radio free midwich

more yomp than stroll: socrates martinis, enrique r. palma, richard kamerman, louie rice & daniel bennett

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?

omft

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