>>> Key
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:: To coin an important phrase, what you have here is music with “no commercial potential” and I think all involved would like to keep it that way. London-based (“anti-label”) Sijis.com (“the home of music with limited appeal”) has taken on the latest project from Freiband (Frans de Waard) in this unlikely remix that sounds like de Waard has interpreted a beautiful ambient drone and added an effect that gives it the sound of an old cassette tape. The editing process has left Freiband with a sound akin to a ghostly shoreline with a repetitive sound that emulates a creaky rocking chair sick cat purring as if its being tended to. In these 15 1/2 minutes the tonal shift is minimal but the volume cascades gently as does the addition of some vague statics, towards the end becoming more of a penetrating vibration.
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:: Scott Monteith (aka Deadbeat) dominated at last year’s Sonar and Mutek festivals. It was great to see a young guy in progress, and great to see him releasing this new disc on Stefan Betke’s Berlin-based imprint. Something Borrowed, Something Blue was recorded between 2002-03 and is a giant leap from his last release Wild Life Documentaries (~scape). As the “sequel” to that former recording, Monteith’s “deep dub” sound has been somewhat elongated and the BPMs have increased, and there belies a more overall romantic texture to his sound. The classical literary title reference establishes the perhaps striving for a more formal, poetic approach to his material. “White Out” combines the ball-bearing animation of a combustible spray paint can with a dub meets click energy that causes an uncontrollable head and shoulder groove. The body absorbs the sound and the sound instructs the body’s movement. “Requiem” is sort of an extension off “White Out” adding, slowly, a bit more scattered and apprehensive percussion. Though the track doesn’t go far enough, it becomes too repetitive and minimal that it gets somewhat lost, until a pop dub comes out from behind the base haze and makes amends. Throughout, a scratchy hue continues on most tracks, acting as an intro/precursor to what pops out. This truth is self-evident on “Fixed Elections” where Deadbeat takes charge on a completely overdubbed voice sample that is fully mutated; in essence completely obliterating what is being said. Given that this disc is a document of the nine moths that concluded in his marriage might partially explain a certain emotional connectedness to the material as my standout track, “A Joyful Noise (Part 1)”, attests. In its 7+ minutes it mesmerizes with a right-left, left-right channeling of sandy beats, culminating in the equivalent of aural hypnotism. Watch for this guy playing Europe all this month!
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*GERMANY / UNITED STATES :: Granted, this duo have been touring and bringing in some lingually interesting MC’s in every town they land in, though this is somewhat of an image restructure. In their first album in four years Disconnected takes Funkstörung to a new place filled with pop dreams. The time off has allowed them to occupy their talents by remixing a host of mostly hits and some misfires, but their live show has gone undaunted and has kept their sound fresher than a stainless steel crisper could manage. Oh my, what’s this song called “Chopping Heads”? It’s street-level Prince meets Apollo Creed in a ghetto funk death crush. Slice it, dice it, it’s all that. And the core of what these two skinny and high experimenters have learned in their last half dozen years has been altered in what they may term “kung-fu funk.” Yeah, that pretty much sums this up and its extension “Habitual Citizens.” The title track plays on a rhythm coined first by Portishead, but with a rougher, more dub inflected rendition in the lips of vocalist Enik.
Working with a host of singers, beatboxes and other manipulators of the human tongue, Funkstörung brings the funk, albeit melancholic here at the disc’s center. Lou Rhodes from Lamb offers her wonderfully youthful, pure voice on “Sleeping Beauty.” Like candy. This is one of the more standard pop vehicles these boys have plated to wax, and it sounds real good, but is missing the important edge of most of what we have anticipated from great records like Appetite for Disctruction. They say they’ve gotten bored of instrumental music and want to incorporate hip-hop and classical. Well that’s too bad for the rest of us – some of this ends up sounding a bit too much like a car commercial and Enik’s best Sting impression on “Like A Poet” over a sappy High Llamas backing track just punctuates this. New York’s Tes plays the real sh*t with their “Fat Camp Feva” and this is uplifting “hydrolic” hip-hop pop of the finest rep, meeting DJ Krush and OutKast. They may be doing something healthy by deconstructing glossy, American hip-hop, so nods to them. In many ways the flaws on Disconnected are made up throughout, the filler is filler and all will see that for what it is, as again witnessed on the disposable “Mr. Important” with typical rhymes by Rob Sonic but as the curtain closes Massive Attack vocalist Sarah Jay’s birdsong “Captured in Tones.” The lyrics are interesting and soulful; the percussion tracks surrounded her and help her small voice project.
But there is something essential missing that I can’t quite tap into, maybe the addition of vocals have become such an essential counter-balance to the fusion of interesting sounds from nowhere, and this relies heavily on star power. So, yes, Funkstörung is growing by leaps and bounds and haven’t quite sold out yet. I have the feeling their next effort may be a jazz record with strings…who knows.
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:: Jean-Pierre Saccomani creates contemporary electronic music that has a dizzying fusion of sensibilities previously exposed by Steve Roach, Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. It’s not quite new age, and not quite psychedelic, but it’s got enough of a realistic darker side that has the worthiness of a second spin. Sure, the passages are harmoniously sculpted with sequencers and Fairlight precision, though Saccomani’s compositions may be best benefited from television mini-series and other soundtrack-related subject matter. The standout track here is the special “Nimbus Cosmique” which could illustrate Samuel R. Delany’ “Babel 17” quite fittingly. So, yes, it does feel a bit like a retrofit “Space 1999.” These are long and totally digital passages that require a soundstage, almost too dramatic for CD format. “A l’approche d’un trou noir” starts off as if you were inside an airtight chamber and after plunging your way out have discovered anew euphoric underworld lit in very precise coloration to meet your senses, but something curious lurks below. Sci-fi lovers will eat this up. Others may define this as background noise. And for someone who thanks everyone from Stravinsky to Styx in the liner notes you may have a clue early on.
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:: Video and sound artist Scott Allison’s live performance in Philadelphia as sc.all is a decelerated foggy drone. In this small, hand-silk screened edition, what’s left is the excess fuel burning off from the edges of a hot rocket. There is very little outside the repetitive cycle here, a muted siren pulsates glowingly until getting eaten up by the fuzzy static.
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:: Squeaky wheels keep on churnin’ Claudio keeps on burnin’…..OK, in what could only be described as a clown jazz quartet jammed heavy into a tight squeeze fun house with little air pressure, so goes The Work Called Kitano. Rocchetti has employed the addition of Manuela Bennetton (Apple and voice), Dario Neri (piano) and Thomas Benetello (stairs and voice) as he plunks away at his doublebass and toyes with the rest of the electronic gears. If you were drunk the notes would all blend together, perhaps forming a classic Coltrane number, but here it is imminently impossible to get there through the growingly engorged balloons and percussive turmoil. In fact, it sounds like they’ve taken multiple practice tune-up sessions and re-spliced them back together into a textured collage of sound, a patchwork. On “Burned” what would be violin, is most likely a Philip Glass lockgroove sliced and diced over and above by frictitious banging and deconstructive surgeries. Neri’s lovely piano on “My Love Was Sitting On the Mortician’s Knees” recalls some of Current 93’s more sadomasochistic moments in repose. This has all the right elements of People Like Us without the constant, instantaneous reminders of pop iconography. It’s like an orchestra on crack – it bathes in its own deterioration. The layers are endless, and so are the samples – this must have taken an eternity to edit. Rocchetti gives us a broad-minded and warped introduction into the mind of a challenging new experimenter.
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:: Sebastian Thomson (Trams AM) has broken out into “new” ground. “The Frequency” deals its debut self-titled disc that crosses 1980’s attitude electro-rock (ala the Cars, etc.) with some of the generally weird antics learned in his years in the front seat of the retro-electro Trans AM. This one barely hits the mark, though this trio or quartet has a hell of a time while making catchy hooks like those on the funk of the Shriekback-ish “Stop It.” Certainly a homage to a few decades when pop was truly Technicolor though in Y2K its faded glories are a bit far-fetched. The guitars grumble like those heard on “The Crow” soundtrack, Filter, God Lives Underwater and a barrelful of monkeys from the mid 90s, remember that sound? (Alright, I forgive you). What is just not so refreshing here is the vocal awkwardness, sounding appropriately like a debut but still soulless. In the age of other slacker lipped heavies like Beck and Schneider TM, when you hear “Erasing Myself” you almost wish they would. OK, I admit I like the slapstick poppy synths of “Zapatos Blancos” but the rest is pretty lackluster and doesn’t save this one from sinking. Guitars and drums, ahem. Maybe it’s me.
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:: The trio that could opens “Shredded Paper, But” with a screechy metal wheel and some random flute-like whistle off in the shaded background. Bhob Rainey’s treated sax is more of a percussive tunnel than the trad tool in your average marching band. My favorite part of this recording is the free-percussion packing tape roll as heard on “Here Teething Moths Have Passed.” While the titles could be anagrams for unrest, the offbeat synthesis of consciousness has flown right out the window to lead the way to new sound canvases. Even Jon Mueller’s quirky toaster with halo drawing cover art is a tongue in cheek via a jab in the ribs. On “Holes” Mueller leaves only a few stones unturned in the world of what thumping, popping, badoom-baddom possibilities exist remembering to use the ultimate crash of cymbals and the flutter of other attention getting noise gear. Someone sounds like they are heaving or lifting heavy objects. Taking this out is the hawk-caught-in-the machine croaking call as “Too Tattered to Read” brings this short story to its end.
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:: Since incorporating in 1993 the duo (since 1997) Ultra Milkmaids have taken their former identity blending punk rock and noise into a far more radical pigmentation of tonal luminosity, as the listener will eyewitness on their latest, Pop Pressing. A blend of jangly drone percussion meets eccentric atmosphere. By using guitar feedback and self editing processes to remove portions of what goes in and out of the left and right channels you may at first think this is another deteriorated CDR, but, its not. Listen closely to the way they overlap the drumming and sax to catch the parts unplugged, only to excerpt its edge, developing a fine tension line. The ‘maids use filter processing, extracting elements from the original recording, layering and composting – and generally making Pop Pressing quite matter-of-factly anti-pop. Take the track “Never” for instance – it may take the place of a river running slowly upstream filled with all the chaos theory ‘0s and 1s” of electronic garbage that have been meaningfully dumped. Incorporating some flighty field recordings and folk rock guitar on “Pop Star” brings a dash of street performance an outsider artist perspective into the mix. Part of the record are sounds that dream about the underground while bleeding into half-hearted “Pornography” era Cure meets 70’s style industrial Cabaret Voltaire. Tasty and fragile.
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:: This is a wise pairing. Two completely versatile and experienced electronic manipulators with a huge range coming together on the original Xenoglossia. There are a host of totally warped sounds that have never come from either KK Null or Alexei Borsov’s catalogue before, or at least nothing I have heard. So they are taking risks in their collaboration. Some fast paced bleeping with syncopated percussion that tracks back to MARRS’ anthemic “Pump Up The Volume.” Crossing Russian and Japanese noise cultures is not often au courante, however, Insofar Vapor Bulk Recordings have now been at it (finding links between art and sound) for a few years, and this testament is the base layer of icing for their big cake. Sticky electronic pitter-patter leads way to tinkling sine tones and cryptic foreign terrain. When they integrate some guy mumbling, it truly sends me back to the seminal sound of lost souls that became Throbbing Gristle. But this is not all-dark cerebral jargon, there is a lighter, almost frustrated techno lurking just below the surface. From nonconforming static to dizzying sick ward alarm calls Xenoglossia‘s thirteen untitled tracks form an hour long field of sound possibility.
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:: Halifax’s Andrew Duke has released a brilliant mini nineteen minute three-track for Seattle’s and/OAR. It’s watery, ebullient, austerity drifts in a shallow depth of field on “Boil Order.” The microtonal silent roar of the nearly fourteen-minute “Industrial Itch” is a drone, based on a one second clip, as other tracks here, it is derived from field recordings and other sound samples from cities in Ontario and Nova Scotia. The mythic fade and placid ebb of faint bubbly cracks in the surface are pale among the din drawl of the invisible wake here. Subtle as a fly caress, while undulating throughout the room, deeper than a San Francisco fog atop Twin Peaks.
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:: Mads Bodker, Thomas Holst and Keld Dam Schmidt make up the Danish trio Skyphone. Forming in Copenhagen circa 1999, these three have a background in rock, and despite their former use of saxophone and guitar, they incorporate their learnings into the multilayered usage of modular synthesizers that create a hybrid microjazz with a techno edge. In fact, the landscape here is powdered with finely casual guitar acoustically strung by Schmidt while his colleagues construct effects out of gauze and spinning clicks. At moments Fabula is a bit sentimental, like a hard rock band who build an acoustic number as on “Airtight Golem” to come up for air from the heavy haze and daze of adrenaline. It’s atypical music for an after party chill out zone. Though the interesting way they build a lightheaded mix with repetitive strings atop electric raindrops and other raw bass lines can prescribe an instant dose of the shivers. The sound is sweet, please repeat.
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:: Drumsolo’s Delight is the second formal full-release after his debut Strut (Outward Music) by Portland, Oregon’s DJ and multi-instrumentalist Strategy (Paul Dickow). Dickow has also been a member of the electronic ensemble Nudge, the ethereal Fontanelle and the punk band Emergency. This is a sudden left turn for Dickow who has made a fluid stream of layered passages on the illuminating “Super Shewolf Inna City.” Complete with mini beeps that glisten like the tiniest Xmas lights, this is a passionate sinuous track. The contents might seem a bit at odds, the sounds are serious, the titles are slacker terms. The tempo builds upward on the title track but only a slight tempo shift, leaving an elegant trail of ambience. How this guy lives in my hometown and I haven’t taken notice is a radical shame – on “Jazzy’s Dilemma” his playing is similar to Stephan Betke’s with a smooth range of dub underpinnings. Tracks like “Final Super Zen” and “Walkingtime” (featuring CARO on muted background vocal) are what “chill” is all about. At 12-minutes “The Jazzy Drumsolo” offers a rain-drenched ending, a certain Pacific Northwest theme that seems like a formal ending. The track is emotionally bottomless casting an almost flawless ambient afterglow. Save this one for August!
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:: Bristol’s BinRay builds big brazen body beats! Hyena Ventilator EP is a fresh cross section of familiar territories paved by Squarepusher and Autechre – though BinRay loosens some of the formula and adds a heaping load of electronic caterwauling slapstick. The themes are familiar, not formula and his use of eeriesamples counteracts the unnerving, rapid-fire assault. In the mix you hear a girls choir, telephone signals and other bips of civilization as the percussion takes full throttle control. There’s pitch, volume, and even edges to the work – so its not a big ole sloppy mix mess – it truly has a composition – in the same sense as a dazed and confused pinball bearing. There are moments where the pacing seems more like one of those Underworld instrumental epics as heard on the “Born Slippy”ish “Czars.” But it’s really not a serious comparison – more a quick glance. This disc is sort of like that , with its BPMs ahead of the horse in a cavalcade of dismantled tonal components held together by the skins of its beats.
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Essential Links ::
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Read more Microview’s ::
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*Note :: Graphic for this country not available at time of publication.
