rooting for barnacles : rfm on power moves library, stef ketteringham, sun skeletons and star turbine
July 2, 2017 at 5:30 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: $un $keletons, claus poulsen, crow versus crow, doubledotdash, excavation series, get it up yers trio, in pink dust, invisible city records, more guitar arrangements, night sky isolation, permanent powers, power moves library, sindre bjerga, star turbine, stef ketteringham, sun skeletons, you/in/be/arc
Various Artists – (Excavation Series 7) You/In/Be/Arc (Power Moves Library)
Stef Ketteringham – More Guitar Arrangements (Crow Versus Crow)
$un $keletons Get It Up Yers Trio – In Pink Dust (Doubledotdash?)
$un $keletons Get It Up Yers Trio – Permanent Powers (Doubledotdash?)
Star Turbine – Night Sky Isolation (Invisible City Records)
Various Artists – (Excavation Series 7) You/In/Be/Arc (Power Moves Library) sold out cassette and free digital album
Hard-hitting, gut-punching, brain-scrambling missive from the collective history of mankind.
Once again Power Moves Library act as curator and editor to bring you, dearest listener, a carefully compiled recording with brains, taste and soul.
This time it’s Kev Cahill who has sourced all his sounds from youtube, vimeo and ubuweb. A simple method that explodes the myth of the wise crate-digging grey-beard (with a full wallet) into a completely open-source, DIY approach that we can all get behind and ape like monkeys.
The mixtape as revolutionary act!
Of course the genius is not in the rarity of the sources or the skill of the mixing technique (like…yawn man) but in the notion of what sounds go perfectly with what – gamelan and ocean waves –Beckett and Indian Raags – it’s all totally ham & eggs!
For those of you that like a little more detail (spoiler alert – read no more of this chapter if you are a blind-eye voyager) expect the poetical anger of Amiri Baraka, gentle spoken French (?), gospel and blues moans, lone xylophone ‘plongs’, Billie Whitelaw’s whispering, Harry Bertoia’s vibrations in and amongst found sound and environmental recordings.
As I’d expect from a fine guitarist/curator the six-stringer appears in various forms (most notably on side two) showing the breath of the Flying V from drone, skronk to chamber-quartet ecstasy. The balance is provided with springy tabla, Orca whoops and Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange’s spooky dream recordings.
The magpie visits anger, anxiety, bliss and desperation in a stream so emotionally deep I’m a little wrung-out on listening. These recordings elicit a response from all my feeble chakras making this one of the most human things I’ve listened to in ages. Gosh!
Like that gold record they sent up into space on Voyager; a recorded message of humanity’s desperate need to make sound, to communicate in the most natural way possible – to make music.
Get another rocket ready NASA – Power Moves gotta message for the cosmos.
Stef Ketteringham – More Guitar Arrangements (Crow Versus Crow) cassette and digital album
These semi-improvised guitar pieces might be loosely arranged but are played with a bright fury and focused intensity that I’ve not heard in years.
Stef spanks this plank with a canyon-wide spectrum of feeling. At one end we have ‘suspicious man who’s never even seen a guitar before’ to ultra-precise and mathematically measured ‘ZOOT HORN ROLLO-isms’ that chime like cold stars.
The busy froth of twang on side one paints several pictures in my head. The tangled wood and barbed wire of ‘If and When’ become the clotted metre-wide micro-environment seen from a moving train where weeds rule supreme. A snatch of sung melody sweeps down the embankment, unconcerned with the swirl of notes above. Dust collecting on old bookshelves is the 3D brain-image summoned by ‘Divide’s’ spacious and geometric riffs. I’m particularly taken with ‘That’ all arthritic knuckles and sunburned hands, shiny as polished chestnuts with its ham-fisted flamenco flourishes bruising the strings.
This is most certainly hardcore!
Side two is a more melancholy affair and starts with the heart-lurching pressure you feel when you know he/she’s leaving forever (refer to ‘Churchgoer’ dear listener). This empty ache is enflamed on ‘Killing Flaw’ an eruption of post-blues as poignant as that exploded shed thing. My mind flips open on the final piece ‘Cry & Sing 3’ where the heavily amplified guitar is rattled and ‘poinged’ with a metal ruler making gilded rivers run from the bone speakers.
The real genius here lies in the two versions of ‘Grimes/Cargill’ a snaked-hipped blues taken in two different directions: one lyrical and melodic played with an early-morning vigour, the other, an end-of-the-day hung-over stubble. Both feature the ‘slap-slap’ of Stef’s sparely deployed bass drum cleverly punctuating the movements.
Telepathic art from Crow Versus Crow summarises the process of composition and recording (unpretentious rehearsal room/stray cat isolation/crisp sellotape stains) making this the perfect package.
$un $keletons Get It Up Yers Trio – In Pink Dust (Doubledotdash?) cassette and digital album
The wonderfully named $un $keletons Get It Up Yers Trio are indeed a three piece. But that’s where their similarity to beards like Cream or The Experience ends.
Employing Drums, Saxophone/Electronics and Shahi Baaja these Thames Valley jokers get all IN A SILENT WAY on your ass with the sidelong ‘Workin’ The Church Shift.’
The focus is on blank space, placement and long-form growth. So this improvisation grows like moss over a log; carefully seeking out nooks and crannies to take hold, working in sympathy with their fellow organisms, leaving blanks on the sour ground.
It’s a drifter, the forlorn lines of saxophone become long exhalations, the shimmering Shahi Baaja a heat mist, the subtle and sparse drums a slowing heartbeat as you become hypnotised by the horizon.
Side two probes the sensitive ‘Solar Plexus’ like it’s rooting for barnacles in a rock pool. Each instrument gently wanders into each other, soft-edge collisions that slowly merge into one ur-drone.
At times it’s hard to tell what’s what with percussive sax, textural drum skins and melodic Shahi Baaja; each voice subtly moving into the foreground for some lazy stretch then retreating back into the collective fug.
With nothing as crass as a solo this is true groop-mind aktion – threeways.
$un $keletons Get It Up Yers Trio – Permanent Powers (Doubledotdash?) cassette and digital album
More long-form lichen jams from the Thames Valley trio.
‘That’s Fine, It Doesn’t Matter’: A mighty slow swing to this one like the world’s longest pendulum swooping east to west across the globe. Time is punched out with simple double-hits on the snare, a dulcimer-like melody and the shallow soaring of hot breath. The Get it Up Yers Trio explore these moments rolling them like mandarin segments in the palm of the hand – wondering who’s juiciest.
‘Life is a Joke’: This time the spirit of Jan Garbarek is channelled through an almost military snare shudder; sheer plucked ‘banjo’ to mash up the theme tune to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century with a Krautrock Cowboy!
The final moments spice up the motorik with a wailing horn as wild as Giora Feidman.
RFM EXTRA
- Ahead of the game for once you can actually catch this lot live soon on their weedender weekender tour with the mighty WOVEN SKULL: 21st July (Gateshead) 22nd July (Middlesbrough) 23rd July (Todmorden).
- Introduce yourselves to: Breadman (drums), Crinkil (alto sax/electronics), Krang (shahi baaja).
- The super-pretty glitch flower art work on ‘In Pink Dust’ is designed by the unstoppable Crow Versus Crow
- They dig the late Chet Baker!
Star Turbine – Night Sky Isolation (Invisible City Records) cassette and digital album
Star Turbine bring their unique improvisers vocabulary to the UK again gracing the N-AU with coiled ‘skoinks’ and leathery ‘whuffs’.
Working backwards from the sound to the source becomes a futile exercise – it could be tape, radio interference, highly-processed computer files or bowed vinyl records. All have a place in the Star Turbine arsenal; but if course it’s not how impressive your tabletop looks, it’s how you swing it.
And swing it they do. This mature duo (Sindre Bjerga & Claus Poulsen) have been working together for around 6 years and I count at least 21 releases on their Discogs page. This familiarity with each other’s approach leads to top class performances on both sides of this live tape
Gateshead’s Soundroom is a glitchy, almost funky performance with complex set pieces including: smeared gob-rot from Sindre and sooty coughing textures from Claus. Both meld into an undeniable wholeness, an organic fullness of sound and presence.
Moods shift fast like clouds on a windy day; they scud quickly – one moment dark and crumpled, the next breezy and slapstick.
We move south to Brighton’s Coachwerks for side two.
- It’s a rumbler! A cacophonous tearing of found-sound opens the set.
- It’s a thumper! Felt-headed mallets beat a lowly tattoo alongside sharp metal cracks.
- It’s a lurker! Strange stains appear on the carpet, an oily filth fills the air. The electric crackle of bad vibes and virus make me clap my h*nds over my e*rs.
And while improvisation often gets a drubbing for being highfalutin’ or overly-academic this is music that is rooted in real life. Fingers and mouths, elbows and knees wrenching uninvited sounds from the magicians sleeve.
Power Bliss!
Doubledotdash? / $un $keletons Bandcamp
-ooOOoo-
my bloody ventolin: joe murray on star turbine, robert ridley-shackleton, sindre bjerga
October 13, 2016 at 11:25 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: chocolate monk, claus poulsen, frozen light, gold soundz, joe murray, robert ridley-shackleton, shade barka martins, sindre bjerga, star turbine
Star Turbine – Nothing Should Move Unless You Want It To (CD, Frozen Light, edition of 300 or download)
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Tupperwave (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.338, edition of 42)
Sindre Bjerga – Japan 2013 Tour Documentary – A Film By Shade Barka Martins (DVD-r, Goldsoundz, GS#130, edition of 26)
Star Turbine – Nothing Should Move Unless You Want It To
This canny duo of Claus Poulsen & Sindre Bjerga have now been together for about 6 years – that’s longer than The Beatles live-performing career. And in that time they’ve moved from loveable moptops (read: hessian cloaked druids) to Abbey Road sophisticates pulling sounds from a cosmic-scurf fortress and mixing them cleverly with improvised crackles and hopped-up speech interventions.
On this disc they reach deep into the hard drive and present, in the main, truncated live performances; the bacon in the bap, hurling you straight into their fully articulate sound cavern.
It starts as you’d imagine – mice invest dollars in sonic-grip technology, aiming their blunderbuss straight at you for the duration of ‘An/Auf’. It feels sort of sticky and thick and on the verge of panic. I feel much more comfortable if I keep my breath even and calm.
Grey-rubber ripping shakes a tail on ‘Hearing Voices’ among some seriously screwed vocals and inter-planet hum. The rushing of tape grot adds a complimentary momentum pulling your ears in different directions; microscopic insects rearrange your nerve endings.
Some sort of My Bloody Ventolin wash creeps through the recording, ‘Looking For the Centre’ a heady rush of airbrakes and panpipes bleeding into a, into a bloated walrus gas pouch?
[worried reviewer checks sleeve notes in panic]
Don’t worry. It’s my bad. No sea mammals were harmed in the creating of this particular jam… it’s just the ‘Fractal Zoom’ piece unpicking my learning centres and scrambling early illustrated encyclopaedia memories. Gosh! The tape work on this is black as tar and twice as difficult to remove.
The cherry on the pie belongs to the wonderfully titled ‘Ape Escape’ that sounds as if IRCAM released its answerphone message recorded after a rather noggy Christmas party. OR… photocopying your arse and sending it to Dick Raaijmakers. You my dear listener will have to work that one out yourselves.
Closer ‘Alef 0’ sees Claus take a sharp mallet to Sindre’s basic recordings and goof them up good and proper. How he’s managed to turn this herring into a Tangerine Dream I’ll never know but it’s heavy as bad news (never BAD NEWS) and rich as freshly ploughed soil.
Despite this recent Euro-nonsense (AKA Brex-shit) the Star Turbine will be back in your town soon. Pull your canoe out the mud and set a course for their cleansing murk.
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Tupperwave
Fifty minutes of RR-S starts with a respectful tweak on NWA’s collective nips and then gets exponentially odder by the minute. The trademarked pocket jazz sound is still in effect but over a longer duration this is embedded and augmented with child-like interactions, tangent-shearing thoughts and bakerlite ring-tones of the mind.
Question. But just what is Robert Ridley-Shackleton? An effortless creature of spoken wordisms, a stream of consciousness half-thought jester, a purple pretender, a dry-rattler extreme? Or perhaps he is the new plastic messiah?
As an excitable, hyperbolic fanzine-style reviewer it’s almost too much to take in. Do I describe the actual sounds coming out my headphones? Oh… I do, do I? Here goes…
…scratch, hiss, crackle, sniff, sex-rap-brit-funk, casio-donk, sniff, meandering monologues, scratch, clonk, harsh noise sock, house keys, humming & mugging…
…but what a thousand tapes with similar components don’t do is pose a really important question. With a comedian’s nicotine-fingered timing RR-S unravels what it means to entertain and what it means to be entertained?
There’s a long tradition of artists pushing and pressing at the limits of acceptable entertainment. And I don’t mean that violent or sexist bullshit, that wreckers of civilisation cul-de-sac, but the more fundamental – how far can I go unwrapping to find the very essence of my own personal music? Family favourites like Gwilly Edmondez, Hugh Metcalfe and the Shadow Ring have been there and chipped out their own answers in the No Audience Mount Rushmore but our very own RR-S has a bag of chisels too and he is already tappy-yappy-tapping incoherent pictograms at the base of the cliff.
The whiffle and flounce feel like a diary of instant conversation created in the moments between a late tea and bed. The Illuminati and God get equal footing to Mr Poo and Mrs Wee as mistakes, pre-thoughts and apologies are sent direct to you in a monologue of seemingly endless imagination.
Oh yeah… there is much rattling and shaking with the texture of Quaver’s eggs.
One of the ‘traditional’ musical pieces, a 5 minute keyboard funk jam, ends with the sound of brittle punnets being crushed (it’s sound art – listen!). The other (a 3 minute keyboard funk jam) launches into a discogs/format paranoid rant backed with static/analogue card-noise war and a riff on taking apart the post-creative process re: publishing.
I’m happy with myself I think
RR-S concludes. As well you might be – the most singular record of the year.
Sindre Bjerga – Japan 2013 Tour Documentary – A Film By Shade Barka Martins
A what? A DVD-R? That most neglected of formats gets a swift brush up and plane ticket to Japan for this super-charming documentary.
See! Sindre (and brother Jorn) explore downtown Japan and creep through the narrow streets looking for the off-off-map venues played on our Norwegian friend’s first visit to the home of the mighty Budokan.
Marvel! As Sindre sets up his trusty yellow Dictaphones, echo tube and tape mess in cramped bars, tiny arts spaces and a beautiful elephant temple; blowing hot steam through his cobbled-electronics, bristly mouth parts and drone-boxes.
Watch!! Various ex-pat goofs and clean-cut Japanese fellows captured doing their own damn thing: solo keyboard hums, circular clarinet, chromed electronics, theatrical goon impressions and electric- fan-versus-acoustic-guitar living sculptures.
Shade’s camera is a friendly traveling companion; always present with a pack of tissues; clear, bright and attentive but never in-your-face. The downtime of a tour is captured with a practiced eye as attractive, vibrant shows are interspersed with sleepy train rides, airport snoozes and the gentle panic of being lost in an unfamiliar city.
Proving the No-Audience Underground, although sparse, is strategically placed on a global scale the gig-goers lap up Sindre’s approach to tape manipulation in a very physical way; lobbing projectiles at him during an instruction piece and (incredibly politely and gently) scything miniature cymbals across the room to topple Bjerga’s constructions of WalkMan/Dictaphone/steel resonator.
But of course this wouldn’t be a trip to Japan without a session in a silk robe and Sindre rocks his white-patterned shortie like a motherfucker!
Like all Gold Soundz releases this is super-limited so I’d make a bee-line for this quick to feast those peepers.
—ooOoo—
erotic polystyrene sigh: joe murray on mutual process, star turbine, sindre bjerga
September 9, 2015 at 8:25 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: adam denton, claus poulsen, discombobulate, invisible city records, joe murray, mutual process, sean cotterill, sindre bjerga, star turbine
Mutual Process – (untitled) (tape, Discombobulate, BOB006, edition of 50)
Star Turbine – White Lines Across the Void (tape, Discombobulate, BOB005, edition of 50)
Sindre Bjerga – Fugue States (tape, Invisible City Records, ICR15, edition of 50 or download)
Mutual Process – (untitled)
North-eastern gook-wizards, the venerable Sean Cotterill and golden majestic Adam Denton, link up electric oddments with greasy string and tobacco-stained sellotape in a classic table-top approach.
I’ve been lucky enough to watch the Mutual Process conduct and project live many times in various squats and attics so this tape becomes part of the open-ended conversation. Follow me…
untitled is a tape performance in three parts.
- Hard-to-quantify squeals fog outta the speakers to start off. Next a broken, backwards TV fizzes listlessly, circuits click open and off with a feline ‘pop’. The sound of Bertoia’s metal rods being manipulated rise out of the mist as graceful as silver-backed Gorillas and with the same barely restrained violence.
- Then it gets quiet… A titanium wind blows. The chicken bones in the trees, gathered by sneaky children start to rattle, shaking off all the trappings of modern life (mobile phones, reality TV etc) to make the sort of sound I last heard during my time at the Phillips Research Laboratory (1956 – 63). The hiss and whistle of the earlier movement is overtaken by a deep-dive into electronic sound arts. Tony Stark himself would goof-off on the reflective magnetic!
- Redundant repulsor rays seem to form the carrier wave to some jittery cipher that tips a hat to the unbreakable Meskwaki code talkers in the third and final movement. Gritty ceramics get bowed with a rat-tail file, cheese graters get bent across a leather clad knee and spanked hard.
Mutual Process: the Marvel-style team up you N-AU heads have been waiting for. Nuff said, true believer.
Star Turbine – White Lines Across the Void
Two live pieces from that great Dane Claus Poulsen and the James Brown of the Underground that is Sindre Bjerga.
Star Turbine are one of those remarkable duos that take two very different approaches and create a very different third wheel; so buckle up buttercup!
Side ‘A’. Pinched nip tweaks give way to that kind of chugging (kof-kof-kof) riff that you find in both 80’s Thrash Metal and late 90’s Italio-House. Before long a canard paddles up the Tyne (this was recorded in Newcastle’s Mining Institute – a scant hop from the sleepy river) with its booming fog horns and belching smokestacks. We travel it’s feathered back to Belize (or somewhere) where electric drizzle cascades down waxy green leaves. Claus and Sindre stoke the fires in the engine room, shovelling dense peat into the orange-mouthed furnace, until sweat beads on brawny forearms, brows and backs. A scat of brittle C90 crackle ends the performance with gentlemanly style.
Side ‘B’ Another live set opens with kissy-kissy intimate ‘pings’ and an erotic polystyrene sigh that almost makes me blush dear reader! This is a superb recording; the up-close micro-sounds are raw in my pig-pink ears.
And the fidelity becomes a player in the game. It draws me deeper into the slobbering honks (fresh like cabbage), field recordings (the heavy links of rolling stock) and dainty metal strokes (innocent as Hans Christian Andersen) layering these orphaned sounds into sonic béchamel.
A cello recorded beneath a mantle of Williams’ Flubber adds a lovely rasp, all cosy and warm, to accompany those cheeky poly-styrenes who begin to squish Galaxians beneath a giant thumb. The bright colours run under the pressure and leak out the loop, whorl and arch spilling onto the scrubbed linoleum.
Both sides were recorded approximately 239 miles apart. Keep on truckin’.
Sindre Bjerga – Fugue States
Live at Ryan’s Bar (London) opens with some awesome tape fuckery executed with extreme prejudice. I had to keep leaping out of bed to check the Cheap-o Hi-Fi wasn’t chewing this innocent tape to little tiny bits!
It’s a kind of a dancehall sound that’s getting mangled here; think Notting Hill Carnival slipping down a gritty wormhole as things slowly, slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y get more Solaris-on-yr-ass. An acapella voice sings some middle-of-the-road ditty/euro-disco pumps/fireworks briefly flare in the cold black sky…
Gosh…this is seriously warped. The stretched tape sounds under immense pressure, like geological pressure, man, as smeared voices try valiantly to drag themselves over the welcoming polished tapeheads.
The cognitive planet vibe starts to bulge my eyes out slightly. An unnatural intelligence erupts as the compact cassette reaches cognition! A perfect 17 minutes.
Side two, live at Kveil #3 (Bergen) opens with an ever-so-slightly polite fistful of tape messin’ that can carry a sustained hiss as easy as I can pinch 3 pints together into a beer-pyramid [Editor’s note: with bag of crisps held between clenched teeth too I hope]. The general pace is super-relaxed with ‘humms’ and ‘whirrrs’ sloshed about like grey undercoat on a corporation bench.
Rather than mash tape into iron-rich paste the manipulation has a more benevolent hand, guiding firmly but with an ear for collaboration. So when voices crackle through the dead air I’m looking for a Radio Ham who recently turned on.
I wonder. Ham? Amateur? Ham-ateur? Well whatever term we choose to use the signals picked up by Sindre’s aerials add honest human peaks to some stereo-spring ‘clunk’ that paves the way for a Bjerga classic hiss-drone. Thin like gruel it is until the whole thing clots like blood pudding, lumpy and painful…and ‘click’ the tape finishes.
Recorded in 2015 (Side A) and 2014 (Side B) approximately 1,262 miles apart.
—ooOoo—
the machine slowly unfolds: joe murray on star turbine, poulsen & klapper, rogaland hot club, forest of eyes
March 26, 2015 at 8:36 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: anders gjerde, claus poulsen, drone, folk, forest of eyes, gold soundz, improv, joe murray, mark wardlaw, martin klapper, new music, no audience underground, noise, pål asle pettersen, rogaland hot club, sindre bjerga, skrat records, skronk, star turbine, tapes
Martin Klapper & Claus Poulsen, Rogaland Hot Club – Og Senere Pa Eftermiddagen / Rogaland Styrende Organer (tape, Gold Soundz, GS#125, edition of 25)
Star Turbine – Alterations (CD-r, SKRAT Records, skr-017)
Forest of Eyes – Leaf Litter (CD-r or download, self-released)
Martin Klapper & Claus Poulsen, Rogaland Hot Club – Og Senere Pa Eftermiddagen / Rogaland Styrende Organer
I picked this beauty up from the Goldsoundz gaucho himself Sindre Bjerga during his recent half-term jaunt to the UK with Claus Poulsen. I’m always up for a trade but was doubly delighted to see the name Martin Klapper splashed across the carefully folded collage cover. For me Martin’s sounds were an important entry point into an underground alternate reality where toys take a seat in the orchestra and accident holds an unreliable baton to conduct.
I asked Claus with my eyes ashine:
How did you hook up with the Klapper man?
and
Martin? He lives round the corner from me,
…came the nonchalant reply from Claus.
Good golly! I almost ran home to jam this silvery prize right there and then but resisted like a good human and took my time.
The seven short tracks from Klapper/Poulsen are total knockabout junk-core of the highest order. No moment is left un-squirmed. The pace is busy like a chicken-pox itch with layers of ‘huzzzzz’, ‘hok-ko-kok’ and ‘charrrr’ expertly mixed so it’s almost tumbling into chaos but pulls itself back from the brink every time.
The attendant floppings are not in any way naive or frivolous. Using toys, doo-dahs and soft furnishings in your music is no easy option. You’ve got to search the possibilities as lovingly as any extended technique merchant.
The stop-start, juddering of micro-musical moments ticks my Tom & Jerry box in thick black marker. It’s delightful to surrender to the ‘quacks’ and belches letting my brain process this particular Technicolor moment, and another, and another, and another until the grey stuff is left panting and fagged out.
I will never tire of this approach. It’s the very sound of spontaneous invention for heaven’s sake! It gives me the same warm glow as discovering that the sonorous snoring behind me is actually the start of a vintage Usurper or Drenching jam randomly selected for my rusty earbuds. Turn on, Tune in, Flop out.
Rogaland Hot Club are another name I’ve wanted to catch up with for a long while now. A Norwegian super-group (Sindre Bjerga, Anders Gjerde and Pål Asle Pettersen) made up of only Ginger Bakers this 21 minute collage of live/non-live jams all smeared together is a master class in group improvisation. Most of us agree that music is a social activity and, as a result, the interactions between individuals in groups are one rich area of both business and pleasure.
The Hot Club play on the skronk, the sound of overloaded equipment peaking redly and knead it into unselfish group moaning and caterwauls; a King Midas of agonies hawked out by specially trained sea lions, so close you can almost smell their fishy rewards.
At the 9 mins 30 mark exactly the scene changes to a surviving audience recording of Suicide’s only Scandinavian date. Those tricky voltage differences pitched all their Casio beats too low for a US crowd but it was perfect for the winter walkers who break out the hjemmebrent to dance like their sensible shoes are covered in foul-smelling glue. A paddle-puddle-battle takes the place of an interval until the show gets closed by the cops, hauling in their own sound system playing Barrington Levy at ear splitting volume – backwards – as they take turns to ‘singjay’ the pages and pages of overtime claims in a newly discovered Atlantian dialect, incomprehensible to us land dwellers.
One lone voice remains, spoiling the ballots in a confused tone.
Gosh…this is one heady rush. Available in tiny quantities; there’s only 25 copies in the whole wide world. Move swiftly my dear reader, move with sureness and speed or let this opportunity pass you by forever.
Star Turbine – Alterations
This upstanding duo of Sindre Bjerga and Claus Poulsen have come a long way in the last few years. Their collective name Star Turbine is well chosen as their first set of recordings were very much the sound of the ion drive, the Dylithium raga and ‘Set the controls for the heart of the sun’ omni-chord workouts. But all things change, even in the field of deep space research, and in 2015 we hear a very different sound-world pumping from Claus and Sindre’s sci-fi drone pipes.
The two live pieces that make up this ‘tour only’ disc are real heavy journeys into the unknown. The lengthier ‘Leiden’ starts in the foothills of some imagined country and hikes carefully up a frozen mountain. Electrick brooks, bubbling happily down below, become ferocious and dangerously sly underfoot the further you climb. The pretty, crisp frost gets deeper and sloppier until each boot crunch sends up explosive plumes of fine white dust, peppering the air with paranoia and panic spores. The trees, naturally, become spare and sparse. The odd rough limb points skywards, blackened against the snow pointing an accusing finger to some jealous deity in the clear night sky.
And then… it’s all calm. The occasional goat bell chimes mournfully and echoes across the valley. Your shortwave radio picks up astronaut interference; they could be reciting poetry or sending a panic-flaming SOS, but you’re too worn out from the day’s exertions to really care. The ‘clicks’ and ‘burrs’ of speech just manage to fight through the static, lulling you to sleep to dream of Spanish guitars played with lobster claws and melting butter.
‘Dawn Voyage’ seems to pick up the journey mid-dream with that familiar ‘same but different’ trick my subconscious loves to play on me.
Skip loads of the river bed silt are brushed and combed by some gently purring machine. For hours it labours, occasionally letting out a gasp of steam or erotic sigh of pleasure. By morning the silt has all gone, processed away and the machine slowly unfolds, like a lotus flower, to reveal a small statue of Niels Bohr shimmering like some solid state disco ball. Steve Lacy asks to borrow my headphones then complains loudly they are not the Beats he expected. I wake up with a question on my lips…
Forest of Eyes – Leaf Litter
If you check out the link to this beguiling new record from Forest of Eyes you’ll notice Mark Wardlaw’s mission statement for his FoE project:
Rescuing folktronica from the blahs
After a good old listen to this collection of songs and environments, at home and on the move, I can conclude that ‘yes’ Mark has accomplished this mission. Folktronica consider yourself rescued!
But Leaf Litter does so much more than that. Forest of Eyes has re-engaged the underground ‘folk’ debate to such a new level he demands a fresh chapter in Electric Eden.
Sure enough you have the sound of wide skies, painful loneliness and horizontal grey sleet recorded direct to mobile phone. Yup…you’ve got medieval instrumentation: your dulcimers, your fiddles your concertinas and of course your good old bowed psaltery.
But this very ordinary looking disc takes the sonic disturbance of folk (the jarring frequencies in voice and subject matter, the stubby finger in the ear) and overlays them with a carefully attuned appreciation of the everyday noise of life. It does this in two distinct ways. Firstly there are the songy-songs tinkered with gently, ribbed for your pleasure.
But a new world is opened with the longer pieces. They tip their hat to the traditional song form of course but quickly kick its shins with a steel-toed clog. But it’s not leg pain that keeps you awake at night; it’s the mead-based Mickey that you can’t quite forget. The deft shift of brain waves that calls you back for more over the freezing hills.
So first the songs: the scene is set with an apocalyptic instrumental ‘Regeneration Scheme Cancelled’ – a choir of thin keening tones played on a tortured dulcimer and pipe contraction (the atomically powerful bombard perhaps) making medievalists weep with its delicious modern primitive style.
You want a murder ballad? Well all you Nick Cave types take note to check out ‘Edward’, a cyclical tale that sets a new low for misery with its plaintive verse over a deep breathing drone. Both beautiful and disturbing.
And the father’s lament ‘Weary Cutters’ is sung a capella with a forlornness that’s magnified by its cliff hanging ending. There’s no happy ever after feeling… it just tails off into an agonising emptiness.
So what’s left? These are the meaty chunks…
Riot batons crash against police shields in a direct act of provocation to open ‘Strike Breaking Bastards’ a stunning, but very grimy, very cellular song-within-a-song that seamlessly incorporates the traditional Blackleg Miner with the sort of clank you’d expect on a Prick Decay record and the aforementioned politically-tinged faux field recording. This is brave work!
A brief noise interlude that begins ‘Poachers Killing Police’ clears the head with a sharp and creaking concertina and explosive machine-breaking, then words courtesy of North Yorkshire Police add a social commentary that’s far more powerful and thought-provoking than any Dog-on-a-string nonsense. (Baton down the hatches Ed – that’s bound to upset the punk primadonnas [Editor’s note: not fussed]).
I’m pretty sure this is turning out to be a god-damn IMPORTANT record before I even sip on the final, black psychedelic slush of ‘Mouldering Vine’. This is an hypnotic and nauseously overlapping tune that’s as truly twisted as a Sun City Gurls ram-jam spliced with Richard Youngs’ innocent weirdness (Lake era). The killer fade-out, like a pale sun disappearing over a damp horizon, is the perfect melancholic masterstroke.
—ooOoo—
Skrat Records (yes, the disc was ‘tour only’ but no harm in asking…)
the medicinal quality of northern noise, its alloys and compounds
May 13, 2014 at 10:16 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: claus poulsen, drone, fordell research unit, fraser burnett, free doom, george proctor, gold soundz, i torquemada, improv, inseminoid, joe murray, lee stokoe, matching head, mike simpson, molotov, new music, no audience underground, noise, noise punk, nundungeon, oppenheimer, oracle netlabel, posset, sindre bjerga, singing knives, star turbine, tapes, vocal improvisation, xazzaz
posset – friction rivers (tape, Singing Knives Records)
sindre bjerga / posset – split (CD-r, gold soundz, gs#123, edition of 25)
star turbine / inseminoid / fordell research unit / xazzaz – nundungeon (CD-r, gold soundz, gs#122, edition of 25)
I, Torquemada – The Book, The Eye, The Scourge (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE106)
Oppenheimer – Oppenheimer (CD-r, molotov, 26)
oppenheimer – js/ls/ms, js/ls/ms/mks (tape, Matching Head, mh202)
Inseminoid – Vanessa Howard’s Night Light (3” CD-r, Sheepscar Light Industrial, SLI.022, edition of 50 or download)
Surprisingly perhaps, given my status as long-term noise aficionado, I suffered my first ever migraine last week. Silver worms squirmed into the top right of my peripheral vision, wriggling downwards until their glistening made it impossible to read the newspaper I was holding. Then the left hand side of my face, upper jaw to receding hairline, seized up completely – as if a phantom of the opera mask was held clamped in place over the affected area. The pain made me feel nauseous but, in denial about what might be occurring, I decided that a few painkillers and a lie down would be sufficient treatment. The worst of it lasted about three hours.
During the following week my face and scalp remained ‘tight’ – the muscle under my left eye twitching like an oyster dripped with lemon juice. Worse though was a near constant state of seasickness which had me imagining I was swaying from side to side and made it difficult to sleep, to stomach food or to concentrate on everyday tasks. I took some time off work and visited my GP who was sufficiently concerned to prescribe some medication and insist that I saw her again if anything changed. My Dad suffered a minor stroke when he was about my age so we all wanted to make sure my brain wasn’t exploding.
Unfortunately, things deteriorated over the weekend and I reported even more, even stranger symptoms – a sunburnt feeling on my arms and hands being the weirdest – to my GP yesterday morning and she referred me immediately to Accident and Emergency at Leeds General Infirmary for a neurological assessment. I was at the hospital for six hours, four of which were spent waiting in A&E. I’ve been before in the evening and seen the bloody, alcohol-soaked horrorshow but the daytime parade of elderly patients rubbing numb limbs whilst spouses laughed nervously, each trying not to let on how frightened they were, was even more upsetting. Anyway, I eventually saw a bunch of doctors, had my noggin sliced with X-rays and got the all clear. Nowt wrong with me that a few painkillers and a lie down won’t see to.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it explains why I’m sat here typing instead of being out gallivanting. Given that all has not been well between my ears, medical opinion (and common sense) suggests that I should probably not press ’em up against the speakers at Wharf Chambers. The timing is heartbreaking as this week sees sets in Leeds from Neil Campbell, Popular Radiation, Spoils & Relics, BBBlood and RFM comrade Joe Murray as Posset. It would, of course, be a glorious way to go out – to have my head literally explode at the peak of a Paul Watson racket-crescendo, say – but my worried wife would much rather I was around to, y’know, help with the baby n’ all that. Thus here I am in Midwich Mansions, self-medicating my sulk with doses of noise from Tyneside, Edinburgh and Norway.
First then to my man Joe and his nom-de-gurgle Posset: a cassette monograph on the ever lovely Singing Knives and shared credit for a split with the ubiquitous Sindre Bjerga on the latter’s Gold Soundz imprint. Between the pair of them we are treated to a symphony for spittle and poorly-lubricated door hinge, a Punch and Judy show as performed by the inmates of Charenton Asylum directed by the Marquis de Sade, a fleet of aquatic budgerigars trilling, gargling and discussing the price of kelp, trainers squeaking on a basketball court during a game played by the anthropomorphic animal croquet teams from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, a wheelie bin full of post-midnight, soggy gremlins plotting mischief and a chipped vinyl Oliver Postgate storybook LP playing forlornly on a faulty wind-up gramophone. Occasionally in Sindre’s tracks some drone bleeds in as if his million other projects are leaking through a badly aligned tape head. Tremendous stuff, full of verve, exuberance and humour as well as a surprising and touching emotional range.
Speaking of Sindre’s million other projects: Star Turbine, his excellent duo with Claus Poulsen, leads off a compilation that could well have been curated with me in mind as the ideal listener. Four bands: Star Turbine, Inseminoid, Fordell Research Unit and Xazzaz – all favourites of mine – each donate a single 10(plus) minute track to a CD-r celebrating that line up playing the exquisitely named Nundungeon in Edinburgh earlier this year. The Turbs are in a playful mood, bringing Sindre’s current solo style to stamp gleefully around in the space afforded by their usual spacey drone. Inseminoid I will be coming onto shortly thus my later comments can be slotted in here: ‘______’. Fraser Burnett of Fordell Research Unit simply cannot put a foot wrong and his confident, expressive drone work is as satisfying as remembering there is an uneaten Easter egg still in the cellar head. Mike Simpson of Xazzaz is capable of exactly the same level of customer service but does it with added pedal-stomped, bristling loudness. Sindre had this one for sale on his recent jaunt ’round the UK – you better drop him a line to see if it is still available.
Mike Simpson also plays a part, I think, in both I, Torquemada and Oppenheimer – the former being a duo of Frater J (Jamie of Wrest? Jerome of Charles Dexter Ward?) and Frater M (Mike, probs), the latter being mainly a quartet of Jamie, Jerome, Mike and RFM heartthrob Lee Stokoe of Culver and Matching Head. I’m sure the omniscient Scott McKeating will set me straight if I have the details wrong. Both acts perform an industrial strength improv noise rock, or free punk, or doom skronk or harsh guitar wall or whatever – subgenre post-it notes won’t stick to this surface caked with filth. There is a perverse relish in referencing the Spanish Inquisition or the Manhattan Project with your band name and a dark, hopeless abandonment is certainly celebrated with the music too. It’s as morbidly beautiful as the glistening wings of a sea bird caught in an oil slick, as terrifyingly faceless as a coin eaten smooth by a corrosive fluid. I am reminded, quite purposefully I suppose, of the famous quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer following the Trinity test:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
These Tyneside nihilists would have been amongst those laughing. They see the big – the biggest – picture.
Inseminoid, the duo of Lee Stokoe and George Proctor (of Mutant Ape and Turgid Animal), are connoisseurs of horror cinema, vintage porn and exploitative art in general but their heavy drone pieces are importantly different to the gore-splattered gusto of their colleagues above. They curate a carefully sustained atmosphere of unease, understanding that true terror is often found not in the act but in its consequences, not in the situation but in its implications. Repeat listens brought to mind haunting, half-remembered, dream-troubling passages from my own limited experience with horror fiction. For example, I always found the reveal in Ringu 2 that Sadako was actually alive and sealed in the well for thirty years before dying to be as viscerally nauseating as any of the deaths portrayed. Or how about a scene from one of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood stories where a guy foolishly pokes a seemingly dead monster and has his hand bitten off? In a moment of genius, Barker steps back from the gore for a couple of sentences to let us in on the shock and dismay this moment of idiotic bravado has caused. We see the awful, disproportionate consequences and are appalled. This is what Inseminoid are up to: cool, considered, implacably hostile – absolutely compelling.
—ooOoo—
(Editor’s note: there are various Gold Soundz resources revealed by a quick Google/Discogs search but none seem current. As such, I’ve linked to Sindre’s own page and you can ask him about these releases directly.)
rfm’s 2012 round-up part one of two: the zellaby awards
January 4, 2013 at 1:59 pm | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | 11 CommentsTags: ap martlet, aqua dentata, ashtray navigations, astral social club, bbblood, castrato attack group, cathal rodgers, culver, daniel thomas, drone, eddie nuttall, electronica, etai keshiki, fordell research unit, hairdryer excommunication, half an abortion, hasan gaylani, hobo sonn, improv, joe murray, joined by wire, kev sanders, kieron piercy, lee stokoe, live music, melanie o'dubhslaine, michael clough, miguel perez, neck vs throat, neil campbell, new music, no audience underground, noise, paul watson, petals, popular radiation, posset, shameless self-congratulation, sheepscar light industrial, space victim, spoils and relics, star turbine, striate cortex, tapes, the skull mask, truant, wharf chambers, yol, zellaby awards
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second annual Zellaby Awards, presented in association with Radio Free Midwich and hosted, via satellite link-up, from the quarantine ward at Midwich Mansions.
And what a year, eh? From watching Mel O’Dubhslaine reinventing music in Kieron Piercy’s basement through to laughing out loud on the bus as I listened to BBBlood’s breaking glass tape, the year in music has been remarkable.
Whilst the emphasis in these awards is on bloggable recorded music, the live performances I saw in 2012 could warrant a whole other sack of prizes – such was the astounding quality on offer. Congratulations to the venues and promoters of my fair city of Leeds for making them happen. Truly there is a renaissance at hand and anyone with a fiver who lives within commutable distance of Wharf Chambers can come and see it.
On a personal level, this has been my most satisfying and successful year in music since I first leant my elbow on a keyboard. I was delighted and humbled by the reception that met my return as midwich both as a live act and over a series of well-received (and largely sold-out) releases. The reanimation of Truant has proved most entertaining too. I’ve been careful to watch and learn from my betters and may finally, after twelve years on and off, be getting somewhere with this drone business…
OK, enuff with the vague preamble! It’s time to carve the turkey and dish out some meat!
—ooOoo—
Almost. First, some methodological asides:
One: the music mentioned below may not have been released in 2012, although most of it was. To qualify it just had to be heard by me for the first time in the calendar year 2012.
Two: I have taken the editorial decision to exclude releases that I feature on. Modesty is not a virtue I can be accused of but awarding myself prizes is a bit much even for me. This led to an interesting conundrum when making the big decision in the final category…
Three: there are the same five award categories as last time. Should an artist win big in one of them they may appear overlooked in others. This is deliberately done in the interests of plugging as much as excellence as possible. No-one should get the hump as I love all my children just the same.
—ooOoo—
Now if you’d kindly take your seat, the ceremony is finally about to begin…
5. The “I’d never heard of you 10 minutes ago but now desperately need your whole back catalogue” New-to-RFM Award goes to…
(with special mentions for BBBlood and Spoils and Relics.)
A lot of brusque, hard-bitten and jaded noise types have found themselves swooning like 12 year old Justin Bieber fans over the work of Eddie Nuttall this year. His small but perfectly formed back catalogue has the fascinating, alien charm of a pea-green lizard, eyeballing you from behind the glass of a reinforced aquarium. In an age of excess, the austere control he exercises over his minimal music is as refreshing as snow. You should have seen me elbow grandma out of the way to get hold of his latest. Big things still to come, I hope.
4. The “Astral Social Club” Award, given for maintaining quality control over a huge body of work making it impossible to pick individual releases in an end of year round up goes to…
(with honourable credit afforded to Lee Stokoe.)
The work of Kevin Sanders sounds like nothing but itself. Sure, a less conscientious commentator could categorize it as ‘drone’ or ‘noise’, even ‘improv’ in places, but these are just reference points that Kev politely nods to on his way past to somewhere else. Each dispatch from his own label, hairdryer excommunication, or guest appearance elsewhere, is another segment of alternative cartography, another section of the map he is constructing that overlays the everyday, revealing previously hidden connections, secret tunnels. This is why it is impossible to pick out individual releases for special comment but why every little bit is essential.
3. The Special Contribution to Radio Free Midwich Award goes to…
(also in the frame being Joe Posset and Miguel Perez.)
My burgeoning bromance with Daniel Thomas (who I knew previously by his given name) has been the talk of the no-audience underground in 2012. Our friendship has spurred me on in my creative endeavour and has led to an overhaul in the way I think about midwich and the place of this blog in the big/small scheme of things. The immediate success of his label Sheepscar Light Industrial was due to a carefully thought through ‘business model’ that has breathed new life into the ‘micro-label’ format. I’ve been sorely tempted back in that direction as a result – he makes it look so effortless (lolz etc.). The chap is a force for the good and well deserves this public pat on the back.
Likewise Joe and Miguel whose infectious enthusiasm has been great for morale all through 2012. An email from either is always a soul-lifting treat. Special thanks to Joe for actually contributing to RFM in the most practical way: 3,000 words of terrific reviews. His whole end of year account can now be read (in six parts, it totals 32,000 words!) here.
2. The Label of the Year Award goes to…
(with Sheepscar Light Industrial manfully accepting silver.)
For the second year running. I needn’t go on at great length: Andy Robinson’s vision, integrity and hard work led to a world-enhancing series of releases. A package from him is always a drop-everything-else cause for celebration. He also released the undisputed album of the year in the Victorian Electronics box – a four CD set, exquisitely packaged with astounding care and attention to detail – featuring four artists at the height of their powers. It led to a celebratory gig at Wharf Chambers which is generally held to be one of the highlights of the musical year and the edition sold out in a couple of days. I hope that it will be reissued in some form some day but in the meantime it remains a perfect historical document. So how come I’m talking about it here? Well, one of the featured artists is midwich so it is disqualified from the big prize. Tough, I know, but thems the rules. Hopefully being the only two-time winner will soften the blow for Andy. Congratulations, man.
1. The Album of the Year Award
There is so much to choose from this year that it is almost embarrassing. First, in no particular order, are those that would have been in the top twenty if it wasn’t for the brutal fact that a top ten is much more dramatically satisfying…
- Astral Social Club – ASC #23
- Ashtray Navigations – Three Spots Two Circles
- Hobo Sonn – Synthetic Preserves
- Fordell Research Unit – The True Meaning of Red
- The Popular Radiation CD-r series
- A Brief History of Joined By Wire
- Star Turbine – Equilibrium
- Posset – Correct Come
- Ap Martlet – Pyrite
All terrific stuff, click on each to read my thoughts at length and for contact/buying details.
Now on with the top ten, in reverse order of course:
10. castratoattackgroupetaikeshiki
The adrenal rush of these punk vignettes is as focussed as toothache and as effective as a blow-dart to the neck (Etai Keshiki)
…and…
It is a life-affirming, nostrils flaring, magnificent wig-out … There are no lulls, no tricksy passages of noodling, no lumpy transitions. This is, ironically given the name of the band, completely balls out from beginning to end (Castrato Attack Group).
It is, as you’d expect from these two, artfully constructed, nuanced and textured as well being totally balls-out gonzo in places. Clinking-plinking-tinkling, smashing, grinding, crunching, squeaking, that kind of ‘pouring sharps’ noise as the pieces settle – like the apocryphal Eskimo having 40 words for snow, a specialist vocabulary is needed to describe the effects these chaps pull from their single sound source…
This is heroic stuff, recorded simply and cheaply with a red-raw honesty … Miguel was amused to see this described as ‘bluesy’ in Vital Weekly but during Part Three, the epic nine minute centrepiece, it isn’t hard to imagine him standing at the crossroads, his loose-fingered raga whipping the desert dust into strange, dancing anthropomorphic shapes. The pieces either side illustrate the expressive power of Miguel’s technique: sore-eyed from the campfire or crackling and mysterious or solemn and contemplative.
7. Daniel Thomas – Delighted in Isolation
Leaving dinosaur-related whimsy aside let me lean across the table, look you in the eye and conclude thus: Delighted in Isolation is an accomplished and deeply satisfying set. The impressive technical savvy with which it is composed and compiled is never an end in itself but instead always serves the flow. There are stand-out tracks – I’ve listened to that final section god knows how many times – but more importantly there is a coherence, a unifying aesthetic, throughout which allows for a sophisticated emotional response from the listener. Dan is a storyteller.
A gloriously super-minimal analogue throb. When listened to at the appropriate volume, that is: so loud as to be consciousness threatening, it sounds like the sewing machine that God used when she was stitching up creation. Fucking amazing.
5. Space Victim – Psychotropic Mind Murder
Passages of this album are properly fried. The psychonauts amongst you may be reminded of the ‘chameleon’ stage of an acid trip: peaking like crazy, your senses fizzing like sherbet fireworks, your skin rippling and morphing to mimic your surroundings, your eyes bulging and swivelling independently of each other. Or so I hear. I wouldn’t know, of course.
4. Mel O’Dubhslaine – I Can Remember the Faces of All the Grebs at My School
Absolutely extraordinary, nothing like anything else I’ve ever been sent. Thirteen tiny tracks, each properly titled, of spiky, squirming surrealism played on bizarre cross-pollinated hybrid instruments. …Grebs… is a unified collection expressing something wonderfully unfathomable.
3. Aqua Dentata – March Hare, Kraken Mare
This is precise, slow-moving, crisply defined and unafraid of periods of silence. It has an attention diverting flow and an interestingly oblique rhythm. The rise and fall is like the breathing of a quarantined astronaut, infected by some spaceborne virus which is now busy reconfiguring his DNA.
The other-worldliness is especially evident on the short second track when what sounds like a recorder is used as an unplugged analogue for the pulls and throbs of electronic feedback. The first and final tracks employ the near perfect length and despite being created with, y’know, instruments and that, have an unmistakeably ‘Lilithian’ xenobiological vibe. I trust that by now I have established this is a very, very good thing indeed.
2. Cathal Rodgers – Thirty-Nine Years Of Decay
Thirty-Nine Years Of Decay is artfully constructed, beautifully evocative and emotionally harmonious. It is melancholy without being maudlin or sentimental, gruffly realistic without being unkind or gratuitous. It is the sound of someone trying to process difficult notions about time, about aging, about mortality and taking seriously the enormity of the challenge. For the record: I am talking about layers of pedal-loop throbbing, scything guitar and/or synth drones, high tension metallic pulses all beautifully recorded and elegantly balanced. A point is being made eloquently and convincingly.
…and drum roll please as the golden envelope is opened… Ladies and gentlemen, the Zellaby Award for album of the year 2012 goes to:
Forgive me quoting myself at such length but the story is a good one…
Earlier this year me and Miguel Pérez, RFM’s correspondent of the Americas, produced a split CD-r: Miguel in his psychedelic raga guise as The Skull Mask, I contributed a throb-heavy Midwich track. Fifty copies were manufactured and offered to friends and to those willing to trade or brave enough to express an interest. One of those who kindly responded was Yol – see below for my thoughts on his art – who sent a copy of PUSHTOSHOVE in return. I was mighty impressed and threw some mp3s of it across the Atlantic to Miguel who found himself just as appreciative. Those two got in touch with each other.
Soon files were being swapped and neighbours unnerved. The work was fashioned into shape with machine tools, willpower and spit and now the results of this experiment in transatlantic improv can be revealed. It’s a fucking triumph.
To be specific: what we have is a five track, 32 minute CD-r, packaged in another example of Yol’s winningly stark graphic style. Two of the pieces are Miguel improvising over material provided by Yol, the other three vice versa. I think the difference between the two sets of tracks is marked and interesting. One is furious, claustrophobic, the other has more air to it, a little more room in it to pace nervously up and down. I’m not going to tell you which are which, though, as I think it might be fun to try and work it out for yourself.
Yol’s contribution is aptly described as ‘Throat Attack & Smashing of Objects’ on the back of the CD-r. His vocalisations range from the almost conversational to horrifying bellowing to teeth-clenched, spittle-flecked groaning. It is remarkable – unlike anything else I’ve been sent. His utter commitment to the physicality of the performance is awesome. Scraping, crashing, the dropping of metal objects augment and divide the stuttering tirade, like punctuation.
Miguel’s part is described as ‘Guitar Neck, Hair Sticks & String Damage’ and his style here is similar to that on recent recordings released under his own name. No effects, no overdubs, rarely even sustain, hard picked, unforgiving in its discipline yet nuanced, subtle and compelling. There is no ornament to it because none is needed.
The collaboration is a success, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Miguel underscores the rhythms and cadence of Yol’s glossolalia. Yol’s furious delivery both bounces off of and is contained by Miguel’s guitar, like the steel ball bearing on a pinball table.
…and there we have it. Another magnificent year.
The Award Ceremony
Well, given that Yol is in Hull and Miguel is on the other side of the world in Mexico I quickly gave up on the logistics of actually handing over a prize. Instead of a voucher (as won by Ashtray Navigations last year) I will be putting an equivalent amount of money behind the release of the second Neck Vs. Throat album in the New Year. Yes, I’m getting my hands dirty with this one. Is it the return of fencing flatworm recordings? Watch this space!
Right, everything that isn’t music to be summarised in part two…
artifacts of the no-audience underground: star turbine – equilibrium
January 9, 2012 at 8:34 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: claus poulsen, drone, improv, new music, no audience underground, noise, sindre bjerga, star turbine, striate cortex
Star Turbine – Equilibrium (Striate Cortex, S.C.44.)
It seems fitting to begin this year’s reviews with the latest from last year’s best label, especially when the release in question is of such impeccable quality. Take note everyone: Andy Robinson’s Striate Cortex has not only set the bar ridiculously high but also nonchalantly hopped over it whilst the rest of us were taking off our tracksuits.
What we have here is a square, black presentation box – the sort of thing a piece of jewellery might come packaged in – encircled with a sash bearing the title and name of the band. Sliding this off and removing the lid (decorated inside with gold marbled paper) reveals a square of fluff. This secures two mini-CDrs decorated with inky abstractions and housed within their own dinky black paper wallets. There are also three card inserts decorated with similar patterns on one side and the details of the release on the other. It is a remarkable object. I opened it gingerly, with a slack-jawed sense of wonder, knowing that Andy constructed each of these packages himself. All one hundred of them. Fortunately, the care, attention to detail and beauty evident in the packaging is justified by the music.
Star Turbine is a long-distance collaboration between ubiquitous force-for-the-good Sindre Bjerga and similarly busy multi-instrumentalist Claus Poulsen. The first of the two discs contains five shortish tracks of droning atmospherics augmented by guitarish scrapes and found sounds dropped in, looped and left to abrade each other. Whilst neither dubby nor minimal, these tracks contain a convincing evocation of space. Whether this is abyssal blackness or infinite sky depends, I guess, on the mood of the listener.
The second disc contains two long tracks that explore similar territory but do so in a darker, more circumspect way. The emptiness remains but the agoraphobia is pitched a little higher in the mix. Could that hissing sound be a leak in your spacesuit? As with many of Andy’s releases, the compelling depth and mystery of this music is revealed on repeat listens. It stands up to scrutiny, in fact it benefits from it.
The track titles invoke science terminology – ‘wave detector’, ‘molecular cluster’ etc. – in the same way that early techno used to do: to add a futuristic sheen rather than to refer to anything concrete. I suspect this is knowingly tongue-in-cheek as the game is given away both by the title of the track ‘Chromatic Underwear (Polyatomic Molecules)’ and by the burst of muted ‘Jupiter Jazz’ style joy-synth that makes a surprise appearance at its conclusion.
Whilst the track titles can be put to one side, the concept of ‘equilibrium’ has more interesting structural consequences. This is not equilibrium in the sense of the solid-state, unchanging drones championed by, say, the underrated band midwich. This is equilibrium maintained by the delicate balancing of competing forces, made possible by a combination of seemingly coincidental factors, the removal of any one of which would send the marbles crashing down like a game of cosmic Kerplunk. There are various ‘quantity theory’ games that can be played by combining the elements of this release: are the two discs in equilibrium? The tracks on each disc? Each track within itself? Over the whole track length or does every moment have its own balance? It is an enormously impressive act, like a snail crawling up the blade of a knife.
Aside: this is something that I actually saw happen back when I kept an allotment and grew some of my own fruit and vegetables. Enjoying a break from my labours, I was amazed to spot a snail ascending the cutting edge of a foot-long knife I had plunged point-first into the soil at my feet. This slow, death-defying glide was hypnotising – a living metaphor I knew would come in handy some day. The mud-filled cuts on my hands attested to the blade’s sharpness. When the snail reached the handle I did not throw it over the fence onto the road (the usual fate for such creatures) but, impressed, placed it on a cabbage leaf in the compost bin instead.
*Ahem*, anyway – to conclude: the fact that Equilibrium can be had for a mere five quid plus postage strikes me as a fantastic bargain. In these straightened times we are all after ‘value for money’ and, whilst it might seem an odd concept to apply to art, I have to say this release has it in spades. A beautifully packaged object that will repay your attention many times over. Need I go on?
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
radio free midwich 