|
|
 |
 |
|||
|
AUDIO VERITÉ / Recordings: clarification, commentary, criticism INSTALLMENT 11 / August 2007
REVIEWED BY: FOVEA HEX Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent: Three (Die Stadt) • The third and final edition in the Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent series maintains a false opening and depicts the beloved in all its Messianic Otherness. Clodagh Simonds’ tremulous vocal sounds, musing “Take my coat, remove my shell / And may all my bones be dissolved as well / For behind my bones there’s a tongue of flame / I yield to your allure, alive again,” are conjoined with rounded tones pleasingly at odds with the harder, more corpulent sounds of bass (Steve Wilson) and cello (John Contreras) drones, and achieve an overlapping of two lacks which annuls lack as such in a mutual completion. On a whole, Simonds’ lyrics assume the form of dense and private poetry, laden with fantasy-imagery that allows her to (mis)perceive the fundamental deadlock of her desire. Little of this is ever fleshed out so plainly, its residue, more than anywhere else, is manifested in the textures, which hinge on juxtaposition, and their loose arrangements that are easily reconfigured and extended. “Allure” is a song that smolders; Simonds voice, tinted with reverb, echoes against a serene, prismatic, and ultimately acerbic string arrangement. Although its progression suggests otherwise, the piece never reaches a moment of incandescence, but burns down to embers and glows faintly underneath a pale light. Elsewhere too, Simonds voice sounds as though it is trying to sing her hallucinations to sleep, adding a haunting drowsiness to the already sepulchral atmosphere. In contrast, “Long Distance” does manage to shift into zones scarcely hinted at by such a direct and tenacious approach, its lightly patterned flow being interrupted by splintered, courtly arpeggios from Robert Fripp, and tense pulses like so many external irritations that are incorporated into the dream so that sleep might be prolonged. Matters of a purely musical nature, though often operating on a certain level of subdued sentimentalism, thereby clearly dwell alongside and, at times, are themselves supported by a narrative dimension. From this melange, a surplus-enjoyment spills out, and over some 20 minutes, this sound document archives the instances of this primordial loss with all the sensitivity and indignation of the collector. (MS) • www.diestadtmusik.de Back To Top DAVE FULTON / GILES REAVES The Range (Hypnos/Binary) • Hypnos is struggling for momentum to effect resurgence. Its output since 2006’s reawakening has been mixed and strangely deficient in forward-motion energy. A critique of musical late-modernity’s dearth of “originality”—a red herring anyway—is not this review’s purpose. Nor is it part of a lament driven by denial of the old ambient space ceremony’s continued validity. It’s essentially to point the need for new skin to give a fresh complexion to the body electronic, and revivified voice to sing it. Unfortunately, The Range is not about to address the absence blighting the Portland imprint’s faltering resumption of normal service, unless a mish-mash form of retread fusion is considered revitalizing. A clunky distillate of the well-trained end of electronic space music and the more workmanlike side of prog/jazz rock, it presents with an air of worn-out old hide showing through suspect cosm(et)ic surgery. Swathes of spacey synth-wibble vie with sub-pomp structures to rub up against the real drumming that now and then seeks to enliven dragging proceedings. Arrangements stumble into semi-structured workouts, whose would-be interesting side-roads and turnings presage stale cosmic theme park scenery or end in muso-attended dead-ends. These two seasoned practitioners expend a deal of huff-and-puff on a set that, for all its crafted professionalism, does little more than register its entry to a mounting glut of recent electronic releases of predominantly back-to-the-future appeal. Messrs. Fulton and Reaves likely have busts of the pantheon of mid-70s Emusic and space-jazz-fusion deities in their hallway, but, like other idolators who worship even more zealously at the kosmische altar to the extent of becoming thieves in the temple, they fall considerably short of their touchstones. (AL) • www.hypnos.com Back To Top DAVID GERARD Compositions (New Franklin) DAVID GERARD Ambientism (New Franklin) DAVID GERARD Bremsstrahlung (New Franklin) ELYSIUM First Light (Orbiting Orion) • Absorb, digest, recontextualize…or regurgitate? Observe the legion of followers who pay penance to the throne of Schulze, perchance to (Tangerine) Dream, and bathe deeply in the glow of Eno, and you’d think that everything old is new again, ad nauseam. Guitarist/synthesist Gerard isn’t bashful about the influences he wears so prominently on his sleeve (in fact, he clearly and respectfully exalts them), so to draw the conclusion that these four works are guilty of nothing but the most blatant copycat crimes at a passing glance seems reasonable. Each attacks a site-specific area of electronic music’s body categoric, each drawing from its sub-phylum various bits and bytes. And the surprising part? Each disc reveals its internal mechanisms without so much as a speck of irony, pastiche, or fanboy homage. Has Gerard tweaked a prime integer of the formula? Is he on to something here or do we both just need to take a spa down in the Rubicon? Yes and no. Though not minimalism per se, Gerard’s synthetic mantras and the genre’s vernacular are all too apparent throughout Compositions. The opening “On Arriving: Trains” might be a bit too close for Reichian comfort (still more Different Trains, perhaps?), yet the sedating sparkle of its pernacious chime-chug is quite soothing, provided the intellect doesn’t examine it too closely. “Enharmonic Convergence” and “Ephemeris” results from a meeting between Professors Eno and Froese, long, languid synth trollings that are content to shimmer in a stationary poise; neither evolving nor devolving, both pieces simply exist, as if coming around a turn you suddenly catch a glimpse, entangled in their purring miasma. Reich’s touch further taints the two “Variegated Marimba” pieces—however, unless it’s impossible to become utterly hypnotized by the interlocking tremolos of that most hypnotic of (even synthesized) instruments (always been a sucker for them myself), you can forgive Gerard’s indiscretions and just let immersion take its course. Such direction is advisable even during the more “straight” sequencer discourses of “In A Glass Cage,” where the ascending/descending chord progressions recall nothing less than the tentative Moog research so beloved of folks like Schulze and Richard Pinhas—Gerard’s obviously captivated to the point of infatuation, so in thrall is he to the “throwback” elements of these motifs that he dispels their tattered origins. Derivative, yes, but the skill behind these Compositions puts most mindless Berlin School plagiarists to shame. Ambientism (apt or not, my kingdom for a better title) is not what most would classify the ten tracks herein as. Again we have errant Froeseisms (Gerard even dedicates the disc’s finale, “Scattered Frequencies,” to the Tadream mainman), the pitterpatter of sequencers big and small parading down the boulevard (“Perigee,” “Event Horizon”), circuit-bending mindwarps (“Lightspeed”) and, embedded within the track called “Phase Modulation,” exactly what you’d expect (reverberating patterns repelling/belaying up a thin rope of minor-key scales). It would all be plain vanilla in color if Gerard failed to play the variety card—by consciously ignoring (or at least feathering) his presets, he’s come up with something you might call the Roach Variations, a poor-man’s Empetus if you will. Hardly innovative, immensely appealing, and leagues ahead of the aftermarket poseurs. This is where the whole situation gets complicated, but that’s a good thing. The more imaginatively-coined Bremsstrahlung (defined as “radiation emitted by a charged particle when accelerating”) reveals such a heated-up progression in Gerard’s compositional prowess (plus a better-engaged faculty of ideas and nomenclature) it appears he’s leaped positions ten-fold on the learning curve. Still partial to a mantric sensibility (this is not a pejorative), the requisite sequencers sport a rusted veneer, the surrounding textures weathered, wind-chapped. There’s even a brief (if ill-advised) flirtation with prog, where fusion-esque guitar afterburns rinse clean the airlock confines of “Penumbra” (now I know why Gerard name-checks Steve Morse in the credits). He also expresses his appreciation for David Borden; though the Mother Mallard reflections crop up more explicitly on Ambientism, Gerard’s similarly-designed gyrations are vital components in both the production and mix. Outer-space descriptors abound (“Sidereal Time,” “Doppler,” “Gyroradius”), not always a good sign, but Gerard generally wards off high-concept cliché thanks to a number of elegant, artful touches. “Heliosphere” remains studiously earthbound, its throbbing dioramas cloaking the arrival of summer showers. Thrusting ever-skyward, “Kuiper Belt” is almost too restrained during its seven-minute perambulation, the lightly massaged sequencer thread appearing as mere spectator than enthusiastic participant. The closing title track stitches together all of the aforementioned elements in a tidy nine-minute summation, all cooly bobbing quasar hums and repetitive synth drawls, it’s only blemish the too-intrusive, hackneyed Cape Canaveral transmissions samples—been there, done that. Still, it’s a satisfying enough trip for the money. As only one-third of the ambient collective Elysium, Gerard is joined by Paul Christensen and Rutger Holst for their debut long-player First Light. Good to know cooler heads prevailed and they didn’t call the disc Planets (harking back to the original Holst!), though I’m unconvinced as to what allusions First Light evokes (or deigns to). Nevertheless, Elysium concoct some good old-fashioned ambient/spacemusic of high order, beat- and rhythm-free, replete with stock-in-trade floatation modules, synth patches that arise and quickly erase themselves, intentionally-placed tracts of near-silence and just the right amount of near-isolationist tendencies. “Braheny’s Comet” is the apotheosis of the trio’s modus operandi, the pauses as dramatic as the deactioned shifts of synth—nice to know that in an era where most musicians feel they have to spackle in every pockmark, tongue and groove, these three work maxims of Cagean and (Bernhard) Günterian magnitude. Elsewhere it’s mostly filigree and shadow, synthi-trembles connoting the place where the bright stars hang. Whether or not it was necessary for three to tango on this particular timetrip is probably not worth contemplating (the work could have easily been summoned by one artist); disregard the whys or wherefores, and the journey proves more illuminating than the destination. (DB) • www.cdbaby.com/cd/dgerard3 Back To Top IRR. APP. (EXT.) Cosmic Superimposition (Errata In Excelsis) • The last grain of sand on a heap is always superfluous—take it away and the heap will remain as such. At the same time, it is nonetheless necessary, insofar as a heap is constituted by its very superfluidity. Yes, much of Cosmic Superimposition, as a revisitation and reconfiguration of the source sounds that made up Ozeanische Gefuhle, is rather superfluous. It is, all things considered, a superfluous necessity, indeed, precisely in the same way as a grain of sand in a heap. In providing subsequent development on the initial blotches it retroactively decides its fate, that is to say, it comes to its aid in achieving full effectivity. While Ozeanische Gefuhle saw Matt Waldron lose himself in his own strategy, in the emotional labyrinth that sprang from their field recordings of storms and nature’s daily habits and whims, thus allowing them to go, in a way, largely unfettered, this particular document is more a systematic aggregate of innumerably repeated sprouting fibres. It is at once more tempered and more unstable—where the previous selection made its mandates known and disclosed an exuberant, free-ranging nature of pomp and splendor, this work brings out the uncertain side of these sounds, forgoing the synth/string skirmishes, and using the repeating splinters of swoops, curls and wild glinting runs to suggest and tease at a dissolution that simply remains unclear. There is a chameleon shifting, a musical allusiveness to most moments, a sense that something is trying to evade definition. There are sections where temporary serenity abounds, when linear exposition is swept aside in favor of a more vertical logic, with softer textures steaming and evaporating high into the air like mirrored palls of smoke; there are sections where things prove more unstable, as disparate freeze-frames are presented in which a nocturnal, seesawing of metallic textures cut through distorted outbursts of ambience and strangely calm, chiming birdlike sounds. On a whole, it’s a dark-hued tale, the album ending with glutinous amniotic fluid seething and spitting. In effacing its face to make it all the more minutely detailed and present, it’s relentless flow leaves one feeling almost cleansed by album’s end. (MS) • www.holoconesound.org/irr/ Back To Top VIKKI JACKMAN Of Beauty Reminiscing (Faraway Press) • Of Beauty Reminiscing is a constellation charged with past constellations, themselves pregnant with the open dimension of the future, which, through their repetition, allow for a retroactive redemption. “Wrapped In Whiteness” begins as an incessant repetition of a beginning, as familiar piano accents and cadences arise and sluggishly dissolve. During this cycle and its repetition, no small amount of shadowing, echoing, and interweaving takes place, a restructuring of presupposed contents. At times, the ensuing piano notes are clearly melodic while others are abstract and rise like steam. In any event, this process keeps the music well-ventilated. The open-ended structure, furthermore, provides a setting in which there is a Satie-like lucidity in the nursing of a circumscribed range of tones and of relationships between them. Serene and lovely is the initial tinkling from the first track as it begins to unthaw. Suitably soothing, its piano chords, steeped in reverb, ebb out into silence as opposed to building to some pronounced statement, with subliminal computer thrumming and foundry sounds summoning a solemn presence to the proceedings. Nothing about this echoing ambience is hurried. And, although the odd doom-laden chord descent manages to signify something specific, the pair of works presented dwell on an uncomfortable axis, made all the more so by the understated manipulations and gaps which leave breaches in the work’s cyclical process. No particular mood is to be latched onto then, and tracks unfurl, digress, mutate, and ultimately evaporate, filled out along the way by whatever strategic desire the listener cares to enlist. “And Then A Blue Sky Overhead,” aided apparently by Andrew Chalk, to whose recent work, Blue Eyes Of The March, Jackman lended a hand, is another towering mass that displays the teasing volatility of a mirage. Ergo, both chapters turn out to be finely crafted exercises where past experiences enter into a dialogue with the traumatic place from whence they came. (MS) • www.farawaypress.net Back To Top JGRZINICH Rudiment Of Two (Edition Sonoro) • In the year of the mournful spirit, that stage during which the hearts of men are deceived, and the ritual house sweeping is enacted as a remedy, time solidifies and assumes the form once occupied by the actual object. The compositions on Rudiment Of Two breathe in this solidified substance of time, that is, the memories, manner, and moods encrusted onto various everyday objects, becoming hypnotized and binding its enjoyment to certain patterns and symbolic formations. In rearranging the electroacoustic vapors and squeaky balloon tones into a narrative, a temporal succession that searches for and simultaneously shields itself from any recognition of primal origins, John Grzinich gentrifies them, but doesn’t yield absolute control, and merely creates a minimum positive consistency through which a slow rotation of events is able to radiate with aplomb. Post-production techniques enable sound sources to shine rather than overwhelm, and interact, however chaotically, rather than embrace one another in a promiscuous confusion. “Pebble And Star” is impeccably guided, its quasi-industrial prismatic refractions and subharmonic pulses are embedded in a variety of contexts, in different relations to the elements which make up the ever-shifting network, each affording the other a specific yet, owing to accumulation, well-rounded identity. The textures of “Stimulus And Resolve,” spun from field recordings gathered in Estonia, Topolo, Lisbon, and Nodar, are complemented with a restless foreground of spindly warbling and scattershot frequencies, erecting, in the process, a tenuous, colossal architecture. At 30 minutes, “Bounds And Magnitudes” begins with luminous single tones that swell on the horizon like pregnant suns. The long oscillating currents are sent deeper and deeper into the bowels of the room, turning the naturally occurring acoustic phenomena into accompanists. The objects soon take on their own aesthetic, branching out on their own while also keeping up with rather than entirely giving into the complex feedback from Grzinich. What ensues is a sustained clammer of perturbed rapture that Grzinich balances right on the edge of instability. In opening these works up as such, he tests the flexibility and usability of his own language, and it holds up rather well in most places. (MS) • www.editionsonoro.com Back To Top GINTAS K 13 Tracks (Percepts) • Buried just under the surface of the few scraps of information on the background of ex-Modus member Gintas Krapatvicius, we find what must be his artistic statement of purpose—studying “the physical effects of sounds on the human psyche"—and the implied path to reach that destination: an expansion of the playful Fluxus art movement founded by fellow Lithuanian George Maciunas. The new Gintas K release 13 Tracks is no movement-approved signature "event," nor does any one of those tracks merit that title, but especially early on this album does connect its art to the ordinary—so much so that there are indeed physical effects on the psyche. They stem from "Nezinau Kas Tai" with its forlorn beeping seemingly pulled from the old 8-bit port of Missile Command, and "Kruva Tempu" backed by beats somehow wet yet crunchy, aural Rice Krispies. They reconstruct and revisit early mornings of modern childhood, a few final minutes stolen before the ride/walk to school/camp/worship, before reality settles in once again. Gintas K continues this hold-off-the-inevitable illusion beyond its promising start to effects that whiplash listeners into some sonic payoff but no psychic one. Hearing-test tones become tuneful dub machinery two-thirds of the way through "Ka As Zinau," the spare beats of "EEE2" and "Kazkas T" are rescued by melodic lines above and below, respectively. Throwing things up against a sampler to see what sticks, as shown during "Naujas Visas," puts Gintas K in the same boat as us. Not realizing he's building up structure in a song until it's too late is dispassionate at best and ironic at worst. His overuse of the element of surprise or misdirection on 13 Tracks kills said surprise, making the journey from the desired to the actual that much more disappointing. (AB) • www.percepts.info Back To Top JASON KAHN Fields (Cut) GÜNTER MÜLLER Reframed (Cut) SETH NEHIL / JGRZINICH Gyre (Cut) GABRIEL PAIUK / JASON KAHN Breathings (Cut) • Jason Kahn has cut such a wide swathe across the bandwidth of electronic/improvised/whatever music that his presence along these axises is practically omniscient. Having played on countless albums across a stream of labels, he’s managed to amass a pedigree that has become almost self-sustaining over the past number of years. Though based in Switzerland, tours worldwide and alliances forged with experimental musicians from various walks (many of which are staples on his own Cut imprint) have produced a synergistic agency that Kahn draws heavily upon—and that has become a marked influence on many of his associates. In Kahn’s nominal soundworld, noise begats texture begats structure begats substantiality. Or something like that. I’m loathe to summon up any pat categorical rubric to file Fields under, as such branding would likely be unwieldy and fairly inaccurate, so suffice to say that on this, one of Kahn’s few solo missives, he’s stretching any bourgeois ideas regarding “electroacoustic” music constructs to the breaking point. Simultaneously subverting much of what one defines as sound (let alone “music”), the seven works here comprise a twisting of established foibles, a submission to elasticity and alacrity that has few if any antecedents, autopsying ossified idiologies maintained by their artist’s idiocies. Blurring the contrails of his analog synth, various percussive devices, shortwave radio and location recordings made during his travels around the world, Kahn’s recast these global impressions into distinctly etched landscapes—indeed, nonplace (sub)urban fields. Track one blasts out of your tweeters with the cacophonic gusts of noonday air-raid sirens, a rush of white noise not usually associated with Kahn’s more mannered creations; just this side of abrasive, it’s a blast of supercharged air that decays into scabrous signal distortion and bell-tones, made that much more satisfying by its creator’s decision to make it the disc's opening piece. Successive tracks peek inside the maelstrom to view the component parts: Swiss watch rhythms trade motorik fancies with vaporizing battery scrawl on track two; track four’s initial waveband strangulations eventually coalesce into a strikingly subtle gamelan photo-negative; the ambience of track five embraces the new African diaspora, erecting the foundations for a “fifth-world” music that somehow sounds as preternaturally indigenous as it does topically cyber. All in all, a stunning piece of sound art, uncategorizable by any standard. Like Kahn, Müller’s work is also unimpeachable. From his humble beginnings as a drummer, he’s so transcended the able-bodied confines of “drumming” that a more accurate descriptor might be “abject abstract percussionist.” Couple his training and sensibilities to a profound zest for experimentation and a ceaseless drive to mutate sound design while altering its vectors, and the results lay waste to the idea that there are no new worlds to conquer. Reframed is just that: taking a traditionally monosyllabic instrument—in this case, the cymbal—and reorganizing its sonic properties to yield dividends of textures at once extraordinarily unrecognizable from its source yet teasily familiar all the same. This takes a goodly amount of finesse, in addition to compositional cunning, both of which Müller possesses in spades. Reframed features some of his most solemn, neé sublime, music yet. The simple but elegant, customary Cut packaging—housing the CD in a sturdy cardboard slipcase—displays what appears to be broken hash marks radiating outward like whorling starfish; track one is its audio equivalent, as Müller retains the barest hint of cymbal decay so it becomes a mere fractal, a ghost-print in the distance, reflecting off the oxidized metal drone that buttresses it. Track two is even more opaque, an exercise in daubed echo, crushed hum and tarnished vibrato, morphing pulses eddying in a great aural oil slick. Only during the album’s closing piece of systems music does Müller betray his m.o., as cumulous drone-clouds expand around ticking filaments of CD skip and halogen buzz—an index of (heavy) metals, dog-eared with throbbing gristle. Congealing, free-wheeling atmospherics remain the order of the day for Seth Nehil and Jgrzinich, the unofficial tag team of archaeological experimentalism. The three long tracks on Gyre sport sound sources culled from wildly distant points on the compass. “Cast” takes it cue from whatever the duo lifted from the pine barrens of Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; if the resultant haunted audio is to be believed, that portion of the Empire State hosts a forest perilous, some mythological playground where the earth has opened and fanciful beings scuttle about. Ethereal drift magnified under the watchful eyes of its perpetrators, during the piece’s 20-minute duration campfires cackle, whipped up by cyclonic winds, warming the rampant sprites’ arcane rituals. Estonia provides the brick and mortar on “Weald,” wooden wands banging about a pindrop tabletop while noises of dubious supernatural natures play hide and seek. “Furl,” also birthed in Estonia, boasts a similar tableau of cooing, irising noises that flit about like light glimpsed through cracks in the foundation. An unnerving and unsettling experience, Gyre is a curious oddity amongst the catalog, rendered with exacting precision and a sculptor’s fine hand. Stripping the piano bare, Kahn’s computer turns Gabriel Paiuk’s keyboard into some malapropist entity on Breathings. Uncurling any number of austere Cageian impulses, Paiuk fucks with tunings, gregariously molests the instruments’ sinew, punches his keys with a seeming randomness that mimics the digitalist’s allure to clicks ‘n’ cuts, and otherwise revels in a minimalized chaos. Meanwhile Kahn carefully surveys the ruins perched high above, smearing the landscape with surgical strikes of electronic thistle, brine and what might be the sound of drumskin stretched frighteningly taut. Cast away in this devolving ocean of disparate noises, the listener struggles for a foothold but Paiuk and Kahn always keep things slightly off balance—in fact, whenever the remotest semblance of equilibrium occurs, when the “music” (or rather, “events’) work towards “normality,” something comes along to upset the apple cart. These are sounds captured in the here and now, taking place the moment laser hits plastic, nervous, puzzlebox etudes the aural equivalent of forensic investigation, all structure whittled away to reveal the machinations beneath. Full-on process, difficult, maddening, arresting, Paiuk and Kahn placing both their ears and ours right in the heart of the mêlée. (DB) • www.cut.fm Back To Top MILES MACMILLAN Futureworld (Miles’ Music Productions) • Miles MacMillan is an Ontario musician whose Futureworld is an attempt at an update of an all too familiar audio-cultural artefact. MacMillan trades in old school keyboard-bound electronic music vignettes. Artists such as Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze are blurbed out, the function being to acknowledge influences, whilst hoping to trade on some reflected glory by association. But Futureworld’s electro-space-pop-tronica evidences little of MacMillan’s own endowment save for a certain naive home-studio charm in a collection that otherwise smacks of artlessness. Opener “Alpha Sector 1” is a barely passable sliver of circa-1993 ambient electro-house, while “Orbiting Outpost” and its film-intermission thematics give way to unwelcome Paul Hardcastle echoes and Depeche Mode dilutions. Cutting edge it isn’t. Overall, Futureworld’s seven tracks eke out a gratfyingly short and synthy-sweet paean to 70s sci-fi cinematics, seemingly seeking to create a kind of old school electronic groove with the in-the-now appeal of Ulrich Schnauss-style ambient-downbeat. But MacMillan’s personal voice is too under-developed to prevent Futureworld sounding like the work of a one-man tribute band to the usual Emusic suspects. (AL) • www.myspace.com/milesmacmillan Back To Top MILIEU Remodelled (Boltfish) • Brian Grainger’s second Boltfish waxing, Remodelled, once more finds him spooning oodles of synth wooze over boozed-up breaks and spannering Rhodes-y spangle into psyched-out hops. It’s a melodic gauze balm for the weary soul seeking downbeat ambi-chill solace, but with more of a flavorsome edge of something home-cooked and not quite perfectly formed. Milky analog love music—as self-designated by the Milieu man—of the dreamy but not too doped variety, conjuring a late summer feel of fading lushness and unmappable nostalgics. But wait. These days it seems no Milieu review is complete without carping comparison of his musical output to that of a better-known bunch. A puzzling phenomenon worthy of more than passing scrutiny, considering that no composer in a postmodern paradigm works in a vacuum without the influence of a preceding tradition. The subtle persecution of Milieu perhaps has a spurious provenance, the key salient factor being his issuing of more recordings in 2006-7 than most acts would in a lifetime musical career. The unspoken but palpable underlying feeling is that the artist who releases, say, twenty albums a year is viewed as somehow less worthy than those who issue one every couple; such an artist is not just less worthy, but downright suspicious, and it would be naive to deem him simply a prolific artist endowed with the fortuitous gift of prolificity. No. Such a man is clearly a charlatan shirker of standards, who, rather than subjecting his material to exacting quality control tests, inflicts even his most insignificant act of flatulence on the (increasingly saturated) consumer. Ergo, he may be thought capable of all manner of underhandedness, such as ripping off his music from others. QED. Busted. And here we have further ammunition for the detractors, Remodelled being a veritable gift to them in the form of a set of remodelled old Milieu, as he has now turned to auto-appropriation. Milieu will eat himself. Those “criminal” record reviews typically enumerate a list of Milieu’s infractions and the names of those infracted against, so let those of Casino vs. Japan, Freescha, (early) Ten & Tracer, and Marumari be duly registered, lest bored of candor. (AL) • www.boltfish.co.uk Back To Top MONSTRARE/WILT Graveflowers (Angle.Rec) • Graveflowers sees Cordell Klier as Monstrare and James Keeler as Wilt blurring the line between a split release and pure collaboration. The pair traded and manipulated each other's source recordings, although both artists—Monstrare first—are credited with a sequence of songs in the final ten-track lineup. The results have Klier and Keeler training the cameras of their respective mind's eyes on a most disturbing implied species (man-made technology) and act of natural selection (war)—something like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom gone cyborg. Monstrare's darknoisedroneclick has hints of heartbeats: the screeching polyrhythms of "Kjeordiena Rosicrucianae Secretaes" can't hide the song's 4/4 tempered steel foundation, and "Mem Na'ught" uses a subtle waltz figure that might have found a home on Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile. Wilt's blackdeathdronenoise, on the other hand, is the music of failure. "From the Museum of Sleep" is all distant bell tolls and giant sucking sounds; "Hemophilic Root Plow" sticks you in a car in a downpour, until the downpour becomes a firefight; climax meets denouement in "Unrest" through Keeler's closing approximation of a bomb, dirty or otherwise. Such an environment is never quite spelled out anywhere, but one can imagine machines living, dying, fighting and thriving far removed from the hands and lives of their human former masters. Throughout both artists' contributions we encounter the beeps and clatter of struggling machinery, the wail of windblown and deserted industrial areas, even the occasional drill and file of metal attempting to repair metal. Other publications have suggested listening to Wilt's four tracks first in order to gain different perspective on and interpretations of the art, and possibly form in the brain and ears a more perfect union of the artists. We concur, although the positive spin involved in moving Wilt's implied catastrophe in front of Monstrare's survivalist soundtracks is slight—little more than turning permanent midnight into shades of gray. (AB) • www.angle-rec.net Back To Top SYNTHETIC BLOCK Means of Ascent (Gears of Sand) • Jonathan Block has apparently been involved in electronic music for over 20 years. And frankly, Means of Ascent, production values apart, might well have emanated from a mid-80s time warp, were it not explicitly stencilled with the legend 2006. Block, we’re told, created the term “progressive ambient music” to describe “his explorations of the ambient, space and progressive domains.” The term falls as dully uncreative as its attributive object yawns with exploratory insufficiency. “Progressive ambient,” both as signifier and signified, hums with a dull air of slot-filler, content possessed of all the substance and resonance of the preset culture associated with that period. The ambiometer barely registered an above zero AQ (ambient quotient) throughout. Parts of the interminable (okay, 41-minute) title track might have passed for ambient were it not for their “ignorability” potential being compromised by a paucity of “interestingness.” Block’s is a concept and realization that is “progressive” only in the emptiest categoric sense. Aurally picture those ponderous 70s instrumental tracts with solos-cum-extended themes widdling up and down the keyboard; now extend wall-to-wall over CD length, with the occasional thematic redirect, throw in some boxed up beat ploddage, and Means of Ascent is served: a stodgy flavorless repast which in fact eschews the ascent that refresh and recon might bring, content to fiddle in the foothills of retro and revivalism. It’s almost a return to the days when the ever-”stretching out” keyboardist was king, sound color was forever horizontal, and grain was for the birds. Slim slivers of timbres, the sonorities deployed by Block, drawn mainly from insipid New Age fused with a vapid Berlin school Emusic derivative. These are hung on to the least engaging aspects of the warmed-up corpse of “prog,” being notably meandering, noodling, and sub-trainspotter absorption in “Gear”, to the neglect of the diminished resonance of tone color generated. Musical methadone to provide poor-relative placation to those shivering in a 30-year-old cold turkey purgatory, post-Berlin School break-up, this recording seems oddly situated on the customarily Now-voyaging Gears of Sand label, for which it represents a rare false step. (AL) • www.gearsofsand.net Back To Top ASMUS TIETCHENS & RICHARD CHARTIER Fabrication (Die Stadt) • Much of Richard Chartier’s work veers away from furtive sallies of chronological succession and concerns itself with a night of spaceless time. Featherlight skeins of sound and condensed clusters of static-stained high frequency tones act as though no longer oriented by the pull of Earth’s gravity, and shorn of the mandate to dutifully maintain the balancing act of universal attraction, they play distorted patterns on the sensorial keyboard. Chartier and Tietchens come together on this project owing to the fruitful Re-Post-Fabricated series, a work born much like a geranium, that is, by Tietchens taking cuttings from Chartier’s previous work. Venturing further along the path mapped out with recent works such as Incidence and Current, the spartan reductivism stands further in the distance, yet remains plainly visible, with dense tonal washes and complex though delicately nuanced chasms looming large. Without beginning or end, these drone-pieces emanate from all sides and permeate the entire soundfield. In their outwardgoingness, these discreet movements are highly amplified, creating intensely present moments that, asides from entailing a transmutation of depth of field, drain the shrill, sibilant tones and felicitous almost-sounds of all their color, not unlike a gyroscope which goes entirely gray when it is spun fast. Although Tietchens seems to haunt rather than directly partake in the shaping of these works, his contributions, in the form of looping glissandi-swooping and general testing of the music's periphery, does allow compositions to gain in succour through the heightened gestural sensitivity. Many instances seem purely sepia-tinted, yet the complex and intuitive swathes of cosmic dust shift the location of the sound dramatically up and down, encouraging concentration on the pitches and colors. When the atmosphere establishes itself, there is an almost bewildering range and an ear-tingling, brain-delighting patchwork of sounds needling their way through the slow motion current of gray. (MS) • www.diestadtmusik.de Back To Top VARIOUS ARTISTS Bioluminescence (Native State) • Expansive atmospheres and dubbed out textures from a one-third familiar, one-third merely heard-of, one-third no-name artist line-up. Bioluminescence is, reductively speaking, an assemblage of psy-chill, IDM and ambient dub excursions, but the boundaries between these sub-genres are if not razed then at least have their boundary traces kicked over a bit herein. And, for the most part, there’s sufficient avoidance of the worst clichés of the territory for it not to merge into the limbo where the colorless morass of PsyAmbientChillGroove compilations hangs, in that great dust-gathering corner of one’s CD shelvage. West Coast label Native State Records is a new kid on the label block, founded by Bluetech, with a house sound taking in, say, the more relaxed end of UK’s Twisted records—like a Shpongle sedated, Israel’s Aleph Zero—maybe a hushed Shulman, wading in the Interchill water. Effective karmechanics are practiced by the likes of Pitch Black, Adham Shaikh, Bluetech, krill.minima, and Deadbeat, the last mentioned continuing to favor a dancehall-cum-ragga two-step rhythm in a characteristic rework of the Shen (who?) track, “Embrace.” Not a million miles away from an earlier Deadbeat styling are Vakuum Sounds’ “A Journey After A Snakebite” and raNDom’s chugging slice of head spliffage, “Dubmage.” A well-judged closure comes in the form of Yagya, who concludes proceedings with the resonant gauze and dub-tech chug of “Discernment,” stepping gently on the Gas and channeling what could be a retooled snowflake from his 2002 Rhythm of Snow sessions, reanimated into more beautiful human life. Overall, then, Bioluminescence impresses as a cohesive collection with more mileage than the average chill comp. (AL) • www.nativestaterecords.com Back To Top |
|||
