MERZBOW & GORE BEYOND NECROPSY – RECTAL ANARCHY (CD by Relapse)
O.k. so you know who this first band is, and maybe you have that 7″
Merzbow did with these punksters. Here they team up for a collaborative
work, consisting of 31 tracks. The CD version opens with CD only bonus
track, lasting some 18 minutes. The 30 remaining tracks breath the
atmosphere of punk. Short, heavy pieces. Death metal industrial punk, tons
of feedback, and screaming. If something needs to be proven, it should be
that in the 90s musical boundaries disappeared. So my best guess is that
Merzbow is doing a gabber CD soon. Let’s hope for it. (FdW)
Address: <relapse@relapse.com>
CHIKY(U)U (CD Compilation by Ash International)
Chiky(u)u is japanese for Mother Earth – in case you didn’t know. This is
the first part of a trilogy of compilations, (this) one with Japanese
artists, ‘Scatter’ with US artists, and ‘Decay’ with European artists; all
in handy plastic wallets.
As we know, mother earth is shaking some parts of this world, so it may not
seem to be a big surprise that a lot of these pieces refer to earthquakes,
ground, stones, topography etc. There is a hidden track (put your finger on
the rewind button, at the beginning of track 1 until it really can’t be
rewinded any futher) and this is an anonymous recording of a quake. Part of
this musical geographical journey is by well-known noiseheads, such MSBR
and Aube, but they remain all very subtle on this compilation.
Apart from these, there are also people from Japan that I never heard, like
Aira Yamamichi, Toru Yamanaka, Tamaru or Hatohan (who delivers a great
piece actually). Most of these pieces have sampled sounds of processed
environmental sounds, that are in general very subtle. Tak++ high frequency
experiments reminded me of Ryijo Ikeda’s stuff. So jap-noise freaks are
warned: this is not over the top noise compilation number 1000!
After track 10, there follows another 87 index points on this CD, all fits
with silence and noiy outbursts – i.e. more fun to shuffle around.
This compilation is well entertaining and an absolute must to get. (FdW)
Address: <ash@touch.demon.co.uk>
THD 02 (Magazine plus CD)
The second issue is now at the shops, mainly in holland (but hey it’s all
in Dutch anyway). Was my reaction to the first one, keep up the good work,
now I have to be more critical. The Varese article is a summary of a book
written by Elmar Schonberger and adds nothing new. There is incestious
story about the opening evening. There is stuff on Vee-Jays I have never
seen, or on the animations of Jaap Drupsteen (again unseen) and some guy
named Bernard Strik. I can see more on the CD-Rom part, but luckily I don’t
have a CD-Rom player. But here is the audio part: the Charlemagne Palestine
piece was released before on Staalplaat’s Sonderangbot CD, Paul D. Miller’s
piece on his ‘Death In The Light Of Phonogrpah’ and yes so are Kong and F
Crijns. Only two are exclusive tracks. Now come on boys & girls of THD
there are gifted musicians outthere who would love to an exclusive track on
your CD, but do they know where they are? Gert-Jan Prins’ piece takes the
skipping needle of a record to create a rhythm to an otherwise noisy piece.
Kong crossing over hardrock to dance rhythms, but no thank you. Miller’s
spooky piece and Palestine’s live piano piece are excellent (but we knew
that already). Blast is a free piece of fast changing rhythms and horn
blowers are nice for those who still have their heads turned to Henry Cow
and finally Luc Houtkamp is doing an improv piece… (FdW)
Address: <redactie@thd.nl>
DELPHIUM/BIG CITY ORCHESTRA (7″ by Aquese Recordings)
Still one of my favourite formats and still one of my favourite labels to
put this kind of music out. Delphium (the band from the label as they say)
have been around for 4 years, and has several releases on various small
labels. The first track builts violin samples with orchestral ones. Quite a
melancholy piece that could have been made by Autopsia and released by
Hyperium. The second track has a fuzzy guitar and drum samples from trip
hop. For me the better piece – and let’s hope there will be more of this. I
am told to expect Delphium CD soon.
Big City Orchestra may not need any introduction. The short piece is the
spoken introduction about what this concept is all about (and I am not
going to repeat that!). The long piece on their side is a densily layered
one, with tones shifting back and forth. Apperently recorded by abusing
records, needles and recordplayers. A strange piece of repetitive sounds,
noise and scratches, but nevertheless a nice piece! (FdW)
Address: 13 Warren Close – Sandhurst – Berkshire – GU47 9EL – UK
HYBRYDS – EIN PHALLISCHER GOTT (CD by Crowd Control Activities)
This CD shows two different world inhabited by The Hybryds. The first side
is the ritual side with its slowly envelloping synths and calm banging
reverbarted beats. Voices whisper along. The other side of The Hybryds is
the ‘industrial side’: more darker, highly processed voices. Creepy and
sinister.
No doubt this will go down with the fans very well. (FdW)
Address: <crowded@ezlink.com>
RAPOON – EASTERLY 6 OR 7 (CD on STAALPLAAT)
This is the latest release by Robin Storey as Rapoon, and as regular
readers of this screen will probably recall, I vowed never to review
another CD by this gentleman again, especially as the last two released on
Soleilmoon did absolutely nothing to get my juices flowing. Easterly 6 or 7
contains 9 tracks, the first four of which tend to meander about with no
apparent direction. One of them includes an abrupt sample of a very famous,
over-used and possibly Yemenite female vocal ( which I first heard on ‘My
Life In The Bush Of Kate, nice idea, sorry, Ghosts’ and then days later on
an excellent cassette release by a man whose name eludes me for a moment
titled ‘ Last Summer In Sue’s Red Mini’. (Anybody know this?))
Anyway something changes during Track 5, we enter into an interesting
droneworld generated by Robin’s usual artillery of delay and sound-dusting
devices. The all too familiar throb of cross-faded loops pulses out of the
speakers in several of what I think are his more interesting tracks since
‘Alchiva’ which opened the best of his CD’s “Raising Earthly Spirits’.
(Alchiva resides in my top fifty tracks of all times.) These drones
continue throughout the rest of the CD with very slight sprinklings of
blurred percussion and occasional voices. In all, it sounds a bit like
overhearing music played in another room… comes close to a soundtrack for
spiders spinning cobwebs in a dusty sunshafted space. Interior music ooze.
(MP)
Address: <staal@euronet.nl>