TEIJI FURUHASHI/DUMB TYPE 1985-1994 (CD by Foil)
I must admit I do not know much about this person or Dumb
Type. The latter is some kind of performing group, and
Furuhashi was the artistic director. He died some time ago.
The beautifully designed digipack doesn’t give much info on
the performance group, except for details on each track, for
which performance the music was used etc. So let’s stick to
that. Since this anthology covers a large period, the music
is sometimes somewhat outdated 80s synth music, such as the
1987 track ‘Drowning #3’, using a sampled beat and a
computerized voice. In more recent tracks the music tends
towards current dance music, but Dumb Type seems to capture a
certain sense of experimentalism in all tracks. That’s what
makes this CD is a nice overview… damm I wish I knew more
about it. (FdW)
Address: Foil -Shinimazato 2-10-3, 5-C Ikuno-Ku -Osaka 544 –
Japan
JON ROSE -PERKS (CD by ReR Megacorp)
This work is based on the life and works of one Percy
Grainger (1882-1961), who invented ‘Random Round’ in 1912,
long before Cage and Schonberg spoke about aleatory music,
made recordings on wax cylinders of folk music (just like
Bartok did), wrote piano player pieces before Conlon
Nancarrow did… excuse me, maybe I’m too cynical, but it
sounds thoroughly fake to me. Had the famous violin player
Jon Rose not other alter-ego’s like Dr. Johannes Rosenberg?
Is Percy not one of them? Well, maybe I’m wrong. The CD is
like a long piece of improvised music, with lots of violins,
ancient folks melodies, piano players (probably samples…)
and the sound of badminton (one of Percy’s obsessions, along
with SM and ‘confused racial bigotry’ ). This is a (pseudo?-)
intelligent work about somebody who might have lived (I don’t
have a copy of the New Grove Music Dictionary at hand here),
but simultaneous a funny play about free music, but some of
the funniest violin players I know. My compliments! (FdW)
Address: ReR- 77 Beulah Rd -Thornton Heath -Surrey CR7 8JG –
UK
KLANGKRIEG -38 CBM (CD by ND)
A relatively unknown group from Germany (the name means
‘sound war’ ), who made a CD for Funfundvierzig a couple of
years ago. I don’t know if there are any releases available
by them. The title for this CD is from the first piece on
this CD. It refers to the volume of a freight container, for
which Klangkrieg made a sound piece. Due to the deep
frequencies the container vibrated. One can wonder if such a
thing can be reproduced on CD with normal audio playback in a
living room. The music piece is a dark collage of sound,
either sampled drones and heartbeats, but also children
screaming. A freighting piece, certainly if one knows that
the container was at times completely dark. The next piece is
a live piece of sampling, analogue synthesizers and
drumcomputer. Again it’s a kinda dark piece but for me too
chaotic and without much structure. The four remaining pieces
are shorter. ‘Korpus 1 and 2’ uses piano strings which are
treated with various objects and, due to sampling techniques,
these are modern musique concrete pieces. Also ‘Tokkata’
takes one source, being a Korg MS 20 synthesizer, into the
sampling area. The final piece is more dark and droning, like
the scanning of surfaces Address: <plunkett@nd.org>