it will reveal it’s beauty. (FdW)
Address: www.allquestions.net
DIEB13 – RESTRUCTURING (CD by ORF/Charhizma)
Whoever Dieb13 are/is becomes not clear. There are two tracks here, of which one is a live track from a concert situation in Graz (Austria) and one is a live in studio remix by various Austrian musicians like Rupert Huber (Berliner Theory), Fennesz, Bernhard Lang, Brian Ferneyhough, Marina Rosenfeld, Radian, Salvatore Sciarrino and Dieb13. Both a battle of turntables. The concert piece is called ‘formlos’, which is German for ‘without form’. I think it’s well chosen title. The track that is called ‘Restructuring’ is much better (and at 35 minutes, 5 minutes longer) and moves between classical music, glitches, scratches and improv music. The ‘formlos’ track sounds a bit redundant, and the full hour of ‘Restructuring’ would have been nicer, plus some indexpoints here and there for the adventurous minds out there because: “the artwork on this CD is open content. It may be used, copied, modified and redistributed, under the terms of the “open content license”. So this work can be seen as raw sound material to be used again, so if finding your sounds is a problem, start here. (FdW)
Address: www.charhizma.com
MOTTOMO OTOMO (Compilation CD by Trost)
Since 1987 the “Music Unlimited” festival is held in Wels, Austria. Every other year they have a guest curator and in 1999 the honours were led by otomo Yoshido, known from his groundbreaking work with Ground Zero, Filament aswell as a who’s who in improvisation land. Otomo invited a whole bunch of Japanese collegues aswell as some of the finest European counterparts and now a CD is presented as a documentation. Ranging from noise by The Incapacitants to the postrock sounds of Radian and everything else in between. My favourites included the aforementioned Radian, Hoahio (all female trio with their avant-garde popsong and vocals, with Haco of After Dinner), Kaffe Matthews, Andrea Neumann and Annette Krebs, who are also an all female trio with delicate improvisation on electronics and the all guitar improvs of Keith Rowe, Sugimoto Taku and Otomo. Not so much for me were the Novo Tono, who are announced as the Japanese Velvet Underground and the arpsynth solo by one Nagata Kazunao. Since this CD moves between various styles, albeit all in the category of improvisation plus…., and the tracks are kept short, the two offs are no problem. Well done documentation, even if you were not part of the real thing, it still gives a good impression of a lively scene. (FdW)
Address: www.trost.at