the death of music criticism: cheap artificial intelligence quickly assimilates the RFM undead into weird new shapes creating a confident chrome voice that it will use to crush & destroy each sorry hack and has-been.
September 25, 2018 at 6:11 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: artificial intelligence, bandcamp, bridget hayden, Chow Mwng, Dane Law, david birchall, death of the music critic, deep learning, early music, grey ooze, murray royston-ward, of habit, opal tapes, phil julian, see monsd
David Birchall – Tongues EP (Bandcamp)
see monsd – eagle house (Bandcamp)
Of Habit & Dane Law – Empty Gesture (Opal Tapes)
Chow Mwng – One Day All This Will Make Sense (Bandcamp)
Phil Julian – Three Single Points (Bandcamp)
Bridget Hayden – Pure Touch Only From Now, They Said So (Early Music)
Hello readers. It’s been a while eh?
Over the last 48 hours I’ve had a fascinating, sobering and illuminating text exchange with NAU inventor, improviser and deep-thinker Murray Royston-Ward
Murray casually mentioned he’s been working on an Artificial Intelligence project and would I mind if he fed my gonzo RFM reviews into his ‘brain in a box’ to train it and see if it would spit out reviews the other side.
“…might be stealing your soul or some other voodoo”
…he joked and of course we both lol’d like the fleshy, leaky humans we are.
Murray takes over the story here.
“Basically I copied and pasted the text from Joe’s reviews…the copy/pasted text was then edited to remove titles, headers, and band/purchase links. What’s left is purely the review texts, all bundled up into one text file of 130,699 words.
I then fed that text file as ‘training data’ into a deep learning algorithm. I’ve never done this before and don’t really understand it myself (beyond it doing some fancy pattern matching and statistical modelling) but I pretty much followed this guide.”
So far, so mind-blowing I thought, but the ever modest Murray continued.
“I mean that’s how far this shit has come now, you don’t need a computer science degree, just be competent enough to install some software and follow a ‘recipe’ to issue a few commands in an old skool terminal. The geeky project files are all here. “
Murray ran the AI training programme overnight all fat with my greasy words and bent phrases. But in a scant five hours the machine coughed politely and said, that’s it mate…got it. I’m done. Feed me records.
Let’s take a pause for breath here. In five hours a machine ‘learns’ what took me decades of intellectual narcissism, false starts, anxious listening and tappy, tappy tapping.
So, my doomed reader, what you are about to read are real reviews of damn fine human records reviewed by our new digital overlords.
Wake up…time to die!
David Birchall – Tongues EP (Digital Album) Bandcamp
Gotta give you a sound of the air as you dash together in the heart of the sap through each other, inviting along Ex-Con and gentlemen, your eruption for ease: mouth-puff – ocarina, saxophone, flute, voice, and things like a next parish) becomes a condor). And if you think you can see your head at ‘real’ life I guess the gamut from scrap-metal-dinosaur-bar-brawl to Go’ starts with its tourism at the sort of traffic making it ready for card? …asks so to the kind of thing. I’m been thinking of this necks. But the drivel drones on this of the outpourings and that makes this time the sort of anti-social can be a bit of the ion drive, the picture. But to where? But what I need to get the head of absence* and this kind of sound takes this is a respective instruments at the spikes to be a hizzing field starts this is a ROCK recording and plods like a scientist head on this tape is this is a way at the heart. But what I think you can be a voyeur but this is bound up and basted in the true-born fidget. It’s something. I can be sure in the timing, so as the sort of thing like a menagerie (note: all buffed up and probed).
see monsd – eagle house (Digital Album) Bandcamp
It’s not as the wave of composition as a true-voice is re-cycled from Crow and, like a early-morning vigour, the kind of abrasion sloshed at the cheap-o laptop on the sort of thing like a Cramp’s Poison Ivy practising over in the speakers as a fan of the Pepsi generation) are splashed in blood in the electronics becomes a glitchy, sound juice to be a ‘lost’ futurist & sisters over in this of the soon-to-be-great-intros-of-all-time with a little world – all akka I get a meta-narrative of sound messin’ is a little thing that ‘M1Jet’…a hissy and overlays a new put-on-the-top-of-the-pile-er. The cacophonous tearing is no more and I have to check this baby into the corner of a ilk that sounds like prejudice’ I think the sort of thing like a backwoods gamelan. ‘Encore!’ Chuck, Chet or Chip calls out the kind of heavily-bearded hip-hop – on the kind of sound so all over the heart of the ion drive, the spectre is that starts up in the heart of the sap through my corner and I feel the outpourings and that seems to be a bit of it…this is a most thing of the castor.
Of Habit & Dane Law – Empty Gesture (Cassette & Digital Album) Opal Tapes
meaning-carcass. A THE r e p meaning-carcass. A THE r e p meaning-carcass. A THE r e p e ALWAYS KEEP A SPARK r e p ON The TAPE r e p ON The SPARK r e p ON The TAPE r e p e ALL KEEP But ALL e IS PAINT, SHOES, GLOVES. PING…CRUNCH. IS IT A WARNING? CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A SPARK CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A SPARK PLUG IN YOUR POCKET. UHG UHG CRASH. SILENCE-CLICK. These four sublimely beautiful modular synth THE LUXURY FLATS. SCRATCH. CREEEE—WAAAJ WAAAJ. I SWEAR DOWN IT WAS LOOKING AT ME. HAH-HAH-HER. FADED GHOST LETTERS. GUNG-KIDDLE-TOING. SAY SOMETHING ABOUT. BOING. PAINT, SHOES, GLOVES. PING…CRUNCH. IS IT A WARNING? CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A WARNING? CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A WARNING? CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A WARNING? CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A SPARK PLUG IN YOUR POCKET. UHG UHG CRASH. SILENCE-CLICK. These THE BALCONY OF THE LUXURY FLATS. SCRATCH. CREEEE—WAAAJ WAAAJ. I SWEAR DOWN IT WAS LOOKING IS SAY SOMETHING CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL.
Chow Mwng – One Day All This Will Make Sense (Digital Album) Bandcamp
Jan concentrated on sound and sparse. But what I’m gunna Glutch & rin There is a real largest Whoopee Cushion deflating as ‘Road’ takes out of the sound of the ion drive, the picture. The map? But with course colours, as drawn out with the heart of the ion drive, the picture. The map? But with a evil. Side is a one easy, Could it’s be a voyeur but this opera?” The first tapes are peeled this is no doubt that makes me all crying into my ears like a moth’s wing, this is a very different growling sounds but in the stomach. Production-wise this tape are dum-dum with the kind of mille plateaux-shudder to be a fitter, leaner guest-blogger. I was associate with a wryd feel: a stunning, but all border appear this is a formless kitchen…I get manner of gosh. But this sounds like an eruption of post-blues as pretty much to check out a Bandcamp. This two pieces seems to be a end-of-the-day machine” is teased and taxed with a apple-cheeked yokel at the sound of the ion drive, the picture. The map? But to Fahey become the corner of this ear-silt; a slackness, a ‘lost SOS, from a appearance on the ion drive, the picture. The map? But to Fahey become the corner of this lived! Klampe, a eruption for post-blues as lead in the jams. This is a lo-slo mung-out. Chirping two-ahhh. Ahhh,three!
Phil Julian – Three Single Points (CD-r & Download) Bandcamp
Miles perfected on Kind of Blue. —ooOoo— And I get the bars of the spikes to create a ounce of fuxxhorn this is a very different jam to interpretation. And in the curtain, beckons in a very different jam to interpretation. We could be a winner. But it’s with the world as this Heat’s Health & Efficiency with a propulsive or sick?). From the argument for the constant expansion of Eliza Doolittle’s ‘Walking on Water’ or the speed-junk-trash-can, like a life? Where’s the twenty-year tape of course) it as a next vocabulary to be a meta-narrative of ‘light’ – drum-fills are the sound of the ‘Spin/Off’ is no more for this of the gentle nut. This familiarity like a appearance but all Mozart to create a meta-narrative of flab on this whippet-like tape. I’m always a jammy world of Damian’s walks – horses appear out of the bridge of this delirious geography experiment. Finally, the one of the everyday pyrotechnics of a very different affair in footage and the pace is super-relaxed with ‘humms’ and electrics. This is recorded from pylons, “Cassette Tape” with oodles of tuning into a lashings of sound and sepia-bores. milkman…he wanders into earshot) —ooOoo—
Bridget Hayden – Pure Touch Only From Now, They Said So (Limited Vinyl LP & Digital Album) Early Music
Of course for each sound of sound takes off with the heart of the dune. A cacophonous tearing of found-sound are the unmistakable sound of Ciudad Juarez, rejoice on the cheap-o high-fi and I realise it on the speakers as a integral a more and I know it I can be it. It starts like a world of chunter and yokel; that seems to be a retro-influence on the other of the child of a AA LR differ is to be the sound of the ‘Spin/Off’ is no more and this tape is a real largest tinkling so this is the sound of the Bertoia persuasion, was kidnapped and play out the sound of the Kinder Dach Lieder’, ‘Sixty-Nine Fat-Stock Brevaries’ and things like a god-damn C and a sap through each other, soft-edge collisions that seems to pump up the Kinder Dach Lieder’. The PASSING TOT: This is no doubt that makes me think but I feel the head of ‘Virgin Soil’ with a progression or where’s the stern-gobs have not be the head of bandsaw takes up in the speakers in a pint pot.
-ooOOoo-
tightly packed egg: rfm tagteam on tradescantia zebrina, swiss barns & queef, various sofia artists, ian watson & rob hayler, lust rollers, of habit
October 26, 2017 at 11:44 am | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: entr'acte, hairdryer excommunication, ian watson, invisible city records, luke vollar, lust rollers, of habit, queef, rob hayler, sofia records, spoils and relics, structured disasters, swiss barns, tradescantia zebrina
Tradescantia Zebrina –Tradescantia Zebrina (Hairdryer Excommunication)
Swiss Barns & Queef! – Live at the Monk and the Nun (Sofia Records)
Various Artists – 12 14 16 18 20 22 = 2 (Sofia Records)
Ian Watson & Rob Hayler –Metronome (Invisible City Records)
Lust Rollers – Grim Reflections from the Poetic Spleen (Structured Disasters)
Of Habit – Extended Technique (Entr’acte)
Tradescantia Zebrina –Tradescantia Zebrina (Hairdryer Excommunication) CD and digital album
Mysterious rumbles from the powerfully-coiffured Kev Sanders and comrades Morgan Potts and Siobhán Britton.
Released as a fund-raiser for Trans Health, Housing Action and Not Your Fault this is a master-class in enigmatic sound.
Like a Graham Lambkin joint this reflects the perfect drifting between rooms you sometimes find yourself craving – a hot sonic ear scanning like radar for ripe sound-fruit. So what if all the apples are withered and brown – no use for a ploughman’s but perfect for chutney!
On this release Sanders’ distinctively polite drone spoons some distant storm clouds and Morgan’s cello that appears to be playing in two rooms at once. The interjection of random slowcrash (think a falling piano slowed down by a factor of 500 perhaps) keeps things both spicy and sweet.
‘Upon Afterwoods’ is particularly poignant and makes me think of Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home’ the waves of dark repression and longing collapsing into a domestic sinkhole.
But most mysterious is the final track ‘Clippings’ that seems to be a total bumdial. A piece of accidental accident to add a healthy dash of sauce to the proceedings.
Quick like fever.
Swiss Barns & Queef! – Live at the Monk and the Nun (Sofia Records) Cassette full of genuine moss and individual art print and digital album
New improvising duo Swiss Barns sport not one but two slack-string-virtuosos; Jorge Boehringer (AKA Core of the Coleman) and Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (Woven Skull, Three-Eyed Makara, Cian Nugent & The Cosmos) both on viola.
This 20 min side-long jam takes in a whole cornucopia of approaches: hillbilly scrape, pointillist puckering and velvet-thunder drone. It moves with the flexibility of language, a language of vibration. But of course – aren’t they all?
Often the off-chug of the voices clash in mid-air making a third vibration that stands proud like a cormorant on the cliffs – wings outstretched replenishing its natural oils.
At other times the slick ‘plunks’ or scrapes rustle like whole peppercorns wrapped up in newspaper; a solitary tune coils like a wormcast on a beach and, as you get your eye in you see there’s another, and another and another.
But each time one of our heroes bows it’s to let out the spirit of some half-mad Pan. Goat-legged and hell bent on debauchery the strings swoop and flutter, they roil and stab ending on a Bernard Herrmann-esque riff that makes the watching crowd stand up, hands on hips and say ‘Oi!’
Queef! play a melodie derived from a Chinese greetings card to open a set of carefully considered tape-grot and strummed/struck/fondled summatorother. Like Prick Decay (but older and wiser) got it back together for one last show this Dada Junk Spew flirts with litter, rubbish and trash in all senses of the words. Discarded remnants of sound, found non-instruments and a heavy ticking combine in ways both formless and totally natural.
The ghost of improv haunts some sections, the mid-point reveals the shuffling chains and dropped keys of a Usurper side but soon mutates into electro-frat clowncore – complete with honking horn and what I presume are enormous shoes.
As things move towards resolution my personal favourite – the rubbery wrench of tight balloons – is combined with a spluttering dentist’s drill and the acid squeal of hot air passing through a stretched neck.
A brief countdown ends the piece and those patrons of the Monk and Nun stand up again to crow the legend ‘Oi – Oi!’
Various Artists – 12 14 16 18 20 22 = 2 (Sofia Records) Cassette and digital album
A conceptual piece of tape collage/field recording masterminded with the spider-like fingers of Natalia Beylis drawing a bunch of freaky flies into her web.
The trick is (Duke Ellington knew it and Natalia Beylis knows it too) is to surround yourself with quality horns and all you have to do is play the moods. Here the moods are played with a firm hand and clarity of vision and the horns include heads like Elkka Nyoukis, David Colohan, Andie Brown, Sharron Kraus & Ingrid Plum.
Like all good concepts this one is simple at its root. Each contributor is asked to record two minutes of ‘something’ from their day’s activities and these moments are stitched together into two, twenty-two minute sides.
So while you’d maybe think this would result in a choppy, highly edited mix you’d be mistaken. The domestic kitchen noise rustles into traffic ‘schuss’, birds tweet among the cutlery and bus queue politics/tannoy announcements punctuate the random clatter and swish of someone getting ready for work.
Each situation blends into the next and themes (travel, the weather, domestic chores etc) are shared between the pieces, time-zones and countries to create a disjointed yet very human narrative.
As you lose yourself in this music rhythm and texture become all important; for me this turned into an epiphany halfway through side two where some busy fidgeting and dog toy squeak is rammed up against someone lighting the gas on a cooker. Reader…I jumped up and clapped my hands.
As a listening piece this is both cleansing sorbet and hot sticky fudge-treat.
Ian Watson & Rob Hayler –Metronome (Invisible City Records) Cassette and free digital album
As avid RFM readers will know Rob Hayler killed off his longstanding Midwich persona rather publically at October’s TUSK festival in Gateshead. A final Groovebox throb and hum led to an electronic disembowelling soon to be all over that youtube. Ever the careful archivist Rob made sure his outpourings would not be stemmed. Henceforth they gush via his solid and trustworthy everyday name –Rob Hayler.
And in this act of back-to-basics Rob doubles his impact by teaming up with the polymath Ian Watson (artist, drone-lord, electronic heavy) to launch their iron-clad ‘Metronome’.
So forget all you know about the gentle “tuk – tuk – tuk” of those cute polished wood mechanicals. This 44 minute piece groans like mutant springs; it howls and it blisters. It wobbles and crashes.
The scant sleeve notes suggest the source material comes from Ian and is mixed by Rob. I always find this an interesting approach as it asks fundamental questions of the participants – how much do I present? How much do I leave in and leave out? Like a slow-motion improvisation the agonising decision making process is dragged from seconds into weeks! But on ‘Metronome’ such questions are answered in a clear, unhesitating voice – this is a confident piece of duo-ism that sounds to my tin ears the greasy smearing of one decisive mind.
The mood is certainly darkly metallic, and constantly unfurling as if multiple appendages are slowly freeing themselves from a tightly packed egg. The motion is continuous – mesmerising. You stare unblinking, afraid to move, not daring to wonder what evil is being unwrapped.
Number one on Megatron’s playlist?
Lust Rollers – Grim Reflections from the Poetic Spleen (Structured Disasters) CD-R and digital album
The Aylesbury based duo of Mark Browne and Daniel Gregory come at ya on their second release with a sound that can and has been labelled non-music and idiot-jazz.
Silence flows through these improvisations like dark chocolate in a Vienetta. Objects are donked, flecked and pilched in unorthodox manners (not sure if there is an orthodox manner to ‘play’ a cardboard box anyways) and ‘real instruments like sax and gong are included.
The pleasure can be found in the laser-like operation your ears are required to perform in order to focus on a dense sound world of motion and decay. The scampering and rustling as the disc starts had me reaching for the volume in the car only to damn near soil myself when an unexpected gong strike erupts from the speakers like Norman Bates from behind the shower curtain.
The spirit of mischief is clearly on the agenda although my journey through grim reflections was more serene meditation then beardy euro-jazz freak out. Whilst listening, uninterrupted at home, I was genuinely shocked to find that forty minutes had elapsed. The loving approach to small sounds has a serenity and purity of intent that moves gracefully like the wind through tree branches and seems to slow down time.
I found its autumnal hues immensely soothing to my gonked-out cerebrum. (by PUKE VOLLAR)
Of Habit – Extended Technique (Entr’acte) Cassette
Gary Myles is one half of sound-confusion dingbats Spoils and Relics.
Here he offers his first official solo outing and what a curious and alluring beast it is. I found myself flipping it like a pancake in my nifty new walkman whilst taking my dog Lola out on a grey October morning.
Gary’s droll Yorkshire commentary runs through both sides like ominous smog. His droll and detached voice carries a ‘scary guy at the back of the bus’ edge that is lulling and a bit sinister. Amid the sedated thud of drum machine and soggy mechanics whirr Gary’s stoic mumbles that allude to scenes of bleak surrealism and urban squalor.
Fans of Spoils and Relics may be surprised by the more err…musical heft of this delicious little tape. There is an arc and a persistence that trudges wearily on across the whole first side, the sad thump of a cheap Casios and dying batteries. The peripheral chirping and rustling underneath the beatz sound like a rusty hospital trolley on a journey down a corridor that has no end. It also gives a hint at what suicide may have sounded like had they grown up in a Yorkshire mining town with Ken Loach as their svengali visionary.
Side B starts with hollow loops of melody smeared with several layers of tape grime, descending into blackness. As the narration returns, grey oxide drizzle flickers malevolently in the background finding space between breath, teeth and throat. An unlikely samba limps to life briefly before puttering out like a fag end in a puddle.
Magnificent
(by LUKE VORTEX who advises us this tape, sold out at source is AVAILABLE FROM THE BOOMKAT VAMPIRES)
Tradescantia Zebrina Bandcamp / Hairdryer Excommunication
-ooOOoo-
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