Trans/Human Tim Olive/Jason Kahn

Trans/Human - The [Un]expected
The Cloud Art Experiment. AUD026. LP

Kahn/Olive - Two Sunrise
845 Audio. 845-3. CD





Ah yes Improv, or the big ‘I’ to give it its full name. Improv of the electronic variety here, well, for the most part. A most wondrous and edifying branch of the experimental sonic arts and one that gives me great pleasure. To prove my credentials and to look hip at the cocktail parties that Mr’s Fisher throws I leave beside my Binatone Hi-Fi [stereo, if you please] a copy of Bernard Parmegiani’s ‘De Sonoro de Natura’. Not the original I may hasten to add but the recent re-issue that came courtesy of GRM in a gatefold sleeve with a debossed cover that’s an absolute gem of a release in all manner of ways. I sometimes pick it up and gently stroke the sleeve with the palm of my hand, my fingers tracing the geometric shapes that surround dear old Bernie’s fuzzy fizog.

But yes, I do like a bit of electronic improv. The sound of springs being brushed by magnets, wire brushes pinging off the sides of bits of tin all contact mic’d up to sound like forests being felled or a sniper rifle being put together.

Trans/Human are the duo of Adam Denton and Luke Twyman. They’re part of an enthusiastic Sheffield collective going by the name of The Audacious Art Experiment that puts on gigs in a requisitioned Quonset hut and releases some interesting looking material in a variety of formats. How they’ve passed me by I know not but here they are now with an LP of improvisation that I’m thinking was inspired by a recent trip to America which may go some way to explaining why the first track ‘Whistle’ begins with a Country & Western track as snatched from a shifting FM band. A Country & Western track that sings about the railroad and thats what it sounds like with an out of tune electric guitar being played like a lap steel making sounds reminiscent of those long dusty railway tracks disappearing into the distance. Rapidly struck tubes of steel are the warning sign that the level crossing barrier is coming down and theres the sound of the train’s horn as replicated by something I know not what.

I’m liking the cheap rent Harry Partch like Trans/Human set up too. A clothes rail hung with various objects: a sax, an electric guitar hung upside down and no doubt used as a percussion instrument, one laid flat on a table and used Keith Rowe style and no doubt having ball bearings hurled at it, there’s a bell too and an old casserole pot for whacking with twigs. All the requisite bits and bobs as required for the onset of some improv. This equipment would be for nought though if the results were of a substandard nature. I’m happy to report that for the most part they’re not with only a tendency to stray into Einsturzende Neübauten territory spoiling what is on the whole a decent use of wax.

The two tracks on side one [‘Whistle’ and ‘The Incident at Frankfurt Airport’] are the more interesting with the side long ‘Peasant’ the only instance of Trans/Human getting carried away with themselves. By going for the massed clanging, juddering, almost rhythmic, build to a climax for effect dollar they slip into Neübauten Lite territory and even though this is Sheffield 2014 its not Berlin in the early 80’s. They’re far more interesting when trawling the shortwaves, giving out little mini drones and radio voices via the shorter ‘Frankfurt’ where those shortwave transmissions become throbbing noise with a treated radio broadcast appearing like the disembodied voice from the mothership in an American 50’s Sci-Fi movie. ‘Whistle’ actually gets quite noisy in a piece-of-wire-being-given-the-Aube treatment kind of way whilst the fevered drumming and clashed cymbals give you the feeling that your in the midst of a Sonic Youth whig out.

Tim Olive is far nearer to Bernard than Thurston though and this we like. His collaborations   via his 845 Audio label have graced these pages before and are fine examples of the electro-acoustic voyagers art. Here he teams up with Zurich based mutli-faceted artist Jason Kahn with four tracks all recorded in Japan [Kyoto and Osaka] during 2012, the last being a live outing. Olive’s preferred mode of expression is through a one-string magnetic pick up, Kahn contributes to the noisier end of the spectrum with analogue electronics.

Four tracks that finish up at just over the half hour mark that evolve and mutate through various forms be it the quiet rumblings and odd spurt of analogue beep or, as in the live outing, the close up sound of that stretched, coiled wire being drawn down from top to bottom with the edge of a 100 Yen coin [probably].

Kahn tempers his urge to go all out noise on Olive which makes for a well balanced release. On the opening track Kahn’s viscous knob twiddling matches Olive’s string manipulations until they both realise they’re going at it far too hard and let things slide off into a controlled feedback loop until Olive picks up two stones and begins to rub them together [perhaps]. Sporadic use of Japanese radio and the noisier end of things on the live track go towards making this another quality 845 release. They should do more together.





The Audacious Art Experiment     


845 Audio

Stuart Chalmers / Ian Watson

Stuart Chalmers - Imaginary Musicks Vol 1
No label. CDR/DL

Watson/Chalmers - Good is a Lobster
The Lows and the Highs. HI/LO 035. Cassette/DL


Choosing your holiday music is a serious job. The yearly chance to indulge your earlobes for a whole week without the intrusion of the everyday is one to be cherished and welcomed. The mere thought of me sitting on a veranda gazing out into the azure Ionion sea with those little plastic things dug deep within my earlugs is one to send me into raptures. So after careful consideration I decided that I’d take the entire works of that lovable Austrian Serialist Anton Webern seeing as how you could get the whole lot for £8 on iTunes [not a path I normally tread but the ease with which my iPod was filled with his work was a simplistic joy in itself]. As to whether Webern's stark squawk becomes long afternoons spent gazing out onto the azure blue of the Ionion sea was a question that answered itself once an electrical storm of Biblical proportions arrived one evening, perhaps this was where Xennakis got his inspirations from? But I digress. I also took with me some Hawaiian music courtesy of Alan Lomax [more fitting and an antidote to Webern should he prove to be too much] and Rod Mckuen’s Beatsville LP, a recording that contains the immortal line ‘you don’t really get to know someone until you’ve held their hair back whilst they’re vomiting’. At least I think thats what he said. Maybe it was the Metaxa kicking in?

There was a few other bits and bobs of course including some new environmental stuff that arrived from Gruenrekorder the day before we left but the artist that I enjoyed the most this year was Stuart Chalmers.

Last year I took the opportunity to fill my head with lots of William Basinski so this year it seemed logical to progress with Chalmers. Basinski is the artist I most identify with Chalmers but as ever, its only a rough guide. Basinksi’s Disintegration Loops and his Shortwave Music are amongst the most profound and deeply moving examples of experimental music I know of and its the elements in these two works that I find in Chalmers. Working with guitar pedals, electronics [a catchall term I know but it’ll have to do] synths, possibly shortwave radios and cassettes he creates some incredible states of mind. But its cassettes that are the beating heart of Chalmers work.
  
Imaginary ‘Musicks Vol 1’ is Chalmers own handmade reworking of a cassette that first appeared on Beartown Records. Going for a more ritualistic vibe was Chalmers intent and in a bid to add some gravitas to the proceedings he had the results mastered by Denis Blackham a man who’s worked on everything from Jean Michelle Jarre to Whitehouse to Nurse With Wound to …  Basinski.

Here you’ll find the taught three stringed Japanese shamisen rubbing shoulders with classical Indian compositions of the flutes and singing variety, negro blues, looping filmic soundtrack like slices and insect chatter. These 35 minutes pass in an absorbing and all encompassing manner as you could possible wish for.

We begin with the wheezing drone of a Shruti box and the high call of a lonesome flute fluttering its notes hither and thither, synth nodes are layered, bird sounds appear, the mood is of contemplation. But this isn’t new age twiddling as found on an American West Coast guru’s prayer mat, this is West Coast England in the year 2014. This makes for an altogether different experience. These pieces of ritualistic and ethnic expression are now being put through the hands of someone who has no doubt listened to lots of Nurse With Wound and Whitehouse and no doubt Mr Basinski himself. This has not been filtered through rose tinted granny glasses and the fumes of bifters rolled up on Grateful Dead double albums. This is a far more grainy, multifaceted and modern affair.

My favourite track is the third [they’re all untitled] and the nearest Chalmers comes to donning the Basinski crown; a disintegration loop all of his own in which the haunting sound of a female Indian singer comes at you like a Lorelei. The fourth track is a walk through a dark room hanging with muted tubular bells, a saxophone flaps its pads unaided. The fifth finds a pair of violins swapping eerie notes as a sunken ship groans under the weight of all thats above it. And so it gloriously goes on.

‘Good is a Lobster’ contains nine haiku’s from Chalmers and a tenth track thats the noisiest thing I’ve heard from him. The haikus are as you’d expect, short excursions, creaking oar straps, an anvil being struck in the distance, Chinese wooden blocks and the odd stark piano note and ominous chord, wind chimes, the swirl of a cassette tape being abused via the slight depression of a fast forward button is never far away thus producing a serene almost uneasy atmosphere. Until we arrive at ‘East is West, West is East’ where Chalmers gets to flex his noise-drone muscle with an epic piece that incorporates what could be several monastic chants, each one degraded to a nub whilst being given the full on roar treatment.

And lets not forget Ian Watson’s contribution here. His four tracks ping about in minimal glitch/drone territory with crackles and the sound of dust as caught in shellac run-off grooves. There’s some atonal squeals courtesy of some circuit board on circuit board action and the odd struck ringing bowl all adding to a feeling of remoteness and space. There’s a definite Sähkö-esque feeling of analogue sparseness and disruption going on here of which I most heartily approve.

From what I’ve heard of Watson’s work over the years [not much I admit and didn’t he begin life as The Death of the Enlightenment Project?] he appears to be maturing nicely. There isn’t much here that bears comparison to the last thing I heard of his [a sample laden outing on LF] from which I assume he’s still experimenting and searching. That's no bad thing. And much better than Webern, when the suns out that is.                             
   

 Stuart Chalmers

The Lows and the Highs

Beartown Records

Shards of Ordnance. Birmingham 26th & 27th September

A reminder of this soon to be upon us weekend of sonic shenanigans where I shall be wrapping up warm just in case it snows. Last years gig at the same venue [celebrating 30 years of Con-Dom's existence, this gig, I think, celebrates the end of 30 years existence] had to be performed outside in the beer garden due to a double booking. This, in November, where the temperature can easily drop below zero once the sun has disappeared, if it ever makes an appearance at all. For the full horror of what happened at this particularly surreal gig read the full report here .

Se you there.

www.peripheralrecords.co.uk

Let's do the Extraction

Daniel Thomas - That Which Sometimes Falls Between Us/As Light Fades
Kirkstall Dark Matter. 2 X CDR/DL. 39 copies [including 9 ‘flower press’ copies].

Daniel Thomas - Enemy Territory
Cherry Row Recordings. CDR/DL CRR005.

Daniel Thomas & Kevin Sanders - I Am A Moment Illuminating Eternity
Hairdryer Excommunication. CDR/DL 25 copies.

Midwich & The Skull Mask - Six Angles
Cherry Row Recordings. CDR/DL CRR004

Midwich - Inertia Crocodile
Cherry Row Recordings. CDR/DL CRR003

TST - The Spoken Truth
Hairdryer Excommunication. CDR/DL





It would appear that half of what lies in front of me is what Rob Hayler would term ‘Extraction Music’. Thats him in the Midwich guise, making contemplative sounds or writing about such matters via his Radio Free Midwich blog or releasing such things via his Fencing Flatworm label. He expresses himself most clearly with words and sounds and when he claims something as his own [see the term ‘no audience underground’] it sticks.

Which brings us, once again within a short space of time, to Extraction Music, or as I prefer, having already shortened it for my own amusement ‘Extraction’. I’ve written about it recently and thanks to the efforts of Daniel Thomas, David Thomas, Kevin Sanders, Hayler and others on the periphery of this newly minted sub genre there’s lots to listen to. It would seem that every time I visit a gig in Leeds my pockets are further stuffed with the rich pickings of this ‘vibrant underground music scene’ [cf The Guardian and any other media outlet who realises that after a quick Google search that there is such a thing].

On my last visit Daniel Thomas gave me what could be seen as Extractions defining moment so far. In much the same way that Striate Cortex’s Victorian Electronics four disc set gave Leeds its flag in the ground moment a few years back, this limited to nine copies two disc set of his work comes housed in a flower press made from defunct beehives. Not only does it look good and smell good but the contents work too.

It is effortlessly listenable material. I’ve been at it for weeks now and find it hard to tear myself away such is the ease with which it fills your space. But you do need space within which to experience it. Extraction demands your attention and you should give it by listening in a quiet room on a still day when the neighbours are all out and the phone is muted or off the hook. Thus armed you can immerse yourself in this new found world where things move more slowly and where tracks can runs into the thirty minute mark giving you plenty of time to hear things evolve and mutate.

Thomas’s ‘That Which Sometimes Falls Between Us/As Light Fades’ is the place to start [via download too as I’m guessing these small runs will already have gone]. Eleven tracks spread over two discs give rise to the gently hum of a droning prop driven aircraft as heard from the comfort of your seat [this being Monday Off], next track Cabin is a near fifteen minute float of discrete circling, cycling, swelling synth patterns. More ominous fare appears on the untitled tracks of the first disc where single notes reverberate into cranial gaps setting up vibrating resonances that play havoc with your sinuses, track three is more urgent, more vibrant but still with that undertow of throbbing pulse that permeates much of what Thomas creates.

What all of the above people are doing is collaborating, cross pollinating, swapping and sharing, finding themselves in a space that is rewarding for all parties. Hayler explains:

‘the leading exponents of the sub-genre I’ve defined as ‘extraction music‘ are very busy guys indeed ... Dave Thomas (solo as ap martlet, half of Hagman, one third of TST, label boss of Kirkstall Dark Matter), Daniel Thomas (solo under his own name, the other half of Hagman, a further third of TST, as a duo with Kevin and label boss of Sheepscar Light Industrial and Cherry Row Recordings) and Kevin Sanders (solo under his own name and as petals, as a duo with Dan, the final third of TST, label boss of hairdryer excommunication)’

That's what happens when you put but three very creative, talented and enthusiastic people together. When you add to this list like minded travelers and those that hover on the fringes of Extraction such as Seth Cooke, Stuart Chalmers, Ian Watson, Eddie Nutall [Aqua Dentata], Andie Brown [These Feathers Have Plumes] and Plurals, not to mention a small number of enthusiastic labels, you have what is amounting to a significant amount of highly rewarding and listenable music, the vast majority of which is of tremendous quality. My mind doth boggle.

When Thomas [Daniel] teams up with Sanders you have a nigh on single 40 minute track that's a slow build made from [no doubt] crusty old analogue boxes and field recordings. Here the mood is a sombre one made from flatulent crop sprayers, distant irrigation pumps and rubbed bowls. It eventually peters out to the sound of a muted helicopter, crows and shortwave static. As invigorating as as lung enhancing long walk on a cold, damp winters morning.

The TST release ‘The Spoken Truth’ has a much fuller, thicker sound which is what you'd expect when the attendance rises to three. Here we have a single eighteen minute machine throb drone with the controls set firmly towards planet Ambient Industrial. A piece that barely shifts from its original settings until its final dying seconds. A piece where the sounds of passing cars on wet roads and the gentle crash of waves upon pebble beach vie to be heard.  A powerful, resonant drone and one I found somewhat unsettling in an ominous, stuck in a dark underground car park at one in the morning kind of way. The way it exits leaving that last fizzing box as evidence of its existence is pure delight.

Which leaves the three Cherry Row releases. Cherry Row exists to allow Daniel Thomas an outlet for those releases that surpass the recording limits set by his three inch only CDR label Sheepscar Light Industrial. Which leaves plenty of room for Thomas to stretch his legs on Enemy Territory. A more lively release in that the pulses almost become beats especially on first track ‘1016’ which tips its hat to some of Tangerine Dream’s more pulsing ecstatic moments and is without doubt the most energetic, head bobbing track to be found amongst all of these releases. ‘Vampierkasteel’ is more in keeping with what has gone before, minimalist, inching, shuffling, throbbing, a microphone placed within an extraction duct, ‘Lincoln Towers’ is fifteen minutes worth of deep sonar sounding pulses whilst the title and last track is rawer with flapping overloaded woofers farting their analogue hearts out.

Rob Hayler’s Midwich project takes over where Enemy Territory leaves off with some equally engaging head throbbing, bobbing synth stabs as recycled through some kind of effect that makes it sound like its losing its signal and finding it again. The less than two minute track ‘Piped’ is an oscillating frequency leaving ‘The Sure’ to see us out with a less frantic take on Terry Riley’s Poppy Nogood in which Midwich goes for the cycling overtones jugular.

His collaboration with the Mexican guitarist cum experimenter Miguel Pérez is perhaps not so Extractionist with the title track seeing Pérez’s droning dissonance segueing into Hayler’s climbing overtones. The longer ‘Written in Sand’ is cut from the same cloth with each artist layering their sounds over each other making for a jarring listen.

I could have added more to this list from whats in front of me now; the new Piss Superstition on Fencing Flatworm, the three Sheepscar Light Industrial releases, the two releases I have featuring Stuart Chalmers. Where Extraction ends and drone and improv begins is a moot point but it hardly bears pondering over for long. With such a wealth of material available its best just to enjoy the moment and worry about semantics later.




  
Sheepscar Light Industrial

Cherry Row

Kirkstall Dark Matter

Radio Free Midwich

  

Daniel Biro - Shir Hadash

Daniel Biro - Shir Hadash
Sargasso. SCD28076




After weeks in the extraction immersion tank the words ‘a-cappella gospel-influenced voices with transcendent electronics’ didn’t exactly set the pulse racing but then I remembered playing Shir Hadash when it first arrived here [in pre extraction immersion tank days about six months ago now] and thinking that its mixture of resonating harmonies sung in Hebrew coupled to deft electronic nuance was actually much better than its strap line suggested.

So here we are six months down the line and a planned day out from the extraction immersion tank became a week in which I dipped my head into the Shir Hadash bath almost to the point of self annoyance. I became addicted to its close knit harmonies and took it everywhere I went. Mundane journeys became transformed, I was in a world of my own. I was, dear reader, transported.

Performed by three male vocalists of the Elastic Theater Ensemble Shir Hadash is immediately lifted from the mundane by the use of words like ‘shamanic’, ‘trance inducing’, altered state’, ‘spiritual ecstasy’ and in the case of Naggen Bitrua, an offering that wouldn’t look out of place if overdubbed on to the original Omen, ‘demonic’. Perhaps a little something to remind us of the dark side? Biro then treats their voices electronically, which he did live when this piece was performed in 2009 but with soft hands showing his skill as a composer whilst allowing the obvious natural beauty of the voices to reveal themselves. Its only on the last track ‘Chayos’ that Biro allows himself the luxury of cracking his fingers and letting his electronics dominate the proceedings entirely. 

But its the voices that win out. I admit to being a fan of close-knit harmony, be it via the sacred works of Arvo Pärt, the Mike Sammes Singers, the King’s Singers [I’m being serious here by the way] or Gregorian Chant. You can’t beat a bit of group singing [just don’t get me going on barber shop quartets]. So to hear these three male voices of the Elastic Theater Ensemble singing in harmony [in Hebrew remember] has been something of a much needed breath of fresh air for me. It could do the same for you.

The most uplifting moments are on Shir Hadash 2 when the reprise from Shir Hadash 1 is drawn out and extended to include Biro laying on some jazzy Rhodes electronic piano and lengths of low tempo electronic drum washes. The way those voices soar with nothing but a series of closed mouthed ‘hmmms’ is both uplifting and deeply moving. ‘Chayos’ sits at its end with the voices processed beyond recognition into a swirling mass of discord. In-between the harmonies disappear into seas of Biro-twisted discontent [think soundtrack to unsettling nightmare as used by BBC production team]. Its those two Shir Hadash compositions that get me every time though. First as pure a-cappella and then in its ten minute long Biro-tinged incarnation.

Sargasso are doing a fine job of stopping me from getting in to a rut with my musical tastes. I’ve reviewed their releases on these pages before and each time I’ve been impressed, not just by the quality of work on offer, but the way in which they challenge your musical preferences.  
 

   



www.sargasso.com


http://danielbiro.com/

 

Panelak - Heimat

Panelak - Heimat
Angurosakuson. AS007. CDR



We left Pascal Ansell with his eponymously titled release but a few months ago. After listening to it and digesting it the word that rang out loudly between our ears was ‘scattergun’. After listening to Heimat the word that now rings loudly between our ears is ‘scattergun’. The man is a tower of reliability.

And he’s enthusiastic. Of that there is now doubt. The Tigger of the Leeds noise scene [if indeed there is such a thing]. An intelligent presence constantly rubbing things together and sticking things in where they shouldn’t just to see what kind of noise emerges. Shouting, wounded sounds, tapes going backwards and forwards, bongoes gone mad, noises galore, some harsh, some not so, pan lids chucked down stone steps, strings plucked, strings scraped, anything that he can get his hands on is detuned, broken and put back together again in a constant bout of ‘pure digital experimentation’ to quote the press release.

True experimentation then, not something you come across much these days. Including the cover with each one coming in a different sleeve as hand made as they come, all torn bits of paper and added bits of things. All wonderful really and hard to dislike. Both inside and out.

Trying to describe it though is like trying to describe your entire music collection. I jotted down a few names that came to mind whilst listening to Heimat and ended up with the following list: Yol, Throbbing Gristle, early Merzbow, Derek Bailey and Raymond Scott. Last time around the list included, Toshiji Mikawa, Joe Jones, Faust and Derek Bailey [a constant I feel]. Whether all of this makes for one coherent whole I’m not so sure but after listening to Heimat numerous times I’m still of the opinion that sooner or later Mr Ansell will deliver something thats not just a collection of ideas. That he’s open to these ideas is encouraging [Yol-like shouting would suggest that exposure to local gigs is having a beneficial effect]. The man is a culture sponge soaking up everything within reach before forming a version in his own style.

I shall look forward to further adventures.





http://angurosakuson.wordpress.com

Adam Bohman - Music and Words 2

Adam Bohman - Music and Words 2
Paradigm Discs. PD30. CD




There’s a guy walks around Cleckheaton covered in huge Kylie Minogue badges who mutters to himself. He’s never without a carrier bag the contents of which are numerous holiday photographs which he’ll gladly show you. He stands at the bar drinking out of his Leeds United pint glass and with typical unimaginative provincial humour gets called Stevie Strange.

The first time I saw Adam Bohman at a gig I thought of Stevie Strange. Bohman arrived at the gig and wandered about with numerous carrier bags in hand looking like a lost soul in search of the Mission. His carrier bags contained not photographs [well ... you never know] but various items of detritus with which he and the rest of Morphogenesis used to produce some rather wonderful electro-acoustic improv.

On ‘Music and Words 2’ we find Bohman capturing his every waking moment on a dictaphone. An accumulation of thoughts and observations. I doubt he can move around without it in his hand. Here we have his observations recorded in London, Southend and Wiesbaden, ‘The time is just after 9 a.m. and I’m in the Acre Lane Coffee House egg bacon sausage and fried slice tipping down with rain outside then I’ll walk down to the tube station and then to Heathrow for the flight to Frankfurt airport’ all recited in Bohman’s own splendidly lugubrious tone.  At times he becomes more animated, adopting a Cockney accent to regale us with the delights of Southend sea front, ‘Rockettes, Thursday night laser disco karaoke …’ he edits as he goes along utilising his pause button with gay abandon ensuring that what you get comes in a seemingly random fashion with words disappearing mid sentence whilst others appear in similar fashion.

Humour is his greatest asset. I can’t think of any other artist working in the avant-garde who can reduce a listener to laughter. On ‘Barry on the Blower’ Bohman rings up the chart phone line [this was the early 80’s] ‘I wanna hear Barry Manilow’ he says in a childish voice before Barry appears down the crackly line. On ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ Bohman joins in a traditional rendition of the song with what sounds like a rubber car horn.  ‘Hectomaneous Masturbation’ is a punk influenced affair, an off his tits Viv Stanshall thrashing away at a Desperate Bicycles b-side. ‘Ordnance Survey’ sounds like the music from Trumpton with Bohman coughing his guts up [‘Ordnance Survey, yuk, yuk, yuk’]. ‘The Unfortunate Demise of Sammy Slug’ is a one minute drama recounting the demise of Sammy the Slug. Perhaps the most mirth inducing moments come during ‘The Lost Islands’ where Bohman uses his TV set as sparring partner making animal noises to a wildlife programme and farting noises to a musical box. ‘Is there anyone there’ says a TV character ‘NO!’ shouts Bohman at his television set. He joins in with dialogue and accompanies a theme tune as would a drunk Derek Bailey on a guitar with only two strings left on it, both out of tune. ‘When a Man’ finds Bohman [along with someone called Kenny] sparring words at each other in gruffer and gruffer voices. 
 
And then theres the tape compositions, ‘Screams of the Undead Earthworms’ where tapes go to and fro over abused capstans as Bohman groans and gurgles into the mic like a deranged Michael Bentine. ‘Among the Twinkling Stars’ is a series of cut ups and edits culled from TV programmes replete with squished edits and more heavy duty use of the pause button. 'Galactic Radio Storm' appears to be short wave radio recordings given the pause/play treatment. ‘Music for Metal Pipe and Guitar’ is just that.


His greatest achievement is in making the mundane appear remarkable. His is a world where everything is remarkable, from a restaurant menu, to the contents of his fridge, to the synopsis of a TV programme, to the noise that a spring makes. Entering Adam Bohman’s world has all the benefits of a week in a remote cottage without contact to the outside world. He will realign your chakra [whatever that is], he will ying your yang. He will remind you that the world you live in is indeed a very special one. The man moves amongst us like no other. The recent exhibition of his art at London’s Cafe Oto has lead a step nearer to his beatification.

Twenty eight tracks and almost eighty minutes that span the early eighties right up until 2010 all expertly compiled by Clive Graham and culled from Bohman’s own cassette masters.

All this comes in a rather spiffing fold out digipak, one picture of which disturbed me no end; the picture of Bohamn with that toilet in the background. Is he in the same room as the toilet or was the door to the toilet left open? Did he and his three friends [I can see three plates, nothing gets past me] think not to shut the door? And the toilet lid has one of those hideous 70's fluffy covers. Very strange.



www.stalk.net/paradigm


  

Merzouga - Live at Fluc / Prinzip Nemesis - My Name is Assumption

Merzouga - Live at Fluc
Attenuation Circuit Concert Series. ACC 1013. CDR in DVD Case.

Prinzip Nemesis - My Name is Assumption
Attenuation Circuit Concert Series.


Seeing as how we were about to see an improv performance by the Vibracathedral Orchestra at the WC, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, I asked Phil Todd if he’d had the email that was going round wondering if there were people interested in restarting The Termite Club. After nearly spraying his beer all over me I took it that he hadn’t.

The Termite Club was one of the few organisations in the country that dared to dirty its hands with Improv and the chances of it reforming are slim indeed. The reason it eventually died a death was mainly down to the fact that gigs of an improv nature were nearly always poorly attended. After Derek Bailey went to join Elvis they became even less well attended. An improv gig in Leeds was the fiscal equivalent of setting fire to tenners. You could be virtually guaranteed to lose money, along with, as is more likely, your sanity, friends and musical associates.

But I do like a bit of improv. When its done well it can be the most rewarding of musical experiences creating sounds that appear as if from nowhere, sounds that you’ve never heard before, that moment of sheer rhapsody that emerges in the midst of a 30 minute scrummage between guitar, drum, sax and electronics. In its myriad forms it can and does delight, but, and heres the rub, just as easily infuriate. For when improv goes bad it goes bad like little else. Its very nature demands that there will be as many, if not more, lows than highs. Its comes with the territory.

If the Termite Club ever does reform I wouldn’t mind seeing Merzouga on the bill. Merzouga are the German duo of Jano Hanushevsky [prepared electronic bass] and Eva Pöppelin [electronic sounds]. They’ve graced these pages before, working their improvised sounds into field recordings and wax cylinders with equally joyous and stunning results.

On ‘Live at Fluc’ they’re on their own as it were with a 40 minute performance as given in Vienna in 2012. The pairing of prepared bass and electronics is an inspired one at once linking a physical wood and steel instrument with a massed produced piece of technology, the results being far more organic than anything produced entirely via lap top or similar. The seemingly endless array of sounds Hanushevsky teases out of his instrument is quite stunning, everything from frotted strings to plucked strings to sawed strings, to vibrating strings, hammered, drilled, knocked, bashed whatever but always seemingly in control weaving his instrument through the effects as produced by Pöppelin, be they chirping insects, sine waves, ringing glasses or as in one particularly memorable instance the inside of an effervescing Alka Seltzer glass whose sudden leap in volume is nothing short of magnificent. The mood is often sombre and austere, at times thoughtful, chin stroking but never for an instant boring. Quite an achievement.

On the other side of the coin we find Prinzip Nemesis and their awful ‘My Name Is Assumption’. A car crash of musical styles that would only appeal to people with Attention Deficit Disorder and FDW over at Vital Weekly [he said after a quick internet search].

From the press release: ‘Prinzip Nemesis are wise enough to know that sounds do not always speak for themselves, so to tell a story with sounds you still need words - and music, in this case a kind of goth/rock/electro-pop/ambient hybrid style …. ’

Quite possibly one of the most hideous and misguided releases ever to cross this desk. Not even the Termite Club would have had them.







Attenuation Circuit


     
  

Vowinckel / Kutin

Antje Vowinckel - Terra Prosodia
Gruenrekorder. Gruen 125. CD/DL

Peter Kutin - Burmese Days
Gruenrekorder. Gruen 132. LP/DL


The Tower of Babel. A convenient Biblical story created to explain the existence of the multitude of languages we share. But what if we all spoke the same language? Wouldn’t it be much easier? If only we hadn’t pissed God off all those years ago with that silly tower.

I love languages. I may not speak some of the European ones very well but I like to have a go when given the opportunity. And when the that fails there’s always finger pointing and sign language. Its all part of the fun and you usually get there in the end. Its not like I’m involved in foreign diplomacy here, I’m usually trying to buy a meal or get a bus somewhere. Travels abroad used to be a lesson in how much schoolboy French you could remember but now that everyone speaks English its less of a thrill.  When working abroad in the 90’s I did have to resort to ordering food in rural Chinese restaurants by pointing at several items on a menu covered in characters I couldn’t understand hoping that some of it would be edible, but by adding the Chinese word for beer, I at least got a drink. Some of the food turned out to be pretty good too.

Languages continue to die out as the world shrinks ever smaller. I read recently that the Danes are worried that their children now find Danish harder to learn than English. The single commonplace French language is also a fairly modern concept after the 17th century French government of the day realised that a nation that didn’t speak a common tongue was virtually ungovernable and deliberately eradicated numerous local tongues. The list of extinct European languages alone runs into the dozens.  

Antje Vowinckel’s release Terra Prosodia collects several European languages that are in danger of dying out so that we can hear what they sound like ourselves; Romansch, Gutamal, Wallis-Deutsch and a couple of obscure ‘French’ examples are reproduced for our edification. Its an educational undertaking and one of which I wholeheartedly approve. If only it stopped there. By adding pointless bits of noodling electronica to these voices [twanging rulers anyone?] Vowinckel [a sound artist] actually detracts from them. I obviously don’t understand what the speakers are saying but I’d like to hear what they do have to say without a cat taking a walk along a synth. I’m at a loss as to why anyone would think this would be a good idea at all.

Peter Kutin’s excellent Burmese Days does a far better job than Vowinckel’s by keeping things simpler. Here, a collection of eleven field recordings are segued into two wholes [unusually for Gruenrekorder this comes as a vinyl release] with the voices of the Burmese, where ever they appear along this wonderful release, given a clarity they deserve.

Kutin visited Myanmar in 2012 shortly after 60 years of military rule gave way to a democracy of sorts. With journalists now given free reign to wander where they wish Kutin returned with, no doubt, many hours of field recordings which he then used to capture the feelings he experienced whilst there. Having listened to my fair share of field recordings I’d say he’s done a fantastic job. Typing this in a muggy room late at night as the UK reaches its first heatwave of the summer means those insects and forest sound are far nearer Myanmar than Leeds.

This is a ‘journey’ work capturing many aspects of his trip, insects, forests, bowl rings, the imam’s 5.a.m call, street markets, work places, train journeys, gongs ... the lone male singer on ‘Train to Rangoon’ is a happy one, the sound of the train wheels on the rickety track adding its own rhythm, the insects that open the piece are nearer pure electronics than cicadas, the bowl ring that rides out the last five minutes is spine tingling.

Kutin is aided by Viennese turntablist dieb13 who had a hand in mixing it and Brendt Thurner who added various gongs and metallophone sounds. Their contributions augment and enhance the work.

This is the only field recording album I’ve heard of that instructs the listener to play it back at high volume with good bass response. At times it does feel like you’re listening to glitch electronica or a Pan Sonic album but this only adds to its mystery and longevity.

Burmese Days is a work worthy of many repeated plays. A true gem in the Gruenrekorder catalogue.




Gruenrekorder

Smell & Quim

Smell & Quim/Onomatopoeia - 'Live At Kirkstall Lites - Brutalist Mix'
Cipher Productions [Sic 82]. CD

Smell & Quim - Quim De La Quim
Stront. Cassette. [C90 in A5 wallet with two inserts]


The Smell & Quim tour bus is full of rotting corpses watching animal porn. Rolf Harris steering the 254 Huddersfield to Leeds Arriva to the Kirkstall Lites, a neon lit fun pub where the tearful souls of attendees are tormented by long haired skeletons in shell suits bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jimmy Savile. The conductor is Cyril Smith. A midget troupe of Black and White Minstrels sing a capella versions of Brown Girl In The Ring whilst pumping helium into tired wheels that show their webbing. Chuck D swings his oversized alarm clock in homage to Jimmy Clitheroe and Ken Dodd tells jokes. How tickled I am.

The recent rectum invading Gulliver’s gig in Manchester added yet another page to the already notorious Smell & Quim live action dossier. See them at all costs. They’re on fine form. There are no substitutes. For none are drunker. None more chaotic or unstable. None will leave the venue, themselves or you in a more disheveled state. You may fear for your ears and your eyes, your Farah slacks and your carrier bag carrying that days charity shop pickings but you will leave a better person. You will have been anointed in the best possible way.

Alas I wasn't at the Kirkstall Lites gig that night in Leeds in the early 90’s but I hear it was a good one. Wet fish may have been involved. Of the several Smell & Quim collaborations with Stephen Fricker's Onomatopoeia in the 90's I saw, alas, none.

Fricker is now forever known as the forgotten man of the English noise scene. Disappeared, just like that. But what a man. I once saw him tottering around the Red Rose on Seven Sisters Road, glass in hand, like a magician about to show you a magic trick - the trick being trying to keep the beer in the glass before it made it to his mouth. A fine fellow in a loud shirt and a greasy overcoat. Arthur Daley on cheap drink looking like he needed a good nights sleep. If you’re reading this, have one for me Mr. Fricker.

One of those live outings was at that shitty 'Kirkstall Lites'. An edge of Leeds 'fun pub' where all the 'fun' was to be had in paying over the odds for shit beer beneath piss poor murals featuring John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. It captures 18 brutal minutes worth of pure, exhilarating noise that appears to have been run through a mixer and shows that when it comes to making noise in its purest, most basic, nihilistic form Smell & Quim can live with the best. I still wish I’d been there.

Quim De La Quim's three studio tracks hark back to a previous Smell & Quim age. Constructed by Srdenovic and Gillham it brings to mind earlier releases such as ‘A Sods As Good As A Wank To A Blind Arse’, early 90’s Smell & Quim where the Industrial parp and scrape of rusty axles bring to mind huge female bottoms pounding old fashioned bicycle saddles down cobbled streets. ‘Anal American’ contains premium rate porn chat smut as background to all manner of tree felling and ballon rubbing hideousness. There’s a Beatles-esque Day in the Life never ending chord smash and the hand drier in The Grove blaring away and at its very end with a spittle flecked ‘CUNT’ is the maestro himself Milvoan Srdenovic. For just in case you’d forgotten what it was you were listening to. As if you could.

The more attentive amongst you will have noticed that all the tracks on Side A are the reverse of Side B [in a fashion] which is exactly the effect upon playback. Rather than this render the B side a predictable experiment in reversed noise it actually creates a unique listen in itself.

Last track ‘Killer Cunt’ is Smell & Quim at their pounding best. A juddering juggernaut of skull shaped maracas beaten together at a pulse quickening rate, a pounding beast of a thing, an explosion in a bottling plant, a scrap yard gone mad, concrete going around your new Bosch washing machine.

And again maestro, this time in reverse.



Cipher

Stront

LF Records and Extraction.

 

Ian Watson - Terrestrials Gone Tropic With Some Pretty Fancy Animals

LF Records. CDR. LF032

Robert Ridley-Shackleton - Ovencleaner
LF Records. 3” CDR. LF033

Hagman - Number Mask
LF Records. CDR. LF037

DSIC - Infinite Dream
LF Records. CDR. LF038




The word on the street is ‘Extraction’. It’s a word used to describe a kind of music that is mainly recorded on bust up old equipment thats filtered with field recordings and makes you cry. Electronic in nature but not exclusively so it encapsulates all that is good in a free floating, heady, psychedelic, industrial, grim, dub landscape way without ever becoming harsh or all out pure noise.

Its not easy this sub genre identifying job but if anyone can do it then Rob Hayler’s your man. Having nailed the ‘no audience underground’ banner to an ever widening mast a while back he’s now doing the same for ‘Extraction’ and it fits like a latex glove.

Like all genres and sub genres it takes a while before you realise that you’re actually listening to one. Plenty of people working within the ‘no audience’ underground have unwittingly been doing their bit for ‘extraction’ for quite a few years now and while I’m never that happy when it comes to pigeonholing it does make the writers job a lot easier. Whether the artists involved ever sit comfortably with it is another thing altogether though.

By far the most rewarding and extraction-esque of the four we have here is Hagman’s ‘Number Mask’. The two Leeds based and unrelated Thomas’s deliver slowly evolving movements of a dreamlike electronic nature where you are want to drift off finding yourself slowly nodding away to swathes of analogue synth wash and field recordings of Leeds suburbs.

Number Mask contains three very short outings given only track numbers as recognition, random blurts and electronic gamelan of sorts but its the longer work outs where the thing blossoms. 'The Solar Factory' begins all Geiger counter-y before developing a frequency hum, ‘The Tower Revolving’ is TG like with a series of small stabs mingling between the barely audible street sounds, 'A Sequence of a Short Dream' personifies Hagman and extraction itself, a meditative gently rolling sub rhythm over which a melody of sorts comes and goes. Last track ‘Guiseppi’ is a simple oscillating drone that mutates through a two pitched phase until it cuts dead leaving a chasm of silence in its wake.

What we’re hearing here is the continuance of that fine North European tradition for producing electronic works of a forward thinking nature. Cologne, Dusseldorf and Leeds.  Three of my favourite city’s blessed with an abundance of electronic pioneers.

Ian Watson's quirkily titled ‘Terrestrials Tropic With Some Pretty Fancy Animals’ also fits the ‘Extraction’ bill. Twelve tracks of very gently evolving industrial ambient soundscapes that at times bear close comparison to William Basinski’s loop work. Twelve tracks in all each one having enough of an individual vibe to make for a rewarding hours worth of travel.  

Watson disguises his sound sources well enough to demand close attention from the listener. Organic in feel they sound like distant prop planes, unidentifiable hums, dentists suction pumps and broken glass ground into disused factory floors. Tape loop decay appears to best effect on track ten [all tracks are untitled], a gorgeous melancholic doze whose drifting motif flutters in and out of hearing like an ephemeral drug fairy giving you just enough to carry you off on without losing focus on your whereabouts. These are tracks that are heavy with emotion, leaden, doomy, weighty, soporific. 

DSIC is computer music. Or music made by computers. Like what Hecker and Haswell do, does, did and they have their fans and what I've heard is fine but I find it too cold and detached, like the soul has been sucked from the room leaving a cold empty place. Sonically its interesting with every facet of every sound ringing clear but I find it only works really well when the volume jumps and the pure noise kicks in which sadly it only does the once here.

And then we have Robert Ridley-Shackleton and his ‘Ovencleaner’. Not so much ‘Extraction’ as ‘Distraction’. A caterwauling Dadaist scrape of atonal electronic squawk that's akin to an early Pierre Henry work being squeezed out of an annoyed ducks arse. A release so efficient at getting me to put my hands over my ears that I tried turning the stereo off with my foot. Perhaps some other time.  




LF Records

[For a far more detailed and erudite description of all things 'Extraction' I point you in the direction of Rob Hayler's most excellent written article on the subject.]

SPON 40/41/42 and Decadence Comics

SPON 40
Story Simon Harris Art Dr. Adolf Steg
 A4 comic.

SPON 41
In Memory of Nigel Joseph CD

SPON 42
The Mark Ritchie Pocket Poetry Edition.
A6 booklet. 30 copies.

ADAMAO by Stathis Tsemberlidis
Decadence Productions 2011
A5 comic.

Aaaphide Spenk Comik - Stories by Shaun Odor and Dr. Adolf Steg.
A5 comic

We left Dr. Steg outside Gullivers in Manchester at past midnight in the pouring rain his golden masks in Ikea bags surrounding his feet like golden beetles. He cut a forlorn figure, damp to his very soul, the drink having taken its effect many hours earlier when he decided to usurp whatever it was that was playing across the corridor by staging his own anti-concert. This consisted of throwing to the floor just about anything he could get his hands on whilst waving about dangerous looking gold sprayed knives and crosses that he’d brought along as Smell & Quim props. Somewhere down the line the rather benevolent staff took it upon themselves to tell him in no uncertain words that if he didn’t stop playing silly buggers he’d find himself on the street rather earlier and damper than he anticipated.

And there he is on stage with Smell & Quim not too long after, wearing one of his masks, drunk as hell shouting and screaming in to a microphone alongside someone who up until that afternoon had never heard of Smell & Quim.

The noise world could do with a few more loose canons. It certainly adds to the tension at gigs.

It seems that my premature announcement of the death of Dr. Steg’s SPON project caused a bit of a stir amongst friends of the the good doctors work. It turns out that I was half right and half wrong all along. SPON will cease after its 42nd incarnation but word reaches me from Steg’s very own pen, this very day of our Lord the 22nd of May 2014 that the project will continue as a collaborative one under the SPOONGG banner.

If the two collaborations here are representative then the future looks long and brown and Jimmy Savile cigar shaped. Thats a good thing in Steg’s world and in ours too. Having delighted, amused, baffled and [some may say] outraged those of us who have come across his work since emerging via the Fylde Coast it would be nothing short of a national tragedy to see him hang up his knife, pen, scissors, glue, spray paint or whatever it is he chooses to create his work with.

Steg’s right eye bulges with healthy disdain when it comes to trying to make sense of this ball of muck and water that spins beneath our feet. If his work offends then I dare say he’d be chuffed to bits. The recent jailing of various 70’s DJ’s, entertainers and celebrities for sex crimes is manna from heaven for one such as Steg. What was once cuddly and TV friendly and to be found adorning the walls of unknowing cherubs turns out to be the very thing they should have be afraid of. The world turned upside down. Chaos in pink rooms with Baba Papa wallpaper and David ‘Kid’ Jensen on the radio.

Lets start with what I think is the most delightful item here; a small A6 [?] booklet with a braille, paint smudged cover, lots of Steg’s bright and colorful abstractions and lots and lots of poems as culled from Mark Ritchie’s Hiroshima Yeah! zine. Ritchie puts out the cynical, world weary, drink soaked, fuck you cut and paste HY! zine on a regular monthly basis and is a much anticipated and welcome arrival here, as it has been for what must be over ten years now.  Most of the poems are Ritchie’s own but there a few from HY’s other contributors all of them suffused with huge amounts of drollery and apathy. I’m no massive poetry fan myself but I cant help but admire Ritchie’s work especially a two line poem like ‘Fanxiety’ that both nails the trivial ridiculousness of the ever expanding modern cultural lexicon whilst giving us a chortle along the way:

'The definition of fanxiety is:
worrying about your teeth'.

Or on existentialist philosophy:

'I shite,
Therefore I am'.

A treasured item that I hope will become as sacred as Bukowski’s early pamphlet ‘Crucifix in a Deathhand’. I shall carry it and submit to memory its most memorable words, reciting them to somber drunks in The Duncan. A willing audience if ever there was one.

The Happy Christmas issue sees Simon Harris’s OZ OZ Alice blogspot entries used as text for a host of Steg’s twisted creatures. A meeting of Blackpool minds with the Ceramic Hobs mainman’s observations [a curious mixture of the mundane and the unsettling] finding a voice via many a Steg deformity.

The most poignant artifact here is the tribute to Ceramic Hobs guitarist Nigel Joseph who died earlier this year. ‘Nigel Joseph 1 2 3’ contains his last ever noise release under that name and the Hobs gig as recorded after his funeral. I actually reviewed ‘1 2 3’ two days before Joseph’s death, the news of which spooked me no end. My initial reaction was that I hope he didn’t commit suicide over what I wrote [my review was hardly enthusiastic] which in the cold light of day appears ridiculous but this is the Hobs we’re talking about here. That review appears here. The gig at his wake is a typically wild and shambolic Hobs affair presaged with five minutes of people ordering drinks at the bar before a guitar gets plugged in and things go suitably haywire. I dare say drink had been taken.

The rest of what you see here are various bits of detritus that accompany Steg missives and two comics from Decadence Comics which Dr Steg assures me is worthy of your attention. From what I’ve seen here I’d agree wholeheartedly. Aaaphide Spenk Comik contains stories by Shaun Odour and Steg whose images appear to be rips from French outfit La Dernier Cri, bits of letters from Jason Williams and various other cut and paste robbed ephemera, the centre spread is reproduced here in all its magnificence. ADAMAO baffled me no end but its minimalist style certainly appealed in a dystopian fantasy kind of way.


One more and SPOONGG’s away then.
  
   
World of Steg

Decadence Comics