remarkable plimsoll squeak: rfm on kostis kilymis, helictite and quisling meet
July 8, 2017 at 2:37 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 1 CommentTags: a void, friends recording, fuckin' amateurs, helictite, kostis kilymis, last quizzle, nicked, old police house, organized music from thessaloniki, quisling meet, yassen roussev
Kostis Kilymis – A Void (Organised Music from Thessaloniki)
Helictite – ‘Nicked’ Live at The Old Police House, Gateshead (Fuckin’ Amateurs)
Quisling Meet – Last Quizzle (Friends Recordings)
Kostis Kilymis – A Void (Organised Music from Thessaloniki) CD and digital album
As a rule I never read any press release or artist statements that come with the submissions to Midwich Mansions (Newcastle branch) before I settle down at my tripewriter.
Most importantly this is a desire to stay clear of internal word-bias. For example…if I know your freek jam was recorded in the Brazilian rain forest with shards of broken glass my mind finds it hard to ignore the hot & wet, mirrored-silver-shard vibes.
But there’s also a part of me that shivers at an artist’s description (or worse – the label’s description) of the music I’m about to listen to. The desire to sound highfalutin’ and worthy leads the best of us into bumbling, alienating art-speak and that makes my head rattle with incomprehension.
However I make an exception for Kostis Kilymis and his empire of OMFT whose brief, clear and informative notes perfectly set the context for my next half hour of listening.
As Kostis tells me these are recordings of ‘nothing.’ I guess your regular sound engineer would declare these tracks empty of music being as they are carefully stitched together field recordings laced with occasional micro-platinum electronics. They are of course full of sound.
Crisp sound!
Vital sound!!
All-encompassing sound!!!
A rubber-mutter heralds the start to ‘The Commons’ and features some remarkable plimsoll squeak. Elsewhere the coiled rush of traffic roars like concrete waves and people, real people chatter below the threshold of my understanding.
‘Down there (la-bas)’ crackles with infectious clicks and whirrs, street noise and colourful birdsong. The tension is tugging at my ears, the old skin on my hands puckers-up in fleshy peaks. This is body music without the tyranny of beats.
Memory gongs strike on ‘Stay the Year’ with that distinctive locked-groove click undercutting some domestic activity (brushing with a stiff broom perhaps) as the solitary door-hinge squeal plays like the tiniest horn.
The psychic space is tightened for atmospheric closer ‘Another Room’ with some really nice close-mic clutter and rattling of brittle plastics in the Pocket Jazz style pioneered by one Robert Ridley-Shackleton.
Oh yes…this piece is altogether more raffish liked the striped blouse of a gondolier.
Yet again the outside is brought in with swooshing traffic and distant birds filling my room while I glace sideways at the rain making clear dots and dashes on the window, a wet Morse.
As the piece fades to a close I realise the rich sound world we live in is tapping on the door asking for house room.
“If you got ears. You gotta listen.”
(Van Vliet 1980)
Helictite – ‘Nicked’ Live at The Old Police House, Gateshead (Fuckin’ Amateurs) Recycled cassette
Real end-of-an-era junk this – two times!
‘Nicked’ marks the last ever Fuckin’ Amateurs release. That’s right! With over 100 indescribable, uncategorisable tapes/CD-rs and the rare vinyl offering F#A! have blown ragged holes in the North East N-AU for almost exactly a decade.
Whether these tapes were given away or shoved through letter boxes our friends in Blyth, Northumberland, have finally decided enough is enough and shifted their chaotic energy into other areas.
So what are we left with? Apart from a massive discography creating a document of what it meant to live, work and play in this Northern scene this tape cannily becomes a summary of all that came before.
Live to cassette recording (check), blistering chaotic performance (check), muchos crowd chatter and conversation (check) homemade sleeve, recycled tape and DIY as fuck (check). The spirit of F#A! is pure to the last drop.
And that’s where the next body-blow arrives. This tape documents what will most certainly be the last performance from Newcastle’s wildest, most unruly, most misunderstood noise/improv big band – Helictite. Mirroring F#A! Helictite have played around the edges of a variety of scenes for the last 10 years led by their only constant – the cosmic joker – Yassen Roussev. Under Yassen’s haphazard tutelage Helictite have scraped the edges of heaven with their no-rules improv shows, delighting, annoying and baffling audiences in equal amounts.
For an under-the-radar unit they have clocked up some impressive stats: a kinship with Faust led to an in-audience guerrilla style double-header in Edinburgh. Yas talked his way into a slimmed down Helictite live soundtracking Wallace Shawn’s play ‘The Fever’ over 3 nights. His close links to independent cinema resulted in oodles of futuristic film improv scores. Helictite played in Yorkshire’s biggest cave, broke a huge pottery dwarf, worked with a bevy of dancers, set fire to all manner of things and disregarded noise restrictions wherever they went.
My personal favourite? One outrageous fifteen-piece performance (including five goddamn kit drummers) alienating hundreds of indie-kids waiting patiently for The Dirty Projectors to play.
Such is the hubbub created around them they even spawned an unofficial tribute band – Phalictite – with a brief so stringent no member was allowed to play the same instrument twice.
But, ever the psychedelic explorer, Yassen has moved on and decamped to the USA to cause a star-spangled panic in his new home. God bless ‘im.
This final version of Helictite (but of course the line-up changed for each performance) contains a mellower blend: solo bass drum and organ battle it out for a while. Guitar noise gives way graciously to a sweet xylophone solo. Yas’ sax –often consciously absent from performances – is on fine honking form. The general bluster and energy is high in the mix and while the playing is free it’s also wild, untutored and unconscious. Non-musicians and non-players were always welcomed with open arms making this group such a delight to witness and a joy to play with.
I get the impression groups of players were camped in different rooms and Martin (F#A! chief) is waltzing between them, or the band are wandering around the audience. Whatever the plan this is a leg-remix. Whatever is happening here it’s undeniably Helictite.
OK – time to dry them eyes and rewind.
I’ve no idea where you’ll find this tape – the last batch I saw were being handed out at random to drinkers in Newcastle’s Free Trade Inn. Yassen distinctive laugh cackling as he forced his way through the comfortable middle-class clientele, “take this tape…it’s me playing with Tina Turner ” he yelped as confused fingers gripped the proffered cassettes nervously.
For more on F#A! be sure to check the Discogs site but remember at least half of what you read is lies!
Quisling Meet – Last Quizzle (Friends Recordings) Cassette x2
Rich and luxuriant long-form drones/riff-scapes from guitar and bass that remind me of contemporary Dead C and/or/at-the-same-time the sort of stuff associated with Grim Humour fanzine (circa 1987).
Tape one: Volume levels are set for stun and each moment is FULL of FUZZ and RUMBLE. The occasional let-up from the mayhem involves a Clanger’s style feedback howling – no doubt some machine is being tortured – until the RUMBLE continues like a bad tempered juggernaut.
Song structures are hinted at, even attempted for a few moments (the bit I’m listening to now sounds like Suicide or something – all pulse and throb) before being crushed under the weight of the frantic electronic squealing.
Tape two: Like Skullflower coughing through a watering can! This is both fractured and all-pervasive – which is a pretty odd mix when you think about it. The feedback peals like tinnitus and never seems to stop (high end) while earth-moving bass gouges deep troughs out of granite (low end).
Some ferocious shredding lifts the final movements out of the grubby-grubby gutter pushing the sound skyward, higher and higher, circling dangerously close to the sun.
Julian Cope! Where are you baby? This one’s right up your street man.
-ooOOoo-
lick out the jams: rfm on jute gyte, jamie drouin & hannes lingens, a.i.r tapes 1: excavation series 5 and yan jun & ben owen
June 10, 2017 at 10:03 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: a.i.r. tapes, ben owen, blue tapes, excavation series, hannes lingens, jamie drouin, jute gyte, organized music from thessaloniki, power moves library, x ray records, yan jun
Jute Gyte – The Sparrow (X – Ray Records / Blue Tapes)
Jamie Drouin & Hannes Lingens- Alluvium (Intonema)
Various Artists – A.I.R Tapes 1: Excavation Series 5 (Power Moves Library)
Yan Jun & Ben Owen – Swimming Salt (Organised Music from Thessaloniki)
Jute Gyte – The Sparrow (X – Ray Records / Blue Tapes) Single-sided clear vinyl 12 inch with engraved ‘b’ side and digital album
The deeply psychedelic nature of Black Metal: the ingrained grot, indistinct momentum and distain of fancy technique hugely appeals to me. This is ‘feeling music’ concerned with emotion above all. Oh to be a Norwegian teenager in the early 90’s when it all kicked off!
But since those halcyon days both Black Metal and I have grown up (a little). And while there is still plenty of room for true Norwegian Metallers you’re more likely to come across darkly-experimental artists like Jute Gyte in the scene than them church-burners and jail-birds.
The brittle bones of this particular beautiful stain begin with a red-tinged swooshing thunder. The seemingly endless build galloping like Sleipnir over a one-chord velvet strum.
A plague of uncompromising screams mangle throats on the verge of panic making ‘The Sparrow’ seem almost old-school. And then it all goes very quiet…
…ghostly clicks and reverberations tinker through my headphones, decaying and rotten smears of dark sound are punctuated with slowly-roasted, grumbling vocal. The lack of volume has no affect on the intensity, as this restraint is uniquely spooked and unsettling.
Noise-mongers will rejoice when the guitars collapse back into the mix with a Shields-esque tremolo-effect fluttering like a thousand tiny birds – the sparrow perhaps in all its scruffy oil-slick glory!
The flip side (in reality a free-to-grab digital download when you buy this see-through disc) is orchestral in the best Metal mould. Deep swathes of sound become a coal-black rainbow on ‘Monadanom’ arching across a cruel indifferent sky.
Through the tone-clusters thin-steel rattles and soars (like the metal strips used to bind blocks of house bricks). It’s very nature and chemistry dictates a signature sound – high and tight.
After thirteen minutes a number of these grim swooping arcs seem to lock into place revealing a new landscape, barren for sure but not without hope.
I think I hear slo-mo singing bowls wrestle with bronze fake gongs in the fading minutes; but perhaps the extremities of passion have blunted my ears. Whatever is occurring that burnished boom is vibrating every atom in my head like an exquisite psalm.
This desert may be almost featureless but the stark beauty takes the breath away.
Music for moon landings!
Jamie Drouin & Hannes Lingens- Alluvium (Intonema) CD
A fitting title for this ear-silt; a subtle, almost-there, grit that builds up in pale layers.
The brief pieces (many around 3 minutes mark) all seem to document an action: unboxing something, gently bowing something, methodically rubbing something with cryptic knocks and wheezing adding hot spice.
Further investigation reveals these actions come via Jamie Drouin’s basic electronics and Hannes Lingen’s floor tom and/or snare drum as they listen intently to each other on expensive earphones.
It’s easy to imagine you are inside the friction (now the snake-like, descending hiss of uncoiling sellotape, now the busy scrub of glasspaper on marble) or the low electric moan (a dying medical machine, a looped breast pump) as it seems to bore inside your very soul.
For something so lowercase and subtle this Alluvium is exerting a powerful influence over my ear-bristles.
The sound itself is king and to keep the composition clear of unnecessary chaff, especially in a duo situation is testament to the control and lack of improvisers-ego in both Doruin and Lingens. It’s only on ‘06’ – that deals in an ever-so-slightly more assertive sound – a rubbery raspberry that putters like an outboard motor – could you say these folk lick out anyone’s jams.
The longest piece ‘07’ is still loose-limbed and beautiful at a stately 15 minutes long. It begins by conjuring up a polite crowd caught on malfunction mp3’s; the code starting to buckle and warp in that wonderful see-sawing motion. Then a wet rope being twisted in the rigging interrupts the human recordings; some dry-heaving swells sing like angels and someone starts a terrible tap dance.
Truly sublime listening art.
Various Artists – A.I.R Tapes 1: Excavation Series 5 (Power Moves Library) Sold Out Cassette and free digital album
You had to move super fast to bag this tape in any physical form as it seemed to sell out, on both sides of the Atlantic, in a matter of days. I felt like a chump to miss out but was happy to pick up the virtual scraps from the digital table thanks to the essential free download offered by the very generous Power Moves Library.
These well-curated mixtapes (and I use that term with awe and the greatest respect) come from vintage radio recordings of Indian Classical music captured ‘in the field’ by scholar and No Audience maven Phong Tran in 1996-97.
The fact Phong has plucked these transient recordings from the very air with a magpie’s ears makes this all the more magical. This curation took dedication and judgement. We are not worthy!
Side ‘A’ features some outrageously warped sitar playing, heavy as Sabbath but with that flat-fingered funk of Monk which just peaks and peaks and peaks; stuttering spoken word interludes; chewy toffee-like ragas that seem to stretch time when coupled with their reverberating tabla-bombs. All jaggery sweet.
Impossibly deep rumbling strings open Side ‘B’ and play out some creation fantasy – this is real crack in the cosmic egg/universal ohm/blind idiot god territory. Such supreme melancholy! I’m close to welling up man.
A quick news update (in English) and more chat leads into some heart-breakingly sad singing that definitely pushes me over the edge. But I’m not crying into my beer for long as the penultimate recording hauls ass, hurtling at impressively unwise speeds though (musical) hairpins and hard shoulders – the final fade-out fuzzes and fitz’ like the contemporary tape collage from the mighty Burselm slag heaps.
Do I need to say it? Essential!
Ed’s note: just in case you missed it – all future Power Moves Library releases will be available in the UK via Crow versus Crow and vice versa for our friends in the Americas. N-AU across the ocean la!
Yan Jun & Ben Owen – Swimming Salt (Organised Music from Thessaloniki) CD and digital album
Thirty-eight minutes of slowly uncoiling silver fern recordings.
This unabashed and confident record exerts a steely glaze trained on the empty and distantly imagined absence. The tools? Electronics, feedback, op amps and radio are working busily – coaxing tiny, granular sounds from their private holes in fine detail.
In many ways this is a classic two-layered recording: the hiss of a cracked pot vs the faint thud and rattle of movement. Like equal partners in an equation each voice leans in to each other, supporting and bracing a structure that organically sprouts five distinct limbs. Like this…
- Fidgeting static, a canvas for the meek feedback tones, drops away to allow some dub-like drops in pressure. The white throb, once a rude thumb in the ear, slips into complete silence.
- Breath like water fired through a hose is captured in a watchmaker’s basement. Dexterous hands move with purpose, delicately balancing the tension between cog and spring, engineering the never-never of potential energy – delayed power gratification.
- A faint voice is heard through the ionosphere’s thick blanket; sick tones are peeled off like dollars from a grubby, foul-smelling, bundle to eventually settle into one citric slice.
- Pure harmony spirals out of the miasma – bone dry. A warm purring and some form of engraving machine start seriously flirting; finishing each other’s sentences, coquettishly playing with their hair.
- Sucking dull solder from an antique circuit board. The collapsing death of once electric sounds.
Lovers with hot new ears. Apply yourselves!
Organised Music From Thessaloniki
-ooOOoo-
more yomp than stroll: socrates martinis, enrique r. palma, richard kamerman, louie rice & daniel bennett
April 4, 2017 at 6:13 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 1 CommentTags: computer, daniel bennett, digital noise, electronics, enrique r palma, kostis kilymis, louie rice, omft, organized music from thessaloniki, process, richard kamerman, socrates martinis
Socrates Martinis – Under the arches of her voice (Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
Enrique R. Palma – Contenance (Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
Richard Kamerman – Music for Glassblower’s Studio and Broken Toy Piano (Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
Louie Rice- 33/45 (Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
Daniel Bennett – Roil (Organized Music From Thessaloniki)
Socrates Martinis – Under the arches of her voice (Organized Music From Thessaloniki) CD and digital album
Richly textured recordings of rumbling mic damage. Abstract in the extreme, this symphony of hiss and clicks, gritty-roar and deflated muss are edited cruelly with a straight razor.
The quick, decisive cuts that dart between dry hessian rough and oily slipperiness are arresting to say the least. No sooner does my heart-rate settle into a particular gruff hum then I’m thrown by a high-end squeal or inflatable ping.
Insights?
Track 3, ‘Under the arches of her voice, words explode in blue sparks like gunpowder spilled on candles’ gradually reveals a slender hand dropping plastic cups, the echo of the cloister thick and clouded as mediaeval glass.
To my cloth ears track 4, ‘Under the arches of her voice, horses carry the milk of dawn’ seems the most worked on: an imagination of typists clicking away on MacBook keys, inside the Laundromat, singing bowls rubbed with warm Vaseline.
But its track 6, ‘Under the arches of her voice, the air of summer whistles over the headless statues of the hours’ that stretches out a battered alarm bell’s (?) tinny ring into the most gorgeous fade out you’ll hear today.
But any way you want to slice this dusty fig the power of the scrubbed and polished sonic palate is palpable.
Like stepping down the ladder of the landing vehicle to emerge blinking into the harsh white light of Mars.
Enrique R. Palma – Contenance (Organized Music From Thessaloniki) 3 inch CD
Enrique offers us lucky listeners a passport to an imagined future via the murmurings of some giant data engine. The sound of one million calculations bouncing from damp connectors and making the valves glow a warm sunset orange.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself here. The process is important and in this case the process involves Javier Beci on melodica huffing over Enrique’s bowed cymbal and computer morass – the electronic 10101010’s merging seamlessly with that dry breath bruising a vibrating reed. Simple enough I guess but the resulting bluster can throb wildly like a stubbed toe or smear itself as hot tar covers a pock-marked road. Gosh…either approach is good for me and I find myself rocking gently to this 20 minute piece never quite relaxing but riding the changes in intensity and clarity…we’re weaving between clearly recorded melodica/cymbal and abstracted NOIZE flickering like a stick pulled across a chain-link fence /or/ a rusty jet taking off /or/ a scrap-yard dog dragging an iron bone across black rivets.
The only un-rawkus moments are the final 3 mins. Of course this only serves to remind us of the technique and brains behind this operation. As slack as a Jazzfinger jam, this brief pause in the splintering noise digs deep into the engineering of sound, pulling leavers and oiling the blunt teeth of the many cogs making up this contraption.
File under: magnifying-raindrops-to-better-understand-the-hurricane music.
Richard Kamerman – Music for Glassblower’s Studio and Broken Toy Piano (Organized Music From Thessaloniki) Cassette and digital album
Blimey! Ultra-minimal rattle and site specific munge; a real scratcher that makes me go ‘wha?’ And I like it.
Side one – This may well be a glassblowers studio with the fiery ‘husss’ of the blast furnace underpinning some rusty hinges, various droppage and steel-rod clangs along with an almost Lucier-like radio chattering in a room (in a room). There’s an easy momentum as things get plunged into stuff, utensils are washed and tools are replaced noisily to the tool box.
Side two – The flipside makes me think of a miniature Big Ben, small enough to fit in John Cage’s top pocket along with the pens. Delicately placed pings humbly peal through a glorious riot of cassette grot. Ever heavier manners are laid upon the scene until dread is the only emotion vibrating out the stereo. A happy finish of deeper drone, slow slaps and the faint impression that you’ve left the iron on.
Layers of enigmatic rustle; plateaus of barren shell-noise whistle – this cassette pushes boundaries.
Louie Rice- 33/45 (Organized Music From Thessaloniki) 7 inch single and digital album
33
Right-to-left dry brillo scours out your ears, bouncing
A slow glutinous train advances from Osaka directly into your weak skull
Onward black snake, advance dark worm!
This hiss that shuffles the shadows, the finger that smears grease on soft bacon
A fumble for tickets means you drop your felt hat
45
More pop than mope, more yomp than stroll
The interior dialogue of a boulder (containing quartz and seams of basalt)
The soft rubber leavings from an erased life-drawing collected in tiny pyramids
Metal Guru? Iron Man?
There’s a great Wurlitzer in the sky hungry for the 3:23 of this perfect un-beat
Daniel Bennett – Roil (Organized Music From Thessaloniki) CD
This sharp palette of breathtaking sourness makes me realise how sweet and cloying much of today’s music is, as our Daniel is relishing in the zesty and tangy on this quartet of electronic pieces.
The first two tracks ‘Pain’ and ‘Mint’ are forged of elements ranging from thin magnesium to bright electric scissor-kicks. They unfold like the endless belt on an escalator, gnashing interlocking steel teeth with a relentless energy. But there is enough black avalanche to please a grim-faced noise fan. For me though the sweet spot comes in the quieter moments: a reflective squeal, an introverted circuit snap, all placed with unknowable logic.
The second pair of tracks take a clubbable twist with the scent of salty bodies writhing on ‘Tennenbaum’ and ‘We’. The first is a superbly warped beat and bass rumble that’s boiled down until it is almost liquid. The approach to rhythm is choppy as the Solent with static breakers crashing on a crisp digital shore…
…and on my deckchair I fantasise about FKA Twigs humming over the top of the bit-splicing, waving a tiny foot in a bruised ballet pump.
The closer ‘We’ is a bacchanal; a no-holds-barred ritual in losing one’s shit at 6am in the morning after fourteen hours of hard partying and then ending up in a chill out room with a cyborg Sunn O))) providing the vibes.
Or do you disagree?
-ooOOoo-
the crest of a dune: joe murray on will montgomery, in atoms, slowthaw
December 10, 2015 at 1:11 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: aetheric records, in atoms, joe murray, organized music from thessaloniki, slowthaw, will montgomery
Will Montgomery – The crystal at the lips (CD, organized music from thessaloniki, t29, edition of 200)
In Atoms – WREATHS (self-released download)
slowthaw – doll cuts (download, aetheric records)
Will Montgomery – The crystal at the lips
Super-brain Will takes not one but two scores from toff-composer Manfred Werder and uses their cryptic instructions to place his hizzing field recordings about the noble Hansard Gallery, Southampton.
I’m a relative newcomer to all this kinda jazz and find the pale austerity a real turn-on. So, for once, I resist the temptation to listen ‘blind’ and check out a bunch of links that lead me to Werder’s beautiful and inventive scores and a disturbing picture of the other Will Montgomery… a so called Chicago Bear. I’m hungry for context and even beat a path to the straightest RFM bedfellow yet [Editor’s note: you’re on a warning].
So, rigid with excitement, my pink little shrimps pick up the baffling wind and stray electrix easy enough. I tune in deeper and the sea-birds start caw-cawing (it’s Southampton right) and small-city hubbub of traffic and noisy kids kind of build a bivouac between my hammer and anvil.
Some voice intones ‘honey’ or ‘honning’ or ‘awwney’ or something, adding to the general duck-egg blue fuss in the air between my speakers. I catch myself squinting as I’m listening with a fierce intensity. The high heel footsteps clip-clop and are as dubby and regular as a Pole jam from way back. And then…it’s over. You know I can’t get enough of this domestic psychedelic sound-world so press play again.
When I finally recover my frothing I check out track two, ‘Filtrate’, which is even better. It’s an exercise in reduction, redaction and erasure. Will takes a source field recording from the desk of one Mr Kostis Kilymis and proceeds to rub out all the ‘field’ frequencies. This delicate slash with the tippex leaves the lucky listener with a transparent ghost of the original recordings. Beautiful magnetic curves loop out of ether mirroring Sarah Hughes’ spare sleeve design.
I recline awkwardly and close my eyes to concentrate harder. It’s all just feedback I guess but the tones are so wonderfully grimy and smeared… all soft grey pencil rather than garish fluorescent highlighter and tracing single lonely arcs. One by one the tones rise and fall in splendid isolation. And never, until the closing seconds, do they intersect, setting off a sepia-tinted soft blossom.
Crickey!
There’s a calming desolation to these recordings, like watching sand blow off the crest of a dune.
In Atoms – WREATHS
A super-classy synth/drone affair in three parts.
- Pretty dramatic, like Black Beauty, as horses appear out of the mist. There’s a close up of a sweating flank and long-lashed eye. You can feel the yearning from the saddle.
- The intro to Sweatloaf (complete with vinyl crackles) but instead of Sabbath riffs we get lovely denuded drum patterns.
- Gentle floating? A bath of warm cumin seeds; at first a dry slithering over the body but then eczema-like patches form sticking to any protein dampness.
slowthaw – doll cuts
Blissed-out electro/drone summons the unveiling of a leisure centre in Asgard. All the gods and demi-gods stand proud as the wave machine is turned on for the first time and marvel at the heated floors and lockers you open with a 20 pee piece. After the frolics they stop for hot chocolate on their way out.
Scene: A horizon scanning meeting in the Department of Transport. While the interim Accounts Director (the real Director is on sabbatical – yeah right!) outlines our 2016/2017 business plan I track the starlings over Victoria Coach Station. Huge abstract shapes fold in on themselves. Murmurations… that’s the word for their psychedelic ravelling my shattered brain reminds me.
Their black-fuzz smears the peachy sky.
It hypnotises me to such a degree I’m absentmindedly rolling my pen across the desk, ‘clack, clack, clack’ it goes.
Anything to add Mr Murray?
The interim Director points at me.
I stammer,
It’s about all I can manage under the circumstances.
—ooOoo—
the heady scent of courage: joe murray on greta buitkute, alan wilkinson, thf drenching, seth cooke, nick hoffman, va aa lr
February 12, 2015 at 12:29 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: 1000füssler, adam asnan, alan wilkinson, council of drent, dictaphonics, dominic lash, electronica, fort process festival, free jazz, greta buitkute, improv, infinite jukebox, joe murray, lf records, louie rice, new music, nick hoffman, no audience underground, noise, organized music from thessaloniki, paul lomere, plush wattle, seth cooke, thf drenching, va aa lr, vasco alves, vocal improvisation
Greta Buitkute & THF Drenching – Contribution to a Discussion on Tic (download, Plush Wattle)
Alan Wilkinson & THF Drenching – Night of the Flaming Meatus (download, Council of Drent)
Seth Cooke – Eternal World Engines Of The Demiurge (3” CD-r, LF Records, LF044)
Seth Cooke / Dominic Lash – PACT (3” CD-r, 1000füssler, 025, edition of 60)
Nick Hoffman – Necropolis (CD, organized music from Thessaloniki, t26, edition of 200)
VA AA LR – Newhaven (3” CD-r, organized music from Thessaloniki, t27, edition of 100)
Greta Buitkute & THF Drenching – Contribution to a Discussion on Tic
An under-the-radar, sneaked-out recording from two of the out-est heads around.
I came across this one by accident via that You Tube. This led to a series of embedded links, a journey through the dark web to the home of the Plush Wattle Corporation, where this very generous free download sits.
Taking callused thumbs, fingers and twin gob-holes to act as our orchestra these two have charmed their way into my very bones. This is an intimate listen, full of clicks, creaking and rustling; it’s an interior sound world that’s perfect for headphones and tedious train journeys.
So (drum roll please)…introducing Greta Buitkute! Greta might be a new name to Radio Free Midwich but she has been wowing Northern audiences with her fresh take on vocal jaxx/nu-scat for the last couple of years. A recent move to Manchester, a light ale quaffed and connections made via The Human Heads means Greta and the great THF Drenching have teamed up – their individual super powers amplified by the presence of similar corduroy mutants.
You already know THF Drenching and you’re thinking Dictaphones yeah? Sure, the Dictas make an appearance but over half of this collection is vocal-based doof, hurling two well-lubricated throats together to dance merrily like bacteria in a Petri dish.
Yet keen Drenching watchers will note the Dictaphone tone is drier – less squelch; more rattle and hink/rustle and clatter. The bombs are deftly dropped and the feedback ‘heek’ soars like a rectangular alto.
‘Bach Bathed in Bathos, Full Illustration’ is an important cornerstone. An Hawaiian motel room is wrapped up in garish litmus paper, reacts pinkly and then is noisily unwrapped. You can’t beat them apples!
But it’s the twin-vocal pieces that froth me over like excited milk. The twin ‘Portrait of Baize Wattle’ pieces (large and small) make me recall those European Public Information films that would show up on That’s Life! The humorous animation would be followed by a vaguely chucklesome punchline…’Winner’s drink piss’ or something like that. The pace is furious but uncluttered; live with no overdubs (I think). This almost puritan and old oaty approach really pays off. The clean living certainly lends itself to Amish-style efforts.
This is in and out, reflexive and agile music. It slips happily between hi-brow and goose-honk, pearly notes and granddad mumble. As the closing seconds of the recording state:
Greta Buitkute:
Oh my God, it’s exhausting
THF Drenching (sniffs with a chuckle):
I know.
Alan Wilkinson & THF Drenching – Night of the Flaming Meatus
This is an altogether more Jazz recording. Two pieces; live, live, live at Sconny Rotts (2014) or something.
Welcome, reader a fine pair of foils: thin breath pushed through brass and the quivering whine of sculptured feedback. Damn, that’s good!
Soundz?
(i) Like snakes making out in the back of an old Audi until they make a mess of the upholstery; their coppery tones get all twisted and spoony.
(ii) Old doods reminiscing about the days in their wartime dance band – sounds leak all gummy from their ears.
(iii) The alarm on our oven telling me the bread’s ready…oh wait. That is the oven. Give me a minute…
…but it’s not all top-end tomfoolery. A real satisfying base layer of hissing creak (Dictas) and watery saliva- garbles (Saxes) give this a weighty gravity that pulls on the rocketing undulations (a flight of a condor).
And if you’re still asking questions about what free music is doing right now jam your ear up against these two beauties and huff up the heady scent of courage.
This is music for heroes!
PUBLIC APOLOGY: This review also functions as an apology to Mr A Wilkinson for my cheeky and childish ripping of his sound check sounds on my Correct Come tape. Sorry mate – can I buy you a pint or something?
Seth Cooke – Eternal World Engines of the Demiurge
These two pieces of electronic gumbo take what we might call process recordings and apply the extraction method adding calm and deliberate shadings to a real-world sound scenario.
In the first of two offerings Seth ransacks an insurance office circa 1978 whilst the office party averts prying eyes. The unmistakable sound of a dot matrix printer (duh…I was mistaken. Research shows it’s one of them stupid 3D doo-hickies) going all akka over a slowly emerging picture (in this case a 3D bust) of Benjamin Disraeli – or some similarly bearded goof – as it appears line by dotty line.
Said printer is jammed with cocktail sticks and discarded business cards – in reality electronic shadows – as he hits the print button and lets nature take its course. The frantic slide, shuffle and whirr is hypnotic and lulled me like a fat wren zonked by bright red berries until it snaps off into disturbing silence.
The calm is suddenly fractured by track number two, a gliding, sliding and silvery cascade; a perfect sound track to ice skating that would make Torvill & Dean throw greasy shapes ending up as sooty smears on the ice.
Gear heads will be pleased to note that the machinery on this disc was pioneered by Paul Lomere for his Infinite Jukebox that “endlessly extends and reconfigures MP3s by calculating probabilistic routes through the sound file based on pitch, timbre and metric position.”
Seth says he’s channelling Jack Kirby but for the romantics out there this is Bolero 2015 and a perfect 10 for artistic interpretation.
Seth Cooke/Dominic Lash – PACT
The quicksilver tones versus Pront-a-Print kerfuffle that starts this disc (‘PA’) are a waterslide into a world of grimy groan.
Massive and ungainly ‘things’ are rubbed with tweed gloves. Moist and sweating ‘objects’ are painfully squeezed to release sticky ichors. Soft and flexible ‘parts’ are cruelly bent into unholy shapes resembling the Goat of Mendes.
A close-up inspection reveals canyons of scrape and gummy friction. And while the pace remains stately for a time layers of rub and tug bring forth some slippery excitements. Oh Matron!
Track two (‘CT’) is a darker affair. The double bass bowing (Lash) and kitchen sink manipulation (Cooke) as uncooperative as a sullen teenager. Black storm clouds gather over my cheap-o high-fi and I feel my brows knit.
Gosh. This is brooding stuff.
The simple bass riff is not happy with me or you and doesn’t care who knows about it; electronics twinkle but with the black light of sea coal from Redcar beach. I love this sombre and funereal pace and can feel my mood merge into full-on sulk.
So, what you looking at eh? Clear off and leave me with Lash & Cooke. You don’t understand me anyway.
I hate everything!
More details here if you can be bothered.
Nick Hoffman – Necropolis
Microscopic attention to microscopic detail turns my hammer, anvil and stirrup into marshmallow fluff.
This is a record of extreme extremes: from hosepipe-full-on-gush to tiny cooling-metal-tik. These five pieces of sieved electronics lurch from Black Metal through the Gristleizer (The Rotten Core) to the ivory click of miniature pool balls intensifying until my speakers are fizzing and flipping-out like a model railway going straight to hell (Eros).
But what I like most about this disc are the abrupt edits, the inter-track halts and about turns that keep this grizzled noise monkey twisting to check that a fuse hasn’t blown. While I enjoy a heads-down, no-nonsense, continuous blast of fetid sludge as much as the next pair of ears being wrong-footed and fooled is a joy. What’s next? Is this build up going to explode or whimper out? It’s as slippery as Be-Bop from Minton’s Playhouse.
Nick pulls out all the stops for the lengthy closer, ‘The Scent of Ground Teeth’, a 16 minute monster of glitching signal, spluttering like a coffee percolator spiked with cobra venom.
If this blog was a radio show I would segue seamlessly from this blustery fizzing into the white-hot spitting of VA AA LR’s Newhaven. Recorded at last year’s fascinating Fort Process festival VA AA LR drop their usual prepared electronics and objects and carve out a landscape from the sound of distress flares alone. Taking away the literally explosive visual element you are left with a wonderfully peculiar 20 minutes of sparkling hiss and frazzle. Every permutation of splutter and crackle is worked through like Coltrane on Giant Steps, probing and searching; pushing forward and wringing all possible combinations from this electric spitball.
After a time the busy and frantic schizzle seems to fine-tune my old ear ‘ole letting me pick out tone and textural changes. There is a whole world in here as the planes of fuzzing gimble regroup like a forgotten language. Be sure to make a beeline for this vibrant crackle readers; a worthy bookend to that other splutter classic, Lee Patterson’s Egg Fry #2.
—ooOoo—
sea, souvenirs, spice: luke vollar on grisha shakhnes, seth cooke and early hominids
January 8, 2015 at 11:28 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: early hominids, field recording, glistening examples, grisha shakhnes, jason lescalleet, luke vollar, neil campbell, new music, no audience underground, noise, organized music from thessaloniki, paul walsh, psychedelia, seth cooke, zanntone
Grisha Shakhnes – Distance and Decay (CD, organized music from thessaloniki, t24, edition of 200)
Seth Cooke – Sightseer (3” CD-r, organized music from thessaloniki, t25, edition of 100)
early hominids – palpate (CD-r, zanntone, 000)
Grisha Shakhnes is a Moscow born, Tel Aviv based individual. I’ve heard of him before as he has a record released on Glistening Examples, the label run by American tape fiddler and conceptualist Jason Lescalleet. There are some obvious similarities between the two as both use obsolete recording devices to blur and confuse what is recorded and what is an artefact of the recording – are we hearing the inner workings of a tape machine or is this a field recording made ghostly with ferric oxide?
There are no details provided with Grisha’s disc just the enigmatic, lovely artwork and title. There are sounds that hang in space as if suspended in water, their movements as slow and methodical as a giant sea creature. Indeed, when I try to put into words the sounds of this disc I invariably end up with an aquatic theme. At one point I imagined a mini-sub coming across a metropolis on the ocean floor, its occupants staring slack jawed at the enormous structures of neon lights and chrome towers churning out geysers of bubbling water. Later I hear a game of snooker played under a waterfall before the sad lament of a female voice in an alien tongue is buried beneath the gloop of machine malfunction. A somnambulant feeling is maintained throughout the 75 minute duration making it an unwise choice for your car stereo but a great soundtrack for full time dreamers.
Seth Cooke presents us with an entirely different beast on his little disc. He lists his tools as:
no recording, recording and no input field recording
No, me neither. Whilst ‘Cape Coast Seashell Bowed On Minster-on-Sea Shore’ informs us of its method of execution, the other titles reveal very little other than a rye [Editor’s note: sic, but what a great typo! I’m keeping that one in] sense of humour: ‘If You Only Listen To One FLAC This Year’ being a prime example. The mood is lonely, with voyeuristic overtones. At one point I could hear Seth releasing a caged pigeon to fly around a dimly lit multi-story car park. In other moments a faceless individual impassively views a seaside location, now devoid of human life. A sense of disquiet is achieved as a recording of, essentially, nothing is gradually enhanced with surgical precision only to be abruptly cut off just as it starts to become uncomfortable then switched for grizzled distortion swiftly followed by ghostly tones receding dimly. I have to say the more I listen to this, the more impressed I am with the craft and thought that has gone into it. Seth has used the format of a 3″ disc to fit in a lot of ideas though it never feels overcrowded.
Both artists make ample use of field recordings and both presumably use some form of processing for further confusion. Where Grisha’s sounds are in no hurry to get anywhere and are blurred by the use of cassette tapes, Seth’s sounds are clear and shrapnel sharp with abrupt editing and unexpected changes in colour and tone. Seth’s espresso to Grisha’s grande latte, if you will.
I’ve seen early hominids, the duo of Paul Walsh and Neil Campbell, play a few times and part of the pleasure is marveling at the collection of noise kit spread before them: a couple of light activated boxes that fizz and crackle in response to strobes, like an angry serpent disturbed from its slumber, and all manner of odd looking stuff, presumably soldered together in a shady basement with the fiendish duo shouting ‘it’s alive, ALIVE!’ as it bleeps itself awake. One show in particular sticks in my mind from a few years ago at the Fox and Newt in Leeds. Paul and Neil created a Technicolor psych noise juggernaut that vibrated the tiny room while threatening to levitate the whole darned boozer into another dimension. It was what I’d always hoped Incapacitants would sound like: noise as the ultimate euphoric wig flipper.
The boys are in a more restrained mood here but their electronic gadgets still stutter and belch as if barely controlled by their probing fingers. Rather than batter us with a relentless sonic barrage the sounds are allowed to rise and fall into pleasingly awkward shapes. As I am hypnotized and my head begins to nod I visualize the two of them face to face over a table of wires and boxes creating a slurry of rich and spicy noise blarts while occasionally reaching for the ever present ale that fuels them. ‘Tis good stuff I tell thee.
—ooOoo—
organized music from thessaloniki
not sure if the homs CD-r remains available – try contacting Paul via the zanntone bandcamp page or via that Twitter.
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