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Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Oneohtrix Point Never - (2020) Magic Oneohtrix Point Never

 

Warp Records ‎– WARPCD318

0PN mounts a definitive opus with his rapturous 9th studio album, entirely produced during lockdown, with “executive production” by The Weeknd, who also supplies vocals alongside Arca and Caroline Polachek.

‘Magic Oneohtrix Point Never’ is titled after the mispronunciation of Magic 106.7, a local radio station in Boston, Massachusetts; the state where Daniel Lopatin aka 0PN grew up, and where the album was created. The radio station’s adult contemporary programming is a formative and enduring influence on 0PN’s music, and it’s clear that he’s saved this album title for some of his most accomplished tributes to his influences, but refracted thru his prismatic styles to illustrate the distance between that era, and this, with some of his most elusive, illusive and beguiling sound design wrapped up in a mix of stunningly mazy and pop-toned arrangements.

0PN is one of those artists we’d imagine took to lockdown quite naturally, sequestering themselves away to immerse in their art for the good of everyone outside. Written between March and July, the results of ‘Magic Oneohtrix Point Never’ speak for themselves as 0PN’s most broadly appealing record, typically placing avant-inventiveness and curiosity at the service of a tumultuous narrative that really needs some kind of road-trip simulation game to go along with its possessed dial-strafing.

You’re probably familiar with the album’s opening sequence, which appeared on a lead single, and includes the lushest FM synthesis of 2020 in ‘Long Road Home’, and the rest of the album follows suit with a profligate approach to genre, cutting from phased dream-pop grunge in ’I Don’t Love Me Anymore’, to hypnagogic ident collage in ‘The Whether Channel’, and The Weeknd’s romantic ‘80s power pop turn on ‘Lost But Never Again’, crucially fractured with cut-scenes and mutant jingling of the ‘Cross Talk’ parts that tie the album’s story together with something approaching a sonic-visual analog of Safdie Brothers’ choppy editing gone lysergic.

Mikami Kan, Hijokaidan, Mikamikaidan - (2019) 三上階段 2xCD

 

Chaotic Noise Recordings ‎– CHAOTIC-037

 

 

灰野敬二, Merzbow, Balázs Pándi - (2019) Become the Discovered, Not the Discoverer CD


 RareNoise Records ‎– RNR111

A certain magic floods the room when free improvisers of the highest order get together to make music. And when said improvisers are also kindred spirits who know and can anticipate each other’s moves, a kind of wonderful telepathy takes over. Such was the case when enigmatic Japanese noise legend Merzbow (Masami Akita) got together in the studio with fellow countryman Keiji Haino and Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi for Become The Discovered, Not The Discoverer. For their second encounter for RareNoise Records, following 2016’s An Untroublesome Defencelessness, the three intrepid improvisers explore a threshold of sound so blisteringly intense, that it passes into a zone of divine cacophony.

Comprised of four lengthy, uninterrupted suites, each containing dense, sometimes harsh sonic onslaughts, Become The Discovered, Not The Discoverer is fueled by Merzbow’s cathartic sheets of electronic sound and guitar, Haino’s slashing guitar, bass and vocal work and Pandi’s pummeling intensity on the kit. And as Pandi explained, “It was 100% improvised, nothing added in post-production, just like every time we record together. No limitations, no concepts, nothing. Just listening, and playing.”

Merzbow has found a true kindred spirit in Pandi, who has also become a kind of ‘house drummer’ for RareNoise. “The chemistry between us was there right from the very beginning,” said Pandi, who began collaborating with Merzbow in 2009. “My way of playing fits his music perfectly, as I play both improvised music that is changing shape all the time and heavy amplified music. We don’t have things anchored, we just have a continuously expanding vocabulary and we pay attention to each other and find immediate hooks in each other’s playing.”

The third member of this formidable triumvirate, singer-songwriter-guitarist Keiji Haino, had previously worked with Merzbow under the moniker Kikuri. “Keiji is like an infinite well of ideas, said Pandi. “It’s incredible how he can push music and sounds into new directions. Sounds coming from him have way more qualities than the ones coming from most musicians, as he uses every possible way to alternate sounds and give them extra qualities that people just don’t know about.”

For Pandi, this latest is also the fifth recently RareNoise release involving both him and Merzbow, following 2013’s Cuts (a trio with Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustasfsson), 2015’s Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper (a quartet with Gustafson and skronk guitar hero and Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore), 2018’s live Cuts Up, Cuts Out (a quartet again with Gustafsson, and Moore) and 2016’s An Untroublesome Defencelessness (as aforementioned, with Haino). And for the powerhouse drummer, the thrill is definitely not gone. “It’s been almost 10 years since I first played together with Masami as a duo,” he said. “That was a string of four shows, and even on that tour there was a difference between the first and the last gig. So its obvious that we continue to do different things, and our relationship on a human and an artistic level also strengthened throughout the years. For obvious reasons we can’t play too many shows. In a busy year, we have about a handful of shows, but it’s always exciting to play and we always discover new things within our music. Masami never uses the same setup twice, and I always do my best to have something new to drop on him every time we play together.”

As far as the particularly intense nature of this latest invocation in the studio with Merzbow and Haino, the drummer said, “All we do is listen and play. Wherever we go with the music, the moment takes us there. Even if we make a plan, we just go with whatever we feel like doing. Haino-san decided on the spot to use the bass guitar, an instrument he never played on previously on recordings, if ever. Also Masami plugged in a guitar he found in the studio, so for a part of this recording we were a rock trio. The only thing we talked about the night before was to do five to seven-minute takes, but then the first take we actually did was over one hour.”

While Masami and Haino strike such a seamless blend with their electronic onslaughts, Pandi fuels the proceedings with his signature skills, drawing on the power of grindcore and death metal while also listening intently and reacting in the moment. “I just play whatever feels good to play,” he said. “It’s funny that even though I try to not play in tempo anymore and approach drumming more as coloring to give the music another texture, this one turned out more like a classic rock record. And at some parts I am even playing a backbeat kind of thing. So it’s definitely more straight-forward drumming than what I usually play these days.”

“I basically grew up with playing and being surrounded by all kinds of music.”, continues Pandi, “Back then it was Morricone scores, Verdi, Bill Haley & The Comets. One day I would play Dead Kennedy songs with my high school punk band, the next morning I would play “Slavonic Dance No. 8” by Dvorak on tympani. And still today, I have varied music tastes. So whether I’m playing with Merzbow, Obake or Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, it’s all music to me.”

Like the music itself, the titles of Pandi’s latest outing with Merzbow and Haino — “Become the discovered, not the discoverer” and “I want to learn how to feel everything in each single breath" — are intriguing. “The titles came from Haino-san and are inspired by the music,” the drummer explained. “The titles, just like the music doesn’t need to be understood, or doesn’t need a strict interpretation.”

BIOGRAPHIES

Born in Chiba, Japan on May 3, 1952, Keiji Haino has been active on Japan’s underground music scene since the 1970s and remains active at age 67, ever-exploring on the fringes. His main instruments of choice have been guitar and vocals. Known for intensely cathartic sound explorations, he has lent his distinctive voice to recordings by a variety of groups, including Vajra (with underground folk singer Kan Mikami and drummer Toshiaki Ishizuka), Knead (with the avant-prog outfit Ruins) and Sanhedolin (with Yoshida Tatsuya of Ruins and Mitsuru Nasuno of Korekyojinn, Altered States and Ground Zero). He has also collaborated with such artists as Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Charles Gayle, Makigami Koichi, Jim O'Rourke, Yamantaka Eye, Fred Frith, Charles Hayward and John Butcher. He also appeared on John Zorn’s 1993 album Painkiller with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Mick Harris.

Haino’s initial artistic outlet was theatre, inspired by the radical writings of Antonin Artaud. He had his musical epiphany after hearing The Doors' “When The Music's Over” and immediately changed course towards music. After brief stints in a number of blues and experimental outfits, he formed the improvised rock band Lost Aaraaf in 1970. By the mid 1970s, he collaborated with psychedelic multi-instrumentalist Magical Power Mako and in 1978 formed the rock duo Fushitsusha. The lineup expanded to a trio and continued to perform, with shifting personnel, through the 1990s. In 1998, Haino formed Aihiyo, which performed covers of tunes by The Rolling Stones, The Ronettes and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, filtered through his own unique garage-psychedelia prism. In recent years, Haino has made some of his most profoundly intense musical statements in the company of fellow countryman Merzbow and Hungarian drummer Pandi.

Merzbow's onslaughts of sound employ the use of distortion, feedback and noises from synthesizers, machinery, and home-made noisemakers. Utilizing two laptops, four stomp boxes and a homemade sound-maker, he creates a world of sound ranging from ambient drones to fusillades of frightening intensity. One of the most recognizable figures on the international noise scene, he began his recording career in 1980 with Fuckexercise and Rembrandt Assemblage. He followed in 1982 with his landmark recording, Solonoise, which incorporated tape loops and creatively recorded percussion and metal. He has since released over 400 recordings, collaborating with dozens of musicians, contributing tracks to compilations and making numerous guest appearances on recordings by other artists. His stage name Merzbow comes from the German dada artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork Merzbau, in which Schwitters transformed the interior of his house using found objects.

Born in Tokyo on December 19, 1956, Akita listened to psychedelic music, progressive rock and free jazz in his youth. He became the drummer of various high school bands and shortly after began playing improvised rock at studio jam sessions with high school friend Kiyoshi Mizutani. A graduate of Tamagawa University, where he majored in Painting & Art Theory, Akita commenced work as an editor of several magazines upon getting his degree. He subsequently became a freelance writer for several books and magazines and has written several books of his own on a variety of subjects, including music, modern art and underground culture. His other interests include painting, photography, filmmaking and Butoh dance. He has cited a wide range of influences on his own music, from progressive rock, heavy metal, free jazz, and early electronic music to non-musical influences like dadaism, surrealism and fetish culture. His 2010 project, 13 Japanese Birds, was a 15-album series highlighting his ongoing ecological and vegetarian activism.

The youngest member of this powerhouse improvising trio is drummer Pándi Balázs. Born on August 6, 1983 in Budapest, Hungary, he has worked and toured with various acts from all around the world including Venetian Snares, Otto von Schirach, Last Step, To Live and Shave in L.A., The Blood of Heroes, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and the Italian experimental instrumental group Zu. His current projects include Italian doom band Obake, Metallic Taste of Blood (featuring Colin Edwin of Porcupine Tree, Eraldo Bernocchi of Obake and RareNoise Records’ resident keyboardist, Jamie Saft), Slobber Pup (with Saft, guitarist Joe Morris and bassist Trevor Dunn) and the black metal/punk band Wormskull. From 2012, he started to play solo shows at festivals under his own name. Since 2009, he has frequently played drums live with Merzbow, headlining at experimental music festivals around the world. Pandi’s muscular drumming style, marked by high-speed churning, intense blast-beats and thunderous double bass drum pedals, has been informed by free jazz, breakcore, doom metal and noise. It’s always pedal to the metal with Pandi.

Together these three intrepid explorers and noise renegades arrive at some intense, harsh and ultimately compelling on Become The Discovered, Not The Discoverer, their latest RareNoise release.
credits
released September 27, 2019

Keiji Haino : Vocal. Guitar, Bass, Electronics, More decorous than duty
Masami Akita: Electronics, Guitar
Balazs Pandi: Drums

BECOME THE DISCOVERED, NOT THE DISCOVERER

1. Become the discovered, not the discoverer I
2. Become the discovered, not the discoverer II
3. I want to learn how to feel everything in each single breath I
4. I want to learn how to feel everything in each single breath II

All compositions by Masami Akita, Keiji Haino, Balazs Pandi
Published by RareNoisePublishing (PRS)

Recorded on 18th of February 2018, Recorded @ la Cave 38 Recording Studio. Recorded by Kevin Le Quellec, assisted by Julien Rosenberger .
Mixing by Daniel Sandor
Mastering James Plotkin @ Plotkinworks

Artwork and Design by ROK

Gareth Davis & Merzbow - (2020) Broken Landscapes

 

Moving Furniture Records ‎– MFR076

Gareth Davis & Merzbow – Broken Landscapes
Following on from their 2016 Moving Furniture release, Atsusaku, Broken Landscapes is a new collaboration between Gareth Davis (Oiseaux Tempete, Scanner, Elliott Sharp, Machinefabriek) and Merzbow, Japanese noise mastermind Masami Akita.

The theme of mechanical compression explored in the first album is taken further this time, being looked at in the context of the fears of mechanisation in the environment. A torrent of noise reimagines the North Sea wind farms, the industrialisation in Southern California and the fight for the survival of animals in their overrun habitats. Through three tracks, the sounds of these spaces are crushed and distorted, the sense of air being saturated by the shifting low-end drones and hum of machines, howling reeds and dense white noise pushing away the breathing space.

The acoustic sound almost suffocated beneath the dense mechanical sweep of furiously abusive digital cross-fire and unrelenting production line intensity. Hints of recognition as a voice from the environment shines through before moving abruptly back into the mechanical barrage of looping textures. Broken Landscapes is built on impenetrably thick walls of manipulated field recordings while the bass clarinet saturates the midrange, the massive swirling mesh of analogue and digital material painting pictures of the magnified terrain that surrounds us.
credits
released January 10, 2020

Merzbow & Vanity Productions - (2019) Coastal Erosion LP

 iDEAL Recordings ‎– 184 

Masami Akita and Christian Stadsgaard both hail from places with a lot of coastline vulnerable to sea level rises, ‘Coastal Erosion’ sees them grasp the nettle of impending doom with typically gauntleted grip and an unswerving intensity that speaks to clear and present concerns. While perhaps not the most obvious bedfellows for collaboration, the artists patently share an emphatic empathy for the situation that resonates through their music, where human forces of emotion intersect elemental chaos in a pair of poetically tempestuous, even harrowing works.

Merzbow’s visceral, primal roar sustains a perpetual force of attrition that constantly threatens to overwhelm VP’s widescreen, panoramic pads on both of the LP’s monolithic tracts. But it’s due to their democracy of vision that they speak as one, rather than over each other. On the A-side’s 18 minute ‘Erosion Japan’ they connote the frothing might of the Pacific tide encroaching and destroying towering walls of steel and glass with an arrestingly Ballardian quality to their instrumental description of violence and anguish. The B-side’s 17 minute ‘Erosion of Denmark’ follows with a more pensive arrangement of low-lying, unyielding drone frequencies smeared to stereo extremes and overlapped with spirit-penetrating shards of distortion, limning the prospective submergence of the Danish peninsula and its archipelagoes with a Thunbergian seriousness and intractable logic.

Taken as a profound warning or as an elegy for anthropocene extinction, ‘Coastal Erosion’ is a frighteningly powerful statement that leaves its message like the murky stain of flood waters inside the mind.

Merzbow - (2020) EXD

 

Room40 ‎– RM4131 

 

Across the middle years of the 1990s, Merzbow (Masami Akita) refined a stochastic language for harsh noise that had emerged from his studio experiments at the beginning of that decade.

"This technique, which involved a combination of self made instruments, synthesisers, tabletop effects and, in the case of EXD, drum machines, often recorded at incredible levels to create a uniquely visceral distortion, has essentially become the benchmark for noise music in the 21st century.

A devout archivist, Merzbow’s unreleased works from this period are finally getting the attention they deserve. Editions like Noise Mass, issued by Room40 in 2019, are amongst a growing number of releases that document the gradual unfolding of his signature approach to overabundance of frequency and ceaseless sonic chaos. Recorded at the end of 1997 and early 1998, EXD owes its title to the Bias Rockaku-kun EXD 5ch analogue drum synthesizer. It is an exercise in maximal minimalism. Using repeated phrases, atmospheric, but reductive drum patterns and tightly wound pulses, Merzbow calls up a vision proto-industrial technoscape.

Bathed in white noise, it is a music in which the reassurance of the kick drum is largely torn away, sending the music into an uneasy orbital decay. It’s the sound of warning systems onboard a satellite as it begins to burn up, falling back to earth. An exquisite sonic evisceration. What makes EXD quite unusual is it reveals, in part at least, some of the skeletal structures Merzbow deploys in the creation of his works. It’s especially revealing, as this period is mostly recognised for its unending shower of brutalising harsh noise. On the title track EXD we can a Roland TR-606 drum machine folding into and out of focus. Its grooves ruptured by, and then become gradually consumed in, a field of phasing noise and distortion."

Merzbow - (2020) StereoAkuma

 

Room40 ‎– EDRM428

 In June 2019, Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow travelled to Australia to take part in Room40’s Open Frame festival.

Across a week he delivered a series of performances to sold out audiences in Sydney and Melbourne. The performances were viscerally explosive, a channeling of intensities of frequency and volume - the kind of trademarked bodily affective noise Merzbow has become renowned for.

Between the concerts, Akita spent his days visiting a variety of forests, spending time with legendary Australia fauna icons like the Australian White Ibis, Little Penguins and various other native species. As a vegan, his affinity for the natural world is unconditional. With this in mind he has announced all profits from this edition will be donated to assisting wildlife recovery in the wake of the Australia bushfire crisis of the past few months. Room40 will be matching all money raised.

Thanks Merzbow!

released February 28, 2020

Design by Traianos Pakioufakis
Mixed and Mastered by Lawrence English

Boris With Merzbow - (2020) 2R0I2P0 CD

 

Relapse Records ‎– RR7471

Relapse Records presents 2R0I2P0, the brand new collaborative album from BORIS and MERZBOW. The 10 track album showcases every bit of the excitement and pulse-pounding rock and metal heard throughout the inimitable, expansive BORIS catalog, as it meets the signature harsh noise and soundscapes of the equally prolific MERZBOW.

An album that is at once familiar and unique for its time, melodic and harsh in equal parts, 2R0I2P0 aims to find sonic harmony. After all, 2R0I2P0 translates to "Twenty Twenty R.I.P." "This year was a period of trial for everyone in the world," BORIS comments. "This work becomes a monument to the requiem of the previous era. From here, a new world begins again."

Alberich - (2010) NATO-Uniformen 8xCS

 

Hospital Productions ‎– HOS-284

Clinic Of Torture - (2020) Rohrstockliebe CS

 

 Institute Of Paraphilia Studies ‎– none 



Concrete Mascara - (2015) History Of Ruin CS

 

Trapdoor Tapes ‎– TT084

Contagious Orgasm - (2018) Stalked Into The Gap Of Heart CS

 

Tension Collapse ‎– TC005

Contagious Orgasm / Caligula031 - (2018) Non-Consensual CS

 

Elettronica Radicale Edizioni ‎– EREAU013


Controlled Death - (2020) Death Entries 1

 

Holy Terror ‎– HT.DEATH.


 

Kinbakushi - (2020) Construction Site Bondage CS

 

 Institute Of Paraphilia Studies ‎– none



HHL - (2015) Shorn / Flail CS

 

 Summer Isle ‎– SI07

Jacob Winans - (2020) Burn One, Bring It Through The Garden, Pin A Rose On It CS

 


Flag Day Recordings ‎– FDR41

Leather Bath - (2019) Nature's Crackling Fire CD

 

Leather Bath, Inc. ‎– LBINC1908

Leather Bath is a performance and art project founded in 2010 by Greh Holger and John Wiese in Los Angeles, California. Their work consists of sound-based performance and video, collage, and installations, creating explicit publications communicating reality to mature adults. Nature's Crackling Fire is their first full length album. Edition of 200 copies in 6-panel digipak. 

Grunt - (2012) Long Lasting Happiness CD

 







 

 

 

 

 

 

 Industrial Recollections ‎– none

Grunt - (2020) Spiritual Eugenics 2xCD

 

 Freak Animal Records ‎– none

Born in 1993, Grunt remains one of the most active and restless forces in Finnish - or even global industrial noise network. Since first tapes published 25 years ago, project has been active without any breaks. Messy discography makes it hard to judge how many actual ”albums” has been created. List of releases reaches close to hundred, yet most of them represents other approach than creation of ”album”. Spiritual Eugenics continue to path established by Castrate The Illusionist (2018), Myth Of Blood (2015), World Draped In A Camouflage (2012), Petturien Rooli (2009) and Seer of Decay (2006).

It expands the sounds, themes and visuals to unheard levels, but keeps firmly touch of known Grunt sound. 80 minutes long album is monolithic work packaged in double digipak with booklet.

 

Grunt / Outermost - (1995) Stab In The Ears CS

 Cat Move ‎– CM 007

 

Grunt / Pile Of Eggs - (1995) Noise Never Stops : Split! CS

 


Eggscab Radio ‎– none 

Genocide Organ - (2014) Kwazulu Natal LP

 


Tesco Archaic Documents ‎– 005 

Kjostad - (2020) Red Iron Knife CD

 

 White Centipede Noise ‎– WCN054 


Kjostad - (2019) Ice In / Ice Out CS

 

 Cipher Productions ‎– (sic 102)

Mania - (2020) Raw Nerves & Unseen Eyes CD

 

Freak Animal Records ‎– FA-CD-124

The New Sadism - (1984) Breather's Penis Age CS

 

Not On Label ‎– none  



Peter J. Woods - (2018) The Actress And The Gauntlet CDr

 

Breaching Static ‎– BS 98 

 

Zoviet France - (2020) Châsse 15xLP & 2x7''

Vinyl-on-demand ‎– 155 
Part: One / Two / Three
 
 "Members during the exciting early years represented by these 11 LPs (on 15 12''s and 2 7''s) of :zoviet*france: were Ben Ponton, Robin Storey, Peter Jensen, Paolo Di Paolo and Lisa Hale. :zoviet*france: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagogic and half-heard.
Having wilfully obscured themselves in Newcastle upon Tyne since their inception in 1980, :zoviet*france: has developed a radical relationship with cheap technologies, homemade acoustic instruments, primitive looping and sampling techniques, and basic dub trickery from which the group has crafted a distinctly unique vocabulary of sonic hypnosis.

Just as the group’s sound has alchemically reconfigured inexpensive technologies, the packaging of their releases has avoided standard formats with aluminium, steel, wood and porcelain among the materials that have been bent and cut to shape instead."

Zoviet France - (2020) Châsse 2e 17xLP

 

 Vinyl-on-demand ‎– VOD 165 

Part 1 / 2

 Zoviet*France: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagogic and half-heard. Having wilfully obscured themselves in Newcastle upon Tyne since their inception in 1980, :zoviet*france: has developed a radical relationship with cheap technologies, homemade acoustic instruments, primitive looping and sampling techniques, and basic dub trickery from which the group has crafted a distinctly unique vocabulary of sonic hypnosis. Just as the group’s sound has alchemically reconfigured inexpensive technologies, the packaging of their releases has avoided standard formats with aluminium, steel, wood and porcelain among the materials that have been bent and cut to shape instead.

William Basinski - (2020) Lamentations

 

Temporary Residence Limited ‎– TRR343 

William Basinski’s reputation as the foremost producer of profound meditations on death and decay has long been established, but on his new album, Lamentations, he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. More than any other work since The Disintegration Loops, there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and that sense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor.

Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski’s archives – dating back to 1979 – Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by the inevitable passage of time and the indisputable collapsing of space – and their collective resonance is infinite and eternal.

Alfarmania - (2016) Vid Sömnens Sista Tråd CS

 

 Styggelse ‎– 83 


This is a less limited tape edition of the impossible to find 7”ep released by 8EMINIS in a ridiculous edition of 20 lathe cut copies (…I hear a second edition of 20 copies was issued, but I could not validate the truth of that). At least now the music is more widely available given Kristian of Alfarmania has issued another version on tape (with bonus material), via his own Styggelse imprint.

The first track ‘Vid Sömnens Sista Tråd’ features crumbling atonal modulated synth layers, an underbelly of cavernous junk metal chaos and rough vocals barks from the depths of the asylum.  Fantastic stuff.  ‘Kvick I Jord’ is the next track, and features a broadly metallic creaking resonance and interweaving mid to high range wailing/ droning tones, as stilted bass thumbs bed down the loose structure. ‘Lomsk’ is the last of the tracks featured on the 7”ep, consisting of radio channel scanning noise, sustained burrowing textures and spoken samples again pushing atmospheres of dread and unease to the fore.  The bonus material then consists of ‘En Otrampad Stig’, which was originally featured on compilation tape associated with the United Forces of Industrial II festival from 2015.  This track is more stalking in atmosphere, where it take its time in elevating the tone.  Atonal synth loop provides the backing for controlled yet squalling noise and the barked vocals of the mentally deranged, all wrapped up in deep mineshaft tone.  There is also an unlisted 5th tracks, which is evidently an outtake from an earlier ‘Slutstationen’ compilation tape recording session and brings more Alfarmania induced anxiety.

By now you should appreciate what might be expected from an Alfarmania release and this tape delivers as strong material from the project as you should by now expect, which ultimately amounts to classic Alfarmania ‘post-mortem’ paranoia.  Double sided fold out J card with suitable imagery rounds out the tape nicely, and the slogan of “No To New Support” is a nice attitude and sentiment.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2008) L'Œuvre Musicale En 12xCD

 

 INA-GRM ‎– Ina G 6000/11

Part 1 / 2 / 3

An incredible complete works boxsetwith 33 compositions from 1964 to 2007 with a 92 pages booklet in French and English. The best way to enter into the world of Bernard Parmegiani, French composer of musique concrete, member of the GRM group.
"The Wire magazine recently described this amazing package as "A bargain price treasure chest....containing worlds of inexhaustible spaciousness and strangeness" and, indeed, listening through just some of the 12 cd's included you find yourself drawn into a multi-faceted world of strange sound sources and audio manipulations designed to play tricks on your senses to an extent that has left this reviewer almost paralysed with wonderment. Parmegiani started out working for the French equivalent of the BBC and soon found himself mentored by the founding father of Musique Concrete, Pierre Schaeffer. Making use of technological advances that gave the world magnetic tape and microphones, Schaeffer pioneered a method of taking everyday sounds and transforming them into unrecognisable, detached pieces of music with no identifiable sound source, a style that became known as Acousmatic music.

Parmegiani was hugely influenced by Schaeffer's pioneering work and Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM), the French Radio institution that is often described as the French equivalent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The work Parmegiani would go on to create would make use of these Acousmatic techniques in creating a body of work which is not only one of the most significant of the 20th century, but also hugely influential on a whole host of musical pioneers that would follow in his wake, with Christian Fennesz, Aphex Twin and Jim O'Rourke being notable disciples. These 12 cd's cover the majority of Parmegiani's musique concrete legacy and include pieces recorded between 1964 and 2007. You can barely believe the immersive and often woozy effect of these recordings, ranging from eerie cut-out tape loops through to popular music plunderphonics and proto-distilled-dub that's impossible to absorb in one sitting. Having so far only made it through half of this gargantuan collection (with the very handy aid of the 92 page book included in the package) - I can safely say that L' Ouvre Musicale is not only one of the most impressive and important collections of music I've heard this year, but also one of the most culturally significant and rewarding.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2020) Violostries LP

 

Recollection GRM ‎– REGRM 023 

 

 Violostries (1963/64), 16'39

Premiered and recorded in April 1965 at the Royan Festival - France, by Devy Erlih (violin) & Bernard Parmegiani (sound projection).

Violostries represents the intersection of several musical research directions, presented as two simultaneous dialogues - composer/performer and instrument/orchestra.

After a short introduction tutti very spatialized:
1. Pulsion/Miroirs: multiplied by itself, the violin is projected into the four corners of the sound space.
2. Jeu de cellules: concertante piece for violin and audio medium, the latter being made up of very tightly woven microsounds.
3. Végétal: slow and invisible development following a continuous time, resulting from an internal and permanent processing of the matter.

Capture éphémère (1967, 1988 version), 11'48

This work was composed in four tracks in 1967 for quadraphonic diffusion.
Remixed in stereo in 1988.
Premiered at the Studio 105 of the Maison de la Radio, Paris, May 1967.
Sounds - noises that circulate as time unfolds - continue to exist despite our recording them.
Breaths, fluttering wings: ephemeral microsonic sounds streaking space, sound scratches, landslides, bounces, vertigo of solid objects falling into an abyssal void, multiple snapshots forever frozen in their fall. As many symbols leave inside us the permanent trace of their ephemeral brushing against our ear.
Some day, a desert, a sound, then never again....
Somewhere, in my head and body something still resonates... resonance, what could be more ephemeral.

La Roue Ferris (1971), 10'45

Premiered at the Festival des chantiers navals, Menton, on August 26, 1971.
Sound projection: Bernard Parmegiani.

La Roue Ferris (Ferris wheel) spins, merging with its own resonance, stubbornly perpetuating its variations. It only sketches a regularly evolving movement around a constant axis. Each of its towers generates thick sonic layers that penetrate each other, producing a very fluid interweaving. The crackling of the origin eventually metamorphoses into sonic threads whose lightness recalls high-altitude clouds, cirrus clouds, haunted by the cries of swifts twirling in the warm air. The wondrous arises and dies off, leaving us with an illusion of duration.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2012) L'Œil Écoute / Dedans-Dehors LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– REGRM 003 

Just after Pierre Schaeffer had founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1959, Bernard Parmegiani became a member of it. It was a collective of composers, who represented the »musique concrète«, far away from traditional instruments and sounds. Additionally, they helped popularizing elctro-acoustic music, probably one of the reasons why Editions Mego have created a whole sub-label for the group last year. Recollection GRM’s third record includes two tracks by the 75-years-old composer Parmegiani, who is said to be one of the most influential representatives of acousmatic music, dealing with sounds without an audible origin. The track »L’Œil écoute« (ie. »the eye is listening«) was created in 1970 and originally served as part of a video with the same name. At the beginning, the sounds are still very familiar and concrete: trains rattle, bees hum, radio-channels skip; this is how far our own experience allows us to recognize the sounds. After about one third of the 19-minutes-track (there was a CD in 1997 with a 25-minutes-version – what happened to those six minutes?), it drifts of into the unknown. From now on, the listener is on his own and has to create individual pictures in his head, has to learn how to listen again. The track »Dedans-Dehors« on the b-side is from 1977. In its 22 minutes playing time, it contrasts natural with artificial sounds. There are more or less audible references to the elements water, fire, earth and air, created as a natural metamorphosis, liquid, solid, gaseous, all in one movement. And in between, you’ll hear birds singing. It is a bit like a phoenix burning in the glow of the morning sun at sunrise, only to rise again straight away from its own ashes. »Dedans-Dehors« is pure mythology and gets its power from that very source – thankfully, this music can now be purchased again, remastered on vinyl.