CRATES – PROCEED (CD BY CYCLING 74)
DOUBLE ADAPTOR – LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD (CD by Osaka)
VERPLANKEN – AUTOPSY OF A DREAM (CD, self released)
THE COMPLAINER – SPONSORED BY RETRO SEX GALAXY (CD by Mik Musik)
GONE BOLD – EXOTIC KLAUTROFOBIA (CD by Narrominded Records)
DALE LLOYD – SEMPER (CD by Alluvial Recordings)
ELECTRONIC MUSIC COMPOSER – ABANDON MUSIC (CD by Planet Mu)
SHITMAT – THE LESSER SPOTTED BURBERRY (12″ by Planet Mu)
MANDARIN MOVIE (CD by Aesthetics)
ANTANAS KUCINSKAS – INDEX NODORUM/KILPU KATALOGAS/LOOP CATALOGUE (CD, private release)
AGENTS XI – ALTARIMA (CD by Genie Ou Rien)
4 WOMEN NO CRY VOL. 1 (CD by Monika Enterprises)
VERNON & BURNS – THE TUNE THE OLD COW DIED OF (LP by Gagarin Records)
ANTMANUV – VAGUE (CDR by Antmanuv)
OVERSHADOW (CDR compilation by Antmanuv)
ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO – STYLT (CDR by Absurd)
OLD FASHIONED DONKEYS (CDR by Absurd/Phase Records)
ARTURAS BUMSTEINAS – THIS UNIFORM (MP3 by Con-V)
CRATES – PROCEED (CD BY CYCLING 74)
This is certainly not what I expected from Cycling 74, the developers of software which includes the almighty Max/msp stuff. Their releases on CD deal with music made with the software and so far operated in a ‘serious’, somewhat academix way. Now with Crates they release something entirely different. Crates are centered around Jhno on laptop and Scott Amendola on drums and percussion. On the two lenghty cuts here they are helped by Nels Cline on guitar (both pieces), Devin Hoff on bass, Todd Sickafoose on bass and Dave Mac Nab on guitar. The last three play only one track. Both cuts were recorded live in concert and is basically a free space jam of many guitar sound, drum virtuoso and some computerized sounds in the background. It crosses the borders of rock, techno, symphonic rock and jazz, and that is of course always a nice thing. But does that lead to an interesting, totally great CD? Not for this listener. I found it very hard to encounter something nice here. The material drags on and on and on end, without seemingely to make a point. Maybe the experiment of combining a rock ensemble with laptop is a nice one, but if it leads such dull music, the experiment is, as far as I’m concerned, a failure. (FdW)
Address: http://www.cycling74.com
DOUBLE ADAPTOR – LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD (CD by Osaka)
More music from Ireland, here in the form of Double Adaptor, a duo of Roy Carroll on computers and keyboards and Keith O’Brien on keyboards, computers and guitars. They play around Dublin a lot (although relocating to Berlin), and never the same thing. They are crazy about improvising and that’s no surprise when you hear the nine tracks captured on their debut CD. In a total mayhem they work through say fifty years of music, sometimes hopelessly outdated prog rock, but also vibrant computer processing of what ever is loaded through the computer and even throw in a dash of breakbeat. It’s full frenzy, crazyness and mayhem. Quite enjoyable, but also asking a lot of the listener. It’s demanding music with hardly a moment of quietness and introspection. The listener is left behind quiet tired. You need a CD to relax at hand once this is over. It’s not always the best stuff around here, but the energy of it all makes it all good anyway. (FdW)
Address: http://www.osaka.ie
VERPLANKEN – AUTOPSY OF A DREAM (CD, self released)
The fact that on the Verplanken it says that he met Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers in the South of France, who played in stead of Terry Riley, made me think that Verplanken (despite his rather Belgium name) hails from France. The psychedelica of Allen combined with the interest in minimal music, led to this debut some thirty years later. The psychedelic element is quite big, combined with elements of minimal music (Riley on the organ in ‘Holy Heart’?). The opening ‘Paradise’ with it’s heavy cosmic synthesizers and mumbling voices is from another planet (pun intended). Not a musically innovating CD, but nice, with however one problem: there is throughout a little bit too much variation in this CD, like Verplanken wants to show off it’s different interests but not in just one track, melted together, but seperate on this CD. But as said, it’s all not the newest thing in the world, but nice enough. (FdW)
Address: http://www.verplanken.com
THE COMPLAINER – SPONSORED BY RETRO SEX GALAXY (CD by Mik Musik)
So I figured out that the band is The Complainer and the title is ‘Sponsored By Retro Sex Galaxy’, but since I know that Retro Sex Galaxy is/was also a band, I assume The Complainer is just Retro Sex Galaxy under a new name. But maybe not, I sometimes don’t get it (from unclear press releases that is). The Complainer is a band who love sampling, and some sounds are easily recognizable, such as Depeche Mode’s ‘People Are People’ or Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’. But these samples are small, minor, because the main thing is quirky, up tempo and uplifting electro music, with one of those dead eighties voices (singing pretty without tone variations, or even spoken word). This is indeed retro throughout. Both with a nod towards the eigthies aswell as to the electro-clash of a few years back. Is this all bad? Hell no, this is throughout a most enjoyable CD, certainly for an old guy like me, bringing back the memories of the eighties and it’s electronic artists in particular. Nice one from our Polish friends indeed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.mikmusik.org
GONE BOLD – EXOTIC KLAUTROFOBIA (CD by Narrominded Records)
With this new release by Amsterdam’s Gone Bold, the Narrowminded label slowly moves away from being an electronica label, and release a more new wave/punk and or free rock style. Gone Bold is a trio with Razorblade JR (guitar, vocals), Stanley Disko (bass) and Bubba de Vries (drums) and exist since 1994. Apart from a few compilations I never heard anything substantial from them. The five tracks on this CD range from almost three minutes to sixteen minutes, and it’s something that comes hardly be on this desk. The free form improv punk is far away from the usual Weekly stuff. The one thing I could compare it with is the recent CDs on the Amanita label (see Vital Weekly 466), but Gone Bold seems to be more precise in their playing with a tight rhythmsection and carefully worked out compositions. The title piece, the longest piece here, is an almost symphonic one, Rush plays punk, or some such. It’s not music that will easily win me over, but it’s quite alright, every now and then. (FdW)
Address: http://www.narrominded.com
DALE LLOYD – SEMPER (CD by Alluvial Recordings)
In the world of field recordings, and the music made thereof, the name Dale Lloyd should not be unknown, even when he so far released his work on MP3 and CDRs. This is I believe his first ‘real’ CD. It consists of the lenghty title piece and the shorter ‘Magnesian Recumbit’. The soundsources listed as the usual ‘field recordings, electronic sounds, toy xylophone, old coins and other metallic and found objects’. It’s hard to trace back the origin of the field recordings, save for some of the water and insect sounds, but most of the times, the computer is working overtime to process all the sounds into a nice ambient glitch mass. Densely layered with some the microphone quite close to the objects (a trick of trade Lloyd shares with people like Yannick Dauby or MNortham). The combination of the sometimes warm, natural sounds and the somewhat colder electronic sounds work in quite a nice way. ‘Semper’ is divided in smaller parts, each with it’s distinct, own character. ‘Magnesian Recumbit’ is more of drone piece, with loops and layers of the metallic objects, working in a trance like way. The two pieces have a rather pastoral feel to it, it sounds quite solemnly. Two great works, pity the CD is rather short at that. (FdW)
Address: http://www.alluvialrecordings.com
ELECTRONIC MUSIC COMPOSER – ABANDON MUSIC (CD by Planet Mu)
SHITMAT – THE LESSER SPOTTED BURBERRY (12″ by Planet Mu)
Great name of course if you make electronic music (perhaps even better if you just play acoustic guitar?). Behind Electronic Music Composer we find one Ian Read and Ken Gibson, the latter also known as Eight Frozen Modules. Ten tracks, thirty minutes and what mayhem it is. These boys love their rhythms to be chopped up and then they are at their best. Breakbeat splicing until they are even more broken up. And fucked up. In ‘Skintight Kink’, they offer a much more straightforward acid bleep, which is nice too, but maybe a bit too regular. At just under thirty six minutes, this is long enough, or perhaps I’m just getting too old for endurance tests like this. If the underground tunes usually on offer with Planet Mu is your darker alley, then I am sure you love to wander around here too.
On the same label, but on DJ friendly format is Shitmat, aka Henry Collins, with a record that should of course appeal to me as a Dutch man: it’s a heavy gabber beat record, with some darker moods. Nice tracks, even when I am not a particular big lover of gabba stuff. A pity that similar samples of someone saying ‘fucking’ appear in all tracks. Noise from a different angle, and that’s fine too, every now and then. (FdW)
Address: http://www.planet-mu.com
MANDARIN MOVIE (CD by Aesthetics)
Never heard of Mandarin Movie? Not to worry. If you know it’s a new project from Rob Mazurek, the man with the cornet of Chicago Underground Duo, Isotope 217, aswell as a solo artist. Mandarin Movie is a new band with of course Mazurek on computer, moog, cornet, Alan Licht on guitar, Matt Lux on bass and electronics, Steve Swell on trombone, Jason Ajemian on double bass and electronics and Frank Rosaly on drums, plus a host of individual contributors. The music is throughout a loud and noise related improvisation. A bit jazzy at times, a bit silent (only at a few occassions), but the chaos rules in this music, an assault on the senses, leaving the listener breathless, but it’s also a CD that doesn’t entirely satisfy me. It’s powerful for sure, but it somehow power that didn’t grab me very much. It’s a like a coat that looks warm, but isn’t. It’s alright, not bad, but not great either… Maybe I should dive into this more… (FdW)
Address: http://www.aesthetics-usa.com
ANTANAS KUCINSKAS – INDEX NODORUM/KILPU KATALOGAS/LOOP CATALOGUE (CD, private release)
So far I don’t think I heard of Antanas Kucinskas from Lithuania. He studied at the Lithuanian Academy Of Music and got a doctor’s degree in Arts ‘Principles Of Composing In The Works Of Contemporary Lithunian Composers”. For the nine pieces on this CD he works with what he calls ‘loop music’, but unlike say Pierre Schaeffer or Steve Reich, his loops are not made on analogue tape, but on computer, thus going down to the smallest particles to loop. Maybe Kucinskas is under the impression he created something entirely new here, but his ‘loop music’ clearly related from anything from Boyd Rice to Oval. Using spoken word, classical music and maybe electronic sound, all looped inside the computer (or perhaps a CD player), these tracks are quite simple to create and not always interesting to hear. For stuff like this, the act of creating is far more interesting than listening to it. My favourite here is ‘The Double Loop Twice Reversed’: a relatively simple set of sounds, being played in and out of phase. Otherwise it’s fine to hear once, but a repeated listening session is not for me, I guess. (FdW)
Address: http://www.ma-stdios.com
AGENTS XI – ALTARIMA (CD by Genie Ou Rien)
Of all music, recent and old, there are a few with which I don’t have that much and rap is one of them. The slow music, the talking… maybe music with text is just not my thing. So if the rap is in French, a language which I master only a petit peu, I have great difficulty. ‘Altarima’ is the second album by Agents XI, dealing with ‘pre-historic rap, merging minimalist Glenn Branca/Phil Glass sound with Parisian banlieu texts’. I sort of miss out on the Branca/Glass thing, and the text I don’t understand. In the title ‘Altarima’ one may recognize ‘altamira’, the spanish site for prehistoric drawings, a relation that is supposed to come back to us in the texts. Like said, rap music is nothing for me, and this new CD from Agents XI didn’t win me over. (FdW)
Address: http://www.genieourien.net
4 WOMEN NO CRY VOL. 1 (CD by Monika Enterprises)
Monika Enterprises is a Berlin based label, run by Gundrun Gut (formerly of Malaria), and she has an extensive roster of female artists. But she likes to introduce more of them, and the compilation is a perfect way to do that, keeping the ‘No New York’LP in mind (but I’m sure everyone has their own examples of compilations that introduced great artists). I never heard of the four female artists on this compilation, but they live all around the globe.
The CD opens with Rosario Blefari from Buenos Aires, who produces solo work since 2001 and who has her own label ‘Fan Discos’. Although her sound is largely electronic, there is a certain exotic element to be found in her pieces, like the sunny guitar in ‘Partir Y Renunciar’ or the bicycle bells in ‘Nunca’. Quite nice, and at the end turns out to be best contribution for me, a bit like Barbara Morgenstern. The second one is Tusia Beridze, who is from Tblisi, Georgia and her contributions are the most raw here, both in composition and execution. The voice is pretty important and her songs are dreamy ones. Quite alright. Eglantine Gouzy comes from Paris and had a couple of tracks on compilations before. Her music reminded me of Cortex, one of the older Insane Music bands. Poetry like, in French of course and with a minimal backdrop of electronic music, however not as minimal as the good ol’ Cortex, but certainly quite nice. Catarina Pratter comes from Vienna and has had releases on Cheap Records and Temp Records. Her sound is more straight forward, and has a lot of sound processing on her voice and it sounds a bit more militant. The nicest track is ‘Policeman’, with it’s dub rhythm. All four are quite nice, and hopefully extend in individual full-length albums. (FdW)
Address: http://www.monika-enterprise.de
VERNON & BURNS – THE TUNE THE OLD COW DIED OF (LP by Gagarin Records)
Maybe you think when you hear the word ‘radioplay’ of something ancient, something pre-TV, when the whole family was sitting around the tabel, listening to the radio, or perhaps Orson Wells’ ‘War Of The Worlds’. But inside the world of audio art, the radioplay is the more interesting part of plunderphonics. Whereas plunderphonica is something the random cut n paste of audiosounds, the radioplay is a small story, with a beginning and an end. Vernon & Burns are from Scotland, and from Burns we know he has a layman’s ear and that Vernon works as a musician and radio producer and that he is one third of Hassle Hound (new CD on Staubgold soon). Together they splice real life audio recordings into small radioplays, except it’s on vinyl and not on the radio. Tramps on a bench, the music outside a disco or a walk in the snow. But these real life recordings have been altered, changed and added to, so that a small musical story becomes alive. Very much alike the musique concrete tradition, but then nothing abstract, but clearly recognizable, albeit in a poetic way. Small fascinating journeys. Next week they perform at Extrapool, so I’m curious to see how the radioplay works out on stage. (FdW)
Address: http://www.gagarinrecords.com
ANTMANUV – VAGUE (CDR by Antmanuv)
OVERSHADOW (CDR compilation by Antmanuv)
The man behind Antmanuv is Tomane Vinagreiro from Coimbra, Portugal, whose ‘Magnetic Field’ release was reviewed in Vital Weekly 416. He currentely lives in Canada, and he plays a variety of sounds, field recordings, analog modular synthesizer, microphones and turntables. In the first two pieces, Antmanuv has a simple, minimalistic rhythm to play with, but these are not the strongest tracks around. His power lies more in the treatments of field recordings into nicely modulating pieces of ambient music, such as in ‘The Net & The Sea’ or ‘Premonition Of Charm’, in which what sounds like the refrigator is processed into some gentle ambient music. The rhythmic pieces are nice, but dwell a bit too much on one sound and idea, which is a pity.
On his own label is a compilation of his various friends, mainly from Canada and Portugal. Many new names (at least for me), such as SMBP, House Of Snakes, LOD, Hackeronte and Tirriddiliu but als Antmanuv, The Infant Cycle, Vitor Joaquim, OK Suitcase and @C. Many of the tracks could have been composed by Antmanuv, as there are strong similarities between his sound and that of his friends. Here too some of the tracks are too lenghty to be interesting such as the Amanv (Antmanuv in disguise) piece, but overall it’s a nice compilation of darker, atmospheric ambient glitch with no particular standout track. (FdW)
Address: http://www.antmanuv.net
ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO – STYLT (CDR by Absurd)
OLD FASHIONED DONKEYS (CDR by Absurd/Phase Records)
In Vital Weekly 421 the previous release by Alfredo Costa Monteiro was discussed, but not by me. It was a solo accordion CD, even when that instrument was hardly to be recognized. The four pieces on this CDR release are for ‘pick ups on turntable’. That’s it as far as the description goes, so it’s a bit hard to relate to that, if one didn’t see what is exactely going on. In the first two (untitled) pieces Monteiro is interested in playing a sort of powerful drone music. Extended scraping on the surface of the turntable using pick ups, evoke a dark, noise related hum, which is nice but a but too uniform to hold my interest. The third piece is that respect, with its silences and changes is by far the most interesting piece of the lot.
Behind Old Fashioned Donkeys we find Nicolas Malevitsis (the man behind Absurd) en Panagiotis Spoulos (the man behind Phase Records, who are co-releasing this). The main theme is inside the booklet about some sex driven Dr. Curl, with a huge penis to conquer the world. Maybe a bit too old fashioned industrial sex thing for you? Then stop reading, since the music is very much alike the noise tag too. Feedback, synth noise, scratchings of vinyl and other mayhem make up the forty-nine minutes on this release. A bit Merzbow like, but with a much lesser sound quality. I’m sure it will appeal to some, but I prefer to witness these things in concert. (FdW)
Address: http://www.anet.gr/absurd
ARTURAS BUMSTEINAS – THIS UNIFORM (MP3 by Con-V)
For me the name Arturas Bumsteinas is a new one, despite his previous releases ‘Retorta’ (on Nexsound, 2004) and Placido (Zeromoon, 2005). In this twenty-five minute piece, ‘This Uniform’ quite succesfully combines glitch and drone music. Apperentely he uses the real-time recordings of the ru-be, a reed instrument from the south-east Asain Ma-peoples, in combination with the same sound being processed through a bunch of plug ins. The real-time recordings form phase-shifting loops, that go in and out of phase, pretty much like an old Terry Riley piece, and the glitch sounds form particles, or rather a residue, the edges of the sound. Nervous sounds set nicely against a wall of relaxing sounds. Maybe one of the few succesfull combinations of its kind. A long download, this twenty six minute piece, but a much rewarding one. Curious to hear his other releases. (FdW)
Address: http://www.con-v.org
correction: In Vital Weekly 472, the bandname and title were switched of Wirewall and Erg. So the bandname is >wirewall< and the title is ‘Erg’.