Eric La
Casa "Stones of the Treshold" CD Ground Fault
Former member
of Syllyk Erik La Casa's solo work heavilly relies on fieldrecordings which
this CD is also
based around
and that to breathtaking effect. Three long pieces fills this CD, clocking
in at 70 minutes
and the first
is using the sound of water, stones and fire. Apart from perhaps slowing
down or speeding
up, no treatments
of the sounds are used, instead La Casa skillfully layers the sounds to
merge into each
other;
an impossible union of fire and water togher seamlessly transforming from
water to fire and back
again. The
second piece adds breathing sounds and voice, imaginary pen-writings, percussion
and prepared
piano to
the proceedings with tibetan bowls and siamese gongs creating a more ritualistic
mood early on and
later moving
into more scrape & drone territories using metals and wood with some
resonant bells entering
the picture
towards the end. Third and last track is also the longest at 30+ minutes
is a bit similar to the first
piece with
it's use of water, wind and stones but is not quite as intense, the first
part being like a walk in the
countryside
on a rainy windy day then entering a vast resonating space then back to
a small creak in the
woods where
the water rises in intensity until it explodes in a thundercloud. Then
we quietly sit and listen
to the wind
in the distant realising that we're pretty close to the road by the sound
of those cars passing by.
I conlcusion
a very strong album with beautifully sculpted soundscapes by one of
the top-dogs in the genre.
Strongly
recommended. RS
r.chartier
"a hesitant fold" CD meme
nosei
sakata + richard chartier "0/r" CD 12k
Wallsocket
soundtrack composer chartier goes even more minimal on his meme CD, and
more quiet for
that matter
as well. These are stripped down minimal pulses and tones generatedon
from analogue and
digital sources.
Now, some people might mistake this album for a test-tone record for your
hi-fi and others
will find
a minimalist extravaganza but it doesn't succeed to hold my attention throughout
(first couple of
times i played
it i forgot i was listening to a CD... ) as his fine debut CD on Instransitive
did. This will need time
and patience
to sink in. In collaboration with 0 (nosei sakata) things get more intense.
created through mini-
disc-through-the-mail
exchange this CD presents shorter tracks of (around 3-7 min) of piercing
highpitched
tones, digital
clicks ands pops delicately arranged to more engaging and effective pieces
of minimal electronica
(or 'microsound'
or whatever it's called this month...) resulting in one of the more interesting
release of both
artists.
RS
Fennesz,
O'Rourke, Rehberg "The Magic Sound of FennO'Berg" CD Mego
I was looking
forward to this one... recorded on tour in Europe during 98-99 this documents
the FennO'Berg
laptop trio
caught in the act. Fennesz and Rehgberg seems to be showcasing their usual
box-of-tricks in the
Mego school
while the lesser known Chicago improviser O'Rourke seems to be feeding
in more surprising
material
in the mix, such as that wild woodblock(?) solo on the first track... Although
i said usual box-of-tricks
this IS great
improvised electronics, organic, shifting and yes sometimes frustrating
but still managing to keep
the focus
and being able to surprise. Favourite track is definitely the closing "FennO'
Berg Theme" where a CD
of some weird
orchestral easy-listening march(?) meets almost cartoonish noises swirling
around in the stereo
spectrum.
great stuff. RS
Jazzkammer
"timex" CD Rune Grammofon
Lasse Marhaug
is an unavoidable figure in the underground so called 'Trondheim Scene'
in Norway, there's just no
way of getting
rid of that horny devil. Everywhere you look you can be sure that he has
one or two of his sticky fingers
in the works.
Here he joins forces with lesser known Bergen improvisor John Hegre in
an attempt to win the 'Worst
Band Name
Ever Championship' but aside from that they make weird electronic music
as well. Both composers evidently
finds pleasure
in digital editing techniques and splices together fieldrecordings,turntable(?)fuck-ups,
recordings of
electric
static etc , to somewhat entertaining effect.The disc moves from static
grey ambiances to more intense noisy collage
sections
to locationrecording-extravaganzas like that of Lasse crashing on his livingroom
couch while alien feedback lifeforms
are copulating
in his ceiling, or another one when one of them are frying amplified crashed
harddrives in a wok-pan while
the other
tries to play acoustic guitar with a chainsaw. This is a varied and pretty
impressive document of the one of the most
profilic
members of thecurrent 'wave'of the Trondheim electronic underground
and you'd be prettydarned foolhardy to miss
out on this
one, and unsexy as well.....(And by the sound of those fireworks in the
ending i'd guess that they probably did win
that 'Worst
Band NameChampionship' , or at least made it to the finals..). RS
JKL "8.-10.
December 1998" CD Albedo
Der Brief
"Volume" CD Jazzassin
Jorgen Træen
seems to be a rising star on the norwegian electronic scene, he being
the common nominator for these
two discs.
First out in a trio with Træen on electronic treatments, Knut Vaage
on piano treatments and Lars-Erik ter Jung
on violin
ditto, they work with in-studio improvisations with subsequent studio treatments
as their method and the
choice of
violin and treated piano is certanly bold but unavoidably gives the music
a strong nostalgic feeling and is
sometimes
melodic and dreamy but for most of the time they end up sounding like a
meeting between AMM and
Voice Crack,
very nice indeed, the electronic cracklings contrasting beautifully with
the sonorities of the acoustic
instruments.
Træen also produced the debut CD of improv-quartet der
Brief (of which he now also is the fourth
member of)
who's been round for five years now, exploring a bit noisier realms
- similar to Supersilent minus the
'jazz' flavours.
But der Brief dit not have a good day (or week) upon recording these
sessions since they are not
convincing
and not even Træen's post-production studio trickery can save them.
Maybe you need to see them live
instead to
'get' what they're about so maybe it's a name to look out for in the future?
RS
francisco
lópez "untitled #89" CD Or
francicso
lópez "untitled #91" CD edition...
music for
ants. i read somewhere that mr.lópez evidently has discovered an
unknown species of ants or something and his
music sometimes
feels as if it was composed for ants (if they can hear at all) because
"untitled #91" is in his barely audible
style
beginning with brief waves of deep bass tones slowly moving over to a very
quiet selection of drones.
"untitled
#89" seems to be composed for humans though, presenting a lovely multilayered
thick drones not to far from an
Hafler-trio-trademark-kind-of-drone
slowly fading in over 40 minutes from very quiet to roaming and a sudden
stop and
ends with
16 minutes of (near?) silence. Easily the most accessible and definitely
my favourite lópes so far. i need more of this.RS
Merzbow
"Tentacle" CD Alchemy
Satan's
Tornade "live at Rough Trade" mp3 falsch
Merzbow goes
powerbook! Yes it's true Masami Akita has entered the digital domain and
is now using a computer to create
his noise
(but don't worry - it still sounds Merzbow) although it might not be appareant
in the first couple of tracks but the
center pieces
in here clearly displays that there is some heavy dsp going on here, sounds
like he's sampling himself and then
loops and
fucks about with those samples with the use of some live-processing software,
tracks 3 and 4 being the highlights,
but what's
most interesting about this is to see if this is an exceptional release
or if he will continue in this vein in the future.
His live
collaboration with Russell Haswell (under the name Satan's Tornade - released
in mp3-format on falsch) gives an
indication
to the latter, where similar techniques are being used. Lotsa loops and
dsp. The mp3's alternate between direct to
soundboard
and live-microphone recordings in an attempt to show how the concert
felt for both the audience and the
mixingboard...
RS
Rehberg
& Bauer "Faßt" CD Touch
Pita "Get
Out" CD Mego
Seems like
the best Mego releases are those of Mego artists released on other labels
such as Touch/Or as these
two discs
are a clear example of. Although the solo disc of Pita isn't exactly bad
it is his duo CD with Bauer that
is the most
rewarding of the two. After a brief stumbling introduction things
get pretty noisy and almost melodic
at the same
time; white noise blasts are puntuated by descending strings. This
is the beginning of a journey
through the
wonders of live-processing software; a few samples are being looped and
layered, tweaked and
processed-to-hell
and back often heading for the piercing high-end side of things.
Imaginative and amazing.
On his solo
disc Pita tries to get away with a more minimal approach opening up with
a track in the how-loud-can
-you-get-school
of piercing feedback and after a brief interuption continues with an
11 minute overlong excursion
into the
'distorted-melodic-loop-syndrome' before presenting a bunch of shorter
tracks of icy minimal textures
that doesn't
seem to want to go in any direction at all reaching it's heights in the
closing 8 minute track of static
distorted
clicks & droning, resembling lisetning to a raw data file. RS
Reynols/Olivieros
Tape+CDR White Tapes
Reynols might
to some only be known as the only true 'retard'-improv band, having a drummer
/vocalist with
Down's Syndrom
and all, but with this release (and an upcoming CD on trente oiseaux)
they seem to demand
to be taken
a bit more seriously. The CD contains 'heavy processing' of recordings
of a concert of the grand lady
of Deep Listening,
Pauline Olivieros, in Buenos Aires where Reynols resides. First track on
the CD starts with
distant grey
clouds of sound gradually being transformed into more noisy looping areas.
Second track sounds
like a treated
accordion drone rising and sinking in pitch with a dark thundercloud being
introduced halfway
through the
track building up to a massive thick drone. Third track is very short
with some unidentifiable
sounds fed
through a tremolo. Fourth and final track layers Oliviero's voice (talking
about some piece at the
concert)
with the sound of rain and a low bass drone. This was really a surpise
coming from the Reynols but
just to remind
us that they are pranksters they've included a tape with the voice of drummer/vocalist
Miquel
Tomasins
commenting this release and life in general (in spanish)....RS
steve roden
"view" CD jennjoy gallery
Four pieces
initally presented as an installation, these compostions were made using
recordings of the view of
a window
in the gallery at times both open and closed. Those recordings where then
fragmented, processed and
looped to
make up four 'possible soundscapes' from that view. In comparison with
roden's last(?) full-length CD
on trente
oiseaux this is a lot more lo-fi (which makes me suspect that the
raw material was recorded using
a dictaphone)
but that is also what makes the sounds more mysterious, magical and
dreamy because dreamy it
is. This
is a perfect CD for late night or naptime listening; in that state between
wake and dreaming the gentle
loops and
atmospheres slowly slips into your consiousness creating a soundtrack for
your dreams. The volume
is low as
always and the compositions are simple but effective in creating perhaps
the most poetic of roden's
work so far.
RS
shirt trax
"good news about space" CD Or
Those darn
English people. They won't let go of their grip on the development of electronic
music, although
most of the
interesting stuff in this area during the '90s came from other European
countries shirt trax arrives
to let us
know that the English can't yet be ruled out... This is a great CD of minimal
wacky fucked up 'microsound'
textures.
fractured beats, pulses and tones are tweaked, stretched chopped up and
manipulated in many ways.
At first
the disc struck me as a bit too wacky for it's own good but
it slowly won me over because of it's diversity
and it's
improvised nature and simply because it's fun. Most tracks are kinda short
and there are times when they
tweak the
sounds to the extent that you think they are going to burn a hole in you're
head but then they shift
gear and
towards the end they deliver a fifteen minute glitchy-dub thing to lighten
things up and does also kind
of remind
you that one half of the group also serves time in the equally excellent
snd. 70+ minutes of this kind of
stuff might
be overkill and yes maybe they could have skipped a couple of tracks
but the diversity and ingenuity
of it makes
up for it. Simply great. RS
Otomo Yoshihide
"Cathode" CD Tzadik
Four electroacoustic
compositions by the greatest turntablecomposer from Japan. The first and
last tracks
(Modulation#2
& Modulation#1) are 10 minutes each and recorded live in the studio
and 'focuses on the
acoustic
phenomena of modulating diffenrence tones caused by the interaction of
sampled sine waves,
acoustic
guitar and shô - a traditional japanese mouthorgan'; the result being
long stretched out high-
pitched somewhat
irritating tones intermingling with each other with the addition of contrasting
melodic
guitar plucking
in the first track. Hypnotic or unnerving? maybe both. Tracks two
and three are both 17 minute
compositions,
the first "Cathode#1'"being a classic electroacoustic piece for large ensemble
playing acoustic
and traditional
japanese instruments recorded to tape and then reconstructed using analogue
tape manipulation
techniques
from the '50 s and the '60s. Can't figure out the motivation for using
these techniques but the funny
thing is
that it ends up sounding like a NWW tape-collage piece from the '80s...
"Cathode#2" is a 'sampling
composition
on hard disk recorder' which like the previous track also reconstructs
ensemble improvisations
but this
time in the digital realm and is intended to be played at a low volume
as a environmental piece, not
to be listened
to actively. hmm, i'ts a very nicely executed collage and i'm not
sure if it deserves to be treated
like an 'environmental
piece'...maybe if he filled a whole CD with this kind of stuff but in this
context it doesn't
really work.
Although frustrating, a pretty interesting CD. RS