SELF-TRANSFORMING MACHINE ELVES -GHOSTFISH (CD by Nova Zembla)
Follow-up to that excellent debut from last year, which was a
clever mix of techno/house music and more experimentalists,
electronics in combination with a real flute and violin -I mean:
can you believe it? This CD contains 4 solo tracks by W.O.R.M.
and 5 by W.O.R.M and The Square Root Of Sub. I am not sure if
STME becomes a solo project by W.O.R.M. -let’s hope not. This
said, the three solo tracks by him that open the CD are
excellent. Straight forward techno, lush synth lines and
vocodized vocals. Or ethno samples as in ‘Tahiti’ -hey, nothing
new under the sun, just joyful and pleasant stuff. In the
collaboration tracks the sense of experimenting with samples and
dubby rhythms become more apparent. STME also borrows tricks
from jungle, such as in the version from ‘O.K. That’s It’ (which
is on their debut), now called ‘K.O. ‘ , including violin and
Jorge Reyes samples. The last track ‘Spacefour’ has some deep,
moody samples and again a slow rhythm. It sounds quite
threatening, but looses it’s touch somewhere halfway through.
Despite this, this is an excellent CD. (FdW) Address:
<KKNZ@KKRECORDSBE>
DJ SPOOKY -SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER (CD by Asphodel)
Aih… this is one to give me a hard time… Unlike many other
DJ’s, DJ Spooky likes to write, to theorize about his work as
DJ. ‘DJ culture -urban youth culture -is all about recombinant
potential’ it is said in the booklet, which is a text by Spooky,
packed with text samples from Gertrude Stein, Deleuze/Guattari,
Susan Sontag, Francis Bacon and others. Another quote: ‘Each and
every source sample is fragmented and bereft of prior meaning –
kind of like a future without a past’ .Spooky doesn’t make
music, but ‘electronic hybrids, that would create a milieu where
a previously interior world could be brought to light through
methods like keyboard mapping and time stretching… ‘ .Before I
discuss the musical content, some of my comments on his text. I
wonder in what way then the DJ differs from musicians making,
let’s say, house music or industrial music? They too take sound
out of the prior context and combine it in a new work. Any old
80s recycles, P16.D4 or Kapotte Muziek, for instance, have done
this to a wide extent, or even made it to their sole starting
point in music. The ‘studio as instrument’ dates back to musique
concrete of the SOs, but has been used in pop music before, from
The Beatles to Jimi Hendrix to Brian Eno.
What then, so we ask, makes the DJ different from any of that.
So far, I didn’t discover much new in his writing. Let’s hear
that silver disc. A dark intro takes you into the city, as if
you were coming from Mars. Several discs with some rhythmical
matrix is played in Phase Interlude. This is like a trip hop
rhythm, which we encounter a few times on this disc. Like most
of stuff that I heard in trip hop, it is austere music,
dismantled and stripped down to just a few basic lines. The
atmosphere that DJ Spooky brings out lives up to the name of
it’s creator. I very much enjoyed the music, eh… the mood
sculptures or electronic hybrids. You don’t need to call it
music, if the term shocks you (and that’s my sample in this
review) Address: <asphodel@interport.net>
R & D by DISINFORMATION ( CD on Ash International)
This is the third time Joe Banks AKA Disinformation has appeared
on an Ash release. First up was Ghost Shells a mini-LP issued
with dire warnings regarding the safety of your speakers which
was followed by a track on The Fault In The Nothing, the latest
Ash compilation reviewed in this bulletin Issue # Joe dabbles in
the nether regions of the radio spectrum, recording sounds which
float in through this particular acoustic window. The liner
notes, though brief, are beautiful, and they read like a
surrealist poem… ‘ storms crackle: biostatics whisper, hiss
and sigh: televisions scream: pylons and power loops drone and
roar: military signals, the musical pulses of navigation
systems, timecodes and the coded data broadcast deep beneath the
sea… , The sound structures on the CD buzz and hum with the
suggestion of information…the compositions are mostly brittle
structures comprised of a few layers. The colors of the sounds
are sharp, angular and, on occasion, quite disturbing. R & D
Track 6 sounds like a sophisticated piece of gardening equipment
now in control of it’s own destiny cleaning up in a toddlers
playground ( or is it just my imagination ? ). My favorites are
Track 1, which includes grass insect and leaf static’s amongst
it sound sources ( all sources are listed and they read like the
ingredients of an alchemical formula from a future world). Track
8 is great too; perhaps this is because of the inclusion of an
unidentified harmonic motif recorded from a HF broadcast A
compelling release. Address: <touch@touch.demon.co.uk>
HIS HOLINESS FRANK ZAPPA ( Deceased) -THE LOST EPISODES ( CD on
RYKODISC )
I have a hunch (entoot) that the Zappa Archives will be
regularly dusted and that his family will continue to
occasionally release items of historical value ( not too many
tho’ , ‘cos they still love him ). Frankly, I’ve heard
all official Zappa releases and many of the items included on
this CD were previously made available on the Mystery Discs
which accompanied the Boxed sets of old material re-released on
vinyl several ,or was it almost ten, years ago. Ultimately, I
suppose, all of the ‘exclusive’ Zappa vinyl’s will become
available on CD. The Lost Episodes fills in loads of holes in
the tapestry that Conceptual continuity has become. Most of it
will be mostly meaningless from this point of view to new
listeners -but how many are there of them who scrutinize this
broad sheet. Zappa, comfortable in all musical styles compiled
this CD shortly before he so graciously shrugged off his mortal
coil to promote nicotine abuse elsewhere, so at least he was
involved with it. I suppose he managed to compile a couple of
these retrospectives during his last years, and as always, there
are examples of wonderful musicianship (Frank was stern and
demanding even then) and some rather demented pieces, a lot of
which document his early ear-stretching routines with Captain
Van Vliet.
The current re-emergence of Easy (G)Listening music, till now
shunned by most, is surely indicative that nostalgia has almost
run it’s course ( again ). First we glorified what was
considered good/acceptable (check current Pop Charts -half of
the tracks are usually cover versions of reliable, safe songs
which have proved themselves in the past) and now it is the turn
of the alternatives to glorify everything previously considered
crass and crap. Sadly this wave of sewerage has yet to crest.
Zappa made a parody of nostalgia way back then which remains as
valid now as it ever was. The semi-acoustic nature of this CD is
also refreshing and as with all of the posthum(o)us releases,
accompanied by copious liner notes. The Conceptual Tapestry may
be completed yet… (MP)
BLACK LUNG -THE DISINFORMATION PLAGUE ( CD by NOVA ZEMBLA )
Another release from Australian D. Thrussell licensed for Europe
by Nova Zembla, which follows a remix project of tracks from his
previous CD ‘The Depopulation Bomb’ .In many ways, ‘The
Depopulation Bomb’ far outstrips this CD especially with regard
to the fear and paranoia it can generate. The sounds are still
beautiful and carefully arranged in deep and dark compositions
which sometimes burst into relentless pounding rhythm tracks. As
before, the track titles and liner illustrations and text
concern themselves with the dangers of the conspiracies that
just might (unknown to us) be directing us to work, work, work
so that we can spend, spend, spend on all the stuff we don’t
really need like Pariah Carey posters and silly putty conjobs.
Thrussell has a very individual sound, easily distinguished from
that of his contemporaries. Few composers bother to traverse
this sonic terrain; if they do, then they don’t do it very well.
Perhaps it’s best left to the Thruss. Check it out…and yes,
screaming does not require a mouth… (MP)