MICROVIEW :: Volume 5 By TJ Norris

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:: Ambience has a new name on this release by Stuart Dodman called You Fill Me. The sine wave frequencies here are taken from architectural spaces. The muted hum purrs mildly and shifts dramatically if you are adorning headphones. Its reverberation creates this channeling of waves that is like getting an inner ear massage. Brighton-based (UK) Dodman has worked as a visual installation artist for over a decade and I believe this 9-track disc is his solo debut. With a firm nod to alums of Raster-Noton, You Fill Me traces around the high pitch beams of sound to create a sort of dot matrix composition. My favorite track, “BN”, is like a filtered fine mist slow-motion drone, deep roar with a sublime top-of-the-scale tonal ending. Filled with a certain youthful angst that I can’t really pin down – but that is what makes it so interesting to try and catch.

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:: From Ljubljana’s newest (only?) experimental label, RX:TX was launched as a Slovenian collective label back in 2002 and its fourth offering, the 128BPM Double Fold, is from Scanner (Robin Rimbaud). Based on lauded Canadian writer Nicholson Baker’s book of the same name the eight tracks here merge as one extended techno-mix. Rimbaud’s usual tape samples (from 22 years of source tapes!) of disjointed voices appear straightaway on the title track – but less elusive as usual, more per the uptempo mix as part of the instrumentation per se. He keeps the rhythms tight and the elasticity of the beats are in high check. This is a fun record for him, it’s basically a funky dance record with rhythmic limbo and tempo plots. There are similar loops here that could be attributed to similar complexities found in Plastikman’s work. Though Scanner is in a class all his own, probably the busiest (and most well traveled) living solo “underground” electronic musician – but minus any titles and genres, as he is constantly breaking them in half. This is a pre-Summer indulgence.

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:: Organum (David Jackman) and Z’ev (Stefan Weisser) are two of the most elusive and enigmatic characters in all of the contemporary experimental music circles. Therefore, it is a pleasure to find that they have joined forces of discontent and dissonant folly on Tinnitus Vu. After meeting back in 1999, they harmonized their minds and chords and compositional detritus in 2003. The result is a ghostly ep that runs for a too short, but bliss, fifteen and a half minutes. But when you got it you GOT it! And they have. This moves like a freaking apparition, a translucent drone and sandpapery mist behind which lurk some grueling, wild beasties atop which an occasional piano stroke appears and echoes. This is a sorcerer’s stone cracked open wide to glean the gutted random, peculiar contents. My only complaint is the skimpy length of material – this is a harmonious union of like minds, and I could sit easily for an additional hour taking in the peculiar scapes created by these true artists. By far, one of the most highly effective CD tray cards by Jon Wozencroft yet, the lackluster x-ray of skeletal coils and winter scene are foreign, distant, removed emulating its innards.

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:: Scratchy residues emerge slowly and surely on the newest collaboration from Asmus Tietchens and David Lee Myers disc 60:00 (which incidentally clocks in at 59:59), broken into six distinct ten-minute vignettes. The mellow looping of analogue equipment as put through layered sound source edits cause the Spartan material to glint resiliently. Comedic pauses and elongated echoes illustrate that serious composition can grimace back at any listener on tenterhooks. Feedback frequency is used as an atonal charting device dividing the ears from right to left brain and vice-versa. I call it scrap rhythm for no reason other than it sounds like someone bowing away on various width pieces of metals and recycled what not in a local junkyard. There is a value in the discovery of improvised sound that comes from an unknown place, even from mistakes. On 60:00 this sense of exploration is incalculable, its almost about the chance of its minimal components assimilating as if through a will of divine providence. This is not all-pleasant listening, quite to the contrary; its aesthetic is quite dense, for a disciplined ear. Though Tietchens’ and Myers’ combined sparks crunch and delight in there informalities, the overall impact is an invasive experiment on our rational sense of space. Try a blindfold; you may trip into the vortex of the hour.

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:: If you tried you wouldn’t possibly be able to illustrate
the sounds on Evol’s (Roc and Anna) newest Punani Shell
more precisely as Scott Draves’ 1993 “Fire” – a completely fractalized ice
spike floating in the dark which becomes the disc’s cover art. Taking their
love for computer sciences to the nth degree Evol, who have previously
recorded for the cerebral imprints Mego, Fals.ch, Alku use the rubbery
faculties of bouncy noise to encrypt Punani Shell with a razor sharp
atonalism that follows its own sense of abandoned humor. Whether they are
referencing Close Encounters or freebasing the innards of some of the best
work by Squarepusher, it is a given that this record is a downright serious
22-minute interpretation of experimental molecular-sized galaxies. When what
you hear sounds like a stampede of GameBoy characters who’ve jumped from the
flat realm to that of the fourth dimension and attempting to pierce through
a series of talc dusted dental dams, you know Evol’s inherent philosophy is
dedicated to the field of imaginative psychedelia. Get lost!

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:: Beginning with what sounds like a micro-forklift continues with a wash of purely hypnotizing ragged drone. Label-bouncing Pimmon (Tigerbeat6, Sirr-ecords, Meme, etc.) otherwise known as Australia’s Paul Gough has traveled a bit to make his sound varietals available to all nations. Here he has teamed up with Staalplaat for a limited edition that is a sort of leftfield record. Mort Aux Vaches is more an experimental venture that is drained from his more pop leanings. There is a curious Pink Panther mystique (“Hip Suplex”) on the seasick wiggly waters (“Any Atom of Fear”) that don’t necessarily make you feel at home. But if I wanted to stay at home I wouldn’t venture into this wicked world of buoy beats and uncertain static. I think Pimmon is what you get when you roll Jack Dangers inside-out and spin him around counter-clockwise. Pretty complex microtonalities brushed and layered to a gauzy finish.

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:: Detroit rock city’s J. Torrance sounds like the awkward stepsister of the latest Kompakt release. On “Yard of Ale” the distant background can’t contain the levitating voice (ala Opus III) that floats while the funky BPMs build some blur, fuzz and casual sizzle. On the hilariously titled “Gweynth Paltrow Butt Naked (Now that’s what I call Coldplay)” is like a half-hearted jazzscape with interruptive beats over a piano sample. It pokes fun at what could be assumed as the center of contemporary jazz from Thirsty Ear, DJ Spooky, Compost, K2 and a whole slew of divergent free expressionists. It toys with miniaturizing itself, but is appropriately edited to be real short – almost like a haiku comment on where jazz has gone in Y2K4. “Coney Island Dogbiscuit” is a a succession of overstuffed beats in their most organic regurgitated state of being. Part Chicks on Speek, parts Wolfgang Voight, it definitely has a certain German clubhouse sound goin’ on. At the finish we are met with a “Bucket of Blood”. Its mimeo graphic agility tumbles over and over in a percussive rhythm with a magical time-machine melody skipping in the background. What starts out as sounds to get you out on your feet end up futon flat – but this is only in counterbalance balance to the Japanese cut-up discussion between two friends that punctuates the last-call.

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:: Montreal-based indie folk singer/guitarist Elizabeth Anka Vajagic sings in tongues, guttaral, dramatic, defiant, subdued – and all at once. With a cast of backing musicians from bands Crackpot and Silver Mt. Zion among others, she wriggles and wrangles through ashy cuts that conjure a gothic cosmos where dreams are bought and sold. A voice like a chanteuse with the freedom to grumble and stare into the darkness as well as light, she paves her own destiny. These songs have vague prayer-like confinement without the vestiges of typical singer-songrwriter issues, this ain’t pop music. A “death in your face” (to coin one of her lines) looks at the rough-edged world we really live in. The upright bass on track 4 is as deep as the impassioned vocal. Vajagic isn’t trapped by either her peers’ trends or her influences standards, and she could probably be compared to many, but in my humble opinion she is a bright flavor of her own design.

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:: From France’s 0101 Music’s Parallel Series comes Capture from The Digital Intervention (Paul Kendall and Olivia Louvel). Sensual vocals and manipulated tape recorders sounding like the buzzer at a barbershop make this a fairy tale come to life like an animated soundtrack. It’s a bit of a wiry world created by this duo’s debut effort, something evocative of a true artistic pairing. A hazy mix of poetics and offbeat music concrete akin to a bizarre clash between the worlds of say, Patti Smith’s spoken word attitude, Bjork’s vocal posturing and the distortions of THU20. They are not ashamed to show the ugly and profane, even if they are shaded in layers of frequencies and a jilted climb towards the pop realm. There is a moment or two when the impersonation of Diamanda Galas is righteously atoned, but that doesn’t stop this record from flying. And the comparisons don’t end there as you could connect the dots of Louvel’s voice to Beth Gibbons, Garbage, Sneaker Pimps and even Alison Goldfrapp. So, yeah, she is in good company, and they play accordion and croon in a wonderful French tongue – so they can’t be all that bad, eh? Let’s hope these two continue to unravel future embellished and informed mysteries. A lush life begets a complex mix of unfamiliar terrain.

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:: Blixa Bargeld + co. bring their circus back to town and this time it’s a bit more acoustic, and relaxed. These gents have been at it forever and their sound has been circumventedly reinvented with each effort. This is their first record since 2000, and the mechanical percussion is more sparse and cryptic, while their sound concept is all based on the wind. On the nearly fourteen-minute title cut the emphasis is on all things in motion, motorized baggage carts, escalators, taxis, etc – via a scripted rattling off of such mobiles. They add some trademarked drumming on metal and other rubbery sounds of helium release. The skilled patience and pacing here is down to a science. “Ein leichtes leises Säuseln” is German spoken word to a pastoral backdrop. By all unconventional means this offbase quintet of poet/artist cling-clangers have taught many lessons in linguistics. Einsturzende Neubauten in total is a legend in almost 2 and a half decades in the making – on Perpetuum Mobile performing what some may see as kodo haikus in their native Deutchland tongue. This is the most focused work I have heard of theirs, more proverb, less angst as on “Ein seltener Vogel” where the sounds come from a deeper consciousness – from drawings and reverb, from experience and myth.

Coming from someone who has been easily annoyed by some of their output in the past 8 or so years, this proves that these bad boys on the periphery have done their fair share of penance, making up for their make-up. “Ozean und Brandung” is a studio interpretation, or recreation of a savage windstorm as heard through electronic means, silhouetted by a cast of radiant light and barricaded from the unthinkable damaging possibilities. It’s the essence of the force of wind, through perhaps the sounds of the cover’s depicted airbrush nozzle? These feisty baby boomers maintain their sophistication for the unexpected by taking their studio online as this recording was done live while fans could communicate during the creative process. The digipak inner packaging includes dizzying photos (the cover art, a postmodern fabrication of the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed), drawings, scribbles and scratches all making up the patchwork to a phantom band who has in many ways influenced everyone from Sigor Ros to Radiohead (well, you might not think that’s a stretch – but the proof is in the aura these bands create). And it’s not all packaging.

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:: Tokyo’s Chib is Yukiko Chiba. Her debut solo release on Fat-Cat is a sleeper balancing act between outright up-pop and compartmentalized minimal beats. She makes melody part of the mix of sequencers, while renewing our sensibilities for slower, simpler structures and elongated enjoyment of playful electronica. If you could imagine walking through FAO Schwartz blindfolded wearing a bear costume with headphones you may have a first impression. Moco is a startling debut for an emerging artist! The ever-popular reconstruction of cut/paste voice samples make their way to “+” as do fireworks, clinking glasses like vibes and a drunk bass hum that hangs above throughout. Chib recycles vocals industrially by projecting them on the background with hints of a kind of 16MM memoir. Traditional Japanese bells are coded into the feathery track “Hon”. Each track has its own distinct character, which is always a good sign when an artist is experimenting with possibilities. Often this strategy just falls flat, but Chib takes it on full frontal! In the end her “Long” track leaves a bit for contemplation, with folky-slow guitars and gameboy blips all the way home.

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:: Stockholm’s twentysomething BJ Nilsen (Hazard) has the latest release on Touch’s live Generator series curated by Christian Fennesz. The series has also included work by S.E.T.I., Philip Jeck, Raphael Toral and Fennesz. “Hazard” was recorded in Vienna in June of 2003 and is a 38-minute calm before the storm that wakes, sinks and meanders through its watery depths. IN his fourth proper release, the first outside of the Hazard moniker, this proves to be an aesthetically ambient journey through the core of an isolated countryside, bare to the elements. The few hints of menacing mosquitoes are few and far between, but the purity of realism makes one wonder how he makes a laptop do that. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty nerdy hack of it all, as I am completely disinterested – though his union with the machine has a flavor of brooks and streams and creepy crawlers. This single track has an excess of cinematic flare with organ pipes bringing it to an exhalant conclusion. His upcoming work with like field recording whiz Chris Watson will be another welcome indulgence for the weary city dweller among us.

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Essential Links ::

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