Adverse Effect

New Post at Adverse Effect

2010-02-21T05:33:00.001-08:00

Again, another post at the new home for these blogs, should you be interested:

http://www.fourth-dimension.net/index.php/ae-blog

Of which, responses and comments are encouraged. Simply email them via the website's contact directly to me. They may then lead to a further entry.

Thanks.

New Home

2010-02-01T04:36:00.000-08:00

As already noted at least a couple of times before, Adverse Effect continues via its new (and more appropriate) home at the new Fourth Dimension website. All of the previous posts, both from here and the now non-existent, FD/AE website, can be found there, as well as (so far) a couple of posts from the past month. Besides this, of course, news on Fourth Dimension's releases and a new (as yet unfinished) Shop dedicated to vinyl and CD releases from labels and artists traversing 'similar' spheres, can also be found there.

Please visit: www.fourth-dimension.net if interested.

Thanks.

Aside

2010-01-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

As an aside to the last update, I want it to be known that this Adverse Effect blogspot will definitely cease during the next few months. Meanwhile, simply check in on its now being housed at the new Fourth Dimension Records website and, if so inclined, look out for other updates, news and pontifications on my personal blog, which you should see a link to on the page here.

Thanks,

Richo

Reviews: Number Six

2010-01-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

As previously noted, Adverse Effect is now housed at the new Fourth Dimension Records website and, as such, the latest batch of reviews have just been posted there. In due course, and once AE has settled into its new home, I will cease its activities here.

Meantime, please visit the new site. Everything that has been posted here before is now there, and more posts will follow soon.

You can find it at: http://www.fourth-dimension.net/index.php/ae-blog

Otherwise, thank you for reading these posts and all the best for 2010.

Richo

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

2009-12-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

Well, for a number of reasons I have not been so active here recently. The main one being that I'm finally in the throes of putting together a new Fourth Dimension website, which'll in turn house Adverse Effect once again, too. Once this is ready, I will announce it here and will probably only leave this space running for a short while longer.

More reviews will follow soon enough, plus another interview or two.

Watch this space.

Short Note

2009-10-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

Just to set the record straight about a few things, allow me to clarify what Adverse Effect may or may not be these days. Basically, I would like to see it exist in published form once again but, since barely anybody bought the final, fourth, edition of the magazine itself in 2005, I have had to consign material for this either to the now barely functioning website and, well, here ever since. I hope that the website will be replaced by something better in the near future. And I would one day like to collect some selections from here in a published compendium, following on from the one that will hopefully appear next year that's devoted to the eighteen editions of Grim Humour. In the meantime, I will continue to post reviews here, plus more interviews. I am not sure who I will interview next, but Thomas Bey William Bailey and Steven Severin are both on my shortlist. I'd welcome contributions and/or suggestions from others, too, but please do not expect me to include any unsolicited material.

Likewise, I will only review proper vinyl, CD, DVD, etc. releases. The same goes for books and, indeed, anything else. As such, please do not ask me to consider MP3 releases and suchlike. Whilst I can fully appreciate some of the effort that goes into creating music, or anything else, I do not have the time spare for the more, dare I say, hobbyist approach. If you believe in what you're doing, get it out there properly. The same as I do and everybody else whose work I respect. I am not here to support half-measures. And whilst on the subject, I would welcome more review material too, please. See the previous reviews for an idea of where the interests lay...

Thank you.

Reviews: Number Five

2009-10-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, there are still some older titles tucked amongst the review piles, but I think this lot sees the back of those from 2007. Please note that some of the reviews here are by old Adverse Effect contributor Ian Canadine, too. Hopefully more people will climb on board in due course...

KASHIWA DAISUKE 5 Dec CD (Noble Records, 2009)
The first track on this album wafts in with some gentle keyboard melodies pleasantly redolent of Daisuke’s countryman Ryuichi Sakamoto, while some of the later pieces combine piano and glitch in a manner very reminiscent of Sakamoto’s excellent collaborations with Alva Noto on Raster Noton. That would all be fine, if a little unoriginal, but Daisuke obviously feels the need to shit all over the mellowness elsewhere, by throwing in everything but the kitchen sink on the majority of the remaining tracks. With elements of drum’n’bass, cheesy Metal guitar and pounding beats elbowing each other aside for room, Dec 5 mostly comes across as a bit of an incoherent bombardment, or perhaps an exercise in cut up pranksterism that can’t quite wipe the smirk off its face. (Ian Canadine)
www.noble-label.net
www.kashiwadaisuke.com

FAMILY UNDERGROUND untitled 7” (Quasi Pop, Ukraine, 2009)
New release from this Danish trio who’ve been furrowing their own path through a convergence of foggy drones and textures for a number of years now. Both pieces here maintain their interests perfectly well, offering up two instrumentals almost bordering on layered noise via the sound of electric shavers overheating whilst, on one, a hypnotic rhythm does its utmost to compete. Rather nice. Wouldn’t mind getting one of their albums now as this taster’s simply not quite enough. (Richard Johnson)
www.quasipop.org

FRANZ HAUTZINGER & BERTRAND GAUGUET & THOMAS LEHN Close Up CD (Monotype Records, Poland, 2009)
I recently had a discussion about improvised music with a close friend who ended up contending that you only need to listen to it on a release once because, afterwards, it’s got nothing new to offer. Whilst I can see his point, I likewise feel that recordings of improvised music, as with any other form of it, can become valid documents in their own right which, for all manner of different reasons (subjective and otherwise) can be returned to repeatedly. Especially if those moments captured succeed outside their realm as, simply, improvised music. This team-up of these improvisers caught in, respectively, early 2007 and two separate occasions in 2008, illustrates this all too clearly. Utilising Gauguet’s alto and soprano saxophones and Hautzinger’s trumpet (and electronic devices) alongside Lehn’s analogue synth, the three untitled pieces caught here fall into that magical category whereby certain music or collections of sounds appears to reveal something new with every listen. Through some carefully mannered gloop positively rife with contours enough to sustain interest alone, breathy rasps, squelches, tones, unearthly mumblings and a subtle sense of distress and unease unfurl without once sounding either unnatural or uncontrolled. The fact these three players have played together several times and have a huge understanding of each other prevails heavily throughout. Nobody gets in the way of the others and the focus never once strays. What’s even more noticeable than the apparent chemistry, however, is the way the music pulls itself along into possibly the most atmospheric domain I’ve so far heard on a release of this nature. And whilst the music itself is not so obviously confrontational, it does at least sound like it’s challenging the notions of what can or can’t be done in improvisation. An achievement in itself. Highly recommended. (Richard Johnson)
www.monotyperecords.com

MERZBOW Tombo CD (Fellacoustic, USA, 2008)
Three cuts of ear-bleeding howl the like of which Masami Akita made his name on before he began going both digital and into more rhythm kingdoms. Some of the sounds, as to be expected, are incredible, but I have to ‘fess this album’s not as dynamic as certain work I’ve caught in recent years. Track two, simply titled ‘Tombo 2’, nudges in some quieter moments but, as with the rest of the album, an all-out sonic lava-fuck tends to remain the main course. (Richard Johnson)
www.fellacoustic.com

MIKHAIL Morphica 3xCD (Sub Rosa, 2009)
Morphica apparently represents an exercise in “morphing” an earlier Mikhail album, Orphica, from 2007, which was based on the Greek Orpheus legend. The triple CD set features a cast of thousands, including DJ Spooky and members of the Hilliard Ensemble, reworking material from the earlier project. It comes elaborately packaged, including a sizeable foldout featuring extensively annotated heavyweight academic essays, referencing Deleuze and Lyotard, which attempt to site the artist somewhere on the intersection of the postmodern and the Baroque. While it would certainly be easy to snigger at the preciousness of the whole thing, that would indulge a kneejerk anti-intellectualism which I tend to think is cheap, so I’ll restrain any cynicism here. The discs within are respectively entitled Electronics, Voices and Strings, although I wouldn’t say the distinction in sound or content between the three was that clearly discernible. The music itself comprises a dense and heady fog of layered and phased electronics, harpsichord and kettle drum, tabla, drones, whistles, squelches, and chamber strings, with a Gertrude Stein sample thrown in for good measure. Mikhail’s highly-strung androgynous vocals float in and out at intermittent points, to complete the febrile atmosphere. I was reminded at times of Antony and the Johnsons, at others of ‘80s 4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil, and occasionally of the queasy stylings of Nurse With Wound. Having not heard the original Orphica CD I’ve got no idea how Morphica develops or resembles it, but it nonetheless works reasonably successfully as a standalone experience. (Ian Canadine)
www.mikhailmusic.com

FES PARKER Side Room CD (Pressupable Recordings, 2008)
Fes Parker, “one of the real Blackpool legends” according to Simon Morris’s sleevenotes, was a local hero of the Fylde coast punk scene, who died of cancer in February 2009. This 2008 release delivers a full-on set of fairly unreconstructed, and sometimes pretty lo-fi, rock’n’roll ranting, with maybe a touch of Hawkwind kosmische in the guitar attack. Not really my scene, but the guy was obviously a man with a mission and he stuck with it to the end. (Ian Canadine)

GERT-JAN PRINS & BAS VAN KOOLWIJK Synchronator DVD (Cavity, NL, 2009)
Collaborative audiovisual project that commenced in 2006 by these two artists that can be perceived as some kind of assault on what’s typically spewed from our TV screens. Prins’ own digitalised sonic gush, wavering as it does between spacious crinkled workouts and towering temples ablaze with molten white-noise, provides the perfect accompaniment to images derived from often distorted magnetic signals found within the interference. The resulting ten pieces here amount to broken and barely snatched images cast assunder by violent waveforms or what may well be a test card transmission beamed from a planet so distant that it’s become a mere shadow of its former self in the process. It all works rather nicely but, I’m sure, would be far more effective on a massive screen than those to be found in most people’s homes, despite this being the original intention. The fact it also clocks in at 36 minutes total goes in its favour as well. Too much of this and I think these boys would have to get Nurofen sponsoring them… (Richard Johnson)
www.synchronator.com

RAMLEH Switch Hitter 10” (Black Rose Recordings, 2009)
Since the late 1980s, Ramleh have been stabbing away at a tumultous rock approach that steers between a heavily anguished form of psychedelia and something more suitable to battering yr senses to fuck. Occasionally, they still dabble with their power electronics of yore, too, or even combine the two approaches. Whatever, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all pretty damn good and I can honestly say they’re one of the few groups who survived the early ‘90s UK noise-rock non-genre still prone to doing interesting things. ‘Switch Hitter’ opts for another all-out sensory bombardment of a punked-up and beefy Hawkwind In Search Of Space variety where some great rhythm pummel drives along the kind of guitars that could spill your innards. The distortion’s cranked to the red and Gary Mundy’s vocals sound like they’ve been stripped savagely from an early angry punk obscurity. It all, need I point out, works fucking great for me. The b-side’s ‘The Machines of Infinite Joy’, a title in itself which instantly conjures something from the late Ballard’s world, is an equally heavy instrumental belter. Neat. (Richard Johnson)
Write: srmeixner@yahoo.co.uk

SLOWCREAM and CD (Nonine, Germany, 2009)
Five pieces by Berlin’s Me Raabenstein which embark on a celebration, if you like, of the hand, in all respects from our physical dependency on it to its use as a symbol or metaphor, and everything in between. Beginning as a commission for a contemporary dance project, Slowcream’s third album stretches for around forty minutes and generally sways gently over a filmic hue imbued with a soft electronica approach itself augmented with strings and extra cellos and organs on three of the cuts improvised live by Greg Haines. Whilst the temperament remains refined throughout, some foothills at least take shape at certain points, adding an appropriate sense of subtle drama to the proceedings that sensitively reflect titles such as ‘Pressure’, ‘Vibration’ and ‘Moisture’. What with melodic keys likewise breaking through the symphonies at various junctures, it all feels like Me Raabenstein’s background in club music is ultimately shaking itself away into pastures more serious yet not so sober it may alienate previous listeners. I’ll resist the urge to round this off by saying we’ve either got to hand it to him or must give him a big hand. Instead, I implore you to listen to this incredible addition to a canon of work by a mere handful (sorry!) of contemporary artists whose vision rests outside the usual parameters. (Richard Johnson)
www.nonine.com

STEFANIE RESSIN/ASMUS TIETCHENS 3 Wishes split-7” (Meeuw Muzak, The Netherlands, 2009)
Another great entry in the ongoing series of 7” releases from Meeuw Muzak. Stefanie Ressin I know little about, I have to ‘fess, but here she proffers a nifty slice of dirty electro-pop vaguely reminiscent of Malaria!, which is fine by me. Tietchens, on the other hand, appears with a version of the same song which discards most of the rhythm and vocals in favour of sounds resembling machinery at war. Which also, needless to say, wins my vote. Fantastic stuff. (Richard Johnson)
www.meeuw.net

MIKA VAINIO Black Telephone of Matter CD (Touch, 2009)
Being one half of the fantastic Pan Sonic, it’s no surprise that Vainio’s solo endeavours tend to adopt a similar approach to teasing often abrasive or uncomfortable sound structures into areas where they are tempered and far less black and white. When Vainio cranks things up, everything feels measured and almost surgical, yet these red-level workouts only arise in the first place from a mass of undulating and sometimes broken frequencies or what sounds like machine-noise having a coughing fit. At times, such as on ‘Silences Traverses Des Mondes Et Des Anges’, the proceedings even become quite subdued, like listening to an underground lake, before what sounds like a plane looming overhead then takes over in the next piece, ‘Bury A Horse’s Head’. Attention to detail and, in turn, to mapping out ideas that never betray a stance that feels wholly personal (without being completely detached from the listener) is what sets everything apart. Once more, the (perhaps obvious) analogy of the surgeon in the operating theatre springs only too readily to mind. Everything’s considered and executed with precision and care. Helped along by very occasional choice samples themselves given to some appropriate treatments, Vainio appears to be operating on a far superior level to most of today’s digital wanderers. Black Telephone of Matter pays testament to this fact in leaps and bounds. (Richard Johnson)
www.touchmusic.org.uk

WICKED KING WICKER eponymous CD (Noiseville, USA, 2007)
Four lengthy tracks of slow-motion sludge and feedback by these US metal monsters. The very thing certain teenagers find themselves leaning on because they’re misunderstood whilst the rest of us splutter into our cognac, I suppose, although to be fair there are some pretty massive sounds afoot here that could make many a purported ‘noise’ artist weep with envy… (Richard Johnson)
www.noiseville.com

JOHN YOUNG Lieu-temps DVD Audio (empreintesDIGITALes, 2007)
John Young is an electroacoustic composer from New Zealand, though currently based in the UK. In Lieu-temps he uses field recordings, narrative framing, radio samples and oral history, interweaved with drones, electronics, detuned piano and other tools of the electroacoustic trade, to relate the story of how his father, a soldier with the New Zealand army, first met his Italian mother, during the Second World War liberation of her hometown, Forli, by Allied forces. Young mixes his ingredients effectively and movingly to draw out his major theme of how personal and world-historical events are inextricably entwined, and how chance can play such a huge role in dictating the outcomes of human lives. The repetitive use of chimes from the belltowers of Forli, together with contemporary commentary from war reporters on the scene, works particularly well in evoking the feel of time and place which is vital to the project. Lieu-temps has something of the experimental radio documentary about it, but is none the worse for that, and repays repeated listening in bringing out the intricate detail of its montaged elements. I’m not sure if there are any real benefits in this having been released on DVD Audio rather than CD, but evidently all releases on the empreintesDIGITALes label follow this policy. (Ian Canadine)
www.empreintesDIGITALes.com

Reviews: Number Four

2009-09-05T14:58:00.001-07:00

I keep unearthing more review material. Some of this should have been handled last year, but it unfortunately took me half a year or so to organise many things following a move in late 2007. Anyway, bearing in mind my apologies directed to those concerned are now firmly yet inadvertently cemented, here they are. Hopefully, the next round will see one or two others helping me out, too...

MYRA DAVIES Cities and Girls CD (Moabit Music, Germany, 2008)
Spoken word by this Canadian mostly fleshed out by music from Gudrun Gut but also, on one piece each respectively, by Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten) & Danielle de Picciotto and Beate Bartel. The stories, which are executed well and are infused with a salubrious modicum of black humour, range from being about resisting ‘stuff’, Berlin, hanging out with John Giorno, times of supposed innocence caught in a timewarped friend, family history and so on to one cleverly suffusing women’s independence with a need for a ‘drill’. The music backs everything up perfectly and arrives generally from haunting electronica indebted to its rudimentary roots in sound exploration, although Bartel’s employing a single-string Viatnamese instrument called the Dan Bau serves as pleasant a detour as the use of old Irish melodies in Gut’s accompaniment to ‘Goodbye Belfast’. Altogether, everything falls into place well enough for you to either listen to it in the manner in which it was intended, with all attention paid to the words at work, or to enjoy as a glorious whole where Davies’ passages can be treated as very much a part of the music. Fair enough, considering the music was composed around the words and how, well, the collaborations even witness Davies singing on the ‘60s pop-inflected ‘My Friend Sherry’. Whatever, a wonderful album irrespective of how you choose to approach it. (Richard Johnson)
www.moabitmusik.de

GoGooo Long, Lointain CD (Baskaru, France, 2007)
GoGooo is, essentially, the name given to Gabriel Hemandez’s excursions to often melancholic frontiers. Using field recordings and voices alongside a wide range of instruments including guitar, melodica and piano, then aided by his laptop, he creates a warm and gentle setting more structured than so many others operating in similar areas. Sometimes, such as on ‘Affleurement’, the voices and delicately-strummed guitar are employed to dominate proceedings, but even these assume a vaguely pastoral quality in perfect harmony with everything else on offer here. Gently airbrushed textures and tones are augmented by little, unobtrusive swells of electroacoustic flotsam and jetsam, whispers, bells and clacking noises, while the guitar never once betrays its polite stance whenever it appears. Overall, it recalls the feelings generated by Pan American’s work and, well, if you’re partial to these hazy plains, you could do far worse than visit this album. Also included are videos accompanying the first four songs, but for some reason or other they don’t appear to work on my laptop. (Richard Johnson)
www.baskaru.com

HEAL Supernatural 12” (Sound On Probation, France, 2009)
Laurent Perrier has been responsible for both producing his own music and releasing work by others for a considerable while now. Since the late ‘80s, he has recorded under his own name and collaborated with others in groups such as Zonk’t, Cape Fear and, indeed, this project, Heal. He also used to run Odd Size before ceasing operations and moving on to Sound on Probation, which has moved away from the former label’s concerns with post-industrial music to often dance inflected electronics. Heal themselves fit in perfectly well with this, too. On Supernatural, their third release, they merge a wide range of percussion and string instruments with electronics in a setting not far removed from the worlds Portishead and Massive Attack have operated in. Pinned into place by some great double bass playing, violins sweep over an alluring array of soundtrack-ish twilight swirls perfect for these autumn evenings. Only odd thing, really, is the fact the sleeve states there are eight songs spread over both sides when it appears there’s only actually one song each side. I wouldn’t have been averse to listening to those missing six. (Richard Johnson)
www.soundonprobation.com

HURRA CAINE LANDCRASH Unanswered Questions CD (Split Femur Recordings, 2008)
Manchester guitarist Daniel Hopkins’ debut, offering six cuts whereby he creates glazed textural ‘scapes by dropping pebbles, shells and so on onto the guitar strings before shaping everything up on his, yes, you got it, laptop. It’s okay but like so much of this type of music just doesn’t navigate anything particularly new or interesting. Shifting banks of sound produced by objects dropped onto guitar strings has been done to death already. I need something more personal from such work. Something that may hold my attention enough to command repeated listens. It’s not a tall order. (Richard Johnson)
www.splitfemurrecordings.com

LEHN/SCHMICKLER Navigation im Hypertext CD (A-Musik, Germany, 2008)
These two established electroacoustic artists, Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler, first met in MIMEO in 1998 and began collaborating outside them together soon after. Over the years since their first album, Bart, released in 2000 and catching them at some synth improvisations, they’ve toured extensively and have recorded fifteen of the shows now used as the source material for both this album and the simultaneously released Kolner Kranz (also on A-Musik). Lehn uses an analogue synthesiser to Schmickler’s digital one and, together, they meld battery-assault-sized blocks of molten sonic disturbance to rather more refined bridges of static carresses all, of course, arriving from that same tempestuous lake so much contemporary electronic music is drawing from. Although some post-production work has taken place here, it’s still interesting to hear how much scope these two instruments have when placed side by side by two people whose chemistry and imagination evidently equal each other. The dynamics keep everything afloat but, besides this, the very fact there’s so much happening every time things either peak or are pared back to calmer levels really maintains the appeal. Sometimes almost industrial and at others akin to being snagged in some kind of parallel universe, Navigation im Hypertext is precisely where I enjoy being taken by abstract improv music. (Richard Johnson)
www.a-musik.com

YOSHIO MACHIDA Hypernatural 3 (Baskaru, France, 2008)
Japanese artist Machida’s third part of a triptych, which began with a release in 1999 and has witnessed a gap of six years since the last, continues his interest in collaging field recordings with real instruments and treatments. Spread over seven cuts dedicated to the theme of oblivion (in being a positive thing as much as a negative, he explains on the sleevenotes), we get to hear lapping waves, lagubrious miniscule pulses, undulating tones, carefully woven crackle, birdsong, what sounds like a TV recorded ‘neath some frequency noodling, Aki Onda on “cassette recorder”, glazed chunks of static white hiss, Buddhist nun sutras, shuffling machinery and what may be either somebody walking on gravel or eating a wafer. Waves as an obvious reference point aside, it’s hard to see where all of this fits in with Machida’s overall concept for these pieces exactly, but there’s no denying that a lot of work has clearly gone into their being realised. This, and the fact the entire album sits together as both a beguiling and thoroughly engaging listen, renders it one to return to repeatedly. And every listen seems to successfully reveal more and more of its charms. (Richard Johnson)

MöSLANG/WEHOWSKY Einschlagskrater 7” (Meeuw Muzak, The Netherlands, 2008)
Just when I was beginning to think things were going quiet on the Ralf Wehowsky front, a package containing several singles including this one from Jos of Meeuw Muzak arrived quite recently. Good news for me as I’ve been collecting whatever I can by the German musique concrete artist for a considerable while now. My old group Splintered even collaborated with him on an album back in 1996 that I’ll still tell anybody who cares is one of my proudest moments. Here, of course, he collaborates with Möslang, from Swiss duo Voice Crack, on two cuts that are more accessible than most of his work, but I’m not complaining. Heaving drones that sound like they’re welling up from somewhere deep under the Earth’s crust cough out some electronic splutter and chattering sounds that’d sound agreeable enough alone. A great little record, from a great label dedicated to eclectic limited run 7”s deemed collectable almost as soon as they’re released. (Richard Johnson)
www.meeuw.net

ZONK’T Beat Wins You and Me MLP (Sound On Probation, France, 2009)
Another release from Laurent Perrier, but this time presenting his solo material on what must be his sixth under the Zonk’t guise. As with previous material, Zonk’t is given to melding colossal chunks of industrial pounding to electronica and techno. The five cuts here see this approach scaling new heights, and it’d be fantastic to hear this in a suitable environment such as club or a blasted through a venue’s PA system. My own hi-fi, good as it is, has to accept the huge compromise known as neighbours, unfortunately… (Richard Johnson)

Reviews: Number Three (Part Two)

2009-08-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

Quite simply, a few more reviews started around the same time as the last batch that needed tweaking a little...

Photo: Office-R (6)

ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO with ENSEMBLE MODERN –utp_ CD/DVD (Raster-Noton, Germany, 2008)
Absolutely phenomenal team-up between Carsten Nicolai (aka, Alva Noto/raster-noton label big chief) and the multi-talented ex-YMO member that catches the former utilising piano works and other sounds by the latter in collaboration with film artists Ensemble Modern. Microscopic piano melodies and vague electronic signatures join hands with atmospheric tones, filmic haze and carefully woven flecks of digital debris to create an album where reflection harmonises with the very same visions of utopia hinted at by the title itself. The DVD features visuals from the original concert by the two of them as well as another dedicated to its process. (Richard Johnson)
www.raster-noton.net

APE SHIT Intravenous in Furs/Heavy Leather LP (Smith Research, 2008)
You pretty much know where you’re heading when you receive another slab o’ wax accompanying a hastily scribbled note from the Ceramic Hobs’ Simon Morris. The DIY/hand-assembled sleeve, complete with sticker proudly proclaiming that the record is one of 100 only, the photocopied insert that looks like it exploded out of prime ‘80s cut ‘n’ paste culture, and the white label record itself with stickers on all add up to something that instantly induces recollections of Amor Fati’s Body Without Organs LP via Rancid Vat and, more appropriately, the UK’s own ATV and, moreso, Blackpool’s The Membranes. The music, as with the Hobs before them, is of the homegrown, unadulterated and virtually self-destructive persuasion, all vitriolic poetry and cynical swagger bound to a load of live recordings that sound like they’ve been culled from a mixing desk stuck in some dingy pub’s backroom toilet. Beyond this, it’s all psychotic and drug-addled drum pummel, feedbacking guitars, audience shouts and quite possibly Speaker’s Corner-type rants about the general nature of things. It’s like a Bukowski story in sonic form. The sound of embitterment arriving from a heart with some passion.
Apart from the fact Simon sings on one side of the LP, it’s difficult to ascertain who’s involved exactly. Names such as Watson Lewis, Jim MacDougall, Errol Hunter and ‘Sir Nigger’ are all embroidered to the insert, plus The Wire’s Ben Watson’s name appears a lot…but I suspect as some kind of joke at the critic’s expense. Whatever, definitely not an album to be played if your biggest desire is to ward off evil spirits. (Richard Johnson)
www.ceramichobs.livejournal.com

KASHIWA DAISUKE 5 Dec CD (Noble Records, Japan, 2009)
Third album proper by this Japanese laptop artist who has been operating since 2004. Following a rather lush and almost filmic opening track that wouldn’t be out of place on Russia’s Electroshock imprint, Kashiwa throws us into slightly more haphazard territory, where piano melodies soon get pushed violently aside by drum ‘n’ bass, Fennesz-type electronic gristle, broken operatic vocals that wouldn’t seem out of place on an old Prog record, rock guitar and cut-ups. It’s okay but, combined with other songs that delve into downtempo territory and post-techno manoeuvres that are all perhaps slightly overcooked, reeks of someone trying maybe a little too hard to demonstrate his obvious abilities. From what I understand, Kashiwa is a huge Prog fan too, and I think it’s precisely this that governs his own music. The ideas are more about him showing what he’s capable of in the studio than expressing anything deep or personal. Everything’s too polished and, due to the lack of real orientation evident here, often quite clumsy or awkward sounding. Fifth cut, ‘Black Lie, White Lie’, would, I’m certain, soon clear out those club spaces in need of a reason to go home. (Richard Johnson)
www.noble-label.net

IAN MIDDLETON Time Building LP (Entr’acte, 2009)
Arriving from a certain class of musicians and artists whose dedication to their craft pays absolutely no attention whatsoever to trends or the demands of the listener, Ian Middleton has been forging his own path in the often enticing world of analogue synth drones and related areas since the mid-1990s. Although he now employs a wider range of tools to help realise his work, such as a pattern generator, ring modulator, various effects units and occasional acoustic sounds and field recordings, it has always aspired to reach heights so many others who’re similarly-inclined completely fail to arrive even remotely so close. Sometimes Ian Middleton’s work may flounder slightly due to various limitations but, mostly, it succeeds in being extremely natural, beautiful and mesmerising simply due to his possessing a very clear idea about his objectives here. On Time Building, which arrives in an almost plain white sleeve and with an insert explaining some of the reasons and processes behind both this and his previous material, there are six pieces evenly divided over both sides which are not only dedicated to the repetitive outdoor sounds Ian likes so much but capture them perfectly. In the past, I’ve generally likened Ian’s work to those rather more obscure or hidden places either around the world, or on others, and whilst this may be true to a certain extent, it’s also very clear he’s catching nature’s cycles closer to home too. Layered oscillating tones that forever metamorphose form the main body of these pieces, yet other sounds glide in, make subtle and brief appearances, and occasionally take over altogether, overtly resulting in music that feels alive. Always engaging and never once afraid to explore all the available contours that present themselves, Ian Middleton’s work is up there with everything at once extraordinary and inspiring. Time Building’s only crime is that it comes in an edition of 250 that, I’m sure, will disappear fairly quickly. (Richard Johnson)
www.entracte.co.uk

OFFICE-R (6) Recording the Grain CD (+3dB Recordings, Norway, 2008)
Improv is a form of music I’m, to be perfectly honest, rarely in the mood for, despite having enough interest in the medium to indulge in occasional concerts (of which there are plenty here in Krakow) and even pick up the occasional release. Mostly, I feel it’s music best caught live anyway, but there are plenty of justifications to it being recorded as well. In the same way as free jazz is best seen and heard sweated out in some flea-riddled bar, there are still plenty of times when those moments can warrant return trips…especially when, for instance, we’re talking about someone such as Albert Ayler, whose fantastic forays into his own soul-searching can now only be heard on recordings testifying his greatness. Improv falls into exactly the same trap, really, but some albums by these artists are more justified than others and, luckily, Recording the Grain, put together by six musicians otherwise found under the N-Collective moniker, happens to be one of them, especially in the sense it successfully bridges the gap between free jazz and contemporary improv like little else.
Over the course of five lengthy pieces, a couple of saxophones, clarinet and bass are all reduced to an appropriately subdued relationship to some electronics also carefully woven into the setting. Little reed instrument signatures are fed into this and kept to a level where they rarely become obtrusive, whilst the electronics themselves are spatial and measured and yet as fluid in their execution as everything they’re up against. Space itself appears to be the key to this music as well, as absolutely nothing is allowed to dominate or consume proceedings and there’s more than a passing nod to the minimalist end of electro-acoustic composition. Gently swaying bridges of peeps, parps, poots and fragmented melodies give way to an undercurrent of tinklings, taps, shuffles and knocks that rarely assume forms outside the purely oblique. Swells sometimes loom into view, but don’t stick long enough to detract from the overall sound, and we’re ultimately left with an album as rewarding and comfortable to listen to as such apparent disjointedness could possibly hope for. Time to check out the N-Collective releases, I would contend… (Richard Johnson)
www.plus3db.net

UBIK Loop Finding… CD (Recycling Records, Poland, 2008)
Third album by this Polish artist, here joint-released with another from 2006 called Cut with the Blade that originally came in download-only format (see? It’s not a real album until it actually exists as something solid!). Featuring six tracks, it mostly hovers over loop-generated atmospherics territory not entirely original but still okay in an easy-listening kinda way. The downside of this type of music is that it’s not exactly hard to make these days, but it at least feels as though Ubik’s Mikolaj Trzaska’s heart is in the right place even if the execution of his expression isn’t quite there. Dunno though…I’ve always thought too much music is made by people who can make it instead of those who feel completely and utterly compelled to. Everything sounds fine on Loop Finding…, if somewhat functional and perfunctory, but it ultimately points to Mikolaj still trying to find his own voice in an ocean becoming increasingly deeper. Above all else, this album amounts to someone struggling to find exactly what he wants to do in relatively safe, and rather calm, waters. It’d be good to be knocked sideways from time to time, if nothing else. The very fact Cut with the Blade amounts to saxophone/electronics experiments absolutely nothing like the music on Loop Finding… compounds my point perfectly, although I must concede this music is more interesting. (Richard Johnson)
www.recyclingrecords.com

Reviews: Number Three (Part One)

2009-07-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

Note: Part Two will follow very shortly. And, yes, I'd welcome a couple of others to join me in this. Please contact me if interested...

LUCIO CAPECE & MIKA VAINIO Trahnie CD (eMego, Germany, 2009)
Following a somewhat disappointing opening track comprised of nothing but vast, industrial-strength textures, this collaboration between Argentina’s improv/jazz musician Capece and Pan Sonic’s Vainio comes over like a perfect match. Sax blasts are hammered to the point of becoming new, almost alien, sculptures given to changing shape according to Vainio’s monolithic proto-rhythms and hints of violence, and occasional sonic tendons are exposed to reveal an intricate underbelly to the proceedings as beautiful as they are awe-inspiring. Track four, ‘Hondonada’, with its combination of subtle knocking sounds and sparse bellows, may well shuffle quietly towards some of Capece’s own background, but the majority of the album sounds exactly like what I’d want from two such artists being thrown into a furnace together. Fair to say I wouldn’t expect anything less from Vainio, though. Both his work as solo artist and in Pan Sonic rarely disappoints, and this collaboration, perfectly illustrating how the gap between such disparate artists can narrow when likemindedness is afoot, only adds to the canon. Fucking wonderful. (Richard Johnson)
www.editionsmego.com

ERDEM HELVACIOGLU Wounded Breath CD (AuCourant, USA, 2008)
Possibly Istanbul’s finest electroacoustic music export right now, Erdem here delivers his third album and proves precisely how much he’s made a name for himself by dedicating it to five pieces collected from a selection of prizewinning pieces performed at international festivals. Unlike a lot of his other material, the guitar is not a focal point this time, either. Instead, like electroacoustic artists such as Eric La Casa or Eric Cordier, a variety of sound sources (such as marbles, fire, water, etc.) are utilised and teased into forms far removed from their natural forms, mostly creating an unsettled yet atmospheric setting where what might be otherwise readily dismissed ‘noise’ is afforded a smoother hue. Although a lot of conflicting sounds are lulled into view, and the overall effect is one of an uneven, haphazard soundbed of opposing ideas learning to live with each other in a calm environment, there are still, however, elements of both surprise and foreboding kept afloat. This music is not all about being easily swallowed, or sweetness and light. In a number of ways, it bears similarities with some work by, say, Colin Potter or irr.App.[ext.], for example, as much as those operating either at the more comfortable end of things or purely in the world of electroacoustic composition. I think the fact Erdem’s background also takes in rock music may be partly responsible for this, and indeed the deeper understanding of dynamics necessary to keep his own work alive must certainly owe something to this school of thought. Whatever, I’m all for it. I far prefer those artists who can bridge the gap between different worlds than those who close themselves off in their hermetic bubbles. Erdem’s work succeeds completely here, and I hope he continues to maximise what I personally feel is an extremely rare and adept handle on such matters. (Richard Johnson)

KENNETH KIRSCHNER Filaments and Voids 2CD (12k, USA, 2008)
I have to ‘fess I’ve long loved the type of harmonic drone or tonal music evident on this latest release by prolific New York composer Kirschner. Throughout both these discs, fantastic and lengthy shimmering sound-drifts sweep and gently roll into each other, at once leaving room for each to breathe without losing sight of a clear objective to colour space and silence with a little meaning. All three pieces that make up the first disc assume a melancholic position where loss and absence are rendered positive via abstract forms, evoking a place where one can blissfully and peacefully contemplate the subjective and objective completely undisturbed, not unlike staring at a lake’s ripples on a remote planet. Kirschner’s main instrument, the piano, provides a clearer source for the fourth (and last) track, ‘March 16 2006’, but all 72.37 minutes prove themselves an exercise in a bleakness as healthy as one of Bela Tarr’s lengthy camera shots. Grainy and sparse piano chords rarely sound so downright absorbing and, if anything, the feel of this piece compares with some of William Basinski’s work; in tone and texture if not the actual execution.
Over the years, Kirschner has released a number of albums and collaborated with 12k’s own Taylor Deupree. I urge you to investigate. (Richard Johnson)
www.12k.com

FRANCISCO LOPEZ & LAWRENCE ENGLISH HB CD (Baskaru, France, 2008)
In a way, I suppose it was only a matter of time before these two artists amalgamated their respective interests in both field recordings and relationships between normally hidden sounds and their being taken to new levels of perception. Whilst, however, Australia’s Lawrence English usually transforms his own interests in such soundworlds to heights often melodious or at least accessible, Spain’s Lopez has long had a reputation for crafting pieces that one must strain their hearing as far as possible in order to derive anything from. On this album, each artist contributes a field recording piece and then adds an additional reworking of each other’s piece whereby the source material is hammered into new forms that at once remain respectful of the originals and delve into more musique concrete realms. Birdsong, drifting hiss, chirrups, a buzzing fly, near-silent textures, occasional swells and various studio-concocted sighs and creaks all add up to four pieces that shake hands firmly together on the conceptual soundmap. Interesting to the usual point with such releases, of course, but lacking the necessary emotional attachment I personally crave. (Richard Johnson)
www.baskaru.com

IAN MIDDLETON Aural Spaces LP (Swill Radio, USA, 2008)
‘S funny how some things turn out. I relocate to Poland a few years ago, lose touch with a whole bunch of people (due, largely, to my now being heavily dependent on the ‘net in order to maintain contact) and then still receive the occasiional surprising package out of the blue by one of these very same people that’ll knock me for six. Ian Middleton is one such person. Used to be in fairly regular contact, traded records with each other and then, well, a protracted silence until this LP was handed to me by one of my handmaids. Nice though it was, I then couldn’t actually listen to the thing until now, due to my turntable having gasped its last breaths at the turn of this year (I can’t afford new turntables and handmaids, you know!). Thankfully, some waits pay off, however. Not that I honestly expected much less from anything by this Scottish artist whose music is as enriching as his paintings…
What we have are ten pieces spread equally over both sides of an attractive 180g slab perfectly matched for these sounds. With pieces either taken from the LP’s name itself (in three parts) or titled ‘Negative Space’, ‘Whirlloop’ and ‘Horizon’, etc., Ian successfully transports us to those places of wonder and magic so often missing in music borne of the lonely studio scientist. As with the previous work I have of his, Ian excels in crafting rich moraines of sound streaked with sparkling crevices and shimmering streams cloaked in mists of mysterious hues. Tones ripple with organic delight, oscillating hums take on the appearance of a language from another world, rhythmic flutters carress you hypnotically, and an overwhelming yet unspoken beauty forever breaks away from the nearby shadows.
When contemporary electronic music can sound this good still, there’s no reason in the world to abandon any hope. Sublime. (Richard Johnson)
www.anti-naturals.org/swill

NANA APRIL JUN The Ontology of Noise CD (Touch, 2009)
Five pieces by Swedish visual artist, composer and art magazine editor Christofer Lamgren intended to explore the “dark associations of post-black metal” via an entirely digital medium that employs no traditional instruments. As such, we are left with an array of cascading tones, frequencies and timbres that aim for a hallucinatory high yet aren’t quite well-formed enough to achieve this. Like so much of this type of listening experience, the result is too cold or detached and aloof. The filmic realms it aspires to are perhaps hinted at on the final cut which, as the title ‘Sun Wind Darkness Eye’ suggests, at least evokes a slightly warmer and more natural sound. Ultimately something of a misfiring, I feel, for the usually reliable Touch. (Richard Johnson)
www.touchmusic.org.co.uk

THE NIGHTINGALES Insult to Injury CD (Klangbad, Germany, 2009)
Last time I heard this Birmingham-based group I was a teenager! John Peel used to play their records frequently and I once bargain-ought their ‘Paraffin Brain’ single (released in 1982 on Cherry Red, no less), although I think that went the same way as countless other records bought during this period. Whatever, it transpires that singer Robert Lloyd’s group have continued to remain active in one form or other over the years since then and reformed properly in 2004 with an assortment of others, such as members of pre-Nightingales group The Prefects, Aaron Moore of Volcano The Bear and Pram’s Daren Garratt, helping out or joining along the way. They’ve also released several singles since reforming and now, indeed, have this album both recorded by and on Faust’s Hans-Joachim Irmler’s studio/label. Although I’ve not listened to the group since their early days, I think it’s fair to surmise the twelve cuts here both perpetuate and expand on the ramshackle approach formulated then. Punchy-as-fuck rhythms cement an amalgam of cut-throat guitars, corridors of exploding melody, semi-spoken bridges of wry commentary, near-No Wave jazz-funk collisions, urban Country flourishes and deep dark delves into a kind of psychotic pop barely found these days. On ‘Big Bones’, both The Cravats and The Birthday Party spring to mind as meaty enough reference points but, ultimately, The Nightingales have skillfully embroidered their own sound, torn it violently apart and scattered it in several different directions. Fair play to them. (Richard Johnson)
www.klangbad.de

MICHAEL PETERS Impossible Music CD (Hyperfunction, Germany, 2009)
Surely an album with such an inviting title should sound less downright ordinary than this? Composed of mostly piano fed through software this German artist himself devised called a Gumowski-Mira attractor (itself dedicated to an algorithim and named after the two CERN physicists who discovered it), the pieces mostly exude a faintly charming aura akin to a jaunty John Cage doing a drunken jig. Lopsided keys bounce off each other, then pare down for a more sombre embrace before stirring themselves up again. Meantime, Peters inflects them occasionally with live interaction that, it would appear, wasn’t taken far enough. Whilst the idea alone is worthwhile enough, the resulting sixteen pieces suffer for their not actually delivering on the excitement of the promise. (Richard Johnson)
www.hyperfunction.org

REHAB Man Under Train Situation CD (+3dB Recordings, Norway, 2009)
Debut album by this new duo consisting of John Hegre (Jazzkammer) and Bjørnar Habbestad (N-Collective), with nine cuts of improv guitar and flute-led electronic works destined to pulverise your cranium’s toughest points. The guitar is as downright savage as anything old-timer Stefan Jaworzyn ever knocked us with, occasionally assuming almost rock forms before quickly spiralling into those unknown areas that are as alluring as the universe’s darkest recesses, and the accompanying bombardment of processed flutes and electronics weaves along with it all perfectly. Once in a while, the intensity subsides to make room for a little more breathing space. Track five, ‘Pankow’, in particular, sees everything whittled back to a more measured and subtle approach I’d personally have liked to have heard more of. As with so much of this music, though, I always feel it is best caught live. And if this release is anything to go by, I’m certain Rehab would make a commendable proposition. (Richard Johnson)
www.plus3db.net

TECHIX Monosymphonic CD (AntiClock Records, USA, 2008)
Techix is the name given to Oklahoma-based artist Justin Jones, who has been dedicated to this project since 2001. Inspired by classical music as much as electronics and improvisation, the twelve cuts here appear imbued with a similar hue to Max Richter’s or some of Stars Of The Lid’s later delves into more heavily string-laden territory. Rich in atmosphere due mostly to the violins prevalent throughout, tempered electronic rhythms and textures likewise occasionally jostle alongside in an appropriate manner. It all sounds pleasant enough, but things generally tend to get slightly more interesting when, for example, other elements creep in. ‘Dead After All’, for example, with its guitar rhythm and synth whorls, and ‘Tear of Dust’’s being carried along by gentle folk-ish guitar strums and ghostly voices, add much needed moodiness to the proceedings. Ultimately, though, most of the pieces appear to suffer for their seeming to miss an ingredient or two. It would be good to hear Jones perhaps take his ideas into a collaborative setting. (Richard Johnson)
www.techix.com/www.anticlock.net
Note: The date on the sleeve states these songs are from 2004, but I only received this release last year. Either the mail from Oklahoma takes an exceptionally long time or this album simply collects work recorded from that year. Who knows? (Actually, a quick ‘net check has revealed this album was released at least a couple of years ago. Oh well…)

VIOLET Violet Ray Gas and the Playback Singers CD (Zeromoon & Sentient Recognition Archive, USA, 2009)
Violet is the name given to Washington DC veteran Jeff Surak’s latest guise. Operating since the early ‘80s and responsible over the years for a part in the homespun cassette label arena as well as collaborations with Crawling With Tarts, John Hudak, Frans de Waard, Kotra, Francisco Lopez, etc. and his own 1348, Sovmestnoye Predpriyatiye and V projects, Violet pretty much continues from where the V duo left off. Utilising found objects, prepared acoustic instruments, damaged discs, old record players and the like, Surak here heads for an exciting juncture where cinematic drones meet abrasive outbursts. Following the opener ‘All Records Collapse’, with its gliding metallic textures and spoken voices, we are treated to a good example of his capabilties. ‘Marionetki’, stretching for over 14 minutes, combines penumbric hiss the like of which The Hafler Trio are especially good at sculpting entire universes from with gentle whirs and flutters whose movements later fade away to make room for a savage machine attack. Afterwards, tracks mostly continue to work themselves around more dynamic gush, nods towards minimalism, carefully woven loops and enough attention to detail to keep things wholly engaging, but fifth piece, ‘Interior Ghosts’, makes way for a haunting violin drone-led setting that must rank as the album’s highlight. Whilst other sounds bubble away beneath the overlayed violins, visions of skinny black-clad types creating the perfect din in a New York loft hover ever closer, but it’s something that works sublimely when juxtaposed with all else on offer. An album I’ll certainly be returning to. (Richard Johnson)
www.zeromoon.com

JANA WINDEREN Heated: Live in Japan CD (Touch, 2009)
Using an array hydrophones, Norwegian sound-artist Winderen here collects material gathered from Greenland and Iceland as well as her native country to create a nearly 27-minute-long piece recorded live at Super Deluxe in Tokyo, October 2008. Concerning her work with the sounds to be found in lakes, oceans, glacial crevasses and generally beneath the world we see around us, she weaves together sonic blankets as haunting as they are beguiling or comforting. Mysterious underwater creaks, crackles and oozes converge with the atmospheric flowing and gushing to an effect as satisfying as that to be found on Nurse With Wound’s heavily criticised Salt Marie Celeste album. And, outside a limited edition 7”, ‘Surface Runoff’, released on USA-based Autofact label, some of her recordings appearing in Sigur Ros’ 2007 film, Heima, and a series of installations and collaborations (including a recent one with Chris Watson), Heated is actually her debut CD. I look forward to hearing more. (Richard Johnson)
www.touchmusic.org.uk

Emotional Restraints: Martin Küchen live at Alchemia, Krakow, Sunday June 7th 2009

2009-06-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

Not only afforded the pleasure of seeing Küchen for my first time live in Warsaw late last year, I’d also been introduced to him immediately before this particular night’s show by Marcin of AudioTong and was pleased to discover him extremely affable. Always nice to meet decent musicians, as I generally contend the vast majority are either dull or pretentious and, therefore, best avoided at all costs. Anyway, after grabbing a beer and heading downstairs to one of Krakow’s only venues dedicated to modern jazz, improv and related forms of music, I was surprised to find the place had several rows of empty seats available still. Good for me, of course, but not so good for those people who clearly had better things to do than join me in witnessing one of the best saxophone players I’ve personally caught for a long time. One of the best because, quite simply, his playing transcends all the usual barriers concerning the instrument.
Although having arrived from a freeform jazz background (and itself beginning, apparently, in a punk band many, many years ago), Küchen’s own work centres around a different approach to the saxophone. Each of the compositions played tonight, similar to his set in Warsaw, concentrates on a breathy, occasionally almost silent, type of playing given to more textural forms that are akin to utterances from beyond the space time continuum. If the wind could play jazz through the trees (and, heck, maybe it does!), it might come close to sounding like this. For all the obvious energy and exertion married to Küchen’s style, what comes out is a series of murmurs, melodious guff and near-impenetrable silence intent on perhaps picking at the notion of details lost to the everyday racket we’re generally bombarded by. It may be either a reaction to the latter or it may well serve as a reminder of those seemingly buried fragments of noise we at least think are obscured by those many bigger blocks of sonic debris, or it may indeed simply be open to subjective interpretation. In the end, it doesn’t especially matter when placed next to the music itself.
Playing five rather lengthy compositions in total, each related to the overall context by virtue of the stealthy playing at work, we were treated to music that made me think of hypnotic forms themselves occasionally conjuring all from strained cries of anguish to the internal sounds of a building collapsing caught from afar. Once in a while, more regular sounds associated with the instrument would make their pronouncements but, mostly, what Küchen does is create a setting where restrained yet dynamic enough movements flesh themselves out amongst babbling that’s more like electro-acoustic work than anything immediately related to freeform jazz or whatever. Quietly employing some kind of shaker to the saxophone’s bell on one of the pieces, the emphasis on detail becomes even greater. Outside of this, he also uses what looks like an electric toothbrush on another piece, sometimes taps out little rhythmic flourishes elsewhere on the instrument and is capable of working it up to resemble either Indian chanting or pipes being blown. Ultimately, his tool of choice, the saxophone, is pushed completely and utterly out of its context.
I bought a CD after the show itself dedicated to the material in the set. Sad to say that it’s not quite as good as actually experiencing this music live (although it's still good), but I’ve always maintained that such music is best caught being sweated out on stage anyway. If this man plays anywhere near you, push any reservations you may well have about improv or freeform music, or indeed a sax soloist come to that, and give yourself a treat. Küchen’s music is aimed at all open ears and can grease your mind’s tightest coils. Get to it.

Richo

Ulan Bator, Club Init, Weds May 13th 2009‏

2009-05-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

I really should pay more attention sometimes. If it weren't for the fact that I randomly picked up a copy of Roma C'e (i.e., Time Out for the Italian capital), I would have missed the fact that Ulan Bator were playing at Rome's Init club. UB is the brainchild of ex-Faust musician Amaury Cambuzat, an amiable Frenchman resident these days in Milan. I first came across him when Richo helped organise Faust's first ever Polish gig a few years back (a phenomenal show, documented on the LTC release From Our Souls To Your Ears, or however the fuck it translates into Polish). Amaury had been great company on that occasion and kindly handed me a few Ulan Bator CDs, which turned out to be full of fine, muscular guitar rock of the type rarely found these days.

So arriving at Init (located bloody miles from my flat in the poncey boozwah part of Northern Rome) I track down Amaury and we catch up. He apologises profusely for a guest-list screw-up, but I assure him that I really don't mind paying to get in like everyone else. The rest of the band (including London's James Johnston - Faust, Bad Seeds, Gallon Drunk, etc) is relaxing with the homemade wine of the roadie's Southern Italian grandfather - such geographical specificity is important in this country. At 11pm they disappear off to perform.

It seems that Rome is infected with the big-city gig-crowd malaise that afflicts places like London - everyone stands around like statues, refusing to react, so it's left to roadie Diego and me to move around a bit. This has always annoyed me - apparently, you risk the fate-worse-than-death of looking 'uncool' if you dare to show any sign of being viscerally affected by the music you just paid 10 Euro to listen to. Jesus, shake your booties, people!

It's the least this band deserves, because they're a PHENOMENAL live act. I tend to see the guitar/bass/drums/synth setup as largely redundant these days, especially given what the disease that is Indie Rock has done with the format, but UB injected an intensity and ferocity into it that I haven't seen since Swans' final gig in London a decade ago... or since Faust in Poland for that matter. Working seamlessly with each other, each musician displays both virtuosity and - more importantly, perhaps - SHOWMANSHIP, throwing themselves fully into the gig, culminating in a 'musical orgasm' (a la 'Death Valley 69') that left me gasping.

The new CDEP, 'Soleil' (to be reviewed elsewhere here soon enough) is a fine piece of work (ta for the freebie, Amaury!) but it can't do the impossible and reproduce the potency of the onstage experience. UB gigs a fair bit in Europe these days; if they play in your town, do yourself a favour and drag your lazy arse out to see them. Their finely crafted sound-of-the-mountains guitar work will shake you up in a way that little else seems capable of doing these days.

Anton Black

New Continent of Noise: Cut Hands in Krakow, 5/5/09

2009-05-25T06:10:00.000-07:00

Photo of Cut Hands in Lodz,
Friday 8/5/09

Despite the fact a cold had just begun to throw me into its turbulent waters, I dutifully broke away from the murky subterranean confines afforded by one of Krakow’s few venues, Alchemia, in order to meet William Bennett from the airport and get him there. In doing so, I missed saxophonist Ray Dickaty’s duet with Rafal Mazur, but such things cannot be helped. Half hour back from the airport and we’re in the venue’s vague semblance of a dressing room, nursing drinks and chatting whilst Alan Licht, Aki Onda and Noel Akchote take to the stage. Never having been impressed by Licht’s recordings before, I wasn’t so bothered about catching him live really, but what I could see and hear of his own improvisations in this trio setting from the stage’s wing seemed okay. Occasional plumes of textural glaze bombarded by shards of crystalline distortion and spiralling sonic shavings penetrated all conversation well enough, sustaining my generally good mood that was only otherwise dented by my losing the battle with the germs. Another Coke for William and beer for me later and it was time for the Cut Hands DJ set. Only the fact it had to happen after midnight and, as such, being a weekday, the audience began to thin out really betrayed everything once the line check was out of the way…

Of course, there were a few people around who clearly wanted some Whitehouse, going by the few song requests I heard being shouted out, but the entire Cut Hands deal is a world away from Whitehouse’s often overblown theatrics-led dabblings with perception via sound, language, ideas and, of course, an image supported by a rich history itself awash in notoreity. Only William’s obvious ability to create vast shifting torrents of electronic sound as dynamic as the best structures to be found in rock music furnish one with a link between the two platforms, really. Beyond this, whilst delivering what he has long called ‘afro-noise’, he’s onstage and bears more similarities to other DJs given to only focussing on their craft whilst performing. And by DJs I don’t mean the kind who play other people’s music, either. Akin to certain artists who’ve arrived from dance culture (I’m thinking Richie Hawtin, for example, here), William’s notion of Djing amounts to him playing around with, sequencing and live mixing sounds he’s mostly prepared himself via a laptop. Onstage, nestled amongst the darkness he’s insisted on playing in, there’s very little engagement with the audience or even, come to that, the drink carefully placed nearby. Full concentration is the order of the day, allowing the music to completely shout for itself. And shout it does.

Dashing all expectations, there’s greater emphasis on William’s (personally played and, as he points out later, non-looped) djembe drum workouts. These alone form incredible polyrhythmic soundbeds that instantly transport many around me. I notice people sat down nodding their heads with eyes closed, helplessly locked into proceedings, whilst others take to the limited area there is to dance in. Then there are the electronic washes of blissed-out sound weaving in and out, cascading over or replacing the rhythm segues. Peaks and troughs again commanding the listener and clearly indebted to both William’s own background in such music and, to a far lesser extent, those live house or techno DJs who cut their teeth creating music destined to become new genres. On one hand, the ‘noise’ at work appears fully controlled and as carefully hewn as anything presented so far by Whitehouse’s ‘second phase’, on the other it is poised to the brink of going all Mount Pompeii on us and leaving everybody drenched in sonic sputum in its wake. What’s likewise noticeable is how the music which constitutes a Cut Hands set doesn’t pander to those whose bodies are firmly glued to it, either (mine included!). Anybody can be thrown off the scent at any time before then having to rethink a route back into it. As many doors are slammed violently in one’s feet as are actually opened for them.

But then, well, this is neither ordinary dance music or ordinary music to begin with. If it appears to be about anything then it may well be the basic premise of elevation or at least taking listeners to that very point where its both in their grasp and could be as dangerous as exciting for them. The place where possibilities, in all their guises, exist. And, yes, this might also be something which can be levelled at Whitehouse. I personally wouldn’t expect anything less from William Bennett’s music, though. Which is precisely what sets it apart from so much else…

Richard Johnson

Footnote: I also caught the third of three Cut Hands sets here in Poland in Lodz a few days later. This time the venue was an art gallery and I am certain that the audience, much as some clearly wanted to, wouldn’t ‘allow’ themselves to move to the music for all the (supposed) inhibitions this brings. Behaviour can easily be influenced by the environment and all preset ideas one may have about that. Or maybe it was the fact William was backed by three short Jean Rouche films from the late ‘50s this time. Or the combination? Either way, I strongly feel dancing in art galleries should be encouraged. Well, to live music in them, at least!

The Fine Arts of Language and Sound: An Interview with Michael Begg of Human Greed

2009-05-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

The following interview took place between Michael Begg and Kate MacDonald sometime during April 2009, a mere cluster of months after the release of Human Greed's third CD album, Black Hill: Midnight at the Blighted Star, released on Lumberton Trading Company and featuring a number of collaborators such as Julia Kent and David Tibet. During this same timeframe the duo (also comprising phenomenal artist Deryk Thomas) have also played their first ever live shows (in Poland) and plan to embark on more...

Photograph by Carlo Giordani.

AE: Start with a basic: What was it that originally made you want to start Human Greed?

MB: To tell you the truth, I have no recollection at all of wanting to start it, probably because there was no real start. It just kind of grew out of what had been going on before.

The start Start START was when Deryk and I met, aged 12, sat down in a room with my father's electric guitar plugged in to a hifi and tried to pick out the theme music from John Carpenter's Halloween. Fast forward through years of aiming two cassette recorders at each other to create primitive multi tracks, a few effects boxes, a propensity for sticking a guitar into the back of an amp then kicking the amp to make the reverb wires crash together in the midst of the beautiful howl of feedback and the recipe for disaster was pretty much there.

We were good suburban boys though and had no conception or notion of taking this racket out to the world. It just kind of hummed in the background while we got on with other things.

The whole brew I suppose began to surface in the late nineties. I was writing at the time, and had my own theatre company, and was looking to do a new kind of performance. I didn't quite realise at the time how far I was subsequently going to come into personal dispute with the act of writing itself. I was just feeling my way forward in the dark, as it were. I had these ideas of pure sound leading to pure emotional response, and arrangements of sounds that would lead to some form of direct narrative that somehow would evade the negotiated meaning inherent within language. It was as vague at the time as it is pretentious now!

I travelled to Morocco and I was lucky enough to meet Paul Bowles. We had some nice chats: about dogs and dentists mostly, but sometimes writing. He, of course, was a composer who was unsatisfied at music's limitation at presenting negative emotions. Which these days seems an extraordinary thing to say. We have come to appreciate music, sound, as being very well equipped to present negative feelings. So he turned his back on musical composition to address his negativity in poetry and prose. I turned my back on poetry and prose in order to face the same demons with sound.

Round about this same time a friend introduced me to audio applications on the computer, and so I found myself tinkering with early versions of Cakewalk, Wavelab, Cubase, Sound Forge, etc.

I was like a kid in a sweetie shop. I sunk deeper and deeper into a dark pool of delight, where I would swim around, shredding, stretching and twisting synths, samples and instruments. It took a while, but I soon gained a reasonable degree of competence and began arranging and sequencing the results. It was exactly what I was after. Purity of intent, non-negotiable emotional response. I never thought of it as music, or noise, or anything really. I just knew it was right: and that is a feeling that I rarely ever have.

It just so happened that a play that was being worked up at this time was called Human Greed: A Mortality Play in 3 Courses. When I heard that Steven Severin was, at that time, composing work for theatre I decided, more or less on a whim as I recall, to send him a cassette of these arrangements, and Human Greed was what I wrote on the side of the cassette. In retrospect it seems outrageous that this approach should lead to the first HG album, but there you go. Says something about Severin too. Either that he has great insight, or is more desperate than I thought! Ha!

AE: After your first album, you started your own label, Omnempathy and then moved back to releasing music through another label for the third album. How would you compare the experiences of releasing your own material versus having it on someone else's label?

MB: Omnempathy was just a word I came up with and I wanted it to be something - a nom de guerre, a website, a publication, a family motto. It just so happened that the way fate wandered from day to day it presented itself, at the right moment, as a name for a record label.

I am enough of an enthusiast to say that I really liked being involved and in control of the whole enterprise, but on the other hand I have enjoyed not having to put capital up front for the work that appears on other labels.

That said, the general level of incompetence that sits under the administration of the majority of boutique labels is quite astonishing to me. There's no doubting the enthusiasm there but the marginal audiences involved in this kind of enterprise seems to allow them to give up entirely on any will to market or promote the artists in any way whatsoever. You end up with this weird scene where label owners act like artists, and that just doesn't work.

AE: Your music has a very strong visual and literary component ("the musical investigation of a writer and a painter"- stolen from your website). How do you think the other artistic pursuits of the HG members shape your sound? Are there other elements you'd like to add to Human Greed for future recordings? (kabuki-style puppet shows during live performances, slow-moving can-can dancers, kazoo orchestras...)

MB: I'm not really sure how to answer that one. It's not possible to separate one element of your life entirely from another so there is always going to be some kind of bleed. It would be difficult to pinpoint a single source for a particular intervention. As a writer I have a good grounding in narrative structure and that certainly informs my approach to composition. But its questionable whether it has any more or any less impact than my response to the sound of trains in the morning, or the way that a road drill fills me with profound melancholy - both direct examples that have informed HG recordings in the past - I really can't be sure. Deryk is an illustrator and there is a similar formality to his approach in that work. But it also demands a huge capacity for patience that is also valuable in navigating the long gestation periods of HG recordings.

You have to think of it, and I'm sorry to go on about this, the purity of the emotion. What is the emotional impulse and what happens to it on the way to expression? Language distorts because of its need to negotiate meaning in its presentation. Sound and image are much more representative of the pure thought. The prerogative of expression. As an illustration, think of a child at a kitchen table drawing pictures. They seldom do this in silence. They make all these lovely sounds as they scratch out their lines. They are expressing the same little thought in two representative mediums simultaneously. We tend to lose that approach as we get older. Probably round about the time we begin picking up writing skills.

I have been quite down on the written word for some time now. Though the ongoing experience of HG seems slowly to be resolving itself back towards some kind of embrace of language. We'll see, we'll see...

But it seems to me that the written word in the 21st century serves only a single purpose: To take something from you. Your money normally, but increasingly, your trust, your faith, your mind. Oh, I could go on, and I do. But I am tiresome, and pretentious.

How about this? Deryk and I set up an idea for a live routine that would involve us standing on stage and opening a cardboard box brimful of puppies. Then amidst a blizzard of noise we would shave the puppies with electric shears and set them loose, pink, terrified and pissing themselves into the crowd. That seemed to be a good way of generating the desired emotional response from an audience - that heady cocktail of disbelief, horror, pity. Of course, we could never follow through on such a plan. Not fair on the puppies, of course. And you can't really get puppy actors to consent to perform it as a role.

You will have read about the artist whose work amounted to a stray dog in a room that over the course of the exhibition starved to death in a pool of its own ordure. Who was it, Vargas? Costa Rican, I think. There was a huge outcry. Its not art, its cruelty, they screamed. It was absolutely very cruel, but it seemed to me a perfectly valid artistic statement. Who's to say what is and what isn't?

To be perfectly honest, I am now familiar enough with the process of recording an HG record that I can safely say at this point I have no idea whatsoever will make its way onto the next record! There are certainly new elements that pop into my mind on a daily basis, particularly since undertaking the live shows in Poland late last year.

But if you do happen to have a can-can dancer among your friends, pass on my number.

AE: You have comparatively recently started to perform live. Have you been (generally) happy with the results? How does the live environment change your sound (if at all)?

MB: Very, very happy. It was so thrilling to be able to take it all out on the road. And I love Poland, so it was just perfect. Those doomed, winter-savaged flatlands, those beautiful, sad Slavic faces, those late night smoky basements under the mediaeval squares - and there, tangled up in the Christmas lights, little old us with our fistful of sounds. Quite, quite beautiful.

As you say, we have only looked at this aspect of our work recently. That's on account of three things I suppose. The advances in software, the experience of my playing with Fovea Hex all over Europe, and the introduction of the visual element brought in by film maker Neil McLauchlan. He is another old friend of mine who is based out of Galway, Ireland.

I'd like to do more. In fact, I am in London right now and I'll be meeting a promoter later in the afternoon to look at possibilities. A London show would be good. And I'd like to go back to Italy. I've played there several times with Fovea Hex. I think they'd go for us there. From what I can gather we have a bit of a following there - largely on account of a pirate copy of Black Hill leaking out onto the Italian bulletin board communities.

The live sound is, necessarily, I suppose, much less contemplative, much more immediate. There is little room for subtlety, but there is still a lot you can do with these soundbeds of ours, particularly at high volume, that shifts the material in a whole new direction.

It was always a concern of mine that a show of beat-less, melody free laptop generated music would be the most boring thing in the world. God knows the world is jam packed to the gunnels with duos staring intently at computer screens and indulging in the ludicrous practice of improvised electronica. Everyone we met on the road always seemed to say that same thing; "Ya, ya, I'm, like, into doing improvisational electronica right now, ya!" Fuck that!

I had to think in a very traditional way about what works on stage. Instruments. Visuals. Vocals!

So, I configured the set to afford Deryk as much time as possible to work with a treated guitar. Neil composed some very effective visuals to be projected behind us, and I invited Gosia (Warsaw's Brenda LeeDVD) to read some texts from 'Moonsuite' (a piece of writing that has been occupying me recently). It worked really well, but sadly she could not make it with us as far south as Krakow. We still had a mic on stage and at some point during the Krakow show I picked it up and began singing, after a fashion. It was not so much catharsis as purgative. Kind of like what I was saying earlier about children making noises with their mouths because the gateway to the pure emotion wasnít being opened quick enough by the act of drawing. The surge needed to get out fast, and in this case it just came from my throat. I don't know if it will ever happen again. Its not something I can envisage working up in rehearsal or introducing in any substantive way to the recording process. But it worked on the night.

I am pleasantly surprised at how flexible the performance set up was in the end. I didn't expect there to be so much room for improvising. Oh shit - improvised electronica!

For more information: http://www.omnempathy.com

2009-04-18T04:22:00.000-07:00

ART OF DARKNESS: CocART, Torun, Saturday March 28, 2009

Long, long time since I last embraced a huge journey for any music. In fact, the last time it happened was probably for Whitehouse’s show at The Garage in London around a year ago, if I’m to conveniently overlook the fact I since happened to be in Warsaw for a Human Greed show there in December. But that doesn’t count. No, last time was the trip to London for Whitehouse although, similar to this particular instance, there were outside factors to the music concerned. In London, I not only had a chance to finally meet Kate MacDonald but also a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and faces hardly seen for a considerable while (years, even, in some cases): people such as good pal Steve Pittis, Stephen Meixner, Justin Mitchell and Jo, and many others. A good music event can often serve as a great social gathering, too. An ideal way to at least meet people not seen for a long time, if not the best way to actually catch up with them properly.

Whatever. Fast forward. I’m ensnared by a similar circumstance as I travel to Torun by train. Alone. Following almost two weeks of deliberation during which my only friend from Malaysia, Yin, stayed with me for almost one of them. Whilst she was at my place, I made a decision to go to one day of the second edition of the annual CocART Festival in Torun and duly set about setting things up. A little groundwork conducted via old emails between Stefan Knappe of Drone Records/Troum and myself, plus my obtaining the festival organisers’ contact details, and I was in. With Yin on the plus-one. Only the train ticket and place to stay remained to be conquered, as well as the necessary finances for both, but Yin soon took care of the hotel situation and played her part in activating my otherwise latent decision. As such, several days after she left my place for Gdansk and following my usual couple of days teaching in a town 120km away from Krakow, I’m on my way to join her once more…

…via a train journey that lasts over 7 hours and gives me a chance to not only catch up with some much needed sleep but also devour half of Ian McEwan’s incredible Enduring Love in fits and starts clouded by daydreams, idle contemplation and the occasional jotting of notes in a compartment that thankfully becomes my own after Lodz. If anything can justify travelling such great distances for me it’s the fact I rarely make time to relax or sit down with a book at home (most of my reading is done whilst away each week in the town I teach at, Polaniec). Even when I watch a film, I remain restless (at least at home).

Anyway, I get to Torun at 16.40. Tired and laden enough with a bag full of CDs to give to various people. It’s raining, of course, and once I’ve got to the hotel with the aid of a taxi driver who forgets to put his meter on till 2 minutes into the journey (I notice these things…), I am left with all of 40 minutes to settle into my room, freshen up and walk around the very heart of the city that saw Copernicus become the person we all know him as before I have to meet Yin in the reception. I feel tired, but good and at least content. Well, quite content.

Yin and myself meet and I’m pleased to finally talk to somebody who isn’t just a ticket inspector or a stranger attempting to make smalltalk with me on a train. We head for a restaurant and need a beer with our respective meals before heading back out into the downpour and a search for a venue which seems to magically and predictably evade its address. Fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes later, we find it. Opposite directions always seem to make the most sense in such circumstances.

Whatever. Not too drenched and we are truly in. The venue is some kind of art centre and the festival itself takes place in its underground car park: a location perfectly suited to the first group for its notions suggesting escape. Yes, Column One are into their set as we arrive, and I’m instantly reminded of so many groups who think they’re something they are clearly not. I’ve never been really into such music a great deal, anyway, but their mish-mash of horror movie textures, farmyard sounds and intergalactic grunts coupled to a man strutting about in his underwear and a large cardboard tube over his head, plus others in Japanese masks, only succeeds in making me look for a viable alternative: another beer. I’m sure Column One spend time on what they’re doing, and maybe even take their slightly Dadaist performance art sensibility seriously enough to believe it means something beyond all the usual cliches, but their music moves in concentric circles to the point it becomes a powerless and insignificant dot. When it comes to music of this kind of faltering and wispy disposition, I am glad there are other things in life worth savouring far more.

Such as meeting people. Luckily, one of the festival organisers, Rafal, from drone outfit Hati (who performed the previous night), is there to greet me almost as soon as I make my way for a glass of beer. CDs are exchanged, lightening my bag, and I thank him for letting Yin and myself into the show for free before we tentatively discuss the idea of collaborating at next year’s festival. This idea of some kind of Lumberton Trading Company spotlight has been simmering away for a while now, actually. Another flash in the pan mooted for only too long by various parties that must be realised at some point. No question.

Also meet Agnieszka, a photographer who’s been in touch a lot recently. Always nice to put a face to some writing. We catch up a little, disagree over Column One and then watch The Magic Carpathians soon commence their set. When I saw this group in Krakow last year, I was mesmerised by their blend of folk and psychedelia strained with an avant sensibility, but the performance on this particular night started out like a hippie tea party in a church hall and ended as an excuse to get lost in thoughts so far removed from the proceedings it was impossible to return. I think I ended up surveying the audience instead, plus engaging in more beer and conversation with my various friends and associates. I’ve absolutely nothing against music drifting through pseudo-Pagan corridors smothered by the stench of lentil soup and slightly stupid yearnings for ‘a better world’, but it needs to be backed up by something that may actually pull you in, even if momentarily. These mountain folk just couldn’t do it, though. At least, not on this particular night. When it comes to so-called hippie music, I want Amon Duul or Can or whatever. Hippie music with bollocks (and, indeed, a yearning to evade the ghastly hippie trappings it may be attached to in the first instance). The Magic Carpathians may have been striving for that ‘transcendental’ level of music afforded by certain minimalist artists, such as Charlemagne Palestine or, better yet, Christina Kubisch, but nothing actually worked. When the female vocalist started playing around with her own capabilities, Yin remarked that it all sounded like Enya. Which just about encapsulated it perfectly. Hippie trance-out music for office workers isn’t quite what I want from my own listening experiences…

Thankfully, Frenchman Richard Pinhas was up next to save the night. Although, perhaps to my shame, I’ve not kept up with his solo work since his group Heldon disbanded (and didn’t he collaborate with Merzbow recently, too? Mind you, who fucking hasn’t…?!), certain people over the years have often mentioned it as being pretty strong still. And the show here clearly illustrated this. Aided by two other musicians and, between them all, utilising a guitar, laptop and various electronic devices set to some suitably bright and tantalising abstract visuals, Pinhas moulded a molten soundbed of shapes and textures into focus. Sometimes jarring and taking on an almost quasi-noise approach, the music mostly, however, remained anchored to a palette owing as much to his background in Tangerine Dream-inspired ‘70s electronics as its then stretching its tendrils out to more filmic concerns. Ultimately, Pinhas’ psychedelia successfully honours his past without sacrificing its potential stakes in the contemporary arena. On top of this, the moods constantly shifted. With enough abstraction woven in to keep us transfixed, melodic swells crumbled into ominous twilight pools as enchanting and exciting as being reminders of our solitude. This performance was worth the trip alone, and I hope I will one day get the pleasure of seeing Pinhas again.

More drinks, more talking, more lapping up the moment. All is good, and the combination of alcohol, fatigue and having perhaps not eaten enough during the previous few days send me reeling to a space where Oren Ambarchi’s set doesn’t do so much for me. During his 45/50-minutes solo show of electronics, I keep telling myself I should be enjoying it more than I am. Stitching drones and fragments together, Oren’s music once again assumes a psychedelic stance that at least worms its way through some interesting corridors, but I find it hard to get as excited about it all as Yin. I put this down to my own state of mind rather than the music, though. Maybe I’ve just had too much electronic music for one night?

Once Oren finishes, I grab another beer and make my way to an adjoining room, where the smokers are allowed to indulge their habits, and catch up with Stefan and others a little more. My beer quota has reached the point where I need conversation rather than music, plus a little less noise disturbing it.

When I leave this room to return to the main one where the concerts are, a Japanese guy is banging out some techno hopelessly muted by the seated audience and its sounding not only out of place and awkward but slightly out of date.

It’s time to leave.

Yin and myself are asked along to an after-show party at a nearby bar. We tag along for a while, walk into the new venue and decide, after only a minute or two in this smoke-choked and busy environment, that it’s time to head back to the hotel.

I fall asleep knowing that my journey back to Krakow is going to be padded out by a monstrous hangover and that the notion of hell will once again consume me on it. But at least I've enjoyed myself, if not all of the artists on offer.

Richard Johnson

Reviews: Number Two

2009-03-01T06:20:00.000-08:00

A small round-up this time, just to illustrate that not all the music received here simply ends up forming another pile...

AND ALSO THE TREES (Listen For) The Rag and Bone Man CD (Indigo, 2007)
Before AATT’s singer, Simon Jones, sent me a copy of this album, I must ‘fess I’d not heard anything new by his group for a few years. Not sure why, either, as I always enjoyed their reflective and autumnal songs before, plus even had quite a good friendship with them once that included my first group playing with them twice and my staying over with various female friends of ex-bassist Steve Burrows in London a number of times. I suppose life can just take over at various junctures, leaving certain people, groups or whatever relagated to the wings. Still, if there’s one good thing to be said for the internet and, indeed, possibly cheesy social networking sites, it’s that long forgotten bridges can be traversed once more and, naturally, old friendships restored. As such, my tail is firmly between my legs as I now seek to investigate what I’ve been missing out on in the AATT camp during more recent years (but why does it all appear to be so expensive on, for example, eBay…?)…
(Listen For) The Rag and Bone Man hails from the tail end of 2007, actually, but warrants inclusion here simply because it deserves whatever little extra attention I can bring its way. Thirteen songs form this album and capture a sound that, really, can now only be described as AATT’s own. Whereas earlier work drew parallels with certain other post-punk contemporaries such as Joy Division, Nick Cave, Modern English and The Cure at times, AATT’s emphasis on the imagery in Jones’ words always took a bigger hold on the music and elevated it somewhere else entirely. And it’s now evident that this has matured to the point the songwriting operates in a landscape purely of its own: one where world-weariness converges with a lonely stroll along a river’s bank, lost thoughts, broken romance, the evening shade and times lost to the hungry jaws of the modern age. In the wrong hands, this very same world could end up fey and pastoral, like the very worst of so much so-called ‘indie’ music, but AATT anchor their sound to weightier stuff. Alongside Simon’s brother Justin’s forever evocative guitar work and the muscular basslines that always served AATT well, the generally contemplative and melancholic air gives way to occasional swells of bitterness and anger. A hint of danger, or of things not being quite right, stakes its presence perfectly amongst these songs…
From the opener, ‘Domed’, with its dynamics building up to a punchy finale, through the murderous tale ensnared in ‘The Legend of Mucklow’ and on to the beautiful combination of melody and cello of last song ‘Under the Stars’, (Listen For) The Rag and Bone Man makes for a successful celebration of both yearning and new passions like very little else. And with Cave having clearly laid songwriting ability to rest in favour of seeing out his mid-life crisis, only Tindersticks serve as AATT’s most obvious contemporaries. It would be nice to see them garner the same kind of recognition. (RJ)
www.andalsothetrees.co.uk

THE DRONES Havilah CD (ATP Recordings, 2009)
Dear oh dear. Very ordinary rock music strained with an air of melancholy and the occasional savage spurt to, I imagine, balance things out. And a vocalist who sounds like he gets through two packets of cigs a day. Apparently, this Australian group have received heaps of acclaim during the past few years. I guess pub rock passes for innovation and excitement these days…?! (RJ)
www.atpfestival.com

ETHAN ROSE Oaks CD (Baskaru, France, 2009)
Third album by this Portland, Oregon, soundsmith whose work during the past decade includes soundtracking films, its appearance in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, a number of collaborations, and various sound installations. Here, he has employed a reconditioned Wurlitzer theatre organ to form the basis of his acousmatic explorations, resulting in a contemporary instrumental electronica approach whereby soft textures and unobtrusive tones are brushed with much attention to detail. Whilst pleasant and relaxing enough, it’s a shame the Wurlitzer was reduced to the level of a mere sound source rather than being actually utilised more directly (in, say, the same way as Eric Cordier’s Breizhiseled remained faithful to its own use of a 1960s reissue of a 78rpm record of traditional French music was). By reducing the sounds here to highly contemporary forms, the source has become irrelevant, and the idea itself has no substance beyond amounting to something reflecting a whim. Not a bad album in and of itself, although it doesn’t exactly jut out of the sea of such music in any great way, but it could have been so much more. (RJ)
www.baskaru.com

SEELAND Tomorrow Today CD (Loaf, 2009)
Following two singles on Stereolab’s Duophonic imprint during the past few years, Tomorrow Today represents Birmingham group Seeland’s debut album. Spread over the twelve cuts you’ll find a summery pop that’s as wispy as it is dreamy and comprises the kind of electronic inflections their beloved Joe Meek liberally applied to his work. Amidst the standard arrangements of a pop song, tones waver and occasional sounds babble away that resemble old sci-fi film soundtrack effects, leading to an overtly nostalgic glow recalling an age when the idea of space travel was dominated by visions of people in bacofoil suits roaming the stars in search of little green men. Outside of this, the tunes themselves have arrived strictly from that part of the horizon still indebted to ‘80s giants such as The Smiths and New Order. There’s clearly a depth there, but it’s unfortunately not strong enough to punch with the same weight. Equally, the album’s simply not idiosyncratic enough to compare with other electronic pop albums of a generally deemed ‘classic’ nature. Whilst certain songs, such as ‘5 a.m.’, possess an infectious quality absolutely imperative to music of this nature, The White Noise’s An Electronic Storm’s position at the top remains very much in check… (RJ)

V/A Escaping From Colour: Rapoon Recomposed & Remixed CD
(Quasi-Pop Records, Ukraine, 2008)
One’s reaction to this release is likely to be determined by two factors:

1. How one feels about Rapoon to begin with;
2. One’s ability to distinguish sonic traits of artists working in what might be termed organic-influenced ambient music.

This release, on an almost unknown Ukrainian label called Quasi-Pop (their web site is an exercise in online futility), features artists using source sounds from Rapoon, the long time project of former Zoviet France lynch-pin Robin Storey, to create new pieces. It’s unclear whether the source sounds were created specifically for this project, or if they were taken from previously released Rapoon material. Given the artist’s prodigious back catalogue, there would certainly be plenty to choose from.
Many of the “re-composers” are better known in the field of art than that of music. However, there are some bigger “names”, such as Francisco Lopez, Troum and Aidan Baker. All tracks are created from Rapoon source sounds, although- with the exception of a couple- other elements have been added by the remixers. The shimmering depth, the glacial reserve and the organic texture of the Storey sound is evident throughout. Much of the album sounds very much like a Rapoon release (ironically, more like traditional Rapoon than Storey’s 2008 release The Library of the Dead). Alternately, other parts sound like Shouting at the Ground or Shadow, Thief of the Sun-era Zoviet France. A Storey fan (and, while I don’t claim intimate familiarity with all his work, I do count myself as one), will find much to like here. If Rapoon material normally leaves you cold, then chances are these tracks will have no great appeal.
One of the things that struck me listening to this is that, while there are certain artists present- Lopez and Troum, for instance- who have a distinctive sound, that sound already meshes pretty well with that of the source artist. Some tracks - Tube’s noisier take on things, or Ronnie Sundin’s more stripped-down, raw approach - offer a bit of variation, but this is akin to choosing between desks made of various types of hardwood; sure, there are differences, but it’s not like you’re choosing between a ultramodern glass and aluminum affair and a Queen Anne escritoire. (In the live collaborative piece between Rapoon and Russian artist Cisfinitum, one could easily be forgiven for assuming it was a Storey solo track. The elements combine so effectively that the collaborator is entirely subsumed.)
Overall, this will be of interest to Storey fans. There are some moments of real beauty, much like those on “proper” Rapoon albums and the tracks remain very true to the spirit of the originator. (KM)

WINDSCALE Servitude CDEP (Fellacoustic, USA, 2008)
Four cuts very much indebted to early Whitehouse and various affiliates of the infant era Broken Flag Records. What, as ever, gets me with such artists is that they all appear to have missed the fucking point. ‘Noise’ has to have some depth that goes beyond all the hackneyed ‘shock horror’ reflections of the modern world. It needs to cut deeper and work with far more interesting agendas. It needs to be reconfigured, fucked around with and cast into new contexts where meaning actually dovetails with purpose. Windscale can only take some solace from the fact there are probably several handfuls of people scattered around the globe who will brainlessly nod their heads in approval of their work. Well done. (RJ)

A Conversation With William Bennett

2009-01-24T11:02:00.000-08:00

Interview by Richo

Photo by Melissa Musser

NOTE: This interview took place with William Bennett during October and November 2008. In hindsight, I feel several points raised could have been pushed further, plus more questions to a few of his responses could have been drawn. But it's at least good to leave something for another time, though. Outside of this, the interview will be posted on the main Adverse Effect website in due course, but since this may take another month or more its being posted here in the interim makes perfect sense.

William Bennett, of course, needs little introduction, really. Since 1980, he has courted controversy via his group, Whitehouse, who themselves have sometimes been responsible for the most aggressive and hostile electronic music imaginable and have thrown all manner of different ideas together to create something way beyond the realms explored by the vast majority of their peers. Perhaps meaning different things over the years to their many listeners as to William himself, Whitehouse have primarily concerned themselves with the very basic premise of engaging with their audience and in turn evoking a response, whether necessarily willed into view or otherwise. A response that can be every bit as much about itself in its purest, most natural and raw form as much as being about it leading to an equally interesting array of interpretations open to discourse, debate and even different ways of thinking. At least, this is how I have always seen the group, anyway. To dismiss them as merely clever bastards fucking about with electronics to create a din with obscenities glueing sometimes fantastic wordplay together would, to me, undermine precisely how much the group have succeeded with getting the listener to think, although it’s absolutely clear William would deny this as being part of the group’s agenda and would doubtlessly be just as content, or carefree, if you did just dismiss Whitehouse so or, indeed, not think about anything whatsoever. What I have personally always enjoyed about Whitehouse is not only how their sound and ideas have progressed, especially in more recent years (Phase Two of the group, as it has become known by many) and documented perfectly on 2007’s Racket CD, but how wide-ranging people’s opinions about them are and how this equally matches an audience’s reaction to any one of their live performances.

The very fact that I’ve heard strangers and good friends alike suggest Whitehouse as being everything from intellectual noise-mongers or post-modern purveyors of the avant-garde at its angriest to a one-trick act whose supposed ‘joke’ had worn thin by their second album certainly hints at the spectrum of responses I speak of. And, again, it is something galvanised by a live audience; performances being a medium where Whitehouse have always especially thrived and where, indeed, one can witness any number of people screaming (joining in?), thrashing about, attempting to rip ex-member Philip Best’s clothes off (or even the almost skeletal William’s, come to that), laughing uncontrollably or simply looking nonchalant as though waiting for a big event beyond a live music concert to somehow consume them. Without doubt, it’s a great display and I’m sure I’m not alone in gleaning so much pleasure from a band and audience alike. Rarely do groups with a captive audience transcend the usual trappings of simple adulation from them.

However, there is far more to William Bennett than simply Whitehouse. Whilst the group are presently in limbo following Best’s departure in early summer 2008, he has been busy overseeing a vinyl reissue campaign on Very Friendly Records which commenced the previous year, has taken his interest in what he calls ‘Afro Noise’ to new heights via his Cut Hands DJ performances, still has plans for his long-running Susan Lawly imprint, and can be found occasionally indulging in other activities widely documented on his frequent posts on his page at Blogspot or at least via the links there. For a man now steadily creeping towards the valley of his middle years, he appears to possess as much energy as somebody around half his age.

On top of this, and having been afforded opportunities to get to know him a little (with the emphasis on little, as I strongly feel William will forever remain rather guarded and never fully reveal himself) better during the last two or three years, he’s proved to be a deeply fascinating individual who is every bit as charming, personable, generous, caring and witty as one could hope for from anybody. Not bad going for somebody who’ll readily declare himself a misanthrope and whose perhaps not completely unfounded mistrust of other people never belies his abject friendliness and warmth.

Whitehouse are possibly only part of the story behind William, but the worlds they inhabit, expose or even dash back against the walls they came from certainly shine a torch towards one of the most genuinely interesting people presently operating in music still. Let’s hope it remains that way for a considerable while yet…

AE: Firstly, since Philip left Whitehouse, you have gone from abandoning the group altogether to a short while later announcing that it will continue. What prompted this decision?

WB: Less a case of abandoning it altogether than a case of being in a quandary as to what, if anything, to do next – after much soul-searching and messages of encouragement decided to carry on (even though it’s still not clear in what form that’s going to take).

AE: Are you going to work with anybody else in Whitehouse, following Philip’s departure? Since Philip is clearly a close friend who has likewise worked alongside you and contributed much to Whitehouse, won’t he prove a tough act to follow?

WB: A very tough act to follow indeed – and that’s why it’ll require a different approach, a major rethink. Not necessarily a bad thing of course to be shaken up a bit – it’s always easy to get comfortable and stuck.

AE: Do you think Whitehouse were becoming comfortable before his departure, though? I would say that, certainly live, you’d had everything down perfectly for a considerable while…

WB: That’s true and is ironically part of the problem, which is why circumstances (whether or not by design) that force a shake-up can generally be embraced; another related factor was the role played by the stupid accident that I had in Belfast which meant that Philip found himself having to do several solo shows in our stead which had unwelcome effects upon his performance dynamic, and therefore ours, upon later resumption.

AE: Clearly, Whitehouse is at a point of change once again. Do you think you will utilise this to your advantage and try exploring something new? Of course, your sound was changing anyway, as especially proven on Racket, but I’m not specifically referring to the sound. Rather, besides perhaps pushing your interest in African percussion even further, I mean new strategies, concepts, or even ways of performing live…

WB: Yes, exactly – of course that’s way easier said than done, I think there needs to be a period of reflection or contemplation on how things could evolve. There are a couple of half-baked ideas I have but nothing too electrifying yet.

AE: Can you elaborate?

WB: Let me bake them a bit more, then I’ll get back to you on that...

AE: When do you think Whitehouse will be ready to emerge again, either live or on record?

WB: Hard to say because a lot will depend on the outcomes of the aforementioned period of reflection - I’m confident that something will come of it however, but it’s just too early to be too specific. There’s also the unreleased track ‘Pains Part Of The Dilemma’ which is like the third part to ‘Cut Hands Has The Solution’ and ‘Killing Hurts Give You The Secrets’, it also has that rather stripped down bare sound – so one would imagine that will form a part of the next releases.

AE: How is the reissue campaign of the Whitehouse back catalogue going in the meantime?

WB: The first 3 releases came out very well, and then things stalled a bit before the summer with the Bird Seed 2LP – issues with the test pressing and side 3 which were then followed by issues with the manufacturer themselves. Now we’ve changed manufacturer and by the time you’re probably reading this, Asceticists 2006 and Erector will both be out which will hopefully lead to a resumption in the series’ momentum.

AE: You’re also in the throes of making the back catalogue available for download. I can appreciate the advantages of this in respect of it possibly making your work available to a market otherwise not interested in buying CDs or vinyl, but I know you wanted to avoid it, ideally. Where did the change of heart arrive from?

WB: It’s not really a change of heart, I still have serious misgivings about it, but was persuaded by the distributor to at least try it out through iTunes with the understanding that I could change my mind about it at any time. In one sense, it seems churlish to deny anyone who might be interested access to the songs in this format, and in another it certainly goes against my strong belief that music is to be experienced and not merely listened to.

AE: Where do you personally stand on the debate between vinyl/CDs and downloads?

WB: Personally? Vinyl is by far the best in terms of the music experience – the visual (the large format artwork; the grooves; the turntable), the kinaesthetic (through the ritual of purchasing, examining of the grooves, the turning over, the anticipation of dropping the needle down), even the smell – and then the sheer warmth of the sound, and the format’s increased longevity over the alternatives. To go back to your previous question, the point is really one of whether it’s any of my business to impose that bias upon anyone. Almost certainly it isn’t.

AE: So, can we expect to see the more recent albums reissued on vinyl in due course, then?

WB: For sure, everything’s getting reissued on vinyl – Asceticists 2006 (and Erector) are already now here.

AE: Forgetting the last album, which must surely represent the one you’re most proud of, what are your personal favourites?

WB: I don’t know, which is your favourite son or daughter? All the albums mean a lot for differing reasons, they represent moments in life as much as the music itself, and all the fond and not so fond associations and memories that come with them.

AE: Do you believe the Whitehouse audience has changed much during more recent years? I’ve personally witnessed much less in the way of abuse hurling, spitting, beer bottle throwing and suchlike at your shows. Do you think this is due to your shift towards playing the ‘art’ card more heavily?

WB: Yes, I’m sure we still have a lot of the same fans, along with many new ones and the dynamic in the live context has shifted considerably, just as you point out. Around about the time of the Batofar show in Paris, we decided to make several subtle alterations in order to challenge previously held expectations, and it paid off and things changed pretty quickly for the better. I’m not sure we’ve ever really consciously played the ‘art’ card, though I do much like that turn of phrase!

AE: I have aways suggested that Whitehouse are somewhat ‘misunderstood’. An opinion you’ve steadfastly denied. However, do you feel that, in a sense, misinterpretation has been integral to Whitehouse?

WB: This is always going to be a danger whenever you challenge or provoke – people are pretty fixed in their ideas and if something comes along that questions that, you’re going to see a wide range of responses. Really, I think the problem I have is with the term ‘misunderstand’ which implies some kind of message that requires specific interpretation – my preference is for the term ‘get it’ – and it’s one of the expressions that can’t be deconstructed but can be felt. My artistic definition with regards to the music is that if you hear it then you get it, if you don't understand it then you get it, if you understand it then you get it, if you misinterpret it then you get it, but if you want not to understand or interpret or hear then you don't get it. But you can't have the arrogance to experience it as if there wasn't something not to know, the knowing of which would make a difference, absolutely.

AE: Okay. I would then contend that many of your listeners/’fans’ (I hate this term, but…) do not ‘get it’. Agree?

WB: It depends what exactly you mean by ‘many’ or ‘listeners’ but, to put it another way, I’d tend to think that, based on my own particular artistic definition, that most do in fact get it.

AE: Fair enough. Would I be correct in stating that, given how much Whitehouse seem to be concerned with eliciting or provoking a response of any kind, the biggest insult would be to fail in this?

WB: Failure to ‘respond’ isn’t seen as being an insult. Then again, exposure to anything will elicit some kind of response, even a perceived lack of a response is a type of response. So to go back to the original point, it’s not really what I’m saying - I know it’s rather tortuously worded but I refer you to ‘but if you want not to understand or interpret or hear then you don't get it’ from my original definition... (which isn’t the same as failure to respond).

AE: How do you feel about most of the electronic noise groups who cite Whitehouse as an inspiration? Have any of them made you sit up? Do you pay attention to any of them?

WB: Not really, to be perfectly honest. One of the difficulties with that is that all the new ideas I get are coming from a domain far removed from that genre – and beyond that, I see such little desire in most music to take much of a risk. Depressingly, it either seems to come down to a safe way of paying the bills, or in the case of so many new acts, scratching around looking for some kind of gateway into the scene, to live the life, to buy into the fantasy.

AE: It has been contended that your Extreme Music from Africa compilation CD on Susan Lawly is purely your own creation and, as such, isn’t an authentic document. What would you say to this accusation?

WB: Of course, I would say the accusation is incorrect.

AE: But it is only this particular entry in the series which garners this immense wagging of the accusatory finger. Any idea why?

WB: Because the names of the artists are less known perhaps?

AE: Can you tell us which of the artists have other releases out, then, and give us some pointers as to what they are and where they can be found?

WB: The album came out over 10 years ago and sadly little in Africa is widely available and easily googled and packaged; I can tell you the original contact for coordinating the project has not been in touch for a long time...

AE: Considering how wide your own music tastes are and that, indeed, you can play a handful of instruments outside the electronic realm, don’t you ever feel compelled to use any of them (again) in a non-electronic noise-orientated context?

WB: Hey, maybe I already do!? In all seriousness, I’m not really too into specific technology or instruments – for me, it’s much more about having great ideas and notions and how they can be best realised. That’s why calling oneself a guitarist, or a djembe player, or even a laptop musician or whatever, wouldn’t be useful because it limits you to such a very narrow range of outcomes.

AE: I guess, more specifically, I mean do you ever harbour the desire to pick up a guitar, or whatever, again in a live context?

WB: It would only be an exercise in lazy indulgent self-gratification. Most guitar playing has the same intent as karaoke - it’s what a game like Rock Band is for.

AE: Using laptops can be considered lazy as well, though, can’t it?

WB: I certainly don’t wish to defend the laptop or anything else as a superior type of instrument, can be lazy, yes, by all means (as with everything) - but not as a means of performance self-indulgence in the way that guitars are typically utilised. It’s why they’re such a popular instrument with guys.

AE: Have you been involved in any non-Whitehouse collaborations? If so, what? And please explain why you would choose one such offer over another (presuming, of course, you receive offers?!).

WB: I recently did a mix for Colt on their recently released EP, and there’s probably other stuff over the years that I can’t think of right now. There have been some nice offers which I mostly turn down either because I might not have the time, or else more often, I can’t bear not having things my own way...

AE: What does ‘extreme music’ actually mean to you?

WB: To be frank, absolutely nothing!

AE: So why use the term on the compilation series? For me, it’s such a broad term, anyway, and certainly has nothing to do with, once more, these stupid and infantile little bedroom-‘noise’ outfits playing around with same tired ideas first explored around 28 years ago…

WB: Extreme is merely a quantifier but is not intended to be genre specific – that’s why I believe it’s a good term for the compilation series. It opens up possibilities, rather than to limit them. As with all language, words end up getting co-opted just as ‘noise’ has in the way you point out.

AE: But there’s no escaping how language is reduced to its most convenient level, no matter how our own subjectivity may interpret it in certain contexts, don’t you think?

WB: Yes, absolutely - and it’s an inexorable process, and part of the way languages, any language, evolves – from the moment a word or an utterance is originally created as an abstract noise it has to go through stages of greater common understanding and dilution to replicate itself. So when expressions such as noise began to be used in a music context, in order for them to be ever more widely understood, it adopts rules and boundaries which get increasingly narrow – this is then, ironically to us as early adopters, seen to be manifested in how greater numbers of people then make this music abiding by these adopted limitations because the linguistic value has become a part of their very identity and worldview. I saw a performance by ‘noise’ musician John Wiese in Cologne a year or so back and wrote at my blog about how generic an example of music it was, and although it will be to him an invisible compromise (in other words, not something he would notice), it was this - the phenomenon - that I was referring to rather than any personal criticism.

AE: Every band or artist makes mistakes. What are Whitehouse’s?

WB: If you’re referring specifically to the music, I’ll be coy and say I don’t accept the metaphor of making mistakes within the domain of music, or art for that matter. Of course, beyond that, there’s stuff outside that aesthetic domain: routine stuff like at live shows for example where you’re in a scenario sometimes where all bets are off and you just have to do your best with a good intent – and that sometimes isn’t enough with so many variables and factors at play. You take the risk and hope it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t.

AE: You started the group during what I would personally deem an extremely vibrant period in music, having arrived from the post-punk landscape. Are you interested in the work of any of your peers? I mean, do you even keep a wry eye open towards a handful of them?

WB: A wry eye open for sure; I know I probably come across as pretty disparaging a lot of the time, but I do love the whole field of popular music (good, bad and indifferent) and try and stay pretty well read.

AE: Wouldn’t you like to work alongside some actual African musicians? Or is that too close to concepts explored by Peter Gabriel, Jah Wobble and the especially ghastly Sting…?!

WB: Now there’s a horrible thought! It’d be a great learning experience to have, yes, but ultimately not especially meaningful, simply because the use of the African instruments isn’t in order to try and make African music – while it can be inspiring to listen to, the super-objective is to create something different and new.

AE: Any stories concerning Whitehouse you’d like to impart that may either shock, illuminate or even be amusing for us? (And, no, not the rib-breaking incident, please!)

WB: If we’d accepted the extraordinary offer we had a couple of years ago to play in Angola then I’d be undoubtedly be able to deliver on all three of your criteria – and certainly all three as far as my dear cousin was concerned as he foresaw our inevitable return home in 2 white caskets.

AE: Along with a mere handful of groups, Sex Pistols, TG and Crass being the most pronounced (and I must confess I think the early Punk/Industrial generation groups achieved much more than those before them in the western world), I have always seen Whitehouse as being far more than purely about music. It has been a whirlwind of ideas caught up in something that, similar to these other groups, could only be too readily dismissed for all manner of stupid reasons, plus has simultaneously always served as some kind of portal to them. To look at Whitehouse at face value and deem you a mere ‘noise’ group has always cheapened your worth, in my opinion. Rather, I have always considered you amongst those few who can truly help stimulate thinking (which of course can likewise lead to inspiring myriad copyists…). Do you agree? Has this ever been part of your own agenda?

WB: I like to think what you’re saying is true, yes – and if so, it’s heartening to know though I couldn’t claim it be a part of any specific agenda. Going back to your point of the legions of copyists, for me the really curious thing is that they seem only fond of that very early sound of ours from the early 80s, and I can’t think of a single example of anyone even attempting to imitate any of our stuff from after that era.

AE: Is modern culture presently nose-diving towards a dead-end? Or is there still some hope?

WB: An interesting question that would probably merit book treatment. In a word, I don’t know.

AE: Who do you respect (in culture or otherwise)?

WB: What I respect more than anything is a person who has a sincerity of intent and whose fire is still burning. (You can see some of my lists for examples.)

AE: Your interest in merging African music/instrumentation with electronic ‘noise’ (I personally think the best noise music falls nearer psychedelia, but…) has recently culminated in some DJ slots under the Cut Hands moniker. What does this entail exactly?

WB: Cut Hands is a bit unusual in the sense that it’s being used as a loose umbrella term for a number of activities and notions (a bit like its origin...). So it’s the clubnight, it’ll be the name for the afro noise LPs, for the DJing, for the live visuals (done by Nick Herd) – and anything else related for that matter. Likewise the format for the club nights is an unusual one comprising just one live band that we consider very special (such as Skullflower, who played at Cut Hands II in November), a DJ set, a short demonstration/talk by my good self to get everyone in the mood, and of course the live visuals. It certainly makes a change from the usual diet of one band after another, or else some band stopping off on some horrendously long tour.

AE: Certainly sounds interesting. What are the talks about, though?

WB: It’s a secret part of the Cut Hands experience. I can’t say more.

AE: That sounds like a good way to cultivate interest or a selling point, to me!

WB: Maybe indirectly, yes - better to say it’d be like telling you what presents you’re getting for your next Christmas, you might want to know but it’d ruin the experience!

AE: Do you prefer performing on stage or Djing? What’s more important for you?

WB: It’s kind of similar, both fun to do, though you’d have to say the former has more resonance and I’ll find more memorable.

AE: How do you see Cut Hands progressing?

WB: Difficult to say, I really have an abundance of preposterous ideas to try out that’ll probably destroy any of my remaining street cred, not sure how good they’ll all be but it’s fun to be operating within this new territory. It’s genuine experimental music in that sense.

AE: You’re a huge film fan, but you seem to spend a lot of this time watching complete and utter rubbish or releases you know will ultimately only lead to disappointment. Why?! Do you have too much spare time on your hands?!

WB: Oh yes, way too much time on my hands – and clearly you do too for reading all those ‘reviews’. Some of the obvious rubbish I watch is also because I think it’s a good thing to keep up with all sorts of culture even the mainstream, and occasionally you can be surprised – receptive absorption is an integral part of inspiration.

AE: Fair enough. Leaving your lists aside, what has struck you as being particularly memorable or surprising lately, though?

WB: I’ve been on a bad run lately, much has been memorable and surprising for negative reasons only. I did very much enjoy Tarsem Singh’s The Fall – Catinca Untaru’s performance is truly magical, it’s so very rare to have a child role that doesn’t depend upon stereotyping of children by adults.

AE: Any more plans for Susan Lawly? If so, what?

WB: Well, we’ll continue with all the vinyl reissues – plus the afro noise vinyl, and any other Whitehouse stuff that gets released, so the label will pretty much continue as before.

AE: Why do you continue to make every Whitehouse live recording available?

WB: Actually, there are several recent shows without recordings – but I think it’s nice for anyone to know where they can get an archive recording of any show should they want it. I’m not one for doing live albums, but the archiving seems worthwhile.

AE: What are the most important things for you in life?

WB: Wow. How about appreciating the moment on my own terms?

AE: Is that always possible?

WB: Not at all, it’s a good super-objective to have.

AE: Do you have a generally positive or negative worldview? Why?

WB: It’s the internal conflict of being an unreformed misanthrope that has got to know a few people that I really like a lot.

AE: Don’t you think the notion of being an, in your words, ‘unreformed misanthrope’ goes against your engaging with people through the highly communicative medium of music? I’d contend that true misanthropes would want to avoid people as best as possible rather than attempt to engage with them. And they certainly wouldn’t join ‘social networking’ sites…!

WB: Therein lies the conflict – especially when you consider the difference between being misanthropic and antisocial.

AE: I would still suggest that the idea of a true misanthrope wouldn’t want to socialise or engage with those he finds abhorrent on any level whatsover. And, again, that involvement with music is completely paradoxical. Should a real misanthrope even be able to look at himself or herself in the metaphorical mirror…?

WB: What you’re suggesting there is different from being antisocial by nature – misanthropy suggests a universal aversion to mankind, not a targeted one. And social interaction, indeed forms of narcissism, will confer all sorts of benefits to a person, even a misanthropic person... no, I see the two as belonging to separate domains.

AE: Would you feel lonely without the world you have created for yourself?

WB: Can we really take the credit for that creation?

AE: Are you saying that you’re not wholly responsible for that creation? Surely, this goes against your idea of placing so much importance on being in control of your own life?

WB: Again, there’s a critical difference. I’ll take responsibility for things but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am responsible for them, or indeed am in control of them. And I offer these notions as questions of personal philosophy, not about what’s true and false, or right and wrong.

AE: Are there answers to all questions?

WB: OK, we’re getting really philosophical now... I would challenge whether questions are indeed questions in the way we commonly understand them. So what is a question, and, more interestingly, isn’t? There’s something to make your head spin.

AE: Okay, we’re going towards the realms of asking whether grass is truly green now…!

WB: Not at all! We can both have a shared perception of the colour of grass, but the abstract notion of what a question is and isn’t is extremely difficult to define. The more you try and think about it, the more elusive it becomes.

AE: I see this as corresponding perfectly with Whitehouse. For me, a group that has raised as many questions as (possible) answers without a fixed agenda or any dogma attached, whilst allowing for interpretation and, again, subjectivity. Agree?

WB: I certainly wouldn’t disagree with that.

AE: Is change important, both to yourself and in the more general sense?

WB: Well, change is inevitable whether you like it or not, we’re changing (dying?) from the day we’re born – and our environment is also constantly shifting and evolving around us. To word this in a slightly different way, what’s important (to me), is not being stuck – and that’s all too easy for all of us. We get stuck in our beliefs and our behaviour patterns even when they’re clearly unuseful.

AE: I think it’s incredibly difficult to avoid the comfort zone furnished by being stuck, however. Some of us try hard to break away, even momentarily, but it’s always there, ready to lull us back and mostly succeeds, don’t you think?

WB: Yes, very much so.

AE: And how successful do you consider yourself to be in evading its clutches?

WB: If - and it’s a big if because most people wouldn’t even see it as a threat - you’re aware of the process, then you can establish circumstances which will allow the possibility of subverting its clutches. So for example, in the artistic context – after every album or recording has been released I typically destroy all the notes, settings, templates, and sometimes the equipment that have been used - that creates an artificial obstruction for any subsequent recording of course which could potentially be subverted by reversion to how things were done before. In other words, the comfort zone. Originally I did that in order to experience the music as if it was done by someone else but then I learnt how effective it was for these reasons too.

AE: Finally, you have lots of different and contrasting interests outside of what you do with Whitehouse, Susan Lawly and Cut Hands. And, despite the many different accusations I’ve seen thrown at what I’d call your main concerns, I’d argue everything you do is borne of an incredible passion for life and the many things it throws our way. What do you think about that?

WB: I’d like to think so, yes – the underlying intent I’ve tried to adopt is one of taking personal responsibility for what you get. That’s not to say bad stuff doesn’t happen but it really helps you play with what’s thrown your way.

For more information on William Bennett’s activities, visit: www.susanlawly.com And, indeed, either follow the links there or find him at Blogspot or on MySpace

Reviews: Number One

2009-01-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

What follows is a collection of reviews spanning 2006 to 2008. Most of these are likewise on the website, but I am anxious to get things moving into some kind of shape here as well. Please also note that, unless we are not aware of the country of origin, all labels are UK based beyond those stated. Reviews by Richard Johnson, Kate MacDonald and Sacha Colgate.

ACOLYTES ACTION SQUAD Winkle Time CD (Early Winter Recordings, 2007)
Sheffield based duo A.A.S.’s debut album, Bust Of, surfaced 7 years before this follow-up, but it would appear absolutely nothing has compromised their often erratic and jagged swerves into the kinda terrain where idiosyncratic souls as disparate as NWW, Richard Youngs, Omit and The Gerogerigegege can also be caught stalking around. Throughout the eleven songs here a certain DIY aesthetic remains in check, but stealthily avoids the no/lo-fi trappings so often found attached, remora-like, to it. Instead, the production allows for the sounds and ideas to breathe. Which is a good thing, because there’s quite a lot going on here that commands it and would otherwise be reduced to sonic mulch. Mashed-up interludes greet spacious guitar passages, amp hum and electronic chattering gives way to solo female vocals, an Amon Duul-type ur-jam makes itself known, junk shop madness bubbles away, songs dissolve just as they’re beginning to form, languid flotsam coils around vague structures, and fragmentary noodling ripens the gaps. Fine stuff, skimming those places where the avant-garde is fucked around with even more and cast alongside different approaches to music without once either puffing on the air of pretension or falling into futile bedroom terrorism. Mysterious and quirky, yet never annoying, Winkle Time reveals much to hold onto without ever being obvious. A good thing in my increasingly battered book, f'sure. (RJ)
www.earlywinterrecordings.co.uk

ANT Footprints Through the Snow CD (Homesleep Music, Italy, 2006)
Thirteen unassuming stabs at the kind of fragile songwriting guaranteed to either send you towards homicidal tendencies or reeling into a pit of introspection so deep nobody but the most meek will feel compelled to cast a rescue ladder into. Either way, it’s a lost cause. As such music goes, this bobs along gently enough, but it lacks the magic or cynicism that can salvage it and unfortunately strays a little too close to the domain of the bedwetter for comfort too much. Ant may well possess a talent for exposing his heart with the aid of his keen songwriting abilities, but he seriously needs to grow some balls. (RJ)
www.homesleep.it

AUTOMATED ACOUSTICS Love to the Dedicated Listener CD (Alternative Blueprint, 2007)
A label which says that it celebrates artists who are unique and hard to categorise is a good thing. And, despite some initial misgivings, this disc grew on me as it went along. I started off not too sure about it, but got swept up in the sheer unpredictability of the sounds.
It ranges from some clever, almost AFX-like songs to a grooviness that reminds me a little of Bad Seeds’ offshoot Crime & the City Solution, or a safer take on the sound of Xiu Xiu. At its strongest moments, it’s a breath of fresh air, something that really does defy comparison. At its weaker moments, it sounds a little too much like it’s trying to be music for art college students, striving for a strangeness that doesn’t come naturally.
The chief drawback of the album is that there is just too much of it. The whole project could have done with more whittling, to emphasise the potential of its high points.
A sort of wunderkind multi-instrumentalist, the character behind Automated Acoustics doesn’t seem to want for ideas, he just needs to refine a little more going forward. That said, he’s a young’un, this is only his first full-length album, and it seems that the future could be bright. (KM)

THE JOHN BAKER TAPES Volume One/Volume Two CD (Trunk Records, 2008)
Two fantastic insights to the (rightly) long revered and influential BBC Radiophonics Workshop via one of its three mainstays, the late John Baker, who, alongside Delia Derbyshire and David Cain, was responsible for creating some of the most amazing and visionary compositions to have arrived from true experiments in sound beyond those more self-conscious realms generally associated with them. Discovered by his brother, Richard, a large number of these pieces were considered lost until recently and an equally significant amount have never been released before. As such, both collections are invaluable on several counts.
On the first volume, collecting 49 rare and unreleased works recorded from 1963 to 1974, John Baker reveals some of his production techniques in between themes, jingles, public information broadcasts and soundscapes, etc. originally used for BBC radio and television shows and commissions elsewhere. Nestled amongst an array of melodic signature pieces, stabs of strangeness and humourous oddities titled and indeed used for ‘Newstime BBC’, ‘Building the Bomb’, ‘Sling Your Hook’, ‘Man Alive: UFO’, ‘Barnacle Bill’ and so on you’ll find an electronic opening for the film classic ‘Dial M for Murder’, some non-broadcast cues, an interview for ‘Woman’s Hour’, and far more besides.
The second volume collects a further 39 pieces not used by the BBC and is no less captivating than the first. Homespun jazz, library music, feedback loops, electronic jingles from adverts, more demented electro-acoustic passages, test tones, etc. recorded between 1954 and 1985 converge to embellish John Baker’s evident genius further. A soundtrack for Ridley Scott’s debut feature, Boy on a Bicycle, also makes an appearance, once again illustrating a love of jazz but also somehow magically fusing elements drawn, seemingly, from classical music and a colliery’s brass band. Otherwise, titles such as ‘Electro-Suspense’, ‘Electro-Weird’, ‘Get Happy’, ‘Pots ‘n’ Pans’, ‘Piano Concrete’ and so on probably point to everything you may think you know.
At times, both volumes fold together like Joe Meek’s more quirky forays rubbing shoulders with Nurse With Wound and, elsewhere, they prove themselves way outside such lazy confines on my part. Mostly, and somewhat more paradoxically, the albums add up to something which exist outside easy frames of reference. And, whether amusing or created for more serious purposes, the sheer scope of the inventiveness and energy behind it, can only be admired,
Complete with rare photos and liner notes, these two collections come wholeheartedly recommended to everybody interested in truly innovative music. As archives go, this one can only command repeat visits that will never once disappoint. The lines between insanity and genius in sound have once more been drawn. (RJ)

BEEHATCH eponymous CD (Lens, USA, 2008)
Beehatch is the result of a collaboration between Mark Spybey (ex-Zoviet France, Dead Voices On Air, etc.) and Phil Western (Download and platEAU), following ten years since they last worked together in Download and its being realised via the increasingly popular (and more convenient) method of file sharing via the internet; something that, given their respectively residing in England and Los Angeles, they could only do anyway.
Over fourteen cuts, they straddle those filmic areas they’re already known to explore, cut-ups, mashed passages of psycho-mulch, gentle looped voyages through light and dark, waking dreams in sound, electro-pop, and songs that could comfortably sway alongside the likes of Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble, Michel Banabila and some of Mark Stewart’s work. Lots of different elements are pulled together and there’s no doubting Spybey and Western’s knack for at least keeping them pumped full of blood, but the whole album suffers for being a little too disparate or blurred around the edges at times. The attention to detail, and even those warts that reside amongst it, is impeccable, but it feels as they’ve lost sight of the whole they’ve created in the process. (RJ)
www.lensrecords.com

FRANK BRETSCHEIDER & PETER DUIMELINKS flux CD (Korm Plastics, NL, 2006)
Although both of these artists have a pedigree in experimental music, I hadn’t been familiar with either of them until listening to this CD. Consequently, if you are familiar with them, I’m not going to be able to tell you whether this release is a logical continuation of either or their work. What I can tell you is that this is a collaboration (as opposed to a split release) and that it was recorded as part of the Brombron series put together by Frans De Waard, where artists such as Main, Tore Honore Boe and Jaap Blonk are brought together to work on a project for a fixed period of time. This is the tenth CD that the larger project has generated (there have been three more released since).
The music is an extremely minimal but likeable techno, with an irresistible pulse lurking beneath its sparse surface. It helps that the production is particularly sharp, so that the resulting sound mix has every whir and click perfectly placed. A flatter style would have rendered the work bland.
It could be argued that this sort of music is a more stripped down variant of the kind of thing labels like Sakho were doing in the mid-nineties, but the fact that it is so engaging shows that there are greater depths to be plumbed in that ocean. (KM)

CRESCENT Little Waves CD (FatCat, 2007)
This is the second album I’ve heard out of their total of five by this Bristol-based group. The last one being, well, their last album, from four years earlier, By the Roads and the Fields, which has been something I’ve turned to on many a wintry night since reviewing it. Little Waves sees the group moving from analogue recording to digital but thankfully losing none of the rugged beauty of the previous album. Singer Matt Jones’ soft yet husky vocals once again recall a world-weary and (emotional) battle-scarred soul caught thick in the middle of a search for his lost self, whilst the music that backs it appears to be beamed from a time and space otherwise only to be found in dusty corners of record shops. No surprise then that Jones has cited 1930s gramaphone records, old folk and blues music, and even Indonesian Gamelan and the magnificent Pearls Before Swine’s One Nation Underground LP as being amongst the touchstones for Little Waves. This album possesses precisely the same feel of being from a slightly different place whilst neither compromising Crescent’s obvious songwriting ability or sounding unnatural.
Gentle acoustic melodies bind an array of instruments that include organ, horns, drums and homemade double bass together with a variety of environmental or found sounds which embellish the proceeedings perfectly. Combined with a very subtle nod towards contemporary electronica’s more adventurous plains, minute mistakes and a roughly-hewn edge likewise add to the setting.
As with the album before it, this is brimming with an earnest warmth, a rawness and bruised beauty impossible to resist. It suggests musty photo albums, walks along leafy paths after the rain has just cleared, staring out of a window of a derelict house, broken toys from one’s own childhood, buried dreams and well-thumbed pages. Such an air of sentimentality could so easily become trite in the wrong hands, but Crescent pull it off fantastically.
How it all compares to their lo-fi punk-inspired beginnings 14 years ago, I don’t yet know. Maybe it’s actually better I keep it that way? (RJ)
www.fat-cat.co.uk

THE DEATH RAYS Twelve Gauge Blues CD (DTK Records, Canada, 2007)
Balls-out, punked-up ‘n’ tremor-inducin’ destructo-rock of the type first stoked by the likes of Black Flag or even Flipper, (un)healthily peppered with riffin’ Stooges cruncherama, vocals that sound mercilessly torn from their lungs, psychotic sax blasts and all the trappings of a band doubtlessly aware of their cliched trappings but’re intent on having a fucken good time regardless of what I, or anybody else, thinks. Actually makes a change to have something like this around here, too. A massive flip-off to all the chin-scratchers amongst us. (RJ)
www.myspace.com/thedeathrays

KEVIN DRUMM Sheer Hellish Miasma CD (Mego, Germany, 2007)
If you’re going to call an album Sheer Hellish Miasma, as far as I’m concerned, you’d better be prepared to back it up. When you consider further that this release is actually a reissue of a much-lauded 2002 album (with extra material added), there was already a lot for Mr. Drumm to live up to by the time I had broken the seal on its tastefully minimalist packaging.
Perhaps if my expectations hadn’t been raised, this would have been a more enjoyable experience for me. Certainly, there are sections of the album that captured my interest, but nothing that truly won me over. The buzzy, layered drones of the first track oscillate and shimmer in a nice chorus effect, in a manner not dissimilar to some American power electronics, but without the PE spite. The second track is more rhythmic, with stuttering percussion hammering out an almost African cadence.
Unfortunately, after track two, which comes to an abrupt end, the album starts to drift. It meanders from tone to tone without much sense of dynamics and never builds on the energy of the opening tracks. This loss of direction is something I find Drumm shares with Jim O’Rourke, an artist with whom he has collaborated and to whom he has often compared.
Not bad, but not a sheer hellish miasma in either a bad or a good way. (KM)

FELLAHEAN Insignificant Scrap CD (Fellacoustic Records, USA, 2008)
Not the same Fellaheen whose records I chanced upon years ago who also hailed from the US but with a different vowel. Rather, what we have here are thirteen pieces of full-on electronics noise fuckery emanating from the same camp that exploded into the likes of Daniel Menche, The Incapacitants and infinite others whose smacks around the cranium have been long endorsed by RRR, for example. There are some interesting twists, turns and textures hewn from what’s an otherwise immensely abrasive block of sound, lending the proceedings that all-important disorientating or vaguely ‘delic quality very much required in order to make it work, but I’m not so heavily into such music these days (I take time out for Whitehouse and a coupla old Japanoisers, but that’s about it), to be perfectly honest. Third cut, ‘Purchase’, stands out for its slightly more rhythmic tendency leaking violently like burst bruises all over the place. With bedfellows titled ‘Data’, ‘File’, ‘Return’, ‘Amount’, ‘Fees’, and so on, Fellahean appear to be furnishing us with some appropriate enough reflections on the present age, and it’d be unfair they stop there, that’s for sure. (RJ)
www.fellahean.com

FORMICATION Icons for a New Religion CD (Lumberton Trading Company, 2007)
Ah, this is what reviewers dream of and fear. A record that’s hard to describe. It’s a challenge, of course and you start off your review wanting to communicate something of the atmosphere that these two musicians draw from a diverse collection of instruments (guitars and synths on the mainstream side, djembe and “tooting horn” on the obscure side), except that knowing the instruments won’t tell you a thing about what the final product actually sounds like.
So, you start over again and try to think of words that might be evocative of the end result of all these processed guitars and tooting horns and such. Juxtaposed terms like “mellow psychedelia” or “undulating electronics” sort of help to approach the subject, but seem to miss the gracefulness inherent in it.
It’s only after a couple of listens that it strikes you that there’s something a little bit familiar about the sound, something in the back of your mind with which it forms a continuum. Coil. Mid-nineties to early-whatever-you-call-this-decade Coil is the closest link in sound and mood, which is fitting, since Coil themselves were notoriously difficult to describe.
This is not to say that the music is derivative, far from it, but sometimes a comparison is worth far more than a reviewer throwing terms like “burbling” and “mysterious” and “morphing” at you. Well worth keeping a lookout for, now and in the future. (KM)
www.lumbertontrading.com

FORMICATION Agnosia CD (Harmful/Dark Winter, 2007)
Closely following their album for my very own Lumberton imprint, Formication bring us another handful of cuts that, this time, roll along a more pronounced emphasis on rhythms. Sometimes akin to a chattering alien computer or a funeral march past a foundry where a lonely worker sweats away, the rhythms swing nicely between being busy and more subdued whilst forever avoiding those more obvious beat trappings. Alongside ghostly psychedelic textures, distant wails, carefully woven torrents of amber hiss, finely-hewn pulses and equally measured minimal keyboard chord strikes, everything feels befitting of either a haunting film score or perhaps a chemically-soaked recess where nostalgia, lost days and reflection reign. Only the final, fifth track moves away from such anchorage towards the type of electronic interstellar gush they’re usually happy to fall adrift in, but it is still solidly executed and works perfectly. Just a shame the packaging (a black & white slipcase with sombre images on not so far removed from the approach adopted by many a dodgy goth group) betrays the music, unfortunately. (RJ)
www.darkwinter.com

FREIBAND Leise CD (Cronica, Portugal, 2007)
Ten compositions based on recordings his then three-year-old daughter made, using musical and non-musical instruments/sound sources, represent Frans de Waard’s Freiband’s third album. As with other Freiband material, the emphasis is as much on computer processing as the original material used for it, but while the realms explored are of a chiefly electro-acoustic nature they are never rendered sterile as a result of the environment. Rather, all manner of interesting thuds, pops, crackles, scrapes and suchlike weave around each other to form atmospheric textures, mostly gentle patterns, occasional rhythmic snatches and the general digital palette that could only too easily be staid if left in the wrong hands. Once again, Frans proves that he has a firm grasp on his inventiveness, possesses an ability to shade it in many ways, and refrains from allowing it to plummet into the very depths of boredom so much music of this nature is guilty of. (RJ)
www.cronicaelectronica.org

ERIK FRIEDLANDER & TEHO TEARDO Giorni Rubati CD (Bip-Hop, 2008)
Thirteen songs inspired by the poems of murdered Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini feature on this trans-Atlantic collaboration by downtown New York improvisation cellist Friedlander and prolific Italian electronic composer, Teardo, known otherwise for his soundtrack work, involvement with several groups, and remixes for bands or artists as diverse as Placebo, Girls vs. Boys, Rothko and Lydia Lunch. Initially based on 8 multi-tracked or single track responses to the poems recorded by Friedlander, Teardo reworked the recordings while adding piano, electronics and guitar along the way. From the plaintive ‘Ricordi di Miseria’, with its haunting textures and the cello strokes given centre stage, to the alarmingly viable and vaguely electro-punk-gone-minimal cover of ‘Warm Leatherette’ that closes the album, Giorni Rubati both splits its seams with surprises and commands nothing but your full attention. Highly recommended. (RJ)
www.bip-hop.com

FUCK BUTTONS Colours Move promo CDS (ATP Recordings, 2008)
Imagine prime cut Spacemen 3 or even early Spiritualised sliced, diced ‘n’ sprinkled over a slightly more aggressive palette via some colossal mesmer-rhythms hewn like proto-industrial’s dancefloor cousin and ‘Colours Move’ may well hammer itself into focus accordingly. Dunno how this cut compares with the rest of this duo’s debut album, ‘Street Horrrsing’, from earlier this year, but it simultaneously reminds me Terminal Cheesecake and newer cousins in fucken fucked and celebratory fuckedelia, Holy Fuck. A nice and chunky Andrew Weatherall remix, ‘Sweet Love for Planet Earth’, seems as fitting as both the support slot to Mogwai and the fact this release can only otherwise be found on 12” or download. Apparently, the press have been creaming themselves over ‘em, but I rarely keep abreast of such matters. At least it seems vaguely justified for once, anyway. (RJ)

GUY GELEM Works CD (Split Femur Recordings, 2008)
Simple, minimalistic electronic rhythms and sinewy guitar melodies fleshed out by some often suitably atmospheric cello playing form the basis to this debut instrumental album by London’s Guy Gelem. Because it only too often falls near those kingdoms already signposted by the likes of Mum or Fridge, it isn’t the elevatory experience it’d probably like to be, but Works makes for a pleasant enough, if rather perfunctory, halfway house to them. Shame there were no more of the Italian folk touches, as witnessed on fifth cut ‘Village’, peppered throughout, really. (RJ)
Split Femur Recordings Ashleigh, Main Road, Great Haywood, Staffs., ST18 0SU www.splitfemurrecordings.com

GENERIC Torture CD (FracturedSpace Records, 2008)
Generic is the name given to Adam Sykes’ outlet for the type of tempered space mulch you may well actually expect when faced with it and likewise, of course, the title of this debut CD ‘proper’. Adam, formerly known as the guy behind the now defunct Iris Light imprint, here proffers six cuts spun from deep drones, slow machine rhythms, spiralling fragments of hiss and the kind of brooding malevolence that’s designed perfectly for the domain of the horror film or, indeed, those club spaces where the black clad amongst us tend to mooch about in. Whilst the work doesn’t really scale heights beyond so much else I’ve stumbled upon (more by chance than design) on various labels set up to promote post-industrial gloom-mongering, it’s neither unlistenable or disagreeable. Last track, ‘Torture Garden II’, is especially nice for its falling nearer H3o-type haze, but overall I feel Generic still has a way to go if it wishes to be as fully captivating as, say, Band Of Pain or even Biopsphere’s forays into such realms. (RJ)
FracturedSpace Records, 5 Serjeant’s Green, Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. www.myspace.com/fracturedspacerecords

ROBERT HAMPSON + STEVEN HESS eponymous CDEP (Crouton, USA, 2006)
Four collabs all spanning the four-to-six minutes mark from Robert Hampson, otherwise known for his work with Main and Loop outside various collaborations, and US drummer/percussionist Steven Hess, whose own credits include Pan American, Fessenden and others. Half-submerged creaks, skittering shimmers and what sounds like a computer protesting at the bottom of a mineshaft wander into ripples created by mild cymbal sweeps, fragmented pulses, sequences of minute pops ‘n’ poots and vaguely rhythmic whorls. Neither unpleasant or particularly unexpected but, rather, somewhat unremarkable. Sometimes wish Hampson would just squeeze some blood out of his pores again, to be honest. Whatever, limited to 500 and probably long gone, like you actually care… (RJ)
www.croutonmusic.com

HUNTSVILLE For the Middle Class CD (Rune Grammofon, 2006)
Pretty incredible long-player by the Norwegian trio of Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften and Ingar Zach, who’ve long been involved with the free improvisation world already documented by Grydeland’s Sofa label on a number of releases since 2000. Here, however, they utilise all manner of instruments from guitars, double bass, banjo, tabla machine and various others originating from India to explore a more recent interest in drone, country, folk and electronic music. Opening song, ‘The Appearance of a Wise Child’, tethered to around 15 mins worth of driving, hypnotic percussion and snatching some random vocals along the way, largely sets the tone for the remainder of the release. Organic textures snake around each other, rhythms staple everything to that juncture where everything points to an apex of unadulterated ecstasy, and discernible ur-strums combine with frenetic bows and scrapes for that only too important raw effect so hard to find in this day of software-generated sterilisation. Only second track, ‘Serious Like a Pope’ loses its grip slightly as the pace is whittled back to a near Fahey-esque approach rendered better on fourth and final cut, ‘Melon’, which furnishes us with a comparatively stripped and gentle touchdown to the proceedings. Nonetheless, Huntsville sound like their experience within such realms of music is paying off. The product of people who know their game without having let their imagination or yearning to voyage to new places suffer. Fucken dandy in my book, I have to concede. (RJ)
www.runegrammafon.com

ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI/ATSUKO NOJIRI Continuity DVD/CD (Asphodel, USA, 2007)
Karkowski is a well-known figure on the international circuit concerning digital-noise, improvised electronics and audio-visual performances. Based in Tokyo for the past few years, he continues to travel the globe and play art and club spaces on a fairly regular basis, somehow successfully blurring the lines between his grounding in power electronics-inspired sonics and a more mannered, ‘academic’ approach en route. On this collaboration with Japanese video artist, Nojiri, he has put together a few tracks using source material originally recorded live by a number of musicians in San Francisco.
Various strings, guitars, wind instruments and percussion were deployed by three collectives who then had their work manipulated by Karkowski. Although it’s evident the sounds are teased and processed, the original forms also appear to have been handled with a modicum of respect, rendering a keen ear with a sense of balance to the proceedings. Or, if you like, an almost perfect melding of the organic with software via corridors padded with a healthy imagination…
The DVD itself features three mid-length pieces where, on ‘Float’, tempered drones, ghostly scrapes and knocks, soaring tones, minimalist percussion and subtle rattling are pushed into a dynamic range Glenn Branca would be proud of whilst accompanied by suitably hallucinatory yet relaxing colourful lines swaying about the screen. Second track, ‘Tritonal Rapture’, presents more of a quasi-industrial offering, with heavier emphasis on percussion and the general feeling that something unpleasant may be going on in the nearest basement, and last piece ‘Membrane’ is akin to an almost full-on attack of multi-layered voices completely unlike the sourced material or, indeed, the comparatively soothing visuals.
Two lengthier pieces go on to form the CD part of the nicely presented package, ‘Mass-Flow-Rate’ and ‘Perceptor’; the former resembling a flying saucer’s perhaps slightly malfunctioning engine during a rendezvous with a black hole and the latter nudging towards Aube territory. Not, therefore, quite as overtly absorbing as the work on the DVD, visuals or no visuals, but at least executed with the precision one would expect of a master within the genre. (RJ)
www.asphodel.com

KEPLERS ODD Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula CD (Fractured Spaces, 2008)
Trio from Sweden’s third album with seven untitled and largely agreeable slices of moody yet sinewy guitar-led instrumental pieces which gently nod towards The Cure’s classic Seventeen Seconds and Faith albums whilst sucking on the same air as comparatively more contemporary artists such as Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. There’s a heavier emphasis on the foggy swirls and post-industrial sounds buried way down, but the overall tone is one of minimalist melancholy and rather subdued despair. Everything mostly hangs together with both a meaning and intent that belies the ‘noise-drone-ambient’ angle heralded by the press sheet, anyway. Only the fourth and fifth cuts’ meandering into Skullflower-esque distortion-anchored landscapes gives the general effect a slight hammering, unfortunately, as they appear to be borne of an idea to prove Keplers Odd worthy of the ‘noise’ school more than anything more focussed or, well, rich in feeling. I’m all for noise, but it has to be harnessed or have direction. In the context presented here, it carries no weight and deflates an otherwise good album. All the same, worth keeping a half-mast peeper on, at the very least. And I certainly wouldn’t mind investigating the previous albums, either. (RJ)
Fractured Spaces Records, 5 Serjeants Green, Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK14 6HA.
www.myspace.com/fracturedspacesrecords

DAVID KRISTIAN Ghost Storeys CD/DVD (C0C0S0L1DC1TI, Canada, 2008)
‘Last studio’ album from prolific and highly revered Canadian electronic music composer, David Kristian, collaborating here with Ryosuke Aoike, Japan’s much vaunted Manga animator responsible for creating Catman and Perestroika, on five films based on Japanese ghost stories. The music itself veers through those spaces where appropriately drifting penumbral shimmers wrap themselves around distant knocks, crashes and taps like ectoplasm manifesting into menacing forms. While shades of Lustmord or the moodier textures behind Thomas Koner’s arctic explorations instantly leap out as reference points, we mustn’t lose sight of Kristian’s intentions here or, indeed, the fact that he conducts them perfectly. As a starting point to his newfound direction as a soundtrack composer, these thirteen compositions represent nothing but a mission firmly accomplished.
Aoike’s five silent shorts, working themselves through gloomy hues, never overstated abstractions, neatly hewn graphics and sequences often as haunting or evocative as the music itself are a sheer pleasure to watch despite what generally appear to be rather simple premises. If, like myself, you’ve not seen any Manga films in a long time, these may well just convince you that the time to redress the balance is way overdue. (RJ)
www.cocosolidciti.com

ANDREW LILES & JEAN-HERVE PERON Fini! CD (Dirter Promotions, 2008)
I have to ‘fess that I sometimes now baulk at the idea of reviewing material concerning my friends, and this particular release is a double-barrelled example in that it features Mr. Liles and is on Steve Pittis’ label. Thankfully, however, the former, despite my presently rather featherweight criticism of there simply being too much available by him now being completely at odds with my own endorsement of his work via releases on my own labels, has barely made a duff record yet, whilst Pittis’ Dirter Promotions is very much a kindred spirit to my own labels in that it’s never been hip, is dedicated to purely reflecting Steve’s own interests, and has indeed crossed over with mine at several points. Basically, our labels are in the same (possibly sinking but certainly stinking) boat, and always have been. Returning to the point about Liles’ work, however, I think my problem with there being so much output by him now stems from the belief that he’s going to slip up very badly at any given time now, but my fears are violently cast aside with absolutely every new record I hear by him these days. And this collaboration with one of Faust’s founders is no exception.
Beginning, as it does, with a welcoming Faust-type drum loop and Jean-herve yowling and protesting that, as the title suggests, ‘The Drummer is on Valium’, plus all from metallic clunks and scrapes to what sounds akin to an android gibbon deeply in pain and some rockin’ guitar, the tone is largely set for an album that appears to get better, and perheps more skewed, as the following thirteen cuts unspool their very guts. As the piece begins to plummet into some nicely hewn noise towards the end of its 8 minutes running time, we’re given the usual few seconds pause before ‘I Do Not Like To Get Wet’ assumes a posture dominated by Liles’ presence. Trademark flirtations with the carnivalesque and downright absurd bubble ‘n’ foam away, hinting at those cloud-strewn netherworlds Liles’ ouevre has continually poked its tendrils at since first crawling amongst the moonlit shadows. Only a rusty trumpet really seems s to bag the air trapped by Jean-herve, but rusty brass is welcome into my palace any day. Third track, ‘Shut Up & Sit Down’, sticking to the two-to-three minutes mark dominating most of the pieces and held together by the kinda plaintive enough guitar strums that wouldn’t be outta place on an early post-punk record, pays witness to more of Jean-herve’s vocals and all kinds of indiscernible, mutated noises spiralling from a Lovecraftian rift clearly exploited elsewhere. Whilst its only too apparent that the recent Faust collaborations with Nurse With Wound represent an inevitable meeting of minds, Liles and Jean-herve alone together mould far more fantastic shapes from the subconsciousness than you may’ve heard in quite a time. Not only that, but Fin! Really fucken, uh, ‘rocks’ in places, too.
Indeed. Work your way through the looped breaths, rasps, muted bass drums pounds and complaining horse of ‘Shake Your Hooves’ and there’s so much fantastic guitar fuzz to swathe yourself in you can almost hear early Skullflower battling it out with The Stooges. Which is precisely one of the reasons the instrument itself was invented for, as far as I’m concerned, and I vehemently advise seeing a doctor if you stupidly think otherwise.
Of course, guitars don’t cloak the album entirely, however. Other tracks, such as ‘I Lost Faith in Words’, consist of a haphazard yet playful collection of cut-ups, gadgetry and vocals, and ‘Congo Bongo La La La’ is virtually self-explanatory aside from the additional employment of a flute and gleeful speed-fuckery. Then, penultimate piece, ‘It’s Too Loud’ kicks off with a couple of layers of Jean-herve saying god knows what in German before we’re sent reeling spacewards with more six-stringed lunacy. The signs proclaiming there being two geniuses at work don’t have a solitary chance of remaining mounted…
Friends or not, this is a grand album. My objectivity forever rules regardless and, well, if any of you fuckers trust me, you can sure as hell count on me regarding this release. The only disappointing thing is the shitty, almost throwaway artwork. It looks like the kinda album one would find on RRR or a dodgy US noise label. The music deserved better. (RJ)

GETATCHEW MEKURIA, THE EX & GUESTS Moa Anbessa CD (Terp Records, The Netherlands, 2006)
It had been a considerable amount of years since I last heard The Ex before this album, and I’d never felt particularly won over by their rather Gang Of Four-inspired delves into angular and sometimes noisy rock, but this collaboration both caught my attention and jolted it for six almost immediately on the very first listen. Getatchew Mekuria is a highly respected saxophonist from Ethiopia who, now in his 70s, has been playing in his own, almost free-leaning, style since 1947. Utilising typical Ethiopian signatures, his vibrato blasting takes its main cue from a war-chant that then spirals wonderfully into colourful melodies, blistering attacks and more mournful refrains. Alongside The Ex’s staggered rhythms, mannered anger, punked-up guitar cuts, buoyant (but not cloying) playfulness and the addition of a horn section whose own accompaniments swell everything out perfectly, the eleven songs barely contain a passion I’ve hardly heard outside certain Polish groups originally snagged in the ‘Yass’ circuit of the 1990s. Overtly, the album represents a highly spirited meeting of minds downright impossible to ignore. And, heck, if this illustrates what The Ex have been up to in more recent years, then those early misigivings of mine need to be retracted immediately. Likewise, as quite possibly my first (small) helping of Ethiopian music, it sounds like an entrance paved in gold. Would have loved to have caught this live, and no mistake. (RJ)
Terp Records, PO Box 635, 1000 AP Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.terprecords.nl

DAVOR MIKAN Tauschung CD (Cronica, Portugal, 2007)
Four years in the making, the 28 miniatures (as, indeed, they generally are; only one piece goes over the four minutes mark, only a few hover around the two-to-three-minutes length, and the remainder range from eleven seconds to being barely much longer than a minute) here by Mikan, a Vienna-based artist given to combining algorithmic music with handmade sounds, resemble the type of scrunched-up electro-acoustic compositions RLW has perfected over the years. Balls of light and dark bounce against jagged and often jarring micro-patterns teased into something then invitingly teased elsewhere. As with other such works, this is not a place to turn to for comfort or to get dragged along by. Instead, Mikan creates a completely absorbing space where sounds are explored and pushed into new realms perfectly reflecting the whole gamut of emotions without the crutches served by convention. It is music designed to climb inside, and it works fantastically. (RJ)
www.cronicaelectronica.org

GEOFF MULLEN thrtysxtrllnmnfstns CD (Entschuldigen Entgeoff, Germany, 2007)
Combination of treated guitar drones, textures, electronics, banjo plucking and suchlike on a debut album which sucks on the already congealed juices of what certain people have been calling ‘Americana’ during recent years. Although it functions on an agreeable enough level, it is hard to imagine this work being capable of fulfilling those with more demanding appetites. Certainly, the multi-layered mininimalist drone pieces are okay, but they’re ultimately similar to only too many other processed mulch works of this nature. Put them next to any other such artist’s work and I’ll give a big bag o’ sweets to the person who can discern Mullen’s own endeavours from them. No lie. On other cuts not so readily anchored, a subtle folk-ish leaning can be occasionally whiffed between the patchwork of glitches, pops and micro-parps, but Leafcutter John’s throne won’t be toppled yet. Again, it’s all okay, but we now live in a world where only too much music is merely ‘okay’ when, let’s face it, more of it should be fucken gobsmackingly blinding. Kudos must be given for the handmade feel of the packaging, however. Each copy of the album arrives with digital prints by artist Sarah Powers glued to the front and back of the digipak, plus a cloth bag inside containing a photo and info sheet by Mullen. More artists/groups could learn from this, at the very least. (RJ)
www.entschuldigen.com

NEUBAU rymdmyr CD (Nonine Recordings, Germany, 2008)
Neubau is Arno Steinacher, who has been composing music since he was 12 and is known in more recent times for his work in the domains of improvisation and electronic music. The nine cuts here paint a remarkably alluring picture, allowing tiny melodic refrains to work alongside fragmentary whispers of sound, occasional pulses, field recordings, little digital poots and sighs, and electro-acoustic platforms to rather startling effect. Without doubt, Neubau’s work owes much to the whole scope of micoscopic sound exploration but, with the aid of more organic devices such as voice and even a cello at certain points, the focus appears to be of a far warmer stock and enriched with ideas usually barely touched on by such artists. If anything, it all swings towards those places Ralf Wehowsky’s explorations sometimes point to, yet with a sense of more obvious structure underpinning proceedings. Ultimately, it’s an album rife with nourishment and a satisfying, yet not smug, air of surprise that’s firmly capable of pulling us into its world and never once letting go till the very last note sounds out. Near perfect. (RJ)
www.nonine.com

NíD Plate Tectonics CD (Aufabwegen, Germany, 2006)
Posthumous release by this Swiss-German trio dedicated to mostly drone-bound sounds, noise manipulation, foggy samples and dialogue snatches. Here, three lengthy pieces encircle some fantastic voyages through muted hum, looped voices, gentle vibrations and the stench of noxious ooze. The last one, ‘35000 Feet Below the Ocean Surface’, clocks in at almost 22 minutes and hints at a leather-clad NWW surveying a desert of black ash. Which works a treat for me. (RJ)
Aufabwegen, P.O. Box 152, 50441 Cologne, Germany
www.aufabwegen.com

PURE SOUND Submarine CD (Euphonium, 2007)
This release advertises itself as "ambient, avant garde, experimental", but I have to say that this release doesn't really match up to these adjectives. The first track, ‘Breathe Deep, My Love’, comes on like an ersatz Can (complete with ‘Mother Sky’ bassline), and what follows is a bunch of acoustic guitar strumming and plunking, samples of World War Two-era monologues and quotes, submarine-like beeps and bloops (do you see?), some sardonic (and to be honest, tiresome) vocals, rumbling loops and drones, various bits of found sound, and so forth. There are some nice touches here and there, such as the atmospheric piano playing of ‘Get My Cutting Head Down’, however, but on the whole there is a lack of focus present, with the impression that Pure Sound are attempting to squeeze in as many sounds and ideas as they can, which don't always work well or hang together. In addition, they are treading a well-worn path in respect to what they are attempting, and I found my attention often drifting whilst listening to Submarine - a case of "heard it all before", perhaps? Mixing songwriting and atmospherics can work sometimes, but it's a tricky thing to pull off, and to be honest, I feel that Pure Sound have somewhat missed the mark. (SC)

RAN SLAVIN The Wayward Regional Transmissions CD (Crónica, Portugal, 2007)
Latest work from this Tel Aviv-based audio-visual artist, anchored to the fundamental premise of marrying sounds from the Oriental Middle East to contemporary glitchworks. It’s an idea bursting with a promise, however, which generally fails to live up to the album’s opening highlight of ‘Village’, which succeeds because it is carried along by Israel’s leading singer-songwriter Ahuva Ozeri’s three-steel-string instrument, the Bulbul Tarang. And, despite her appearing with the very same instrument on a further three songs, only ‘Hagalil’ and ‘Wayward Initial’ from these vaguely sniff near its warmth and immediacy. Between these pieces, we witness at least an edging towards the original idea, if not the fullest realisation of it.
The remainder of the album relies too heavily on the already stated software fuckery methods that now only seem incredibly lazy, easy and, of course, only too often employed by a grey and sickly tide of clueless bastards with absolutely nada to offer.
What could have been a truly enterprising venture turns out to be, unfortunately, yet another album that, certainly during its finer points, hints at a scope far wider than it possibly even originally set out to. Pity it’s swiftly cut short by its predictability.
A truly wasted opportunity. (RJ)

PETER REHBERG Kapotte Muziek by… 3” CD (Korm Plastics, NL, 2007)
Digital-noise artist Rehberg, more commonly known as Pita, here works source material from Kapotte Muziek’s first workshop, recorded in 1997. Approximately 17 minutes of amorphous sonic buggery tweaked into something quite beautiful, with all the cut-ups and junkyard mayhem of Frans de Waard’s KM outlet buried, perhaps, like a corpse in the cellar that’s still making its fragrant presence felt. Such collaborations, I strongly maintain, should always subsist on the fundamental idea of hitching the original material to completely different points. Narratives, sounds and even the most vague of notions need to be both thoroughly explored and then redressed. And Rehberg understands this perfectly. Shame it’s such a stupidly short release, really. (RJ)
www.kormplastics.nl

SHINING Grindstone CD (Rune Grammofon, Germany, 2007)
Persuasive second album by a Norwegian rock outfit whose combined background in jazz, theatre, pop and film music clearly pays dividends if Grindstone is anything to go by. Despite a blistering assault into the crevice where Prog joins forces with what many tend to deem ‘Art-rock’ (as with most such terms, it’s so wide and variable that it cannot be pinpointed to any particular sound; rather, it’s a generic badge to be pinned on the lapels of those whose ‘rock’ dabblings are ‘clever’, ‘intelligent’, ‘sophisticated’ and simply steer clear of the ‘dunt’ trappings so many musicians in the area vy for…I’ve seen ‘Art-rock’ levelled at all from Roxy Music, Magma and Pere Ubu to Peter Hammill, Wire, and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and none of them bear many similarities. Nonetheless, I’ll run with it for now anyway), there are huge ‘n’ juicy dives into the domain of the film soundtrack via haunting or even bombastic sections, plus healthy dips into other waters altogether. ‘Moonchild Mindgames’ starts out like something you’d expect to hear emanating from a decent jazz bar before then getting itself entangled in some dark strands o’ wisp perhaps left by a recordist for an old B-movie. The bizzarely titled ‘Stalemate Longan Runner’ picks at medieval scabs also found elsewhere, and ‘To Be Proud of Crystal Colours is to Live Again’ is a short instrumental that wouldn’t be out of place on Danny Elfman’s fantastic score for Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. Meantime, ‘ASA NISI MASA’ actually succeeds in making vocoded vocals seem acceptable.
At certain intervals it brings to mind fellow Scandinavians Circle and at others maybe Goblin if they’d been put together by Ozzy, but such parallels cannot realistically be drawn for too long. Above all, this is just a great, very lively and inventive album so stuffed with sonic protein it’s impossible to leave unattended. Shining make rock music sound like the kind of banquet even unsociable ragamuffins such as myself would only too happily attend. Incredible work. (RJ)
www.runegrammofon.com
www.shining.no

SWARMS The Silver Hour CD (Vendlus, Norway, 2008)
Five compositions recorded between 2002 and 2006 by a group revolving around Kim Solve, Petter Berntsen and several others caught on those icy winds often found nestled amongst the fjords of their native Norway. Somewhere between The Hafler Trio’s blend of plaintive textures and Biosphere’s ventures into frozen gush, Swarms own take on matters, unlike so many others nestled amongst such folds, at least avoids falling into that awful and cloying cod-horror post-industrial fissure so many morose Scandinavians seem to lick their blistered lips into a lather over. Muffled voices, chains dragged slowly along distant floors, broken rhythmic rasps and sighs, ghostly yet enchanting nods amongst the static, and a very carefully measured approach to the matters at hand prevent Swarms from appearing like an unwanted guest at a party. This is a good way to drift into some stray thoughts. And I speak as somebody cloaked in heaps o’ reservations initially. So, yeah, take it as gospel, if you choose… (RJ)
www.vendlus.com

TROUM AIWS CD (Transgredient, Germany, 2007)
AIWS is the first full-length release by this German duo since 2003 and collects recordings from between 2002 and 2005. With a title translating as ‘eternity’ in gothic language or representing an abbreviation of ‘Alice-In-Wonderland-Syndrome’ (I have no ‘net access as I type, so haven’t the faintest idea what this is right now, unfortunately), it collects nine melancholic drone-orientated pieces drafted from guitars, e-bow, accordion, voices, Sufi-songs, flute and the forever enticing surface sounds from old vinyl. Everything is recorded in analogue and, as the cover itself proudly proclaims, no computer, sampler or synths were used, which is no mean statement in itself if you have a rough grasp of recording and production techniques but still gasps a welcome sigh when placed next to today’s Ableton-bound explorers into little sonic kingdoms. Overtly, Troum work with slowly shifting foggy textures where other sounds also get knitted in to add to the mood, though. At times, it draws from similar pools to certain minimalist composers or, say, some of Eno’s ambient works, but the atmospherics share a malignance or sense of gloom more commonly associated with the duo’s own post-industrial peers. Occasionally everything drifts into some beautiful miasmic patterns, such as on the opening ‘Amhateins’, and the following ‘Aggilus’, but elsewhere Troum’s handle is lost and replaced by a more generic and predictable approach. It is clear Troum possess the ability to create droneworks that are majestic and powerful, however. Let’s hope they continue to nurture it. (RJ)
For more information, visit Drone Records: www.dronerecords.de

VARIOUS ARTISTS Audiotoop CD and 28pp book (Korm Plastics, NL, 2007)
A very curious release, this - it appears to be a spin-off from a series of live events (also called ‘Audiotoop’) that took place in early 2005 in the Netherlands. This CD and book package has the feel of being geared towards young children, with the book consisting of artwork and illustrations provided by each of the 10 (mainly Dutch) artists present. This impression continues with the initial track by Jana and Bertin (‘English Spoken’), which has both performers discussing some increasingly daft scenarios, whilst occasionally being interrupted by some seriously irritating bargain basement sounds. Henri-Chopinesque vocal manipulations are essayed on Freek Lomme en Remco van Bladel's ‘OERatiaudio Empir’, and much of the rest of this release features spoken word combined with either washes of electronics, or (more frequently) musique concrete-type juxtapositions. The most engaging moments come from the distinctly non-Dutch Bohman Brothers, whose ‘This Is Rocketscience’ combine their often-humorous whispering and ranting with their unique take on electro-acoustic sound manipulation. The CD as a whole is a pleasurable distraction, and a novel take on an area of music that can often be bogged down by the po-faced and humorless. It's not the sort of release I would find myself returning to regularly, but I do like its lack of pretentiousness and sense of fun. Worth checking out if you're in the mood for some Low Country shenanigans. (SC)

CHRIS WATSON – BJ NILSEN Storm CD (Touch, 2006)
Three lengthy pieces culled from a collection of recordings made over the course of several years of storm fronts on the respective shorelines of these two renowned artists. The first, by Watson alone, catches the lapping waves, gulls and suchlike from Budle Bay, the Forth and Tyne, etc. making for a natural setting that steadily drifts along towards something more enchantingly alien. ‘SIGWX’, the collaborative second entry, snares a cyclonic North East gale and thundery rain along with an air of Viking menace lifted straight from the Baltic sea, and the third and final piece, by Nilsen alone, catches various coastal locations recorded straight to DAT from his native Sweden. It all adds up to something simultaneously comforting and recognisable as well as faintly disconcerting. A fine balance not altogther removed from, say, some of Eric La Casa’s equally engaging work. Turn out the lights. Sit back. Ride those waves… (RJ)
www.touchmusic.org.uk

WoO Mobi Rock CD (rx-tx, Slovenia, 2007)
Debut from an improv guitarist from Belgrade otherwise known for his being a founder of the Belgrade Noise Society and one-time member of noise-rock outfit Off. Over ten cuts, WoO, as he now calls himself, casts his line into that space where gadgets and devices such as remote controllers, mobile phones, a computer mouse, radio receivers and a bow are employed as source material for sonic miniatures to rub alongside guitars and pedals. The results amount to a mostly melodic and atmospheric fabric of loops, drones, inconspicuous random clicks and shuffles, delicate sighs, melodic pings and twangs and suchlike over gently swaying rhythms. It’s all rather pleasant and slots readily alongside so much other material operating within the electronica spectrum but, unfortunately, like the vast majority, has little to actually elevate it beyond the homogenised morass it has trickled from. As with nearly all such music, there’s little to distinguish each of the artists responsible outside their being located in different cities or countries or whatever. Pleasant and very slightly interesting is all very well, but is it really enough? (RJ)
www.rx-tx.org
www.belgradenoise.com

Z’EV/FRANCISCO LOPEZ Buzzin’ Fly/ Dormant Spores CD (Black Rose Recordings, 2007)
Sadly, this is music that some would describe as “ambient”, simply because that seems to be the going term for music that doesn’t have drums or traditional style guitars. The problem with that definition is that it is considered synonymous with “nothing really happens” and there is a world of chthonic wonder to be found in the depths of the sounds herein.
It’s virtually impossible that any fan of experimental or concrete music will not have happened upon the works of either Z’ev or Lopez in their travels. Each is prolific, respected and established within the community. The album is a split, rather than a collaboration (hence the divided title) with the first half, comprised of five shorter linked tracks, belongs to Z’ev, the second, a long single piece, to Lopez. The two halves are a nice match, with the almost blissful organic drift of the former leading nicely into the intense rise and fall of the latter.
This release is all about the texture and progression of sound, so if you are looking for something that truly is ambient- something inoffensive that meekly fades to the background- you might want to look elsewhere. If you’d prefer to throw on headphones for something that will reveal itself more with each subsequent listen, you could do a lot worse. (KM)

Editorial no.1.: The Rise of Because...

2009-01-19T03:29:00.000-08:00

There are many reasons why I have succumbed to the idea of launching this Adverse Effect blog but, chiefly, it boils down to the fact it is so much easier to maintain than the website (which has always been dependent on the assistance of others) and, indeed, affords me the opportunity to fully control it and upload material whenever I want. This freedom is something I simply don't get with the website. And, indeed, whilst the website will continue to be updated with various reviews, interviews and suchlike as and when those whose hands I depend upon for such matters can actually tend to them, I have long felt that posting the material here in the interim will at least satiate my overwhelming desire to handle it whilst relatively fresh.

Of course, I want to encourage others to continue assisting me, too. My efforts in the publishing world always relied on the notion of people getting involved, in order to help provide a broader insight towards whatever may or may not be going on in either (un)popular culture's recesses or even occasional bubbles to the surface and not just amount to reflecting my own often conflicting and confounding interests, even if I did always try and maintain a sense of 'quality control' along the way. As such, unlike my personal space here at blogger, Adverse Effect is here to welcome contributions by you, although I would urge you to contact me to discuss ideas beforehand rather than just solicit material in the vain hope I'll go ahead and use it. To this effect, I would like more interviews and reviews, as well as articles or pieces dedicated to those areas of interest which may dovetail with everything else accordingly. Additionally, I can send review material occasionally, too.

Essentially, I want Adverse Effect to maintain its place as a meeting point or juncture where the similarly-minded can interact. In this respect, it does not matter whether it exists as a properly published magazine (still my personal favourite medium for this, but the budget simply isn't there anymore for this) or via a website or here.

If you are unfamiliar with the past ground stalked by Adverse Effect or, indeed, its former guise as Grim Humour, I'd urge you to at least visit the website to help. Although generally music-orientated, plenty of other material dedicated to film directors, writers, artists and so on was always welcome, and included.

Material by myself will be posted here very shortly. In the meantime, however, please feel free to email me directly via the address in my personal blogspot if you want to get involved or have any suggestions. Feedback of all kinds has always been a motivating force...

Richo x